Cécile McLorin Salvant - The healing power of small disasters

The American singer Cecile McLorin Salvant is celebrated by audiences and critics alike. Not only does she have a subscription to all the relevant annual best lists. In a career spanning over a decade, she has received more awards than many jazz legends in a lifetime. These include first place at the Thelonious Monk International Competition, the most important jazz competition in the world, three Grammys, the German Jazz Award and the MacArthur Fellowship, also known as the "Genius Award", which is worth 800,000 US dollars. McLorin Salvant is the perfect combination of what has been and what is to come. And not just as a jazz singer. For years, she has succeeded seemingly effortlessly in doing what the world around her regularly fails to do: combine social criticism with self-irony and exemplify feminist activism without lecturing. This may also be due to the fact that she herself is never just one thing. The American with Haitian-French roots, artistically a double talent as a musician and visual artist, grew up multilingual and lives what enlightened societies strive for as a matter of course: Diversity. Musically, too, she cannot be reduced to the role of singer. She is also her own composer, lyricist, bandleader, art director and producer.

Many years ago, Cecile, aged around 13, was sitting in the back of a car on her way to a piano exam. There was only one thought in her head: "I can't memorize any of these pieces. I'm just not ready for this audition." The situation was hopeless. In her panic, she could only think of one way out. A car accident!

That would save the day. So she kept repeating to herself like an incantatory mantra: "Car accident! Car accident! Car accident!" She remembers even performing a kind of car crash dance in the car. And then it actually happened: a car accident. Luckily, according to the Cecile of today, she only wished for a "car accident" and not a "serious car accident". And so it remained a largely inconsequential bumper-to-bumper rebound. When asked about the incident in an interview with jazz pianist and blogger Ethan Iverson, she explained with a wink: "My evil, evil spirit was rewarded." Because the exam was then postponed by a week. "It was as if I had been given life. I then practised, practised, practised the whole time and did really well in the exam."

And what exactly does this episode from the life of the "best jazz singer of the last decade" (New York Times) want to tell us? It was her own thoughts that obviously - and enriched by a small spiritual component - spontaneously healed a rather hopeless situation in her life. Of course, we don't want this little story to give the impression that the healer didn't differentiate between good and bad thoughts. In any case, we believe that it is much safer to think positively in the long term. Fortunately, the artist is long past the point of having to wish for a car accident to prevent this.

Cécile McLorin Salvant will be performing live at Enjoy Jazz at BASF Feierabendhaus on Friday, October 25, at 8 pm.