SOUNDTRACK: MELANIE CHARLES-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #165 (January 4, 2021).
I had never heard of Melanie Charles and boy was I in for a treat with this being my first exposure to her.
A Brooklynite proud of her rich Haitian heritage, Charles is conscious of the giant shoulders upon which she stands and takes steps to both honor and advance this music. Behind her, smiling pictures of her guardian angels, Mary Lou Williams and Billie Holiday, encourage Charles while she and her musicians blend the mystique of Haitian folk music with the sorrowful optimism of negro spirituals and the free space for elevation that jazz improvisation allows.
The video opens on a dark screen with samples being manipulated and twisted. It’s amazing to have the camera fade from black into this really old-fashioned looking scene–upright bass, snare drum and a nearly sepia filter on the video. And then there’s Melanie Charlie dressed in a beautiful but old-fashioned looking ensemble manipulating all of the sounds.
She is playing from the
Williamsburg Music Center, one of Brooklyn’s last surviving black-owned jazz venues… This performance was a full circle moment for Melanie Charles. The Williamsburg Music Center is owned by Gerry Eastman, a celebrated musician and composer who taught the jazz class Charles and her brother and saxophonist, Rogerst Charles, attended when they were in high school. According to Charles, Eastman “represents a special era of Brooklyn jazz musicians” and created a space that gave these artists a place to perform when all other doors were closed to them.
Then she starts singing French while Jonathan Michel plays a bass solo /melody. This song is
“Damballa Wedo,” [in which] Charles channels her Haitian roots and delivers a modern twist of a traditional vodou song by Toto Bissainthe. She sings that when we seek transformation, we may become someone who those around us no longer recognize, but that the change is necessary and part of the ancestors’ divine plan. “C’est bon, c’est bon,” she sings.
Up next she offers a little Sun Ra vibration. She plays a sample and dramatically shuts it off as it loops. The starkness of the silence is very dramatic. Then she starts singing
Charles’ arrangement of “Deep River” is inspired by her admiration for Sun Ra. The biography of the eccentric composer, arranger, musician, and early pioneer of Afrofuturism, Space Is The Place rests on a stand behind her. By really digging into his approach and arrangements and using his “spaceship setup as a performance guide,” she breathes new life into this spiritual, injecting it with a potency that is simultaneously somber and otherworldly.
While the sample continues the band picks things up. The bass and sax play the main melody while Melanie plays some sharp and cool flute accents.
And what a voice!
Before the final song, she introduces the band:
Jonathan Michel: who looks like an upright bassist–he’s got that Ron Johnson turtleneck. Shout out to Ron Johnson. On drums, Diego Ramirez: coming in at the last minute and learning the songs over night. On saxophone, Rogerst Charles, my blood brother, my heart.
The final song is “Dilemma.”
She finishes the set with “Dilemma,” a new song written to find the balance between self-care and showing up for those you love amid the cries for justice during the first summer of the pandemic. On our phone call, Charles explained that the song is an anthem that reminds us to not to “dim your light for anybody” and “remember how vibrant we are, despite what we as black people had to deal with in 2020.”
She plays keys and sings a soft song until the whole band joins in. After a couple of minutes she she sings a high note and the sax plays the same note a wailing harmony of greatness.
With about two minutes left she starts singing the coda “we’ve been doing alright be we still shine bright.” The band sings along and she interjects:
We’ve been doing alright
even though we didn’t get our stimulus.
But we still shine bright.
[READ: March 31, 2021] Only Righteous Fights
On December 31 of 2020 I donated some money to Elizabeth Warren (I’m not actually sure to what end it was used–presumably her Senatorial campaign?) to pre-order this collection of speeches (and get a laminated bookmark!).
There are few things more disappointing than reading amazing, inspiring and truly moving speeches by a person who lost a candidacy.
Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren were my number 1 and number 2 choices for President. I didn’t have to worry too much about which one I would ultimately choose, I was just happy they both were so successful (until they weren’t). Having Harris as V.P. is pretty awesome, and I will acknowledge that Biden (who was my last choice) has been doing a good job thus far (apparently having taken ideas from all the other candidates…which is rather a good idea).
But reading this book and seeing how genuine Warren was (or came across) and how much she cared (or appeared to) for the people she spoke to and about, it is crushing that her campaign didn’t last.
There are five speeches in the book as well as lots of photos. There’s a few smaller sections as well, like photos from the Selfie Line, Letters to Elizabeth and Pinky Promises.
What’s impressive is how she manages to hit all of her main bullet points and yet how each speech is quite different. (more…)
