\n<\/p>\n
W<\/span>hen I speak to Dee Dee Bridgewater, the jazz singer is preparing for a concert that evening in Des Moines, Iowa, performing classy selections from the Great American Songbook. But even though she has also recorded this material for her recent album Elemental, Bridgewater is not really in the mood. \u201cI just don\u2019t feel like it\u2019s the time to be doing love songs and whimsical songs from the 1920s and 30s,\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019re beautiful, but there\u2019s some kind of spirit and energy pushing me to sing songs saying: people, we have to protect our democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n Bridgewater is one of American jazz\u2019s foremost voices. Capable of crooning and confronting, the two-time Grammy winner has a career that spans six decades and has never stopped evolving. She cut her teeth sharing the stage with several of jazz\u2019s greatest band leaders \u2013 Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon \u2013 before branching out into acting; singing pop and disco; and working out of France, the UK and Mali, always with a determination to create on her own terms.<\/p>\n At 75, an age where some singers may be content with gently reheating their earlier success, she emanates energy, idealism and splenetic anger. \u201cI\u2019m too old and I\u2019ve been through too much,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m a product of the 1960s; I supported the Black Panther party and their community projects. Even now I deal with racism daily \u2013 every day there is something that somebody does which is racist. Even my kids don\u2019t understand it. I cannot just sit back and be silent. I have to raise my voice.\u201d<\/p>\n It will be heard at this week\u2019s London jazz festival, where Bridgewater is backed by We Exist!, an all-female band she founded to promote women in jazz. \u201cI got tired of hearing jazz musicians saying the same old chauvinistic crap and keeping women out,\u201d she says. \u201cI decided to put together an all-female band as a statement that the jazz world is still very macho.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Dee Dee Bridgewater performing in Milan, 2024.<\/span> Photograph: Sergione Infuso\/Corbis\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Bridgewater also established the Woodshed Network, now overseen by her daughter and manager Tulani, with the aim of providing female jazz musicians with \u201call the things they need to learn to help get their careers off the ground\u201d. The Woodshed Network sits within the Kennedy Center, the Washington DC-based institution that is regarded as the national cultural centre of the US, and which has now been taken over by Donald Trump and his Maga acolytes. \u201cConsidering what he\u2019s doing to the Kennedy Center, I\u2019m unsure if [the Woodshed Network] will continue for too much longer.\u201d<\/p>\n Bridgewater doesn\u2019t mention Trump by name during our 90-minute conversation, only saying \u201che\u201d, her distaste evident as she spits out the syllable. She now performs songs that reflect her fury: the likes of Billy Taylor\u2019s civil rights anthem I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free, Gene McDaniels\u2019 Compared to What, Donny Hathaway\u2019s Tryin\u2019 Times and Bob Dylan\u2019s barbed Gotta Serve Somebody.<\/p>\n \u201cI couldn\u2019t go to a No Kings protest, but I do protest songs with the We Exist! band,\u201d she says. \u201cThe programme I am doing now started out of the war in Gaza \u2013 I watched the news and thought: I am witnessing the beginning of a genocide. I guess I have what you might call a spiritual voice which sometimes speaks to me very loudly. I was sitting in my living room watching the news and crying and this voice said to me: put it in music, let the music speak for you.\u201d<\/p>\n Another selection, Nina Simone\u2019s Mississippi Goddam, \u201cis the song that really hits the nail on the head. It\u2019s still relevant today as they are trying to make protesting more difficult.\u201d Percy Mayfield\u2019s Danger Zone, meanwhile, \u201cis an old blues that needs to be heard, because we are in a danger zone! We have to raise our voices and vote, here and in Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n Not that Bridgewater believes speaking out is free of cost. \u201cI\u2019m trying to wake people up through songs, but a lot of young people are oblivious to what\u2019s going on. I\u2019m trying to figure out a way to do it without causing too much upset. I fear this government is going to start cracking down on free speech and coming after those of us who speak out.\u201d<\/p>\n We are in a danger zone! We have to raise our voices and vote, here and in Europe<\/p>\n Bridgewater was born Denise Garrett in 1950 in Memphis, Tennessee, and grew up in Flint, Michigan, where her jazz musician father gave Dee Dee \u2013 a childhood nickname \u2013 an introduction to African American music. She sang in bands throughout college, then, aged 20, married jazz trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater. Their honeymoon was spent on tour with hard-bopping pianist Horace Silver, as Cecil was in his band. \u201cThe night they were playing Detroit, knowing my family would be in the audience, Cecil suggested I come out unannounced to sing on Love Vibrations. I did, and Horace, who had no idea this was going to happen, cut me off, saying: \u2018Get off my stage!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Max Roach was even more brutal. \u201cCecil was playing in Max\u2019s band and his wife and vocalist Abbey Lincoln had left. Max asked me to replace Abbey for the We Insist! suite. We did it a couple of times and then, one night, he started cursing me out, calling me \u2018Abbey\u2019, getting really abusive. I had to flee the stage.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>With Ray Charles in 1989.<\/span> Photograph: Christian Rose\/Roger Viollet via Getty Images<\/p>\n Despite these incidents, Lincoln\u2019s song And It\u2019s Supposed to Be Love is in her current set, and she speaks with compassion for her old bandleaders. \u201cMax Roach was intense. I now realise he was bipolar. But we managed to stay friends \u2013 I\u2019d see him whenever he came to Paris. And Horace kicking me off stage gave me the impetus to prove I could do his music.\u201d Come 1995, they recorded together for the album Love and Peace: A Tribute to Horace Silver.<\/p>\n Dizzy Gillespie and Sonny Rollins were easier company. \u201cDizzy was the sweetest \u2013 I learned how to entertain audiences, how to make them laugh, from him,\u201d while Sonny \u201cgave me the biggest hug and said how much he liked my singing\u201d.<\/p>\n After these early-70s collaborations she graduated to lead billing, but her well-received 1974 debut album Afro Blue was not a commercial success. Now a single mother living in New York, Bridgewater moved into singing pop, then won a Tony award for her performance as Glinda the Good Witch in Broadway musical The Wiz, before cutting a number of disco tracks. Acting in TV and film also kept her busy, and she was Olivier award-nominated for playing Billie Holiday in the 1986 West End musical Lady Day, before marriage to French concert promoter Jean-Marie Durand led her to settle in Paris for almost a quarter of a century. There, Bridgewater developed into a superb interpreter of jazz standards: albums dedicated to Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and Holiday all raised her profile (the last two securing those Grammy wins).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/span>The Dee Dee Bridgewater Quartet perform Compared to What<\/span><\/p>\n In the mid-00s, still living in France, \u201cI used to hear all this great music they\u2019d play on the radio there, and it was the Malian music that spoke the strongest to me. At the same time I wanted to find my African ancestry \u2013 and DNA tests were prohibitively expensive \u2013 so I decided to go there.\u201d Arriving in Bamako she was welcomed by the \u201cfabulous, statuesque\u201d Oumou Sangar\u00e9, while \u201cCheick Tidiane Seck and Bassekou Kouyate challenged me to sing griot songs,\u201d resulting in the rich west African jazz fusion of 2007\u2019s Red Earth: A Malian Journey.<\/p>\n Today, Bridgewater says she has no intention of slowing down \u2013 \u201cthis is how I make my money, baby, I live out of hotels!\u201d \u2013 and an appearance at the UK\u2019s We Out Here festival in 2024, alongside DJs and producers, \u201cmade me realise I want to be heard in the clubs again\u201d. She is now making an album with Gilles Peterson and house music legend Louie Vega.<\/p>\n \u201cI always wanted to be like Miles Davis \u2013 not staying in one groove but constantly changing, not staying still,\u201d she says. She cites another inspiration, jazz singer Betty Carter, who she would visit in Brooklyn after moving to New York. \u201cShe was running her own record label, her albums lined up in the hallway in various stages of packaging, leading her own band. Now I produce my albums and I own my albums. I take control of my career so no one tries to tell me what to do.\u201d She laughs: \u201cWell, my daughter sometimes tries.\u201d<\/p>\n Dee Dee Bridgewater performs in the EFG London jazz festival opening gala, Jazz Voice, at Royal Festival Hall, 14 November; and with We Exist!, at the Barbican, 15 November. Elemental is out now on Mack Avenue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I speak to Dee Dee Bridgewater, the jazz singer is preparing for a concert that evening in Des Moines, Iowa, performing classy selections from the Great American Songbook. But even though she has also recorded this material for her recent album Elemental, Bridgewater is not really in the mood. \u201cI just don\u2019t feel like<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[19375,10611,11892,8472,859,2375,4014,8416,944],"class_list":{"0":"post-33929","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-bridgewater","9":"tag-confronting","10":"tag-dee","11":"tag-greats","12":"tag-ive","13":"tag-jazz","14":"tag-maga","15":"tag-silent","16":"tag-singing"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}