Bonni - Get Your Ticket (2016)

The sheer majesty of Bonnie Maxwell's music - the soaring power of her voice, the deeply pleasurable grooves laid down by her band, the sinuous call-and-response siren songs—compel you ever deeper inside her stories.

The sheer majesty of Bonnie Maxwell's music—the soaring power of her voice, the deeply pleasurable grooves laid down by her band, the sinuous call-and-response siren songs that compel you ever deeper inside her stories—might just distract you from the frightening reality of the world she describes. Like all great Soul artists (Aretha, Stevie, Marvin, Nina), Bonni never sacrifices the groove for the sake of the message, but it's that message—what's going on between those beats—that ends up haunting you for days.

Songs like Grand Daddy Took a Train find the universal in the particular, relating family history to a larger story of societal exodus and aspiration. C'est la Vie recognizes the grinding, day-to-day human parade of mendacity and malice but its silky, cat-like bounce refuses to admit to despair. And the spooky, remarkable Black Angel proclaims that, after all is said and done, checking out is not an option.

"Soul" music is about what's inside Black experience. It's about bearing witness, legitimizing one's own humanity, about making the sale for one's own individual worth and identity. Here is music that locates and identifies that private reality and places it in the sweep of history, into our current struggle for dignity. It's in Bonni's voice, a sensibility composed and worldly-wise, an atom moving through time and space, buffeted by external forces, resolved finally into a point, a center that cannot be crushed, a clear, implacable voice that cajoles, suggests, calls out for and finally demands justice.

TRACKLIST
1. Grand Daddy Took A Train (4:51)
2. C'est La Vie (3:31)
3. Black Angel (3:57)
4. Stars Are Falling (3:37)
5. Terrorist (3:52)
6. How Can I (4:46)
7. Preacher Man (5:43)
8. Katrina (4:04)