Solange: “I’ve started writing music for the tuba”

Solange has revealed that she has been working on new music – although in a different way to what fans are used to.

• READ MORE: Solange – ‘When I Get Home’ review

The musician’s last studio album arrived five years ago, when she dropped the 2019 LP ‘When I Get Home’. Since then, she has turned her efforts to composing a 2022 ballet score.

Now, however, it seems Solange is once again venturing into a new direction: focusing her efforts on writing music on the tuba.

The R&B star opened up about the new material she has been working on during a recent discussion with Harper’s Bazaar, and revealed that the next project she releases may be comprised entirely of her playing the instrument.

“I’ve started writing music for the tuba, and I am trying to talk myself into releasing it,” she began, going on to open up about her reluctance to officially share the new material. “But I can only imagine the eye rolls from people being like, ‘This bitch hasn’t made an album’.”

She continued, adding what it was about the instrument that made her gravitate towards it and turn her sights away from R&B. “It sounds like what the gut feels like to me,” she explained. “There’s a way that it takes up space that you can’t deny, and it also just feels very Black to me.”

Strangely enough, it isn’t just Solange who has turned her sights to a new musical direction and focussed on instrumental music.

Just last year, former OutKast member André 3000 made a similar decision by sharing his latest album ‘New Blue Sun’ – an 87-minute long project which saw him perform entirely on the flute and collaborate with stars of the jazz scene.

After the album’s release, its unusual, spectacularly wordy titles garnered significant attention – particularly with songs titled ‘I swear, I Really Wanted To Make A “Rap” Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me This Time’ and ‘The Slang Word P(*)ssy Rolls Off The Tongue With Far Better Ease Than The Proper Word Vagina . Do You Agree?’.

He later went on to suggest that a collaboration with SAULT is on the cards, and Ja Rule said that he was left feeling “heartbroken” after discovering that the musician doesn’t want to rap anymore.

In other Solange news, last month the artist shared preview footage and images from her new four-act performance, In Service To Whom.

The multimedia presentation was described as a combination of “sonic meditations with performance-specific scenography and digital-visual archive projections” that integrates the artist’s “spirit in music, design, visual art, and cultural archive and preservation into one four-act performance”.