Big Sound Saturdays: Strange Love

When I was a teenager I dated a boy who put his pillow in the freezer so we could stay cool when we snuck into his bed in the California summer. In the beginning of college, a guy who spent his spare time tightrope walking and hanging with his dad’s pets. After him, one with a shadow mustache who’d lean against his junked-up soil-brown car and smoke a cigarette in plain view of my parents, which, honestly, still “gets” me. A guy who projected PBS’s live reenactment documentary about the Carter Family across the entire face of a ten-story building. A sweet man, now, who prowls like a wolf and sleeps like a caterpillar. There are through-lines in my romances, but they’re mostly wildly different from each other. Even my woozy nervy feeling morphs. Lately, I’ve been feeling it big enough to make a mix that sounds the thick of it.

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Big Sound Saturdays: Ladies First, Sister Soul vol. 2, Oh Mama (Afro-Caribbean Beats)

Not sure if y’all missed this, but on April 9^th, Obama paid the first presidential visit in 32 years to Jamaica, immediately visited the Bob Marley Museum, and opened his speech to a crowd of students at the University of the West Indies with a cloying patois, “Wah Gwan Jamaica?”. Leaving aside the politics of Obama’s attempt to divert trade from Venezuela, his role in the distribution of liquid natural gas, and, less seriously, his statement upon first setting foot at the museum— “Yes. This is it! Bob Marley”—Obama’s role-play might actually bring us into a deeper history of exchange between American music—particularly blues, gospel, and soul—and Caribbean, particularly Jamaican, sound.

For this second installment of Sister Soul, M.H. and I collaborated on an Afro-Caribbean “Ladies First,” mixing her choices, contemporary Soca and heavy Trinidadian dance beats, with the tunes I’ve pulled from across Africa (bless you, Awesome Tapes From Africa) and high-life Jamaica. It took a long-time ex-boyfriend’s reggae obsession to make me realize how innovative and heart-shaking ‘60’s and ‘70’s reggae stars were in their recreation of American soul and gospel music—see Phyllis Dillon’s “Picture on the Wall,” à la Patsy Cline’s “She’s Got You”—and lots of these songs seem like they come straight from the Jamaican ether. Cum Nora Dean: “He’s got barbwire in his underpants.”

M.H. and I wanted this mix to be big and new, so it’s full of stuff that people still dance to: Destra Garcia’s 2013 hit, “Call My Name,” for one, or Patrice Roberts’ banger, “Do Wuh Yuh Want.” We’ve also got classics, Sister Nancy’s “Transfer Connection” and Patra’s “Queen of the Pack,” with the biting, lolling invective, “look how me cute and sexy like that,” that reminds me of The Breeders’ furious plea, “do you love me now?” This mix is full of African rhythms pulled by Awesome Tapes’ cassette collection, the comically bored “Jam It” and Congolese rhumba singer Mbilia Bel’s heavy-hitting 90’s R&B inflected Manzil Manzil, and rounds out Accran musician Jojo Abot’s “To Li” bass/falsetto dreamscape. Sister Soul lives!

Big Sound Saturdays: Sister Soul

Ladies first, there’s no time to rehearse

I’m divine and my mind expands throughout the universe

– Queen Latifah, “Ladies First”

For today’s mix, I collaborated with the inimitable M.H. to serve a broad swath of soulful, genre-spanning women: from R&B and blues to hip-hop, soul, country, reggae, and funk. Donna Summers leads us in with the radio edit of what, when she first released it as a single on Oasis Records in 1975, totalled at about sixteen minutes and fifty seconds of orgasmic moaning, the mega-hit “Love to Love You Baby.” We float on Dolly’s “Early Morning Breeze” through the melty, ecstatic harmonies of Studio One’s the Soulettes and into Mariah Carey’s timeless “Fantasy,” into what Maya reminds us is one of the best tough-girl songs of our early teens: Toni Braxton’s breakup anthem, “He Wasn’t Man Enough For Me,” and through the lyrical gymnastics of young Queen Latifah and Monie Love. No story line to chart in this mix, really: Erykah Badu plays the prophet, Denise La Salle takes no prisoners, Etta James wreaks havoc over what must be the best horn solo in soul history. A room full of strong women, singing together.

It felt so right and good to make a mix where Denise La Salle rubs shoulders with Toni Braxton, Queen Latifah, and Monie Love—where Sugarpie DeSanto can sing her pre-party dress-up hip-shaker nestled between a progenitor and a disciple, where Mariah links arms with fellow high-voiced angel Dolly Parton. In Sister Soul, Aretha Franklin answers TLC and Big Mama Thornton protects her brood, excoriating the man trying to break into this sonic house of women with the righteous, enormous, “I Smell A Rat.” Maya and I have more rooms to fill with female musicians—stay tuned!