Scenes in the City
Mingus, Sade, Annahstasia, Dr. King, James Weldon Johnson
Hello and welcome to Vinson Cunningham’s Quiet Storm. If you’re here among the initial subscribers, I owe you a special debt of gratitude. Thank you, thank you, thank you. My very modest goal here is to offer you some tunes to listen to and a small snippet of my weekly reading. Sometimes I’ll write a bit about the music or the writing, sometimes not so much.
When I was a kid, my parents were always listening to oldies and R&B radio stations, whose centerpieces were late-night, smooth-listening “Quiet Storm” shows. The songs were romantic and softly danceable. The D.J.s—deep voices, dramatic vowels—sounded like they looked like Billy Dee Williams. I often listened in the backseat of the car, just about to fall asleep. A soothing feeling that I’d like to pass along.
So here goes: last Sunday after church I went to my local record store and spent way too much money on records. I’m now redeeming that exercise in excess by filling this week’s playlist with songs plucked from all that vinyl, plus some more recent songs I’ve been listening to. Indulge:
Listen!—Listen! All you sons of Pharaoh. Who do you think can hold God's people When the Lord God himself has said, Let my people go?
—James Weldon Johnson, from “God’s Trombones”
This week I wrote about commercials for A.I. and (with apologies) “Love Island USA.” On the podcast I co-host, Critics at Large, we talked about the movie “Eddington” and the “indigenous American berserk.” See you next week.
❤️🔥