XAVIER INTERVIEWED BY NY TIMES BLOG

MY PAL AND SINGER XAVIER ON A VARIETY OF THINGS--ALSO CHECK OUT HIS MUSIC!

Artists as diverse as Ashford and Simpson, Lena Horne, Del Marquis of the Scissor Sisters and Bread and Puppet Theater have all had the pleasure of being sung to, backed by or collaborating with Xavier Smith, a dreadlocked, extremely tall (6’6″) fixture on the downtown Manhattan performance circuit. For the past several years, Smith — who grew up in New York, has a gently soulful voice and prefers to be called simply “Xavier” (“with a hard X,” he notes, “like Ex-ayvier”) — has produced a Valentine’s song as a love letter to his friends, fans and whomever he might have been in love with that year. It started in 2004 with a cover of the Beatles’ “In My Life,” and this year’s offering is a heartbreaking rendition of Curtis Mayfield’s “The Makings of You” set to a small orchestral arrangement. From Bushwick, Brooklyn, where Xavier lives with Dima, his once-vicious but now sweet Himalayan blue-eyed cat, Xavier told T why he does the yearly Valentine’s song.




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