Gwen Ansell
29 November 2007
Johannesburg — WE HAVE no shortage in this country of women who can sing. So it is perhaps not surprising that for the past few years we have experienced an epidemic of production-line female vocalists.
All look gorgeous: skilfully styled in Afro-chic garments and loads of lip gloss. All certainly can sing; some slightly better than others. All are marketed, mystifyingly, as jazz singers -- but very few have any of the interpretive qualities a decent jazz singer brings to her material, and almost none are given material that allows them to display their chops.
Latest off the production line is Aya (Ayanda Mpama) with A STATE OF AYA (Sony BMG). The album is a mix of tracks composed by the singer and by the team of Silje Nergaard and Mike McGurk, with live guitars and brass and synthesised strings that sound ... well, like synthesised strings. Aya has a pleasant voice, really pretty in the middle range, although slightly stretched when she pushes it higher or, particularly, lower.
And she has a winning track with a dangerously infectious hook in Ngiyakudabukela/Shame On You. For the rest, these mostly mid-tempo, mostly relationship songs form a dreary and repetitive procession. Aya displays good diction, can swing -- and does so convincingly on Me Oh My -- but the material largely cages any character, flair or even eccentricity (which is a virtue in a jazz singer) she might possess.
Letta Mbulu was making hit Afro-jazz albums before Aya was born, and no doubt her latest, CULANI NAMI (Sony BMG), will continue to please fans. Both Mbulu and husband Caiphus Semenya write good songs; Semenya is an assured, world-class arranger. So Culani Nami is enhanced by a starry team of sidemen, including percussionist Tlale Makhene, keyboard men Barney Bophela and Themba Mkhize, saxophonist Sydney Mnisi and, on three tracks, the chiming pan-African guitar of Louis Mhlanga. There are no surprises here; indeed, Culani Nami is almost formulaic in comparison with vintage Mbulu/Semenya outings such as Streams Today, Rivers Tomorrow. But the formula is superbly done, and it still works.
Mbulu's timing and phrasing are perfect, and she's not afraid to use the more textured tones with which maturity has endowed her voice. Since they share a label, perhaps she should sit down with Aya and explain the joys (for singer and listener) of embracing a distinctive vocal identity.
Although it has been out for 18 months, little has been written in this country about Cassandra Wilson's latest, THUNDERBIRD (Blue Note). If Belly of the Sun was Wilson's Mississippi album, Thunderbird points more towards Texas, interpreting songs from Blind Lemon Jefferson and Willie Dixon alongside more contemporary material from Jakob Dylan and others.
The team includes guitarists Marc Ribot, Keb Mo', Colin Linden and Wilson herself, 50 Cent bassist Mike Elizondo and Grammy-winning producer T Bone Burnett.
As well as showcasing her own original material, Wilson shares with reedman Don Byron a fascination with using American popular songs.
She demonstrates how simple music can become profound or ironic with just a twist of the phrasing or a breath in the line. She does what some -- but very few -- of SA's ostensible "jazz" singers do: she interprets, and her improvisation is rooted in this rather than in the surface doo-be-do scatting many production-line warblers paste on to their songs.
Textures on the album range from the starkly intimate dueting of Red River Valley to the big (and not a little rock 'n roll) slide crescendi of Easy Rider; moods, from love and loss to the gently ironic original Mexico. That song starts out as a lyric of holiday fun, and then subverts the mood with lines such as: "Itchy hands/ on the trigger/ Saw the latest story on TV/ Bluebird flew/ Past my window/ Helicopter's too damn close to me/ There's gonna come a time/ We'll be just like Mexico..." -- all underpinned by a joyfully compelling sample from New Orleans Indian Mardi Gras troupe The Wild Tchoupitoulas.
We have young singers who understand timing, phrasing and interpretation beautifully in SA: Tutu Puoane and Siya Makuzeni spring immediately to mind. But until they get recording contracts that permit edge and allow them to sound like themselves, I may swear completely off reviewing female vocal albums whose only distinguishing characteristic is the shade of the lip gloss.
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