Farayi Malek brings together jazz and country in her debut EP

Farayi Malek is a Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist, composer and singer-songwriter.

Malek, a graduate of the New England Conservatory and Berklee Global Jazz Institute, has just released her debut EP Edge of the Earth. She joined GBH’s Morning Edition host Mark Herz to share her story and what inspires her music. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.

Mark Herz: Tell us your story and how you came into the jazz and country/bluegrass traditions.

Farayi Malek: I grew up in Idaho. My first instrument’s the fiddle, and I grew with a lot of old-time music and country and gospel.

I went on to study jazz in high school and college. As I came out of college and the world was going into a lockdown, I decided that I really wanted to kind of go back to my roots and spend time with the music that I enjoyed during my childhood.

The music on this debut EP really reflects all of these aspects of my musical identity.

Herz: Well, talking about your musical identity, who are your most important influences?

Malek: Oh, wow. Well, I’ll say Stevie Wonder is huge for me. Ella Fitzgerald, of course. But also Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn. I grew up singing a lot of Patsy Cline, so some of those country women.

Herz: Do you see a connection with some of the great jazz singers? Do you hear jazz in how they approach country?

Malek: That’s such a good question, I don’t think anybody’s ever asked me that before. I certainly hear a connection in the timbre and tone, and I hear a collection in the storytelling. To me, singers are poets. We’re poets with music. And so the singers that captivate me the most are singers that are really good at delivering a lyrical phrase.

Herz: You covered Whitney Houston’s pop hit, “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.” It certainly doesn’t skimp on some complex jazz harmonies at times, but it’s really driven by some real rootsy acoustic guitar and fiddling. So tell us about how that came about.

Malek: I work with a wonderful nonprofit organization, Salt Lick Incubator, which helps emerging artists with grant funding and videos and different sort of projects. And the president Liza Levy — when I was putting my project together — she said, “You know, I really think that you need a cover on this EP.”

And so we kind of came up with a list of 50 tunes that we really loved. And this was one of her ideas. I was like, “Whitney Houston, that’s really bold. I’m not sure if I can pull that off.” She’s like, “Well, consider it. Sing it, put an arrangement together.” So I did, and I just completely fell in love with it.

The liveliness of the fiddle and the re-harm that I came up with, I just loved it. And I thought, “OK, I’m gonna do this. I’m going to commit to it.”

My perspective is that all American music is really rooted in the blues. When we’re talking about rock and roll, jazz, country music — it’s all rooted in blues. The blues music comes largely from the stories of the Black experience in America. When you really break it down, that’s where all these traditions are stemming from. And so I don’t think of country as that unrelated to jazz and that’s the perspective that my music is coming from.