Corinne Bailey Rae

Chancellor:

The University of Leeds isn't just a famous concert venue; it also boasts a number of highly successful performance artists among its graduates.  Of these, one of the most talented and already one of the most lauded is singer-songwriter Corinne Bailey Rae.

Corinne's eponymous first album has been described as a 'mellow', 'well-wrought' jazz-pop performance.  Winner of numerous awards, and nominated for both the Brits and the Grammies, Corinne Bailey Rae reached number one in Britain, and sold nearly four million copies worldwide.  

But it's her darker, elegiac second album, The Sea, released in 2010 and nominated for the Mercury Prize, which confirms her lasting star quality, signalling as it does an artistic and emotional complexity which is witness to her intelligently eclectic musical curiosity - from Smokey Robinson to Björk; Billie Holiday to TV on the Radio - but also to the untimely loss in 2008 of her husband, the gifted jazz saxophonist Jason Rae.  

Born in Leeds - her mother is from Yorkshire, her father from St Kitts in the Caribbean - the young Corinne Bailey's talents were nurtured by a 'radical, questioning' youth leader at her church and found expression during her teenage years in this city's lively indie music scene where she performed regularly with her all-girl band, 'Helen'.  All this, by the way, whilst Head Girl at Allerton High and working towards four A's at A-level and a fortuitously unsuccessful application to Oxford.  Oxford's failure of judgement was our - and, I'd like to think, Corinne's - gain.  Preferring to maintain her links with Leeds music, Corinne read English here and graduated in 2000.  

Corinne Bailey Rae provides a wonderful role model for Leeds students.  Balancing her co-curricular commitment to her music with a creative enthusiasm for her subject, she used her time as an undergraduate to broaden her education in the widest sense: whether in expanding her musical horizons by working at the Underground jazz club; or choosing a path through her degree which deepened her already acute awareness of women's role and potential.  Originating, no doubt, in the example of (in Corinne's words) her 'really impressive' mum, Linda, who left school at 15 and resumed her education as an adult, the position of women recurs in Corinne's always thoughtful and articulate commentaries on her career.  It's manifest in her account of being inspired as a teenager by grrl-power bands L7 and Veruca Salt who were 'kinda sexy - but feminist'; and it's key to her role as ambassador for the clean water charity Pump Aid.  For Corinne, 'water is a feminist issue.  [Girls] end up missing school, walking miles with unsafe water.'

'Much as I love singing songs', Corinne has said, 'I've always wanted to do more.'  That ethos of giving something back runs deep in her family background, but I like to think that it was nurtured too during her time here at the University of Leeds. 

The reports of my colleagues who taught Corinne are unanimous in their praise: 'a finely tuned and energising mind'; 'keen, conceptually acute, funny'; 'always a lively and generous presence'.  More than ten years on, those qualities have helped her gain a distinctive place among young female recording artists; they are evident in her eloquent, searching lyrics; and they underpin her understanding of the creative arts as a source of healing and hope. 

Chancellor, I am honoured and delighted to present to you for the Degree of Doctor of Music, honoris causa, Corinne Jacqueline Bailey Rae.