As the singer and writer for Italian dance act Blackwood, Taborah Adams traveled the world and amassed several international hits (among them "I've Got to Have You," "Ride on the Rhythm" and "My Love for You.") With two massive club hits "I Am (The Rising)" and "All I Gave to You" showcasing her powerful voice, Taborah is now making her presence known in the United States.
DJ Ron Slomowicz: I love both of your songs that you have out.
Taborah: Oh thanks so much, I enjoy them too, and it was fun writing them because it's very emotional
when you get to write and then sing with the emotion that you have behind it.
RS: So you wrote both of those songs, "I Am" and "All I Gave To You?"
Taborah: Yes, I wrote both of those songs, and as you can tell from the meaning of both of those songs, I
was in two different places when I wrote them.
RS: One thing I love about songwriters is that when they sing their songs, you can tell they're really in
a place when they sing them. When you wrote "I Am," what was going on in your life that inspired such lyrics to come
out of you?
Taborah: Oh, I was feeling inspired to climb higher heights, to become better at what I was doing, and
it's such a feel good song and such a song of inspiration and reaching goals, and that's where I was and that's where
I was going in my life, so out came "I Am."
RS: And this was at the time you were with Blackwood, right?
Taborah: Yes, it was.
RS: Well let's rewind a little bit before that, before you made it to Italy, were you trained as a singer?
Taborah: I took a few voice lessons as a child with the Venettes cultural workshop on Long Island, but
other than that all the training came from my home. My father sang with the Fisk Jubilee Singers and my mother used
to sing Ave Maria to us every night before she'd put us to bed.
RS: So how did that beginning end up with you being a European pop star?
Taborah: By the grace of God, I don't know because we had to fight at my house to get the microphone and
sing. And my mother said I had no key, I couldn't sing until I was twelve.
RS: I find that hard to believe.
Taborah: My mother said that I would sing and she would hold her ears and say 'um, that's nice baby.'
But I was off pitch and I was off key, and then all of a sudden it came out.
RS: So from there, did you meet up with the Blackwood people in Europe or meet them in New York?
Taborah: You know, I started off in New York with the young lady that came in from Hawaii and we went to
the studio and did a few things together, and that enabled me to send me tape over to Italy when they were looking for
somebody.
RS: So you went over there, worked with them in the studio, and then it just became a bad situation?
Taborah: No, no, not at all, that's not what happened at all. I actually went over there and was
supposed to just record some songs, but they liked the whole package when they saw me and we decided to become a
group. It was back and forth for a few years and we were really ahead of our time with the music, we did "Ride On The
Rhythm" and
it was six years before it hit the charts on Billboard, where it stayed at number one for six months. So I went over
there, I came back to America, I came back and forth because nothing was really happening. Then boom, after two years
of being in America it took off, and I got a phone call to come back and that's when we put the album together.
RS: OK, because I was sort of thinking that "All I Gave To You" might have been inspired by the Blackwood
breakup.
Taborah: No, actually "All I Gave To You" was one of the first songs I wrote when I went to Italy just to
write songs and not to be a face, just to be the songwriter.
RS: Really?
Taborah: Now in Italy they have a lot of people that they hire, they say 'you just sing the song' and
they'll put somebody else in the video, you know, they're good for that. But I went over there just to get paid to
write some songs and sing them, because they didn't know what I looked like. But after I got over there and they said
'wait,
we can make this work.' We put it together.
