Music Soul Child?

I love music. I really do. I'm not one of those people who knows a whole helluva lot about it or anything. Like my best-friend-in-law (yeah. that's a 'nuther blog.) writes blogs on music, and one of my UPNORTH buddies is an entertainment editor, and some people know band members names and band organizations and.... stuff I don't even know. I just like to sing along (and very likely I'm using the wrong words when I do). But that doesn't detract from my love of music.

I don't play an instrument or sing. I mean I sing. I'm sure you've heard me if you know me in real life. And while my tune-age might not be stellar...I got a lot of soul. And no one has ever laughed at my singing. But its not anything I've got any desire to do outside of walking down High Street singing the end hook to Posion with you. I might- when on an airplane try to remind you of that Ralph Tresvant song that goes I've been thinking lately 'bout be-ing single...or just alone...., And no lie, in the shower is where I channel my inner Aretha.

I'm also not one of those people who likes everything. I can boil my musical taste down pretty clearly. With the exception of the few Rock bands I like, and the odd ball Fiona Apple-esq artist and Jeff Woodell (who I also just love both musically and personally) I pretty much just like Soul music.. do you like good music? that sweet soul music? I like Motown, Rap, R&B, the blues (like BB King and KoKO Taylor...notsomuch Stevie Ray Vaugh) I like old jazz, I like new jazz. I always tell people my mother raised me right.

Music speaks to me. I can hear a particular lyric and find myself teared up and unable to pull my shit together. Which is kind of a big deal if you know me.... The Game has a song out right now called My Life. Weezie has a line in it that goes, Dear Lord, you’ve done took so many of my people but I’m just wonderin’ why You haven’t taken (my life? x3)Like what the hell am I (doing right?) . That hit me like an arrow through the heart. Almost ran off the end of my treadmill. When I was becoming Dr. Err, any song about being a hustler, staying on your grind, etc was my anthem. Angry rock songs always get played twice in a row on my IPOD on a particularly difficult run. Or on a drive when I'm pissed about something. The music...it moves me.

But mostly, as I get older and now have a huge list of songs I love. After all, I inherited all of the ones WM loves, some that TB has shared, and even some that I picked up from WM's father. If nothing else, I am grateful to him for taking me to my city's jazz festival when I was four. I remember thinking, "wow....this is what cool is...."

I remember singing Wilson Pickett, Sam and Dave, the Commodores, the Temptations, Four Tops and always Smokey Robinson in the car with my mom when I was too little to remember much of anything. I don't love you....but I need you..... Like my mom sang it to me, I sang it to my God daughter on my back porch when she was about 6 months old on a freakishly warm spring night. She tried to sing along with me going, 'AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH' as loud as she could.

In high school, I couldn't walk down the hall without someone singing Poison at least once during the day. Never trust a big butt and smile..... I can hear the music we danced to as kids (and my men were always dancers, people...Color Me Badd hair or high top fades and Cross Colors all of 'em) and still feel what it was like to be 'out.' To be dancing close with some boy who was slightly sweaty in his rayon shirt of many patterns and dress slacks and wearing way too much Drakkar. You'd come home smelling like him and wonder if he was smelling like Chanel no 5. Was he at home, now, smelling his shirt and thinking of you? Even then I doubted it. The boys I ran with still wouldn't have been home at curfew. Instead, one of my boys would have likely been smelling like me in a 7-11 parking lot, listening to NWA, telling his boys how I had booty for days and how he might call me.

But the New Jack Swing formed so much of what I was as a teenager. All of us girls from Around the Way still talk about it. The songs were all about how fine a woman was and her worth. I knew I deserved a man with sensitivity. And that if I ever chose to leave a man, I was worth a song like Boys II Men's Please Don't Go Away From Me. I wanted to be the girl who would make a man say, "your love makes my head spin 'round n 'round n a daze...". BBD's When will I see You Smile Again made me cry every damn time. How some stupid Eric Clapton song was my junior prom theme song when Jodeci had just dropped Forever My Lady is beyond me. And don't even get me started on Troop's I Will Always Love You.

Not that some songs weren't just about getting some ass. Keith Sweat's Make you Sweat is still one of my favorites. When I saw New Edition a couple of years ago (yes, Johnny Gill made me cry...) SILK opened for them and naturally they played, Freak Me. I told TB that if I had a dollar for every hood who sang that in my ear while we danced, I'd have like eight bucks or something. And I still can't help but grin as I write that even 15 years later.

I still dance. My tail feathers are older, but still got to get their shake on, occasionally and my friends still tease me about, 'thats yo song, gurrrlll' every time a song about trunks full of junk are played by a DJ. And it still embarrasses me. However, I very seldom slow dance as TB is the single no dancing boy in my history, and there are few boys who are allowed to dance with me. But, hoods still slide up behind me on occasion and I still wish that the DJ would throw on It Takes Two so we could really get down. I still listed to the same station I always have. Its the same format of my city's "best rap and r&b." But now, overwhelmingly, every song is about a stripper. I wonder what the girls I teach think their role in a man's life will be... For the record, I am over hearing about strippers. Though, I have some of it on my IPOD. But when its set on random, the occasional New Edition, or TuPac, or someone else from my musical memory slips in. And damned if every time I don't feel just a little bit younger. Although, now when the Humpty Dance plays, I don't have to turn it down so my mom doesn't hear the lyrics....