Cécile McLorin Salvant has an extraordinary voice! French-Haitian-American, she could have rested on her laurels. This brilliant vocal technician, who knows all the codes of jazz, in addition to her classical training, can sing any standard and transport it to infinity.
But Cécile has never been satisfied with that. After Mélusine (2023), an album mainly in French and Creole, she releases Oh Snap, her most daring album…until the next one.
Is Cécile McLorin Salvant transforming into Beyoncé or MeShell Ndegeocello? Not really, but she takes all sorts of unexpected paths. The first piece, “I Am a Volcano,” is studded with electronic keyboards. The third, “Take This Stone,” borrows from folk and country. Jazz purists can rest assured: some pieces are closer to bop and other styles, but always with a desire for inventiveness and freshness. “A Frog Jumps In,” the final piece, takes us into a choral, then instrumental, universe close to gamelan.
Oh Snap is the opus of a woman who yearns for creative freedom, who refuses to take refuge in any label. “Eureka” almost flirts with rock and, in my humble opinion, it’s not the best song on the album. We even hear her singing with a vocoder on “A Little Bit More,” it didn’t convince me. Regardless, this series of small musical vignettes (thirteen songs, thirty-five minutes) hits the mark. We quickly change climates, Cécile McLorin Salvant’s voice rarely disappoints, inspires a lot, but is less in virtuosity and improvisation than in Ghost Song (2022). You have to accept to move forward in your new universe.
As the United States flirts with conformity and dictatorship, Cécile McLorin Salvant is heading in the opposite direction. “R E S P E C T,” as Aretha Franklin said.
