Cécile McLorin Salvant Performs Live In-Studio

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This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

I'm David Remnick.

Don't tell me not to live just sitting butter.

Life's candy and my son's a ball of butter.

Cecile McLaurin Salvant is a jazz singer, and she's one of the top singers around today.

Someone on the level of Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald.

But Salvant's repertoire and her approach to music are completely her own.

A standard from the American songbook might be followed by a tune from hundreds of years ago and across an ocean.

I once went to see her expecting, you know, How High the Moon, but the first thing out of her was a century-old murder ballad, and it lasted about a half an hour long.

Wynton Marcella's called her the kind of talent who comes along only once in a generation or two.

Cecile McLaurin Salvant is performing at jazz festivals all over the country this summer.

I got a chance to talk with her last summer, summer, and she came to perform at our studio at WNYC.

I'm gonna live and live now.

Get what I want, I know how.

One roll for the whole shebang, one throw, that bell will go clang.

I am the target and wham.

One shot, one gun shot, and bam.

Hey,

Mr.

Fartner,

here

I

am.

I'll march my band

out.

I'll be

my drum.

And

if I'm fanned out,

your turn at bat, sir.

At least I didn't fake it.

Hat, sir.

I guess I didn't make it.

Get ready for me, love, cause I'm a comer.

I've simply gotta march.

My heart's a drummer.

Nobody, no, nobody

is gonna

rain

on my

porn.

Oh man,

I don't know what I did there.

Wow.

I am so excited to have you here today.

And I have gone to see you at any number of places around New York

and not enough.

Because every time I go, I leave so happy and so surprised by what you've decided to sting on a given night.

What goes into those decisions?

It's very nice to hear you say that you're surprised because that's my first

priority, I think.

I just love to be surprised in life in general, by people, by the musicians I play with, by myself.

That's huge for me when I'm looking for songs or listening to songs.

And even just as a fan of art and artists.

Well, this song is so associated with one singer in particular, maybe Barbara Streisand.

Yeah.

And you take it on head-on.

And then on another night, I'll go see you, and you're singing, I don't know how many verses that was.

We were just discussing this before we came in.

It must have been 40-verse-long blues song that no one had probably heard.

Yeah, I think.

I think it was like a half an hour long.

It was a half an hour long blues called Murder Ballad that Jelly Roll Morton did for Library of Congress years ago.

Let me tell you

one of the things that I've said.

This woman who murders her boyfriend's lover

and then goes to prison.

And

there's a lot of profanity.

And I had always wanted to sing it.

So for like,

I sat on it for 10 years thinking, where could I ever possibly do it?

And who would I do it with?

And then I had a Valentine's Day concert at Jazzet Lincoln Center.

And I thought, wouldn't that be for date night?

Wouldn't that just be great?

Date night with a little murder involved.

Decoration day.

Well, let's start from the beginning.

You grew up where?

I grew up in Miami, Florida.

And what were you listening to at home, and who was filling the home with music?

I was listening to whatever my mom was listening to, and she loves everything.

Cesaria Avora from Cape Verde.

We were listening to Yusun Dor from Senegal.

We were listening to Los Tres Paraguayos, which is like Paraguayan folk music.

We were listening to French music.

We were listening to some jazz, mostly Sarah Vaughan, a little bit of Nancy Wilson, Gladys Knight,

Aretha Franklin.

We were listening to folk music,

some bluegrass.

I could go on and on, actually.

A lot of Brazilian music.

And that's all due to your mother.

She has a huge, wide ear,

and she traveled a lot in her childhood.

And I think she brought back those travels in some way, or that traveling sort of feeling.

Where did she grow up?

She grew up in Tunisia.

She lived throughout Africa.

She lived in Senegal.

She lived in Cuba.

She lived in the Dominican Republic.

She lived in Honduras,

in Haiti.

And what was the lingua franca at home?

English, French, or both?

It was Franca.

It was Franca.

It was French.

It was French at home.

Yeah, from what I understand,

in fact, from a profile in the New Yorker some years ago, there was a time when you were a kid, you thought you were going to study law.

Not so much when I was a kid.

It was more after high school.

I really didn't know what to do.

And there was this political science prep school in this small town in France.

My cousin was going.

They had a law option, like first-year law.

A beautiful place in Aix-en-Provence.

In Aix-en-Provence.

And so I said, oh, why not?

What a good deal.

It was a great deal.

My cousin was there.

I've always liked school.

So off you go as a teenager to the south of France to study law, politics, history, and then something happened.

I always studied music alongside my other school activities.

Did you play an instrument?

Piano.

And you were playing classical, jazz, everything?

I guess I was playing classical, but I was not really playing much.

I was not practicing.

I had to be bribed every week

with doughnuts to go to class, to go to piano class.

I just didn't like it.

But I did it for 15 years.

And singing?

Singing,

I,

it's funny.

I think singing for me is so social.

I don't sing when I'm alone, or I sing very rarely when I'm alone.

Not in the shower, not

so much.

It's not, no, no, no.

It's very social.

It's very communicative.

It's about being with other people and telling them a story or telling them a secret.

So while you're studying in France, at a certain point you start performing as a singer with a jazz quintet.

How did that happen?

And how did you have the skills and the nerve to do that all of a sudden?

It was really my teacher at the music school, Jean-François Bonel.

I had sung for him a Saravon song.

He

was adamant that I join the jazz class.

I was probably the only native English speaker there, so maybe it gave me a little bit of an edge with singing these standards.

And he was just like,

I got us a gig.

We're doing a show

within like two months of me starting in his class.

And it was in a small jazz club.

It was a tiny jazz club in Aix-en-Provence with like five people in the audience, but it was horrifying.

Tell me about the first first night.

What'd you sing?

I sang It's Only a Paper Moon.

Say it's only a paper moon,

sailing over a cardboard sea.

But it wouldn't be baby.

I sang Body and Soul.

I sang Loverman.

I sang

You're Just Too Marvelous for Words

in my best and most

intense Ella Fitzgerald impression mixed with some Saravon.

You're just

too marvelous.

Too marvelous for words.

So I get the feeling that you're...

At a certain point early on, you're kind of like a magpie of different styles and voices that your teacher is giving you stacks of CDs to listen to.

And one week it's Sarah Von Week and one week it's Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday or whomever.

This is all coming in as kind of information.

And none of them wins out.

You don't become an imitator of any one of them, do you think?

I think as I go through the phase with whoever it is, I am trying to sing as best I can like them.

I think that's what was happening.

But I was failing.

You can never really sing like someone else.

The failing is becoming yourself.

The failing is becoming yourself, yeah.

And it's interesting, like the singers that he had me listen to,

yes, there were those big ones, the famous ones.

But what was more interesting was all of the music by people that are completely

unknown or not celebrated enough, people like Lil Hard and Armstrong.

If you're doing a Lil Hart and Armstrong imitation, no one's going to really know because they don't know who she is, unfortunately.

Neil, my sources tell me that the song you're going to do next is pretty radically different.

It's called Can She Excuse My Wrongs?

Oh, I would love to talk about this.

I want to know everything about it.

It was written by an English musician who was born in the 16th century, John Dowland.

Tell me about the song.

The lyric is attributed to this man named Robert Devereux.

The music is John Dowland.

Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, who was Queen Elizabeth's, Elizabeth I's favorite, or one of her favorites.

And it's an interesting lyric because he talks about his desire and the desire can be read two ways as a desire for her or a desire for power.

And what happened to the Earl of Essex is that

he was found out in a plot against her and was then killed.

I mean, like,

executed by the queen for plotting against her.

And the song basically is, it's just everything is there.

Now, how did you learn about this song?

Flipping around on Spotify or

car radio?

What?

I was taking loot lessons years ago.

I thought that I was

that I would maybe learn a little bit of lute just for fun.

And this is like a very,

this is like a classic, this is a standard classic.

This is Don't Rain on My Parade.

In the 16th century.

In the 16th century, lute.

That's what they were playing at the Vanguard in the 16th century.

Exactly, exactly.

He says, better a thousand times to die

than for to live thus still tormented.

Dear, but remember, it was I who for thy sake did die contented.

And he does die.

It's crazy.

Well, let's give it a go.

Okay.

Let's see if I remember.

Can she excuse my wrongs with virtue's cloak?

Shall I call her good when she proves unkind?

Are those clear fires which vanish into smoke?

Must I praise the leaves when no fruit I find?

No, know where shadows do for body

stand.

Thou mayst be abused if thy sight be dimmed.

Cold love is alike to words written on sand

or to bubbles which

on the water swim.

Will thou be thus abused still?

Seeing that she will write thee never if thou canst not overcome her will, thy love will be thus fruitless ever

Will thou be thus abused still knowing that she will write thee never know but remember it was I who for thy sake did die contented

Was I so base that I might not aspire

Unto those high joys which she holds from me

As they are high, so high is my desire

If she this deny, what can granted be

If she will yield to that which reason

is

It is reason's will that love should be just.

Dear make me happy still by granting this

or cut off delays that if I die must

better a thousand times to die than for to live the still tormented dear but remember it was I who for thy sake dict I contented

better a thousand times to die, knowing that she will write me never.

Dear, but remember it was I, who for thy sake did die contented.

Better a thousand times to die, than for to live the still tormented.

Dear, but remember it was I, who for thy sake did die contented.

I screwed up some lyrics.

We're good.

Okay, this is what happens after each song, the recriminations begin.

In the studio,

in the studio, always.

I was, it was, it's funny enough.

I was.

I'm speaking with the extraordinary singer, Cecile McLaurin Selvant, a three-time Grammy winner for Best Jazz Vocal Album.

And Sullivan Fortner accompanies her on piano.

Our conversation continues in just a moment.

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This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

I'm David Remnick, and I've been speaking today with the singer Cecile McLaurin Selvant.

She's emerged as one of the great jazz artists of her generation.

I interviewed in this room, in this studio at WNYC years ago, Rihanna Giddens.

And she, to me, she does a lot of things, but she does two things at once in the sense that she's a great performer, but there's an element of her that she's also a scholar.

She's a musicologist.

She is an evangelist for

all kinds of music.

It seems to me with different music, you're doing a similar thing that Rihanna Giddens does, is that you're introducing all kinds of things things to the stage.

You're not just, of course you do standards and Broadway show tunes and things that we associate in our minds with what Sarah Vaughan did or

Ella Fitzgerald.

But so many other things are on your mind to give us.

It's funny you mention her.

Rhiannon Giddens is somebody who I have to thank so much for a lot.

I first heard about her through Carolina Chocolate Drops.

Her first

band.

Her first band.

I learned about the banjo and what that instrument is and how it's, you know, a product of the African diaspora.

I did not know.

And it felt affirming in a way as somebody who had always loved that music but thought, oh, this is just some white music that I like.

Much like the grunge is white music that I like.

And then realizing through her, in large part, that no,

this is not just white music.

This is actually music that originated with black folks and with a mixture.

So she's huge to me.

I actually sing one of her songs

in my shows.

Which one is that?

It's called

Build a House.

Oh, yeah.

I love that song.

You brought me here to build your house.

build your house, build your house, you brought me here, build your house, and grow your house.

But do you feel that you have that in mind too?

That there's a, that

it ain't just by chance that there's a project that you're building over time of introducing certain kinds of music to your audiences, whether it's in French or it's in English.

I think

I have

the spirit of like

a kind of a radio DJ slash curator.

Like I want,

it's almost like making a mixtape for someone and only putting deep cuts.

That's sort of how I feel a lot of times.

If someone is to ask, oh, can you do a cold porter tribute?

I'll be like, okay, sure, I'll do a cold porter tribute.

But I want to find the gems that haven't been

sung and sung and sung over and over again and that we might love and fall in love with.

And yet we began our conversation or you're being here with a random eye parade.

Yeah.

Huge, huge hit.

Why do you want to do something that's so familiar and so associated with one singer?

You know, a lot of the decisions are very intuitive.

But that song for me is not about the fact that it's associated with Barbara Streisand.

It's just such an optimistic

kind of

she's just like so strong in that, in that, in that lyric.

It's not enough that you sing across the centuries and so beautifully.

You also write extraordinary songs.

Oh, thank you.

Tell me about the beginning of

songwriting and how you went about it and what you were after.

I first started writing songs.

Well,

I think as a kid,

I wrote one song in my own invented language with my cousin.

And then.

Can you sing it?

Shamuda, Shamuda, Shamuda Radi, Shamuda Ye, Poli Kala, Purukutu Tu.

And how old were you?

Who knows?

Did you have a sense of what the lyrics meant?

Maybe at the time we knew what it meant.

Now I don't know what it is.

Lost to the mists of time.

Yes.

And I heard Abby Lincoln, I heard an album of hers called

Holy Earth.

And it made me want to write.

The very first song I wrote or that I remember writing is a song called Woman Child.

That was the title track of my second album.

And then, yeah, ever since then I've been writing.

And you're writing them with the piano, with not the lute.

Not the lute, not yet.

I'm writing with the piano.

Well, no, I have a feeling that that's coming.

No, no, no, no, no.

With the piano and with the window.

I like to look out a window.

How do you spend your days?

Long walk, a lot of writing in the morning.

And then eventually get to the piano at some point.

And then embroidery, a lot of embroidery.

It's a lot of alone time.

Yes.

And how does that inform the music?

Wow.

That's a great question.

It is very introspective music.

And it is music about solitude, a lot of it, about solitude, about yearning,

about desire.

And I think all of those feelings are clearly coming from the fact that it's so much alone time,

which I need.

I think I may be pressing my luck, but I'm hoping you'll sing Moonsong,

which is on the album Ghost Song from, I think, two years ago.

Three years ago.

Tell me about the song Before We Hear It.

It's a song I wrote

about

wanting to want and loving that feeling of desire and that feeling of before

the big thing happens, and almost not wanting the big thing to happen, just wanting to be in that

prelude of it,

because that's where all the excitement is.

Being far away from the object of affection and looking at them longingly.

So different than a 16th century lute-based song.

Maybe exactly the same as a 16th century, maybe exactly, maybe it's exactly can she excuse my wrong.

Yeah, they had desire in the 16th century.

Okay.

If you should love me,

don't ever tell me.

Show it,

that's how I'll know it.

In fact,

it's better not to show me at all.

Let me pine,

let me yearn,

let me crawl.

Let me write you a song

and long

to belong to you.

Write you a song

from a distance.

Let me love you like I love

the moon

Let me love you like I love

the moon

I want to thank you so much for being here.

Thank you.

Thanks for having me.

This was great.

Thanks for having both of us.

Cecile McLaurin Salvon joined me in the studio at WNYC in May of last year, along with the pianist Sullivan Fortner.

She's playing at the Spoleto Festival in South Carolina this week, and later this summer she'll be at the Newport Jazz Festival, the DC Jazz Festival, Springfield Jazz and Blues, and many other venues.

That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today.

Thanks for listening.

See you next time.

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