Juneteenth, by Yakini Ledisi

Juneteenth

by Yakini Ledisi

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1.	Intro 04:52		buy track
2.	Three Days Before 04:09	info	buy track
3.	Fire 05:00	info	buy track
4.	Bliss 05:19	info	buy track
5.	The Shooting 04:21	info	buy track
6.	Teasing Brown 03:30	info	buy track
7.	Days Gone By 05:04	info	buy track
8.	Gotta Leave 04:35		buy track

about

"Flight is not as much leaving something, but the path to something."

This journey started May of 2007, which marked both my return to music (after a failed audition that led to a hiatus after 6 years of drumming) and my birth into a free world. An identity struggle developed in both of those which caused a sort of collision leaving me musically stagnant (and living in my parents' house longer than I wanted).

In July of that year I was allotted the opportunity to share my craft via a multimedia panel that discussed the works of writers such as Ralph Ellison and Zora Neale Hurston. After reading Ellison's "Invisible Man" I became interested in his second novel, named after the holiday that honors the emancipation of slaves in Texas months after the signing of the Emancipation. Free and unaware seemed to be something I had been for a while (self and mental emancipation is the most important freedom there is), so the name stuck. The album was to address coming of age issues as well as "bondage" from denial, feelings of guilt, inability to forgive, and so forth.

Two years passed without a release.

Another look at Ellison's second novel revealed a totally different use of the name. After spending 40 years writing the novel, Ellison passed away before completing the novel. But not before first losing most of the manuscript in a fire [which critics are now starting to question], and then writing 2,000 manuscript pages that did not satisfy him enough to complete the project. I realized that through a love for my art and an over-analytical approach to criticizing my own work, I was pushing myself further from my goal.

Something in me (and of me) would have to die first.

credits

released June 19, 2009

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