Phenomenal Woman: The Maya Angelou Songs – Extraordinary!
By rights, and I’m a committed fan of Birdland, this indelible cross pollination of classical/opera/jazz/blues/gospel should be at Carnegie Hall – which is not to say you won’t find yourself chair dancing. Composer Louis Rosen’s symbiotic relationship with poet Maya Angelou, muse/vocalist Capathia Jenkins, and his superb band is so organic, so exacting in craft, it’s difficult to imagine one without the other.
Twelve years ago Rosen (composer/songwriter/performer/teacher) heard Capathia Jenkins and felt he’d found the last component needed to fully realize what became The Black Loom Trilogy, scoring the work of Langston Hughes, Nikki Giovanni, and Maya Angelou. Enmeshed in a black, Chicago neighborhood through his childhood, the artist always felt affinity with and uncanny understanding of his neighbors’ roots and challenges.
Unlike composers whose enthusiasm overrides capacity, Rosen’s music never feels like fitting a square peg in a round hole, as if poems are wrangled into submission. Some of these songs are so melodious (while maintaining ferocity), it seems as if words were originally lyrics. Excavating life experience, the artist adds painterly imagination, musical backbone, and arresting texture to Angelou’s raw emotion.
Capathia Jenkins is unique. I could note shades of Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Helen Humes, Aretha Franklin …but the lady’s style and talent are very much her own. Jenkins seems to become a song rather than perform it. Cascading through octaves with seamless control and discretion, she erupts and retreats plumbing meaning. Exuberance is infectious, anger palpable, pathos visceral.
An epilogue to the trilogy and woven into the Angelou suite are a Prelude and four Interludes. Immensely evocative musical pieces, these seem ripe for choreography. We open with “A Day Next Week,” conjuring lamplight shadows, wet streets- underbelly; tense anticipation. The clarinet gets under one’s skin.
A honey-cured “Come Be My Baby” finds Jenkins’ irresistibly seductive. In “But They Went Home,” she’s darkly resigned; admired, tasted, abandoned, yet not defeated. With “Preacher Don’t,” we’re galvanized by rhythm. Trumpet underlines: Preacher, don’t send me/when I die/to some big ghetto/in the sky…I’d call a place/pure paradise/where families are loyal/and strangers are nice,/where the music is jazz/and the season is fall./Promise me that/ or nothing at all. The congregation is clearly jivin’ while lyrics dive deep.
Interlude I “Dreamdust” floats in like a drug haze. Ravishing trumpet hands off to sax which nods to vibraphone. Languid and shimmering, musical wails rise from fog. Steps are careful. “Think About Myself”: When I think about myself,/ I almost laugh myself to death, /My life has been one great big joke, A dance that’s walked /A song that’s spoke…swells with pride and fury. Jenkins vibrates.
“Some Blues I’ve Had” begins a capella. This is a voice in which you want to wrap yourself – to comfort or be comforted, one wonders. Then, whomp! hard, rhythmic beat surrounds us with a pulsing neighborhood – dirty, noisy, poor, roiled. The singer (character) moves through it, past it – inside her head? A door or window abruptly closes. Sanctuary. Music is elemental and charred, vocal tenacious.
Rosen and Jenkins recall the journey they’ve been on (thus far). They agree that timing was inadvertently auspicious. “We both aged into the work.”
“Turned to Blue” determinedly faces down a demon – better one known and addressed. Interlude II “Trust Silence” bends without edges expressing solitude, not loneliness. Muted horn is our protagonist. Teased by flute and vibraphone, awareness expands owning a feeling of possibility.
“I Hate to Lose Something” sashays in churning, roadhouse burlesque. Drums punctuate. Horn swings its hips. “I hate to lose something,”/then she bent her head,/“even a dime, I wish I was dead…”Now if I felt that way ‘bout a watch & a toy,/What you think I feel `bout my lover-boy?... Jenkins moooves with warning grit. Her territory, her piece of earthy delight.
Pissed off and mourning sisterhood, “Poor Girl, Just Like Me” sympathizes with her lover’s other girl. Surges and digressions are perfectly employed to make the song a scene. We believe every word. Bass-centric “Out Here Alone” is a true blues: The race of man is suffering/And I can hear the moan,/‘Cause nobody,/ But nobody/Can make it out here alone… Jenkins sings widening her eyes, extending both arms, opening palms, entreating. A declaration of elusive truth.
Jenkins calls “Together” (Interlude III) “my jam.” In fact, eyes closed, fingers snapping, she rocks and bounces throughout –as does much of the grooving audience. Instruments seem a pumped-up gang intent on getting into mischief. Having read Angelou’s autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, at 14, she then picked it up again recently. “The thing she does so beautifully is to use poetry to describe trauma.” Rosen wields his medium similarly, inhabiting, not wallowing; often providing music in pithy counterpoint to gravity.
“For the Caged Bird Sings” musically loops and sails with a free bird, while his fellow … Can seldom see through his bars of rage/His wings are clipped and his feet are tied/So he opens his throat to sing….much like Angelou herself and representing others. The lovely song is rife with yearning.
“Phenomenal Woman-Song for C.J.” (Note the title addition) is sassy, cool, savvy, sure, and all wo-man. Jenkins works it with every fiber of her formidable being. Though a powerful anthem, finesse never exits. The performer has a lustrous light note with more guts than most in the business.
Tonight’s encore “The Black Loom” from One Ounce of Truth: The Nikki Giovanni Songs, is sheer voodoo; seething, tribal, hot. Horns cry. The inclination is to call out as if at a revival meeting. We rise as one, nourished and knocked out.
Musicianship is flat out terrific.
Phenomenal Woman is the last component of Black Loom. Though given the rights to perform his Angelou songs, it was not until last year that the author’s estate signed off on performance. A CD has also been released. It’s masterful.
Photos by Steve Friedman
Phenomenal Woman: The Maya Angelou Songs
Vocalist Capathia Jenkins & Composer/Conductor Louis Rosen
Michael Stapleton-piano, C.J. Camerieri- trumpet & French horn, Hideaki Aomori-flute, clarinet, alto & tenor sax, Andrew Blanco- vibraphone, Dave Phillips- acoustic and electric bass, Gary Seligson-drums
Birdland Theater
October 25-27
315 West 44th Street
