Gospel Music

I was homesick.

If you haven’t seen the documentary Sonic Highway, I highly recommend it. Directed by a member of the Foo Fighters of all people, it’s about how the culture, history, and regional differences of the United States live inside our music.

The Blues traveled with my family, up the highway from Mississippi to Illinois. A Great Migration family, when my great-great-uncle fled the American South, he sent for his sisters, cousins, and other relatives. That’s why my grandmother was born in Mississippi and spoke with a Mississippi accent, but my mom, sister, and I were part of the generation of people raised in Chicago. Music traveled with us. Think about it: Muddy Waters. There’s a reason why Chicago blues and Mississippi blues sound so similar. The music traveled through people who were traveling.

A recent experience reminded me that songs don’t just come from a place, they carry the place with it. Even as far as Portugal.

The Shift

My friend Giel has a show called The Shift. It’s popular, and rightfully so. It usually sells out the dimly lit, super crowded basement venue. You already know how I feel about cramped spaces. So, after supporting it once, I never went back.

But, when I found out she was collaborating with MOGA Festival to bring The Shift to the beach at sunset? Oh, I knew I was going to be there! And, I’m so very glad that I went.

I brought a friend that I call “the Dutch Ambassador to Portugal” with me. She calls me the Queen of Almada. Though neither is technically true, one of the things I love about being friends with her (and other Dutchies in Lisbon) is it emotionally connects to my current time living in Europe with my previous one. Together, the Dutchies and I do things like sing André Hazes at karaoke, go for long bike rides, and of course we speak Dutch with each other.

The Dutch Ambassador is one of my favorite people. Even thinking about her now, I can picture her smiling face, red lipstick, brown hair, and dance moves. It makes me so happy.

She brought those dance moves to the beach.

Waiting for The Shift to start, she and I sat barefoot in the sand as we watched the sunset. The sky turned pink and purple and blue and orange and all of the other colorful gifts the sun gives us before waving goodbye by dipping into the blue Atlantic.

There she is:

The show hadn’t started yet, so we were still just sitting there barefoot, people-watching & listening to the warm-up music.

Shazam told me the beach DJ was spinning Calling Out by Sophie Lloyd.

When I saw the singer’s face in the app, I felt oddly territorial.

“This is gospel house music. Who is she? Is she even American?!?!”

Google taught me Sophie Lloyd is a DJ, guitarist, producer, slash slash. She’s from the UK, but her song took me back to some of the happier memories from childhood.

Back to those churches, with beautiful people with brown skin and matching robes singing in the choir. Those songs that made me feel at peace, like I could release every muscle in my body, because I was in a safe, sacred space. I felt this so viscerally, even though I was on a beach in Portugal, listening to a song made in England.

It also made me feel a little sad.

Call it saudade or heimwee, it made me miss my culture. I was a little homesick, and hadn’t exactly expected that to wash over me like waves.

The Dutch Ambassador and I spoke her language as we made our way from the sand into the indoor-outdoor co-working space slash burger joint slash music venue that was hosting The Shift.

Giel took the stage.

“Burger Queens! How y’all feel?!”

Music

Giel is from Miami. Drum and bass. I’m from Chicago. House music.

As the show wound down, a British kid (I think his name was Robert?) started beatboxing. That’s New York! Portuguese musicians kept playing, and Giel started singing Murder She Wrote in a slight Jamaican patois.

Because Miami knows the Caribbean well.

In fact, as people who hail from countries with large Caribbean communities, so many Americans & Brits in the joint kind of lost it. We all started dancing and singing. Our friend Kelvin, who’s actually from Jamaica but lives in Portugal was there, too! Giel moved closer toward him as she sang. I’ve grown up with that song in my bones during house parties since I was 15.

At a beach party with my Dutch Ambassador as a friend from Miami sang a Jamaican song to an international crowd, as a Brit beatboxed.

It was all so beautiful, and it took me back home.

Afterwards, in our shared Bolt ride to our respective homes, I tried to explain to the Ambassador what, exactly, had happened to me.

Yes, the warm-up song was technically European, and you could hear it in the techno-adjacent mix. But The Shift? That was so incredibly and beautifully American. All of our differences, cosmopolitanism, legibility across cultures. It’s the way we dance to Bad Bunny’s songs in Spanish, and how we share each other’s foods, tunes, references, and histories.

In that moment, I felt so very proud. I was so happy that was my culture, and that I got to experience it 4,000 miles from home, on a beach!

We’re all part of the same thing.

I’m grateful to Giel, to the Ambassador, and the music. That night, I hadn't gone looking for American culture or any kind of sense of home. Because, really, I didn’t even feel like I needed it.

But, it found me anyway. I'm grateful for that.

If you live in (or find yourself passing through) Lisbon, check out The Shift @ 8pm on Wednesdays at Badassery.

Tiny, Private Love Letter is written by Twanna A. Hines, an award-winning sexual and reproductive health educator, and an obsessed observer of how we love, learn, leave, and find our way through this world. Subscribe or upgrade.