Artist Review: Joy Oladokun Misses The Birds

I really like Joy Oladokun, and she represents a part of me I wish I did not feed: my ego. In a world filled with racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, and government sanctioned famines, genocide, and debt: its really hard to know how the best of your humanity can get better. Sure, I’m good, but I have growing to do, and watching the news makes personal growth feel useless, lost, endangering, or even not enough in a world that is painted so fearfully.

As she played songs from, in the historic Stonewall Inn, I kept on thinking to myself of the people that came before me to this bar. You go in, and its just people drinking and re-telling their lives. It really is oddly simple for all that it carries like, the memories of Silvie Rivera and Marsha P Johnson. Yet, that is point of Joy´s music, in some ways…. Right now, we are in history and it can feel so small for how big it will be written about. Our heroes were just people trying to get by and feel a little shiny about it, and that is what makes them just like us but also not…. because they found their shine.

I do not know how to keep my heart safe, and that seems to be the giant, existential chord amidst Joy´s simple melodies and fluttering voice. When you love in a world that defines its story according to the moments it did not, where do you truly stand in its narrative. Who knows? But Joy´s songs are trying to figure that out. Observations From A Crowded Room Comes Out October 18. Click Here For More Info