Ekep Nkwelle’s ‘Caged Bird’ Takes Flight

“Caged Bird,” the debut album by 27-year-old singer Ekep Nkwelle, isn’t just a collection of songs. Rather, it’s a road map to well over a hundred years of African American music, poetry, culture, and spirituality.It was worth waiting for: anyone going out to hear music in New York in the post-pandemic era can hardly have missed Ms. Nkwelle; she’s been featured everywhere from Jazz at Lincoln Center to Birdland to the 92nd Street Y. At about age 25, she headlined in her own featured spot at the Newport Jazz Festival, which is almost unheard of for a new artist who, at that time, hadn’t even released a single album. (Needless to say, I know musicians and singers who have been trying all their lives to get a featured spot at Newport.)Ms. Nkwelle, whose name is Cameroonian, but whose accent is more indicative of Baltimore, MD, or Washington, DC, honors her forefathers and foremothers with every delicious note she sings. Even in her visual presentation during her recent run at Dizzy’s, she wore a turban reminiscent of Jazzmeia Horn and spectacles à la Cécile McLorin Salvant. And it’s clear that she’s listened and learned from artists even beyond the African American spectrum; her penchant for weaving different songs together is informed by Kurt Elling, as well as Marilyn Maye, whom she acknowledged at Friday’s show. (She shared a bill with Ms. Maye and Catherine Russell at 92NY a few years ago; now that was a night to remember.)Her opening move, both at the club and on the album, was a multileveled construct that drew on the metaphor of birds as a recurring folkloric symbol for the peoples of the African diaspora. She starts with the 1905 gospel hymn, “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” a signature of the great blues and jazz singer-actress Ethel Waters. From there, she goes directly into Abbey Lincoln’s “Caged Bird,” which also reaches deep into the roots of the tree of black music. Lincoln introduced this incarnation of the caged bird on a 1973 album, acknowledging the inspiration of poet laureate (and one-time calypso singer-songwriter) Maya Angelou and her memoir “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” In 1983, Angelou published her own poem titled “Caged Bird.” All of these caged birds were inspired by the pioneering black poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, in his 1899 “Sympathy,” and possibly also by Emily Dickinson’s earlier observations about hope and feathers.Then too, she continues with “Night Song.” Although it was composed by a pair of white Jewish songwriters, the late Charles Strouse and Lee Adams, who is still with us, it was immediately accepted by black performers, starting with Sammy Davis, Jr., who introduced it in the classic-but-neglected musical play “Golden Boy.” It’s the rare song by non-black writers that black artists — such as Sarah Vaughan, Andy Bey, and, most famously, Nina Simone — have adopted as one of their own. In “Night Song,” Ms. Nkwelle poignantly expresses alienation, what it’s like to be “other” in mainstream white society.In that sense, “Night Song” is a parallel to “Feelin’ Good,” from “The Roar of the Greasepaint, the Smell of the Crowd.” This is another show tune by white authors that found favor with black artists and audiences. Come to think of it, “Feelin’ Good” would also be a great number for Ms. Nkwelle. Ekep Nkwelle performing at Dizzy’s with Russell Hall. Lorelei Edwards Design CompanyOther songs check other boxes and touch on other traditions: “See See Rider” is just about as basic a blues as you will find, credited to the legendary blues woman Gertrude “Ma” Rainey. “Early One Mornin’” is classic R&B from the book of Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, although considerably reanimated with percussive hand claps and, admittedly, more rhythm than blues. “The Creator Has a Master Plan” is a post-modern hymn brought to us by Pharoah Sanders and Leon Thomas; it’s both a prayer and a message of hope. The album contains only one traditional torch song, a song of a romantic relationship gone awry, and that’s “Good Morning Heartache,” first recorded by Billie Holiday in 1946, with music by Irene Higginbotham and lyrics credited to Ervin Drake and Dan Fisher, a beautiful moment of pan-ethnic solidarity between a male Jewish lyricist and a black female composer.When Ms. Nkwelle speaks between songs, she’s an engagingly giggly young girl on stage. She clearly loves life and loves performing; even her protest songs are joyous and optimistic. It’s hard not to love her, yet her singing is capable of expressing the most profound and serious emotions.Ms. Nkwelle ended her show at Dizzy’s with another elaborate mash-up of two highly compatible songs, for which she credited the inspiration of Marilyn Maye. She started with “I’m in the Mood for Love,” which she launched with the very rare verse (I haven’t heard anybody sing that since the much-missed Barbara Cook), then the chorus, and then she transitioned seamlessly into the very famous bebop vocalese variation, “Moody’s Mood for Love,” a modern jazz classic thanks to James Moody, King Pleasure, and Eddie Jefferson. Neither song is heard on her current album, which makes me impatient for her next one.

Ekep Nkwelle’s ‘Caged Bird’ Takes Flight

Ekep Nkwelle’s ‘Caged Bird’ Takes Flight

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