MY PLAYLIST – NI MAXINE
For this edition, we sat down with the award-winning British Neo-Jazz Singer-Songwriter, Ni Maxine. Compared by audiences to Billie Holiday, Sade and Erykah Badu, her conscious, political lyricism and timeless vocals have taken her to the main stage at Liverpool’s Africa Oyé, Gilles Peterson’s ‘We Out Here’ & the EFG London Jazz Festival.
With a BBC Introducing ‘highlight’ live session under her belt, her Manchester Jazz Festival performance broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s J to Z and a live appearance on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Front Row’, Ni Maxine has carved a path for her ‘afro-centric and soulful’ sound. Here’s some songs that have inspired Ni Naxine and helped shape her sound.
- Betty Carter – Open The Door
What a beautiful bass line to open with… I love this song. Betty Carter’s voice is so smooth, silky, it almost blends in with the instrumentation. It’s percussive when it needs to be, but mostly sounds like a horn – I love that style, and sometimes find myself singing in this style when I perform live. I guess you could say, she’s one of my inspirations.
- The Brand New Heavies – Brother Sister
I had to include a track from that funky cool 90s acid-jazz era, and ‘Brother Sister’ is it. It’s a coming-of age song, empowering and it has a message, which I love in music. I have early memories of this music, which was a key component of the soundtracking of my childhood (thanks mum). It was always ‘The Brand New Heavies’. ‘Incognito’, Omar, all of the classics, and I remember my mum telling us about a ‘From The Soul’ LIMF night in 2016 in the Philharmonic Music Room, presented by Gilles Peterson, where a couple of these names were playing, alongside Carleen Anderson (a legendary voice). That night out with my mum and sister in my mum’s hometown is the reason I moved to Liverpool!
- Donny Hathaway – Sack Full of Dreams – Live at the Bitter End, New York
Dreaming of a better world… Where do I even begin with this song? It’s so powerful! The world would be a much better place if there was more love in it and the way Donny Hathaway performed this song, live, with a band, always makes me feel really emotional – Feels like I’m there, in the jazz club with them, do you know what I mean? I think we need a jazz club in Liverpool!
- Dele Sosimi – E Go Betta
When I heard that Africa Oyé were bringing Dele Sosimi to Birkenhead, I knew that I had to be in the room – Whenever Oyé bring a band to town, you know it’s going to be great music! It was electric – A rhythm section with percussion and Dele on the keys and the mic and a four part horn section which was TIGHT! Dele Sosimi started out playing keys in Fela Kuti’s ‘Egypt 80’ band and has, since, become of the pioneers of Afrobeat, having led various ensembles across the globe over the past (almost) 50 years or so. Nigeria to the world! Of all of his tracks I’ve listened to since seeing his play at Future Yard, I think this one captures it best! I could only manage 3 songs because it was such an overwhelming experience to hear this music, in the birthplace of my father, born to Nigerian and British parents in the 60s. It made me wonder whether this sort of thing would have been happening in Birkenhead while he was there. I felt a really powerful ancestral presence. Music has the power to do that!
- Nina Simone – Four Women
‘Four Women’ means a lot to me. The instrumentation in the song is very simple, piano, drums, guitar, electric bass, sprinklings of flute and the spellbinding voice of Nina Simone. The lyrics are hard-hitting – They don’t shy away from the nuance of being a Black woman, through the lens of four women, four stereotypical African-American women, addressing the legacy of slavery. Although this song is written from an African-American perspective, I think it’s really relevant to Black British women, because so many of us come from families where someone in our bloodline was an African-American woman, and generational trauma is a thing. I have performed this song many times, and have cried many times while performing this song and I’m holding back tears as I listen to the song and write this. Please listen, and take note.
- Corinne Bailey-Rae – He Will Follow You With His Eyes
This track is from Corinne Bailey-Rae’s latest album, ‘Black Rainbows’, and it tells the story of a Black-British woman, which I relate to. It took me a while to come back to this song after hearing the album when I was in a bad mood and not really connecting to it. Funny how that happens sometimes… I think every Black woman would relate to parts of this song, I mean, I do, being sold a Eurocentric beauty standard by mass-media, from a very early age, (Barbie, magazines with not a single Black woman in sight, films, TV) and believing that you had to change yourself to be loved and accepted, straighten your hair, change your behaviour, be less ‘loud’ but realising later on that Black is beautiful in every way, and being slightly annoyed that you ever fell for the capitalist trickery of white supremacy. Thank you for this masterpiece, Corinne!
- Solange – Cranes In the Sky
I had to include a Solange track in this playlist, and I couldn’t choose between ‘Weary’, ‘Don’t Touch My Hair’ and this, but ‘Cranes In The Sky’ is such an important song to anyone who has ever needed to heal, but avoided facing the thing(s) that they needed to heal from and turned to unhealthy coping mechanisms. I wish I’d really heard these lyrics back in 2016, but I guess these words were swimming around in my subconscious, and now I am aware. Healing is more in reach than you think!
- Butcher Brown – Happy Hourrr
Such a cute Bossa-Nova beat, an interlude… I’m sure the first time I heard about Butcher Brown was when my guitarist Jack Lewis told me about them, and they are really cool. I think I listened to this track about 50 times in a row when I first heard it and I danced around my living room. It always makes me happy when I am feeling low. What’s your go-to ‘happy song’?
- Billie Holiday – Speak Low
Continuing with the up-beat percussive sound, I had to throw in Billie’s rendition of ’Speak Low’, the song I heard for the first time after a dinner party I’d hosted in my student halls in North Acton (London) before I dropped out of fashion school! I remember the moment I heard that drum beat, and the guitar come in, I needed the whole room to be still, so that we could all appreciate its greatness. I’d never heard anything like it, and it remains one of my favourites. If you’ve ever seen me play around Liverpool, you’ll have heard me do this one, and we borrowed that beautiful guitar riff, we had to! What a beautiful, respectful love song. It really makes me cherish moments with loved ones!
- Erykah Badu – Certainly
I love the jazzy instrumentation of this track – That double bass sound with the piano, trumpet and the beat, it really stopped me in my tracks when I heard it for the first time and it felt. It’s a very metaphorical song, drawing parallels between the kidnapping of African people and the process of enslavement when they were brought to America and a woman who has her drink spiked on a date. Very clever metaphor!
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