This the 300th post on Musically Speaking ignores my informal policy against the reviewing of singles. Typically teasers for a forthcoming album, singles take up a lot of oxygen, and I prefer to wait for the album’s release. However, when singles of the exceptional quality of Vox Sambou’s “Limbe” and Starling Arrow’s “Wild Sweet” appear, I am obliged to share.

Vox Sambou
“Limbe”
A review
One of the great pleasures of attending a large music festival is encountering a remarkable artist with whom you might otherwise not connect. As usual, the 2022 edition of ¡Globalquerque! produced several such encounters, including native Haitian Vox Sambou, now based in Montreal. Musician and activist, Sambou sings in Haitian Creole, French, English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and in every one of those languages, he is in search of justice, equity, and inclusion. “Limbe” focuses on the resistance to the African diaspora, calling on Zumbi Dos Palmares, pioneer of the resistance of enslaved Africans in Brazil, and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, founding father of the nation of Haiti, and uses that theme to underscore the ongoing obstacles faced by Black communities in the Americas. (Sambou tells me that the song’s repeated phrase “Limbe o Pomago” refers to the towns of Limbe and Pomago [aka Port-Margot], both of which played a major role in organizing the battle of Vertierres in November 1803 by Dessalines to free Haitians from slavery.) If it is possible to sing and dance a way to justice, equity, and inclusion, Sambou will be leading the way, with his charismatic and dynamic performances and his unique blend of Haitian rhythms and dance combined with elements of afrobeat, jazz, reggae, and hip-hop. The new album from which this single is taken, Nou Dwe Viv (The Right to Live), will be appearing early in 2023.

Starling Arrow
“Wild Sweet”
A review
Those of you who have been on this ride over the last 299 posts are well aware of my attraction to vocal harmony, especially female vocal harmony. Starling Arrow is the latest spellbinding practitioner of this art to come my way. Fronted by five singer/songwriters—Leah Song and Chloe Smith of Rising Appalachia, Tina Malia, Ayla Nereo, Marya Stark—the group grew out of weekly Zoom sessions during the pandemic, with each songwriter bringing new songs written to a specific topic and genre. I’ll let Ayla Nereo explain the gestation and birth of her tune “Wild Sweet”: “I rediscovered this melody from the archives of my recordings. The foundation of ‘Wild Sweet’ was born out of a loop pedal improv on a New Year’s sunrise set at a small festival many years ago. But the song was fully written during our recording process together in Asheville. . . . I dove into polishing this song seed. The lyrics came swiftly, inspired by the energy of being in the cocoon of staying at home during lockdown, as well as the cocoon of our songwriting immersion, and the magic of recording this album together. It was the final song to be written during this cycle of our collective song-catching journey and captures the essence of what we were gathering. ‘Wild Sweet’ sings to the emergence of widened wings after a deep season of rest, just as humanity is reemerging into a new season of becoming.” The lovely melodic lines ride on an airy cushion of harmony, and the song’s sentiment, poetically rendered in the lyrics, is a welcome salve for a pandemic-weary world. The new album, Cradle, is due out in January 2023.

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© 2022 Mel Minter