Bobby McFerrin’s Circlesongs project has everyone singing for joy
Acclaimed singer Bobby McFerrin and his group Motion come to the Freight & Salvage for two nights of Circlesinging.
Just about every Monday afternoon at Freight & Salvage, Bobby McFerrin reenacts the creation of the universe.
No stars or planets coalesce in the venerable Berkeley venue, but sitting on stage flanked by the four vocalists in his ensemble Motion, the NEA Jazz Master taps into a protean force conjured by spontaneously generated melodies and rhythms.
Since November 2021, the vocal sorcerer has convened Circlesongs at the Freight, encounters that are both Motion performances and open mic sessions in which audience members can join McFerrin, Tammi Brown, Bryan Dyer, David Worm and Destani Wolf to start new rounds of improvisation. You never know who might drop by. Grammy Award-winning jazz violinist Mads Tolling has joined the fray and a few weeks ago Phish bassist Mike Gordon checked out the scene.
In a departure from the Monday meetings, McFerrin is bringing Circlesongs to the weekend with evening Motion performances at the Freight June 1 and 2. The idea is to make the practice as accessible as possible, while offering a taste of the immersive experience available at the CirclesongSchool retreat taking place at Grace Cathedral July 24-29.
For McFerrin, everything’s going according to his planless plan. He started the Freight sessions looking for a situation to heal his voice and spirit after a few rough years. Calling Worm, a longtime compadre, he said, “We’re going to improvise, not continuously but throughout,” McFerrin recalled in a January interview shortly before he received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award. “I want nothing more than to sing with other people.”
McFerrin brings a singular body of experience to presiding over the Circlesong sessions. He’s conducted the world’s greatest orchestras, scored a chart-topping pop hit with 1988’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” and has performed and recorded with a succession of fellow musical adventurers, including Yo-Yo Ma, Chick Corea, and Herbie Hancock.
Watching him lead Circlesongs brings to mind recent essays by Ted Gioia, the dauntingly original music writer who lived in Palo Alto for many years. He’s been publishing a new book, “Music to Raise the Dead,” chapter by chapter, on Substack, and he argues that music’s essential role in human evolution is largely uncredited in contemporary musicology.
“In ancient myths, we hear of the world literally being sung into being out of chaos,” Gioia writes, “and that’s true whether we’re discussing the quasi-magical Songlines of Aboriginal culture in Australia or Shiva creating the universe, in Hindu iconography, with a damaru, an hourglass-shaped drum of tremendous antiquity, or a host of other mythic traditions.”
In his ability to absorb and channel any new sound that enters the Circlesong orbit, McFerrin seems to embody music’s generative power, creating harmony and groove out of disorder. The process is as much a spiritual calling as a creative practice, though McFerrin might argue that’s there’s really no distinction.
In many ways finding a community to sing with lifted McFerrin out of a debilitating bout of depression. He and his wife Deb had moved back to San Francisco in 2019 after two decades in the Philadelphia area, and he was dealing with the onset of Parkinson’s.
“I went through a period of depression because I wasn’t singing anymore, and the voice I did have was flawed,” he said. “I couldn’t get any sound. I didn’t have much control over it. And it took me about a year and a half to get through it.”
It was her upbringing in the Black church, rather than her formal musical training, that provided a path into Motion for Santa Cruz singer Tammi Brown. At the initial gatherings McFerrin convened for the Motion singers to get to know each other, “I felt a lot of trepidation,” she said.
It’s not that she was unfamiliar with improvisation. An accomplished jazz singer who earned national attention for her work on the award-winning album “Lost American JazzBook,” she was used to “a very organized way of presenting music,” she said, like her June 24 concert at Kuumbwa “Tammi Brown Sings Ella.”
In getting accustomed to responding to open mic contributions by people who might not be trained musicians, she found herself drawing on her church background. “There’s a moaning type of effect to invoke the spirit, a loose thing but with tonality and in key,” she said. “Bobby really helped me to get to a place of comfort with it. It’s like having an empty canvas. Someone throws some paint, you add your piece and it grows from there.”
The group has taken on a life of its own apart from McFerrin, performing as the a cappella quartet Attúne. In Motion, McFerrin is the “center and foundation,” Brown said. “When he’s not there the focal point turns into four people. It’s the same process, but has a different point of beginning.”
Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.
BOBBY McFERRIN
When: 8 p.m. June 1-2
Where: Freight & Salvage, 2020 Addison St., Berkeley
Tickets: $35-$39, 510-644-2020, www.thefreight.org