Meshell Ndegeocello
No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin
Blue Note Records
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I must have started this review a million times. Sometimes on paper, sometimes on my laptop and many times in my mind. At first it started like most others—with the who/what/where that form Music Reviews 101. But the more I wrote those many scrapped introductions, the less convincing they became and the more inadequate they felt. Meshell Ndegeocello’s No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin is beyond just music and more like a sermon for those with ears to hear and hearts to feel. In short, it is hard to imagine hearing this album and not being changed. I certainly am.
Many years ago, my sister bought me a set of James Baldwin books. I eagerly read Another Country, Giovanni’s Room and Go Tell It On The Mountain, but (stupidly, I now realize) left The Fire Next Time on my shelf gathering dust. When Meshell Ndegeocello’s new album popped into my inbox a few weeks ago, the accompanying press release mentioned the role that that book had played in framing, inspiring and fueling the latest of the inimitable artist’s wonderfully rich mine of musical excellence.
So, I read it.
In truth, I devoured it. I pored over it. I highlighted it. I highlighted it some more. I thought about it constantly. And then lurking on my TV was the 2016 documentary I Am Not Your Negro based around his unfinished manuscript, so I watched that too. All of this was a far cry from the usual preparation for a review—listen a few times, make notes about songs, themes, stories, etc. and write it. This was life-affirming, fire-lighting and deeply humbling stuff.
In the aforementioned documentary, the first section is about the school integration of the 1950s onwards and something struck me like a bolt of lightning. As I watched those young Black children walk into the schools, row upon row of sneering, hate-filled, twisted white faces spat such virulent disgust and bile in their direction. This was not a few outliers. No tipping point had been reached among white folks, as I’d naively thought. Where did I suppose those people were now? Had they changed? Or had they infected generation after generation with their white supremacist agenda? The answers to those questions are so blindingly obvious, they don’t need stating.
And amidst that work and the added context it gave me, I pressed play on No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin. Following on the heels of her GRAMMY-winning The Omnichord Real Book and her Sun Ra tribute LP, I discovered the personnel and textures were largely the same in the very best way.
Justin Hicks’ voice is prominent throughout, replete with warmth and character and Ndegeocello’s wondrous tones make enough appearances to satisfy my ardent love for her. But alongside them is the spine-tingling, fire-crackling Jamaican poet Staceyann Chin. She razes all before her, her ire indignant, ferocious and very necessary.
Listen to the Album:
The music is interspersed with spoken word sections from Chin, but also features songs using Baldwin quotes as lyrics to be built around—so on “Tsunami,” Chin interpolates the titular quote, spitting “No more water, the fire next time” with all the laser targeted precision and violence of an Exocet missile. Elsewhere, on the album highlight “Love,” Ndegeocello and Hicks build Baldwin’s quote (“Love takes off the masks that we fear we can’t live without and know we can’t live within”) around a delightful, squelchy bass line and a melody that lodges in the brain instantaneously.
Yet to say the album is shaped only by Baldwin’s work is not quite true. On “Thus Sayeth The Lorde,” the clue is in the title, as Audre Lorde’s work is invoked by Chin. Again though, the power of the lyrics is matched by the allure of the melody. On “What Did I Do?” Hicks’ plaintive voice asks, “What would you do, if we became you? / Would you push through, let me see you?” while portentous handclaps ring out before the music swells like the ocean depths.
Just after the release of the documentary, Stephen Casmier wrote for NPR about the surge of feelings he experienced as he confronted the image of Baldwin the film showed, compared to the one he had gleaned from studying his works. He wondered if the optimism he’d interpreted from the works was wrong, as he felt the Baldwin the documentary showed was shorn of hope, “despairing” to use Casmier’s words.
This album too, offers multiple expressions of the state of affairs. There’s hope (however far flung it may seem) on album opener “Travel,” reflecting the Afrofuturism of Ndegeocello’s recent Sun Ra project. There is a more doom-laden feel to “Trouble” thanks to the militaristic drumbeat, Ndegeocello’s sonorous vocals, a moody bassline and a hammer blow couplet: “What’s another word for trouble, cos that’s what we’re in / Everyone’s down for the struggle, until it begins.”
And things end with “Down At The Cross,” which strikes a somber tone and asks that most simple, yet frighteningly elusive question: Will it be better?
Further evidence of the album’s brilliance is in the sequencing of it. For every jaw-dropping evisceration by Chin, there is space to recalibrate. So, following the intensity of “Tsunami” comes “Another Country” with a more relaxed (though still affecting) atmosphere. Early single “Raise the Roof” offers further evidence of Chin’s blisteringly emotive poetry, but it is followed by a seemingly gentle acoustic guitar and Ndegeocello’s delicious tones. But this one is a con—her playing may be gentle but the lyrics are like a kick in the guts.
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To say this is a purple patch in Meshell Ndegeocello’s career borders on doing a disservice to her storied career, but after Ventriloquism, her stellar set of covers from 2018, she has embarked on a journey inspired by some legendary figures in Baldwin, Lorde and Sun Ra. But beyond those external influences, she is equally inspired by those performers she surrounds herself with and here they concoct a heady brew that satisfies on every conceivable level. A more than fitting tribute to Baldwin on the 100th anniversary of his birth.
Notable Tracks: “Love” | “Raise the Roof” | “Thus Sayeth the Lorde” | “Trouble” | “Tsunami”
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