Daughter of Dee Dee Bridgewater, China will be in Milan on November 4th at the Teatro della Triennale
When China Moses will take the stage at Triennale Theater of Milanhis mother Dee Dee Bridgewater will have already started her first set at the Blue Note. Wednesday 4 November, 2026 JAZZMI brings them together in the same city, on two different stages. The appointment with China is at 9pm.
Born in Los Angeles in 1978 and raised in Paris, the singer and songwriter took her first steps in French R&B. On his debut album you could also hear the voice of rapper Guru. Twelve years later, with This One’s for DinahChina would dedicate an entire album to Dinah Washington. To get to the jazz he had breathed at home, he had taken the path of Parisian hip hop.
Why is your album “It’s Complicated…” not available on streaming platforms?
I wanted to promote mindful listening. As a radio host with two shows, one in France and one in the UK, I’ve noticed that on streaming platforms people don’t really listen to albums in full. They just listen to the songs. I wanted to remind myself, and everyone else, that it’s okay to sit and listen intently, without another screen. It all started with a “no”. Ten labels rejected me, the last of which was run by someone I really wanted to work with. When they told me they didn’t have the necessary resources, I realized I had to do it alone, and that was okay. It’s my seventh album and the fourth I’ve produced on my own, but the first without any help. I didn’t want the work of all the people who made it together with me to go to waste.
And yes, it was a choice. I wanted it to be the relationship between the artist and the audience that counts, without any algorithm involved.
There is something complicated about all this…
It’s my seventh album, and first in eight years after that Nighttales. It started in 2017. I had left Paris after a divorce and found myself in London on a rainy autumn evening, alone in a large empty apartment. To chase away the darkness, I started writing. I wanted to find a way to express the sound I’d had in my head for years, and it was in London that I found the right people.
The Weight of DNA: Being Dee Dee Bridgewater’s Daughter
It’s not a burden. It’s an honor, a legacy that I’m doing my best to carry on and cherish. It’s a source of pride. I am a third-generation musician and a fourth-generation artist, on both my mother’s and father’s sides, Gilbert Moses, a theater and film director and co-founder of the Free Southern Theater, an African-American theater company in the segregated South. The world I grew up in was full of art. Art with a purpose. Art as a path to freedom. Art as a means to express oneself, to document and bear witness to social change. So the music I make is the music of my culture, of my African-American heritage, whether it’s jazz, blues, soul, funk or rock. It’s all part of my DNA, and I’m doing my best to learn as much as I can about it and to honor the work of those who came before me.
Your relationship with Italy and Milan
Lately I have performed often in Italy. I played at the Teatro Asioli in Correggio, at the Blue Note in Milan, at the Atina and at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto. I just returned from Palermo and Catania, my very first time in Sicily. I also performed on national television with Raphael Gualazzi and collaborated with the band Gabin.
I know there are many festivals in Italy that I haven’t visited yet, so it’s an honor to be part of JAZZMI’s rich program. The room in which they will host us is beautiful.
Latest single: “Another Night (It’s Just)”
“Another Night (It’s Just)” was born from a moment of loneliness that comes over you after concerts. One moment you are surrounded and applauded, the next you are alone. It’s the other side of stage lights. It gave me panic attacks. It was an intense moment, and I wrote it on the guitar. Then, during the pandemic lockdowns, I thought that we all felt extreme loneliness, and that it was important to face it, accept it, transform it. Loneliness is not sadness. It’s a moment to savor. The moment. To stop.
What is your idea of jazz?
Jazz is a culture and heritage, part of African American culture, and is the music of freedom and liberation. I include hip-hop, rock and roll, soul, funk and disco in the same family. I don’t see any difference in terms of strength between Alice Coltrane and Wu-Tang Clan, and splitting it into smaller subgenres is a mistake. It undermines the true greatness of African American culture.
