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After a rescheduled performance due to rain, singer and songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello gave fans everything they were waiting for (and some!) during BRIC's "Celebrate Brooklyn!" show Wednesday night in Prospect Park.
The original show date on Aug. 2, marked what would have been the 100th birthday of author James Baldwin. It also was the date Meshell dropped her newest album, No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin, an ode to the prolific author, philosopher and beloved baby of the Black Renaissance who– through his writing– championed freedom of artistic and sexual expression. His stories spoke of the Black experience with unrelenting and razor-sharp detail, repudiating America's cancer of racial inequality.
Meshell writes of her latest album that it is a tribute to African-American writers and thinkers such as Baldwin and Zora Neale Hurston.
Wednesday's performance brought to life the spirit of her album through music, poetry and song– what she coins as "the gospel." But isn't that what Meshell has always been about? From the time she burst onto the scene in the early 90s, her music took its sweet time on the ears, like molasses, meandering between poetry and song, always with a message of enlightenment that hit home.
She opened the show with a familiar fan favorite– "I'm Diggin' You (Like an Old Soul Record)" from her debut album Plantation Lullabies. But for the majority and rest of the show, she, with her band and background singers, donned church robes and shared the music and gospel of her most recent album.
Poetess and performance artist Staceyann Chin was the evening's host. She erupted onto the stage like a preacher bringing the fire and brimstone, "tunin' up" the audience after which they co-signed: "Make some noise!" Staceyann shouted. "If you don't make any noise, they'll say you were never here!"
Staceyann returned to the stage between songs with some of her own new poetry, stoking the emotions of the audience, leaving no racially charged stone unturned.
She was raw, poetic and unapologetic with her words: "A new story cracks our consciousness everyday; We watch those viral videos becoming more and more numb, more struck dumb by the sheer gall of these cops, steady snuffing out Black lives in their made-in-America home movies ..."
Meshell shared a ballad she wrote in honor of Sonya Massey, the 36-year old woman from Springfield, IL, who was shot and killed on July 6 by police officers after she called 911 for help. With just a single guitar, Meshell and her background singers sang a song that reminded us of what was likely one of the loneliest moments in Massey's life, right before she was shot. The song's chorus cried in dulcet tones, "Look at my hands ... please don't shoot me ... Ooooh, oh oh oh oh oh oh ... Put down your gun, take your hands off me ..."
For the most part, she eschewed her popular past tunes and instead invited the audience into a her new album with an age-old American narrative: a cry for freedom!
But, certainly, nothing about her performance felt rehashed or stale. After the first show's cancellation, Meshell's fans arrived even more attentive and more excited to listen to what she had to say.
Because, for some reason– whether its her seldom appearances or the years between when another album drops– so much about Meshell Ndegeocello often feels anticipated and past due. Yet, right on time.
