black music month

I
Don’t look for pie up in the sky, baby
Need reality, no
Said I
Don’t feel the need to be
Pacified
Don’t you try
Honey, I know you lie…
Anita Baker, Fairy Tales

Looking back, it’s odd that for so long, “Sweet Love” was my favorite Anita Baker song. Or maybe not. Maybe, in those years between 5 and 30, I needed to believe. In romance. Transcendence. Optimism. I needed to dream beyond life in my childhood home with my mother, grandmother, and aunt on Cleveland’s East Side.

Knowing what I know now, I see the cracks in the narrative. That the event that propelled me forward—a morning in spring 1996 that I don’t talk about—also shattered my world. It wasn’t an attack or assault. There was no danger and no physical harm. But, crawling into my grandmother’s bed as dawn cracked over my family’s three bedroom house with no idea how I would face the school day ahead, I was irrevocably broken.

I understand why that girl needed to believe.

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One of many unwritten projects floating around in my head is Q’s Jook Joint: The Musical.

Based on the 1995 release by multi-hyphenate musical genius Quincy Jones, it follows a shy, young singer who, looking to make it in The Big City, takes a job at a night club owned and operated by the enigmatic “Q.” It’s your standard Ingenue’s journey, really. The quietly talented girl slips into the edges of this brave new world as a waitress. Then, on a faithful evening when the club’s headliner can’t perform, she’s thrust into the spotlight. Aided by the in-house band and a thundering rendition of “You Put a Move on My Heart,” she shocks the world. She can’t just sing, but sang. Well enough to spark a rivalry with the older, wizened headliner, attract the romantic attention of the band leader, and earn the respect and love of a colorful assortment of side characters. After some conflict and hijinks, the show ends with our ingenue leaving the club for the entertainment business, as the friends she’s made along the way send her off in a hail of song and dance—the jubilant cacophony of “Stuff Like That,” to be precise.

This was my 12-year-old brain on Q.

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