Episode #116: Brandee Younger

The sonically innovative harpist, Brandee Younger, is revolutionizing the harp for the digital era. Over the past fifteen years, she has worked relentlessly to stretch boundaries and limitations for harpists.  In 2022, she made history by becoming the first black woman to be nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition. That same year, she was also nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Ever-expanding as an artist, she has worked with cultural icons including Common, Lauryn Hill, John Legend, and Moses Sumney.   Her current album, Brand New Life, builds on her already rich oeuvre and cements the harp’s place in pop culture.  As the title of the album suggests, Brand New Life is about forging new paths–artistic, personal, political, and spiritual. On this album, Younger salutes her musical foremother, the trailblazing harpist Dorothy Ashby, while also speaking to the sentiments of more recent generations. “We're bringing new life to Dorothy Ashby’s popular and previously unreleased compositions. We're creating new life…for the instrument,” Younger said. Brand New Life is an album about living fully, in neon bright color. In March of 2022, Younger flew to Chicago and began recording Brand New Life in the home studio of her long-time collaborator and friend, Makaya McCraven, who produced and played drums on the album. In the Windy City, Younger hoped to harness some of Ashby’s funky energy from a recording she did there nearly five decades before. Younger gathered artists who have had a sense of kinship with Ashby; from the internationally-lauded neo-soul bassist/vocalist/rapper Meshell Ndegeocello to her long-time bassist Rashaan Carter, plus the legendary rapper and producer Pete Rock and the talented contemporary producer 9th Wonder. The latter producers introduced hip-hop and R&B listeners to Ashby in the 1990s and early 2000s via slick samples. Pete Rock and CL Smooth’s 1992 release, “For Pete’s Sake,” samples Ashby’s 1968 hit “Come Live With Me.” 9th Wonder’s remix of singer Amerie’s 2003 R&B classic “Why Don’t We Fall in Love,” also includes a Dorothy Ashby sample from “Come Live With Me.” With Younger’s solo rendition of this heavily sampled song on Brand New Life, she builds a sonic bridge between generations. “I wanted everyone on the record to have a special connection to Dorothy [Ashby]," she said.  For the project, Younger also recorded a number of Ashby’s compositions that were never recorded before, alongside Ashby fan favorites and Younger originals.  The emotional complexity of the album is stunningly captured in the title track, “Brand New Life,” an original co-written by Younger and singer, Mumu Fresh. “This love is so deep, time and space couldn’t keep you away from me,” Mumu Fresh sings. Younger’s playing paints lush details over Mumu Fresh’s smooth vocals leaving nothing to be sonically desired. Against the backdrop of current social issues–climate change, racism, health disparities, and women’s rights–the song speaks to a desire that many people have for change, for something new in the world. “Brand New Life'' reaches listeners at the level of the human. Love is a subtle but insistent thread throughout the album. The opening track, “You’re a Girl For One Man Only,” is a previously unrecorded Dorothy Ashby composition. Sonically, it is tender and evocative of a first kiss or the early seasons of a new romance. Younger recalls the original song's lyrics’ more traditional message of romantic longing that we still hear in popular music today. Boy chases girl. Girl succumbs. In Younger’s version, there is a sense of agency and exploration. Younger creates a mesmerizing atmosphere. In the second half of the track, we are met with a delicate dance between Joel Ross on vibraphone and Younger on harp, the two instruments pining through the melody.  Brand New Life is part of her steadfast efforts to amplify the contributions of black women harpists and to keep their legacies alive.  Her ca