A Pleasure Ritual (Interlude):
After lighting a hand rolled joint to smoke on a stomach full from a home cooked meal, I enjoy sitting up and listening to music. This joy can be further intensified by dropping the needle on a hand selected record from my personal collection and listening to the project all the way through.
Lingering in the texture of an artist’s full story.
The bliss of music discovery is something I always want to share when I’m experiencing it for myself. So I created an event called “Mind If I Play Something For You?”, a vinyl listening experience.
As an ambitious multi-hyphenated creator, I’m always dancing with the awareness that just because I ideate something, doesn’t always mean I’m going to execute it. In fact, when I came up with the idea to create this event, I was working on what I thought would be a bigger project centered around Black queer live music performances. But I was having a hard time finding the resources for it. As I have revealed to you in almost every piece I’ve written for Toxic Femininity, I like what I like and I will do what needs to be done to see my visions through. But when it comes to honoring my creative process within the constants of capitalism, I always make room to ask myself…do I need to scale this back to still make it a reality in alignment with my vision and my values? Most times the answer is to pivot and edit– not to give up. Whenever I get stuck on an idea or concept, I’ve learned to just keep moving with an open eye and an open heart.
I’m an avid record collector because I enjoy the grown Black lady vibes of owning a thoughtful music collection that I actively listen to. I love making time to go digging and discovering different record shops in my city. When I travel for work or play, I often add a day just to go searching for records. This process has created something of a musical passport in my mind. Since starting this practice intentionally in 2023, I’ve purchased records in Austin, Atlanta, Philly, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Brussels and Berlin. I’ve learned that record shops are curated to the taste of the city they are in and that different regions vary how they value artists, genres, and music projects.
For me, digging for records is an exercise of mindfulness. When I’m having a tough week, I like to go looking for music to give myself a break from my worries in hopes of finding something exciting. One day in LA, I hit one of my favorite low key record shops in Highland Park. As per my digging routine, I thumbed my way to the Soundtracks bins, my favorite place in any record store as a filmmaker and Black movie lover. As if it was waiting for me, I found The Color Purple: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack produced by Quincy Jones with the original liner notes written by Alice Walker. This find made my heart jump because it checked all my boxes as a collector.
Timeless music.
Literature.
Film.
Black Feminist text.
As soon as I got home, I dusted off the black vinyl and dropped the needle on my new acquisition right as golden hour was drifting into my living room. As that quintessential Quincy Jones sound began to play, I knew that I couldn’t keep this feeling to myself. I knew that I found the first record for “Mind If I Play Something For You?”, officially moving this idea from something I wanted to do to something I had to do. Everything, including the resources, flowed into place from there. It wasn’t long before I purchased my first techniques turntable and the best speakers I could afford at the moment and booked the Salt Eaters Bookshop to host my first installment. In a room filled mostly with Black women and queer folks, we listened to the full Color Purple album.
We listened to the 89 piece orchestra that scored the feeling of Celie receiving her first letter from her sister Nettie. We sang along with the 40 women vocalists of the Christ Memorial Church of God in Christ Choir as they exalted that “Maybe God is trying to tell you something!”. And we hummed together as Tata Vega, who is the singing voice for Margret Avery’s portrayal of the iconic literary hero Shug Avery, as she serenaded us with “Miss Celie’s Blues”.
This event was an offering of the art and ideas that have shaped my perspective. While I credit being an out Black lesbian as the foundation of my becoming a self determined adult– music, literature, and art by Black women have always been the gateways that lead me to this deep knowing of who I know myself to be. While sitting in the Salt Eaters Bookshop reading liner notes as I danced the records from one side to the other, my heart knew that this was only the beginning for this type of sonically driven community gathering.
I decided that the next record I wanted to share was the album Betty Wright LIVE. Since I was a child, this live recording shaped my love for live storytelling and music. Once I called in our ancestor Betty Wright, she decided I wouldn’t just be playing her record in Los Angeles.
In October in 2023, Ryan ‘phlegm’ Gilbert invited me to New Orleans to screen my short film Abundance in conversation with Fatima Jamal and Emma Cager-Robinson for his Sibling 2 Sibling Series in celebration of Southern Decadence. This was my first time meeting Emma who is the Communications Director of Highlander. She has been an influential conduit in creating programming that expands the recognition of Highlander: The Movement School formally known as the Highlander Research and Education Center. This organization, which was one of my development spaces as a younger Reproductive Justice organizer, serves as a catalyst and training ground for grassroots organizing and movement building in Appalachia and the South. This meeting of shared love and appreciate for creative gatherings and accessible third spaces lead to the wonderful opportunity to partner with Highlander for their Winter Lyceaum: Going Overtown to bring the 2nd installment of Mind If I Play Something For You? to Miami during Art Basel 2024. It was even more special to be in the music of the late Betty Wright who was a Miami, Florida native while in her hometown.
Underpinning this installment with the 1978 album Betty Wright LIVE, I invited some of my favorite artists to be in the Black cultural tradition of call and response with the body of work in the Pool Hall at the Black owned Red Rooster Overtown.
MIND IF I PLAY SOMETHING FOR YOU? MIAMI ART BASEL 2024 LINE UP
Phlegm Vinyl Selects VIDEO
The evening opened with an all vinyl set by Ryan ‘phlegm’ Gilbert. Phlegm is a New Orleans born and raised multidisciplinary artist. My love for phlegm the artist and Ryan the person is visceral. Ryan's image making instantly captured my curiosity. But our DMs filled with dialogue on his hot takes and life happenings reserved for CLOSE FRIENDS kept me. To activate the space, I asked phlegm for an all vinyl set because I could tell from his ear, his hometown, and an IG story curation he did of Beyonce’s best bridges that he had the taste and selects. And I selfishly wanted to hear it! Just as I thought, I was blown away.
This was one of the best vinyl sets I have ever experienced. The music that phlegm traveled with while also picking up a few titles in Miami, were beautifully woven together. The visual of him sitting in front of a wood paneled wall in a custom tie-dyed outfit playing a range of Black soul, RnB, disco, and house songs will forever be etched in my mind to live happily in the corners of my radical Black queer imagination. In this documentation that is now available to the public, we dropped out the music track inviting the viewer into the room with the artist and the audience. Capturing the ring shout that happened in the space with phlegm couldn’t have been more satisfying to live in and rewatch. Phlegm’s selections allowed me to flow right into the music and live storytelling of Betty Wright.
Amber Abundance plays Betty Wright LIVE VIDEO
Released in 1978, this seminal live recording captures the essence of Betty Wright’s captivating live shows making it the perfect vinyl record to bring back to the forefront of modern culture. I grew up hearing the live version of Betty Wright’s song “Tonight is the Night” on the radio and in my home. I can imagine hearing the live recording of the song holds the same feeling for my mother’s generation as Erykah Badu’s live recording of “Tyrone” holds for me and my peers. Listening to a recording of a great live performance transports me into the perspective of the performer and the thrills of the audience as well. Second only to experiencing the live performances of my favorite artists is being able to watch or listen back to their performance just as they happened. I love the added texture and realism of the room tone, claps, and callbacks on the track. “Tonight is the Night” is a stand out song from this project because of Wright’s memorable monologue where she shares a story centered on her pleasure as a young Black woman consenting to have sex for the first time. However, my personal favorite song is “Clean Up Woman Medley”.
Betty Wright demonstrates the range of her storytelling in this medley inspired by the her original song. With great éclat, she renders the Clean Up Woman as more than a protagonist in this one narrative and instead renowning her as an iconic archetype that’s a revered persona present in the music and personalities of some of the greatest musicians of the time. I imagine the Clean Up Woman having a great kinship with the likes of Dolly Parton’s Jolene and Black hoodoo Blues singers’ High John The Conqueror.
In Conversation with Kelela and Stevona Elem-Rogers VIDEO
Music and writing are tied up in each other. To master either art form you must first develop a love for expansive reading and deep listening. Moreover, I believe that literary writers and musicians need each other. Throughout history, our most dynamic and politically aware artists were known to have close relationships with critical writers. A friend group that I am often inspired by is the kinship between Nina Simone, Lorraine Hansberry and James Baldwin. Their relationship is what inspired me to bring in the voices of writer Stevona Elem-Roger and music artist Kelela into this curation.
Stevona is an educator and it shows in the relatability of her prose as a Black womanist writer and her algorithm busting digital presence. Stevie might have initially drawn some people in through a merch drop from her digital campaign “Black Women Are For Grown Ups”. But she keeps Black women engaged and the people who hate us enraged with posts correcting the legacy of Fredrick Douglass to include Anna Murray Douglass, the woman we should actually be honoring at every Black celebration of the 4th of July.
During the time Kelela was believed to have disappeared from the industry and the internet, she was still very much active online as a student of the audience that loves her and her music. During her hiatus, Kelela was finding her people and learning with the Black queer folk, creatives and thought leaders whose lives are in one way or another soundtracked by her artistry. She took those learnings to reshape the business of music around her to better reflect her values. I wrote about this period in her life that informed her creative development and reentry into the RnB and electronic soundscape with the release of Raven for Dazed Magazine. Yes, my first print cover story was handed to me by Kelela off the weight of a DM slide around the time I was also releasing politically driven queer focused content. Those early moments in my friendship with Kelela taught me about valuing my artistry and trusting that I’m ready for whatever new opportunities find me because I am bold enough to create on my own terms.
This conversation between myself, Kelela, and Stevie brings forward themes of honoring our origin stories while we are actively in the process of developing our own life paths. How family and home impacts our craft. And that our tastes as creatives isn’t just influenced by aesthetics but by our commitments to community and the values we uphold. Basically, being a real nigga— or not—will impact the quality of your art and your audience.
Stevie’s writing and Kelela’s music are testimonies documenting the highs and growth points of their lives as Black women. Through complimentary mediums and our own exceptional life paths, we meet in our audacity to exist and be fully expressed by any means necessary.
Ashley Younniä Deep Soul House Music Set VIDEO
DJ and sonic artist Ashley Younniä's offering graciously flowed this conversation from the mind to being back in our bodies on the dance floor. Ashley’s response to the calls presented in this curation was to release and dance through the wildly innovative genre of house music. With a sound seeded by her mother who is a New Jersey househead, Ashley’s selects energetically bridge soul, gospel, and disco house. Ashley’s presence behind the decks is a visual marker of the Black lesbian potentiality of music curation in the dance nightlife space that can feel completely dominated by male DJs. Mind If I Play Something For You? is positioned to do many things within art, music, and cultural organizing spaces. But chief among them is cherishing the ear and gaze of Black lesbians, queer women, and our undeniable impact on Black communities and culture throughout time. The first time I witnessed Ashley DJing live, her stage was positioned up in the rafters of a sanctuary turned into a party space. There were two Black queer women standing by her side and a whole congregation of Black bodies moving beneath her. It felt like something of an untold Black past and the makings of a thriving Afro-future all at the same damn time. I believe you can hear this experience of traveling time in Ashley’s artistry as a DJ.
Come Live with Me (Interlude):
As I wrote this origin story, I allowed the videos from this installment to play in background as a guide. I relistened to Betty Wright’s record. I also immersed myself into Kelela's newest offering In The Blue Light, a live album from her debut performance at the legendary Blue Note Jazz Club in New York. A performance I was fortunate enough to be in attendance for. I’m so proud that we were able to record the 2nd installment of Mind If I Play Something For You? presented in 4 parts on YouTube filmed and edited by L. Felipe Palomino of Felpvisuals. In reviewing the recordings, I found myself grateful to be able to experience this curation again. Most importantly, I’m honored to be able to share it with you and to be the keeper of such a beautiful contribution to the Black Queer Feminist creative canon. The
existence of these recordings are now a part of the archive of myself, phlegm, Ashley, Stevie, Kelela, and The Highlander Movement School.
I hope this curation sparks a thirst for more Black art and history handpicked by Black queer women. I hope you receive this as a mirror to the life you are in or hope to grow into. For me, Mind If I Play Something For You? as well as my writings on Toxic Femininity mark a beginning point to the body of work I’m dedicating my life to building through Ample World, wherever and whensoever you happen upon it.
