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    Elliptical: The Music of Meshell Ndegeocello
    Elliptical: The Music of Meshell Ndegeocello
    Elliptical: The Music of Meshell Ndegeocello
    Ebook191 pages3 hours

    Elliptical: The Music of Meshell Ndegeocello

    By André Akinyele and Jon O'Bergh

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    About this ebook

    Authors André Akinyele and Jon O’Bergh explore one of the most fascinating and creative figures in contemporary music: Meshell Ndegeocello. She’s an artist who defies labels and music genres, continually inspiring many with her profound vision.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateMar 31, 2015
    ISBN9781631927324
    Elliptical: The Music of Meshell Ndegeocello

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      Book preview

      Elliptical - André Akinyele

      (2007)

      Introduction

      André's Prelude

      Meshell Ndegeocello is a rare breed in the music industry. She has survived and weathered the ups and downs of the business by evolving musically, even against fans' expectations. But, even more, she has also evolved spiritually. She's like an older sister or close relative who you watch growing up right before your very eyes, from crazy and wild to mature and content within herself. This book tries to capture the essence of Meshell's music from a fan's point of view, while examining my own life. It's a reflection of her musical journey that ties into how her music has been the soundtrack in various situations in my life. From Plantation Lullabies to Comet, Come To Me, Meshell and her visionary music have been influential and inspirational in my life. As one who has purchased every album, been to dozens of her shows (where each one has been an experience unto itself), and had boundaries pushed, my relationship with Meshell has been like a personal relationship in every aspect. Within that relationship there was the introduction and courting stage with the release of Plantation Lullabies. Then, there was the falling in love stage with Peace Beyond Passion. The confusion and really getting to know the person stage with Bitter. The making up stage with Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape. Next, back to being in love again stage with Comfort Woman. The misunderstanding stage with releases of The Spirit Music Jamia: Dance of the Infidel and the Article 3 EP. Then, from falling in love once again stage with The World Has Made Me The Man of My Dreams to has she gone crazy stage with the releases of Devil's Halo, Weather, and Pour Une Âme Souveraine: A Dedication to Nina Simone. To finally, letting her evolve into who she is as a musical genius with Comet, Come To Me. So, my relationship with her has been an emotional rollercoaster, that is from loving, hating, confusing, conflicting, and misunderstanding, to letting go and just letting her be who she is. But, in the end, my love for her and her music has endured. I'm so thankful that I've gotten to experience and explore her life's journey. I believe without that reflection, my life would probably be much different without her influence and inspiration.

      What I've learned is that, with any musical artist, true artist, including myself, we as the audience looking in need to let them explore freely. We need to let them grow in their own essence, space and time without expectations. Finally, we need to, in the words of Meshell, Just sit back, relax, listen to the 8-track and dig her like an old soul record.

      So, this book's intentions are to capture the essence and nuances of Meshell's music, while exploring how her music and lyrics correlate with my personal life, becoming the soundtrack of my life.

      For those that don't know Meshell Ndegeocello (Mee-shell N-deh-gay-o-chel-o), she was born Michelle Lynn Johnson, but at the age of seventeen changed her name to MeShell Ndegeocello, which means Free Like A Bird in Swahili. She also goes by the name Meshell Suhaila Bashir-Shakur. She was born in Berlin, Germany on August 29, 1968 to Jacques T. Johnson, Sr., an Army Sergeant Major and saxophonist, and Helen, a health care worker. Meshell has a brother Jacques, Jr. Meshell was raised in Washington, D.C. and attended the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, Oxon Hill High School, and Howard University for a short time majoring in music.

      As a musician, she developed her musical stylings from the local go-go scene during the late 80s playing in bands such as Prophecy, Little Bennie and the Masters and Rare Essence, and dancing in gay nightclubs. According to the Washington Blade, Meshell left D.C. in 1989 and moved to Harlem in New York City. Around 1992, she auditioned as the bassist for the all black rock band Living Colour, but was unsuccessful in securing the position. Instead, the bass position went to Doug Wimbush. That same year, Meshell would later sign with Maverick Recording Company (Maverick Records), Madonna's record label founded in 1992, then to release her first album Plantation Lullabies on October 19, 1993.

      Meshell is married to Alison Riley, where they both reside in Hudson, New York, with their son Atticus (Meshell's second son). Meshell's first son, born in 1989, is named Askia, but is also known as Solomon Askia Ndegeocello.

      In trying to understand Meshell better and why she does things musically, this reflection relates to how she preceives herself and what she says about herself, which is taken from various interviews: Anyone who's followed me will know that I'm more forward thinking and rarely like to revisit the past. I don't…have favorite foods and stuff. I just try to take everything in as an experience, whether it's gender or music. —Washington Blade (November 10, 2011)

      Jon's Prelude

      Why does Meshell's music mean so much to me?

      One reason, I think, is that she is able to walk that fine line between being elegantly simple and engagingly complex. There's plenty of music that is simple, some of it quite good, but it doesn't surprise me and I easily grow tired. I never grow tired of listening to Meshell. There is other music filled with awesome musicianship and intricate contrapuntal workings, but it's something you can't put your arms around and hang out with any time. You can turn to Meshell's music any time, whatever your mood, and find what you need. The process of writing these essays has allowed me to discover new elements in her music and lyrics, like a Chinese box opening up to reveal more wonders within.

      Meshell's musical influences are wide-ranging, but the musicians who certainly reign in her pantheon include Prince, Stevie Wonder, Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock. To know this is to know a great deal about her music. It was Prince's song Soft and Wet that inspired Meshell to want to become a musician, even though she was already surrounded by musicians at home (her father was a jazz saxophonist and her older brother played in a band).

      There are a number of things that characterize Meshell's style, no matter the genre. What you notice first is her voice. She's not a stellar singer, as she's the first to point out. She can't sweep through three octaves with effortless arabesques and blow-the-house-down power. But she uses her voice in a way that communicates emotion intimately. Her voice is seductive, sitting in a lower register, and there's something in its cadence that commands attention. She talks, whispers, recites, raps, sings, and everything in between. When she stops singing, all you know is that you need to hear more.

      The second thing you notice is the bass. She tends to play slightly behind the beat, a loping style she picked up from her early days in D.C.'s go-go scene. Her bass lines are not roots, the typical vertical approach of a broad swath of pop music, but instead share elements of both voice and drum. The bass lines infuse the music with rhythmic momentum and spirit. They breathe. The lines don't always obey conventional notions of harmony, and she's not timid about blurring tonality or taking the line in unexpected detours, usually because it reinforces the meaning of the lyrics, but sometimes just because it gives an interesting flavor and it's not what you expect.

      If you're paying attention, the next thing you might notice is the way she uses musical pauses in the midst of songs, because it's not common in most music. We're accustomed to music that rumbles happily along from start to finish, the only break being instrumentation, but not pulse. Meshell's pauses serve as dividers, to give the ear a sense of before and after. But they also serve as musical breaths, moments of reflection. Sometimes they serve as moments of tension to build anticipation for what comes next (such as in Article 3). Japanese Noh music uses breath in a similar way; time gets stretched out like taffy, the actor holds a pose while the musicians hold the beat, the tension building because you know the moment can't be held forever, and then the motion is followed through and the rhythm recommences.

      You might also be struck with something unusual in the harmonic structure of the music, even if you can't quite put your finger on it. You know it doesn't sound like an Ashford and Simpson song, but you might not know why. Meshell uses a wide harmonic vocabulary, frequently drawing on chords that are not garden variety major and minor triads (the building blocks of most music). She often uses cluster chords that don't sit squarely in either major or minor. The chord progressions don't necessarily follow expected patterns (such as when she uses the flatted second degree of the scale), and when she moves to a new key it may be a distant cousin rather than a sister. In this, she draws on the language of jazz, which has never been timid about experimenting with harmony. In some songs, she even blends major and minor together—which is notable because it is emblematic of her refusal to be labeled one way or the other.

      The last characteristic that looms large is her approach to song structure. Choruses are a mainstay of popular music, but some styles like folk, blues and R&B do not always use traditional choruses. In R&B, the chorus might just consist of the same musical material as the verse but with added instrumental and vocal elements to beef it up. In folk, the chorus might simply be a short tagline repeated at the end of each verse. Meshell often favors short phrases as the chorus rather than a string of phrases, repeating the phrase for emphasis (such as in Dred Loc). Such choruses do not climax the way a traditional chorus climaxes with a dramatic chord progression; instead, they are signposts, familiar resting areas, usually with a memorable hook that makes your ear anticipate its return. Never one to play by the rules, Meshell often tries different ways to avoid or tweak the conventional verse/chorus structure and surprise our expectations.

      So those are the musical elements. The other side of the coin, of course, is the lyric. The topics Meshell covers are diverse. She favors frankness over obscurity. There are the usual songs that deal with love and intimacy. But the significant recurring themes include how the spirit is corrupted through materialism or war (Dead Nigga Blvd., God.Fear.Money, Thankful, Forget My Name); the effects of racism on self-worth (Shootin' Up and Getting' High, Deuteronomy: Niggerman, Article 3); making oneself vulnerable in order to be healed or freed through love (Step Into the Projects, Loyalty, Andromeda and The Milky Way, Virgo); and the power of spiritual affirmation (God Shiva, Criterion, Good Intentions, Solomon). What comes across in the body of her work is a worldview in which she confronts her own imperfections, strives for a spiritual path that is guided by compassion and love rather than materialism and ideology, and checks the world on its hypocrisies.

      All of these things together help explain what makes her music so engaging and why it holds up so well over time. So now let's get to the music.

      About The Book

      Each chapter is arranged in two parts. The first part reflects André Akinyele's personal relationship to the music of Meshell Ndegeocello and how it influenced and inspired his life, in essence becoming the soundtrack to his life experiences. In the second part, Jon O'Bergh takes the reader inside the music, where he explains the nuances that make her music so powerful and successful.

      Plantation Lullabies

      It was late fall of 1993, I was twenty-one and living in Los Angeles, when my landlady came running from her apartment into mine and said, Have you heard of this new female artist who sounds like Prince? As a huge Prince fan, I was like ahh, no! She handed me a CD and said, You have to listen to this, but I want it back, as soon as you've finished listening to it. I shut the door and in my hands was that CD. I stared at the cover, intrigued and mystified. The mirrored effect imagery of the artist, on both sides of the CD case mind you, the name Me'Shell something, I thought to myself. Trying to pronounce the last name left me perplexed. But it was the title Plantation Lullabies that added to the mystery. Then turning the CD case over, again, to read the song titles, If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night), Shoot'n Up and Gett'n High, Step Into The Projects…I was like lord what has my landlady given me to listen to! So, I ran to the stereo and opened the CD case and behold, before even noticing the CD itself, the image of a racially charged, black person (assumedly) with eyes bugging out of its head, mouth wide open, and what appears to be nappy hair but displayed like chess pieces in all black with a no sign (a circle with a line drawn diagonally across the circle) around the object described. I was like what? Then I thought for a minute, No nigga. Okay, I had to put this CD in the player. I hit play and the first track, Plantation Lullabies, began to play with its opening keyboard synth and piano riffs; with a smirk on my face,

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