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Stories   >   Brandee Younger's 'Dust' from 'Brand New Life' makes NY Public Radio: New Sounds 'Weekly Music Roundup'

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Brandee Younger's 'Dust' from 'Brand New Life' makes NY Public Radio: New Sounds 'Weekly Music Roundup'

Posted: April 10, 2023

Sean Carlson - Host, WNYC/WQXR News and John Schaefer Host, New Sounds and Soundcheck bring you the WNYC: New Sounds 'Weekly Music Roundup

For the Week of April 10: cosmic jazz from harpist Brandee Younger, Afro-Venezuelan dance music from Gotopo, and soundscapes from cellist Issei Herr. Plus, duo music for kemancheh and kora from Kayhan Kalhor and Toumani Diabate.

Brandee Younger Pays Tribute To Dorothy Ashby

GRAMMY®-nominated harpist and composer  Brandee Younger has released her new album, Brand New Life (Impulse! Records), `Produced by multi-hyphenate drummer and composer Makaya Mccraven, on Brand New Life, Younger celebrates one of her greatest inspirations, iconic jazz harpist and composer Dorothy Ashby. Ashby is widely credited with having asserted the harp’s place in contemporary music, showcasing the traditionally-classical instrument on groundbreaking albums such as Afro-Harping and Dorothy’s Harp. Her unparalleled body of work has continued to be influential for decades and has been heavily sampled and transposed across jazz, hip-hop, and R&B, by artists including Jay-Z, J. Dilla, Pete Rock and Flying Lotus.

Brand New Life is a stunning amalgamation of past and present, combining original works from Younger, select reinterpretations of Ashby’s work, and previously-unrecorded compositions by Ashby. Younger was initially introduced to Ashby’s work through the many hip-hop artists who sampled her music, and now collaborates with some of those very artists on Brand New Life, including the legendary Pete Rock and 9th Wonder. Brand New Life also includes features by Meshell N’degeocello, Mumu Fresh, and production by drummer and composer  Makaya McCraven.

Younger says of the album, “Creating this album has been a longtime dream of mine. I really had a lot of living to do before being able to execute it, genuinely. The finished product is truly representative of where I am now and it is an honor to convey that through the compositions of one of my heroes.”

The first single from the album, “You’re A Girl For One Man Only,” is a composition by Ashby that had never before been recorded, the charts of which were only unearthed through Brandee’s lifelong commitment to Ashby’s history. What may have become a jazz standard of 1960s - had it been recorded at the time of it’s conception - now emerges as timeless as ever and is colored with the vibrance of the 21st Century via Makaya’s trademark cultural synthesizer. The single is accompanied by a visualizer that further immerses listeners in the ethereal world of Brand New Life. Watch here: LINK

Celebrated as the premier harpist of her generation, Brandee Younger has broken new ground for harpists over the entirety of her career. Younger made history as the first Black female solo artist to be GRAMMY®-nominated for Best Instrumental Composition, for “Beautiful is Black” from her genre-busting 2021 major-label debut album, Somewhere Different. That same year the album also garnered an NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Jazz Album – Instrumental. Along with the release of Brand New Life, Younger will be embarking on a series of headlining shows across the U.S. this spring, and will follow her whirlwind 2023 with a residency as SFJazz’s Resident Artistic Director in early 2024.

 

WNYC writes…..Brandee Younger wants you to know that she is not the first musician to bring the harp into the jazz world.  Alice Coltrane’s “spiritual jazz” of the 60s and 70s has enjoyed a bit of a revival in recent years, and the harp was one of her primary instruments; but there was another, even earlier figure who looms large in Younger’s pantheon. Dorothy Ashby began playing jazz harp in the 1950s, and would go on to make records that broke stylistic boundaries – one album, The Rubaiyat of Dorothy Ashby, was inspired by The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and saw Ashby playing the Japanese koto, a type of zither. Younger’s new album, Brand New Life, not only covers some of Ashby’s music, but actually includes a previously unheard Ashby work. Younger is also a composer herself, and easily blends the sounds of R&B, jazz, and chamber music to good effect – a job made easier by her first-rate ensemble. This track, “Dust,” is a cover of a song from The Rubaiyat LP, and features several layers of the wonderful Meshell Ndegeocello crooning Ashby’s cosmic lyrics.

Brandee Younger does a live set for our Soundcheck podcast series, which comes out on Monday, April 17; get it at www.newsounds.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

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