Valerie June’s songs should be put to good use in a society where beautiful and humane sometimes do not trump. Despite her music being for the most part interpretations of old songs, her interpretations feel very contemporary and cater to our urgencies. June sings and plays to our contemporary psychologies and our living place, the psychologies that come with American dwelling, and in doing so produces music that can heal.
The longer I’ve lived in America, the more I’ve been capable of deciding on what song is “beautiful” and what song is not. Beautiful’s definition in classroom English is one thing and in American it’s a whole other.
Once you’ve met several teachers, doctors, students, bus drivers, bartenders of different supposed races, each with a certain valid humane idea about what this society should be like, you’d like for beauty to simply be human.
You’d like to live in a society where the value of a human being can be felt at “Good Morning” or “Hello” and not at “I am a rich” or “I am of this race.” You know that collective action, politics, won’t fix this society, despite some good days, and so you keep it to yourself, as others do.
Humanity in the US is often found in music and it can be in June’s music. Take for example the song ‘Trials, Troubles, and Tribulations’, a bluegrass gospel classic, on her album Pushin’ Against The Stone. It’s a song sung by two voices, a game of T’s being expressed by two souls. We assume them to be kindred souls and that’s probably the correct way of going about it: voices up against the degradation of one’s soul. They sing the “I’ll be carried home by Jesus / And forever with him be” as their own to music playing that wants to resonate much more than pain can, and never do we hear any false triumph. Nor is there any slickness added to the song as most gospel is like today. It’s music that can be put to progressive cultural use. Despite the word Jesus and the dogmas that that name comes with, the song’s simplicity makes for a communion with a believer’s humanity.
Another one of her great songs is “Twined & Twisted”. We hear either echo in the song or someone else singing to very simple guitar chords. The songs is a long melody as we’d imagine songs to be during the antiquities – an Athenian or Egyptian woman playing a lyre as others dance a circle dance or feel their humanity.
The songs lyrics ‘shackle bound, but I still roam’ hit like an incredible perspective does, if one is open to wisdom. Again the song isn’t her own and she is interpreting it. Dolly Parton sang the song and that’s what’s so great about it; both a black woman and a white woman singing ‘got no place in this old world’ from the bottom of their hearts is really something.
Once you’ve walked the US, suburbs, cities, you often come to the conclusion that they shouldn’t remain in many ways. There’s a whole lot money but there’s something missing feeling wise. It shouldn’t be so.
What’s worse is when you enter private spaces you see what you were afraid of. What you meet is often actual sadness, depression, despite this being one of the happiest countries in the world according to certain lists.
June’s music’s grandeur is in the fact that the qualities of her music speak honestly and humanely to every human and make us happy.
Author: Adolf Alzuphar
