Meshell Ndegeocello

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Andre Wagner

A close-up of Meshell Ndegeocello.

Meshell Ndegeocello

Bassist and composer Meshell Ndegeocello’s 2023 album, The Omnichord Real Book, picked up the first-ever Best Alternative Jazz Album Grammy this year; odds are she will be in the running again next year for her 2024 album, No More Water: The Gospel Of James Baldwin. It’s an expansive homage to the writer and activist, mixing music and Baldwin’s words and concepts (and also bringing some inspiration from another writer and activist, Audre Lorde, in a single from the album, “Thus Sayeth The Lorde”). It should be an immersive concert experience.

media release: This event is part of the annual Jazz Series.

Stay tuned for information about a studio class with Meshell Ndegeocello! 

Meshell Ndegeocello has shared “Thus Sayeth The Lorde,” the third song to be revealed from her forthcoming Blue Note album No More Water: The Gospel Of James Baldwin, an homage to the eminent writer and activist James Baldwin to be released Aug. 2 on his Centennial. “Thus Sayeth The Lorde,” however, is a reference to Audre Lorde, the self-described “Black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, poet” whose powerful words add another dimension to this visionary work.

“There's a YouTube video of Baldwin with Nikki Giovanni. Watching that I could see that Baldwin had to work a little bit on his feminism,” Ndegeocello told NPR All Things Considered host Ari Shaprio. “So within the project, we wanted to add another voice. And I think Audre Lorde just fits within that continuum of information and knowledge.”

Ndegeocello performed songs from the Baldwin album during her recent NPR Tiny Desk Concert including “Thus Sayeth The Lorde,” “Travel” and “Love.” She will be celebrating the album release with a headline performance at the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn Festival on Aug. 2 and will be touring the Baldwin project extensively across the United States and Europe over the coming months. See below for a full list of tour dates.

No More Water is at once a musical experience, a church service, a celebration, a testimonial, and a call to action. Ndegeocello has created a prophetic musical odyssey that transcends boundaries and genres, delving headfirst into race, sexuality, religion, and other recurring themes explored in Baldwin’s canon. Following 2023’s The Omnichord Real Book, her acclaimed Blue Note debut which won the inaugural GRAMMY Award for Best Alternative Jazz Album, the multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, and producer renders an immersive and palpable document that is as sagacious, unabashed, and introspective as Baldwin was in life.

Co-produced by Ndegeocello and guitarist Chris Bruce, No More Water features some of the bassist’s frequent collaborators including Bruce, vocalist Justin Hicks, saxophonist (and Omnichord producer) Josh Johnson, keyboardist Jebin Bruni, and drummer Abe Rounds. Also appearing on various songs are vocalist Kenita-Miller Hicks, keyboardists Jake Sherman and Julius Rodriguez, and Executive Director of the NYCPS Arts Office and trumpeter Paul Thompson. The album also showcases powerful spoken word by venerated poet Staceyann Chin and Pulitzer Prize-winning author and critic Hilton Als.

Nearly a decade in the making, the album’s origins began in 2016 during a performance at The Harlem Stage Gatehouse as part of their annual showcase honoring Baldwin. Ndegeocello had delved into Baldwin’s work the year before, including the seminal nonfiction work The Fire Next Time, which she considers “life-changing” and carries with her as a “spiritual text.” Ndegeocello says, “It was just a revelation to me, and it softened my heart in so many ways.”

“Inspired by Baldwin’s most well-known essay, Ndegeocello’s piece—often staged as a church service—employs music, sermon, text, images, and movement, all of which enter into conversation with Baldwin’s monumental and delicate essay about how black bodies were perceived not only by white Americans but by blacks themselves,” writes Als in the album’s liner notes. “The music you hear in No More Water, is Jimmy talking to Meshell and his words meeting the language of her sounds and then coming out again through a multitude of voices, a multitude of sounds and thoughts that bring Jimmy back and give him—finally—his whole and true self, that which he offered up, time and again, if only we knew then how to listen.”