I've been following the work of Louis Rosen and Capathia Jenkins since 2005 when I first went to hear them at Joe's Pub. Back then they were performing songs by Rosen set to the poems of Maya Angelou and Langston Hughes. It was an exhilarating performance of indescribably beautiful and soulful art songs that tapped into classical, blues, gospel and jazz influences.
A year or so later they released Southside Stories, a song cycle about a white boy and a black girl growing up in a Chicago neighborhood in transition in the 1970's. The album gave Capathia the chance to do funky and fun but also to breathe life into deeply felt songs about love, life and death. With his Randy Newman cadences, Louis' songs were highly personal and perceptively political.
The next year the ever-evolving duo came out with an An Ounce of Truth, an album of songs set to the poems of Nikki Giovonni a poet whose deceptively light verse was a near perfect fit for Louis' musical intensification. Her sexy, smart and incisive poetry came to life with Louis' melodies, rhythms and repetitions. In each song, he seemed to zero in on the sass and singular voice of each poem. With these songs, Capathia's range multiplied again into the realm of Nina Simone, Laura Nyro, Bossa Nova, and her own special gospel infused theatricality.
Which brings us to this year's The Ache of Possibility. I was pleased to see that the album and the shows at Joe's Pub were mentioned in the "Brilliant/Highbrow" quadrant of New York Magazine's Approval Matrix, which confirms that the duo are finally being recognized as the New York treasure that they are.
This album, yet another iteration of their ever-growing sonic adventure, features, in addition to Louis and Capathia, the contributions of a group of stellar musicians used to great effect. Right from the top of the album (and the show at Joe's Pub), the large musical group gets into a funky, horn-filled groove that brings to mind an updated version of the Stax/Volt sessions of 1960s Songs like "The Ache of Possibility," "How You Gonna Save Them," and "Love in Short Supply", are soulful and smart and in some cases bigger than ever in their scope and ambition. I Want To Live To Love You would live happily on the radio right next to productions by a number of R&B divas.
That said, many of the songs, with lyrics by Rosen and Giovonni, are a complex and narrative stew that pull a punch so powerful that all you can do is hoot and holler when Capathia and Louis reach each dramatic and carefully rendered conclusion.
At one of this year's shows, Nikki Giovonni joined the group on stage and read two poems, "The Telephone Poem" and "The Black Loom" (dedicated to Nina Simone) as a lead-in to the songs. It was fascinating to hear Giovonni's rhythms side-by-side with the songs, which are a tribute to and a powerful adaptation of her work.
Today's No Words Daily Pix by Hugh Crawford is a picture of Louis Rosen (left), Capathia Jenkins (middle), Nikki Giovonni (right).