China Moses: Singing defending artistic freedom

Photo by Alexandre Lacombe

Her voice, her artistry, her humanity are important. She changes lives. She empowers. She mentioned to me that she can be an ‘acquired taste’, but to my mind, it is a taste that everyone needs to acquire – the world would genuinely be a better place. China Moses is an artist who fills you with joy. Whether you are watching her perform, listening to her radio shows or reading her social media posts, China Moses makes you feel that anything and everything is not only possible, but deserved and welcomed with open arms. 

Fear of consequence is something that holds many of us back, especially women. We see bad behaviour. We experience bad behaviour,  but the fear of reputational damage is real. There are countless women who have and continue to be ‘black listed’ for speaking out and are no longer booked for gigs and more. But when we see an artist speak their truth, publicly, the impact of this is significant. It empowers and strengthens the community. It brings light to a dark situation. China Moses recently spoke out, very publicly, about not being paid for some work. ‘If speaking up costs me future opportunities, I accept that. What matters more is exposing these harmful industry practices. I’ve made this public because silence only perpetuates these problems.’ The community surrounded her with love, support and celebration. Other people came forward, inspired by the safety China had provided. China did something women before her felt they were never able to do and years from now, when we look through the history books at trailblazers and pioneers, China will be there.

China’s upcoming album ‘It’s Complicated’ is a masterpiece. Eight tracks full of the multiple layers of life – China’s life, our lives – China connects with us all and this is one of her many superpowers, the ability to share her truth with the audience. 

‘I can’t feel anything, my heart is broken’ a line from ‘broken (pour Alberte)’ is sung with a depth of emotion that will blow your mind. Every line she sings will reach deep into your heart, mind and soul. Allowing yourself the space to open up and share that level of vulnerability is powerful and where some artists struggle and feel uncomfortable in this space, China not only embraces it, she transcends in it.

It’s intentional. Totally intentional. I profoundly believe that if I don’t open myself up as an artist, then there’s no way that somebody standing in the audience is going to be able to fully receive. I’m not here, in my art and in my time on this earth, to serve the artistic process and the power of music in a way it doesn’t also help me. So, for it to help me, I have to be exactly who I am – the good, bad and the ugly. And I share that a lot on the stage. It is therapeutic and as simplistic as it sounds, music is a form of therapy for me. If I did not have music, I would not be here. I would have checked out a long time ago. The power of music to bring us together as humans… that experience of sharing on stage. I only make albums to be able to perform. I don’t enjoy the recording process. I mean, it’s fun, but it’s not what I live for. I like the live connection; I like the human connection of music and that’s what keeps me doing it.

Photo by Ward Roberts

I profoundly know that what I’m feeling, millions of other people have felt, and it is the artist’s role to be able to translate those emotions and be able to make pieces of art that can help everybody express that. That’s what art is for, for me. I try to respect that. I have always been comfortable being very straightforward and not hiding behind my natural joyfulness, which is totally natural for me, I like to smile, it’s just how I am. I enjoy smiling, I like laughing, I like seeing the best in people. I also just like accepting humans as they are because I wish for the world to accept me as I am. And it’s never uncomfortable. I do have to deal with resurfacing emotions constantly, that’s the most difficult part, but that’s something that the audience doesn’t have to deal with. I have had to learn to deal with that because performing is my job. It’s not happenstance that I’m on stage. Somebody invited me, provided a budget for me to bring my musicians. It’s not ‘oops,’ we are there. How I have learned to deal with things has taken a lot of therapy, a lot of conversations with other artists and being comfortable in this talent that I have to perform. I learnt my craft by studying other great performers and it is a craft. We all learn to deal with it differently.

China has been surrounded by artistic excellence her whole life. The daughter of two legends – activist, theatre, television and film actor and director Gilbert Moses III and Grammy and Tony Award-winning producer, vocalist and pioneer Dee Dee Bridgewater, China is a trailblazer born from trailblazers. A visionary birthed from visionaries. Having worked in the industry for many years, China knows not only who she is, and but why she is.

I’ve dealt with being observed by, and picked apart by other humans my whole life. So now that I’ve been doing this professionally for 30 years, I’m comfortable with laying it out – what’s the worst that can happen? Somebody doesn’t like it and they leave? That’s literally the worst thing that can happen. The other worst thing that can happen is for me to keep it all bottled up. So, since those are the two extremes, I have no problem risking my chance in front of other people. I have faith. When you lay it out like that, I’ll take that risk and that’s a small risk. It’s a special energy and a special magic. 

Many artists are scared of those risks and the fear of consequence, but China not only embraces those risks, she emboldens herself and others through her risk taking – and not just in her music. That level of assured fearlessness instils strength in all those around her.

Artwork by Anthony Peyton Young

I think it also has a lot to do with accepting humans. Other humans are just going to be who they’re going to be. I’m not surprised when somebody does something good or something bad and that same person can do it on two different days or in the same day. I’m not surprised about it as much as I used to be.  I think that’s directly linked to how I perform. That’s just how I was born. I don’t question it, but I also know my limits. I know what spaces I can fully feel comfortable in and what spaces I don’t. I know what jobs I can do and what I’m willing to try. I just did a wonderful improvised show with Tyshawn Sorey & King Britt in France for the Blacktronika movement and it was incredible. It was absolutely incredible. Had I ever done a fully improvised show? No but it was a lot of fun. I had to rethink what improvisation means for me and for the musical language I have within myself and I had to trust that. Nobody booed me off the stage. The musicians still like me. They followed me on socials. Because that is the thing: nobody’s going to boo you off the stage unless you’re really, really bad. In the world that we live in, a world of more and more acceptance and understanding of other people, you have to be a really bad performer or say something really hyper offensive to get booed off the stage. 

Me not accepting the fact that I have a gift that was bestowed upon me, to define me by my ‘powers’ from the universe and whatever mixture that happened in my DNA, in my upbringing and my nurturing and in my culture, multiple cultures…whatever the mixture that has brought me to be who I am, I have to just accept it. Not run away from it. I do it to the best of my ability and the questions I’ve started asking myself are – How do I get better? How do I do better? How can I respect it? How can I open doors for others? How can I make sure those doors stay open? How do I stay in the joy? How do I stay in the mystical magic of this thing called music? Performance. 

China’s upcoming album It’s Complicated  is a masterclass. Multi layers of styles, themes, grooves, emotions and brilliance.  The line up is inspired. Surrounded by artists that are not only at the top of their game, but artists that understand the beauty and power of China Moses. It’s Complicated  demonstrates the mastery of her songwriting and hits you on so many levels.

Everything that Black Americans have had their hands in, is in this album. You have deep, porch Mississippi blues energy and at the same time you have fusion, jazz and a kind of hip hopian essence. It is also Marvin Gaye-inspired. Every single song is like a mash up, a beautiful mixture of what my influences are and what my heritage is, and my heritage is complicated. It’s constantly being put into question  – being a black American, what does it mean? Are we a tribe or are we a culture? There’s a whole conversation about that over here in the States. You have African American descendants of slaves; there’s a terminology for it and in the United States, you put terms on everything, which is helpful and then at the same time totally not helpful – it’s complicated! Growing up as black American within France or living in London, being friends with people who know they are Nigerian or they know they’re Jamaican, I’m American, what does that mean? I’m black American. What does that mean? What does it mean reclaiming the importance of my tribe? What does it mean to actually start calling it something like a tribe or community or heritage?

But the debate is, is my culture any less? And what part of my culture is of course is from my ancestors, who were enslaved people brought by force to another continent, but also transformed and made the melting pot of all of these different tribes and heritages that has become what black Americans are today – and what does that mean? And what it was like for me growing up in a predominantly white society and coming back to the States and hanging out with black Americans, knowing that I have holes, that I’m missing of my own culture. All these conversations.  So, it’s a lot, and after a while you try to explain it by word, but I just do it by music. 

We all are holes of so many fractured pieces of history. It’s the nurturing versus the nature and the culture of where you landed, and also what your inner personality is and how you can integrate the outside world into your personality. How your sensibilities understand the outside world and transform that information. It all filters into the music.  I’m also very careful with what I say and how I word things when I talk about my culture. I evolve within the jazz realm. But what I do is not consider jazz, and it shouldn’t be considered jazz. It’s jazz inspired. I am a child of jazz. It is my heritage. It is the music of my culture. But am I a jazz artist? I will leave that for other people to go and debate. What I know is that I appreciate a lot of different artists, different cities and cultures and I understand the atrocities of what these different cultures did to each other. And I understand. I understand more about the United States now that I have lived in the UK. 

Not letting the weight of the past hold you down has been the hardest thing I’ve had to try to teach myself. Not saying that I manage it every single time.

In the second part of this interview, coming out in our next magazine, we will explore China’s writing process and the beauty and humanity behind songs, but to end the first of these articles, I want to go to the end of China’s album. 

I know deep down inside that although I don’t feel like it’s going to get better, but I know it’s going to get better

The weight of this lyric has stayed with me.

I profoundly don’t feel that it’s going to get better, but if you give up hope, you give up life. If you don’t believe that it is possible to move forward, even a small step forward, that’s just giving up. And I don’t give up easily. I can take steps back and re-route. I can rethink. But I’m not going to give up hope that things are getting better. I’m not going to give up hope that there are more and more women in media, in jazz media, in the jazz realm. Are we there yet? No. Are there incredible organisations doing something incredible? Yes. What you’ve been doing or Alicia Keys with She is the Music, things that my Mom and my sister have done…things Terri Lyne Carrington is doing.  Am I going to ignore that and just sit and be like things ain’t advancing? Come on.

China Moses website

This article was first published in the March 2025 edition of the Women in Jazz Media magazine