Preview: A Change Is Gonna Come – Music for Human Rights

This month Bristol Old Vic is hosting A Change is Gonna Come, featuring four of the most gifted female soul, jazz and hip hop artists who are exploring the power of protest songs in a critically acclaimed collaboration.

Leading a tight sextet are supremely talented queens of their trade: the soulful Carleen Anderson, jazz virtuosos Nikki Yeoh and Camilla George and rising UK rapper Lady Sanity. On stage together for the first time, they perform unique interpretations of iconic songs from the time of the civil rights through to today, along with new compositions by Anderson and Yeoh.

Mercury-nominated Carleen Anderson was reared on the sounds of the Pentecostal Gospel church in Texas where her Grandfather was a pastor and a friend of Martin Luther King.  The Independent has called her “perhaps the greatest soul singer living and working in Britain today.”

Carleen Anderson

Since her emergence on the British jazz scene in the mid-90s, pianist Nikki Yeoh has proved to be an improviser, composer and all-around adventurer who has continually sought to broaden her musical horizons. She has led her own bands in venues such as the Royal Festival Hall, performed with DJ Pogo, Neneh Cherry and The Roots and composed works for John Surman and Joanna MacGregor.

Birmingham born-and-bred Lady Sanity is a rapper and musician. Drawing on influences from talents such as Lauryn Hill, A Tribe Called Quest and Ms Dynamite, she has played major UK festivals and supported hip-hop heavyweight KRS-one.

Camilla George is a MOBO-nominated Nigerian born saxophonist and star of the award-winning group Jazz Jamaica. Camilla’s love of fusing African and Western hip-hop sounds to make her own unique style has made her a firm favourite on the new London jazz scene.

The band also features the incredible talents of bassist Renell Shaw who has recorded and toured alongside artists such as Rudimental, Skepta, Nitin Sawhney, plus drummer Rod Youngs who has played with Gil Scott Heron, Hugh Masekela, Courtney Pine, Jocelyn Brown and Jazz Jamaica All Stars, amongst others.

Lady Sanity

We chatted to Polly Eldridge co-director of the Bristol-based ACE funded organisation Sound UK who have curated this gig, and whose mission is to put together and promote ‘extraordinary musical encounters’ like this one.

So, this looks like quite a line-up! How did the idea for this gig come about?

This project was bubbling away in our minds for a while, inspired by the role of politically engaged female artists like Nina Simone. Even 50 years on from the American civil rights movement, we’re still confronting so many inequalities of not only race but also gender and sexuality.

We were already huge fans of Carleen back in the 90s and when she appeared at the Bristol Jazz & Blues Festival a few years back, and so we were really keen to work with her. Quickly the two ideas fell together and we met up with her and the fantastic pianist Nikki Yeoh to start exploring ideas. We instantly agreed that the frontline should give a platform to four women to challenge the average band line up, but that’s not to say we’re some all-female club! Renell Shaw is an absolutely amazing bass player, centring the whole band and moving from soul to hip hop with his incredibly zen funkiness, and Rod Youngs was our first choice drummer given his amazing subtlety and credentials of playing in Gil Scot Heron’s band.

What have you found is so special about the music from the American Civil Rights days?

In planning the repertoire, we wanted to explore different areas where human rights still need so much work. It was natural to pick up on the anthems of the ACR and early feminist movements – Four Women, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, What’s Going On and Inner City Blues – as well as older songs like Woody Guthrie’s I Ain’t Got No Home.

We also explore more contemporary songs, including some we commissioned from both Carleen and Nikki, along with a track of Lady Sanity’s. The main thing was to create a show that got people thinking about the fact that these old songs were sadly still so relevant, whilst creating a really powerful set of music that moved, excited and above all brought an audience together to have a great time.

The responses to the premieres in London and Brighton in May were amazing: people standing up, dancing and shouting their support for the issues we were championing. I hope that people leave the BOV feeling that love and positivity can succeed and that by acting together we can all make a difference.

How does this fit in with BOV’s ‘Year of Change’ theme? 

I think this does have a really poignant relevance for Bristol given both its history and ongoing struggle to find peace between communities, and BOV were keen to bring this here since last May. We can only deal with divisions between us by acknowledging them, and what we’re trying to say with this is, yes these are the amazing songs we can all sing along to, but they are not history, they are now, and we have to face up to these things in order to change them. That’s why Carleen slightly reworded Sam Cooke’s song, ‘When Is Change Gonna Come’. Hopefully soon!

Carleen, Nikki, Lady Sanity and Camilla perform ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ at Bristol Old Vic on Sunday July 21. For more information and tickets go to the Old Vic website: https://bristololdvic.org.uk/whats-on/a-change-is-gonna-come

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