I can clearly sense a theme forming with my listening tastes this week. I’ve been digging through my digital record crates (my iTunes library) for music from my late teens and early 20s. It was definitely a momentous time for me.
One of the artists I have been really keeping in rotation is Prince. I purchased his latest single offering “The Breakdown” on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I began playing his 3 CD set “Emancipation” for most of the afternoon. I remember how much I was inspired by that album. I actually named my first website after one of the songs on the 2nd Disc, Soul Sanctuary.
In 1996, I graduated from high school; went away to college and turned 18. I also launched my first personal website. It was called Zeinabau’s Soul Sanctuary/Lair. I really wish I had a screen shot of it. I can tell you that it featured my love of Prince (the recording artist), poetry, African/African-American Studies, the movie Disney’s the Lion King and cats. Hey, don’t look at me too weird. Think about the things you might have been into at that age! Thank you. Ok, I think I might have proven my point.
Ironically in doing a search online, I found a mention of my old site on one of my cyber-friend’s webpage (the above photo.)
I remember playing “Emancipation” while late night freestyle writing poetry in the Prince Fan chat rooms I frequented. The ones I liked. I would post at the Lair or kept in my journal. Many of those poems actually ended up in my book “Poetry of a Black Girl: the Darkness and the Light”.
Come to think of it, I posted and shared content on that first webpage similarly the way I do now to “Memoirs of a Black Girl”. I didn’t have any set posting schedule, I just organically posted material. The only major difference is back then; I had to hand code all the HTML vs. using WordPress.
One interesting factoid is Prince released “Emancipation” in 1996. It was in celebration of getting out of his 18 year contract with Warner Bros. Last week he settled his equally long battle with them over the rights of his catalog (of released and unreleased material.) As a result he struck a new deal with them to distribute it. For us longtime fans are we beyond excited, because this means that we get new music from him. He has been kind of teasing us lately with concerts and appearances. It really reminds me of that magically time period and so I have been feeling nostalgic. I wonder if this is how hard Beetles, Grateful Dead or Kiss fans feel when they hear their guys are preparing to release new music or go on tour after a number of years nothing.
“The Breakdown” by Prince is now available at Amazon.com
© 2014, Lela Jefferson Fagan. All rights reserved.
