Heather Russell - "Can't You call me on the phone?"

I have thanks to my good friend the good brother Mr. Dave Scott have been checking out the mighty Heather Russell who's talent is more than eye opening it is more than PRECOCIOUS...it's just Soul. This song that I was just turn on to absolutely amazed me. She is not only profound, she is phenomenal...as I listen to her lyrics on this song, "Can't You Call Me On The Phone" and watch her jam up those keys like they did it...I am scratching my head going ...I am over 30 ;) and wondering "at 10 ...what do you know about it and how can you sing about it...like that ?"

Music I believe changes everything. I have said it over and over...music's healing power is beyond measure! I listen to Heather and feel that maybe I am not walking alone. I hurt sometimes (okay maybe more than sometimes), but her music, her voice...she feels me...she definitely feels ME!

At 10 she may be feeling you too...

Confessions from a Music Junkie
djdannak

554 Days to Re-elect Barack Obama (5-2-11)

I posted ...Saturday to Facebook

there are 556 days before we re elect President Obama what will you do to ensure victory !

I got much vigorous debate about re-electing our beloved POTUS when I posted this...but as a bullheaded blogger I felt my comments were more than fair and yes I got some push back on whether to "ensure victory" let alone how...thanks Darren, Demetria, Terrance, Sunae, Jahlee and Ruby for your supporting the countdown....thank you Tim for a discourse that made me ...well...stronger !

Tim said...

What is he doing to get my vote? Being cool and looking like me may get your hang card punched but not a vote. But that's just me.

Terrance said...

 Tim, As you see this man has been vetted, vilified, and disrespected more than any other President in the history of this country. Nobody asked for Bush's "papers" and he never released his "college" transcripts. If we give Obama another term I guarantee you he will drop the trade embargo with Cuba, appoint a Black Surpreme Court Judge and tell everybody on the right to kiss his Black Ass. 

Tim then said..  

Terrence, why hasn't he done those things so far, he had an appointment to the SCOTUS and didn't choose a black person, I'm not sure what dropping the trade embargo with Cuba will do for us as a country and telling everyone to kiss his bl...ack ass probably isn't what politics is all about. What I'm saying is this, the folks on the right will vote for any and everyone that says what they want to hear but then, as folks on the right are seeing now, once they get into office they don't do the requsite follow up.

Personally, I don't see anyone on the right that is any serious competition for the office right now but still, to give your vote away without critically examining the politician is the same as throwing your vote away. After the Dems lost power due to the southern strategy and courted the "black vote" black folks have been in the pocket of the left, to the point that they don't even have to work for your vote. We voted this current president in on a promise of things changing in Washington, things haven't changed there isn't any more transparency in government than there was pre '08, Gitmo is still open, troops are still in Iraq and Afghanistan, these are some of the big issues that we were told would be handled. Do I think that President Obama had a magic wand that he would wave and all those things would be taken care of, no but it was still a bill of goods that he, probably, knew that he couldn't deliver on but pretty much figured out that after the votes were cast most folks wouldn't keep their eye on the process. This is pretty much borne out but the losses the Dems took this past fall, folks that were all for "O-beezy" couldn't bother to come out in the midterms. We have to be diligent with our vote and not just be out for the highprofile stuff.

This is just how I see it. Not falling for the okie doke from any politico, if I can help it.

Don't believe the hype and stay woke.

So I said .... 

@Tim I disagree with a lot of that... he said he would get us out of Iraq and we are darn near out (and this just in Bin Laden is dead) ...he told us we would go to war with Afghanistan and we did he said he would tackle health-care despite some graceless moments he did... yes Gitmo... is still open...but on day one he froze salaries and did things to get his administration on the right page..he has been more strategic and more transparent than any president I have "critically examined" in my lifetime and since I've been old enough to vote...he also signed into legislation to LRA Disarmament and Uganda Recovery Act no other President despite "all the record breaking things Baby Bush did for Africa" no one to date has dealt with POLICY when it came to Africa and there is more that wasn't promised that has been delivered and while he was never looking to change bicameral legislation methods he showed everybody what time it was when he made his decision and went into action on Libya and now of all those who said we should not participate in that...McCain is at the front of the line suggesting we increase our presence there and my list could go on as articulately as yours did :) but I got one eye open and one close 

...and btw I agree with you he's got no formidable challengers within the party or from the other party but I truly believe Black Folks (African Americans) will generally always have a better shake with the left and not the right and until given reason I will honestly be in lockstep with the left...the right is offering Bobby Gindal, Sarah and Mitt none will appoint a Black Supreme Court Justice...puhleaze (Bobby Gindal doesn't believe his state of Louisiana composed of 51% Women and 32% African American merits an African American or a Woman on its Board of Regents)

...I have needed every drop of unemployment I have received so thank God for the FEDERAL Extensions (President Obama and Congress)...

much Love Tim and everybody on the discourse...looking for more takers on what we will do to re elect President Barack Obama in the next 556 days...

So the last thing I said was ...

I am solidly locked in because the time and energy for critical analysis and strategic electorate action is better served after the election where the real work begins. Not just his work, but my work as a voter who holds my elected leaders...hip (all of them) accountable to me and my family. I will always cast my lot with one who demonstrates the capacity to hear me, see me and feel me. I also understand the limitations of what can be accomplished from the office, but am solidly locked in to a President and a candidate who has demonstrated strategic action, intellectual prowess all practiced with the compassionate hand of practicality. Obama has already passed all of my tests with flying colors.

I Got the Music In Me-In The Stone - Earth Wind And Fire (1979) Part 2

Part 2....

Many moons ago when I was between 9 and 11, my sister and I were cleaning our room and as an Alabama A&M University football game was being broadcast and half time arrived, the announcer said the band would be playing Earth, Wind & Fire's hit song "In the Stone". My first thought was, "I have never heard of this song and I know all their songs...how is this a hit?". 

My greater challenge was that the performance was instrumental.  While I connect with lyrics after composition, enjoying HBCU band performances before that day and since are still filtered through knowing a song's lyrics.  It was love at first listen, but I was still curious about the lyrics.

As the song opened with its grand horns and then percussion, I was transformed...that music that composition, that arrangement was transcendent and beautiful and somehow possessed "Funk".  I am right now being transported to the very spot in my room I stood looking at the radio (to me then still a magic box like the tv) as the composition and its performance blossomed in my ears.  The radio was for me then and on good days now a portal to a spectrum of concepts and emotions that begin and end with LOVE.

It would be weeks maybe months later before I heard the song being played for the Soul Train dancers and would become briefly acquainted with its lyrics. I can still remember thinking that Saturday morning watching Soul Train, "WEUP doesn't play this song".  The beauty of the composition could still be felt through the TV broadcast which had been so different from hearing a HBCU's band perform it live.

Having played in the band connected me with things in the music that it has taken me many years to realize everyone simply won't hear.  Besides Stevie Wonder's music I connect first with composition (and melody) and then lyrics.  I am the only woman I know who does that...casual polls among friends and musicians suggest women classically connect with lyrics, first and then melody.

In adulthood we all, I believe, reclaim the parts of childhood or youth that we can. Music is both a background and foreground of our lives...if you love the Elements like I do then you may have enough years behind you to remember records (33's, 78's and 45's), reel to reel tape, cassettes, cassingles, CD's, CD singles and now we listen to a waveform known as the MP3.  The music we once enjoyed via these tangible mediums we now enjoy as intangible, ominuously collected by 80 Gigs or more on an iPod or some other off brand MP3 player.

I got a new computer almost 2 months ago now and a friend helped me reconstitute my music library until I take myself back to the Apple Store for a data transfer session so that my music library can be moved from my PC to my Mac.  In addition to the music we put on here, where there were deficiencies of my faves I immediately upload from my hard discs, but then there is...
 

Being in line at a store and seeing an EWF Greatest Hits CD for $5 (brand new) and flipping it over to find an interesting hodge podge of what Columbia Legacy labeled "Greatest Hits".  "A&R guy, give me your job so I can show you how its done even if you are trying to offer something different and yes  I appreciate you for not putting 'Let's Groove' on there" I digress...amongst this 'hodge podge' was my jewel, 'In the Stone".

In my car there is a CD player. I rewind relentlessly to hear every lyric because while the chorus is clear, "true love is written in the stone", Maurice White's amazing and signature phrasing doesn't allow me access to every word (of this poem).  His voice is an instrument and very melodic, but like many artist it is not always accessible by the natural ear...phrasing a lyric to match the melody just doesn't allow it to always be well... articulate (we love you Anita Baker).

However I have damn near put my ear to car speakers trying to hear and understand every word and since I've uploaded the $5 CD to my computer and iPod, I have continued my mission to decipher every word.  There is ministry in there...I just know it ! ...There is healing in there...I just know it !

Well in this tech savvy world I don't have to expend much more time or effort to figure out the lyrics...alas (as we all know and I learned from HS students a while back) there are websites for which you key in your selection and voila...lyrics

So hear to preach and teach us what the word of God is saying to us from the Stone...the Bible...are the Elements...Earth, Wind and Fire...

"In the Stone"
written by Maurice White, David Foster and Allee Willis


I found that love, provides the key
Unlocks the heart and souls of you and me
Love will learn to sing your song, yeah
Love is written in the stone


Every man I meet is walking time
Free to wander past his conscious mind
Love will come, and take you home, yeah
Love is written in the stone


Do you believe, my friend, in what you claim?
People of the world all doubt the same
Bringing questions of their own, yeah
Truth is written in the stone


In the stone you'll find the meaning
You're not standing tall
In the stone the light is shining
Forever touching all


Life experience a passing day
Time will witness what the ol' folks say
Getting stronger every day
Strength is written in the stone


Deep inside, our hearts for you to keep
Lies a spark of light that never sleeps
The greatest love you've ever known
Yea is written in the stone


In the stone, you'll find the meaning
(why) You're not standing tall
In the stone the light is shining
Forever touching all


Never, never my darling
Never you'll be alone
Never, never my darling
Never you'll be alone
Ever, forever my darling
True love is written in the stone


Never, never my darling
never you'll be alone
Ever, forever my darling
True love is written in the stone


Never, never my darling
never you'll be alone
Ever, forever my darling
True love is written in the stone


Never


Ever


Written In The Stone


Never


Ever


Written In The Stone

I Got the Music in Me...In The Stone - Earth Wind And Fire(1979) Part 1.

Music is not only my muse, it is my healer...okay and my lover too.  I present the song of the week ( 2 weeks or month until we get a new song of which there are already new ones brewing), as my healing and growth are moved forward in the hopes that what is said, sung and performed will help somebody else to move forward.

"In the Stone" by the INIMITABLE Earth, Wind & Fire is one of so many amazing records from a catalog that spans 30+ maybe 40 years.  I will not tell my age, but for all of my life that spans back to conscious memories of childhood and in particular memories of radio, 1600 AM WEUP in Hunstsville, AL, I don't remember them ever not being played on the radio. 

At home we had "Saturday Night" on a Casablanca Label 45.  Their songs that punctuated my childhood are "Septemeber", "Boogie Wonderland", "Got To Get You Into My Life (their arrangement on this cover is MATCHLESS), "After The Love Is Gone", "Reasons", "Devotion" and the list goes on ..."Getaway","You", "And Love Goes On" and "Side by Side".

I don't mention songs like "Let's Groove" (a mega hit that crossed them over which is always good for the musician's pocket) or even "System of Survival" because these represented a shift in their continuum of creation. While the success they brought the group are to be applauded, it signaled a turn from the melodies, hymns, spirituals that I loved and songs that had been for the listener (me) transformational.

In the 6th and 7th grades I played clarinet in Davis Hills Middle School band.  My sister played saxophone. Learning to play music was awesome.  I can't say that we demonstrated a particular gift for our instruments, but we tried.  All band camp kids know that when you enter a band as a school activity you are taught music.  You are taught scales and what terms like crescendo mean and what symbols on the sheet music signal a staccato, crescendo, decrescendo or rest. 

I was always impressed with "staccato" because it required...demanded precision. (Staccato is what you hear when "Getaway" opens...they ROCK it)  For two little girls who already LOVED music, being in the band and being taught music lifted me to a new level within myself.  I saw a glimpse of a higher self at 10 years old.  I didn't know what to do with the higher self, but I saw her in the distance :)

Of all the Soul Music played on the radio, I would submit that EWF was most recognizable as band.  I didn't imagine them in an orchestra arrangement in rehearsals like we were at school, but they sounded like they were HUGE.  Their horns and horn arrangements were a major signature for them as a band. There were so many signatures to their sound.  They were and still are flawless.  I heard Philip Bailey sing at a funeral here in LA recently and Verdine White spoke...for me they are timeless icons of Soul Music...of Music. Their compositions were classic and rhythmic at the very same time.  You can listen in a chamber fashion or you can DANCE.  God is so in their music.

My sister and I composed very short songs that we went on the garage and played.  We, I believe assumed that's what you are supposed to do when you learn something new.  EWF (and some TV scoring) bridged a connection for us between what we were learning what was available to be done as musicians. Participating in band meant you were to try, do it, get in it and be a part of it.  We had taken ballet very briefly so while this wasn't an introduction to the arts or craft it signaled to us that we had permission to ..."do something" that started within and came out.

I reflect now (many years later) how beautiful that was because, we saw no barrier between ourselves and the music.  Thank you Earth, Wind and Fire. Because your MUSIC was on the radio, we believed in enough of our potential to try...to not only play, but compose. Though our potential was neither recognized, realized or encouraged (God had another plan). To this day I still see no barrier between me and the music. I am looking to purchase a tambourine and learn piano on this computer...I will not be stopped :)

Anyway this notion of "no barrier between hearing and doing or seeing and doing" I want to bottle that and teach it to Ali, so while I work on that concept for child rearing I share Earth, Wind and Fire's compositon "In the Stone".  The song is still transformational and now that I pay attention to lyrics...I am even more moved...



"In the Stone"
written by Maurice White, David Foster and Allee Willis

I found that love, provides the key
Unlocks the heart and souls of you and me
Love will learn to sing your song, yeah
Love is written in the stone

Every man I meet is walking time
Free to wander past his conscious mind
Love will come, and take you home, yeah
Love is written in the stone

Do you believe, my friend, in what you claim?
People of the world all doubt the same
Bringing questions of their own, yeah
Truth is written in the stone

In the stone you'll find the meaning
You're not standing tall
In the stone the light is shining
Forever touching all

Life experience a passing day
Time will witness what the ol' folks say
Getting stronger every day
Strength is written in the stone

Deep inside, our hearts for you to keep
Lies a spark of light that never sleeps
The greatest love you've ever known
Yea is written in the stone

In the stone, you'll find the meaning
(why) You're not standing tall
In the stone the light is shining
Forever touching all

Never, never my darling
Never you'll be alone
Never, never my darling
Never you'll be alone
Ever, forever my darling
True love is written in the stone

Never, never my darling
never you'll be alone
Ever, forever my darling
True love is written in the stone

Never, never my darling
never you'll be alone
Ever, forever my darling
True love is written in the stone

Never

Ever

Written In The Stone

Never

Ever

Written In The Stone