Bobby McFerrin reflects on inspiration, new album ahead of Hill Auditorium concert

Over the last 30-plus years, Bobby McFerrin has consistently shown his talent for tapping into a variety of musical forms—jazz, classical, pop, gospel—then combining and re-combining them to come up with something uniquely his own.

He's best known, of course, for his sing-songy, playful 1988 hit, "Don't Worry, Be Happy." But he's also collaborated with jazz giants like Chick Corea and classical heavyweights like Yo Yo Ma, and has conducted orchestras as well.

And on his new album, McFerrin—who comes to Hill Auditorium on Thursday for a show presented by the University Musical Society—connects with one of his earliest influences. The album, "spirityouall," slated for May 14 release, largely plumbs the traditional Negro spirituals he heard as a child, when his father, Robert McFerrin Sr., was a well-known opera singer and interpreter of those old spirituals (and was also the first African American to sign a contract with the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York City.)

The album's title—"spirityouall"—is a play on the word spiritual. The disc features seven classic spirituals, including three that his father recorded, plus an inspired re-working of Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released," and a track titled "25:15," wherin McFerrin takes the words to Psalm 25:15, and, along with his band and arranger Gil Goldstein, gives it a slow-burn, bluesy treatment that's as surprising as it is evocative. The album also draws on folk, rock and bluegrass: the use of acoustic and pedal steel guitars, accordions, violin and mandolin give much of the record an Americana-music vibe—although electronic keyboards are also part of the mix. "Spirityouall" showcases McFerrin's compositional talents as well, featuring five original songs.

McFerrin had long wanted to do an album that focused at least in part on classic spirituals, but he said that it was a long, slow process.

"But now it really feels just right," said McFerrin in a recent e-mail interview. "Things happen in their own time. I wanted to record some sacred music. I thought about revisiting the spirituals. I thought about doing a folk/rock/country record. I thought about doing a tribute to my dad. All those things kicked around for years and years. Then they came together, and it all made sense."

For McFerrin, those old Negro spirituals continue to have tremendous power—on a social / cultural level, as well as a spiritual one.

"They have such an incredible history," said McFerrin. "But somehow they're not stuck in that specific history—they're universal.

"So everybody singing them is saying different things, but also the same thing -- like the slaves talking to each other in code about getting to the other side of the Ohio River, or some lonely person in the 1940s, or 10 years from now, in the 2020s, expressing a longing to find a better place, or a church choir leading a congregation in a plea for redemption....I think these tunes—the music and the lyrics—hit something basic about being human in this world."

And once he decided that this album would focus on the old spirituals, it was important to McFerrin that some of them were songs his father recorded—in this case, “Every Time I Feel the Spirit,” “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” and “Fix Me Jesus.”

"Those songs are just in my ears," said McFerrin. "I heard him practicing them when I was little, coaching them with the legendary Hall Johnson, a great man who trained at Juilliard and helped the spirituals get recognition in the classical world—his grandmother was a slave, and he had strong ideas about how those songs should be sung."

But, being plugged into so many musical forms, and having such a gift for sometimes-acrobatic vocal improvisation, McFerrin does not hew to the trad-gospel style—or to his father's more formal, operatic approach—on those old spirituals. Instead, he creates his own, nimble, vocal arrangements.

"My father had an incredible voice, and the way he approached his music was a huge influence on me," said McFerrin. "Discipline, reverence, the highest standards—it's all part of me. I could never sing the way he sings, and I wouldn't want to—he already did that better than I could. He had a different perspective. I've rebelled against it in some ways, but I've embraced it even more. I just needed to find my own way to sing them."

McFerrin's crack band on "spirityouall" includes Grammy-winning bassist / singer Esperanza Spalding, who adds vocals on three tracks; drummer Ali Jackson, a Detroit native who's the longtime drummer for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and guitarist / multi-instrumentalist Larry Campbell, who was Levon Helm's musical director / producer during Levon's "comeback" years, from 2007-2012, up until his death (and was also one of Bob Dylan's lead guitarists from the late 1990s to the mid-2000s).

Dylan's "I Shall Be Released" has been covered many times, of course, but given the sentiments expressed in the song, McFerrin felt compelled to work up his own interpretation for this album.

"I just love (that song)," he said. "What was a little scary was the thought of 'covering' something so iconic. So, to be honest, though the song is in my memory bank, once we had the idea to record it, I didn't listen to Dylan's version (again), or look at the music....I just wanted to feel it out for myself."

The record's overall spiritual theme is also an expression of McFerrin's own beliefs. "Faith is everything for me," he said. "I couldn't sing or get up in the morning without faith. Sometimes people ask me how I do what I do, and I can give them tips on practicing and thinking about improvisation.

"But the real secret is that every day, every hour, I try to stay in touch with the incredible wonder of what it is to be human and to have a sense of the divine. I try to stay right with my life, right with myself, right with God. It's easy for me to sing these lyrics. They have new meaning every time."

That faith also inspired his decision to turn Psalm 25:15 into a song for the new recording: "I spend a lot of time with the Book of Psalms," he said. "Sometimes when I pray in the morning I sing the texts. This one just happened."

Kevin Ransom is a freelance writer who covers music for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at KevinRansom10@aol.com.