I was very excited for this to come back around to me.  This time, taking a cue from what is going on in the world, I decided to put together a playlist of music from women and men of colour.  Music would be so empty without their influence. 

I’ve chosen a fairly wide breadth of music from the past, recent past, and the present.  The whole Acoustic Soul album from India Arie was a very influential album for me personally.  As for Jill Scott’s Prepared track from the album Woman – that song was the inspiration for our arrangement of O Come All Ye Faithful in past Christmas Eve services!  I’ve also included two songs that are not by people of colour.  I’m not really a fan of the Rolling Stones per se (sorry), but Gimme Shelter is one song I’ve always loved – completely because of Merry Clayton – who famously recorded the vocal late in the song’s production while in the middle of the night.  She was extremely pregnant at the time of the recording and sadly had a miscarriage upon returning home from the recording – potentially due to the exertion of belting out these vocal lines in the studio.  The other song is Seth Walker’s Giving It All Away, where I think it is clear after 2 seconds where his influences likely were (yes, including the Beatles).  I hope you enjoy all of it!