Born in Sweden in 1964, Neneh Cherry’s father Ahmadu was a musician from Sierra Leone. Her mother, Moki, was a twenty-one-year-old Swedish textile artist. Her parents split up just after Neneh was born, and not long afterwards Moki met and fell in love with acclaimed jazz musician Don Cherry. Eventually, the strong pull New York City in the 1970s drew him them there, but they made a home wherever they traveled. Neneh and her brother Eagle-Eye experienced a life of creativity, freedom, and, of course, music.
In A Thousand Threads, Neneh takes readers from the charming old schoolhouse in the woods of Sweden where she grew up, to the village in Sierra Leone that was birthplace of her biological father, to the early punk scene in London and New York, to finding her identity with her stepfather’s family in Watts, California. Neneh has lived an extraordinary life of connectivity and creativity and she recounts in intimate detail how she burst onto the scene as a teenager in the punk band The Slits, and went on to release her first album in 1989 with a worldwide hit single “Buffalo Stance.”
A Thousand Threads: A Memoir by Neneh Cherry will be published October 8, 2024. Scribner provided an early galley for review.
I would instantly know the cover of this book as it shares the same image as that on her 1989 banger debut album Raw Like Sushi Being very close in age (we're just a year apart) and thus coming from the same generation, I was very interested to know her story.
As the title states, Neneh takes after her mother as she weaves the many threads of her life into a revealing tapestry. The first quarter of the book covers in great detail her childhood with her parents and brother, bouncing back and forth between Sweden and New York City. With age and wisdom, she is interpets those times through adult eyes yet still captures beautifully the essences of youth.
Even before she started making music herself, she was gathering in threads of various styles and sounds. From her stepfather's jazz connections to her touring along the punk scene to being at the epicenter of the birth of hip-hop, the elements were layering to build what would be the foundations of her own musical stylings. I was very surprised to learn about the punk bands (the Slits and Rip Rig + Panic) that she was a part of during her late teens and early 20's.
The third part of the book is where she dives into own songs and albums. I appreciated the insights into how the music came together and even more so that she recorded her debut album while very far along into her second pregnancy. Her newborn baby and family all figure prominently in the video for "Manchild", her debut album's second single. The threads of life and family run strong through out her story.
In the end, her story is about family, friends, and a little bit of fame. It is one of life, love, and of eventual loss. I could relate to the general human themes that Neneh was illustrating here in her own life.
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