via NPR Music

Realness is a root position in The Omnichord Real Book, Meshell Ndegeocello’s expansive yet interior new album. That doesn’t make it the default. “I’ve been saying things I don’t believe,” Ndegeocello sings softly at one point, in a rueful refrain. “I’ve been doing things that just ain’t me.” The song is “Gatsby,” written and first recorded by Samora Pinderhughes, but it captures an essential idea that Ndegeocello seems keen to contemplate — that realness requires vigilance. It’s a principled stance often mistaken for a state of being.

Over the 30 years since the release of her landmark debut, Ndegeocello has made truth-telling her business, along with a sound and style fed by many tributaries of Black music. The Omnichord Real Book is a coolly transfixing album — her first in five years, and her first as a leader for Blue Note. On some level it’s the product of a jarring realignment, as Ndegeocello explains in the liner notes: “Everything moved so quickly when my parents died. Changed my view of everything and myself in the blink of an eye.

Read full review on NPR Music

Meshell Ndegeocello on TKA

via Garden & Gun Magazine

Bobby Rush is one of the last men standing from a defining era of the blues. A Louisiana native who grew up picking cotton, he left for Chicago in the early ’50s to pay his dues alongside Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. He returned to the South in 1986, living in Jackson, Mississippi, and at age eighty-nine, he still regularly tours worldwide. With his 1971 hit “Chicken Heads,” Rush put his stamp on modern music, incorporating funk into the blues (as he’s fond of noting). In his nearly seventy years of playing music—he has been dubbed the King of the Chitlin’ Circuit—the Blues Hall of Famer has been a rarity, drawing audiences both Black and white. “You could take me to Memphis and put me on Beale Street, and I would pack it with white people,” he says. “You could take me to Mississippi Street the next night in the same town, and it’s all Black people.”

No matter the crowd, it’s the music that matters most to Rush. In August, he’ll release a new album of fresh material, All My Love for You, and today, G&G is proud to premiere the album’s opening song, the anthemic “I’m Free.” Listen to the track below, and read on to hear from Rush about playing in juke joints, his connection to Al Capone, and his secrets to staying young.

All My Love for You will be released August 18 and is available for pre-order here.

Read full interview on Garden & Gun

Bobby Rush on TKA

Cécile McLorin Salvant, three-time Grammy Award winning singer, visual artist, and composer visits Amoeba Music in San Fransisco, taking part in the legendary video series where artists share music that’s important to their creativity, sound, and identity. Salvant is well known for being an eclectic curator of various genres of music, fusing blues and folk with world, jazz, and baroque music. Cecile, a MacArthur “Genius” Award winner, recently released a new album entitled “Mélusine”, which features 12th century ballads, a song from Starmania (a 70’s Canadian musical), and original music, is out now on Nonesuch Records.

Cécile McLorin Salvant on TKA

via Pitchfork

The Omnichord was developed in Japan in the 1980s as a musician’s electronic accompaniment, incorporating a drum machine with rhythm and tempo controls, a set number of playable chords, and a “futuristic” touch-sensitive synthesizer ribbon. And while it has famous fans—Brian Eno, Joni Mitchell, and Damon Albarn, to name a few—it has always been a niche instrument: It’s mostly made of plastic, it feels like a toy, and it now sounds as cheap as it looks. In the hands of an exacting and protean virtuoso like Meshell Ndegeocello, deep into a decades-long career, the Omnichord became a tool for self-discovery.

In 2020, with no shows to play or sessions to sit in on, she found herself scoring three television shows—BMF, Queen Sugar, and Our Kind of People—simultaneously. At the end of marathon days spent collaborating remotely from her home in Brooklyn with an untold number of artists and executives, she would retreat to her attic. Alone with her thoughts and a gifted Omnichord, she would write, free of expectation, free to find things she wasn’t necessarily even looking for.

Read full feature on Pitchfork

Meshell Ndegeocello on TKA