SOUNDTRACK: KeiyaA-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #168 (February 11, 2021).
I had not heard of KeiyaA (and have no idea how to say her name), but i was quite stuck by this performance.
KeiyaA is a new performer, and her debut album
Forever, Ya Girl, appeared last year with kismet timing, unveiling her as a fully formed star. The 2020 release is a meditation on the thin line between solitude and loneliness, one that KeiyaA traces and teeters on while defining her Black womanhood.
The set opens with “Do Yourself a Favor.” For this track KeiyaA sits behind the keyboard a while 13th Law plays a slow funky bass line plays accompanied by finger snaps and backing vocals from the amazingly named Nelson Bandela.
KeiyaA comes out front for the rest of the tracks.
Cornrows braided back with the precision of an architect. Stiletto nails commanding a sampling machine. Gold-glinted lids to match her light-up Beads Byaree earrings. With every move, KeiyaA shines so bright, it’s impossible to look away. And while your eyes are fixated on her person, the music KeiyaA conjures inside Brooklyn’s Electric Garden is what leaves you completely spellbound.
On “Hvnli,” Nelson Bandela plays keys behind a new slow funky bass line. Keenyn Omari played guitar on the first song but he plays saxophone on this one. It starts with soft bursts and then he really starts wailing. With the sax and the syncopated drums from Buz “Hvnli” sounds like a spare jazz song. She sings:
“Gone for so long I prefer to spend time in my pain, hey / Gone for so long I can barely recall the last my phone rang,” she sings on “Hvnli.”
Her album
is a meditation on the thin line between solitude and loneliness, one that KeiyaA traces and teeters on while defining her Black womanhood. Whether it’s through jazzy woodwinds, heavy synths or prickly staccato, the singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist shares waves of anguish, depletion, love and elation in a swirling stream of consciousness.
She says that “Most of the work that has carried me has been the writing of Black women Jayne Cortez and Ntozake Shange [she holds up their books] who both speak unabashedly of the plight and joys and general experiences of the Black femme woman. And those writings are paramount in my work.”
She opens “Finesse Without a Trace” with a wobbly sample and The 13th Law plays some bass chords and splashy drums. The sample turns into some quotes while Omari plays some wild distorted flute.
The song ends with an improvised flute solo which KeiyaA accompanies with samples and some oohing. The song slowly morphs into “Rectifiya” a funky piece with response vocals on the chorus.
She ends the whole set with the sampled quote from Nina Simone.
“Everybody is half-dead. Everybody avoids everybody. All over the place…in most situations, most of the time. I know I’m one of those everybodys. And to me it is terrible. And so all I’m trying to do, all the time, is just to open people up so they can feel themselves and let themselves be open to somebody else. That is all. That’s it.”
Apparently the album sounds very different than this Tiny Desk: (The “album version of these tracks boast much of KeiyaA’s own production, affirmations and layered vocals in chorus”). Perhaps I’m better off just enjoying this and not looking further.
[READ: April 5, 2021] Parable of the Sower [end]
The end of the book provides something of a skeptical feeling of hope for our travelers. I read in the Foreword that Earthseed was meant to be a trilogy; however, Butler only finished a sequel (and an unrelated novel) before she died. The Foreword (by N.K. Jemisin also gives a spoiler to Parable of the Talents–uncool! Even if the books are over twenty years old.
By the way, Jemisin sounds pretty interesting. Anyone read her?
To me, it is astonishing how many big questions go unanswered in the book.
I had mentioned wondering about the Mars mission and there’s no mention of that again. We never find out anything about any state east of Central California and we never find out What Happened. Obviously that information is irrelevant for the characters–they just have to move on–but it’s frustrating not to have even a hint. [I accept that it wasn’t relevant to Butler, but I’m still curious]. We never hear anything about the community that the corporation bought, either–although there is a kind of follow up with someone from a similar community telling about how badly it turned out for the people living there.
This section starts off with an earthquake. Earthquakes are bad news in general but in this situation they are much worse because earthquakes tend to cause fires. And we know who fires attract. Zahra thinks that they might be able to scavenge for something they can use, but Lauren suspects, rightly, that it would be a dangerous thing to do–druggies and people more violent than they are would be there. And this proves to be true.
In fact, it proves to be very smart to move on because they wind up putting some distance between themselves and the violent crowds that scavenged the burnt out houses. (more…)
