EMERGING ARTIST MELANIE CHARLES’ NEW ALBUM Y’ALL DON’T (REALLY) CARE ABOUT BLACK WOMEN OUT NOW ON VERVE

PROJECT CONTAINS REIMAGINED WORKS BY
BILLIE HOLIDAY, ELLA FITZGERALD, SARAH VAUGHAN,
DINAH WASHINGTON AND MORE

Y’all Don’t (Really) Care About Black Women, the new album from emerging artist Melanie Charles, is out now on Verve, marking her first major label release. The project is a love letter to the unheralded labor of Black women, containing reimagined works by Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Abbey Lincoln, Dinah Washington and more. Fans can listen/to share the record HERE.

The new music continues to receive critical praise:

“Breathing new life into a 1960’s anthem for empowerment, Melanie Charles delivers a charged performance of Marlena Shaw’s ‘Woman of The Ghetto.’”—Billboard

“Charles’ reimagination of Sarah Vaughan’s ‘Detour Ahead’ is an ode to resilience”—Flood Magazine

“Melanie Charles saturates Ya’ll Don’t (Really) Care About Black Women with immense Black Girl Magic. And, in turn, the album transmutes and diffuses that magic spectacularly as she reimagines classic songs by Billie Holiday, Abbey Lincoln, Betty Carter, Ella Fitzgerald and others with a personal, sometimes phantasmagoric spin.”—Downbeat

“Y’all Don’t (Really) Care About Black Women finds vocalist Melanie Charles radically reimagining jazz classics for a psychedelic dance floor. She samples at length from original sessions by the likes of Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan and Marlena Shaw — exploding that material into modern-day trap beats and deep house grooves. The listening experience track by track is so compelling that it leaves me wondering what’s going to happen next.”—WBGO.org

“When one continues to go through the tracklist of Y'all Don't (Really) Care About Black Women, a rich tapestry emerges, one that maps and celebrates the history of Black women in jazz.”—Amaka

Charles originally began developing the project in 2019 when she was approached by Verve to create a remix album using their back catalog. Her initial approach was to find songs that spoke to her with the intention of breathing new energy into them. She was immediately drawn to the voices of Billie Holiday and Sarah Vaughn, enabling her to reminisce about the tunes and voices that made her fall in love with jazz. By the time she was ready to start recording, the pandemic hit and Americans were in the throes of a racial reckoning sparked by the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and countless others. Taylor’s death had an impact on Charles’ creative process.

On Y’all Don’t (Really) Care About Black Women, Charles leaves listeners with a powerful statement on what solidarity with Black women can look like. It includes not only care and attention to the everyday struggles that animate Black women’s lives, but also to the beauty and joy as well. At its core, the record is a call for a more intersectional vision of the world in which Black women can live more freely and express their full humanity.

Melanie Charles is a Brooklyn-born singer, songwriter, bandleader, producer, actress and flautist of Haitian descent, with a creative fluidity spanning jazz, soul, experimental and roots music. Charles was raised by a Haitian mother in Brooklyn where the sound waves in their home was filled with artists like Johnny Hodges, Frank Sinatra, Chaka Khan, Anita Baker, John Coltrane and Nat King Cole. As a teen, she attended the famed LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts where she studied flute and vocals. Eventually, she landed at the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music at The New School where she met artists like singer, songwriter and record producer Jesse Boykins III and alto saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin.

Charles’ genre-bending style has been embraced by a wide range of artists including Wynton Marsalis, SZA, Mach-Hommy, Gorillaz and The Roots. Throughout her career she has remained committed to making music that pushes listeners to consider new possibilities, both sonically and politically. “Make Jazz Trill Again,” a project that she launched in 2016, demonstrates her allegiance to everyday people, especially the youth and is focused on taking jazz from the museum to the streets. Earlier this year, Charles’ Tiny Desk (Home) Concert debuted on NPR Music, who proclaimed, “Melanie Charles takes us on a journey that embodies the soul of jazz: exploration.”

For additional information on Y’all Don’t (Really) Care About Black Women, see Melanie Charles’ bio/artist notes HERE.

For more information, please contact Louis D'Adamio or Carla Sacks at Sacks & Co., 212.741.1000.

MELANIE CHARLES
Y’ALL DON’T (REALLY) CARE
ABOUT BLACK WOMEN
1. God Bless The Child
2. Perdido (Reimagined)
3. Detour Ahead (Reimagined)
4. All Africa (The Beat)
5. The Music is the Magic
6. Pay Black Woman (Interlude)
7. Woman Of The Ghetto (Reimagined)
8. Jazz (Ain’t Nothing But Soul) [Reimagined]
9. Go Away Little Boy
10. What A Difference (Reimagined)
11. Beginning to See the Light (Reimagined)


MELANIECHARLES.COM