Artist: Esperanza Spalding
Album: Songwrights Apothecary Lab
Genre: World Fusion, Vocal Jazz
Label: Concord Records
Released: 2021
Quality: FLAC (tracks)
Tracklist:
- Formwela 1 (3:35)
- Formwela 2 (6:10)
- Formwela 3 (7:06)
- Formwela 4 (4:20)
- Formwela 5 (3:32)
- Formwela 6 (3:11)
- Formwela 7 (3:26)
- Formwela 8 (11:40)
- Formwela 9 (4:32)
- Formwela 10 (3:29)
- Formwela 11 (3:09)
- Formwela 13 (6:44)
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It’s been 15 years since Esperanza Spalding’s auspicious debut Junjo. After that largely jazz-rooted recording, the multi-instrumentalist singer/songwriter collaborated with Janelle Monáe, Bruno Mars, and Harry Belafonte while composing and releasing six more albums. Spalding’s projects have reflected her compulsive need to expand the range of her artistry beyond jazz, and each collaboration reveals an artist invested in both the heart and craft of music. The bones of her releases still lean on improvisation and sparkling tones. Yet the sinew of her art-making has evolved—a shift audible on her eighth album Songwrights Apothecary Lab, which showcases a musician reluctant to embody any single mode of expression. Spalding has honed in on a lyricism that is psychologically tougher, less concerned with pleasure, and more aligned with revealing tiers of hurt and how they cling to our bodies.
Spalding recorded the album over several months this year and created a guide that describes the intended uses and effects of its 12 compositions, sequentially numbered Formwela 1, 2, 3, etc. The assigned healing properties of each song came from Spalding’s conversations with music therapists and neuroscientists whom she intentionally sought out for a record meant to have a specific healing effect on the listener. SAL is a strangely romantic, sometimes didactic effort to mold the often private experience of listening and feeling music. Taking a note from Alice Coltrane’s own healing melodies on her albums Divine Songs and Infinite Chants, Spalding offers the type of medicine that comes from days moving through nature or intentional solitude. The recipes here are as ancient as they are intuitive.
It’s remarkably unconventional and, at times, stifling listening to an album that comes with a how-to manual, though the concept isn’t unfamiliar. Music has long been a tool for healing, whether as therapy for patients or to commune with gods and ancestors. Spalding has turned those rituals into direct action for listeners seeking solace in her voice. Opener “Formwela 1” is a slow build of layered harmonies that slip into her crystal clear vocals, sitting atop a strumming guitar and gentle piano. The guide labels this song as one for “an acute moment of stress in the home,” and it’s that specificity of place that sets Spalding’s intention from the beginning. Her meeting with multi-instrumentalist Ganavya Doraiswamy on “Formwela 2” is ethereal and deeply rooted in the traditions that shaped it: the movement and philosophy of Harikathā; the poetry and elasticity of jazz.
by Tarisai Ngangura