For many Broadway buffs, the idea of pairing
poetry and song starts and stops at Cats, The Musical.
But composer
Louis Rosen and Broadway vocalist
Capathia Jenkins prove the possibilities are endless.
Following their collaborative successes of
musicalizing the words of Langston Hughes
and Maya Angelou, they return to PS Classics introducing...
One Ounce of Truth: The Nikki Giovanni Songs,
which combines Jenkins' sultry and soaring voice with
Rosen's inspired melodies into a fresh and enthralling
13-song mix of jazz, blues, soul, classic pop and American
roots music. It's a lush and memorable collection based on
the vivid words of Nikki Giovanni, the renowned female
African-American writer and poet.
After previewing the album at the Harare
International Festival of the Arts in Zimbabwe on April 29 &
30, Jenkins and Rosen celebrate the release of One Ounce
of Truth with four concerts at Joe's Pub at the Public
Theater in New York on May 12, 18, 19 & 26. For tickets,
please call 212-967-7555 or visit
www.joespub.com.
Eugene Lovendusky: Good afternoon; thanks for
chatting with BroadwayWorld and congratulations on the
release of your new album, "One Ounce of Truth: The Songs of
Nikki Giovanni" on May 13. To celebrate, you've got some
concerts lined-up at Joe's Pub. What kind of sounds and
vibe are the audience going to enjoy at those evenings?
Louis Rosen: The music is very jazzy, bluesy
and pop, even some folk-influence; and we've just got some
of the best musicians in the city playing with us!
Capathia Jenkins: We will have our six-piece
band with us, which is new for the people who've seen us
before (we've been mostly working as a quartet).
Louis: The music runs a whole gamut;
light and joyful to some songs that are really quite
emotional. It's a group of songs – each song stands
completely on its own; but together, it's a cycle of being
in love and the loss of it, the joy, the terror. Also
there's a journey from childhood to old-age. It's
emotionally pretty-rich. And C.J. [Capathia] just sings the
heck out of these songs!
Eugene:
Louis, you've made yourself an impressive calling-card as a
composer, shaping original music naturally around
pre-existing poetry. How did you discover that the works of
Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou and Langston Hughes could fit
to a melody?
Louis: I used to work in the theatre and
I had the great fortune of gaining a reputation of someone
who could write vocal-music to words like Shakespeare,
Brecht and Ibsen. I think dealing with those words really
taught me how to make existing-words sing as if they were
written to be sung with that particular music. That's the
idea. If you tell someone you're making songs from poems,
they may think you're making something classical or erudite.
But as you can hear in "One Ounce of Truth," the style is
pure popular song. Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes and Maya
Angelou each wrote with terrific imagery but in the natural
rhythms of our American speech. They all grew up listening
to jazz, gospel, blues – and it shows in their poetry. The
goal is to make it sound like their words and this music
were meant to go together.
Eugene: Intriguing! Nikki Giovanni –
called the Princess of Black Poetry – might not be the most
house-hold name. For those of us less poetically-inclined,
can you tell me a little more about her specific voice?
Louis: Nikki made a reputation in the
late-1960s as a more outspoken, angrier black voice. Her
poetry was very political. I've read her for years, but one
of the things that drew me to wanting to make songs was
that, over the years, she has mellowed some. There is a
terrific generosity of spirit in her work. Instead of the
anger of her youth turning into bitterness, she has a more
open sense of the world. She's a joy to work with – we've
kept her involved every step of the way.
Eugene: She's had a hand in making the
album?
Louis: She really understood the process
and I think she can see that we love the work. And what
we're trying to do is something utterly faithful to her
spirit – to bring it alive in a new way. She's excited that
we're also going to bring her work to people who don't know
it.
Eugene: Capathia, what is it like for
you to be shaping your voice around these words and Louis'
music?
Capathia: The greatest thing for me
about working with Louis is he has a way of writing that,
for me as a singer and interpreter, it's the easiest thing
in the world because I can literally sing the ink right off
the page. His music is seamless in terms of the feeling and
emotion of a song. It's fantastic! I feel this record is our
best work to-date.
Louis: When I write these songs, it's
C.J.'s voice that I'm hearing. There are some songs that I
wouldn't have written the way I wrote them, unless I knew
she could sing it. There's a song called "I Want To Sing"
that spans two octaves. She makes it seem effortless. The
more we work together, I know how to make something for her
but we also keep challenging each other – and that's fun.
Eugene: That's excellent. Rewind time
and tell me how you met!
Capathia:
I was in one of the workshops for The Look of Love.
My musical director was
David Loud. Louis was looking for a female singer for
his Langston Hughes project.
David Loud recommended me, so I started working with
Louis. I loved the music immediately. One day Louis said to
me: "I think I'd like to write for you." I thought: "Oh,
that's great. But you know, some people say that and you
don't hear from them." But he did! He called about two
months later and he had started to set the work of Maya
Angelou – one of my favorite poets. I went over to hear some
of his stuff, and the rest is history.
Eugene: And back to this album, I
listened to some of those tracks… and you're right, it's a
great array of style. For example, "The World" is so smooth
and whole, with a thrumming bass-line. The chorus of
"Telephone Song" almost sounds like a 1960s sock-hop. How do
you decide what feeling pairs with a poem?
Louis: Primarily, it's intuitive. It's
not a great intellectual process. It's my emotional response
to the poem and what I want to communicate. When a
song-writer works with someone else's words, they become his
words. I wouldn't choose something I wanted to set unless it
said something I wanted to say. And also, I had no fear
about being eclectic. I'm comfortable with and have played a
variety of music – and I felt it would be to the advantage
to the project to let each song find its own expression.
There's some Latin jazz, there's some swampy blues…
Eugene: And "That Day" is just plain
sexy!
Louis: [laughs] It's a kind of
contemporary riff on an almost 1920s Tinpan Alley song. When
she first heard the song, my wife said: "So many songs are
talking about other things, but what they really mean to
talk about is sex." And this song is talking about sex, but
really it's about so much more.
Capathia: [laughs] That's what makes it
so much fun!
Louis: The fellow who wrote the
liner-notes said it was "Part of the Life Force!" More than
anything, it's a sense of intuition and not being afraid to
let the intuition lead to where it will not be censored.
And to know it will be shaped around me and C.J. and it'll
find its wholeness in its variety.
Eugene: Capathia, in the title-song,
"One Ounce of Truth," you exude this painfully beautiful
yearning around Nikki's words. What's the story behind this
song?
Capathia: I feel like it's all about a
journey through life – you're born, you're raised, and you
smile through your life. You've lived a good life. And when
you're gone, you hope people will continue to smile. I've
gone back and forth on what's my favorite song on the record
[laughs] and whenever I get to that song, it's so joyful but
heart-wrenching, it's so well-crafted. It's a singer's
dream.
"One Ounce of Truth" will be available in stores
and online on May 13, 2008.
Capathia Jenkins and
Louis Rosen celebrate the release with four concerts at
Joe's Pub at the Public Theater in New York on May 12, 18,
19 & 26. For tickets, please call 212-967-7555 or visit
www.joespub.com.
