Artist:     Chanda Rule and the Sweet Emma Band

Album:     Hold On

Label:     PAO

Release Date:     3.15.2020

89

BUY DIGITAL

BUY PHYSICAL

Hold On is the second album on this label from soultress-jazz vocalist and songwriter Chanda Rule and it is quite different from last year’s debut, Sapphire Dreams, in which she offered both originals and covers. In fact, this one could practically serve as the soundtrack to the recent film Harriet, as it’s mostly filled with traditional gospel hymns and songs. She acknowledges such in the liners saying, “My musical tastes have always predated me. The bluesy gospel hymns of my grandmothers, moans born in field and rhythms that still hover above the Atlantic Ocean have worked my dreams as long as I can remember.” Now residing in Austria, she recalled “a sea of ancestral energy, supporting me. Guiding my light.” These songs honor them. The songs were originally written and sung by un-named and undocumented African-American mothers, fathers, workers, prisoners, preachers, sons and daughters. Likely you’ve never heard these traditional tunes, infused with jazz, like these.

Chanda Rule has roots in gospel, sings at times like a soul singer, and knows her way around jazz. She’s rather genre-defying when considering the breadth of her projects. She sounds like a modern-day Nina Simone and it’s no wonder she had the courage to take on Nina Simone in “Feeling Good: A Tribute to Nina Simone” where she sang alongside saxophonist Donny McCaslin. She has also opened for India Arie, Kamasi Washington, Angela Bofill, Regina Belle & Whispers, as well as having worked with a variety of artists. Rule is a published writer, ordained interfaith minister and speaker who uses her music for community building and liturgy. With so much success, especially in New York, why relocate? It was in New York where she met her partner-in-life, an Austrian. Since moving to Vienna she’s embarked on a whole new musical career and performs all over Europe where, for this effort, she had access to multi-faceted Austrian producer/trombonist and label owner Paul Zauner, who favors a bluesy kind of jazz and has contacts to some great musicians.

Zauner’s jazz ensemble, Blue Brass, landed on some “Best Of” lists for their Roots n’ Wings, their collaboration with David Murray. The trumpeter from that group, Mario Rom, along with Jan Korinek on the Hammond B3, Osian Roberts on tenor sax, and Christina Salfelner on drums join Zauner in Rule’s backing quintet. The band takes its name from Sweet Emma, an American pianist and singer from New Orleans who performed regularly at Preservation Hall. Nat and Cannonball Adderley dedicated the song “Sweet Emma” to her.

You know most of these songs: “Another Man Done Gone” with Billy Branch guesting on harmonica; “I’ll Fly Away,” which, like the previous, Rule changed some of the lyrics to be more contemporary. The traditional “Motherless Chile” and “Sinnerman,”(an outstanding version with spirited soling and interplay from the band) are tunes that often graced Nina Simone’s sets. The gospel chestnut title track appears along with two other traditionals, “Rosalie” and “Carry It Home to Rosie.” The sublime closer “Come Sunday” is from Duke Ellington.
Chanda Rule may well be one of the best singers Americans have never heard, given that both of her recordings were based in Europe. But make no mistake; she is an African-American fully aware and proud of her roots, one who delivers her songs with deep spirit and passion.

—Jim Hynes