Cécile McLorin Salvant
speaker
63 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Cécile McLorin Salvant’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
In the studio? You screwed something up. In the studio, always. It's funny enough.
It's funny you mention her. Rhiannon Giddens is somebody who I have to thank so much for a lot. I first heard about her through Carolina Chocolate Drops.
About the banjo and what that instrument is and how it's a product of the African diaspora, I did not know. And it felt affirming in a way as somebody who had always loved that music but thought, oh, this is just some white music that I like. Much like the grunge is white music that I like. And then realizing through her in large part that, no, this is not – This is not just white music.
This is actually music that originated with Black folks and with a mixture. So she's huge to me. I actually sing one of her songs in my shows. Which one is that? It's called Build a House. Oh, yeah. I love that song.
I think I have the spirit of like a kind of a radio DJ slash curator. It's almost like making a mixtape for someone and only putting deep cuts. That's sort of how I feel a lot of times. If someone is to ask, oh, can you do a Cole Porter tribute? I'll be like, okay, sure, I'll do a Cole Porter tribute. But I want to find the gems that haven't been –
sung and sung and sung over and over again and that we might love and fall in love with.
Yeah. Huge, huge hit.
You know, a lot of the decisions are very intuitive. Right. But that song for me is not about the fact that it's associated with Barbra Streisand. It's just such an optimistic kind of – Make them happy.
And also she's just like so strong in that lyric.
I first started writing songs, well, I think as a kid I wrote one song in my own invented language with my cousin.
Maybe at the time we knew what it meant. Now I don't know what it means.
Lost, yes. And I heard Abby Lincoln. I heard an album of hers called Holy Earth. And it made me want to write.
That was the title track of my second album. And then, yeah, ever since then I've been writing.
Not the lute. Not yet. I'm writing with the piano.
No, no, no, no. With the piano and with the window. I like to look out a window. How do you spend your days? Long walk. A lot of writing in the morning. And then eventually get to the piano at some point. And then embroidery. A lot of embroidery.
Yes.
Wow. That's a great question. It is very introspective music. And it is music about solitude, a lot of it, about solitude, about yearning, about desire. And I think all of those feelings are clearly coming from the fact that it's so much alone time, which I need.
It's a song I wrote. About wanting to want and loving that feeling of desire and that feeling of before the big thing happens. And almost not wanting the big thing to happen, just wanting to be in that prelude of it. Because that's where all the excitement is. Being far away from the object of affection and looking at them longingly.
Maybe exactly the same as a 16th century. Maybe it's exactly, can she excuse my wrongs?
If you should love me Don't ever tell me. Show it. That's how I'll know it. In fact, it's better not to show me at all.
Showing 41–60 of 63 · page 3 of 4
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