![]() If you sing something of beauty, who can resist beauty? Who can resist "I love you, and there's nothing you can do about it?" Who can resist that? Because music gets into our spirit in a whole different way-and I don't mean a political song either. Honestly, this yickety-yak, everybody a talking head, "This is what I think! That's not true!" and all that? No. I don't know that one." So, I think right there in that observation is the possibility of tapping into it in a real, intentional way for connection with each other.Ĭertain songs are elastic as far as time, space and perception go. They're your personal and everybody else is like, "No, I've never heard of that. blank?" And sometimes, they only appear for you. And then there are songs that appear for a certain time and they disappear and never reappear. My relationship with it is still developing. It's kind of something you can't exactly describe, and in the world of grief, I think there's great untapped potential for healing around music.Įven when I hear a standard I've heard a million times, it's doing its spiritual work in the present. It's this co-communication, this mysterious, magical thing that happens when you enter into the circle of a song. And I know this is true because people come to me and spill out all this story around a song I sang that is not even anything I did. And if it says "No," you'd better leave it alone! You'd better sing it straight! And the songs themselves also have a world that they've created in the culture because others have sung them before you got there. And then you ask for permission to change it. That's the honest and humble thing to do. My philosophy is that when you meet a song, you learn it. They were written in the '40s, written in the '30s. ![]() They're not songs that even necessarily belong to my time. I'm a jazz singer, right? So, I'm delving into the American Songbook, right? These are not songs that I wrote. You know, I think songs themselves have spirits. We hear you coming! Sometimes, people even sort of project their vibration, musically-the good and the not-so-good. We as musicians relate to the world with our ears and our heart. All your trauma, all your joy, all your living-your body records it and it becomes your music. It actually can take us back to the place where we first heard it-where there's an emotional memory-because the body keeps the score. I think we're sleeping on music in terms of its power to transport us. I think one underdiscussed thing about grief is the musical relationships you build with your loved ones and how you can manifest them into the world. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Nnenna Freelon gave a Zoom call to discuss the making of Time Traveler, why songs have the integrity of human beings and how reckoning with sorrow is like repotting and propagating houseplants. "The title allows you to go where you will." In other words: Come as you are, clear your head and behold music's still-undersung facility for psychic transportation and emotional restoration. "I would say to just enter the space with the idea of time traveling in your head," Freelon says. (This summer, Freelon also launched her " Great Grief" podcast, a compendium of music and stories about grief and loss.)įreelon sees Time Traveler as a portal for the listener’s memories-especially of those no longer on the planet. She mixed those with originals and reimaginings of '70s hits by artists like Marvin Gaye and Jim Croce to make Time Traveler, an inventory of Freelon's memory bank that came out May 21. After her husband died of the degenerative, cureless disease ALS in 2019, Freelon turned to songs-endlessly covered ones, like "Moon River," "Time After Time" and "Come Rain or Come Shine," that nonetheless revealed fresh meaning. ![]() How does Freelon know this to be true? She's lived it.
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