Dreadlock diva

Dee Dee Bridgewater is a force to be reckoned with when angry – one man was thrown across a room. This time, she tells Sholto Byrnes, the record companies are in trouble...

Dee Dee Bridgewater is one of those people who is slow to anger, normally exuding the kind of calm associated with green tea, eucalyptus oil and tinkly-binkly music. At the age of 51, her skin is almost unnaturally smooth, and her conversation is low and beguiling, often sinking to a whisper. Her career has included stints with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra, stage shows about Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, and forays into pop; a trio of her earlier recordings has recently been reissued. She is delighted with her latest project, an album of Kurt Weill songs, which she will perform tonight at the Barbican. All would seem very well for Ms Bridgewater.

Yet the contented façade barely contains a volcano of rage that she admits she is struggling to keep the lid on. Bridgewater fears that the big record companies are trying to exterminate her and the tradition she represents, to replace them with insipid Barbie dolls with mass-market, lucrative appeal. The idea that jazz singing should be in a frail state may initially seem odd. Aren't the likes of her Verve label-mate Diana Krall and Norah Jones achieving the elusive position of being genuinely popular jazz artists, with posters on billboards and television ad campaigns, just like, well, pop singers? As Bridgewater points out, that achievement does not come without a cost.

"The Diana Krall phenomenon is based on material that's 30 or 40 years old," she says. "The treatment is cold, there's no emotion. It's only working because the jazz has been watered down, it's not abrasive – it's antiseptic." Bridgewater herself is a wonderful interpreter of old standards, although there is a world of difference between her punchy, gutsy style and the pale-honey smooth Krall – you could never accuse Dee Dee of being antiseptic. But there is more than just a difference of stylistic opinion here. "This is the era of the white female jazz singer," she says. "Even though jazz singing has traditionally been associated with the black female voice, it has never been at the elimination of the white female singer. Why, all of a sudden, are we supposed to be eliminated because the labels are scrambling to find their own Diana Krall wannabes? It's upsetting and frightening."

This has been noted in jazz circles. The critic Stuart Nicholson addresses it in the latest issue of Jazzwise. Of Krall, he writes: "Suddenly we are confronted with image over content, since sexy legs are a lot easier to market than blaring trumpets ... Where will we all be if jazz sets out its stall in the grey area between easy-listening and pop?"

There's nothing grey about Dee Dee, or her contemporary Cassandra Wilson, both of whom search for the individual rather than a lower common-denominator. They resist the pressure to make radio-friendly recordings, and as a result, feel their music is not being treated seriously by an industry looking for a fast, sizeable return. "We were both in New York," says Dee Dee, "and Cassandra said, 'I can't get anybody interested in my projects, they keep putting Krall's name in my face. What are we supposed to do? Look at us, we've got our dreadlocks!'"

This is happening not only in America, but also in France, until recently Bridgewater's adopted home. "I've always employed French musicians, I've been burned for taking them to New York. But I can't get any reviews in French jazz papers. They've decided that Diana Krall is the beginning, the end and the in-between. To have the French jazz community turn its back on me because they've got some blonde, blue-eyed chick that can sing halfway decent and can play the piano – I'm livid."

She is determined that her anger will not make her bitter, though. A solution is forming in her mind. "Someone's got to have the balls to stand up and say, that's enough. That... is... enough." Printed words do not convey the force accompanying this sentiment from a woman who admits to having once thrown a man across a room. "We're going to try to unite all the female black jazz-singers," she says, "and make a political stand." Woe betide anyone who tries to oppose her. "When I get really angry, I feel my blood boil, I see red, literally, and then I get physical. Don't mess with my babies, my albums. Don't mess with me. I'll turn into an angry, black 'ghettified' sister who will kick your effing ass."

There's no doubt she will. In performance, she brings a hard-bop vitality to the voice that made her the perfect singer to record a tribute album to Horace Silver a few years ago. But there is a softer side to her. "I've just discovered my own sensuality," she says, explaining that her Catholic upbringing held her back. "At 13, I wanted to be a nun! But I've started buying clothes that fit now." She exaggerates, I'm sure, but she does seem to be letting go of some of the combative tomboyishness that made her music so forceful in the past.

"I always felt that I had to scat, to be another musician" – in her case, a trumpeter. "My father was, my first husband was, I had a boyfriend who was. Dizzy, Miles, Clark Terry – all my heroes were trumpeters." Now she is happy to concentrate on the lyric. "I thought, why don't I just sing the whole song, which I haven't done for years because I've been working so hard on getting my scatting to a level where I felt I was really being an instrument."

This she does beautifully on the new album. "The only image I had of Weill's music was dark, heavy, a little suffering, kind of Germanic and hard. I wanted to show a lighter, softer, more positive side of him."

This is her route now. Bored by standards, which she says she might return to when she's 60 but not before, Weill has opened up a new vista for her; she's even contemplating resuscitating some of his operas. Her record company would do well to realise what a prodigious talent it has in Dee Dee Bridgewater – an artist worth a hundred Diana Kralls. If they don't, she will certainly be off – but not before she's kicked their effing asses.

'This Is New' is out on Verve. Dee Dee Bridgewater plays the Barbican tonight, London EC2 (020-7638 8891)