Cassandra Wilson: Now here is a classy person . . .

Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 10:18:22 +0900
Newsgroups: rec.music.bluenote
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. . . who is accepting of many musical styles and doesn't put down other
musicians simply becasue they do something different. Bravo.
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http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/entertainment/weekend/5864808.htm
Miami Herald
Posted on Fri, May. 16, 2003
All that jazz
BY HOWARD COHEN
It's mean, but I thought I'd start a fight between jazz singer Cassandra
Wilson and R&B star India.Arie.
It's JVC Jazz Festival weekend in South Beach, you see, and Wilson, one of
today's preeminent jazz vocalists, is opening for headliner Arie tonight at
the Gleason.
So, ringing Wilson at her Manhattan pad one recent chilly New York morning,
I found it impossible to resist posing the obvious question.
Why are you opening for her at a jazz festival?
Wilson laughs. Her voice, a smoky, low contralto on record, is warm and
friendly on the telephone.
''I don't mind,'' she says. ``I like opening. It gives me a chance to chill,
and I don't have to do a really long and arduous set. India reaches a
broader audience and there are jazz roots inside of her and a lot of her
music. You can tell she listens to a lot of jazz.''
This much is true.
''If you know me as an artist, it's not far-fetched that I'd be at a jazz
festival,'' Arie, 27, says from her West Hollywood, Calif., hotel room.
''That I'm headlining over Cassandra is hilarious to me. It is hilarious
that someone my age in the industry would be headlining anything. But I do
have jazz in my soul,'' says Arie, who lent background vocals to Just
Another Parade, a track on Wilson's latest CD, Belly of the Sun.
''I got into her late, not until New Moon Daughter (1995),'' Arie says.
``Once I heard her, wow! Her vocal tone alone was enough for me to love her
and then to find out she plays guitar, too. I never thought she'd call me.''
However, Arie, who picked up a couple of Grammys earlier this year for her
Stevie Wonder-influenced Voyage to India CD, balks at categorizing herself.
''I never considered myself an R&B artist or a jazz artist,'' the
singer-songwriter says, speaking rapidly, a contrast to the relaxed vibe
found on her CDs, the descriptive debut Acoustic Soul and the current Voyage
to India. 'I don't classify my music in musicians' terms. The closest I can
get is 'soul' music -- but 'soul' doesn't have to mean black music or Al
Green music. James Taylor is 'soul' music to me. . . . Someone who is honest
vocally and with their instrument.''
WIDER VARIETY
The third annual JVC Jazz Festival Miami Beach -- which began with smaller
club shows Wednesday at Jazid, where Latin jazz act Los Hombres Calientes
played, and Van Dyke Café, which drew Ray Vega with Sammy Figueroa's Latin
Jazz Explosion Thursday -- boasts the best and widest-ranging line-up thus
far.
The first festival two years ago, featuring an underwhelming Gato Barbieri,
offered only Latin jazz on the sands of South Beach. Pop/jazz vocalist Tony
Bennett was the lure last year at Gleason.
This weekend, the major shows offer crossover artists George Benson and
Patti Austin Saturday at the Gleason, in addition to the aforementioned
Wilson and Arie.
The mix of talent begs another question: the upcoming Ozzfest and Vans
Warped Tour feature hard rock acts. A touring country festival, like Brooks
& Dunn's Neon Circus, offers country. So why must jazz festivals like JVC,
which sponsors editions across the nation, mix jazz and pop and R&B artists
together? Can't jazz have its own festival?
The realities of the marketplace suggest a jazz festival without a
recognizable marquee name would be a hard sell these days.
Besides, ''Jazz touches more music than country music,'' Wilson, 47,
explains. ``Jazz is really the foundation of American popular music. There's
a great deal of depth to jazz, more than just the music. It's an approach, a
lifestyle, an ideology of all kinds of things. That's why you go to a jazz
festival. You are given choices, a smorgasbord of tributaries that come from
the river of jazz.''
Arie agrees. ``My first jazz fest was the New Orleans [one] and I think I
got spoiled. There were so many stages. I heard all this music. . . . It was
so much more fun than a regular show.''
BACK TO THE SOUTH
Since Wilson is obviously in a good mood, we figured we'd ask her to program
a jazz festival.
''Don't ask me!'' she says, laughing. Without further hesitation, she plays
along. ``I'd put some bluegrass in there, some zydeco. I'm not big on
mass-produced pop music, but I would find some pop artists who were edgy,
who clearly studied jazz music or were influenced by jazz music. People who
were like Joni Mitchell, a cross-genre type.
''And traditional jazz music like a Dave Brubeck,'' she adds. ``I love his
work and love him at festivals. For someone his age, he keeps getting
better.''
This eclecticism isn't surprising when you consider the Mississippi-reared
Wilson's career. She started as a funky singer in New York 21 years ago. Her
1993 breakthrough CD, Blue Light 'Til Dawn, offered languid, bluesy covers
of Robert Johnson and Joni Mitchell. Subsequent discs mixed her originals
with her takes on Miles Davis, U2, James Taylor, and even The Monkees' Last
Train to Clarksville.
'I was talking to [producer] Craig Street and I said I really loved the
Monkees' songs. He dared me. 'I dare you to do that song.' ''
So she did. Her current Belly of the Sun album, however, found the
singer-songwriter returning to her Delta blues roots. She cut the record
with her musicians inside an old Mississippi railroad depot she had
converted into a recording studio in steamy August, ``the hottest time of
the year.''
The sessions touched on blues, as well as jazz, African, Brazilian, pop and
R&B. The musicians lived in that depot for six scorching days and it was
wonderful, Wilson says. ``We ate, drank, hung out, went to the blues museum.
It was like a pilgrimage. The birthplace of the blues. You can't have jazz
without blues. It's always good to go back to the well.
''I love that record, it led me to the next record, which I'm finishing up
now,'' she says.
The forthcoming CD, which will take her even deeper into the blues, already
has a title: Glamoured. The title is based on a theory detailed in a William
Butler Yeats book of Irish folklore and Celtic culture Wilson has been
reading.
''Glamoured has many shades of meaning,'' she says. ``It's similar to being
in a daydream. The Irish look at it as being carried away by fairies.''
It's that feeling you get -- or don't -- when you slip into a trance, your
eyes locked for a second or so. That's being glamoured.
''Everyone doesn't have it,'' Wilson says. ``It happens mostly to people who
are artistically inclined.''
Wilson and Arie, for instance.