Meshell Ndegeocello

September 25, 2007 from EMARCY

Canonized, marginalized or just scrutinized, Meshell Ndegeocello has given up with the politics of explaining herself. After 20 years in an industry that has called her everything from avant garde to a dying breed, what unquestionably remains is the fearsome bassist, prolific songwriter and the creativity and curiosity of an authentic musical force. With that, she has earned critical acclaim, the unfailing respect of fellow players, songwriters and composers, and the dedication of her diverse, unclassifiable fans. For the sake of setting the record straight, a few brass tacks remain: Meshell was born in Germany, raised in DC, signed at 23, and has been nominated for 9 Grammy awards.

With the release of "The World Has Made Me The Man Of My Dreams," Meshell Ndegeocello releases her 7th musical wonder to the world. With it, Meshell questions the inevitable, inconceivable brutality of the world with an arsenal of familiar themes: faith, rage, despair, fleeting joy and nagging doubt. For those who jones for the devastating bass lines and aching lyrics of prior releases, "The World Has Made Me The Man Of My Dreams" does not disappoint. A continuation of the journey, it is a quest for truth, a plea for beauty, and an elegy for former selves. That said, the truest hallmark of a Meshell Ndegeocello record is in its honest evolution from the last, from any before, and as another stop on the way to transcendence.

Let good music prevail.

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BIOGRAPHY

Meshell Ndegeocello (real name Mary Johnson) was born in 1969, the daughter of an American soldier - also a saxophonist - stationed in Germany. She spent her childhood there until her family settled in Virginia in the early 70's. Her passion for music led her to play in the clubs of Washington before she went to study at Howard University in New York. She auditioned for several bands, including Living Colour, but finally decided to go solo, playing either bass or keyboards. In the early 90's she was noticed and signed to Madonna's Maverick label. Plantation Lullabies, her first recording (1993, with Geri Allen, Wah Wah Watson, Dave Fiuczynski and Joshua Redman), revealed a bold new female artist to the public. Her frank attitude to her work confronted her audience with her deep vocal timbre, her raw texts that broached subjects that in 1990s America were still being avoided in mainstream music (sex, politics and race discrimination), and her original music that mixed funk's energy with a freedom borrowed from jazz and folk. Her voice, at once introspective, modest and asserted, together with the contemporary nature of her writing, were reminiscent of Steve Coleman or things that might have come from Prince, without closing the door on other sources such as hip hop, jazz or blues, of yesterday or today. The album Peace Beyond Passion followed in 1996, and then the extremely intimate Bitter in 1999. Each album stood out because of the spiritual dimension, either personal or more open, but always with integrity, that characterized her songs, and distinguished her from other artists of her generation. As for her concerts, they showed a sensitivity that was all on edge – proof her attitude and personal politics were very much a reality.

In 2002 the album Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape was released, a percussive album where its texts were concerned (the superb ‘Dead Nigga Blvd’, borrowed from a poetic dimension similar to Angela Davis and Gil Scott-Heron), and also an album with more radical grooves (Marcus Miller, Gene Lake, Sean Rickman). Comfort Woman, the following year, laid down more synthetic soundscapes between dub and stoned layers of electronics.

More recently, Ndegeocello has been involved in the film that portrayed the Motown label at the height of its fame (the multi-award winning Standing in the Shadows of Motown), and also a documentary on the go-go music scene in her hometown Washington.

Audiences at Ndegeocello’s first European concerts - in summer 2004, with her new group, the Spirit Music Jamia, (the word means a school or a place of learning) - were at first a little surprised, and then completely won over by the power of the music played for them; now, with Dance Of The Infidel, those same listeners will rediscover the sound and spirit of the organic, contagious themes first revealed by those concerts.

"I've always dreamed about being in a group, being surrounded by musicians like in all those big bands I admired when I was a kid. When I play solo I'm often out front, and that's not the place I was really looking for." Self-deprecating, almost shy Ndegeocello has always insisted that being a leader didn't hold that much interest for her. So, as someone independent always ready to defend her own ideas, the singer-bassist put her ambitions into practice. Onstage, her core fans were surprised to see and hear her in a more discreet though equally important role on bass, steering the research of the ensemble or the free figures of the soloists beside her.

Afro-beat rhythms, funk, improvisation, fusion: freed from the song-format of her previous adventures, Meshell and her Spirit Music Jamia give free rein to her desire for musical exploration, and the result, deeply investigated and intense, is once again equal to her expectations, the same demands that can be seen in her work since the beginning. In the company of Don Byron, Oliver Lake, Kenny Garrett, Michael Cain, Brandon Ross, Gregoire Maret, Mino Cinelu, Jack DeJohnette, Wallace Roney, Gene Lake, Roy Hargrove - a first-rate cast - Meshell today returned with an intense, mature album that is as much her own as its predecessors were. ‘Munin’, with its hypnotic rhythms, opens the album. The voices - intimate with Cassandra Wilson, ethereal with Sabina Scuba (from the Brazilian Girls), more soul with Lalah Hathaway (the daughter of the immensely iconic Donny Hathaway), evoke softness, contemplation or passion. The title-track, which is the session's highlight, opens over an insistent tempo before taking off with a magnificent solo by Kenny Garrett.

In these mingled atmospheres, either slender (‘Aquarium’) or peaceful (‘Papillon’), and in these contrasted emotions, Ndegeocello's bass sets the pulse: discreetly at first listening, then more centrally when it commands your attention. Except in one instance, a limpid chorus on ‘Papillon’ where it fixes the group's destiny like a foster-mother while solo electric bassist Matthew Garrison (son of Jimmy Garrison) takes an astonishing solo.

This was a powerful return to form albeit in a new direction; a bittersweet album that translated a new adventure yet is more of a collective effort. Its transfer to the stage makes your mouth water - inscribes itself in the continuity of a career that has never been disappointing, a trajectory marked by a constant, intangible desire to defend her freedom to play music, and be moved by it, with sincerity.

Yet during her live shows amid the amazing group interplay and breathtaking performances, there have been a handful of fans who’ve pleaded with her to sing. On one occasion during a London show at the famous Jazz Café venue – these requests saw her flee the stage momentarily until she had made her point that singing was not part of this new project. Yet 2007 will see her release a new vocal orientated project that brings together a tough New York punk attitude with rumbling bass and even some African sounds on her new 5-track EP – The Article 3.

Proving herself a continually and profoundly insightful artist, this newest self-produced musical experience includes stellar collaborations with Oumou Sangare, Pat Metheny and Thandiswa Mazwai among many others. Never conforming to anyone but her own expectations this is the opening of another creative chapter in this enthralling artist’s ever evolving career.