Emi Makabe

Echo
Release Date: May 16, 2025
Label: Sunnyside Records

Across cultures the world over, the word echo, well, echoes. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the mountain nymph Echo’s voice was cursed so that she could only repeat the words of others. In Arabic, صَدَى (ṣadā) — meaning “echo,” “ring,” “resonance” — deeply connotes longing, memory. Given her Japanese heritage, the revered, Brooklyn-based composer, vocalist, shamisen player, and educator Emi Makabe was drawn to her native language’s unique iteration: ekō. 

“It shares the English pronunciation, but it means praying for people who have passed away,” Makabe explains. Which resonated deeply with her, as her father passed away in 2021. “It was during the pandemic, so nobody could visit,” Makabe says. “I watched him as he was taken to the hospital in a wheelchair, and I was praying that he might turn around just once. He didn’t turn back — and that was the last time I saw him.”

Yet a soul refraction still transpired — one poignantly documented on Echo, Makabe’s second album. Featuring a masterful band in bassist and backing vocalist Thomas Morgan; pianist, accordionist and Wurlitzer organist Vitor Gonçalves; and drummer, percussionist, vibraphonist, and electronicist Kenny Wollesen, Echo also features the estimable talents of guitarist Bill Frisell, MC Meshell Ndegeocello, and pianist Jason Moran.

Echo follows Makabe’s 2020 debut album, Anniversary, which also featured her trio of Morgan, Gonçalves and Wollesen. JazzTimes noted her ingenuity in bringing the shamisen — a fretless, three-stringed lute — into a jazz context, praising her “light, clear soprano… agile and accurate” and her writing, which has “only deepened… without losing its tuneful brio.” Elsewhere, New York Music Daily hailed her “rapturous, adventurous Japanese folk-influenced jazz,” and PostGenre called it “understated and refined… a very happy anniversary indeed.”

The album begins with “The Birthday Song,” featuring the one and only Bill Frisell. “Music-wise, it’s fairly simple,” Makabe describes. “But during the recording, I couldn’t stop crying at the beauty of Bill’s guitar — so warm, and so touching.” Naturally, Makabe’s lyrics reflect her profound loss: “I'll never forget that moment/ When I came to know how fast the end comes,” she sings, profoundly altered by this seismic, nigh-universal experience.

Moran helped elevate “Morisan,” a track demonstrative of Makabe’s fusion of traditional Japanese music with jazz: “The combination of shamisen, accordion, and Jason’s groove creates something special,” she says. The Japanese word “mu” means nothingness, null, nonexistence: accordingly, Makabe’s shattered yet ascendant “Mu,” meticulously arranged with flutes and vocal harmonies, viscerally reflects “that emptiness — experiencing the pain.”

“Dignity” carries further gravity: “That song directly reflects my memories with my dad,” Makabe relates. “It starts as a simple, standard tune and becomes an anthem for my father.” “Snow” — featuring Ndegeocello, a three-time Grammy winner — stems from an impressionistic poem Makabe wrote, on a frosty day at an artist’s residency.

The Paul Motian-inspired “Scape” is suggestive of a funeral march. As for the experimental “Text,” its origin lies in assigning pitches to the alphabet; Makabe mapped those pitches to text. “Letter” actually isn’t for Makabe’s father, but her cousin — “almost like a best friend; we played as babies, and grew up together. But as we grew older, we went down different paths. This is a letter to her expressing how much I still care, and how I want to say ‘I still love you.’”

The title track, “Echo” — also featuring Ndgegeocello — “is the most honest and straightforward message to my dad,” Makabe continues. Ndegeocello’s lyrics deal in a visceral economy of language: “The voice is for you / Please, reach to you / Everyday I tell you / ‘I am sorry’/ Can you hear me? / ‘I miss you.’ And what Makabe sings is even more economical: just the words yukoue, telling her father to go on, or go ahead, and furikaete, which asks him to look back at us as he goes.

While “Overture” marks Echo’s conclusion, “It carries the meaning that an ending is also the beginning,” Makabe stresses. For her, it invokes nostalgic memories of her and her father — including him as a child, threading a river embankment on his way to school. “Let’s talk, if we meet again,” Makabe sings. Whether that will happen for any of us is anyone’s guess — but by the sound of Echo, his essence hasn’t gone anywhere.