Ekep Nkwelle – A straight talking rootsy vision
American singer Ekep Nkwelle’s debut is rooted in gospel and blues but is firmly a jazz record too. The album repertoire moves from the devotional ‘His Eye Is on the Sparrow’ to Abbey Lincoln’s ‘Caged Bird’, the Broadway song ‘Night Song’, Djavan’s ‘Amazon Farewell’, Billie Holiday’s ‘Good Morning, Heartache’, ‘The Sad Ones’, ‘The Creator Has a Master Plan’ and ‘See See Rider’. It is a wide-ranging selection, although I’m not particularly taken with either the song or Nkwelle’s version of ‘Amazon Farewell’. That aside elsewhere, though, there is enough character in the choices and arrangements to make this a promising debut that should find an audience on specialist jazz radio.
Nkwelle is interested in songs concerned with suffering, endurance, faith and the possibility of something beyond them, an idea that connects with the album’s inspiration in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The opening ‘His Eye Is on the Sparrow’, written by Civilla D. Martin and Charles H. Gabriel in 1905, is a long established gospel standard recorded by artists including Mahalia Jackson and Ethel Waters. Nkwelle’s reading is relatively spare and gives the melody room to speak before Abbey Lincoln’s ‘Caged Bird’ brings the title theme into sharper focus. The Lincoln song has been recorded in various settings during her career, and here the arrangement keeps the emphasis on the voice rather than turning it into a vehicle for vocal display.
‘Night Song’, written by Lee Adams and Charles Strouse for the 1968 musical Golden Boy, takes the record into Broadway territory. Sarah Vaughan recorded it on Viva! Vaughan in the mid-1960s, but Nkwelle does not attempt to emulate Vaughan’s more polished jazz-singing tradition. She is more convincing when she moves towards the rootsier side of her voice, as she does with some exuberance on ‘See See Rider.’
‘Good Morning, Heartache’, written by Irene Higginbotham, Ervin Drake and Dan Fisher, is perhaps the most familiar piece of vocal-jazz territory here. Billie Holiday’s recording remains the unavoidable reference point, while Diana Ross gave the song a very different profile in Lady Sings the Blues. Nkwelle’s reading is controlled and intimate, finding the ache in the song without pushing it towards melodrama.
I liked ‘Early One Mornin’’ best of all, while ‘The Sad Ones’, composed by Washington saxophonist Roger Wendell ‘Buck’ Hill, is particularly interesting because Nkwelle supplies her own lyrics which are hard hitting and are an honest woman’s perepective towards motherhood. It gives the band more space and suggests something beyond the role of interpreter.
The personnel is small but well chosen. Luther Allison plays piano on the opening two tracks, with Julius Rodriguez taking over from ‘Night Song’ onwards. Russell Hall plays upright bass throughout most of the album and Brian Richburg Jr is on drums, with Allison and Richburg also adding percussion and tambourine on ‘Early One Mornin’’. Rodriguez comes through particularly clearly on the later tracks, but the overall effect is deliberately spacious, leaving Nkwelle plenty of room rather than surrounding her with a conventional vocal-jazz accompaniment.
The other major reference point is Pharoah Sanders’ ‘The Creator Has a Master Plan’, originally recorded on Karma in 1969 with Leon Thomas. Nkwelle’s version is a little too middle of the road for my taste. The closing ‘See See Rider’, first recorded by Ma Rainey in 1924, is far better and brings the album back towards more direct blues territory and makes a strong final statement. That and the gospel black church gospel domain is where its heart lies.
The most intriguing moments are those in which she sounds less like a singer demonstrating what she can do and more like an artist working out what a song can mean.
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What makes Caged Bird particularly promising is that Nkwelle already sounds comfortable inside this material without sounding trapped by it. There is gospel in the voice, blues in the phrasing and jazz in the interaction with the musicians, but these aren’t presented as separate ingredients. ‘The Sad Ones’ hints at what might come when she begins to contribute more of her own material. For a debut, this is an assured and thoughtful record, and the restraint is as important as the vocal power. The next step will be to hear more of Nkwelle’s own writing alongside this formidable ability to interpret other people’s songs.