Music Jar – week 28

This week I have had the absolute pleasure of listening to Chicago-based singer, poet and songwriter, Jamila Woods. I was unfamiliar with her work until now and let me tell you, it’s fucking cool.

There’s a lot of identity politics and black history put not just into her music but also the skits, intros and interludes on both of her excellent albums, HEAVN and LEGACY! LEGACY! On her latest single, Tides, Woods takes more of a r ‘n’ b lo-fi approach that shows the breadth of her talent.

What I find most transformative about this project is finding musicians who are not in my immediate orbit, and digging into a world I don’t know of. With Jamila Woods, you have a talent accompanied by a level of success that I wasn’t aware of because I’m a 35-year-old who doesn’t go looking for the cool stuff anymore and accepts that his taste in music hasn’t changed in close to 20 years. It’s such a gift, therefore, to find an extraordinary talent like this and revel in what they do.

Thank you for opening my eyes to this.