Finding sanctuary: Janelle Monáe hopes to ‘be a refuge’ for fans during Saturday’s Ravinia concert
As a child, Janelle Monáe had nightmares about two people: Grace Jones and Prince.
“I’ll never forget it,” the singer says. “Prince was chasing me in a purple suit, and Grace Jones was just laughing hysterically.”
In time Monáe would become both a friend and an artistic heir to the two iconic musicians, each untethered by conventions of genre and gender, and each capable of alchemizing androgyny and Afrofuturism into new forms. But it wasn’t until adulthood that she understood the nightmare obscured a dream.
“What I later found is that there was a part of their freeness and freedom that I was not ready to tap into yet,” the multihyphenate talent says, “but I think I’ve tapped into it now.”
She will tap into it with fresh intimacy and urgency Saturday during a double-billing with Jones at Ravinia Festival in Highland Park.
“There are so many people from all around the world whose rights are being trampled on,” Monáe says of this fraught moment. “They don’t feel safe loving how they love and walking in the world how they are.”
For Monáe, who grew up part of a churchgoing family in Kansas City, Kansas, and now identifies as queer and nonbinary, the quest for psychic freedom has been a constant, driving her to build a high-concept sci-fi world and skip-hop-jump across the continuum of soul music. Her steady stream of expression became a geyser with 2018’s “Dirty Computer,” an album on which Monáe fully embraced her sexuality and sensuality, and traded an androidlike persona for something more personal. She doubled down on her sex-is-power bet with “The Age of Pleasure,” a 2023 album that connected stylistic dots from across the world.
“That project was all about honoring the diaspora and honoring Black and Brown people in music — from the continent to the Caribbean to Atlanta to the Deep South — and honoring myself,” Monáe says during an interview with The Washington Post. “We have such a rich culture and history with music, and I just wanted to show how we connect and talk to each other, from country to country, island to island.”
On “The Age of Pleasure,” Monáe enlisted like-minded artists from different eras and countries, including Jones. The Jamaican-born model/singer/actor is featured on “Ooh La La,” a French-language, spoken-word interlude that serves as a sensual aperitif and a small tribute to the icon. Monáe says she now has a deeply personal, familial relationship with Jones that extends beyond the studio to visits to each other’s homes — time spent eating pasta, watching tennis, swimming in the pool.
Jones “was one of the first Black women to show us that you can be all of you. You can have a father who was a pastor and a preacher, and still be in tune with your sensuality, your sexuality and your freedom, and open up doors for more people,” says Monáe, who did her own door-opening by featuring new-school leaders Doechii and Amaarae on the album.
Monáe says while she can’t time travel and show her future self to her past self, she can help people find sanctuary at her show with Jones.
“When their own churches and governments turn their back on them, they can come to us for music and community and really see themselves reflected, and they get to smile without feeling like they’re living in fear,” she says. “Even if it’s for two to three hours, they’ll be with us. We want to be a refuge for them.”
• • •
Grace Jones and Janelle Monáe
When: 7 p.m. Saturday, June 7
Where: Ravinia Festival, 418 Sheridan Road, Highland Park
Tickets: $59-$180 at ravinia.org