Ledisi has spent much of her career looking backward without ever losing sight of where she is going.
That will be particularly evident when the Grammy-winning singer brings her music — and her reverence for the artists who helped shape it — to Strathmore in North Bethesda, Maryland, for two shows this Friday and Saturday.
Audiences can expect the storytelling and vocal power that have defined Ledisi’s concerts, but with a significant addition: the music of Dinah Washington, the legendary singer she honors on her recent tribute album, “For Dinah.”
“What you will hear is a spiritual experience inside of the blues, inside of my music, inside of the relationship between my influence with ‘For Dinah,’” Ledisi said in an interview with WTOP.
The D.C.-area performances will give Ledisi an opportunity to bring together two sides of her artistry: the music she has created herself and the music she has spent years studying, absorbing and reinterpreting.
“They’re going to get the same that they always get with Ledisi — storytelling,” she said. “They’re going to get my music as well as Dinah. It’s not going to be one way or the other.”
For Ledisi, that combination is important because she does not see “For Dinah” as an exercise in impersonation. Instead, she wants listeners to understand the connection between Washington’s music and her own.
“I am not trying to be Dinah,” Ledisi said. “So if you’re coming here to hear that, you’re in trouble. But I promise you, you’re going to go back and revisit her music and my music.”
Washington has become the latest in a line of artists Ledisi has chosen to honor through full-length tribute projects. Her 2021 album “Ledisi Sings Nina” explored the work of Nina Simone.
The choice of Washington was rooted in more than musical admiration.
“I’ve always admired her presence as an artist and her influence on other artists, some of our greats like Amy Winehouse, Aretha Franklin,” Ledisi said. “I mean, anybody you can think of, Dinah has (been) some part of their fabric.”
Ledisi is particularly drawn to Washington’s independence and willingness to defy expectations.
“She was a rebel and I love that,” she said. “I love women who are in times ahead of themselves and can sing. She sang down, honey.”
That same admiration informs Ledisi’s approach to musical history. She said she wants her tribute projects to serve as invitations to rediscover artists whose contributions can sometimes be overlooked or diminished by time.
“I’m not ‘doing’ or ‘being’ them. I’m just reminding you, hey, don’t forget to go revisit this,” she said.
That mission became particularly important with Washington, Ledisi said, after her tribute projects initially failed to attract the support she expected. Ledisi ultimately financed the “Ledisi Sings Nina” and “For Dinah” projects herself, believing Washington’s influence in particular was too significant to allow contemporary audiences to overlook her.
“I was like, ‘Are you kidding? She’s everywhere. You put her in film and television everywhere. Her name is at the end of the credit,’” Ledisi said. “But you say the Queen of Soul (Aretha Franklin). Why not say the Queen of the Blues too?”
For Ledisi, Washington belongs in the lineage of some of the most important figures in American popular music.
“Dinah influenced Aretha. We wouldn’t have Quincy (Jones) without Dinah. We wouldn’t have all these. She’s part of the line,” she said.
That instinct to preserve history runs through Ledisi’s own artistic identity. She said she has repeatedly been told by industry insiders what she should not do and says she has responded on recent projects by embracing precisely those things.
“I’ve been told don’t cover. Don’t scat. Don’t do this … I rebel against what you tell me I can’t do,” she said.
That rebellion is particularly audible on “For Dinah,” where Ledisi said she has rediscovered a vocal freedom that had been pushed aside during her career.
“I’m finding a voice that I forgot I had, and I had it years ago, but I left it behind for radio,” she said.
The experience has changed the way she approaches the stage.
“To come back to this raw, uninhibited, fun singing, the blues, and then sing my music, it gives it a levity that I haven’t had in a long, long time, and we need it right now,” Ledisi said.
That freedom is also a continuation of a lesson she said she learned early in her career: Never diminish what makes you distinctive simply to make other people comfortable.
“I used to dim my light so that I could fit in with everybody, so they won’t feel intimidated,” she said. “Now I don’t care. Like I am a beast, and if I’m coming in, be ever ready for what God has given me to display.”
Ledisi said the goal is not competition, it is contribution.
“I don’t do it to compete because once you do it to compete, you’re going to always be at a certain level, and I’m trying to keep rising,” she said. “I use it to give to other people to empower others. I sing life. I give life.”
That philosophy extends beyond music to the women who helped shape her career. Ledisi named Rachelle Ferrell, Anita Baker and Dianne Reeves among the artists who have mentored her, describing Ferrell and Baker as “bookends” who prepared her for the artist she has become.
She also remembers a time when simply asking for help was difficult.
Early in her career, Ledisi said, Ferrell once invited her to open a show in Oakland and later paid for her entire band to travel to Los Angeles for another performance. Ferrell also promoted Ledisi on the radio and introduced her to artists including Prince.
“All you need is one person to believe in you, and she was the one person that showed there’s action behind her movements and her support,” Ledisi said. “I didn’t realize that Rachelle was training me. She was preparing me for something.”
Those experiences have influenced how Ledisi thinks about her own legacy — and about the responsibility of artists to make sure the people who came before them are not forgotten. She sees that responsibility as especially urgent when considering artists such as Washington and Simone, both of whom died relatively young.
“I want to make sure their voices and their names are reminded in history,” Ledisi said.
That does not mean she is planning to make another tribute album. “I think this will probably be my last tribute. On my list was Mahalia, Dinah and Nina,” she said.
But Ledisi also knows better than to make absolute promises about where her future artistic instincts may lead. “I listen to what my body says, what the ancestors say, what my energy says,” she said.
For now, that energy is carrying her into Strathmore — where audiences will hear the music she has made, the music that influenced her and, perhaps most importantly, the connection between the two.
“It’s been a spiritual experience singing for Dinah. I cannot explain it to you. You have to see it when you’re in the room,” Ledisi said.
“I’m always blowing myself away,” she added. “And the band is playing different and it’s very spiritual. You can tell when the ancestors are in the room.”
For Ledisi, the point of looking back is ultimately to keep moving forward.
“I am one who always honor what was before, either as is or as I (artistically) see it,” she said. “It’s so much fun to show your colors and I want to leave behind a legacy that’s filled with that, but also with my own music.”
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