Jamila Woods

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Jamila Woods

Photo by Bradley Murray

Here’s a revolutionary book club idea: For your group’s next selection, instead of one piece of literature, designate Jamila Woods’s elegant and conceptual album LEGACY! LEGACY! as a listening assignment. While each song on the Chicago singer and poet’s new album discharges equal parts black power, girl magic, vocal mesmerism, and a soulful symbiosis with handpicked producers, there’s also an intellectual touch in the song titles that pays homage to black and brown artists that have influenced her. Find a song, read a chapter in that artist’s biography, and discuss. Woods’s main canon consists of Zora Neale Hurston, Frida Kahlo, James Baldwin, Eartha Kitt, and eight others.  “I just got to get away from the Earth, man,” Woods sings on “SUN RA.” “I won’t be around to see it when it goes. Black-girl Garvey, I’ll be on my own.” You can either take it as forlorn Afrofuturism or her own way of flirting with the idea of black deliverance. Either way, it all comes alive through speakers and on stage. Now, whether your little book club can handle it is a different question. —Eric Tullis