Juneteenth

A Meditation on Freedom Day and Notes of Rest Turning 3

What’s good everyone,

I hope that today has been a rich Juneteenth for all of you. Turns out that this week is also when I commemorate the birth of Notes of Rest, making it now three years. Wow, has it been full.

A song I really dig that gets at Juneteenth and Notes’ birthday is Freedom Day by vocalist Abbey Lincoln and drummer Max Roach. This song is from Roach’s iconic record We Insist! Freedom Now Suite from the 1960s. I love this record, in part because (sadly) it remains so relevant to now. Roach’s quintet and Lincoln move through the various phases of Black life in this country, and the tune Freedom Day encapsulates the vulnerable hope of Juneteenth so poetically.

“Whisper listen, whisper listen, whispers say we’re free/rumors flying must be lying can it really be. Can’t believe it, Can’t conceive it, But that’s what they say/Slave no longer, slave no longer, this is Freedom Day!”

The song in lyric and music blends exultation and trepidation, creating a soundtrack for the once-enslaved gingerly testing the waters of their freedom. We’re free. Really? I’m free? You’re free? Can it really be? In my sanctified imagination I can see former slaves in Texas balking at the news that they were actually no longer owned by someone else. What would that news sound like as they walked away from their literal and figurative plow? Roach and Lincoln take us there.

Of course, in today’s time we just need to look at mass incarceration, gentrification, proliferating dialysis centers, rampant gun violence, and failed school policies to see that this freedom is a muted one for Black folk today. Perhaps that’s why the rapper Jay-Z made The Story of O.J. where he laments, “light ni**a, dark ni**a, rich ni**a, poor ni**a…still ni**a.” The reality is that many Black folk feel all kinds of feelings on Juneteenth because Abbey’s line still reverberates: “rumors flying, must be lying, can it really be?” Some of us may have money, but at the end of the day, are we still ni**a? (For instance, I heard The Story of OJ recently in Jon Batiste’s documentary American Symphony and that blew me away. Here is a Black man who could not be more beloved by the country and yet the song’s placement in the movie suggests Batiste still recognizes Black subjection in this country predicated on White power. Yet in still, we are reminded that the caged bird sings.)

But Lincoln’s line of questions apply to me in a flip sense too. I am not just timid about the ways Black life is circumscribed, I am exceedingly grateful too for how it can be and has been realized in my life. On this birthday of Notes of Rest, I celebrate so much freedom that I continue stepping into through this ministry and through my own music-making.

In the past year I started my paid page here on Substack. (Thank you everybody who shows love in that way, and if you’re not signed up but interested, I welcome you.) I continued sharing Notes of Rest across North America, signed a literary agent deal for my forthcoming Notes of Rest book (pray with me y’all lol), am getting mentoring from the master spiritual formation teacher Ruth Haley Barton, and am now getting involved in community work here in Chicago in partnership with an Illinois state government targeting mass incarceration and gun violence in Black communities. God has been kind.

On the music side, since last June I released my first original record under my own name - Candid EP - and two records with Isaiah Collier - Parallel Universe and The Almighty which we’ll be touring in Europe starting next week. I also premiered my own group, Circle of Trust, which just had a DOPE show this past weekend with dance, visual arts, and vocals. (See below.)

As always, thank you, reader, for being on the journey with me. American history shows that Black freedom is always something to caveat, yes, but it also is always something to celebrate. It’s sad that the two go together, but if my people didn’t do both, we would surely die. So thank you for helping me reach higher heights and deeper depths as I receive God’s freedom for me and for us. We in this thang together - ubuntu.

abundantly,

Julian

What’s Next

Jun 22 The JuJu Exchange at The BlkRoom (Chicago)

June 25 - July 9 Isaiah Collier and the Chosen Few Tour (Europe)

July 13 Notes of Rest at Fellowship for Protestant Ethics (Atlanta)

July 20 The JuJu Exchange (Detroit)

P.S. Here’s a dope song from The JuJu Exchange that is all about deep-seeded celebration. Maybe it can be a nice nightcap for your Juneteenth celebrations and reparations work.