Announcer: Welcome to NYC NOW, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. In this special episode, we're talking about the late James Baldwin, the legendary writer and activist from New York City. Next month marks Baldwin's 100th birthday. To honor him, singer, songwriter, composer, and virtuoso bassist Meshell Ndegeocello is releasing a new album on that day called No More Water: The Gospel Of James Baldwin. Baldwin is widely known for his poetry, essays, novels, and plays. His voice capturing the struggles and triumphs of the African American experience. Music journalist and author Marcus J. Moore caught up with Meshell Ndegeocello to learn how her album came about.

Marcus J. Moore: 1212, test, one, two.

Meshell Ndegeocello: It's just audio. We're just together. Audio. You the boom man.

Marcus J. Moore: My name is Marcus J. Moore.

Meshell Ndegeocello: I'm Meshell Ndegeocello today. [laughter]

Marcus J. Moore: Today?

Meshell Ndegeocello: Today.

Marcus J. Moore: Right now, we're outside of James Baldwin's old apartment. We're on the Upper West Side where people like Maya Angelou, Miles Davis, Amir Baraka would just come hang out. This is also where he wrote works like If Beale Street Could Talk. Given the fact that you have a really awesome record coming out on Baldwin, what does this make you feel when you're standing out here right now?

Meshell Ndegeocello: I wonder if he enjoyed coming home, back to the city of his youth when Miles and Maya came here, you know, where the conversations like, "ooh, child, I want to have to deal with the world. Let's just talk about music." I wonder, did he cook? I heard he was a fantastic cook. I just wondered, what was he at? Was it downtime or was it collecting and sharing thoughts with each other?

Marcus J. Moore: Right on. Now, I can't help but notice that you have a Baldwin pen.

Meshell Ndegeocello: Yes.

Marcus J. Moore: And you have a Baldwin book in your pocket.

Meshell Ndegeocello: Yes.

Marcus J. Moore: Do you walk around with the fire next time?

Meshell Ndegeocello: Oh, when I'm in the midst of the work, yes, I do. I do. This book changed my life.

Marcus J. Moore: Which way are we headed? Right now? We're in Central Park, and it's a lot going on, obviously, because it's New York City. When were you first introduced to James Baldwin's work, and how did it affect you?

Meshell Ndegeocello: I think, like 2014, like, in a serious way, because I was commissioned to do a piece on him for celebration that the Harlem stage does for him every year. It was a multimedia sort of ritual that we had put together just based on his words. And we used the trope of the church service. And so instead of doing the communion, we do a communion for water, which we celebrate women and water which are, I think, our most endangered resources.

We just started taking his work and living with it and filtering it through our bodies. I work with an amazing songwriter named Justin Hicks, and we just sort of dived into the work and just created music, like writing spirituals, where we consider Baldwin as the deity. Abigail Deville has a piece where she honors those who were enslaved by the White House. She did the visual art to the piece that we did five nights in a row at the Harlem stage.

Marcus J. Moore: So was it ever your intention to keep doing shows around Baldwin, or was it [crosstalk]--

Meshell Ndegeocello: Not at all. Not at all. People started asking for it, and then I made the recording just to document the music, and then it had a life of its own.

Marcus J. Moore: At what point did you decide this is gonna be an album?

Meshell Ndegeocello: Hmm. It decided itself. It just came together. Like, I'm just on this ride, and I'm just trying to respect it.

Just be right here, right now.

We can't lose our way

Struggle starts now, right here, today.

And most of all, it's just to bring people back to his work. But I know if everyone read it right now, it would just really open your mind up to center yourself in love and respect for others because people see it as this-- he's a firebrand, but it's really about love; loving yourself enough not to need to oppress another, to make yourself feel better about your situation.

James Baldwin: Love has never been a popular movement, and no one's ever wanted, really to be free. The world is held together. Really, it is held together by the love and passion of very few people. Otherwise, of course, you can despair. Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. You got to remember that what you're looking at is also you. Everyone you're looking at is also you. You could be that person. You could be that monster. You could be that cop.

Marcus J. Moore: And how did all of that translate to the new album just coming out?

Meshell Ndegeocello: Yeah. The title of the record is No More Water: The Gospel Of James Baldwin. It features some of the most amazing musicians who have been so kind to share their time with me, Julius Rodriguez and Jake Sherman, because I wanted it to center around-- the object that connects to Baldwin is the organ, the B3. You know, there's nothing like the church. He says the church never left him. The church's theater. That theater centers around that B3 organ. They're the feature to me in that recording. And then there's Justin Hicks and his wife Kanita. So that's what it's about to me. Featuring these four people, their writing styles, their virtuosity, their ability to take Baldwin's words and manifest them in song.

Pact

Dragged

Mercy

Mercy, gold

Mercy

Breathing

Breathing, place

Swollen

Place

Place

Arms

Arms, mouthing (quiet), bathing, space

Breathing

I've been

Flying

Naked

Dying

Marcus J. Moore: So I want to talk about a few songs in particular. What was the creative intent with Travel?

Meshell Ndegeocello: I love his essay where he talks about the difference between French culture, waiter culture, and American wait-and-dine culture. In this essay, from his travels, he talks about how a waiter in France is respected, just like an actor. Then, he talks about America, where it's a low-paying job, where you gotta survive on tips and no one has any respect for you because you know why? You used to have it for free from slaves.

I love reading the essays about his travel because it was my first time. I could learn different things about what he experienced at that time that I take for granted. Because me going to Europe as a musician, sometimes I am treated like a great jazz musician. Sometimes I'm treated like an African. Depends how I feel to them at that day. Travel to me is like we use these Caribbean rhythms and just to tell the story, just what it's like to be a traveler in the world, depending where you go. Because sometimes I go somewhere where I know you like our music, but I know you don't like me or the idea of me, or what the color of my skin means to you.

Marcus J. Moore: When I listen to this record, I hear overt gospel themes. It feels like the Black church is very much a part of this album. Talk to me about Thus Sayeth The Lorde.

Meshell Ndegeocello: Thus Sayeth The Lorde is based in the church service, just the structure of it. To me, I wanted it to have the energy of Harriet Tubman and Audre Lorde just to bring that feminine into his message. Because him and Audre Lorde explain succinctly in a way that few writers can-- and Toni Morrison. We were never meant to survive. We've been legislated into society. I am the offspring of an obsolete machine. I cannot legislate kindness or you to treat me fairly. That song is just to remind you. They would lynch us for sport, entertainment.

Safe alone

Wait forever

Audre Lorde said we were never meant to survive.

Meshell Ndegeocello: I want to be clear, and I'm not saying this to be political. These are just things I see to be true. We have one candidate that took out a full-page Ad to have some young men of color given the death penalty. Just want to be clear how that functions in this dynamic. There's been times in history where a white woman could say, that person did this to me. They would go collect them from their home, lynch them, take photographs, and sell them. You have to see this for what it is and wonder why there's the violent tendency towards aggression that we experience in American society.

Marcus J. Moore: What is your favorite track on that album?

Meshell Ndegeocello: Oh, I guess my favorite track would be Another Country, which opens with the words of Colleen Smith, fantastic artist, if you're not aware of her work. Conceptual artist from California. Somehow it embodies this feeling of once you get all this information and reconcile yourself with it, then you have to reconcile with yourself as a human being on this earth and how we can start to really appreciate humans and water as an important resource to life. That would be my favorite track personally. I titled it that because Baldwin says, sometimes love was just another country he had never known, just a place he couldn't fathom. Hopefully, we'll start to try.

This garden sounds to me

To eat its greed

Meshell Ndegeocello: When this album comes out. The liner notes are written by Hilton Als, who's also a Baldwin scholar. And where we connect on the liner notes is Hilton and I both want to say that, like Baldwin, look how far we've come. We're Black, we're queer. I don't even like those titles, but I think that one will work, and Baldwin would be okay with that. We're different and we're open to life.

To be in New York, in this beautiful park, in the city that gave us Baldwin, is for me-- I'm hoping if there is some afterlife, my parents can see that. Like, "Wow. Look what I've done and accomplished and how many people I have in my life to love me for me, who I am. Look what Baldwin did to change so many lives." I hope he knows he's loved in that afterlife. Look at the city. It's amazing. I love James Baldwin's quote in his yearbook, "Fame is the spur and ouch." I wonder what it was like to become successful, to travel the world, and then come back and set up a home in New York City, one of the most vibrant cities in the world that could attach to the front.

Marcus J. Moore: Meshell, I greatly appreciate your time, seriously.

Meshell Ndegeocello: Oh, I appreciate y'all too. Thanks for being you.

Announcer: That's music journalist and author Marcus J. Moore. In conversation with singer-songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello, she was discussing her upcoming album, No More Water: The Gospel Of James Baldwin. Marking Baldwin's 100th birthday. Ndegeocello will perform at the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! festival on August 2. It's a free show. Tickets are available at their website. Special thanks to Jim Carosman, Daia Milo, Pamela Nichelle, and Allison Riley.

Dark black night house.

 

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