Is the private political after all? Jamila Woods talks about openness, heartbreak & self-discovery.
What is love? Everyone has probably asked themselves this question at some point. What is love, what is just lust, what feels good and when might it be better to leave? No one is safe from having their heart broken – or hearts broken – at some point. Not even Jamila Woods.
The Chicago musician released her third album, WATER MADE US, in October 2023. It’s about love, about self-reflection. On the cover and in the seventeen tracks, Woods does not look at her reflection on the surface of the water in a self-absorbed way, but rather openly, self-critically and introspectively. The water here is a metaphor, borrowed from the great African American author Toni Morrison. In a 1996 lecture at the New York Public Library, she spoke of the periodic flooding of the Mississippi River as “memories” of water reclaiming the areas it lost when the river was straightened.
The water remembers – and that’s how Jamila Woods wants to remember. Remember what life is like without the heartbreak. Remembering what it’s like to feel love. Learning to feel joy and openness again, like a child approaching the world fearlessly. “I had this note on my phone,” she says during an interview in Berlin in late summer. “I had written down the stages of a relationship I always experience.” At first quietly and obsessively, then a real crush develops for her and she catches on to spend more and more time with the person in question. “And then that moment of ambivalence or when something irritates you for the first time and you ask yourself, ‘Do I really like this person?’ Then getting to know each other better, seeing each other more often, the first argument, the first conflict, the end and the sadness about it.” And above all: what comes afterwards, learning to get involved with another person again, without the traumas of the past to carry along. “It’s about relationships, but also about the inner path that I have to take in order to develop further, including in my relationships.”
“Little pieces of wisdom”
This cell phone note was supposed to be the starting point of the album and give it structure: WATER MADE US is structured according to these stages, the sound changes throughout the album. From initial euphoria to doubt, to excitement, pain and rebirth. And in between, Woods and her producer McClenney included skits, conversations with family members like her great-uncle Quentin or with friends about love and the search for it. “I went through all the recordings on my phone. “Especially during the pandemic, my friends and I sent a lot of voice messages back and forth to each other – some of them podcast length,” she says and laughs, “so I had a lot of cool conversations and recordings available from which I used little bits of wisdom have.”
WATER MADE US somehow has something of a radio play, of a long radio essay – but which is also wonderful to dance to. It’s not a heartbreak album that deals with a specific failed relationship, but rather an almost theoretical look at love relationships and also love for yourself. And somehow that fits Jamila Woods, because “simple” and without double bottoms has never been her Thing. The Chicago native is so much more than just a musician: as a poet, she published her first book in her early 20s, as an activist she worked in youth projects, taught at schools and universities and organized huge youth events such as the “Louder Than Bombs” poetry slam festival Chicago. Today she still acts as a mentor for students and shares her knowledge and resources.
Telling stories in a variety of formats is the core of Wood’s work, and is also always part of her music. She released two albums together with her ex-fellow student from the US elite Brown University, Owen Hill, under the name Milo & Otis. She performed solo from 2016 at the latest and released her debut solo album HEAVN. She had already developed into something of a musical mouthpiece for the “Black Lives Matter” movement through her activist work and features with Chance the Rapper and Macklemore. With HEAVN she finally assumed this status, writing protest songs for a new generation, sometimes danceable, sometimes very soft – but always clear in their content and attitude. LEGACY! LEGACY! Then from 2019, the successor, each song dealt with an important artist in the African-American community, including James Baldwin, Octavia Spencer, Betty and Miles Davis, Eartha Kitt and Muddy Waters. Through the stories of these role models, Woods talked about her own life, but also the struggle that Black Americans still endure.
It seems almost apolitical to deal with love this time. Or? “I actually felt inhibited this time,” says Woods, “because I was thinking about how it would be received out there to write about something that wasn’t so obviously political.” But that’s personal, too politically. Especially if, like Jamila Woods, you are a Black woman from Chicago, a city that is also called “Chiraq” because of some of the violent districts. Loving yourself and others is a political act of self-determination, self-worth and also a sign of hope, the hope for a better future and a better world.
“Relationships are a microcosm of the world we live in”
“One person told me: Relationships are a microcosm of the world we live in,” Woods recalls. The power relationships out there are also reflected in the intimate area, in family, love relationships and friendships. Another acquaintance went even further and encouraged Jamila Woods even more not to be embarrassed by the supposedly apolitical topic: “She told me that when I tell the stories of my relationships, I heal the throat chakra of the women in my family tree. They couldn’t talk about what they were experiencing, but I can – it helped me think about the project differently and get out of that cycle of thinking that said ‘this topic isn’t that important.'” Basically, Jamila is filming Woods describes the signs of her work with WATER MADE US: “I had LEGACY! I already felt like I was sharing very intimate, vulnerable things, but I had this shield in front of it. The concept was like a cozy blanket – this process of introspection and the open sharing of experiences was different this time.” Until now, the private was hidden under the political, this time the political is visible behind the private. She doesn’t understand love as something that just happens to you, but rather as something in which you actively participate, actively work to break down the rigidities of everyday life and find love for yourself and also for others. And perhaps also: make the world a little better.
But above all, of course, is the love of music. And not to allow yourself to be restricted in your own creativity. Jamila Woods has always shown her love for music simply by showing little concern for genre boundaries. But WATER MADE US sounds even freer, even more carefree. She plays with sound elements from a wide variety of music worlds, stays true to her R’n’B and soul roots, but also plays with electric contemporary pop, singer/songwriter elements, it becomes psychedelic, then funky again. Maybe this is also due to the freedom that Woods gave himself for this album, especially after the rigid structure of LEGACY! LEGACY!. “To be honest, the path to this album was a little unclear, sometimes it drove me crazy. For a long time I didn’t know what I was writing about. “I just wanted to try to write as many songs as I could because I’ve never taken the time to do that,” Woods remembers. But the pandemic and lockdown forced introspection, and also a change in sound: while she previously recorded a lot together with a band, this time she worked a lot from the computer together with producer McClenney and developed structure and songs in the duo that developed together from infatuation to love to separation and new beginnings.
A playlist for friends after a breakup
Such a sophisticated work of art seems almost anachronistic, as in the age of streaming platforms, playlists and Tiktok. But Jamila Woods doesn’t care, for her WATER MADE US is more like a playlist that you put together for friends after a breakup to comfort them: “Of course, on every playlist there are the three songs that you want to listen to “The ones that speak most to you,” she explains, “and that’s okay. The songs should also be able to stand on their own. But I want people to listen to it as an album. Because I think you can feel a very special sense of triumph when you listen to the whole thing.”
So what is it, love? On WATER MADE US, Jamila Woods joins us in search of an answer. And finds: himself.