For the 66th Annual Grammy Awards, the Recording Academy created three new competitive categories; one of these, Best Alternative Jazz Album, went to Meshell Ndegeocello in its inaugural year, for her 2023 record The Omnichord Real Book. Although it may seem suspiciously like a “makeup” legacy award, the record was more than deserving of its accolades. Her debut for esteemed jazz label Blue Note, it was a triumph of new-age soul-jazz and featured an international cast of top-notch musicians, and it was infectiously danceable. By the time she actually received the award, though, she’d all but moved on from that album, playing a bunch of new material with a new band.

That material formed the basis of last year’s No More Water: The Gospel Of James Baldwin, which has now been nominated in that same Grammy category. Following a series of residencies early last year, Ndegeocello has since taken No More Water on the road in Europe and an ongoing U.S. tour, which stopped in Milwaukee on Monday night. Almost every folding chair was full in the Vivarium as Jake & Abe played their brief opening set. The duo, Jake Sherman and Abe Rounds, would also be playing keys and drums respectively in Ndegeocello’s band; Rounds mostly played bass for the opening set and both men sang. Following an opening rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “Heaven Help Us All” (“Let’s sing it again…’cause we got another four years,” lamented Sherman), they performed a few endearingly goofy originals off their 2024 debut LP, Finally!, a textbook warmup act in this incarnation at least.

Ndegeocello has been a household name for decades but she hasn’t exactly catered to the idea of nurturing a fanbase. Following the success of her 1993 breakthrough Plantation Lullabies, she never tried to recreate its smooth-but-charged funky R&B. When her Maverick Record contract was up a decade later she pivoted to jazz immediately, then followed her muse through all manner of genres before returning to jazz recently. But while plenty of music fans will tell you jazz has experienced a resurgence in the past decade or so, it’s still not exactly burning up the charts like the neo-soul/alt-R&B Ndegeocello helped invent in the ’90s. She’s one of very few artists in the history of the pop music realm who never followed a trend from day one. These days, Meshell is only occasionally the lead singer of her own songs; Monday’s show was a full-band experience, Ndegeocello helming the grooves on bass while rarely taking the spotlight herself.

The group opened with “Good Day Bad,” a relative oldie off 2014’s Comet, Come To Me, followed by the only Omnichord tune of the night, “The 5th Dimension.” Neither song could remotely be called a hit yet they both showcased tight ensemble playing and a willingness to get surly without ever losing sight of the song. Justin Hicks, who handled most of the lead vocals, was already making his presence known; he’s a powerful straight-ahead soul singer and he also held his own in brief stretches of improv.

The remainder of the set was dedicated to the new album. In between songs, Ndegeocello would often recite bits of work by Baldwin or Audre Lorde; it was a polite and receptive crowd and the sound was crystal clear, although Ndegeocello did remark about the somewhat harsh glow of the bar area, requesting to have lights turned down that apparently weren’t down-turnable.

While much of her recent work suggests longer musical escapades, Ndegeocello and her band didn’t take any of the material too far afield; the show was more about the songs and the message than about exploration, which might’ve been a letdown if it wasn’t such an urgent and powerful message. Ndegeocello chose only brief poetic excerpts to read, driving home the simplest and most loving truths for the diverse crowd, and despite any number of dire world events and conditions one may choose to focus on at any given moment, these songs flowed with a defiant joy; some of it was the words and some of it a group of musicians clearly feeling the potency of a dialed-in dynamic.

As the set was nearing its end, in between the songs “Love” and “Hatred,” Ndegeocello paused a moment to recommend the book that had inspired the project in large part, The Fire Next Time. “It’s a small book, if you have a chance to read it; it’s really compelling, especially in these times.” It would’ve been easy for her to reflect on how little has changed in the 30 years since she broke into this business; back then she was a firebrand of queer Black culture that the country (excepting of course…John Mellencamp?) wasn’t quite ready to embrace. For the encore, Meshell gave us a solitary taste of the old days, rolling out a very abbreviated version of “I’m Diggin’ You (Like An Old Soul Record)” before a final farewell. While she may be stingy about doling out the hits from her younger, fiercer days, she continues to find ways to bring that same spirit of rebellion and resistance to those who will listen.

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Cal Roach is a writer (here, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, You-Phoria.com) and radio DJ (WMSE 91.7 FM) who has lived in Riverwest for most of the past two decades.