The dramatic and effecting voice illuminated on the debut release, Sun Machine, by the disc's multi-talented singer/songwriter and choreographer, Morley Kamen, captures the lyrical essence of yearning. Morley's music exhudes radiance and warmth.

"The goal of each song," Morley explains, "is growth and transformation. I believe in people's capacity to change." A former teacher of music, dance and yoga in New York City's Junior and Senior High School system, and community centers for seven years, Morley Kamen was born in Jamaica Queens, New York. She spent her formative years absorbing the sights, scents and sounds of Parsons Boulevard's multi-ethnic community--an experience that clearly informs her worldview and the diversity of influences in her music.

Her quest for growth and transformation through the arts began at the age of five. "I was just a little kid but there, I started to develop an awareness of my own presence inside my body and an awareness of my own breathing."

Morley attended dance classes in addition to her study of the martial arts. Her training in martial arts and dance gave her a large physical vocabulary; and the breath control involved in both has been a great assistance to her singing.

At the age of ten, she was enrolled in the United Nations School, where she and her young friends made up dances. "We would dance to Roberta Flack, especially to 'Killing Me Softly'. We wore that record out! We would make up dances to her lyrics so the dance would shape the story. Ten years later, I realized those dances were similar to the social dances of indigenous cultures, any dance that tells the story of the culture. And we didn't know. We just made them up! That's really what started the choreography."

The stories of diverse culture and inclusion told in those dances are consistent with the stories she tells in the songs on Sun Machine. Morley points out- - "Nothing is really new. In realizing that, you reinterpret the lasting and living traditions in a personal and intimate way... Nothing is really ours in the music. In it, you hear echoes of Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Eddie Hazel, etc."

In her teens, Morley spent three years at Washington D.C.'s Duke Ellington School of the Arts. Upon graduation, she came back to New York and won a full scholarship to Alvin Ailey's Dance Theater. After a year's time, she suffered a knee injury, which derailed her dance career. Unclear about her next move, she drifted until she was approached one day in a cafe. "Someone came up to me and asked if I would be interested in modeling," she explains. "He gave me his card. It turned out he worked for a reputable agency. I went there, did a photo shoot and they signed me. Then I went to England to do some modeling."

"After a month in London, I was walking down the street one day, with my face and hair all done up. I had just finished a shoot. I stopped to look at the clothes hanging in the window of a boutique, and I saw a woman in the window. The woman startled me because I realized it was my own reflection! I didn't recognize myself and said 'Oh no, that's not me!' So I crossed the street and I think it was fate because there was this little punk rock girl on the corner giving haircuts for 3 pounds. I told her to cut it off, shave it ALL off! I put my nose ring back in, looked in the mirror and said, 'Yeah, that's me.'"

She was nineteen. "I gave up modeling and returned to the U.S." she continues, "At the time, I felt I was contributing to a concept of beauty that wasn't real. That standard is so limited.

Back in New York, Morley began to spend time with an old pianist friend from the Duke Ellington School. He exposed her to the inner world of jazz. He taught me the difference between listening to music and hearing it. He taught me to be in the presence of music, to get inside of it."

"He sat there with me for a couple of days and played all this music. We didn't talk. We listened. All he'd say was 'Check this out' and 'Check this out'.... It really affected the way I heard my surroundings. I began to hear social frustration. I really began to hear a cry for truth in music, a cry for healing. And I began to hear that cry within myself."

In response, Morley returned to the Alvin Ailey Dance Center and began to choreograph; incorporating spoken-word and song. Later, she co-founded The Undercurrents Dance Theater, a multi-media company for which she acted as musical director. This experience culminated in collaboration with Max Roach, Ossie Davis, Baba Olatunji and Cassandra Wilson for the 30th Anniversary of the protest album We Insist! which was performed at Aaron Davis Hall in Manhattan. The piece included 19 dancers (from Alvin Ailey and Martha Graham companies), 30-piece choir, Cecil Bridgewater, Tyrone Brown, Odeon Pope and the aforementioned musicians. It was an incredibly meaningful and breathtaking experience for Morley.

In between teaching, writing poetry, choreography and (the obligatory) waiting tables, Morley began to write songs. "Desert Flowers" was her first. It appears on Sun Machine. She wrote it with her producers Hod David (who also penned songs for Maxwell) and Chris Dowd (ex-Fishbone). "Chris and Hod had just written the music" she says, "and they asked me what I thought. Well, I thought it was beautiful and they asked me to take it home and fuck around with it. I came back the next day with some lyrics and they asked me if I wanted to make a demo tape. I said 'Sure' and I've been singing it now for three years."

Of her influences on Sun Machine, she cites: Bob Marley, David Bowie, Billy Holiday, Nina Simone, Bob Dylan, Sweet Honey and the Rock, etc. She dedicates Sun Machine, to her Godfather.

"These artists are very generous," she says. "That's what makes a great artist; an artist who exposes their vulnerability. The way Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan offered himself up and sings to God, that's a great artist to me. He said 'Each time I sing, I sing to God.'

Morley credits her two producers with helping her understand and begin to achieve her full potential as a recording artist. "Chris and Hod are hard-core partners with me. They didn't just settle for anything on this album. They were not only like that with me but they were also like that with each other. It's a real family vibe. It's a real situation where we gotta put our best into this. It's all or nothing, and I can trust them."