Musician of the Week: Esperanza Spalding

I’m resurrecting J-Band of the Week, but broadening it.  I will try and bring a new band/ musician each week and bassicially lavish in the joys of music.

I love jazz.  It is simply the greatest form of music out there.  It soothes the soul while at the same time stirring up and variety of emotion.  It’s calming yet invigorating.  So I bring you a blossoming new jazz artist, Esperanza Spalding.  She is simply brilliant.  One of the few jazz singers I have seen to also play an instrument, usually because the greatest jazz artists usually play brass or woodwind.  Esperenza plays a masterful bass.  He lyrics, or lack there of as much of her vocals are scat singing, are beautiful.  This particular song examines the frailty of life and, although it may be short, we should yet be happy.

Sit back and take in the music:

Little fly
The summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away

Am not I
A fly like thee
Or art not thou
A man like me
Little fly

For I dance
And drink and sing
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing

I thought is life
And strength and breath
And the want
Of thought is death
Little fly

Then am I
A happy fly
If I live
Or if I die

 

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