Gail Smith
She’s here. Me’shell Ndegeocello, a woman with a bass guitar who knows what to do with it. A singer, song-writer and multi- instrumentalist who describes jazz as her “first love”, she plays guitar, keyboards and bass (her primary instrument). When asked if this is not “an unusual instrument for a woman” she smiles and drawls: “Lets just leave that alone.” We agree.
I have prayed for this black woman to come to town since the release of her mind-blowing debut album Plantation Lullabies. Ndegeocello says the album is about dealing with being black in America, “where you are totally influenced by what you wear, how much money you have, how you are seen as a woman and how men perceive you. I struggled with that in my formative years and constantly asked questions.”
She’s an urban black girl’s role model, her music explores racism, love, religion, loss, drug abuse, the pain of losing loved ones. In Shoot’n Up and Gettin High (with my baby) a track from Plantation Lullabies, she sings of “The capitalistic hand around my throat/ Shootin up dope/to cope in this dehumanising society/We both found God when he OD’d/He found beauty in my black skin/Amidst the cover girls and Clairol ads.”
The song is dedicated to Ricardo George (aka Fox), whom Ndegeocello describes as “a very dear friend who helped me out whenever I needed anything. He sold drugs and he came to a bitter end. He was shot and murdered. So the song is about that lifestyle, just so that he lives in my memory. He’s not forgotten.”
Her style incorporates soul, funk and jazz, but she describes it as “music, living breathing music” and is flattered by my description of her music as “funkadelic”. It’s hard to sit still and listen to her play, but it’s when you listen to the lyrics that you ache to know this woman more. Her lyrics address sexual ambiguity, unrequited love, black consciousness and the difficulty of sustaining love in a racist and oppressive society.
Ndegeocello scoffs at the notion of herself as a prodigy, despite the fact that she graduated early from high school (she was 16) and spent four years of her teens playing live almost every night in the “go-go” scene in Washington DC. She struggles to define “go-go” but settles for: “Very African drum- based music that exists only in DC. It’s very percussive, and we basically played for two to three hours non-stop and people just danced. We’ll do some on Friday.”
Ndegeocello stayed on the go-go scene from the age of 15 to 19, and flunked out of college. “I was not prepared at all, I was very wayward, constantly searching and asking questions.”
In the midst of her “wayward teens” Ndegeocello studied jazz at the Duke Ellington School of Arts and at Howard University -one of the top, predominantly black universities in the United States that’s produced musical luminaries such as Donny Hathaway and Roberta Flack. The university’s large African population and highly politicised atmosphere had a profound effect on her life, changing her perspective on being “of colour”.
Before going there, Ndegeocello says jokingly, she was an “ignorant American” who wasn’t aware of the African continent. There she met other black people who had a different historical background. She describes this period as a “shocking education” that changed how she saw herself. She learnt that there was more to life than growing up in the ghetto.
Born in Berlin in 1968, Ndegeocello grew up in Washington DC, a city she loathes and is clearly happy to have escaped. “In DC, music kept a lot of us alive – a lot of my friends aren’t alive now. They didn’t have as positive an influence as I had. They went into selling drugs, using drugs. Money is very important to young people in America. We base our successs on how much money we have, and at that age I was blinded by that. It’s taken me a while to really mature and grow out of it.”
Ndegeocello lost a lot of friends during this painful growth period, but has maintained close ties with a fellow musician and childhood friend, Federico Gonzalez Pena, who she’s known and played with since she was 16. “We’ve stuck together – we’ve gotten to see the world together.”
Leaving DC and going on the road has changed her perspective totally. Travel has been a means of salvation. “There are people in DC who are born there, live there, and die there. I was extremely blessed to have left. I hated it, I could not wait to leave.”
She moved to New York in the early 1990s. There she became a member of the Black Rock Coalition (BRC), an organisation for black musicians who play alternative music and who are interested in avant garde jazz and rock and roll. “It was a way of getting to know other black musicians who were trying to do something different. It was a great way of networking with other musicians and that’s how I met my drummer.”
When pressed about her sexual orientation and reports that she “came out” in a BRC newsletter, she says: “I just am.”
Her visit to Johannesburg is long overdue. Like her, this city respects few boundaries and contradictions flourish here. She’s nervous about performing here, saying “performing here means a little bit more. It’s an honour to play in a place that’s been through such radical change. I hope I can contribute some joy.”
She describes her six-piece band as “my best friends”. The band consists of drummer Oliver Gene Lake (son of avant garde saxophonist Oliver Lake), David Dyson on bass guitar, Federico Gonzalez Pena on keyboards, Allan Cato on guitar and Daniel Sadownica on percussion. When asked what we can expect of her show, she smiles and says softly: “You just have to come.” I’ll be there.