Inner Soul Spotlight: Breath of Life (BoL) ~ Weekly Worldwide Musical Journey

Inner Soul Spotlight: Breath of Life (BoL)

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O'Jays Mixtape (1 of this week's BoL gems!)

I can’t quite recall how I stumbled upon this wonderfully diverse blog called, Breath of Life a few years back.  Once a week, in the wee hours between the Sunday evening drag to get focused and right for Monday and the week ahead, this fabulously delectable email hits your box!  Initially its the image of the three mixes that catch your eyes.  Some may ring with a bit of familiarity based on who’s depicted, others not so familiar — either way, each mix is a gift.  With a music catalog that spans from one end of the globe to the other with soul — classic and nu soul, jazz, latin, afrobeat, blues sounds, this blog is compiled by Kalamu ya Salaam.

Here’s info about Kalamu:

New Orleans writer/filmmaker Kalamu ya Salaam is founder of Nommo Literary Society, a Black writers workshop; co-founder of Runagate Multimedia; leader of the WordBand, a poetry performance ensemble; and moderator of e-Drum, a listserv for Black writers and diverse supporters of their literature. His latest book is The Magic of Juju: An Appreciation of the Black Arts Movement (Third World Press). Kalamu’s latest spoken word cd is My Story, My Song. An extensive collection of his writings, plus a feature-length interview are available online at Chicken Bones (http://nathanielturner.com/kystable.htm). Kalamu produces five hours of live radio weekly, beginning at 10pm (cst) on Thursdays on wwoz 90.7fm and www.wwoz.org).

Really now, could you go wrong with him putting a musical blog together?!

Well, this week in the spotlight is a mix from one of my favorite timeless groups: The O’Jays.  I took my mom to see the O’Jays and the Whispers in concert last year.  For Mother’s Day this year, I treated my mom and my sis to the Timeless Voices concert that featured Eddie Levert, Keith Sweat, Johnny Gill and the Temptations’, Dennis Edwards.  What a time we had!  Having grown up on music from the O’Jays (some call me a ‘music nut’ — truth be told, my father was the original ‘music fanatic’), this mix was downloaded straight to the iPod.

I have BoL mixtape treasures (N’dambi, jazzman Donald Harrison, Kirk Franklin, Isaac Hayes, WILL DOWNING <~ chocolate prince PHYLLIS HYMAN <~ the queen &  ERYKAH BADU <~ the goddess *eyes wide* and so very many more).  The mixes highlight some of the particular artists’ hits but several bside songs that we should have paid more attention to.

I sincerely encourage you to subscribe to the Breath of Life blog.

*Kalamu — anxiously awaiting the RAHSAAN PATTERSON & MINT CONDITION BoL features (smile)*

~ by theinnersoul10 on May 19, 2010.