SOUNDTRACK: JAMILA WOODS-Tiny Desk Concert #699 (January 29, 2018).
Jamila Woods is the Associate Artistic Director of Young Chicago Authors, the non-profit organization behind the Louder Than a Bomb youth poetry slam festival. She also did guest vocals on a slew of albums recently.
Last year she released her debut album HEAVN. But there is so much more
Singer, songwriter, poet, educator and community organizer Jamila Woods is also a freedom fighter: a voice that celebrates black ancestry, black feminism and black identity. “Look at what they did to my sisters last century, last week,” goes a line from “Blk Girl Soldier,” her powerful opening number at the Tiny Desk.
A cool bass line from Erik Hunter opens “Blk Girl Soldier.” I don’t love the music that much (too jazz lite for me) but the lyrics are outstanding
We go missing by the hundreds…
The camera loves us, Oscar doesn’t…
They want us in the kitchen
Kill our sons with lynchings
We get loud about it
Oh now we’re the bitches
Woods’ delivery is fantastic and the backing vocals (and keys) from Aminata Burton add a nice touch. Throughout this song and the others the drums are great–different sounds and rhythms from Ralph Schaefer.
Woods followed “Blk Girl Soldier” with “Giovanni,” another anthem of black female pride, inspired by the Nikki Giovanni poem “Ego Tripping.” The original text includes no punctuation, not a single comma or period, and reveals a liberated prosody that is also illustrated in the song. Listen how her lyricism interplays with the rhythm section’s syncopated groove to create a captivating state of emotional buoyancy.
I love the stops and starts and the groovy bass and soaring guitars from Justin Canavan. But once again, I’m more enamored of her lyrics
Little Bitty you wanna call me
100 motherfuckers can’t tell me
How I’m supposed to look when I’m angry
How I’m supposed to shriek when you’re around me
“Holy” opens with just keys and a punctuating drum beat. This song is a slower one and it is all about self-empowerment.
Of particular note is her recurring theme of self-love, as heard in “Holy,” the last song in this set: “Woke up this morning with my mind set on loving me.” (What a refreshing affirmation to hear “loving me,” instead of the predictable “loving you.”)
I don’t like R&B, but I could see this album transcending that for me.
[READ: November 12, 2017] The Resurrection of Joan Ashby
I received an email from A.M. Homes touting this book (obviously, I wasn’t the only one). It was quite an encouraging email so I decided to give this fascinating book a try. Boy, did I love it.
The book opens with a clip from the Fall issue of Literature Magazine. It is a story about Joan Ashby, wondering where she has been all of these years. The article says that they have been allowed to look at her childhood notebooks.
At thirteen she wrote nine precepts she was determined to follow in order to become a writer
- Do not waste time
- Ignore Eleanor when she tells me I need friends
- Read great literature every day
- Write every day
- Rewrite every day
- Avoid crushes and love
- Do not entertain any offer of marriage
- Never ever have children
- Never allow anyone to get in my way
Eight years later she burst onto the scene with her first collection of short stories about incest, murder, insanity, suicide, abandonment and the theft of lives called Other Small Spaces. Four years later in 1989 her second book Fictional Family Life was a collection of superbly interlocked stories.
She was considered brutal and unsparing and wrote very powerfully.
During all of this time, her parents were irrelevant–they didn’t seem to think much about her when she was young and when she became successful she had little to do with them.
The “magazine” prints excerpts from these stories and here is where Wolas really shines. She creates story fragments that really show off what a great writer Ashby (and of course, by extension, Wolas) is.
These are followed by an interview and her last public sighting–a reading of her work. It was at this reading that her first shock was revealed–she had gotten married. And when she toured for the second book, the women who revered her were outraged by this betrayal.
The opening section is “continued after the break” which is basically the rest of the book. (more…)