An eloquent, improvised tribute to seminal writer
When pandemic changed plans, show about James Baldwin barely missed a beat
“Gifts” is the word that stands out in trying to label or describe “Chapter and Verse: The Gospel of James Baldwin” the multi-platform work by Meshell Ndegeocello that’s being presented by Bard College’s Fisher Center through the end of the year. The piece can be accessed on the phone (call 1-833422-5394 and press 7 for English) where you’ll hear a seamless soundtrack of songs by Ndegeocello, writings and speeches by Baldwin, and informal musings from others on religion, identity and power.
You can also go online (Meshell.com) to view short animated videos in which Ndegeocello seems to be having a conversation with the late Baldwin about their common African-american heritage. Such themes continue in a series of artistically rendered broadsheets that are also on the website. Both platforms, phone and online, have been updated monthly with fresh material.
Taken alone or together, the components of “Chapter and Verse” are eloquent, unexpected and beguiling. Ndegeocello is best known as a singer/songwriter and bassist who became widely known in 1994 when Madonna signed her to the Maverick record label. With this new stage of her work, it’s obvious she is also a spiritual seeker.
“The world I was raised in was troubled, harsh, filled with anguish, judgment, physical and sexual abuse, along with disturbing ideas about race,” says Ndegeocello. “Music, books, people, art and theatre, I believe with all my heart, saved me from madness and my harrowing adventures in Christianity, other religions, drugs and alcohol, and, as Baldwin put it, my sexual career.”
“Chapter and Verse” has been a long time in the making but was quickly assembled. Here’s why: Ndegeocello, who lives in Hudson with her wife and their son, was supposed to be part of the Fisher Center’s current season with “Can I Get a Witness?,” a tribute to Baldwin and
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his landmark 1963 nonfiction work “The Fire Next Time.” The performance piece — part theater, part concert, part worship service — debuted at the Harlem Stage in 2016. A review in the Times called it “undefinable.”
Then coronavirus hit and performing arts venues shut down indefinitely. Ndegeocello and stage director Charlotte Brathwaite made a quick pivot and redeployed their large team of collaborators toward a new objective. Rather than another quasi-semblance of a stage showed flattened into a streaming experience, “Chapter and Verse” is innovative in that it allows for exploration by viewers. Ndegeocello describes it as “a 21st-century ritual tool kit for justice.”
The heart and soul of the piece is Baldwin, the writer and activist who died in 1987 and whose writings seem to be perpetually relevant. He’s depicted as both a companion and icon. During her early years in New York City, Ndegeocello worked at Giovanni’s Room, a beloved but now defunct LGTB bookstore in Greenwich Village named after Baldwin’s second novel. But it was many years later that she actually delved into his writing, which she found to be transfixing and comforting.
“Baldwin gave me language for my brokenness, allowing healing and understanding,” says Ndegeocello. She used to carry “The Fire Next Time” in her hip pocket and estimates that she’s read it at least 10 times.
In the original staged version, projected images of Baldwin hovered over the proceedings like stained glass windows in a church sanctuary. “We praised James Baldwin as the savior who has come for us,” says Ndegeocello in describing the worshipful atmosphere. Some of the audience members were seated in pews. Each of them was given a copy of “The Fire Next Time” that they could reference during the evening and were expected to return at the conclusion, as congregations do with hymnals.
There’s a similar hagiographic treatment of Baldwin in the web portion of “Chapter and Verse.” His portrait is given a halo at one point and later is adorned with flowers. In still another image, a golden light radiates out of his forehead, a traditional sign of heavenly inspiration.
Despite all these holy touches, adoration of one influential Black writer doesn’t seem to be the real point of “Chapter and Verse.” Instead, Ndegeocello is pointing us toward Baldwin’s message of liberation and advancement, which she labels “good news” ( gospel).
In discussing her plans for an album of music from the project, Ndegeocello said the following to Tidal Magazine: “Reading Baldwin’s work helped me understand that I had to humble myself. Once you let go of certain dogma, and once you deal with your bigotry, or you disconnect your being from a party or a label or a slogan and you’re down to just yourself, that’s what becomes fascinating to me. It gets down to what kind of human being you want to be on this planet. That’s where things can be transformative.”
“Baldwin gave me language for my brokenness, allowing healing and understanding.” — Meshell Ndegeocello