Meshell Ndegeocello Shining Sound, Soul, Spirit

“Music is a form of expression that’s not destructive; it allows me to express things that I’m thinking and feeling. It allows a moment of transcen­dence; it’s always amazing to dance and feel the music in your body. It gives you that momentary feeling where someone has put your emotions into words and sounds, and you feel a special kinship with the music and the artist. The spiritual aspect of music is so personal to me,” says bassist, singer-song­writer Meshell Ndegeocello.

Having signed her first album at the age of 23, nominated 10 times for a Grammy Award throughout her career, Ndegeocello first rose to international recognition with Plantation Lullabies in 1993. Born to Ameri­can parents in Germany where her father was with the Army, she lived in many places, notably Washington, DC and New York City. Music became a haven as she witnessed the power of emotions let free to the realm of vibrations. Attuned with her creativity, she journeyed on finding her unique style and voice. She began playing the bass a friend left at her home. Soon those strings became her peaceful armor on a life path made of rousing beats. 

“There was always music in the house. I was impressed by movie soundtracks; I real­ly liked jazz like Clifford Brown and John Coltrane; I was a big fan of Rush. They defi­nitely were a splendor to the fire of creating my own,” she recalls. “My father was a musician and my brother played the guitar. I’m one of those people who believe in the genetics, so it’s in my gene pool. I thought if I could play the bass, I could play with my brother regularly, which is the part of music I enjoy so much, the collective, the making of something together. When I was about 14 years old, it was soothing to be able to put down the things I heard in my head. I would stay in my room and make songs on my gui­tar. Opposites attract: my mother is very reli­gious, I have a lot of that rhetoric going through my head and my father is a woman­izing kind of guy. I got to see a lot of the world in the sense of people who live their lives in holes and bars, searching for excite­ment and love. I’m not good with people and social settings, I like to read and day­dream and I like to make things.”

Her new album, Devil’s Halo [Mercer Street], marks Ndegeocello’s eighth record, and showcases her purely profound and electrifying artistry.

“It took me a year to write the songs,” she explains. “The recording process took about seven days; it’s all played to analog tape. It’s a record based on your imagination and the things you can create with your hands — like sound and words. Probably the title track is my favorite; it’s instrumental, which allows the listener to feel whatever they want to. I like it when a person can have his or her own experience with the music. I know when a song is finished by this feeling I get, I don’t think about it too much, if it sounds like I hear it in my head, that means it’s done.”

Queried on how the album got blessed with its title, Devil’s Halo, she responds qui­etly. “Humanity is imperfection and imper­fection is humanity. We have so many myths about evil, and the great writings of Dante; I think all these things exist in us all, the world isn’t so black and white. What brings us all together as human beings, despite where you come from or where you are, is that death will find you; it’s the ultimate equalizer, and you just hope that you have a good death, one that suits the life you’ve had.”

We ask Ndegeocello how she views the role of creation in a world where we approach that destiny she defines as “the ultimate equalizer.” In other words, how can art guide us in making our humane exis­tence more meaningful? “I saw this amazing interview with Salman Rushdie, he talked about the phase he went through where he believed in God and then he didn’t,” she exclaims after a meditative pause. “He went on to talk about how he had one grandfather who was beautiful to him and to other peo­ple, he was like the God of his imagination, really beautiful and loving, he just thought that people would eventually get to that sort of imagination. It made me realize that I’m in control of the world, time, space, that I cre­ate, so I always try to have a kind and posi­tive imagination, not filled with nightmares and fears, and that does come out in your music; I try to develop my imagination to be more calm and clear.”

We wonder: if she were to jam with any musician, dead or alive, on a given night, who would she like to be in the company of? “David Bowie, Curtis Mayfield, Brian Eno” she affirms. “David Bowie because his understanding of music is rarely talked about; he’s a great songwriter, he’s able to go through very different genres, and also having a visual element to it. He’s a great conceptual artist who happens to be a musician, I’m very fond of him. Curtis May­field because he sang from his heart, he tried to aid people in learning and knowl­edge as well as making music. And Brian Eno because he’s a genius; I got to be around him, and every time I felt a great lightness in being.”

She’s had her share of hardships, which springs from being an innovative artist, attempting to create freely in a system based on labeling and profit. “I’ve been around for so long, people are going to think what they want to think. I don’t really con­cern myself with it, I just concentrate on the music as best as I can, that’s all I have con­trol over,” she admits. “Right now, I’m sitting in this hotel room and this is home. I’m very much in the moment. I accept where I am at that moment. I constantly move around. Home is inside my mind. Sometimes I wish I could do more for the immediate communi­ties around me, by farming or teaching liter­acy. Music is great, I love making it, but the traveling and tour get hard at times. Yet I stay with music, it is my journey in life.” 

She changed her last name long years ago to Ndegeocello meaning “free like a bird” in Swahili. “In the late ’80s, early ’90s, people of color in the United States were in a movement of letting go of our quote unquote ‘slave master names,’” she explains. “I wanted something to start fresh from. I also learned that in Aborigine culture in Australia young people change their names all the time to reflect where they are in life. I was into that, trying to find my inner self, so I came up with that name.”

What would she name herself now, we ask, how does she view her life today? “Suhaila Bashir Shakur,” she chuckles. “That would probably be my name! It’s Arabic. Suhaila means one who is gentle, Bashir is bringer of good news, and Shakur stands for strong.” 

The foundation of Meshell Ndegeocello’s music, that invisible thread that keeps it all together, is undoubtedly the beat. “That’s how you entice people, and hopefully the beat will entice them enough to bring them into the other layers of the music,” she notes. “The industry is completely different today. Before they were trying to make stars larger than life, there was this grandiose glamorous idea to music, and that has changed. I’ve never had that. I feel I’m still the same; I like to make music, I want to be a creative person, I’m doing the best I can to continue to do this, because I want to make sounds that make people feel good, not nec­essarily make great videos and be on TV. I just want to make music that people can put on in their headphones and machines and have a good time with, feel sad to, or smile to. I just want to tell people to keep the music alive, and be supportive to something that is so important to human species.” ▼

For more information and tour dates, visit www.myspace.com/officialmeshellndegeo­cello or www.mercerstreetrecords.com