Esperanza Spalding: Leaning Into It

With her eighth album, Songwrights Apothecary Lab , vocalist, bassist, and fearless explorer Esperanza Spalding blends input from various disciplines and asks the question, “What do we need a song for?” These 12 tunes were created and captured in various non-studio spaces, with input from researchers, practitioners, music therapists, and neuroscientists, plus some great musicians like Wayne Shorter, PHOELIX, and Corey D. King. It’s a quest to make “music designed to have a specific effect on the listener,” and it certainly does.

Photo by Jati Lindsay from the Songwrights Apothecary Lab session at the Flamboyán Theater, part of The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center in New York City, NY.

Your new record is fascinating. What was the impetus?

With [the previous album] 12 Little Spells , I was starting to explore this space of inviting an effect in the body – or in the perceived sense of state – with music, songs, imagery, and sound. I was drawing guidance from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Psychomagic [subtitled The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy ], as well as guidance from Reiki [energy healing technique] and poetry. Approaching it from an intuitive lens. Coalescing these themes and intentions, without the guidance or tutelage of a practitioner, because that’s not what that project was about. They’re spells. I trust my capacity to craft spells, in the way that I was crafting them with that project. I did want to delve deeper into how us performers are a type of music therapy practitioner, but we’re not engaging in the client/therapist dyad. I did want to delve further into, “What do they know that we could integrate into what we do?” To potentially offer songs, sounds, and musics that can be utilized in a specific way by the listener. I wanted to have some guidance. I flirted with the idea of getting a music therapy degree, and then I was like, “When?”

Yeah, right?

And that’s not the question of this Lab. The question of the Lab is how can we as songwriters and musicians enhance what we’re doing? Drawing on the expertise, findings, and practices of these other people in another zone. Responding to human needs with music.

Do you think that’s looking for a way past the simplistic parts of music that we all get, like feeling uplifted, feeling rhythm, or feeling sad from a song?

I think those are actually the deepest elements. I don’t think those are simplistic. What’s really at play there is profound. It’s this essential quality, that you described, of our relationship to music, that is escaping analysis and unpackaging by the medical field. Or by anyone in fields who are exploring how our bodies do respond to specifically utilized packages of music. That’s the deep mystery. Why does that song uplift my spirit and not another person who’s my same age, going through the same ailment? I think that’s the part that maybe we can never unpackage in this Lab, and that’s okay. The closest metaphor that I’ve been working with lately is painters in Leonardo da Vinci’s era by starting to integrate what architects, engineers, and mathematicians knew. Integrating ways of measuring and understanding space into how they were painting. They started to do more with dimension itself. I’m looking at it like that. What we do already works. There are multiple fields that are in a deep, devoted inquiry into how music is affecting our body. We’d be crazy not to integrate that with loving intention, and see how we can enhance, refine, and work more intentionally with those mystery elements. Working with a mathematically-accurate perspective isn’t necessarily going to make your painting more beautiful, or more arresting. But having access to that might augment and enhance the beauty, the experience of the beauty, or the engagement in the world that you want to portray.

Who were some of the first people, outside of the music field, that you reached out to with the Songwrights Apothecary Lab project?

The first would be my Reiki teacher, honestly. Then a teacher who I was working with for a little while, who is a healer and a midwife; she was inviting me into practices of tuning and preparing myself before I stepped into that mode of writing that I was exploring with 12 Little Spells . Then, [saxophonist] Wayne Shorter. Conversations with him through the years shifted my orientation to music, as well as why we make music and how we shape music. In 2020, I reached out to five people on that first council. It was a neuroscientist, a psychologist, two music therapists, and a pediatrician who also worked with music therapy. None of the music from that first iteration was shared publicly. That first iteration was us wobbling into, “What do we even mean by collaborating with each other?” We also explored understanding how to communicate shared values and intentions and motives. It was less about, “Let me take this piece of neuroscientist pedagogy and integrate it into a song,” but more starting to mature and realize how much maturing was needed in how we’re even relating to the listener. We step into the space of, “What do you need a song for? How do I show up? How do I respond to your response, given the nature of the relationship?” How can we make sure that when we expand into this exploration, we’re showing up in the right relationship to the listener?

Right. That’s understandable.

Even around relationships to these questions, having the right relationship to these fields, and letting it be as mysterious as it is. Let the discoveries that we make, the connections that we make, and the beauties that we find be beautiful, legible, and transparent. That’s why on the website we talk about everything that we’re reading. For instance, in the Portal Land of Songwrights Apothecary Lab , one of the researchers working with us, Ganavya Doraiswamy, was drawing a lot from counseling practices and methods that helped people become more confident in saying what’s difficult for them to say. We didn’t actually draw techniques from that; we took poetic license to draw from the themes that were being addressed themselves in the study, and we let that inform the way we were writing the lyrics. Like, “Oh, we should keep it in this BPM range, because of this study.” We were inspired to make a song in a different way, because we heard about the work that they’re doing.

With the beginning of this, how did that translate into the recording? I know you had sessions in Wasco County and Portland, Oregon, and then in New York.

What I focused on in Wasco County was creating the songs. Figuring out what was going to go into the songs. Getting a sense of what ingredients needed to be there. Like “Formwela2,” most of what went into that you don’t actually hear, but it’s these nine elements that Hadrat Inayat Khan says, if you put them together, it makes this tenth element that creates a sense of spaciousness and freedom and non-constriction. Some of the sounds that are in that song were not recorded in Wasco County. A lot of them were, but what happened in Wasco County was the devising. The “laboratory time” of what’s going to go into these songs. Then somebody in another part of the country recorded the piano part. Wayne Shorter recorded his part in L.A. Once we got into Portland, where we could get together in a space, and in New York, that was a simultaneous devising exploration, experimentation, iteration, and recording. Then it all is happening in the Lab together. That’s also what happened in Lower Manhattan, and that’s the way I want to explore it from now on. We’re all in this space together, and our hands are all in it. What you hear on the recording is the culmination of our exploration and collaboration around the themes together.

Given that you’re starting from this different concept, how was that communicated to musicians? How did you get them in the right zone? It can’t be just a cold call, right?

Exactly. There are so many things happening simultaneously. It’s gotta sound like my music, too. This doesn’t work if it’s not authentic to the songwriter, the artist making their offering. I wanted to work with people who I love to work with, who I know we have good musical chemistry together, and also people who I thought would be open to this exploration. It’s enough to show up and do your best as a musician. You don’t need to do more. But I thought, particularly when we’re going to be in a space together, it would be good to work with people who were at least curious and interested. “Oh, what is that study about?” They want to hear what the researchers distilled from their inquiries. I chose people who I thought would be interested. It’s a lot to dig through. That’s why we’re collaborating with researchers who are good at delving in and distilling. Raphael [Saadiq, co-producer] sat in on one of our council meeting sessions with the music therapists and researchers when we were working on “Formwela1,” “Formwela2,” and “Formwela3.” I was sending [co- producer] PHOELIX articles that I had been reading. He was eating it up, because he’s also interested in creating music to support meditation. When we did the New York Songwrights Apothecary Lab , we were all in it from the beginning. Britton Williams is a drama therapist and Dr. Marisol Norris is a music therapist. We started by having a session with them about how we were going to show up to this work. If we’re making music that’s about caring for others, how are we going to show up and care for each other in the space? What do we mean by wellness? What do we mean by salutary? Everybody in the space, even the filmmakers, participated in that. It’s like we started by connecting with each other and making this commitment to care to each other. We agreed to hold these values that we hope to transmit through the music in the space, as we were making the music. Then everybody in that Lab was hearing the research as being part of the conversations about distilling what it was, as well as what we intended to do with the songs. Everybody in there was in all the way. They weren’t reading the articles, because that’s what the researchers were doing. But, shy of that, everyone was part of it. Francisco Mela, the drummer, and Aaron [Burnett, saxophone] didn’t come every day. But once we distilled what we were looking for, they were deep in the conversation and trying to transmit what they could understand of the intention, beyond what was already there for them in the music.

<div class="captxt" style="background-color: #fff !important; color: #000 !important; text-align: center !important;"><em class="fa fa-camera"></em> Holly Andres</div>

If you think of record production, sometimes it’s not nuts and bolts. It’s more of an abstract. I’ll tell people in the studio that this should feel lonesome, or busy, or like the city at night.

What’s deep is that they know. One of the student researchers, Grant Jones, dropped this line, which was so powerful. As we’re delving into all these scientific studies and methodologies, let’s remember that they’re studying work that was not created from reading these articles and these studies. It’s work that was created by musicians who were making their offering, not intending it to be part of a clinical study. He said, “I want to encourage us not to abstract ourselves from our own knowing.” I love that line. I love that as a value to hold throughout the Lab. We don’t want to abstract ourselves from our own knowing as musicians. Just what you were talking about, if I ask somebody, “Will you make a melody to soothe a baby?” a musician will start with a basic sense of what to try. It’s important to acknowledge that, name that, and lean into that skill that we’ve been cultivating our whole lives by being musicians, reaching towards what you described; this intuitive way, or referential way, of creating effect. That’s what we do.

How did you go about picking studios or people to work with on the recording end of this? They’d have to be very sensitive to what you’re doing.

People I know who I know would sound amazing. They’d be open to it. They’d be patient. They’d be swift when we need to be swift. We didn’t go into any studios, except we did some recording in Raphael’s studio in L.A. Other than that, it was like home recording. We recorded in the space the Lab was happening.

Just wherever you were setting up residency to work at the time?

Exactly. Eben Hoffer came up to Wasco County. He’s the engineer on “Formwela1,” “Formwela2,” and part of “Formwela 3.” We set up a mic in the chapel, Ganavya sang, I played and sang, and we recorded it right there in Wasco County. Then, in Portland, Eben Hoffer came again and set up microphones at my uncle’s house. So, the Lab space was my uncle’s house, and [vocalist/guitarist] Corey [D. King] stayed upstairs. I stayed upstairs too, in another room.

In New York, you were recording with Fernando Lodeiro. Was it his space?

That was done in Flamboyán Theater, part of The Clemente [Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center]. It’s a beautiful community art center in lower Manhattan, in the Lower East Side. They let us use this big theater. We moved the seats around, opened up the center, made our Lab, and created everything out of that space.

It’s interesting to see that it’s not a “book time at a studio” project. You’ve made a lot of records; what do you think of the studio experience?

The studio is an instrument, right? If you show up with the right attitude, vibe, and skill to the instrument, the instrument can be a vessel to transmit the beauty and the truth that you’re showing up to convey through it. I think of studios like that. If there’s the right engineer and the right musician, it doesn’t matter; beauty’s gonna happen. I don’t ever remember being, “Oh, I don’t like this studio.” It’s like when you have a crappy [backline/rental] instrument at a festival, that is what it is. Music can still be made, right? But with the Songwrights Apothecary Lab , it could happen in a studio. I feel we have so much more flexibility if we’re dressing the space to serve how we want to work in the Lab, and then integrating the recording equipment into that, so that what you’re also hearing is the feeling of the space.

Do you consider the Lab as something that’s going to keep moving forward?

I hope so! It’s probably going to move backwards sometimes, too. I don’t know what this all means. It’s a question that I’m holding. I want to show up better to this practice and devotion. It might mean completely changing the way that we’re approaching the exploration, and that’s okay. It might mean that we keep iterating on what we’re doing for a while, until further notice. But I definitely want to keep doing it in different cities, with different collaborators, different guides, different musicians, different questions, and different ways of weaving in the strands of what we study. Maybe at the end of the day we find out that it’s no different than if we would have gone in and intuitively made the songs. But we got a good journey out of it.

<div class="captxt" style="background-color: #fff !important; color: #000 !important; text-align: center !important;"><em class="fa fa-camera"></em> Jati Lindsay</div>

If you think of traditional therapy, it’s a provider and a patient situation. Would there be a way of taking this concept, having a focus group, and getting feedback from them on how they respond?

I definitely one day would love to play with that. Explore that in a non-sterile way. Or lean more into learning how people experience a song that is made in response to the question, “What do you need a song for?” Once we make the song, learning what the experience of engaging with it is. I would love to delve into that, in a way. Like the way we engage with music in our everyday life.

Right. Music follows us around and provides comfort.

Like on your phone. That is what we do. It would be interesting to learn about what’s different when the songs are made with that specific intention in mind.

Or music prescriptions.

That part! I already do that with my friends and family. If someone is going through something, or struggling, or there’s a reason to celebrate, I love to write them songs for that specific circumstance.

I think you just answered, “What do we need a song for?” Don’t you think?

It’s an ongoing question. Music doesn’t only have the power to move; it has the power to remove. Put the part of your body that’s ill around the speaker. We know this, and we’re leaning into it and seeing what else we can come to know.

songwrightsapothecarylab. com