By Shannon J. Effinger For Meshell Ndegeocello, honest expression is everything. Her debut album for Blue Note more than delivers on that score. Meshell Ndegeocello challenged what a Black, queer female artist could look and sound like long before there was ever a mandate or a crusade. The multi-instrumentalist has made an entire career out
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Although the impetus was simply to make new music, the project itself holds a deeply personal significance. While cleaning out her house one day, Ndegeocello says that she uncovered a copy of the Real Book that her father, saxophonist Jacques Johnson, gave her. Dating back to more than a century ago, the Real Book is a compilation of lead sheets that renders basic information of a jazz standard — melody, chords, lyrics, structure — allowing any musician to perform a competent version of the tune sans improvisation.
“I found the first copy my father ever gave me, and it just brought back all the memories,” she says. “Most of all, like any tome, a book can unite people in an interesting way. And I think that’s what’s amazing about the Real Book, when musicians gotta get together and just kind of click fast, and it just allows that sort of connection. It gives you harmony and melody and time, and then it allows people to get to the gig.”
By far her most conceptual effort to date, The Omnichord Real Book combines Ndegeocello’s vast artistic influences, styles and sounds explored throughout her career — perhaps to demonstrate sound’s primal universality — including jazz, dub, electronica, soul and blues. “I’ve been blessed to come in connection with Matana Roberts and Jason Moran and other mediums of self-expression,” she says. “I’m a child of Oliver Lake. I’m a child of Sun Ra. In the early days of Hendrix — I think he also belongs in that aspect — and Parliament Funkadelic, that music is for your well-being; the sound waves affect you. Like go-go. You’re meant to feel it in your body, and it’s hopefully informing your state of being.”
Omnichord is even structured very much like the Real Book, charting her own musical journey from Michelle Lynn Johnson to Meshell Ndegeocello. The odyssey begins with the tinny electronica of “Georgia Ave,” an homage to her DMV (D.C., Maryland, Virginia) upbringing. As it expands, the sound grows rich in texture and layers, giving way to live instrumentation from her arsenal of musical collaborators. “Virgo” marks a point of transition, as the sound grows more eclectic, but remains grounded through prophetic lyrics turned meditation: “Don’t let your outside world distract you from your inner world.”
Best known for her musical shapeshifting abilities, Ndegeocello manages to push boundaries even further as she creates an entirely new and original sound. Yet it isn’t so overly conceptual as to go over listeners’ heads. In fact, with her almost mantric approach to the lyrics throughout, it feels evocative at times of the spiritual jazz created by her predecessors.
“I’ve also been a big fan of Alice Coltrane and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan,” she says. “And I do think there’s this transition [that] a lyricist has. There are only so many stories you can tell, and you don’t really want to sing. There are only so many love songs you can construct. And so it’s just trying to create things that are just chant-like, like circular phrases.”
The album is also a culmination of decades of Ndegeocello’s truth-telling through her music, as she processes her gains and the many trials she has faced over the years. In fact, much of this past decade alone was spent saying goodbye to her parents; after her father died in 2016, her mother suffered from dementia for years before she passed away in 2021. Grief and loss also are at the root of much of The Omnichord Real Book, and the pandemic offered time for Ndegeocello to process those feelings.
“I only look back to COVID as a time to stand still,” she says. “I was able just to be still and quiet and not travel. I lived upstate and had a whole attic-like room and studio to be with myself, and there was mourning — mourning my parents. James Baldwin gave me context to understand my child rearing, what it lacked, and to deal with the difficulties of being a child of people born in the 1940s, who were people of color.”
In spite of Ndegeocello’s prolific career, the brazen, multifaceted artist has almost always been on the fringes of mainstream success. Her 1994 remake of Van Morrison’s “Wild Night,” a duet with John Mellencamp, remains her only hit single to date. And while she has never been one to compromise her voice or vision for conformity, arguably as a Black artist, she was never given a broad enough canvas to explore that vision either. In fact, it is difficult not to contrast this with her white counterparts — Björk, The Talking Heads, Brian Eno — all of whom are known for and lauded for pushing boundaries within the mainstream. The Omnichord Real Book perhaps marks a zenith in artistic freedom, not only for Ndegeocello but for future Black artists, as well.
“I think I’m just in surrender mode right now,” she says. “I have family members and other elders aging. It’s just like, ‘This is cool [and] really fun. I love doing it.’ But that’s the other thing — it’s not all of who I am. It’s just self-expression. The Creator has gifted me; I gotta keep remembering this. I’m just so blessed from my parents and from the Creator that I hear the way I do. I don’t take it for granted. I am grateful for the people around me, like Josh Johnson and [singer-composer] Hanna Benn. I may write the songs, but I’m hoping people feel the energy from everyone who is omitting their self-expression from the recording.”
In addition to retracing her musical influences for this project, Ndegeocello also turned to literary figures like James Baldwin for inspiration. This grew into additional works planned for the centennial celebration of Baldwin’s birthday next year. “I was commissioned by The Harlem Stage to create a piece to celebrate Baldwin. So I use the trope of the church service, and I make Baldwin’s words the deity — it’s like a church meets town hall,” she explains. “It’s very audience-involved and we played in a round. And from that, we created the service music and that’s the recording you’ll hear.
“It’s just music inspired by his writing, from his essays about travel to environmental issues to the burden they’ve made, for no other reason, except that you are Black. You suffer in this way for no other reason. It’s just a meditation on those things. I [also] have a project based on The Fire Next Time, which will also be on Blue Note. It’s just in praise of someone that really helped change my mental state of being [that] allowed me to define my history for myself, to free myself from dogma I was taking on without knowing.”
Working with the iconic Blue Note label and several of its groundbreaking artists has come just at the right time in Ndegeocello’s life. “There are so many people to thank — Robert Glasper, Jason Moran and Nicholas Payton — plus I think I’m ready now. I guess I see how this works. You are just trying to make something, and you try to be supported.
“The best part of being on the label is, of course, its history, but it’s run by a musician. I’m very grateful to [Blue Note president] Don Was, who is an enigma, but it feels different. My partner deals with the corporate world, and she’s really taught me to have a distance, to [not] be so emotional about them and just see them for what they are. And that’s what I do. I’m just grateful that the people that are aiding me and getting my music out, I think, actually understand what I’m trying to accomplish.”
https://open.spotify.com/album/6m9xpYmSjwsV83YJ1TmJXA?si=vNBjOXPLQxaShVw2QLdoMA
Featured photos by Charlie Gross.