Meshell Ndegeocello's Love Letter to the People

Meshell Ndegeocello’s music is about something. She can write a love song, but it’s not necessarily her long suit. For 30-plus years, her music has taken on larger themes: racism, cops who kill, homophobia, class struggles, gender inequality. Uniquely, her groove-driven tunes often come at these subjects from a literary angle. Ndegeocello is a lover of the spoken and written word. Her songs have alluded to or excerpted the writings (and sometimes the voices) of Eldridge Cleaver, Angela Davis, Dick Gregory, and Gil-Scott Heron. Her album No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin, released on Blue Note in 2024, is inspired by Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time and credits Baldwin as co-writer of many of the tunes.

As she gets older, Ndegeocello, who is 57, has become more of a “gentle spirit,” she says. But she remains a committed activist and her four upcoming shows at SFJAZZ — where she is a Resident Artistic Director this season — will bring this aspect of her work to the fore. On April 30 and May 1, she and her band — a “fellowship,” she calls it — will present a program titled “The People’s Playlist,” (5/1 streamed live) featuring covers and original songs that speak to the American tradition of protest. At matinee and evening shows on May 2, she and the group will present “The People’s Poetry,” which will feature, alongside the music, spoken readings of poetry — poetry as a medium for protest.

“These shows will be like a love letter to the people,” she says. “The people. The unified force.”

Raised in Washington, D.C., Ndegeocello — bassist, singer, songwriter, producer — grew up listening to Prince, Van Halen, Funkadelic, Pharoah Sanders, Allan Holdsworth. Her father was a jazz saxophonist, but “he also played this weird piccolo thing in bluegrass bands; he’d switch around and that’s what I do.”

Jazz is in her DNA, she says; her performances are anchored by “improvisational moments.” But the music isn’t classifiable. It’s her own fluid hybrid of hip-hop, neo-soul, funk, Afro-punk, folk, gospel, reggae, Headhunters-inspired fusion and spiritual jazz. Her compositions are complex — full of micro-detail, like a tapestry — but they feel organic. With her band, she “grows” the songs, she says. Their job is “bringing songs to life.”

My recent conversation with Ndegeocello was unorthodox: Call it an email-to-audio interview. I sent her questions in an email; she answered them in a lengthy audio note. She quoted from George Orwell’s Animal Farm. She imagined collaborating with Walter Kitundu, the composer, artist and instrument builder who spent years in residence at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. Among his inventions is the phonoharp, which merges a stringed instrument with a phonograph turntable. He’s into hybrids, like Ndegeocello.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: I've been listening to your album No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin. Many of Baldwin’s words could serve as commentary on current events, like his manifesto about the “face of this terrifying globe.” Do world and national events in 2026 make you feel more impelled than ever to get a message out through your music?

A: I think I just made that work; I made that project. But, yes, Baldwin helps me deal with these experiences that I'm seeing and having. I am starting to realize that I live in a world, a culture, in which you must endure violence. And so I'm trying to learn to not fall prey to my own anger; to not fall prey to my own judgments and self-righteousness, along with trying to be in the moment in my fear.

Q: What are some words from James Baldwin that summarize how you feel?

A: As Baldwin says: “Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.”

Q: How do these ideas relate to the two programs you're presenting at SFJAZZ: “The People’s Playlist” and “The People’s Poetry.” As I understand it, they’re both intended as commentaries on the times we’re in.

A: I just thought a playlist kind of connects to everybody, you know? So I found some songs that resonate: I saw them as emotional preparation for the time that I'm experiencing now. Because I'm really in an Orwell place: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” That's kind of been where my mind is. And so the playlist reflects that.

As for the poetry shows, I got to work with (poet and activist) Aja Monet, and so I was really starting to have that love of poetry enter into my heart. (She and Monet have a new album, the color of rain, due out in May). I just want to create something that’s based in the now of experience. We have an amazing poet who's going to work with us at SFJAZZ, and the Bay Area is somewhere where I think poetry thrives.

Q: I’m curious about how you plan and execute your projects. Do you have a to-do list of projects that you haven't gotten to over the years? Can you name a couple?

A: I'd like to do a concert with strings, working with Walter Kitundu. And I'd like to bring something to SFJAZZ’s space with Steve McQueen, the film director — something that’s both visual and sonic. Those are hopes. I just hope and wish, and you put it out there. I feel like good things are coming. There's so much I haven't gotten to and there's so many other things that take up time in your human life.

Q: Since you're performing at SFJAZZ, I thought I'd ask you about your jazz playlist on Spotify. (It’s titled Meshell Ndegeocello Digs Jazz). Maybe you can tell me what attracts you to a few of the tunes and albums on the list, starting with Archie Shepp’s The Magic of Ju-Ju.

A: Archie Shepp is a North Star for me as someone who wants to be a thoughtful, considerate artist.

Q: How about Miles Davis’s “He Loved Him Madly,” his spacey tribute to Duke Ellington from the ‘70s?

A: I know he's a problematic figure, but Miles Davis represents something that has to do with the spirit of being born in America. And that just really resonates with something within me that seeks a freedom from the cultural expectations that all genders and races have. It's like he frees me from thinking that I don't have something that's ineffable within this world — within this western culture that's unexplainable.

Q: What are your thoughts about Duke Ellington’s “Lotus Blossom”? That’s also on your list.

A: I think Duke Ellington spoke to the angels — to some other force melodically and harmonically. I think he could see through the matrix, harmonically. And I find myself, as I age, trying to understand those compositions and sitting with them and letting them enchant me. If there's some perfection, those songs are that for me.

Q: You're moving towards age 60. Is that a weird thought to you? How old do you feel inside?

A: When I look in the mirror, I can see time and action. But it's funny. I'm really a mind person, so it's more about whatever I feel in my mind. I don't think about my life in terms of periods or chapters. But, yes, I'm now an elder, so I'm trying to be a calm, love-generating person, or force.

Q: How have your ambitions changed as you’ve gotten older? Are you as hungry to create as when you were 30?

A: I definitely like creating. It's just what I do. Keeps me sane. I think if I ever have cognitive de-grading, I'm hoping I'll just paint. I'll be more calm and sort of let go of ambition.

But yeah, right now my ambition is to try to be at ease and make music that people want to hear. I'm trying to be humble about it. Because it's always a gift to know that people want to come hear something that you helped create. And I know that money is tight. So I want people to come to the shows and know they're going to have a nice sonic experience, perhaps be thoughtful, have a bit of nostalgia — and also see that nothing is really different, which I guess I'm starting to understand, too.

Everyone thinks their day is the heyday. Everyone thinks their struggle is immense. And they are.

It’s just that things are better and things are much worse. It just depends on the angle or perspective you're coming from. And I do think my ambition is to cause little confusion, and to be someone who has some good energy to generate. And I love the Bay Area. I really feel safe and aware there. So these shows will be like a love letter to the people. The people. The unified force. In search of the source code.

Meshell Ndegeocello's week as SFJAZZ Resident Artistic Director runs 4/30-5/2. Tickets and more information are available here. The 5/1 performance will be streamed live. More information here.

A staff writer at SFJAZZ, Richard Scheinin is a lifelong journalist. He was the San Jose Mercury News' classical music and jazz critic for more than a decade and has profiled scores of public figures, from Ike Turner to Tony La Russa and the Dalai Lama.