Cécile McLorin Salvant uses multi-culturalism as metaphor on ‘Mélusine’

Jazz vocalist and composer Cécile McLorin Salvant has released seven studio discs, with her most recent being “Mélusine” (Nonesuch, 2023), a concept album based on French folk tales about a mermaid whose lower body turns into a snake on Saturdays. 

The transformation is triggered by a curse placed on her by her mother. “Anyone who thinks they already know the full extent of Cécile McLorin Salvant’s artistry should listen to ’Mélusine’ without further delay,” says Jazzwise magazine. “It’s a remarkable recording in several respects. Beautifully recorded, Salvant continues to confound and delight at every turn.”

“Mélusine” was nominated for best jazz vocal album and best arrangement, instrumental/vocal at the 2024 Grammy Awards. Salvant returns to Chicago for an SCP Jazz concert on Feb. 21.

The work is a mix of originals and interpretations of songs dating back to the 12th century, mostly sung in French, along with Occitan (a language of southern France and northern Spain), English and Haitian Creole. Salvant describes the story as a metaphor for being multicultural. “That’s an elegant metaphor because both sides of your heritage think the other side is a bit strange.”

In the folk tale, Mélusine agrees to marry a suitor named Raymondin on the condition that he never see her on Saturdays. He consents, but is ultimately convinced by his brother to break his promise, piercing his wife’s door with his sword and then finding her in the bath, half-snake, half-woman. When she catches him spying on her, she turns into a dragon and flies out the window, only to reappear every time one of her descendants is on his deathbed.


“I think what I try to do is more akin to revealing secrets than telling stories,” Salvant said. “Revealing secrets is also the snake’s role in the Garden [of Eden]. The snake brings secrets, knowledge, pain and mayhem.”

In addition, “the story of Mélusine is also the story of the destructive power of the gaze. Raymondin’s sword pierces a hole in her iron door. His gaze does, too,” she said. ”The gaze is transformative and combustible. She sees that he is secretly seeing her. Her secret is revealed. This double gaze turns her into a dragon. She can now breathe fire.”


Salvant, whose parents are French and Haitian, emphasizes that “Mélusine” is “about that feeling of being a hybrid, a mixture of different cultures, which I’ve experienced not only as the American-born child of two first-generation immigrants, but also as someone raised in a family that is racially mixed, from several different countries, with different languages spoken in the home.”


“Dame Iseut,” the disc’s last song of the album, was translated into Haitian Creole by her father from the Occitan. My grandmother spoke a little, and her brother used to teach it,” Salvant said. “This album combines elements from French mythology, Haitian voodoo and apocrypha.”


A 2020 MacArthur Fellow and three-time Grammy Award winner, Salvant brings historical perspective, a renewed sense of drama and an enlightened musical understanding to jazz standards and her own original works.

Classically trained, steeped in jazz, blues and folk, and drawing on musical theater and vaudeville, Salvant embraces a wide-ranging repertoire that broadens the possibilities for live performance.
Her concerts range from spare duets for voice and piano to instrumental trios to orchestral ensembles.

Salvant studied at the Université Pierre Mendès-France. She has performed at national and international venues and festivals such as the Newport Jazz Festival, the Monterey Jazz Festival, the Village Vanguard and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Salvant is also a visual artist.






Meanwhile, Arte, the European public service channel dedicated to culture, filmed Salvant with her band at Germany’s Leverkusen Jazz Festival in December. Cécile McLorin Salvant "is now one of the essential figures in today’s jazz,” Arte declares. “Critics are full of praise for Cécile McLorin Salvant. Those who have had the chance to see the triple Grammy Award winner in concert know that this praise is justified.” The concert filmed by Arte is available till Sept. 5, 2025.