Rachelle Ferrell: Principles Without Boundaries by Wesley Watkins

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Rachelle Ferrell is a singer’s singer. She has been selling out Bay Area performances since her debut album was released in 1992 because every show is a vocal clinic that absolutely demands the presence of Jazz, Soul and Gospel singers far and wide. Her combination of tone, agility and range are incomparable. She possesses a range that spans some seven octaves into the whistle register where few women can reach, and down to the baritone range, almost exclusively a male register. Where most singers might have to ask a band, “In what key do you normally do this song,” one imagines Rachelle Ferrell asking, “Which register would you like me to sing it in?” She can produce as pure and angelic a tone as you have ever heard, and sustain it so long that you will wonder if her body even requires oxygen. That tone may suddenly burst into gut-bucket vocal gymnastics, cascading down from the top to the bottom of her range, pitch perfect at every step along the way. What is more, she will produce tones that you've rarely, if ever, heard from a human being, and yet when they have passed, you will find yourself overcome with the outburst of emotion transmitted directly to your spirit.

Rachelle Ferrell performances are so mind-boggling that one wonders how she came to be. What forces of nature could have possibly combined to create such an awe-inspiring talent? How is she able to reach into the heart and soul of audience members and make them scream out with elation one moment, and quietly mend the broken places in all of us the next? Not surprisingly, the answers lie in an artist who believes in connection, unity, surrender, the limitless possibilities given to each of us, and the honor of being a conduit for all of it.


Ferrell’s mother was a tailor, and she stored enormous pattern books beneath the grand piano which dominated their living room. No more than 6 years old, Ferrell used these books as cover to hide beneath the piano unnoticed and listen to her father and his best friends, “Uncle Spencer Holly” and “Uncle Boots,” create a comprehensive musical experience.

Fueled by the joys of artistic creation and a fifth of liquor that sat atop the piano, Ferrell’s father and Uncle Boots would take turns playing the upper and lower ranges for up to twelve hours. In addition to the sound emanating from the piano, each pianist had a unique growl which presumably helped him coordinate his muscle movements and achieve the desired effect from the keyboard. This tapestry of sound was syncopated by laughter from all three men, and particular squeals of delight from Uncle Holly who sat in a chair nearby.

“Only two of them played the keyboard. My Uncle Holly was like the cheer leader/rabble rouser, and he would call out the songs. He couldn’t play anything. He was like the music aficionado—the connoisseur of music, the music lover. So, I guess in retrospect I grew up with that archetype in the microcosm of what music is about and how music is created and sustained: we had the music makers and the music lovers all in this relationship right there in the same room. And [Uncle Holly] was just as actively involved in the making and the creation of the music as his two friends that were actually on the keyboard.”

It is no wonder that Ferrell’s stage presence makes you feel as if she were performing just for you at your own home. She invites lively call and response by directly addressing audience members, honoring requests on some occasions, and enticing groans and squeals of delight consistent with the highest implications of the African American oral tradition. Ferrell considers her audience “my folk”, right along with the band members and sound engineer, and her intention while performing is clear: connect with the particular family assembled in the jazz-club-turned-living-room on any given evening.

“You get to a place where you know you have your end covered and then you can reach out to others, reach out beyond yourself. And so for the last 15 or so years, that’s where I’ve been: in a space of awareness of how music can connect people and can connect me with others. And once we create this connection, we set up this circuitry whereby through all of the gifts that are thrown in the same pot…we collectively go places that we cannot go alone. And being a lightning rod for that, or a facilitator or a catalyst for that is what I endeavor to do because where we get to go together—it’s amazing.”

As you might imagine, Ferrell hardly considers this task or responsibility a job. Performing, communing with the audience, and going to untold places is something she gets to do, and Ferrell is grateful for the ability and the opportunity to connect with a primal force that she believes lies in all of us.

“I believe the original purpose of music is sacred—that doesn’t mean religious, it means sacred. And I believe that sound is built into the foundations of the universe. And sound is something that wherever it is that we all come from originally—because we know this ain’t home—sound was there, and music was there. And so it’s a way to cut through all of the perceptual boundaries of race, color, creed, social economic status, position, hierarchies, caste systems, cultures, countries, languages—it cuts through everything that’s here on this planet. That’s how I know in my being that sound and music—beautiful sound—is a part of each and every one of us. It’s something that we shared before we got here…. I think it’s The Creator’s way of saying that regardless of what veneer you put on it on this planet, there is a oneness and there is a singularity that exists. And music is a vehicle to bring us back to that.”

More than just a vehicle to the oneness, for Ferrell the best music is created from a collective unification across multiple dimensions of being. There is a magical place, a “zone”, if you will, that she knows very well.

“From my experience it has to be somewhere between two worlds. You’re not altogether in the physical and you’re not altogether in the spirit world. It’s another dimension that one exists in where you translate directly from the spirit into the physical. You become a direct conduit. It’s in between worlds and it’s hard to get there…. I can’t sing two Cs and an A-flat and then get in there. There’s no secret code or combination or sequence that I can do. It’s something that happens collectively. It’s when everyone connects at such a deep level that we move as one and that synergy starts jumpin’ off and it’s like—you know it when you’re in there!”

Like anyone who has experienced this place, Ferrell freely admits, “I can’t get there enough. It’s my goal to get there and do whatever it is that I do from that space, because if I do not—if I can’t get there—then it just becomes rote, it becomes a job. I become a mechanic, a mechanical practitioner of the music. But if I do get into the zone, if I do learn the art of surrender and, you know, practice, practice, practice, practice, and then learn how to release everything that I’ve practiced and give myself and my gifts and everything that I’ve developed over to that dimension, then it’s on!”

Ferrell’s voice—particularly her mega range—certainly alludes to another dimension. Yet, just like her desire to translate and transmit the divine oneness through her embodied physical instrument, the story of how she developed her out-of-this-world upper register lies firmly rooted in provincial life experience.

“The range came to be from growing up out in the boonies, not being able to get strong radio signals, and as a result I just began to listen to…the sounds of nature. I lived near a fire station, and when the whistle would go off, I would try to copy it. When I would hear particular birds sing, I would try to make the sounds that the birds made. And because I didn’t really have formal training, I didn’t know that I wasn’t supposed to be able to sing certain things. I didn’t know that I wasn’t supposed to be able to hold—or even attempt to hold—a note as long as a mechanical device like a fire siren. No one told me that there were physical limitations for a singer, that there are boundaries and parameters for singers, and other parameters and boundaries for mechanical devices. So I guess out of my ignorance I would just sing wherever I wanted to and whatever I wanted to.”