Review: MAIMOUNA YOUSSEF aka MUMU FRESH at Kennedy Center

The penultimate program in the Kennedy Center's Young Audiences streamed season features the music of Baltimore-born and D.C. raised singer Maimouna Youssef.

If the success of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts grad isn't inspiring enough, her five song set is full of nothing but uplift. Recorded in Raleigh, N.C., with a backup singer and a sharp four-piece band, Maimouna, who also goes by the name Mumu Fresh, has a couple of musical personalities as well.

She's a smooth and powerful singer who is as as at home in jazz as she in in soul, but she also is a convincing rapper, who jumps into rhymes to underscore the themes in her songs. That she's the chief songwriter of her material as well tops it all off.

Maimouna chose largely among songs of encouragement. Her clever conceit in the opening "Stardust" is that creatures should be proud of who they are.

"Butterflies don't try to turn down their colors to make moths feel better about themselves," she says by way of introduction. "Because months are doing their thing."

The catchy and effective appeal to let one's light shine has a natural appeal to the family audience that is the series' base. It stretches out to some scat singing as well as her rap before it ends (because she's letting her own musical light shine, too).

Her next song, "Chasing Rainbows," follows the same themes, encouraging listeners to believe in themselves.

"That sounds so cliche because people say it all the time," she says in her intro. "But that's some of the realest stuff that you will ever learn to do."

"Who are you to deny me of my dreams?" she sings in the chorus of the original that begins with a Sanskrit mantra from the Buddhist tradition. "I am my ancestors' wildest dream," she repeats near the end of the song.

The self-worth can be seen in her remake of Lorde's hit "Royals," in which she rejects the original's shrug of "we'll never be royals" to "We're already royal." And if you don't believe her, she wears five-inch earrings that say "Royalty."

Her original song "North Star," about enslaved Black people escaping slavery in the South through celestial navigation, quotes Nina Simone's "Four Women" and is about as political as she gets. She chose to omit her charged song "Say My Name" about police killings that she performed at BET's "Black Girls Rock! Awards" in 2019.

But she does sing Common's "Practice" that he recorded with Robert Glaser as August Greene. She had joined that supergroup when they played their NPR Tiny Desk Concert, to add her killer feminist rap that includes the memorable line, "Sometimes being a woman is like being Black twice."

As soulful and smooth as her singing voice is, Maimouna benefits further with great backing from backup singer Amber Gillespie harmonizing six feet behind her, and six feet further back, a masked band that includes guitarist and musical director Darnell "Showcase" Taylor, keyboardist Nile Hargrove, tasty bass from Lamont McCain and drummer Demetrice "Meat" Everett. They get to especially shine on the closing "Shine Your Light."

Of all the programs in the Young Audiences digital season, Maimouna's is one suggested for the oldest audiences ("Most enjoyed by ages 10+"), but it's hard to imagine any age would not respond well to her engaging and multiple musical talents.

Running time: 38 minutes.

Photo credit: Maimouna Youssef, courtesy of the artist.

Young Audiences' digital season at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts continues through June 27. Its final performance, premiering June 7, is a collaboration of the Ephat Asherie Dance with the art of Mo Willems. Information can be found online.

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