• AVAILABLE ON YELLOW VINYL CUT & PRESSED AT THIRD MAN!
• 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THIS BEAT GOSPEL TREASURE, WITH ITS FIRST VINYL REISSUE IN HALF A CENTURY!
• STRIKING NEW ARTWORK PLUS LINER NOTES BY CAMAE AYEWA (MOOR MOTHER)!
Listen, the great Nikki Giovanni was protected. Inside the church, you can hear it. In the dusty silence, you can hear it. In the electric texture of the crowd, the buzz of the instruments, you can hear it. What you hear and feel is safe in the belly of the blues. Her voice loved like hands on the ivory keys of the church organ deep inside the spell of gospel. Nikki Giovanni is a poet at the pulpit righteous with spirit and energy. A poet in the choir hypnotized with the sound of the past, present and future. Nikki Giovanni inspires a new language rising out of the desolate and uncertain seventies.
The energy of this record serves as a requiem for all past woes and trespasses. The congregation's full hearts were swinging and you can feel the excitement to collaborate with Nikki Giovanni. Everyone can rejoice and shout that the poet has spoken of a new wave coming, a tsunami under new management, a new moon bringing forth a new sun and God has nothing to do with it. Nikki Giovanni is a poet not shutting anyone out but shutting everything down and that's something I can get behind. That is something I can pray for, a black woman allowed to speak her truth in the bubbling sinister seventies to the coming devastation that is the war on drugs, which was a war on our sanity. It was a war on our neighborhoods and on our notions of peace and family.
Nikki Giovanni said, “We have a world to conquer one person at a time starting with ourselves.” You can feel her passion for humanity. Nikki Giovanni has the power to move the word forward in the hope that we can achieve the creative futures we want. If we can come together and envision a better future that can lead us towards more love, understanding and compassion. To end with the words of the great Nikki Giovanni, “If now isn't a good time for the truth I dont see when we'll get to it.” I couldn't agree more, the time for the truth has always been now right now.
– Camae Ayewa aka Moor Mother (Irreversible Entanglements)
Also available on clear orange vinyl from Vinyl Me Please!
Includes:
Great Pax Whitey - Peace Be Still• Nikki Rosa - It Is Well • My Tower - Pretty Little Baby• Alabama Poem - I've Decided To Make Jesus My Choice • Ego Tripping • All I Gotta Do - I Stood On The Banks Of Jordan • Second Rapp Poem - This Little Light Of Mine • Poem For Aretha - Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen • Woman Poem - Amazing Grace • Poem For A Lady Of Leisure Now Retired - Must Jesus Bear The Cross Alone