How India.Arie got her groove back

India.Arie was absolutely giddy, like a schoolgirl with a secret crush, as she stepped on stage for her big reveal two weeks ago. She’d kept her new music under wraps for nearly six months, only divulging the extent of her ongoing collaboration with Israeli pop star Idan Raichel in a Creative Loafing interview two months prior.

The two of them had already appeared on stages together - with Arie singing Raichel’s “Mey Nahar” (“River Waters”) in Hebrew, accompanied by Raichel on piano - at New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage last November, and at a Kennedy Center concert in Washington, D.C., for Martin Luther King Day, with President Obama in attendance.

But Aug. 7 was the trump card, and a new beginning of sorts for Arie, as she prepared to present an album’s worth of material written and composed with her self-professed “musical soulmate,” whom she’d crossed cultural boundaries to meet. While walking through an Open Door - the title of both the listening performance and the eventual album to be released next spring - she was just as anxious to close one on an industry she no longer could allow to compromise her message and brand of acoustic soul.

“I never said anything I didn’t want to say,” Arie told a packed 7 Stages audience of family, friends and Twitter-following fans who’d inadvertently caused the website of her indie start-up label, SoulBird, to crash after she tweeted about a limited amount of tickets to the private event. “But I haven’t said things that I do want to say.”

When Arie charged out of the gate 10 years ago, proclaiming that she was “not the average girl in the video,” it was a bold, self-affirming statement in an era where video hos were a hot commodity in black pop. While objectifying her body was out of the question, Arie says she did choose, on some songs, to sacrifice the acoustic sound that had garnered her such a strong local following at Yin Yang Cafe in the late ’90s for a style of production that her label felt would make her more palatable to urban radio.

And it paid off. Spearheaded by that first single, “Video,” her 2001 Motown debut, Acoustic Soul, was eventually certified double platinum.

But by the time she met Raichel, on a whim, during a 2008 vacation to Israel almost three Grammy awards and three albums later, Arie was nearing a point of desperation. The more she’d compromised for the sake of a radio single here or there, the more she saw a decline in album sales - which, though it probably had more to do with the insufferable state of the industry, still made her question the point of it all.

“I think that’s what I started to hate about the music industry,” said the 2010 Georgia Music Hall of Fame inductee, offering testimony between performing spiritual salvos with such cosmic titles as “The One,” “Brother Sister,” and “You Are a Star.” “I was trying to push myself on people who might not like me anyway.”

That certainly wasn’t the case at 7 Stages, where a mixed bag of supporters, some of whom had driven or flown from as far as Alabama, North Carolina and British Columbia, gushed tears of praise during the talk-back session for Arie’s ability to speak their language. “You gave me back my song, and I didn’t even know I’d lost it,” said one fan after hearing Raichel and Arie’s new work. “It was water to my soul. Thank you for being frustrated enough to get to this point.”

Arie’s latest epiphany isn’t a change in course as much as it is one of many reminders she’s received on her path of evolution. Just as she crafted a personal mantra (“to spread love, healing, peace and joy through words and music”) to remind her of her purpose after losing out on seven Grammy nods in 2002, her recent breakthrough came following an ego-bruising 2009 tour and subsequent prayer and writing sabbaticals she took to reconnect with her center.

“I’ve had to let go of certain people, worn out ideas about myself, and MOST OF ALL, I’ve had to let go of MY image of ME,” she wrote in a post on her website, announcing the details of the invitation-only show a few weeks ago.

It felt like a homecoming as Arie was joined on stage by many of the pivotal friends and figures she launched her indie career with so many years ago, including longtime songwriting homie (and SoulBird signee) Anthony David, who showed up to sing background after she called on him the night before; bassist Khari Simmons, who came up with Arie in Atlanta’s defunct Groovement artist collective and backed her on her first major tour, opening for Sade in ‘01; Anasa Troutman, close friend and former co-founder of Groovement and corresponding indie label Earthseed; as well as twangy-guitarist Blue Miller, who recorded with Arie on Acoustic Soul; and Hilda Willis, her long-time artistic coach and behind-the-scenes creative director.

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Being the first breakout artist of the altruistic Groovement/Earthseed collective, Arie eventually exited to sign her major label deal with Motown in 2000. “We weren’t really making money, and I wanted to make money,” she reflected in a June CL interview. “It’s been 10 years since I signed that deal. In hindsight, I threw away a lot of the things that I could’ve kept. ... I wish that there were just certain friendships that I could’ve held on to, and that I could’ve stayed in contact with certain people.”

As Arie twirled and danced for the intimate 7 Stages’ crowd in a free-flowing, white skirt and tank top, showing off moves that looked more improvised than choreographed (contrary to the program crediting choreography to Jai McClendon-Jones), her career seemed to have come full circle. While she breezed through songs like the reggae-tinged and surprisingly radio-friendly “Get Up” (“Get up/This is not the time to give up”), it became obvious that Arie still has those intangibles that have kept her commercially viable for a decade: the rich alto she dips, like a ladle, into those smoky, soul-stirring registers; the ability to convey the deepest truths in the simplest terms; and that unexplainable inner glow.

Still, some of her staunchest supporters - including her mom/stylist, who goes by her last name, Simpson, and her older brother, J’On - weren’t entirely sold, at least before the show, on her renewed sense of direction. That was based on the incomplete tracks they’d heard. Worried that an album full of slow, brooding, piano-heavy songs might not pop, her brother had initially encouraged her to “do a song with rapper Rick Ross” - a pairing so odd even the audience gasped at the mention of his name.

While she’s had some wildly diverse duet partners in her career - from Akon (“I Am Not My Hair”) to John Cougar Mellencamp (“Peaceful World”) to her idol Stevie Wonder (“A Time to Love”) - none seem as inconceivable as her pairing with Raichel. Yet somehow, despite being worlds apart, they fit. Like the contrast of his blonde, matted dreads to her jet-black, cascading braids, Raichel’s classical, melodic piano playing combines with Arie’s folk and gospel-inspired vocals to strike a tender, emotional chord, especially when paired with trance-inducing, tribal drums (superbly played by Kinah Boto that night).

But could there be something more to them than that?

“She did try to hit on me,” Raichel said in his thick Jewish accent, peeking over the piano with a blushing smirk. To which Arie pounced back, “Yeah, ‘cause he’s a superstar in Israel, and a sex symbol - which I don’t get, but whatever.”

Whether or not their flirtation is simply for show, their creative partnership seems to have sparked some of the best, and frankest, love songs of Arie’s career, including “He Is the Shit” and the smoldering “Sixth Avenue,” on which she guides listeners through a tour of historic NYC attractions before crooning on the hook, “My favorite place in the Empire State/is in bed with you.”

But, ultimately, they hope their mutual admiration can set an example abroad. “You and I know how brave you are to even perform with an Israeli musician in these days,” Raichel told Arie as they spoke of their desire to tour the world with a culturally diverse group of musicians from the war-torn Middle East.

After addressing the need to elevate human consciousness by cutting through cultural barriers in the song “Gift of Acceptance,” Arie stressed the point she hopes their collaboration will make: “Tolerance is different than acceptance.”

As guilty as Arie may be of sounding hippie-dippie at times, she hasn’t totally forsaken the business of music. The very purpose of the show was to corral a concentration of her fan base together to get their reaction to the new music, which could go a long way when the time comes to market and promote Open Door. That fact was not lost on her new manager, industry vet Ron Gillyard (who seemed encouraged, if a little bewildered, at the power of her <a href=”http://twitter.com/indiaarie” target=”_blank” http://twitter.com/indiaarie">Twitter following), or BET’s programming guru Stephen Hill, who was also present.

Finally, Arie turned to her mother - a former Motown singer who opened for the likes of Stevie Wonder and Al Green back in the day - to ask her opinion, after having had the opportunity to hear Arie and Raichel’s musical creation performed live.

“Now I hear your story and I see your story,” Simpson said. “I’m listening.”

But the critical moment came as the two-hour performance and hour-long talk-back drew to a close. With fans fully forewarned that anyone caught recording or photographing the performance would get the boot, an audience member wanted to know, now that it was over, if he still had to keep it a secret.

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“Can we tweet about it?” he asked.

Arie gleamed back at him with a coy smile and tucked her chin as if she was flattered, before responding with a squeak:

“Please!”