I just spent two days listening to Ruthie Foster, singer-songwriter. Ruthie Foster, singer-songwriter of Gause, Texas. I kept hitting the replay button over and over. I would watch and listen to one video of her standing on stage with her guitar, her head tilted back in a I-Am-A-Black-Woman-From-Texas kind of way and then reach for another video and then another. I couldn't get enough of Ruthie Foster this weekend. It's been a tough week on so many fronts. Sometimes you don't know what you need to hear until you hear it. Ruthie Foster's voice is a force of nature. Listening to her is like slowly eating a bowl of sweet South Carolina peaches, while they are on fire, and you don't even care about the accompanying heat. You just think it comes with the territory. And when the bowl is empty you realize you have learned something about yourself, about real true unabridged sweetness, and real true no-accelerant-needed human fire.
It's not often that a poem, and the interpretation of that poem by a human voice singing, can stand alone in their separate power and also bloom in a twin way. Phenomenal Woman by Dr. Maya Angelou is a delicious poem by itself and Ruthie Foster's interpretation of Dr. Angelou's poem, with her own volcanic voice does something that only a great singer can do—listen deeply— to first the words and then find the music that is there just under and behind them.
Ruthie Foster has a new collection of music coming out this month, "Promise Of A Brand New Day" it's called. Please don't miss it. We need Ruthie Foster's voice and sound in this world of ours. We desperately need her "brand new day."(ruthiefoster.com)
It's Sunday. Sunday is my personal day of quietude. The day when I feel like my hands and arms open wider than any other day of the week. If I could hand the world an absolutely healing thing— this is the day I would do it.
Keep walking strong,
Nikky