What’s good everyone,

First, Happy Women’s History Month! I have new music coming soon and very soon that is in recognition of Women’s History Month and Black History Month. Stay tuned.

Second, my group The JuJu Exchange has recently dropped a new song, Somebody Caught Me ft. Derrick Hodge and Dida Pelled. It’s off our upcoming project that we’ve been working on for years and I’m delighted to begin sharing the singles off of it with you now. The song’s title speaks to grace, the way people catch us when we fall. (Haha it’s okay if your mind goes to somebody caught me doing something bad. All catching is not apprehending.) Out now on all streaming platforms.

Third, Notes of Rest has been evolving in some beautiful ways over the last year and the thought occurred to me that it made sense to share with you some of what was going on.

I’ve finally started to nail down a few different meanings of what I’ve meant by the phrase “Notes of Rest.” Of course it’s a ministry/workshop experience, but it’s also a phrase that is a fecund play on words. As I’ve been walking with this phrase for about four years now, God has given me new insights on it that I wanted to share here.

1. Notes of Rest is about the rest within music. Music necessarily comprises sound and absence of sound. When we only have straight sound, we call that some kind of noise, like a drone or white noise. But music requires pauses in the sound so our minds can discern patterns. When there are pauses between notes played on an instrument or sung with our voices, we create phrases and patterns and find that beautiful. So on one level, Notes of Rest is about listening to music and paying attention for the musical rests in the music, the rests that are just as important as the sounds around them. (And to many a jazz musician, the rests are often more important than the notes played.) A song of mine that captures this dynamic well is Restores My Soul off Beside Still Waters (released on Election Day 2024).