The following is jazz journalist Morgan Enos’s interview with harpist, composer, and bandleader Brandee Younger. Her new album, Gadabout Season, featuring bassist-producer Rashaan Carter and drummer Allan Mednard, as well as guests Shabaka, Courtney Bryan, Niia, and Josh Johnson, was released 13 June via Impulse!. Links to purchase the album, and to Younger’s website, can be found at the end of this article.
“If you can write a piece on how Verizon sucks, I will speak as eloquently as I can.”
So vents Brandee Younger, a Grammy-nominated leader on her instrument, who has just been catching signals from a far more profound plane. (This was at the top of our phone interview, a last-minute pivot from Zoom.)
On 16 May, Younger performed at ‘COSMIC MUSIC: The Celestial Songs of Alice Coltrane’, a Carnegie Hall tribute to her primary influence, alongside Coltrane’s children, Ravi and Michelle, Flying Lotus, and the Ai Anantam Devotional Ensemble.
And yet, despite the weight and charge of the moment, and with Gadabout Season just days from release, Younger is still preoccupied with a more terrestrial concern. “You’re talking to a machine for a long time, then they make you restart the router,” she relates. “Don’t you think I know how to do that on my own?”
Just like Coltrane, whose refurbished harp Younger played not only on this record, but on stage, Younger is a forward-thinking artist with a grounded, rational purview.
For one, she’s rolled her eyes at the idea of the harp being inherently ‘dreamy’ or ‘ethereal’. (Of course, it can be those things, but it’s capable of so much more.) Her freight-train charisma and humour undercut any received sanctimony around her art form, or Coltrane’s legacy.
Read on for a full interview with Younger about Gadabout Season.
UK Jazz News: How could most of us expand our understanding of the harp?
Brandee Younger: I think even for musicians who aren’t familiar with the harp, it’s important to understand that it’s a fully functional instrument. Our harp forefathers, like Marcel Grandjany and Carlos Salzedo, created arrangements of Bach violin pieces and piano works so we’d have a traditional, standard repertoire, just like any other instrument.
Our repertoire really does show the breadth of what we’re capable of. But outside our little harp circle, the world still tends to see a [clichéd] glissando. But the harp has all 12 notes, just like any other instrument. I think people just don’t hear it enough in that fully expressive way.
UKJN: Say more about that.
BY: When I was younger, I played a lot of weddings. I used to get hired because I could play pop tunes. It wasn’t that harps couldn’t play pop tunes – it’s just that harpists weren’t playing them. But we can do it. And once brides started to see that, they started sending some pretty outrageous setlists.
I wasn’t introduced to the harp through the usual route: I found it through Dorothy Ashby, by way of Pete Rock tracks. That’s not how most people think of the harp being used, in a hip-hop context.
Back in the ’70s, they had full orchestrations that used harp glissandos all the time. It wasn’t unusual. But somewhere along the way, with changes in music production and technology, the harp kind of got pushed aside and forgotten.
I feel like I’ve spent most of my harp life trying to make sure the harp is represented in spaces where people just aren’t used to hearing it. And that often includes music that isn’t ethereal.
UKJN: What else peeves you about the harp discourse, or its place in the musical ecosystem?
BY: I do get annoyed with very strict genre separations. Perfect example: in 2022, I released a digital single, a tune for solo harp called ‘Unrest’. That lives entirely in the jazz sector. Then in 2023, I recorded another piece, ‘Essence of Ruby’, with my trio. Same thing – jazz category.
Now let’s say a classical harpist records those same tunes. Where do they land? Probably under classical. And yet it’s literally the same piece, played the same way. So what gives? That’s the kind of thing that drives me crazy: the way we box things in. And yeah, I get it, you all – journalists, critics – need categories and descriptions. But it just sucks when the box is so, so, so tight, and there’s no holes in it.
UKJN: What did you think of the Alternative Jazz category addition at the Grammys?
BY: I think it’s great to have an Alternative Jazz category. I do think it’s a little strange when someone we all love as a hip-hop artist can just slide in after not really putting in work in that department. I know a lot of people are upset about that.
It’s confusing. If it’s alternative jazz, then yeah, it belongs there. But if the popularity came from hip-hop – I don’t know, it’s weird. I guess that’s the same problem country music people have with Beyoncé. I ain’t got the answers, Sway!
UKJN: What drew you to each of your collaborators on Gadabout Season?
BY: Courtney [Bryan] came to mind first because she’s not only an incredible composer, but also an incredible human being. We’ve worked together before, and no matter where we’re playing, it always turns into church. We both grew up in Black church, which is loud church.
The piece I wrote for her, ‘Surrender,’ is church, but not Black church. It’s more stoic, more still. When I was writing it, I had Benjamin Britten’s ‘A Ceremony of Carols’ in mind. That piece is traditionally performed with children’s choir and harp in a cathedral. Imagine the purity of that sound. That’s what I was aiming for with the tune, and Courtney fit the vibe perfectly.
Rashaan Carter, who co-produced the album, wrote ‘End Means’ with Shabaka in mind. I happened to be playing with Shabaka at the Blue Note that week, and I said, “Wanna come over? This one has your vibe all over it.” We didn’t know what it would become, but we told him, “Bring one of those 18 wooden flutes you’ve got, and let’s just see what happens.” It came out really, really cool.
Niia is an old friend, someone I’ve worked with for a long time. She sang on my very first recording, and again on Soul Awakening, my debut full-length from 2019. She was the only person I wanted on that song. The album just feels so personal. It’s like a year’s worth of diary entries put into music.
UKJN: Setting aside the historical and artistic significance for a moment – what does it feel like to hold Alice Coltrane’s harp?
BY: Obviously, it’s super special. I’ve actually played it, with her music. The first time was a few years ago at a Red Bull Music Academy tribute concert to Alice Coltrane in NYC, held at the Knockdown Center.
I can’t even put into words how it felt. I just remember thinking, Oh my God – and I’m playing the heck out of it, too. That concert was, without exaggeration, one of the most thrilling days of my life.
Fast forward to now: I had the harp refurbished and restored. It still has its original soundboard, but we replaced the neck and the base frame, because the neck starts to bend over time. It doesn’t change the sound the way replacing the soundboard would, but it does make a difference.
Because we recorded this album at home over a long period of time, I had the luxury of getting up every morning and practicing on this instrument until – cliché as it sounds – it became an extension of me. That can’t happen until you’ve had time with it.
I was really able to find my voice on this harp. Every morning, before doing anything else, I’d play, even just warm-ups, scales, exercises. It gave me a chance to get reacquainted with it. It’s the biggest privilege to play this incredible instrument at this point in my life.
