Diana Jones sings a “Song to the Refugee,” as if she’s lived that life

Review: Diana Jones Song to a Refugee (Proper Records)

Tennessee-born singer-songwriter Diana Jones revealed a genius for inhabiting, with uncanny authenticity, spirits of the dispossessed, as early as her stunning 2006 song “Pony.” There, she put a young Native American’s poignant, painful reminisces right in the lap of our memories.

Today, the album’s guest artists Steve Earle, Richard Thompson and Peggy Seeger help underscore that she’s the perfect artistic spokesperson for Southern border refugees. Consider the Trump administration’s cruel separation of hundreds of children from their parents, a dilemma the Biden presidency will struggle to resolve.

“The  brutal policy of family separation stands in for every other episode of (The Trump administration’s) cruelty, and transcends them all,” writes James Fallows in The Atlantic. ” ‘We’ve been declared in some respects a state sponsor of child abuse by friends overseas,’ ” John R. Allen, a retired four-star Marine Corps general who now is president of the Brookings Institution, told Fallows. “ ‘Having friends and allies declare this as state-sponsored child abuse is a stain on our national soul that will take a long time to remedy.’ ”

Jones’s Song allows us to feel the torn and bereft families’ experience, perhaps to move us to act:  My brothers name is Leo, mine is Gabriel/ 46 and 47 but the numbers do not tell/ what we wish and what we long for what we love and what we miss/ our papa’s crazy stories and our mama’s gentle kiss/ this is where are.

Here’s the compulsively incantatory “I Wait for You”: I walked for miles across many borders alone/ over oceans to make it here/ when nights are cold I sing lullabies/ the sun refuses to shine/ I sing for you/no work no pride, some wait for years to find…you have all my heart while we are apart/someday I hope you understand/ when I sent for you and you come to me/ and you come to me we will be free.”

Her singing can be at once maternal, sisterly, and autobiographical. At times, you can almost taste desert dust.

Diana Jones. Courtesy The New York Times

“Santiago” carries special poignance:

Here I stand in my hands is a rosary/ all I own and you take it/ a gift for my grandmother I was seven years old… Then came the killing and the fire/ we had to run some did not make it/ a little boy name Santiago stayed by my side/ his mother’s final words were he’s a good boy you can see/ I’ve never been a father but I would like to be

I know of no more artful evocation of a contemporary human experience that may be too alien for ordinary Americans to fully comprehend.

Throughout the album, Jones switches points of view. She also conjures vivid and sometimes emotionally engulfing metaphors, as in “The Sea is My Mother.” Yet, always her limpid, luminous voice sounds like an angel on a desolate shoulder, witness to a forsaken heart.

America, the land famously welcoming “your huddled masses,” this is where we are.

My brother’s name is Leo, mine is Gabriel/ 46 and 47, but the numbers do not tell.

Here’s a sample from the album, the song “We Believe You,” which features guest performances by Steve Earle, Richard Thompson and Peggy Seeger.

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This review was first published in shorter form in The Shepherd Express: https://shepherdexpress.com/music/album-reviews/song-to-a-refugee-by-diana-jones-proper/

Hallelujia! Let the healing begin

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Biden and Harris win for America
Hallelujia!! Let the healing begin
as our democracy regains its footing
ever striving,
as the glorious land of the free…
“O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!”
— Katherine Lee Bates, 1893, from “America, The Beautiful,” a poem inspired by a trip to Pike’s Peak.
Now, a woman of color, Kamala Harris, has made history, as America’s first female vice president-elect.
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. — Frederick Douglass, abolitionist, author and black leader, 1857.
  • (Top) landscape photo courtesy theeconomist.com (Below) Maroon Bells, Elk Mountain, Colorado. courtesy blog.americanexpedition.us