Cassandra Wilson

The city:country divide is a major part of the history of black America and indeed America, as the great 20th century migration of Negroes from the Southern states to northern cities such as Chicago and New York brought immense cultural change. Vocalist Cassandra Wilson is an artist who largely encapsulates those complexities.

Her formative years were spent with two innovative musicians from the Windy City, Henry Threadgill and Steve Coleman, of whose M-BASE collective she became a member in the mid 80s. Wilson’s early recordings for the JMT label, above all the excellent Jumpworld, were largely in keeping with the prevalent vocabulary developed by the aforesaid circle of musicians – funky backbeats, vivid keyboard colours, politically charged lyrics that captured some of the energy of hip-hop – but in 1993 she radically overhauled her aesthetic on Blue Light Til Dawn, her debut for Blue Note records. Produced by Craig Street the album presented a stripped down, sometimes sparse sound where percussion replaced kit drum and acoustic guitar came in for piano.

A native of Jackson, Mississippi, Wilson was reconnecting in a major way with her roots in the blues, and while some of the pieces in her repertoire [Covers of the legendary Robert Johnson’s ‘Come On In My Kitchen’ and ‘Hellhound On My Trail’] reflected as much there was something compelling if not unique about the way Wilson created enormous sensuality and fragility in spacious arrangements where breath and sigh from her poised contralto were as important as the closely controlled stretches of a phrase.

Where her previous work largely had the cut and thrust of an urban milieu such as New York this album foregrounded a rural, much less frantic setting. In addition to Wilson’s reassertion of the primacy of the blues she also gave vent to her love of rock, pop and soul by way of fabulous new takes on the music of Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison and Ann Peebles [‘I Can’t Stand The Rain’]. To a certain extent she established a distinctive ‘Wilson sound’ that was reinforced by subsequent records such as New Moon Daughter, Belly Of The Sun and Glamoured.

While taking the art of jazz vocal into new areas by way of a daring and imaginative conversation with its rudiments Wilson has always been very vocal about the place of improvising artists in her development, and she has cited Betty Carter and Abbey Lincoln, as two of her major influences. There have also been recorded tributes to Miles Davis [Travelling Miles] and Billie Holiday [Coming Forth By Day].

Wilson, who like Davis, also paints, has also distinguished herself by writing several intelligent and thought provoking lyrics for her own original compositions.

You Move Me, taken from the soundtrack to the romantic drama Love Jones, is a subtle, deft observation on eroticism in a relationship while Just Another Parade, from Belly Of The Sun, is a sober, insightful take on 9/11 from a black perspective.