Meshell Ndegeocello
Meshell Ndegeocello (born August 29, 1968 in Berlin ; also Me'shell Suhaila Bashir and Me'Shell NdegéOcello , actually Michelle Johnson ) is an American musician and composer .
Life
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Meshell Ndegeocello was born in Berlin as the daughter of the US soldier and saxophonist Jacques Johnson, who was stationed in Germany. In the early 1970s, the family moved to Virginia (USA), where they grew up and attended Duke Ellington High School of the Arts ( Washington DC ). She learned to play bass as a teenager and began her musical career in the city's clubs while studying at Howard University in the 1980s . During this time, at 17, she also took on her stage name: Me'shell NdegéOcello , where NdegéOcello means "free as a bird" in Swahili . Since the late 1990s it has been spelling Meshell Ndegeocello , without an apostrophe or inner major. When she became pregnant in 1988 and her son Askia was born, she dropped out of college.
As a result, she took part in auditions for various bands and also played in individual appearances with various well-known artists, including Living Color and Steve Coleman . From Arrested Development was the musical director of the performance of the band in the television show Saturday Night Live committed. This was followed by various offers labels , including the Paisley Park studios of Prince and Warner Brothers . She finally went under contract as the first female artist at Madonna's then new production company Maverick .
style
Your main instrument is the electric bass . She also plays keyboard and electric guitar and has developed her own style from a mixture of singing and recitation. On their first five albums, their music moved mainly between funk , soul , hip-hop and jazz and also showed influences from reggae and rock .
With her mixture of funk, groove and intelligent lyrics, she is considered an important pioneer for music artists such as Erykah Badu , Jill Scott and others. a. In 1993 Meshell Ndegeocello released her first album "Plantation Lullabies", on which musicians established in the jazz field such as Geri Allen , Joshua Redman and funk guitarist Wah Wah Watson can be heard. In addition to David Fiuczynski (lead guitar), Federico Gonzalez Peña (keyboards) and Greg Lake (drums), Watson was also part of Ndegeocello's band, with whom she was in Europe and Japan for the first time in 1994. At concerts, she also had an additional bassist with her from the start (including Yossi Fine, Fima Ephron ) and only plays in instrumental parts herself.
Her sometimes provocative and critical texts deal with topics such as sex, politics and racism against the background of Afro-American history with 'black' self-confidence: “Art is also there to be misinterpreted. When I formulate sentences like 'The white man should always sleep with one eye open' or 'My lullabies are the calm before the storm, the calm before the revolution of colored people', then that means that I am guided by wishful thoughts, but I am neither a racist nor do I have the power to change things. I live from the idea of what would happen if black people stand up together against the injustice that has been done to them. And those who feel addressed, who think they have to be afraid of such texts, deserve the fear. "
Her skills as a musician led to collaborations with a number of well-known pop and jazz artists, including: Chaka Khan , Carlos Santana , the Rolling Stones , Prince , Madonna , Paul Simon , Basement Jaxx and Marcus Miller . A success in 1994 was the collaboration with John Mellencamp , with whom she sang a cover version of the Van Morrison piece Wild Night and played bass. The single reached number 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US . In the same year she recorded the piece Nocturnal Sunshine with Herbie Hancock for the album "Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool" of the AIDS aid organization Red Hot .
On the following albums - "Peace Beyond Passion" (1996) and "Bitter" (1999) - she developed her unmistakable style, which was oriented beyond the pop mainstream. While "Peace Beyond Passion" was again produced by David Gamson ( Scritti Politti ), Craig Street shaped the intimate, balanced, more country-blues- oriented overall impression on "Bitter", in which he completely slowed down the pace and the pieces almost flow into one another let. The first two albums were characterized by funk grooves and the rock guitar solos by David Fiuczynski and Alan Cato, but now a few strings, acoustic guitars, piano or a Fender Rhodes are used and among other things. a. atmospheric, flat guitar sounds by David Torn and Greg Leisz . The piece Wasted Time is a duo with Joe Henry . Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman are also involved in both albums .
In 2002 she released her most successful album to date with "Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape". At the same time she also took on another stage name: Suhaila Bashir ( Arabic : Bringer of Good News ).
After the fifth album, "Comfort Woman" (2003), she switched from her previous label Maverick to Universal in 2004 . This was accompanied by a reorientation in their music. She gathered a band ( Spirit Music Jamia ) made up of prominent jazz musicians and published - as a producer, bassist, composer and musical director - in early 2005 "The Spirit Music Jamia: Dance of the Infidel". Guest musicians featured on the album include singers Cassandra Wilson and Lalah Hathaway (daughter of Donny Hathaway ), saxophonists Kenny Garrett and Joshua Redman , clarinetist Don Byron , drummer Jack DeJohnette and percussionist Mino Cinelu .
Her music has been used in more than 15 TV and feature films including " How Stella Got Her Groove Back ", " Higher Learning ", " Hurricane " and " Batman & Robin ". As a producer, she was also responsible for Laïka Fatien's album Nebula .
Discography
Studio albums
| year | title |
Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes) |
Remarks | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 DE
|
 AT
|
 CH
|
 UK
|
 US
|
|||
| 1993 | Plantation Lullabies | - | - | - | - |
US166 (9 weeks) US |
First published: October 19, 1993
|
| 1996 | Peace Beyond Passion | - | - |
CH46 (3 weeks) CH |
UK100 (1 week) UK |
US63 (10 weeks) US |
First published: June 25, 1996
|
| 1999 | Bitter | - | - | - | - |
US105 (4 weeks) US |
First published: August 24, 1999
|
| 2002 | Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape | - | - | - | - |
US67 (3 weeks) US |
First published: June 4, 2002
|
| 2003 | Comfort woman | - | - | - | - |
US150 (1 week) US |
First published: October 14, 2003
|
| 2007 | The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams | - | - | - | - |
US186 (1 week) US |
First published: August 20, 2007
|
| 2009 | Devil's Halo | - | - | - | - |
US185 (1 week) US |
First published: October 6, 2009
|
| 2014 | Comet, come to me | - | - | - | - |
US161 (1 week) US |
First published: June 2, 2014
|
| 2018 | Ventriloquism | - | - |
CH62 (1 week) CH |
- | - |
First published: March 16, 2018
|
more publishments
- 2005: The Spirit Music Jamia: Dance of the Infidel
- 2006: The Article 3 EP
- 2011: Weather
- 2012: Pour une âme souveraine - A Dedication to Nina Simone
Singles
| year | Title album |
Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes) |
Remarks | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
DE
|
AT
|
CH
|
UK
|
US
|
|||
| 1993 | If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night) Plantation Lullabies |
- | - | - |
UK74 (2 weeks) UK |
US73 (6 weeks) US |
First published: August 1993
|
| 1994 | Wild Night Dance Naked |
DE55 (11 weeks) DE |
- | - |
UK34 (3 weeks) UK |
US3 (42 weeks) US |
First published: May 1994
(with John Mellencamp ) |
| 1996 | Who Is He (And What Is He to You)? Peace Beyond Passion |
- | - | - |
UK80 (1 week) UK |
- |
First published: December 1996
|
| 1997 | Never Miss the Water Epiphany: The Best of Vol. 1 |
- | - | - |
UK59 (2 weeks) UK |
- |
First published: January 1997
(with Chaka Khan ) |
Individual evidence
- ^ Nathan Brackett, Christian David Hoard (eds.): The New Rolling Stone Album Guide . 4th edition. Simon and Schuster, New York 2004, ISBN 0-7432-0169-8 , p. 471
- ↑ http://www.speakeasy.org/~suomynona/gigography/92-95.html ( Memento from January 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) 'Gigography' at speakeasy.org
- ↑ http://www.northseajazz.com/en/program/1994/friday-8-july/9312_meshell-ndegeocello U. a. at the North Sea Jazz Festival in The Hague
- ↑ Quoted from Ssirius Pakzad: Me'Shell NdegeOcello - Gogo-Girl . In: Jazzthing, Issue 1, Winter 1993, p. 28
- ↑ http://www.billboard.com/charts#/charts/hot-100?chartDate=1994-09-03
- ↑ a b Chart sources: DE CH UK US
Web links
- Meshell.com Official website of the artist
- Fan page with detailed information ( Memento from August 24, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
- Speakeasy.org fan page with disco, gigography ( memento from September 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- Feature about Meshell Ndegeocello with interview excerpts at jazzthing.de ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ndegeocello, Meshell |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Bashir, Me'shell Suhaila; NdegéOcello, Me'Shell; Johnson, Michelle (real name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American funk and jazz musician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 29th August 1968 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin , Germany |