I am interested in telling stories. That’s one aspect of what I’m trying to do as an artist. And even if I’m telling stories about love, I’m trying to tell it in a new way, in an original way. Musically, I would like to think that I am open to exploring different things and pushing myself in different directions. In terms of my musical posture, I don’t know if I’m trying to necessarily be one thing. But I would like people to hear the influences and the global perspective. I would like people to hear where I am from.
—Somi

 I am looking for people who are pushing boundaries, who are challenging homogenized notions of what African expression is. And also I like to see that they have something very original to say. It can’t just be that, “I do hip-hop and I’m from Burkina Faso.” It has to actually be interesting, sonically engaging, and smart.
—Somi

I would like to think that I don’t get too preoccupied with those images that are pushed on us, mass market, media, and all that. I would like to think that there are enough people out there who are looking for other things as well to support what it is I that I do, who it is that I am, what I embody just by being a black woman.
—Somi

Thankfully, her music does not sound like an academic treatise. Some have called her work “Afro jazz.”
 

Oftentimes, people refer to me as a jazz singer. That is not something that I set out to be and I don’t necessarily carry with me. And I don’t really come from that tradition. That’s the one music I never heard in the house. My parents don’t listen to jazz. I didn’t hear Ella Fitzgerald until I was in college and remember thinking that is lovely. I like the chord progressions in jazz and the melodic contours it affords the writer or whomever. Because of that people have tended to call [my music] jazz since that’s the chord progressions I tend to reach for, but it was never intentional.

The beauty of jazz, the reason I embrace jazz and why that community, I think, has embraced me in so many ways, is that it’s  the one genre that really let’s you be whomever you want to be. It actually demands individuality, it demands improvisation, it demands risks—stepping outside of the box, that’s where they are interested. And I think that’s why jazz is the world that I’ve lived within although I am not a straight-ahead jazz singer. I rarely sing standards. [My music] is definitely soul music. And I only say “soul” not to say I am reaching for Aretha. I think soul is about spirit. I think it’s about truth. I think you should do what feels right for you, where you’re inspired to go, and then people will feel that, they will feel that spirit, they will feel that soul.
—Somi

I feel Somi’s music. I respond emotionally to the long tones and the deft rhythms. The beauty of her voice encourages me to smile. Often I amen the specific statements she offers. Mostly, I deeply appreciate that Somi is a sankofa—carrying the past as she moves forward into the future.

This music is beautifully bi-polar. Somi realizes that we have come from histories we should never forget, and are also headed into futures we should never stop striving to reach.

Asante sana, dada Somi. Asante.

—Kalamu ya Salaam

Somi Mixtape Playlist

 
Eternal Motive
01 “Smile Again”
02 “One For Me”

 
Red Soil In My Eyes
03 “Ingele”
04 “African Lady”
05 “My Mother’s Daughter”
06 “Remembrance”

 
If The Rains Come First
07 “Hot Blue”
08 “Wallflower Blues”
09 “Enganjyani (feat. Hugh Masekela)”
10 “Kuzunguka”
11 “Maybe Then”

Smokey Robinson was raised by his mother and two sisters and grew up surrounded by the music of jazz greats like Sarah Vaughn, Billy Eckstine, Count Basie and Duke Ellington. In 1954 he joined with high school friends Bobby Rogers, Pete Moore and Ronnie White to form a vocal group which became The Metadors; whose sister group, The Metadorettes, included Bobby’s sister Claudette in their line-up. Smokey takes up the story: "Shortly after we graduated from High School we had the chance to audition for Jackie Wilson’s manager", he remembers: "Claudette would always come to our rehearsals and so, since she knew some of our material, we took her down to the audition with us. But Jackie Wilson’s managers weren’t impressed at all, they rejected us because we looked too much like The Platters, who were already out and also comprised four guys and a girl with a guy lead who sang high. However, Berry Gordy - who at that time was the songwriter for Jackie Wilson - was there, and he was very impressed ‘cause he hadn’t heard any of the songs that we sang. He came outside afterwards and introduced himself, and then I knew immediately who he was because I had ALL Jackie Wilson’s records and I always looked on records and songs to see who’d written them! He critiqued them - he was very patient with me, and he actually was the first one who showed me how to write songs. From that moment on he and I were friends and, after I’d known him for about a year or so, he started Motown." Before forming the label, Gordy produced some records for Smokey’s group who by now were called The Miracles: "Berry had already produced a record for us called ‘Get A Job’ which was our very first record and released out of New York on this record company called End Records. Then we made another record for them called ‘I Need Some Money’ backed with a song called ‘I Cried’. So we had two records on the End label in New York. And they didn’t pay us! So Berry just said he was going to start his OWN record company, and the first Motown record ever was on the Tamla label - a record called ‘Come To Me’ by an artist named Marv Johnson, but the company was only set up for local distribution. Then we, The Miracles, released a record called ‘Bad Girl’ on Motown locally, and it was just like a big smash hit in Detroit and the surrounding areas. So Berry sold our national distribution rights, for two records only, to Chess Records in Chicago - and THEY didn’t pay us! So then our next record was ‘Way Over There’ and Berry and I were talking one day, and I said ‘Hey man, why don’t you just go national with this record because, you know, nobody’s paying us anywhere. So what have you got to lose?’… So he did - and ‘Way Over There’ by The Miracles was the very first Motown record that was a national release, and that was the birth of what started to happen!"

 
The focus of this Mixtape is not on Smokey’s long and long-lasting career as both a singer and a song writer in general, instead we are focusing on Smokey’s love songs. In the post-fifties years no one else has written as many popular love songs.

I started my deep interest in music as a jazzhead but I was also a teenager in the fifties and early sixties, plus I was a budding poet. I could not help but be significantly influenced by the man whom both Amiri Baraka and Bob Dylan considered “our greatest” living songwriting poet.

Smokey credits Barry Gordy with helping to develop the songwriting skill. An in-depth feature in Entertainment Weekly presented the inside scoop.

It was the summer of ‘57, and Smokey had just graduated from high school. His singing group, now called the Matadors, had snagged an audition with Nat Tarnopol, who managed one of Smokey’s heroes, singer Jackie Wilson. As it happened, the Matadors failed to impress Tarnopol. But Gordy, who witnessed the tryout, saw something in the ‘’delightful-looking kid'’ with the high voice, some combination of freshness and verve, raw talent and passion, that made him pull Smokey aside.

‘’I was more or less just feeling sorry for him, because he had worked really hard and his stuff was so good,'’ says Gordy, then a 28-year-old songwriter with a few hits under his belt. ‘’When I talked to him, he told me he had not only written those songs [he’d sung], but that he had a hundred more.'’

Gordy immediately expressed interest in hearing the tunes, and escorted Smokey to a small room with a piano. ‘’I must have sung about 20 songs for him that day,'’ says Smokey. ‘’He was very patient, he critiqued all of them. He thought I was a good rhymer, but that my songs had no continuity. He made me understand that a song was like a short story, or a movie, or a book, that has a beginning, middle, and end that tie in together. He and I struck up a friendship that day that has been everlasting.'’
—Entertainment Weekly

 
Smokey is clear. Although he has written a handful of topical songs addressing issues of their day, Smokey’s main focus has been on the timeless subject of love.

‘’Songwriting is a craft,'’ he says. ‘’There are no new words, no new notes, probably no new ideas. So you have to take the old stuff and write about it differently, try to say it in a way that’s unique and fresh.'’
—Smokey Robinson

If you write about a dance, about cars or political situations, sooner or later your material sounds passe, dated. But love always has its significance, it never goes out of style…
—Smokey Robinson

Ironically this Mixtape begins with selections from the classic album The Temptations Sing Smokey—Smokey doesn’t even kick-off a Mixtape of his music. The opening selection is “My Girl” with it’s signature opening guitar riff. And we close with “A Quiet Storm,” the song that gave a name to a popular urban radio format. In between are a string of love songs that span over thirty years.
 
Towards the middle of the Mixtape are three live recordings that are followed by the more famous studio versions. The live cuts illustrate Smokey’s power as a performing artist.

I’m gong to close on a trivia note. I never knew where the name “Smokey” came from. Yall know how our people are with nicknames, stage names, and such. The Entertainment Weekly feature gave a rundown that made me proud. Why? Well, because with his looks, Smokey could easily have passed over into the “light, bright, damn near white” world that was considered a major plus when Smokey was growing up.

Although he didn’t wear his politics on his sleeve, I always had an affinity for the way he carried himself, including wearing dreads when he was over fifty. Smokey loves himself and his people. Smokey loves life. All of that shines through, a luminous core radiating from the center of all his love songs.
 

The son of a bowling-alley pinsetter and a housewife, William Robinson Jr. was born Feb. 19, 1940, on Belmont Street in the North End of Detroit. When he was 6 or 7, his Uncle Claude christened him ‘’Smokey Joe,'’ which the young William, a Western-movie enthusiast, at first assumed to be ‘’his cowboy name for me.'’ Some time later, he learned the deeper significance of his nickname: It derived from ‘’smokey,'’ a pejorative term for dark-skinned blacks. ‘’I'm doing this,'’ his uncle told the light-skinned boy, ‘’so you won’t ever forget that you’re black.'’

The name — and lesson — stuck, a lifelong symbol of poetic irony at its sharpest.
—Entertainment Weekly

As the world spins and musical trends change, we might be seduced by an addiction to newness that will lead us to forget from whence we came, but once having heard a number of these songs, how can anyone ever forget to remember the music of William ‘Smokey’ Robinson? I know that as long as I have ears to hear and heart to feel, a quiet storm of Smokey songs will stay secure, soft and warm at the center of my being.

—Kalamu ya Salaam


Smokey’s Love Songs Mixtape Playlist
 
There is something almost magical in the depth and breadth of Smokey’s ability to illustrate and illuminate the nuances and phases of love, especially the intricacies of romantic love both when love is wildly wonderful and when love turns confoundingly complex. From the miracle of an improbable joining together to the misery of a despair filled breakup, Smokey has been able to capture the full spectrum, and has generally done so in four minutes or less.

He has copyrighted over 2,000 songs and at least a hundred or so of those songs have been charted hits for a plethora of artists both on Motown and other labels. This Mixtape presents “some” of Smokey’s most enduring love songs.

 
The first seven selections are from The Temptations Sing Smokey
01 “My Girl”
02 “The Way You Do The Things You Do”
03 “It’s Growing”
04 “Who’s Lovin’ You”
05 “What’s So Good About Goodbye”
06 “You’ll Lose A Precious Love”
07 “(You Can) Depend On Me”

 
These two tracks are from You Must Be Love The Love Collection - Smokey Robinson and The Miracles
08 “You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me”
09 “What Love Has joined Together”

 
The next three tracks are from Live! Smokey - Robinson & The Miracles
10 “I Second That Emotion”
11 “Ooo Baby Baby”
12 “The Tracks Of My Tears”

 
These tracks are from My World The Definitive Collection - Smokey Robinson
13 “I Second That Emotion”
14 “Ooh Baby Baby”
15 “The Tracks Of My Tears”
16 “The Tears Of A Clown”
17 “Just To See Her”
18 “Cruisin’ “
19 “Being With You”
20 “Baby That’s Backatcha”
21 “More Love”
22 “Baby Come Close”
23 “I’ve Made Love To You A Thousand Times”
24 “Let Me Be The Clock”

 
Two tender and totally deep, off-the-beaten-path love songs from Pure Smokey.
25 “Virgin Man”
26 “Shes Only A Baby Herself”

 
The last two tracks are from the classic album A Quiet Storm
27 “The Agony And The Ecstasy”
28 “A Quiet Storm”

I have always wanted to go back to my roots and training as a jazz singer. I was trained to sing everything, so I always will. I came up with the concept of mixing the old with the new because I love jazz, soul and R&B so much that it’s all one thing to me.
—Maysa

My uncle turned me on to jazz music one day when he told me to turn on PBS to see Al Jarreau because he was scatting. That was it. I was like, ‘I have to do this.’ My mom took me to see Melba Moore when I was six. As soon as Melba Moore opened her mouth in the play ‘Purlie,’ I was like, ‘I don’t think there is anything else I want to do.’ I remember my heart feeling too big for my chest and being extremely excited about what she was doing. And knowing at the point, as six years old, that that was what I was going to do for the rest of my life.
—Maysa

Stevie took us out to see one of Chaka’s shows and during her concert she invited fans to come onstage and sing with her. Most of these singers were trying to out-sing Chaka. So she would heckle them. Stevie asked me to go on stage and sing with her. At first I said ‘no’ but once I decided to get up I knew I had to do something different. So I scatted. When I did that, Chaka said ‘Go ‘head girl! The whole audience went crazy. Chaka Khan will forever be an influence. Her power and tone have inspired me to develop my own voice and be unique, sweet and powerful, all at the same time.
—Maysa

Being in Incognito changed my life. Gave me focus, a vision for my career.

When I was a 12 year old in my parents’ basement trying to figure out how I was going to get from the basement floor listening to records to actually singing on stage for a living, I dreamed and visualized it all.

Bluey gave me that opportunity and my whole world expanded and my dream came true.
I am forever grateful to Incognito for helping me to define my voice,nurturing my musicianship and being an integral part of making me the singer-songwriter/producer I am today.
—Maysa

Sarah Vaughan has been my greatest jazz influence. I patterned my style after her tone and phrasing. Ella Fitzgerald (and later Al Jarreau) influenced my love for the art of scatting but Ella will always be the ‘Queen of Scat’ in my opinion. Billie Holiday influenced my desire and love for moodiness and depth while Dinah Washington inspired me to be classy. And Betty Carter, through her music and performances, taught me to be brave and bold.
—Maysa

 
I don’t have to say much about the Sade. Sony’s publicity machine will make sure you hear it. The legions of fans and cult followers will strongly encourage you to buy it. Indeed, I have elsewhere posted two notices about the album myself and I never was that crazy about Sade.

To my ears where the clash of techno/hip hop production against Gil’s world-weary voice were like a stiff shot of some dark, aged whiskey, Sade’s album has a slightly bitter bite to it like a cold glass of fresh squeezed orange just that has sat out too long and is now a bit warm and there is more than a hint of acidic peal or rind grounded in with the pulp.

I’m sure deep fans will not mind and will swear that the album is a refreshing change from much of the soul-less, over production that passes for popular music nowadays. I’m not so sure. I think they tinkered a bit much with the ingredients. Everything sounds perfect, it’s just that they squeezed all the fun out. All of the music is freighted with seriousness.
 
But on the other hand, it’s been a long run, especially for a popular music group. The same four mates (Sade, Stuart Matthewman, Andrew Hale and Paul Denman) have been recording together since 1984. That’s a long time to keep a band together, a long time trying to preserve a fresh sound. A long, long time. So much happens over the years, so many things change: relationships, likes, dislikes, goals, objectives, not to mention musical directions and wanting to explore different avenues that your mates might not… well, you get the picture.

To my ear, Soldier Of Love sounds more like it was engineered than like the band played it. But I could just be being nostalgic, just longing to hear what was and not willing to open up to what is, not willing to give Sade the necessary space to experiment and find new ways to express all the changes that have gone down over the last ten years or so.

Over time all things change and I suppose growing old is the most radical of all changes. Besides, I know that in music, there is nothing more boring than old musicians trying to sound like their young selves did ten, twenty and thirty years before.

This is not a bad album, in fact, a number of the cuts are really, really good music. I don’t want to give the wrong impression but I know that even if I do, Sade’s fans will make sure the album sells and sells well. I guess what I’m saying is that I had always assessed Sade as being lighter than what she has produced with Soldier Of Love—there are some heavy songs on this album.
 
In its own way, this Soldier Of Love album is just as stark as Gil’s oxymoronically titled I’m New Here. There’s nothing new about Gil’s sound and for sure reclusive Sade lives far, far away from the battlefield.

But, like the man said, take it like you find it—if you like it, if you don’t, well then—leave like it is. In both cases these are very strong and very honest statements from artists who have already had their better days in terms of youth and maturity. Both Gil and Sade prove that there is still a lot of gold left in their artistic hills.

Make no mistake, these are potent and important tales told by aged travelers while descending the rough side of life’s mountains.

—Kalamu ya Salaam

          Still Gil           

Early this morning
When you knocked upon my door
And I said, “Hello, Satan
“I believe it’s time to go”

As most of us know, Gil Scott-Heron didn’t write that. Robert Johnson (he of the infamous ‘deal with the devil’) did. Gil could’ve written it though, and if he did, it surely would’ve been autobiographical.

Legend has it that late one dark, dark night, deep down in the Mississippi Delta, Robert Johnson headed out to a deserted crossroad as an average, run-of-the-mill guitar player. Disappeared for a while. Next time anyone saw him (or more to the point, heard him) he’d been transformed, as if by magic, into the best damn guitar player anyone had ever heard. And he’d become the best songwriter anyone had ever heard too.

Some think of the Robert Johnson legend as strictly factual. Others think of it as a metaphor for the things we give away in our quest for fame, fortune and recognition. Either way, it’s both telling and appropriate that Gil Scott-Heron’s last album (and other than posthumous grave-robbing, rest assured that this album will be the last) leads off with one of Johnson’s masterpieces, “Me And The Devil Blues.”

I said earlier that Johnson’s record could read like autobiography for Gil, but there are significant differences too. First, the timing. By all accounts, Johnson made his deal with the devil early on in life. He recorded sporadically and infrequently and died at the ripe, young age of 27. I guess ol’ Satan didn’t much feel like waiting. If there’s a hell below, Gil is fairly certain that’s where he’s headed too, but he’s anything but young. (“Certain bad things that happen,” Gil says through a chortle, “Make you realize that you’ve been here a whole lot longer than a whole bunch of people thought you would.”) He turned sixty last year, but looks a good two decades older – which is appropriate, given that he’s lived a lot harder and longer than most sixty year olds ever have.

Here’s another difference for you: Johnson, by all accounts, made his deal and that was that. He gained immense power, paid an immense price, and that was all she (or ‘He’) wrote. Meanwhile, Gil made his deal with the bottle or the pipe or the needle or the dust or whatever the hell his choice is or was, a long, long time ago. And he’s been paying ever since. Johnson paid everything and all at once. Gil’s different. He went with the credit option. A real shitty, layaway-type of situation where no matter how much of himself he forks over, he’ll never be paid in full. “Ass, gas or cash,” they say in the hood, “Nobody rides for free.” Gil’s been paying lots all three for a long time now.

That gorgeous, baritone speaking voice is now a strangled choke. The masterful elocution long gone too. Gil was once capable of oratory so logical, so exquisite, so dynamic that it could only be described as Malcolm-esque. He was equally capable of dropping ghetto slang so flawless and convincing that listeners felt like street-corner eavesdroppers. And besides the speaking ability, there was the singing voice. Not silky like Marvin’s or expressive like Stevie’s, but a wonderful instrument all the same. An instrument capable of communicating equal parts jazz, blues and (most beautifully) soul. Even when he slid off-key, he did it with style. As both a performer and a communicator, he had it all. The slicing wit, the wry humor, the penetrating insight – it was all there. Plus, Gil cared. He talked about and sang about shit that mattered. Didn’t matter if it was love song, a blues song or resistance song, he wrote, sang it, spoke it, and played it beautifully. No matter the subject, you could always hear the love and the honesty.

The execution, frankly, is gone. These days, Gil’s voice sounds like the bastard child of Bob Dylan’s snarl and Melvin Van Peebles’ croak. If we’re honest about it, the incisiveness isn’t there either. Gil’s lyrics aren’t nearly as complex or logical as they once were. He’s simply no longer capable of the scalpel-like precision he once used to dissected the politics of the day. His new songs are made of images and suggestions – not facts or conclusions. The ideas are not always fully formed. The music surprises less – Gil is no longer apt to follow a fleet, Latin-tinged jazz excursion with a full-figured R&B masterwork.

All of that said, Gil’s new album is well, well worth your ten or fifteen bucks. You might thinking, “How?” I know I’ve just spent the last few paragraphs telling you Gil can’t sing anymore, he can’t write like he used to and, when he speaks, he’s barely even intelligible. And then I told you his music has turned all simple – no more elegant genre-hopping. We’re talking your basic, basic electro-blues. So what’s good about this album? Why do I suggest you spend your precious time listening to Gil (let alone your hard-earned cash)?

Gil Scott-Heron’s I’m New Here is well worth your time and your money for the same reason any good art is worth it – because it communicates both truth and beauty. And in spades. Whether Gil is facing down the devil on the album opener, engaging in near-hopeless optimism for the title track, or trying to find his way back home on the spooky “New York Is Killing Me,” he remains an artist (and make no mistake, despite all of his shortcomings, the man is still an artist) wholly committed to telling the truth and sharing the beautiful bits of his life. It just so happens that the beautiful bits are harder to locate these days and the truth is starker and harder than ever before.

The other reason this album is worth hearing—especially for those who are already familiar with Gil’s work—is because it is almost uniformly personal. You may have read or heard interviews during which an obviously stoned Gil attempted to talk around or make excuses for his wide variety of addictions. But give the man his due: when someone finally manages to get his cranky old behind into a recording studio, there’s no talking around anything. There’s never an excuse to be heard. In previous decades, before his habits became vices and his vices became death wishes, he held court on social ills, political shenanigans and historical inaccuracies. These days, rumor has it that Gil spends most of his time holed up in shitty apartments, staying high and hiding from the world. As such, the only subject about which he remains an expert is himself. And he’s as quotable as ever.

From "The Crutch": “The savage beast / That once so soothed his brain / Has reared its ugly head / And staked its claim”

From "New York Is Killing Me": “City living ain’t all it’s cracked up to be / Yeah, seems I need to go home and slow down in Jackson, Tennessee”

From "Running": “I always feel like running… / Not running for cover / Because if I knew where cover was, I’d stay there / And never have to run for it”

From "Where Did The Night Go": “Fuck a job and money / Because I spend it all on unlined paper / And can’t get past, ‘Dear, baby’ ”

From "I’m New Here": “No matter how far gone you’ve gone / You can always turn around”

I had a dream about Gil the other night. At least I think it was about Gil. I saw a white-haired, skinny old dude wearing a Kangol tipped to the side. He had a hipster’s walk and a musician’s hands – sinewy, long fingers, that sort of thing. The white-haired dude and the devil (don’t ask me how I knew it was the devil…he wasn’t red and he didn’t have a tail…I guess I just took it on faith) were walking down the road. It wasn’t nighttime and the road wasn’t deserted – it was just an ordinary afternoon on an ordinary street. So, like I said, the two of them were walking and then suddenly, there was only one of them. It was still the devil, but when he looked back at me, it was Gil too. Then I woke up. So either there was no Gil, or there was no devil. I don’t know which and I guess it doesn’t matter.

What I think the dream was telling me is there’s some devil in all of us. And there’s some good in all of us too. It’s all about what we do with what we have. Gil was put here to communicate with us, and for us. He was put here to sing to us, and for us. The way I hear it, he’s still doing his job. He’s writing cautionary tales for us, autobiographical in nature. Telling us, don’t be like me. Be wiser than me. Make better choices than I did. Be the best you you can be.

Gil’s down to his last days. He knows it, we know it. But he’s still doing what he was put here to do. Still singing, still sharing, still teaching. Still being Gil.

—Mtume ya Salaam

Gil Scott-Heron & Sade Mixtape Playlist

I’m New Here - Gil Scott-Heron
01 “On Coming From A Broken Home (Part 1)”
02 “Your Soul And Mine”
03 “I’ll Take Care Of You”
04 “Where Did The Night Go”
05 “I Was Guided (Interlude)”
06 “New York Is Killing Me”
07 “Running”
08 “On Coming From A Broken Home (Part 2)”

 
09 “Better Days Ahead” -  Live in London bootleg - Gil Scott-Heron

 
Soldier Of Love - Sade
10 “Soldier Of Love”
11 “Morning Bird”
12 “The Safest Place”
13 “Long Hard Road”
14 “In Another Time”