Some of Ashley Jackson's earliest memories took place at church services she attended with her grandmother. The rising harp player leaned into those experiences for her sophomore album Take Me to The Water. Spirituals, and their coded messages of freedom for the enslaved, are at the heart of her arrangements of works by Alice Coltrane, Margaret Bonds and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
Jackson conjures up spiritual realms that glide like a raft on calm waters. Her mellifluous tone is augmented at times by extended techniques of her own, like using a pair of socks to partially mute the strings and bring out a bassline. While classically trained, she's also at ease in folk, jazz and West African rhythms. Her highly evocative style is also a great match for the first movement of Debussy's Danse sacrée et danse profane (Sacred and Profane Dances), a piece she has performed since her high school years. Accompanied by The Harlem Chamber Players collective, Jackson brings out chromatic washes of musical colors. In her own composition "River Jordan," she plucks evocative chords and hums while drumming on the harp, blending melodies from the spirituals "I'm Going Down to The River Jordan" and "Deep River."
Jackson visited NPR's New York bureau for a conversation with Morning Edition host Michel Martin. She took her harp with her, wheeling it on a dolly through a loading dock, a long, low-ceiling corridor and, finally, a freight elevator.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Michel Martin: Let's start with the concept behind your album. It revolves around African American spirituals. Some people have grown up with these, they are a very deep part of our cultural history, like the background music to our lives. What gave you this idea?
Ashley Jackson: In African American spirituals, for me, the ingenuity lies in the coded language. Looking at the lyrics, I was captivated by water being the symbol of freedom, of being a symbol of hope for my ancestors. So that forms the focal point of the album. I was also thinking a lot about my experiences going to church with my grandmother as a young kid and not understanding everything about the service, but being so moved by the music and how it made the congregation get up to their feet and sing and clap and dance. So I reference baptism spirituals that I heard growing up, such as "Take Me to The Water."
Martin: I grew up with them, too. What can you say about what water means in many of these spirituals?
Jackson: African American spirituals were a necessary form of communication between the enslaved. Their oppressors wanted them to sing. They enjoyed the beautiful harmonies of the enslaved. So on the one hand, it kind of distracted the oppressors from what they were really trying to say. And what I mean by that is for many of the lyrics, the words are coded with a double meaning. They couldn't explicitly express their desire for freedom because that would sound many alarms. So water becomes a metaphor for freedom. Practically speaking, water was often an escape route for those trying to go North. But more broadly, it represented rebirth and hope. And so we often have references to the River Jordan, such as in "Deep river, my home is over Jordan." So, my home is somewhere else, there's a possibility of freedom somewhere else.
Martin: Right. My home is not this place where I am in captivity. My home is freedom. It could mean lots of things. It could mean spiritual freedom. It can mean freedom in your own head. And it could mean literal freedom, physical freedom. And it could mean death. It could mean release me.
Jackson: Right, the very personal declarations of the desires of the enslaved. And so when we look at those words, it's really for me the clearest insight to what they were feeling.
Martin: Did you have a eureka moment when you realized that you did not have to separate the world that you grew up in from the world that you have learned?
Jackson: Yes. When I was coming to the end of my doctoral studies at Juilliard…
Martin: Just want to drop that in. You have a doctorate from Juilliard, you have a bachelor's and a master's from Yale. So if anyone's feeling a little inadequate today, this is not the day to look at your resume.
Jackson: When I was finishing up my doctorate, I was researching the composer Margaret Bonds, who was of African American descent. And she, for me, was really a role model. She was somebody who had integrated her upbringing in the Church, the spirituals, constantly using the words of Black poets in her music. And even though her time was before me, I felt like, if she did it, maybe there's a space for me.
Martin: She was the first African American female pianist of renown.
Jackson: That's right. She was very close to Langston Hughes. So as I'm leaving school, I'm thinking about the world in front of me, in the world of classical music, and how too often I didn't see myself represented, I didn't see my music represented. I wanted to always do something that my community would be proud of.
Martin: Let's stay with Margaret Bonds for a minute. For "Troubled Water," you developed a technique to mimic movement on water.
Jackson: "Troubled Water" by Margaret Bonds is originally for piano, and it's a tour de force. As a harpist, I had a lot of work to do to make it work. In the recording session, we were starting the opening and it's low in the strings. And I thought, "Well, I have a pair of socks in my purse." When our daughter was very young, I used to mute the strings by weaving different head scarves just to make the strings really quiet.
Martin: So that she could sleep?
Jackson: Yes. And so I wove my pair of socks in between the lower strings, so we can get that baseline. It begins in this very low rumbling, kind of murky waters, so to speak.
Martin: I must say, I loved "Yemaya." There are two parts. And the first one is so meditative. I found myself playing it over and over again. It almost takes over your body.
Jackson: In the recording session, to my string players and to my producer, I said, "This needs to feel like we're in the depths of water." I now live in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. So in terms of imagery, I was thinking about our swamps and my ancestors kind of moving slowly perhaps towards freedom. I superimposed the melody of an Afro-Cuban chant about Yemaya [the goddess of the ocean in Afro-Caribbean religions] over some music by a friend of mine, João Luiz Rezende Lopes, who's a guitarist and composer. It works really beautifully together, and it allowed us to kind of enter a different sound world altogether.
Martin: Another composer that you lift up on this album but also make it your own is Alice Coltrane, the wife of John Coltrane, the famous jazz saxophonist. Tell us about her and why it was important for her to be present on this album.
Jackson: I was first introduced to her music through my father, who was a lover of jazz. After I became a mother, I had an opportunity to play her music with a small orchestra. I realized that what resonated with me most was how she really talked about being a mother and an artist and a wife in this beautiful, holistic way. And for me, as a young mother working from home during the pandemic, raising our young daughter, it really spoke to me and just the love that she had and the spirituality that she walked through life with gave me something during that time.
Martin: I wish everybody could see your harp. It's big, beautifully ornate, and it's really detailed, with some sort of filigree.
Jackson: This is a harp made by Salvi in Italy. It's kind of new to me, so I'm very excited to be sharing it with you. All of the designs are still hand-carved and each of the soundboard designs are unique.
Martin: Your album arrives at a very anxious time.
Jackson: I know. And unfortunately, I didn't anticipate the current climate that we're in and my album being a part of that conversation. So I've thought a lot about how it might resonate differently. There are so many world events and local events that are confusing and challenging. I just hope that music does what it does, bring people together.
Martin: Or offer respite, sanctuary.
Jackson: Yes, because there's still a place for beauty in this world.
The broadcast version of this story was produced by Barry Gordemer. The digital version was edited by Tom Huizenga.
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