Hi Sula and Sounds readers,
We are now officially in the second quarter of the year! This has been a big year of musical discovery. I have been diving into so many different genres. I recently started listening to UK jazz and falling in love with artists like Yussef Dayes, Mansur Brown1 and Korokoko. I’ve been going to amapiano parties to help keep my sanity. Not like Us and the Kendrick Lamar and Drake drama and subsequent discourse has shifted my brain chemistry in ways that scientists will study later.
Over the past years, so many of my musical dreams have come to fruition. I ‘ve been able to see some of my favorite artists and DJs in concert. One thing about me is I love a concert. They give me an outlet to scream2 and sing along to music in public. I love the sense of community that they cultivate like I love meeting people at shows. As someone who struggles with mental health, the quest to get concert tickets and then subsequently getting to attend the shows gives me healthy stimuli and something to look forward to. I coordinate train and travel times, I get an excessive amount of pre-sale list invitation and various venues concert line-up announcement emails. I set alarms on my phone to wait in virtual lines, like when the tickets go on sale at 10am3. I will write down concert manifestations on post-its in a vision board format. I was able to see Soulections, Kelela, and Yussef Dayes after doing this #mymind. Like I am coming to the concert game with intention and purpose.
In the past two weeks, I’ve seen the Yussef Dayes Experience in Central Park, and Janelle Monae and Brittany Howard in Manchester, UK4. Few things can compare to seeing Tiago Pass live. It started thundering during his set and went, “See how the vibrations we play change weather man says,” and then the band proceeded into Chasing the Drum. Janelle Monae helped raise me and her music has accompanied me through so many stages of my coming of age, so seeing her slide from the Age of Pleasure, Electric Lady, and the ArchAndroid meant so much. I burst into tears four times throughout the show. Last but not least, I was able to Brittany Howard unexpectedly. I’ve seen her live before, but something about this show was really special, and I wanted to talk about it further.
Seeing this show stirred up many emotions and made me think a lot about Black American Southern culture, geopolitics, and the power of a live instrument and powerhouse vocalist. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Brittany Howard is the former lead singer of Alabama Shakes and now releases her own solo music. She draws on the Black American rock, Blues, and funk traditions and pays homage to artists like Sister Rosetta Thorpe, Big Mama Thornton, and Prince. The show was at the Albert Hall and I walked in and knew the acoustics in the room were going to make the concert special. There is also no tracklist from this show on the setlist, so I am convinced I walked into a genre-bending portal.
Brittany entered the stage in a bedazzled Kaftan and a seven-piece band with two people on assorted guitars, two keyboardists, a bassist, and a drummer. Then, she had two background singers on top of that!I love a live band so I knew she wasn’t coming to play. One thing I really loved about the concert was how she glided through her discography. She flowed across the stage while singing Stay High like it was the 1970s and she was on Soul Train. He Loves Me, the spoken intro, began to play, and I knew the show was about to pick up. She hit us with a magical guitar riff, then transitioned to Georgia and the rest of the Jaime album. Jaime is a storytelling album and is named after her sister, who passed away as a child. He Loves Me dives into themes of overcoming religious trauma and Christian Hegemony, reconciling with your faith, and finding the inherent divinity inside of you. Then she transitioned to Georgia, which is song about growing Black queerness and her having a crush on her babysitter. The song is also directly influenced by Georgia on My Mind by Ray Charles.
Brittany announced that she wasn’t much a public speaker during the show, so she really only introduced her band and the song Baby. One of my other favorite moments was when she performed 13th Century Mental, which is a sonic affirmation, which then led into a 4-minute organ solo. Brittany and her background singer then got in formation to perform Goat Head. Goat Head tells the story of the violent racism and backlash that her parents faced for being in an interracial couple. As a child, racists left a literal goat head in the back of her dad's (who is Black) car. This song speaks to the very visceral and ever-present nature of racism in America. Hearing her perform this song abroad made me think and reflect on my identity as a Black American and how the legacy of American Chattel slavery impacts interpersonal relationships. It was also interesting because I noticed all the Black people who were at the venue were in interracial relationships.
The concert ended with the song What Now, and she and her band left that stage with quickness. I left the concert with my energy buzzing and my spirit full. I was shocked to hear how many people left the venue complaining about how her song and how they were redundant and only about religion. So many Black people across the diaspora were violently converted to Christianity at the hands of violent slave masters and missionaries, and she can’t sing about seeing the divine in her own image. I’m like, y’all missed the whole plot of so many songs and the storytelling we just witnessed. I also think complaining might just be a British cultural tradition. It was still a beautiful show despite what folks had to say. Please see Brittany Howard live if you can!
Thank you for reading! I am forever grateful to have seen Janelle Monae and Brittany Howard in the same week. Happy Pride to me! If any publications want to make me a global concert traveling correspondent, you know where to find me.
Talk soon!
Please tour in America soon stink :)
I love hollering!
I always wonder why this is the time they choose to start selling tickets; it is so random and accommodating. You are letting the bots win!
The weather is so depressing, but you will always be famous for your equitable concert ticket prices, England!