Jamila Woods’ fusion of poetry and music is an emotional lifeline

Unless you’ve had the pleasure of encountering spoken poetry firsthand, it’s difficult to comprehend the sense of peace, serenity and strength that its performers emanate. And poet and singer-songwriter Jamila Woods not only encompasses this holy trinity of attributes, but accepts the inherent “corniness” that comes with calling oneself a poet. For those who don’t know, Woods is a Chicago-based artist who “grew up on the South Side, but now lives on the West Side” — an important cultural distinction for those who know Chicago. And this summer, after three years, she’s returning to the UK to perform her newest album, Water Made Us, at festivals across England and Europe, starting with Love Supreme jazz festival on 4 July.

I ask if she’ll be bringing an American je ne sais quoi to her show on the fourth, and she reminds me that, in America, fireworks run from Juneteenth (for the Brits, that’s a holiday on 19 June commemorating the end of slavery in the US) through to the end of August. The fourth of July isn’t a day, it’s a mindset. She tells me that she’s looking forward to spending the holiday here, and I remind her in turn that it’s BYOF (Bring Your Own Fireworks). In other words, the only traces of the fourth of July in the UK are found in the middle aisles of Lidl and Aldi. But no matter where she is — and perhaps on the opposite end of the element spectrum to fireworks — Woods can easily be found by the water, both literally and figuratively. Whether that’s by the Chicago River, or on the covers of her three albums, HEAVN, Legacy! Legacy! and The Water Made Us, she finds that water and its subversive qualities have heavily inspired her work thus far.

“Somebody recently commented that I do write a lot about water, and it’s a common thread on the album covers,” says Woods. “On HEAVN, I’m halfway submerged in Lake Michigan — and that one’s a lot about where I come from. And then Legacy! Legacy! is about my familial ancestors and the lineage of creative people who inspire me. The water is on the altar for that [cover]. Then on the cover of The Water Made Us, I’m fully submerged.” I want to know where the fascination with water comes from, and she tells me that it was practically written in the stars. “If you’re into astrology, my Venus is in Scorpio, and Venus is a lot about relationships and your sense of creativity,” the artist explains. “And that’s a very watery, deep sign.” This emotional depth is evident in everything from Woods’ friendships to her personal relationship with her art. “‘How is your heart feeling?’ is a question me and my friends ask each other a lot,” she says. “I like to be in the depths when I’m talking or curious about something, and I use music or poetry as a place to ask those questions. There’s something that feels very watery about going into the depths.”

When it comes to the albums’ titles, then, Woods tells me that there’s a quote by Toni Morrison that inspired The Water Made Us: 

You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. ‘Floods’ is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that: remembering where we were, what valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place. It is emotional memory — what the nerves and the skin remember as well as how it appeared. And a rush of imagination is our ‘flooding’.

Despite this specific creative ‘flooding’ having actualised in late 2023, The Water Made Us has not yet been performed on tour. It’s safe to say that those who’ve snagged a ticket to Love Supreme, or another show on Woods’ festival route, will be some of the first people to hear it live. “My band is really excited,” the artist tells me. “It’s my first time playing my newest album overseas because I had to reschedule my tour last year. It always feels incomplete when I don’t get to do the tour for the album, so now I’ll get to complete it performing in all these different places.” This said, Wood likes to refer to her discography as a series of ‘projects’, rather than ‘albums’, and says each one comes with a different colour and energy. I ask Woods how she fuses her projects (a term more commonly associated with poetry) with music to create her unique sound. “When I was writing my first two albums,” she tells me, “there was a lot [of inspiration] from poems. I have a song on my first album about my name and how people say it wrong. Also, until 2020 I was regularly leading poetry workshops for a non-profit, so I think that was part of it.”

As someone who did their university thesis on beat poetry, I ask Jamila if she encountered any kind of resistance from students or fans who considered poetry to be ‘cringe’. “I feel that,” she says. “But I don’t know if I’ve heard ‘cringe’ as much as ‘Oh it’s confusing’ or ‘It’s not for me’”. She pauses. “Actually, slam poetry or spoken-word definitely gets the cringe rap.” But that isn’t something that Woods perceives as a bad thing. “I’ve been embracing this idea of corniness or earnestness,” she says, before pointing to an interview she recently heard with Vietnamese-American poet Ocean Vuong. Responding to accusations of being “too earnest” Vuong says in the video, “I have been forced to assimilate in this country so many times and I refuse to assimilate again in my aesthetics”. It’s this rebuttal of constraint that, for Woods, makes poetry and music a natural pairing. “Poetry helps us get in touch with our tender feelings,” she says, “and I think music does that, as well. It’s so important because often it’s easier to just be numb and kind of detached, so [poetry] is this lifeline we have to our own emotions. If that means we’re corny sometimes, then I think that’s okay.”

Jamila Woods performs at the Love Supreme Jazz Festival in East Sussex this weekend. Tickets and more info available from www.lovesupremefestival.com.