David Remnick: This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

[MUSIC - Cécile McLorin Salvant: Don't Rain on My Parade]

Don't tell me not to live

Just sit and putter

Life's candy and the sun's

A ball of butter

David Remnick: Cécile McLorin Salvant is a jazz singer, and she's one of the top singers around today. Someone on the level of Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald. Salvant's repertoire and her approach to music are completely her own. A standard from the American songbook might be followed by a tune from hundreds of years ago and across an ocean. I once went to see her expecting How High the Moon, but the first thing out of her was a century-old Murder Ballad, and it lasted about a half an hour long. Wynton Marsalis called her the kind of talent who comes along only once in a generation or two. Cécile McLorin Salvant is performing at jazz festivals all over the country this summer. I got a chance to talk with her last summer, and she came to perform at our studio at WNYC.

[MUSIC - Cécile McLorin Salvant: Don't Rain on My Parade]

Ooh, life is juicy

Juicy, and you see

I've gotta my bite, sir!

Get ready for me, love

'Cause I'm a "comer"

I simply gotta march

My heart's a drummer

Don't bring around a cloud

To rain on my parade!

I'm gonna live and live now

Get what I want—I know how

One roll for the whole shebang

One throw, that bell will go clang

Eye on the target—and wham—

One shot, one gun shot, and bam!

Hey, Mister Fortner, here I am!

I'll march my band out

I will beat my drum

And if I'm fanned out

Your turn at bat, sir

At least I didn't fake it, hat, sir

I guess I didn't make it

Get ready for me, love

'Cause I'm a "comer,"

I simply gotta march

My heart's a drummer

Nobody, no, nobody

Is gonna rain on my parade!

David Remnick: Oh, man.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I don't know what I did there.

David Remnick: Wow. I am so excited to have you here today. I have gone to see you at any number of places around New York and not enough. Cause every time I go, I leave so happy and so surprised by what you've decided to sing on a given night. What goes into those decisions?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: It's very nice to hear you say that you're surprised because that's my first priority, I think. I just love to be surprised in life in general, by people, by the musicians I play with, by myself. That's huge for me when I'm looking for songs or listening to songs. Even just as a fan of art and artists.

David Remnick: This song is so associated with one singer in particular, maybe Barbra Streisand, and you take it on head-on. Then on another night I'll go see you and you're singing-- I don't know how many verses that was. We were just discussing this before we came in. It must have been 40-verse-long blues song that no one had probably heard.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Yes.

David Remnick: I think it was like a half an hour long.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: It was a half an hour long blues called Murder Ballad that Jelly Roll Morton did for Library of Congress years ago.

[MUSIC - Jelly Roll Morton: Murder Ballad]

Let me tell you one of the things that I’ve said

Cécile McLorin Salvant: This woman who murders her boyfriend's lover and then goes to prison. There's a lot of profanity. I had always wanted to sing it. I sat on it for 10 years thinking, where could I ever possibly do it, and who would I do it with? Then I had a Valentine's Day concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center. I thought, "Wouldn't that be for date night? Wouldn't that just be great?"

David Remnick: A date night with a little murder involved?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Yes.

David Remnick: Well, let's start from the beginning. You grew up where?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I grew up in Miami, Florida.

David Remnick: What were you listening to at home? Who was filling the home with music?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I was listening to whatever my mom was listening to, and she loves everything. Cesária Évora from Cape Verde. We were listening to Youssou N'Dour from Senegal. We were listening to Los Tres Paraguayos, which is like Paraguayan folk music. We were listening to French music. We were listening to some jazz, mostly Sarah Vaughan, a little bit of Nancy Wilson, Gladys Knight, Aretha Franklin. We were listening to folk music, some bluegrass. I could go on and on, actually. A lot of Brazilian music.

David Remnick: That's all due to your mother?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: She has a huge, wide ear. She traveled a lot in her childhood, and I think she brought back those travels in some way or that traveling sort of feeling.

David Remnick: Where did she grow up?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: She grew up in Tunisia. She lived throughout Africa. She lived in Senegal. She lived in Cuba. She lived in Dominican Republic. She lived in Honduras, in Haiti.

David Remnick: What was the lingua franca at home? English, French, or both?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Franca. It was franca. It was French. It was French at home.

David Remnick: From what I understand, in fact, from a profile in the New Yorker some years ago, there was a time when you were a kid, you thought you were going to study law.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Not so much when I was a kid. It was more after high school. I really didn't know what to do. There was this political science prep school in this small town in France. My cousin was going. They had a law option, like first-year law.

David Remnick: In a beautiful place in Aix-en-Provence.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: In Aix-en-Provence. I said, "Oh, why not?"

David Remnick: What a good deal.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: It was a great deal. My cousin was there. I've always liked school.

David Remnick: Off you go as a teenager to the south of France to study law, politics, history, and then something happened.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I always studied music alongside my other school activities.

David Remnick: Did you play an instrument?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Piano.

David Remnick: You were playing classical, jazz, everything?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I guess I was playing classical, but I was not really playing much. I was not practicing. I had to be bribed every week with donuts-

David Remnick: You having the chance?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: -to go to class, to go to piano class. I just didn't like it, but I did it for 15 years.

David Remnick: And singing?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: It's funny, I think singing for me is so social. I don't sing when I'm alone, or I sing very rarely when I'm alone.

David Remnick: Not in the shower? Not-

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Not so much.

David Remnick: -walking down the street?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: No, no, no. It's very social. It's very communicative. It's about being with other people and telling them a story or telling them a secret.

David Remnick: While you're studying in France, at a certain point, you start performing as a singer with a jazz quintet. How did that happen? How did you have the skills and the nerve to do that all of a sudden?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: It was really my teacher at the music school, Jean-François Bonnel. I had sung for him a Sarah Vaughan song. He was adamant that I join the jazz class. I was probably the only native English speaker there, so maybe it gave me a little bit of an edge with singing these standards. He was just like, "I got us a gig." We're doing a show within two months of me starting in his class. It was in a small jazz club. It was a tiny jazz club in Aix-en-Provence with like five people in the audience, but it was horrifying.

David Remnick: Tell me about the first night. What'd you sing?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I sang It’s Only a Paper Moon.

[MUSIC - Cécile McLorin Salvant: It’s Only a Paper Moon]

Say it's only a paper moon

Sailing over a cardboard sea

But it wouldn't be make-believe

If you believed in me

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I sang Body and Soul. I sang Loverman. I sang You're Just Too Marvelous for Words in my best and most intense Ella Fitzgerald impression mixed with some Sarah Vaughan.

[MUSIC - Cécile McLorin Salvant: Too Marvelous for Words]

You're just too marvelous, too marvelous for words

Like glorious, glamorous--

David Remnick: I get the feeling that at a certain point early on, you're like a magpie of different styles and voices that your teacher is giving you stacks of CDs to listen to. One week, it's Sarah Vaughan week. One week it's Ella Fitzgerald or Billie Holiday or whomever. This is all coming in as kind of information. None of them wins out. You don't become an imitator of any one of them. Do you think?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I think as I go through the phase with whoever it is, I am trying to sing as best I can like them. I think that's what was happening, but I was failing. You can never really sing like someone.

David Remnick: So the failing is becoming yourself?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: The failing is becoming yourself. Yes. It's interesting, the singers that he had me listen to, yes, there were those big ones, the famous ones. What was more interesting was all of the music by people that are completely unknown or not celebrated enough. People like Lil Hardin Armstrong. If you're doing a Lil Hardin Armstrong imitation, no one's going to really know because they don't know who she is, unfortunately.

David Remnick: My sources tell me that the song you're going to do next is pretty radically different. It's called Can She Excuse My Wrongs?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Oh, I would love to talk about this.

David Remnick: I want to know everything about it. It was written by an English musician who was born in the 16th century, John Dowland.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Yes.

David Remnick: Tell me about the song.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: The lyric is attributed to this man named Robert Devereux. The music is John Dowland, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, who was Queen Elizabeth I's favorite, or one of her favorites. It's an interesting lyric because he talks about his desire. The desire can be read two ways: as a desire for her or a desire for power. What happened to the Earl of Essex is that he was found out in a plot against her and was then executed by the Queen for plotting against her. The song, basically, everything is there.

David Remnick: Now, how did you learn about this song? Flipping around on Spotify or car radio? What?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I was taking lute lessons years ago. I thought that I would maybe learn a little bit of lute just for fun. This is a standard classic. This is Don't Rain on My Parade.

David Remnick: In the 16th century.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: In the 16th century lute.

David Remnick: That's what they were playing at the vanguard in the 16th century.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Exactly. Exactly.

David Remnick: Got you. Okay.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: He says, better a thousand times to die than for to live thus still tormented, dear, but remember, it was I who for thy sake did die contented, and he does die. It's crazy.

David Remnick: Well, let's give it a go.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Okay. Let's see if I remember.

[MUSIC - Cécile McLorin Salvant: Can She Excuse My Wrongs]

Can she excuse my wrongs with Virtue’s cloak

Shall I call her good when she proves unkind

Are those clear fires which vanish into smoke

Must I praise the leaves where no fruit I find

No, no; where shadows do for bodies stand

Thou may’st be abused if thy sight be dim

Cold love is like to words written on sand

Or to bubbles which on the water swim

Wilt thou be thus abused still

Seeing that she will right thee never

If thou canst not overcome her will

Thy love will be thus fruitless ever

Wilt thou be thus abused still,

Knowing that she will right thee never

Know but remember it was I

Who for thy sake did die contented

Was I so base that I might not aspire

Unto those high joys which she holds from me

As they are high, so high is my desire

If she this deny, what can granted be

If she will yield to that which reason is

It is reason’s will that love should be just

Dear, make me happy still by granting this

Or cut off delays that if I die must.

Better a thousand times to die

Than for to love thus still tormented

Dear, but remember it was I

Who for thy sake did die contented

Better a thousand times to die

Knowing that she will right me never

Dear, but remember it was I

Who for thy sake did die contented

Better a thousand times to die

Than for to live thus still tormented

Dear, but remember it was I

Who for thy sake did die contented

[laughter]

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I screwed up some lyrics. We're good.

David Remnick: Okay. This is what happens. After each song, the recriminations begin.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: They all in the studio.

David Remnick: You screwed something up?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: In the studio, always. It's funny enough, I was live. Well, no--

David Remnick: I'm speaking with the extraordinary singer Cécile McLorin Salvant, a three-time Grammy winner for Best Jazz Vocal Album. And Sullivan Fortner accompanies her on piano. Our conversation continues in just a moment. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and I've been speaking today with the singer Cécile McLorin Salvant. She's emerged as one of the great jazz artists of her generation.

I interviewed in this room, in this studio at WNYC years ago, Rhiannon Giddens. To me, she does a lot of things, but she does two things at once. In the sense that she's a great performer, but there's an element of her that she's also a scholar, She's a musicologist. She is an evangelist for all kinds of music. It seems to me with different music, you're doing a similar thing that Rhiannon Giddens does, is that you're introducing all kinds of things to the stage. Of course, you do standards and Broadway show tunes and things that we associate in our minds with what Sarah Vaughan did or Ella Fitzgerald. But so many other things are on your mind to give us.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: 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.

David Remnick: Her first band [crosstalk].

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Her first band. I learned about the banjo and what that instrument is and how it's a product of the African diaspora. I did not know. 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. Then, realizing through her in large part that, no, this is not just white music. This is actually music that originated with Black folks and with a mixture. She's huge to me. I actually sing one of her songs in my shows.

David Remnick: Which one is that?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: It's called Build a House.

David Remnick: Oh, yes.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I love that song.

[MUSIC - Rhiannon Giddens: Build a House]

You brought me here to build your house, build your house, build your house

You brought me here to build your house and grow your garden fine

David Remnick: Do you feel that you have that in mind, too? That it ain't just by chance that there's a project that you're building over time of introducing certain kinds of music to your audiences, whether it's in French or it's in English.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I think I have the spirit of a kind of a radio DJ/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.

David Remnick: Yet we began our conversation, or you're being here with Don't Rain on My Parade.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Yes. Huge hit.

David Remnick: Why do you want to do something that's so familiar and so associated with one singer?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: You know, a lot of the Decisions are very intuitive. That song, for me, is not about the fact that it's associated with Barbra Streisand. It's just such an optimistic kind of--

David Remnick: Make America.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Yes. Also, she's just so strong in that lyric.

David Remnick: It's not enough that you sing across the centuries and so beautifully, you also write extraordinary songs.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Oh, thank you.

David Remnick: Tell me about the beginning of songwriting and how you went about it, and what you were after.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: I first started writing songs-- well, I think as a kid, I wrote one song in my own invented language with my cousin, and then.

David Remnick: Can you sing it?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: [foreign language]

David Remnick: How old were you?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Who knows? Six.

David Remnick: Did you have a sense of what lyrics meant?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Maybe at the time, we knew what it meant. Now I don't know what it means.

David Remnick: Lost to the mists of time.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Lost, yes. I heard Abbey Lincoln. I heard an album of hers called Wholly Earth, and it made me want write.

[MUSIC - Abbey Lincoln: Wholly Earth]

Oh the holy earth’s a mural

Seen from way up high

Abstracted natural bas-relief

Witnessed from the sky

Cécile McLorin Salvant: The very first song I wrote or that I remember writing is a song called Woman Child. That was the title track of my second album. Yes, ever since then, I've been writing.

David Remnick: And you're writing them with the piano, with not the lute?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Not the lute. Not yet. I'm writing with the piano.

David Remnick: Why do I have a feeling that that's coming?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: No, no, no, no. With the piano and with a window. I like to look out a window.

David Remnick: How do you spend your days?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Long walk a lot of writing in the morning, and then eventually get to the piano at some point. Then embroidery. A lot of embroidery.

David Remnick: It's a lot of alone time.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Yes.

David Remnick: How does that inform the music?

Cécile McLorin Salvant: 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. I think all of those feelings are clearly coming from the fact that it's so much alone time, which I need.

David Remnick: I think I may be pressing my luck, but I'm hoping you'll sing Moon Song. Which is on the album Ghost Song from, I think, two years ago, three years ago. Tell me about the song before we hear it.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: 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. 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.

David Remnick: So different than a 16th-century lute-based song.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Maybe exactly the same as the 16th century. Maybe it's exactly Can She Excuse My Wrongs.

David Remnick: Yes, they had desire in the 16th century. Okay.

[MUSIC - Cécile McLorin Salvant: Moon Song]

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

Let me pine

Let me yearn

Let me crawl

Let me write you a song

And long to belong to you

Write you a song from a distance

Let me love you like I love the moon

Let me love you like I love the moon

David Remnick: I want to thank you so much for being here.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

David Remnick: This was great.

Cécile McLorin Salvant: Thanks for having both of us.

David Remnick: Cécile McLorin Salvant joined me in the studio at WNYC in May of last year, along with the pianist Sullivan Fortner.

 

Copyright © 2025 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.