ECHOES INTERVIEW w/JHELISA
by Kevin Legendre

There are several reasons why some artists release albums infrequently. Anything from record company wrangles to testing personal circumstances to downright laziness can be cited and, in some cases, it is a combination of all of the above that comes into play. The music industry can be a Bermuda Triangle to even the most wily of navigators.
Jhelisa Anderson, the woman who has proved to be one of the most esoteric and experimental singer-songwriters to have emerged from America in the lasat decade, has been off the radar for much longer than her fervent admirers would have hoped and even casual onlookers would have perhaps expected.
Her last album Language Electric goes back to 1997 when she was still living in London and signed to Dorado Records, one of the small crop of indies that sprung up in the wake of Talkin' Loud and the buzz that once was Acid Jazz.
Since then she has gigged around the world, written songs for cinema and made music available on her website, but it is only now nearly a decade down the line that she releases her third album proper, the outstanding A PRIMITIVE GUIDE TO BEING THERE.
"I will always wonder why i could not orchestrate the release of all this music that I have piled up on hard drives, and lyric books," she comments on the lengthy hiatus between this set and her previous album.
"I left Dorado in good shape, and started my compnay Rentavibe Records, released Starfishing on Avex in Japan, and got a couple of licences for films, including THE PROTAGONISTS (starring Britich Actress Tilda Swinton). I also was featured in the film. This was a great start but i soon learned my limitations with running a new business.
"I was doing this primarily on my own with a lawyer, and the help of a few friends. I was in the dark, about what was really required to make a label really work. This is still my ultimate goal, but independent labels have inpsired me, and supported me."
And that's why she's happy to have signed with INFRACOM!, the German imprint headed by Jan Hagenkoetter that was astute enough to license Cleveland Watkiss' Victory's Happy Songbook.
This is the entirely logical place for an artist like Anderson, whose melodies, lyrics and whole aesthetic are far too unconventional to really strike a chord with the majority of major label A & Rs. She's never made disposable music. She's never aimed at dumbed down mass appeal.
Friendly Pressure, Anderson's signature tune is highly instructive in this regard. Built on a subtle but penetrating harmonic framework, the piece artfully dissects a troubled relationship without slicing up any stock love song cliches.
Galactica Rush, the 1994 debut album whence the aforesaid anthem came, announced an artist whose muscularly tender and tenderly muscular tone and love of "hybrid sounds", a brew of jazz, soul, gospel, African Music, hip-hop and electronica, made for a maverick with the same otherworldly countenance as a Jeanne Lee, Meshell Ndegeocello of Bjork.
As with the latter, expatriation has been a key factor in Anderson's evolution as an artist. The capital of our green and pleasant land became her home between the early '90s and early noughties after she touched down from her native Atlanta.
"I miss London very much; it always will be a part of me," she gushes. "And after being in the Sttes for two years, I realize that Jhelisa the artist as you know of today would not have existed had i stayed in the States, and had never come to London, period.
Yet as much as she hails her beloved London, a refuge for many artists all over the world who otherwise would not have been heard on a global scale," Anderson's affection is tempered by a typically thought-provoking observation. "On the other side, living in the bosom of the most successful colonizers, and the implications of that, is a double-edged sword."
Quite. From the denuciation of child slavery in SELL ME AWAY to the evocation of clergyman-perpetrated sexual abuse in HOLD MY PEACE, there has always been a candor and defiance in Anderson's spirit but it has surfaced more emphatically than ever on A PRIMITIVE GUIDE TO BEING THERE and this is partially due to the circumstances in which the album was borne.
After briefly returning to Atlanta at the end of the '90s, the singer, who at one point was slated to produce material for one of her idols, Chaka Khan, settled in New Orleans to complete recording. Then last year Katrina came. Anderson's studio was flooded. A huge chunk of material was lost. The natural disaster that was turned into a tragedy by the incompetence and outright racism of the Bush Aministration, came to epitomise the inequities of an America whose reprehensible foreign policies are unfortunately mirrored by dehumanizing domestic ones.
Songs like CULTURE OF SILENCE, JOURNEY OF LIFE and SURVIVIN IN THE KEY OF EFLAT caprute the singer's alienation as a result. But as the Coup's Boots Riley recently pointed out when talking about 9/11 and censorship, its important to realise that a watershed moment does not mean all was rosy "back in the day."
"Inhumanity is cyclical, Bush is only a metaphor, atrocities did not begin with his administration and it will not end there," Anderson states. "Expressing my frustrations and confusions, with this system is my life's work and it's not limited to the contradictions of politics. It parallels the contradictions of personal politics, and even biological politics, the war on the inside of our bodies..
"It was difficult before Katrina: I found life in general consistently challenging. But after Katrina, it became even more surreal. I wasn't just reading about it, or hearing about it, I was actually a part of it, directly affected by the violence of Mother Nature.
"There was no looking outside on a bad storm that passed on by as we slept peacefully. The hurricane, and the aftermath now lives in my heart, and my material things were sacrificed for it, but more importantly, many lives were sacrificed, and so much innocence was lost.
"No birds were singing when Katrina came. Nor did I want to sing; I was silent. But my head was thinking a thousand thoughts per minute. I could not think of finishing the album, although I knew that somehow I had to.
"I think SURVIVIN IN THE KEY OF EFLAT was the evidence of my experience in New Orleans. It also reflects the incomplete feeling you feel when your life is suddenly changed with no word of warning. There is nothing you can do but change with the weather. This transient condition has been a part of my music since time, this determined nomadic traveller that I have become, as it has somehow become a part of my purpose, to go and see for myself, smell for myself, taste for myself, hear it for myself. Katrina was certainly a "catalyst for change" for me."
Anderson's recent gig at the JAZZ CAFE', a venue in her beloved London" that has attracted consistently good crowds anytime she's booked, certainly reflected this upbeat state of mind. It was the most confident and energised performance of hers that I've seen in years and explained why she was able to pick herself up post-Katrina and complete A PRIMITVE GUIDE with real resolve.
On stage is where Anderson perhaps makes the most sense. its where her puckish, slightly unsettling persona comes through, where she can enact the all-important gestures that clarify THE STORY OF A MUSICIAN'S MADNESS, where she can lock horns with her fellow musicians and enjoy the ensuing creative conflict. The Jazz Cafe band was perfect for her. Keyboardist Robert Mitchell, drummer Mark Mondesir and alto saxophonist Tony Kofi provided the opposite amount of improvisatory nouse to inspire the mast daring use of Anderson's voice, prompting her to unveil a raft of rich textures and cyclonic wordless vocal throughout the set.
All of which made the point that although Anderson is not "officially mentioned in jazz reference books, she has both an understanding of the mechanics and ethos of the music to enable her to keep company with its most demanding exponents.
Tellingly some of her finest moments on record have been with two iconic British jazz saxophonists. In 1995 she appeared on Steve Williamson's mesmerizing version of Celestial Blues and then in 1997 she graced Courtney Pine's reprise of Tryin' Times. Neither track would have worked without her.
Pine told me that the specific reason he wanted to work with her was becasue of the impression she had made when "battling" Williamson, one of his favorite musicians, at a gig.
The sense of creative mutual sparring also pervaded the Jazz Cafe concert and speaking to Tony Kofi afterwards it's clear that improvising musicians see the likes of Anderson as one of them, even though her aesthetic may not be as clearly defined by Ellingtonian or Pakeresque signposts as theirs are.
Anderson stands on the cusp of jazz and myriad forms. She blurs the line between the genres. She has a voice that is flexible enough to accomodate many musical traditions and forms of harmonic language. With that in mind Nina Simone might be her most appropraite predecessor.
The connection has been made more explicit in recent times by a superb Simone songbook album that Anderson has recorded for her own label RENTAVIBE. SUNDAY IN ALGIERS finds the singer bringing an impressive degree of creativity to arrangements of songs that still present a challenge for the most accomplished of musicians.
Although there are many fine moments on the set the highlight is a volcanic reprise of See-Line Woman in which Anderson manages to capture that quite unique cocktail of insurrection, straight-talking and sugar-in-my-bowl sexulaity that made Simone
such a law unto herself.
"I would like to think that there is a parallel between her and I," Anderson concedes. "For many reasons, but mostly her radicalism, when her peers were only singing about' my baby done left me" Nina was also singing about "Mississippi Goddam. She was not as accpeted in America on the mainstream as her music progressed. "She was unafraid to express it, and she paid the financial price of that, and the ridicule, and the degradation from mainstream press, when she went out of favor for some.
"I am honored to pay tribute to here on this SUNDAY IN ALGIERS record that I recorded in New Orleans a few months before Katrina. I hope to find a worldwide release for it soon."