Description
Singer-songwriter and guitarist, Joy Oladokun, is a generational American talent. Based out of Nashville, Tennessee, where the National Museum of African American Music recently featured Joy as part of a new exhibition, her powerful voice, profound lyrics and intricate folk guitar melodies carry the spirit of the Black folk tradition into the 2020s with fervor and a whole lot of Joy.
As a special treat for KCRW, Joy returns to her roots for a stripped down acoustic performance of four songs from her new record, Hope Is a Heavy Thing, along with a cover of Des’ree’s R&B anthem, “You Gotta Be.”
In the performance you’ll find that her music doesn’t dance around the uncertainties of the times, it offers “Easy Company” and empowers us to be “Kind” to our truest selves. It boldly encourages you to overcome hate with love and turn radical hope into actions of change. As she introduces her song, “The End of the World,” she describes the record overall as “best listened to in a haze of smoke on a porch somewhere pondering conspiracy theories.”
Joy ventures through each song with closed eyes, summoning a feeling deep inside that pours out with ferocity. While her songs are firmly rooted in her Black, queer, Nigerian and spiritual experiences, the feeling she evokes transcends from a personal well into a universal ocean. Her song about grief, “Time Is A River” features some of the most beautiful lyrics about the painful subject and during recording it moved most of the folks in the room to tears, myself included. But that feeling didn’t linger too long, because as she began strumming the opening chords to Des’ree’s, the grief melted into a strong and undeniable conviction that “love will save the day.” It all perfectly matches the energy of Joy’s white t-shirt with bold black words that read, “got nothin’ left but hope for tomorrow.”
Every lyric, every strum speaks directly to the soul, prompting you to bear witness to Joy’s brilliance. Let Joy Oladokun’s radical hope wash over you and guide the new day ahead.
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00:00 Easy Company
03:32 End of the World
07:52 Kind
11:56 Time Is A River
14:40 You Gotta Be
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Joy Oladokun – Artist
Hope Brush – Lead Audio Engineer
Henry D'Ambrosio – Assistant Audio Engineer
Katie Gilchrest – Assistant Audio & Mixing Engineer
Nick Lampone – Assistant Audio & Mixing Engineer
Vice Dalton – Director & Editor
Dalton Blanco – Director of Photography
Jack Arthur – Lighting Director & Camera Operator
Tohar Zamir – Photographer
Tyler Boudreaux – Producer
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