On a recent Sunday afternoon, the guests gathered at Durham’s NorthStar Church of the Arts for a concert sang and stomped their feet as four women on stage led a most unconventional chorus:
“She’s wearing combat boots and glass slippers,
drinks champagne or brown liquor…”
Accompanied by a wailing guitar riff, the song is both a rallying cry and my new personal anthem—and judging by the number of fans who jumped to attention at the behest of songwriter Lenora Zenzalai Helm, I was in good company.
The song the quartet was singing, “Combat Boots,” is a track on the debut release from The Sistering, a jazz, gospel, and folk supergroup made up of Durham musicians Helm, Lois Deloatch, Nnenna Freelon, and Kate McGarry. The Sistering’s eponymously named album was released via Helm’s independent label, Zenzalai Music, on March 20.
Listening to the group’s performance at the NorthStar release event evoked the feeling of sitting at a dining room table filled with women breaking bread with one another, creating a validating space for support, encouragement, and belonging.
The Sistering formed in 2023, when Deloatch, Freelon, and McGarry hosted a tea party and artist conversation to celebrate Journeywoman, Helm’s latest album release. As they spoke about music, the joyous social event evolved into a cultural imperative.
“It was an aha moment,” said Freelon. “We said, ‘Look at us, we are all here … Why don’t we do something together? Why don’t we celebrate each other?’”
Days later, at Helm’s home, the women gathered around her grand piano and began writing and composing the album’s first song.
“Composing together was such an exciting way to bring a pot to the party or a potluck,” Helm said. “We each are whole women who have whole lives and careers. This legacy project galvanizes everything that we are and have done, and the sum of the parts are enriched by each other.”
Beyond its familial meaning, “sistering” is also a carpentry term that refers to support beams that are placed alongside a beam to reinforce it.
“Sistering, being that support, that anchor for each other in a variety of ways, is more than a title—we are a collective,” said Freelon. “It’s almost like our lives named our group.”
For years, the group members’ musical careers orbited each other. Helm is a vocalist and composer, as well as a conductor of the Tribe Jazz Orchestra and the Dean of Professional Education at her alma mater, the Berklee College of Music. Grammy-nominated artist Freelon built her decades-long musical career on stage, traveling the world while building community in the arts in Durham.
Vocalist and songwriter Deloach, meanwhile, grew up in rural Northampton County with a strong gospel music foundation, and attended UNC-Chapel Hill and later, Duke University, immersing herself in the local jazz scene of the late 1970s and 80s before releasing her own music. McGarry, finally, studied at the University of Massachusetts Amherst under the tutelage of NEA Jazz Masters Billy Taylor and Max Roach, cutting her musical teeth over two decades in LA and New York City before moving to Durham in 2009.
In addition to the artist’s individual accomplishments, they shared connections through Durham’s robust, supportive jazz community, counting as mutual friends luminaries like Billy Taylor, Robert “Bob” Tapp, Branford Marsalis, Dave Finucane of Sharp 9 Gallery Jazz Club, and the inimitable Yusuf Salim.
“The anchors of the music here were what drew me to jazz,” said Deloach. “It was not difficult to immerse myself in it, build partnerships, and be a part of a community around the music.”
The twelve songs on The Sistering reflect the group’s respective journeys in music and life, traversing seasons of love and loss with a deftness guided by grace and wisdom.
The album begins with “River Song,” a melodic piano ballad that melds singing with spoken word, gently guiding listeners through moments of sorrow, encouraging listeners to find and lean on support systems.
“All of us have a commitment to guide generations coming after us,” said Helm. “When we were exploring the music for “River Song,” I remember discussing the need for an ancestor to whisper to you, to soothe and to guide you, through the grief process.”
“Hold on, dear one, this night can’t last forever…there’s room enough for friends to join you.”
In “Circle,” written by McGarry, the singer pays tribute to her late parents, recalling the life lessons they passed down that continue to guide her in the wake of their passing. “Dying Season,” written by Deloach, is a haunting song about the ravages of COVID-19 and its reverberations of loss. “Follow the Stream” is a counterpart to that song, embodying the process of moving through seasons of joy and pain.
“Part of the power of coming together is that we are all of a certain age, and we’ve all experienced everything in life—loss, heartache, joys, triumphs,” said McGarry. “We’re creating spaces where the full range of human experiences is welcomed and embraced into a container where people can gather, remember, feel, and heal.”
“We’re creating spaces where
The sistering member Kate McGarry
the full range of human experiences is welcomed and embraced into a container where people can gather, remember, feel, and heal.”
Deloach approaches memory cultivation through a different lens.
“I often say we’re documentary artists,” she said. “People think of documentary artists as filmmakers, but we are documenting through our music, our experiences, and our vision.”
As the Sunday concert drew to a close inside NorthStar’s warm space, that March afternoon, the four vocalists held a question-and-answer time. One audience member asked if there was a word or phrase that the artists felt described the emotions of the event. Without missing a beat, each responded with: “gratitude” (Deloatch), “gathering” (McGarry), “grounding” (Helm), and “belonging” (Freelon).
The Sistering is ultimately a manifesto—a love letter to Durham’s jazz community and an empowering, personal call to action.
“You start, you meet yourself where you are, and you give yourself permission to speak, to dream, and to sing,” says Freelon. “That requires a certain kind of fearlessness—we have to silence those voices that would have us not speak our whole truth. This delves into an authentic life story of women who have chosen to come together and share their collective wealth.”
To comment on this story, email [email protected].
You must be logged in to post a comment.