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SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE

~ Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE

Tag Archives: afrobella

I Can’t Even Begin To Explain…

04 Monday Aug 2008

Posted by Vivrant Thang in Feeding The Music Jones, Let's Rock: Concert Reviews

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

a beautiful mess, afrobella, averagebro, black and married with kids, black weblog award votes, chinahblac, concert reviews, crunk and disorderly, estelle, friday favecast, jill scott concert review, ra-re valverde, rock the bells review, soul singer v

by vivrant thang on jill scott

…how YOUR girl Jill Scott cut up on Saturday night. I’m not going to have time for a full concert review because for one, I’ve got about sixty other videos I need to download before those (Raheem and Chrisette Michele, Bilal, J*Davey, Rahsaan Patterson) – although I am SO tempted to push hers ahead of the rest. Once again, Jill had me mesmerized.

You can find concert reviews, video and pictures here and here.

Some additional thoughts:

I need more more more Estelle in my life! Understandably, her set was short since she opened ahead of DC go-go legend Chuck Brown, The Roots, and Jill. She did about five or six songs – including my fave “Substitute Lover” which I’ll be rocking hard in Barbados because of its Caribbean flavor.

Was great to see V, Ra-Re Valverde, and Chinahblac backing Jill. I mentioned V in my last review.  You should get to know Ra-Re. She has an album out called “A Beautiful Mess“ (love that title because that’s how I refer to myself on many a day!) Her talent has been co-signed by some of the greats. Get into her.

I was officially done with Jill for the night when she opened her “trying to get you laid” part of the show. She did “Come See Me” and then noticed some folks starting to leave. She says, “They got to go! They can’t even make it home. They got to get to the car right now!” Then she did “Crown Royal” and talked about the great old school love songs and how when you invite your man over, you got to take the batteries out of B.O.B (your battery operated boyfriend) and put them in the remote for the stereo.

DEAD.

When you press play, you hear this:

ChinahBlac put a HURTING on Teena Marie’s “Portugese Love”

V killing the Isley Brothers “Between The Sheets.” He could do no wrong with me since the Philly show when he reminded me of how much I love Atlantic Starr’s “Send For Me.”

Ra-Re did her thang on Prince’s “Do Me.”

I was done.

Video evidence is coming because my description just can’t capture it.

Jill-ism of the night: “Shit on your shoe don’t keep you from walking.” Hate on me indeed!

She ended her set of mostly tracks from the new album with a nice up-tempo, house version of “Lyzel in E Flat (He Loves Me).” The encore included The Roots and Chuck Brown joining her on stage for “It’s Love.” She praised Chuck for introducing her to that go-go sound. Chuck Baby didn’t really know the words and I was begging Jill to take the mic back and just let him ad-lib which is what she eventually did and it was pure fiyah!

As she has been doing at every show, she came out as everyone was filing out to do “And I Heard,” the song she says came to her in her sleep. Some crazy woman kept yelling out “Obama!” I guess she wanted Jill to do an Obama freestyle. Jill simply warned us not to continue making this race about a black man running. We better focus on his politics or we might “fuck it up.” I see her point but that’s impossible.

What I love about Jill’s concerts is that I’ve seen her three times in the past year and a half and her shows are never the same. I love how she changes up her arrangements and the set lists are different. She’s just versatile like that and I love her for it.

Just as my high was just starting to come down, I head on over to catch up with one of my favorite, most-respected bloggers, Afrobella and see that she has called me a “brilliant” music blogger while referencing my Rock The Bells review in her excellent review of the Miami show.  She is certainly at the very top of my list of favorite female bloggers so that damn near had me misty!

While we’re on the subject of favorite bloggers, I’m sure you’ve heard about the Black Weblog Awards. Voting is now underway. I would never tell you how to vote, except if we’re talking about the general election 🙂 However, I would invite you to consider throwing your vote in several categories to the good folks over at Soul Bounce.  Nova, Butta, Harlem, and Ill Mami bust their hindparts every single day to bring you original, extremely well-written content about the latest and greatest in the music industry – and that’s hard to find on the Internets.

Here are the categories they’d like your vote in.  Frankly, they deserve all of them but I’m sure they will take as many as you can spare! If you’re not convinced, take a listen to them speaking about the evolution of Soul Bounce and why they do what they do on Friday Favecast.

So head on over and ROCK THE VOTE.

I didn’t vote Soul Bounce in every category. Afrobella, Friday Favecast,  AverageBro, and Black and Married With Kids, and Crunk and Disorderly were just a few of sites that got my vote as well.

Whichever way you vote, just do it!

Monster post coming this week. Stay tuned!

photo credit: African Olmecca

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I Am Not My Hair

17 Wednesday Oct 2007

Posted by Vivrant Thang in Feeding The Music Jones

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

afrobella, ask this black woman, black women, daily news and the colored section, glamour magazine, hair, i am not my hair, india arie, natural

iamnotmyhair.jpg

Good hair means curls and waves/ Bad hair means you look like a slave
At the turn of the century/ Its time for us to redefine who we be
You can shave it off / Like a South African beauty
Or get in on lock / Like Bob Marley
You can rock it straight/ Like Oprah Winfrey
If its not what’s on your head/ Its what’s underneath

This is not the post I had in mind, but sometimes the best posts are not the ones you planned.

I was catching up on my blog reading today (I subscribe to WAY too many feeds because of my varied interests—the ones on the blogroll are just a sample of what I have in my Bloglines!) and saw an update on Afrobella’s fabulous blog about the Glamour Magazine incident. For those not familiar, a now former junior beauty editor at Glamour (which I don’t read) was giving a presentation at a law firm luncheon on the do’s and don’ts of corporate fashion. According to American Lawyer magazine, these were her “words of wisdom” :

First slide up: an African American woman sporting an Afro. A real no-no, announced the ‘Glamour’ editor to the 40 or so lawyers in the room. As for dreadlocks: How truly dreadful! The style maven said it was ‘shocking’ that some people still think it ‘appropriate’ to wear those hairstyles at the office. ‘No offense,’ she sniffed, but those ‘political’ hairstyles really have to go.

Oh to have been a fly on the wall and see the faces of the ten Black female lawyers in attendance.

It’s been causing quite a stir in the blogosphere for months, which you can read about here and here. Ask This Black Woman reports on the obligatory, canned apology she and other bloggers received in their inboxes from the powers that be at Glamour.

Like Afrobella, this story just makes me tired. I would like to hear exactly why it is so “shocking” that I would wear my natural hair at the office? I know that this way of “thinking” is certainly nothing new and not at all surprising. Our hair is and always will be cause for conversation and controversy.

This all made me think about my path to natural, which is still not complete! It happened by accident really. As a 80s kid, I used to rock the jheri curl and thought it was quite cute until about 7th grade when this kid came up to me and asked almost sympathetically,” Aren’t you tired of wearing a jheri curl?”

Little asshole.

So of course I pleaded with my mother to let me get my first perm and that would be the way I wore it for the next fifteen or so years. I had some variety in there: the asymmetrical Salt-n-Pepa; up-dos, bangs, finger waves, ponytails, pageboys, spiral curls. I let my cousin put in the occasional braids during the summer that I would leave in for a for a few months. However, for the most part, I was on that stop-scratching-a week-before-or-those-chemicals-will-burn-your-head up kick.

I was getting my hair done every week, spending hours of my life in the chair, under the dryer, waiting. Now my hair was fly. It was a nice auburn color, almost shoulder-length with layers cut in. It looked like….the 50-11 other females I encountered on a daily basis.

So about four or five years ago, I was going on vacation and planned to put braids in. I told my longtime hair dresser that I’d be back after I took the braids out. When I walked out of her shop, I had no idea that was the last time I’d step foot in there. I went to a hair show and saw a woman getting twists put in and fell in love. It was nothing new but it’s as if my eyes had been opened for the first time. I made an appointment at that shop and the rest is history. I never put another perm in and the same stylist I met at that shop, I still go to now, even though she works for herself.

There hasn’t been one day where I’ve missed having a perm. Why? My time is too valuable these days to spend it in the salon half the day. I go every three weeks to keep it maintained. I don’t have to worry about whether I’m going to come out with scabs in the back of my head from chemical burns. Something about that just ain’t right! And truthfully, I love the way my natural hair feels in my hands. It’s soft and beautiful…not “dreadful.”

I wear the twists because my hair still has not grown out to the fullness I would like so I can wear it big, wild and curly. I may have to face facts though–it may never grow anymore. It’s been a while– so this may be it! My stylist says that I may need to take the twists out and let it breathe. I’m considering that for the winter.

When I first did it, I did get the curious stares, particularly from my former supervisor. I could tell she didn’t like it. When we talked, her eyes would wander up. Ask me if I cared? I love it. I didn’t go natural to be political. I went natural in part because I was tired of the pain–of the chemicals and my wasted time! I wanted something different. It just feels right.

 

tonimorrison100907.jpg

*picture credit: Jezebel

I’ve been on the job market for a while and briefly considered whether my hair would affect my marketability. I quickly dismissed that thought. I’m not the least bit interested in working at any place of business that would consider how I wear my hair an issue, outside of the fact that I’m presentable for business purposes, which would never come into question. I’m far too liberal for that kind of environment.

Oh wait, I’m being too political.

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