Niki Haris on M

Bay Windows

"Now, which publication is this for again?" asks Haris, rifling through a mental Rolodex.

It’s for Bay Windows, I remind her. A gay paper.

"Oh, yes!" she recalls. "You know, I always have to remind myself who I’m talking to. But I always know when I’m doing a jazz interview, because they never ask about Madonna."

She laughs. We’ll ask, and she’ll tell. To start: why the fallout? Diva drama?
"Maybe there was some drama, but I didn’t buy into it. We were sisters for years," says Haris. "At the end of the day, really she [Madonna] is a gem and I’m so grateful."

"She threw my baby shower for me!" adds Haris, who gave birth to her daughter in 2003. It was shortly thereafter that Madonna launched her Re-Invention Tour, the first time she staged a show without Haris in over 15 years.

"People can talk all the crap they want, but we both knew by that last tour [Drowned World, 2001]," says Haris. "I had broken my legs, learned how to walk again, how to dance again, and did that tour with really bad injuries. It was okay, but painful. Now, I was 41 and pregnant. ... Of course, my ego was involved: ’Oh, she don’t want me no more!’ But at the end of the day, she gave me the greatest gift. Because of her, I got to spend every freaking day with my kid, doing the music I love to do. I’m close to ’the family’ still. She knows I love her and she loves me."

Coincidentally, Madonna’s last two tours have featured similarly named singer Nicki Richards as a backing vocalist. Haris doesn’t mind.

"She can get Niki Two, if she wants to," she chuckles.

And Haris is cool with the notion that for some of her fans, her own fame might always be preceded by that of a certain someone else. "If they want to associate me in the pop world, the gay world, with Madonna ... that’s fine," says Haris. "But when they see me perform, when I do what I do, they know I’m not just here on the wings of Madonna. Though I’m grateful for the time [with her]. It’s on the resume, as they say in jazz."

"At the end of the day... thank you for the bank account!" she yelps. And if she ever needs more, she knows just how to get it.

"I’ll sell my bra one day," she says. Her own bra that is, and not just someone else’s corset.