Top 30 Jamila Woods Quotes

Me and my three younger siblings, we sang together in grandma’s church, and I was in the Chicago Children’s Choir in high school, but I didn’t think I had the voice to be a singer professionally.

My mentor made me say a poem over and over. ‘Stop! That’s not your voice. Start again.’ I was sobbing by the end, but it drilled into my head that my voice is important.

The good things about Chicago save me on a daily basis, like getting to work with my students, seeing a beautiful part of the city, or seeing the people that I love.

Part of what I like about living in Chicago is it’s not easy. The breath of the city, the everyday challenge of it, is good. It forces you to grow and push yourself.

Part of our pedagogy is, you report on what’s going on in your neighborhood and your city.

I always loved singing because I grew up in a very musical family. My mom wasn’t able to do music professionally because her parents wanted her to get a ‘real job,’ but she played guitar.

My hope is that ‘Blk Girl Soldier’ is a freedom song for black women today who are fighting the macro- and microaggressions of daily life in our city/country/world.

My entrance to music was singing gospel in church, and to hear that gospel language in a hip-hop song was cool.

My art gets called political, as opposed to my intending it to be political. I think that’s something that happens with black artists or marginalized voices trying to speak truth. Because there are things in the status quo to speak out against, speaking out against them will inherently be political.

It was through poetry I learned just to appreciate my own voice and to not think of my voice in terms of what it needs to be able to do, but what it can do.

When I was a kid, getting on Lake Shore Drive from the south side to go downtown was magical.

Hairdressers are all-knowing. They’re so wise.

In some ways, I value specificity. I think that there’s power in, once you know who your fan base is, being able to speak to them. I hope to cultivate a fan base of black girls and black people and people of color, women of color, queer people, people who are are marginalized in general.

In church, the music is for everyone. People are singing off tune, loud; they’re not ashamed – it’s for their healing. That’s kind of just what I strive for, that feeling.

I like bringing my poet brain and sensibility to lyrics I write.

My artistic manifesto exists in the world as poetry. So even though most of the things that I’ve done have been on other people’s projects or could be pigeonholed in certain ways, that’s not how I perceive myself.

I think of music as creating a space. I like to put things in that are comforting to me and are nostalgic. To me, that’s what sampling does in songs; it’s making deeper layers for people who know where it comes from, but also referencing another part of my history and my memory or a memory that I have.

I read ‘Song of Solomon’ by Toni Morrison in college, and it just blew my mind.

A lot of people get Chicago wrong. I’ve developed this protective feeling about how we’re portrayed, and at the same time, I’m acutely aware of the issues we face and the root causes of these issues.

I really liked ‘Blk Girl Art.’ It’s like a manifesto saying why I create, whether it’s poetry or music.

I wish that more people, especially young people, were taught about self-love at a younger age.

When you’re in a choir, it’s about blending into how everyone else sounds.

My mentors were very good.

‘HEAVN’ is about black girlhood, about Chicago, about the people we miss who have gone on to prepare a place for us somewhere else, about the city/world we aspire to live in. I hope this album encourages listeners to love themselves and love each other.

When I started writing poetry, it was always in very hip-hop influenced spaces: Someone would teach a Nas song side-by-side with a Gwendolyn Brooks poem, and we’d talk about the connections between those things.

For black and brown people, caring for ourselves and each other is not a neutral act. It is a necessary and radical part of the struggle to create a more just society. Our healing and survival are essential to the fight.

I think it’s just my nature to stay on the outside so that I can understand and observe.

I spent a lot time with my siblings because there weren’t too many young people on our block. We were our own best friends: making dances to a Stevie Wonder songs and singing with my mom.

I hold strongly to my identity as a Chicago artist and want to do whatever I can to participate in creating a strong community here so that artists don’t feel pressure to move somewhere else to succeed.

With lyrics, being a poet gave me a different approach than other people.