Concert Review: Meshell Ndegeocello
Protest music has a long history in the United States. It often ebbs and flows depending on the political temperature of the moment. The 1960s were a fertile time for such music owing to the twin upheavals of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. Activism through jazz is nothing new. For example, drummer Max Roach demanded social justice in his album, We Insist!: Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite (Candid, 1961). As protests again roil the streets of the United States in the third decade of the 21st Century, Terri Lyne Carrington and Christie Dashiell reenergized and reinterpreted that album with We Insist 2025 (Candid, 2025).
Perhaps Carrington and Dashiell garnered inspiration from Meshell Ndegeocello, who followed a very similar path in 2024 when she focused on the works of 20th Century civil rights activist and writer James Baldwin. Now, as protestors turn out to object to unprecedented immigration enforcement and racist “Kavanaugh stops,” Ndegeocello’s work seems even more timely.
Ndegeocello is touring in support of her album, No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin (Blue Note, 2024), which won a Grammy in 2025 for the Best Alternative Jazz Album. The program on Friday night at the Newman Center, with two exceptions, comprised works from that album. No More Water includes extended spoken word passages from the works of Baldwin (1924-1987) and other African American intellectuals such as Audre Lorde. On the album, most of those sequences were narrated by several guests. Friday night, Ndegeocello handled most of the spoken word sections with an occasional recorded recitation from Baldwin himself.
Friday night, Ndegeocello sang, spoke and played bass. She was joined by four others, making for a quintet. Justin Hicks was the primary vocalist, but he was often joined by Ndegeocello and by Abe Rounds, the drummer, for frequent, glistening three-part harmonies. The band didn’t blast the audience with extreme pyrotechnic playing, but rather, preferred to set contemplative moods and atmospheres. The musical soundscape was designed to place the emphasis on the vocals and the message of the lyrics.
A particularly powerful piece was “What Did I Do?” It was one of several songs about race relations. “What would you do/If we became you/You can die too/And be so.” Another potent moment was the performance of the song “Love,” followed by the song “Hatred.” Love takes off the mask and hate destroys the hater; it’s an immutable law.
Besides singing in Ndegeocello’s band, Hicks has an independent recording career and an album entitled Man of Style (self-released, 2026). Friday night, the leader let her vocalist step up and sing a song from that album, “Wendy.” Hicks took full advantage of the opportunity and belted out one of the more searing performances of the evening. The other song the band performed, which was not on No More Water, was “The 5th Dimension” from Ndegeocello’s prior album, The Omnichord Real Book (Blue Note, 2023). This one closed the main set and created an eerie, soothing landscape while philosophizing that “destiny rules, fate decides.”
During much of the evening, images were projected on a screen behind the band. Some were geometric shapes which ebbed, flowed and throbbed. Another theme was waves on a beach lapping backward. Emphasizing a primary influence of the evening, the images included many pictures of Baldwin, some from when he was a young man.
Part of the band served as its own opening act. Drummer Abe Rounds and keyboardist Jake Sherman have their own act known as “Jake and Abe.” They, too, have their own recording, Finally! (Forage Records, 2024), and Friday night, they performed a four song set of mostly their own tunes, with the exception of Stevie Wonder’s “Heaven Help Us All.” Sherman played his various keyboards, while Rounds occasionally played an isolated conga and, on one tune, an electric bass. They both sang, often in falsetto harmony. Their songs were pleasant and humorous, for example, when they substituted the word “president” for “man” in the refrain of “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”
Although the primary message of the evening was a plea for social justice, the band didn’t seem to get too preachy. Instead, the messages, both spoken word and lyrical, melded into the music to become an enveloping aesthetic experience.
Set List
Jake and Abe
Heaven Help Us All (Stevie Wonder song)
Curbs
A Good Man is Hard to Find
It’s Easy
Ndegeocello
Baldwin Manifesto I
Baldwin Manifesto II
The Price of the Ticket
What Did I Do?
Travel
Eyes
Down at the Cross
Justin Hicks: Wendy
Trouble
Love
Hatred
On the Mountain
The 5th Dimension (from The Omnichord Real Book)
Encore
Another Country
The Band
Meshell Ndegeocello, vocals, bass
Justin Hicks, vocals
Chris Bruce, guitar
Abe Rounds, drums, vocals
Jake Sherman, keyboards
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