I’m going to start a new regular music slot and first up has to be India Arie. If I had a daughter I would make her listen to India Arie’s whole back catalogue on repeat as part of her education in being a woman. I mean ‘Video’ alone needs to be the anthem for body image, for a start (‘My momma said a lady ain’t what she wears but what she knows’ WORD).
Perhaps because I discovered India on the impressionable brink of ‘womenhood’ at 20 (Angie Stone, Sade and Kirstie Maccoll also featured heavily in my Discman), or maybe because she is so on point about female empowerment without being all ‘sassy’ about it – but she really spoke to me, she showed me I could be an empowered female – quietly.
Don’t get me wrong – I love the ‘hip-popping, femme fierce’ queens who are confident in their self-worth and femininity – all power to them – but I’m a middle-class, English chick who’d rather make a self-deprecating gag at her own expense than blow her own trumpet. Awks.
But India made me feel like that was okay, one sultry R&B track at a time. Most powerful for me is ‘Just let it Go’, I mean how’s this for some lyrics:
You don’t have to wait for an apology
Or for someone else to make amends
When you can remember
That your healing is in your hands
Life isn’t meant to be perfect
And we won’t always win
But can you remember
That your healing is in your hands
Being told in her gentle, velvet tones to ‘just let it go’ is sometimes enough to take that deep breath you’ve been holding all day and quite literally – just let it go… give it a try.