A Blackqueer Theology of Liberation: Peace Beyond Passion at 25
June 25, 2021
In an interview in 1997, Meshell Ndegeocello (born Michelle Lynn Johnson) was asked about her [then] recent name change. The interviewer, curious about the switch, inquired about the rationale for her name change, both suggesting and asking, if the name change had to do with spiritual growth, and its possible effect(s) on her music. In a quick response, nearly cutting the interviewer off, Ndegeocello emphatically agreed, but with some reservations.
Talking about the role of spirituality in her music she stated: “oh, it torments me; makes me feel good on one day, some days it makes me feel like the world is about to end; causes me to question each step that I make…I’m trying to figure out what I’m driven by. Am I driven by simply being a good person and seeing the world…or do I sit and critique the world for all its problems? You know, hopefully my life comes together like the music comes together.”
—
On June 25, 2021 Meshell Ndegeocello’s sophomore album, Peace Beyond Passion will celebrate its 25th anniversary. On it, Ndegeocello centers questions, not answers, about religion, sexuality, and liberation, ultimately acting as the inquisitor. And musically, Ndegeocello extends her roots in Black American music traditions – the Blues, Jazz, Funk, Hip-Hop – engaging what some would later call “neo-soul”. Twenty-five years later, Ndegeocello’s sophomore album is still pushing us to ask questions about self, about liberation, and about the spaces we inhabit.
For context, at the time of its release, Peace Beyond Passion was met with warm reviews, praising the artist for her compositional prowess, as well as her virtuosic instrumental performances. The album garnered Ndegeocello a nomination for Best R&B album, amongst other accolades, and became Ndegeocello’s most successful commercial album to date. But beyond album sales and accolades, Ndegeocello offers something more; something that can never quite be quantified by chart positioning or album sales.
Meshell Ndegeocello presents us with something special: a de-centered Eurocentric-hetero-patriarchal theology, and recenters a Blackqueer theology of liberation – one that is critical and imaginative of what is yet to be; a rearticulation and possibility for living otherwise.
-----
Meshell Ndegeocello begins side 1 of Peace Beyond Passion with The Womb – an anticipatory tune built around a slow burning, mostly instrumental, welcoming groove in C minor. As the listener is settled into the warm sound of a Fender Rhodes, accompanied by a synthesizer and Ndegeocello’s smoothly played arpeggiated bass guitar, we are then quickly transported from the calm of the womb, into Ndegeocello’s furious bass slapping – the funk.
From The Womb we are taken to The Way. It is here that Ndegeocello introduces the central tension of the album – not through assertion, but through a series of questions, holding account to Eurocentric-hetero-patriarchal theological practices – a theology anyone that’s been in church, intimately or passively, is familiar with. Rather than make assumption, she questions the theological underpinning that is used as a method of oppression. She states: Jesus cured the blind man so that he could see the evils of this world / Perchance blindness is but a dark thought overcome by the light / Maybe Judas was the better man and Mary made a virgin just to save face / I too am so ashamed on bended knees / Prayin' to my pretty white Jesus.
Ndegeocello furthers this tension in the chorus, offering a “then” to the “if” presented in the verse – if Jesus is the way, the light, and the truth, then why am I enslaved by his followers and the logics of oppression that would see me as unworthy?
In the following three songs: Deuteronomy: Niggerman, Ecclesiastes: Free My Heart, and Leviticus: Faggot – Ndegeocello presents a radical reimagining of often weaponized theological texts.
Set to the sound of a break beat, synthesized bass line, and Hammond organ, Deuteronomy: Niggerman offers us with a critique of the imagery often used to define Blackness – in its femininity and masculinity – and one’s definition of self amidst the fray. Yet, intimacy and love persist.
As the song progresses and the music breaks, with a distorted voice – presumably the voice of God – Ndegeocello begins reciting texts directly from scripture. And to the woman he said: "I will greatly multiply your pains and your pregnancies. In pain you will bring forth children and to your husband you will turn and he will have authority over you – relegating women to a life of pain and suffering and domination. And at the height of the song, filled with great tension, Joshua Redman’s blazing tenor saxophone emerges in what feels like a response.
In Ecclesiastes: Free My Heart Ndegeocello’s lyrics read like a prayer: of longing, of hope. As the verses are presented in spoken word and the hooks sung, Ndegeocello challenges the form and structure of what one might expect from a song. The music – sparse as it may be, with a wailing guitar fading in and out – picks up as the song progresses, crescendoing with the refrain – Free my heart so my soul may fly / Free my mind of my worldly wants and desires / I look towards heaven with my arms open wide / Take my hand come and take my hand.
In the final song of the triplet, and the lead single from the album (also the only song with a music video from the album), Leviticus: Faggot, Ndegeocello offers her most scathing critique of the often-weaponized theological beliefs rooted in trans- and homophobia found in churches, homes, schools, government, and elsewhere. In the song, Ndegeocello presents the story of a boy, ridiculed and abandoned by his family; a father so panicked that he kicked the son out of the home; a mother so distraught that she would pray for [her idea] of his salvation. As the song reaches its climax, Funk Brother and Head Hunter alum, Wah Wah Watson’s guitar pushes the tune into its next movement, and Ndegeocello closes with the spiritual, Swing Down Sweet Chariot.
Ndegeocello’s theology centers the least of these – those ridiculed and relegated to the margins – at every turn. In Mary Magdalene Ndegeocello sings of desire, rather than the ridicule and scorn often associated with Mary Magdalene, shaping a new narrative that could only come from a recentered theology.
As the album progresses, we can see Ndegeocello’s theological framework developing – from dismantling to reconstruction. In God Shiva, a tune produced by Wendy Melvoin, presents herself as one attuning to self: I realize we are in truth / the truth we seek god / Perfect this very moment. With Ndegeocello playing a fretless bass and a patiently played acoustic guitar, God Shiva feels like breath.
—
Impressively, Ndegeocello’s second album boasts a roster of veteran musicians, producers, and engineers – a clear indication of the tradition that she follows in. Acts like, Wendy Melvoin, Billy Preston (whose own life was impacted by the type of Blackqueer grief Ndegeocello centers in the album), Benny Maupin, engineer, Bob Power, drummer, Gene Lake, and countless others round out the album’s all-star lineup. With this all-star lineup, Ndegeocello pays direct homage to artists like Roy Ayers (Bittersweet uses the same chord progression as Ayers’ Everybody Loves The Sunshine) or her cover of Bill Withers’ Who Is He and What Is He to You?
Given the album was released in 1996, Peace Beyond Passion is one of several to be released in a two-year window that would mark a moment of sonic transformation. Following Ndegeocello, Maxwell, D’Angelo, and Erykah Badu would release their debut albums in ’96 and ‘97, albums that would later be characterized as “neo-soul” – a term coined by music executive Kedar Massenburg. Though, at the time of its release, such a label did not exist.
As a final contextual note of hindsight, when Me’shell Ndegeocello released Peace Beyond Passion in 1996, Pride Month certainly didn’t have the corporate backing its gained in recent years. In fact, when Ndegeocello released the video for the lead single Leviticus: Faggot many music video stations would not even play the video – some fearing backlash, some citing the song’s title as problematic – none of which Ndegeocello found to be credible reasons (and they weren’t credible).
—
In the preface to the 1986 edition of James Cone’s hallowed text, A Black Theology of Liberation, Cone writes about how the framework he had evolved since its initial publication in 1970. For Cone, his beliefs about white theology had not changed. For Cone, white theology is nothing more than “a racist theological justification of the status quo.” Cone also writes how, at the time of the initial publication, he had not traveled to Asia, Africa, or Latin America, and how traveling to such places would’ve offered him a perspective on the global struggle against racism(s) and class exploitation. But Cone also mentions another area in which he’s begun to develop: the issue of sexism in theology. In the text, Cone writes: “I have become so embarrassed by that failure that I could not reissue this volume without making a note of it and without changing the language exclusive of the 1970 edition to inclusive language.”
Where Cone falls short, Ndegeocello moves forward. Ndegeocello presents us with a clear and robust Blackqueer Theology of Liberation – one that shows us the interconnectedness racism, sexism, classism, transphobia, and homophobia. Ndegeocello also shows a way out. She presents us with a humanness and an imagination that is not based in a Euro-hetero-patriarchal standard, but in a Blackqueer imagination of liberation.
