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shirlette ammons: Love Without Limits

ShirletteAmmons

Rules were made to be broken for versatile singer/songwriter shirlette ammons

Poet, writer, journalist And singer/songwriter shirlette ammons (she prefers her name without capitals) is always on the go. In recent years, she’s published two volumes of poetry and recorded several albums, including And Lover’s Like, a rap/rock collaboration with the Dynamite Brothers; Twilight For Gladys Bently, a hip-hop celebration of the life of Harlem’s most outspoken lesbian blues singer of the 1920s; and The Window, a funk/rock/rap disc with her band Mosadi Music. She just finished work on Language Barrier, a record she made with producer/composer Daniel Hart (St. Vincent, Broken Social Scene).

The music includes ambient soundscapes, metal, pop and classic R&B melodies, married to ammons’ impressive poetry: dense syncopated rhymes that investigate love from every angle. “I chose Language Barrier as the title after thinking about the ways we defy boundaries in our lives,” says ammons. “As a queer black woman, I’m aware of our historically oppressed condition—people whose existence has been actively, and often violently, challenged. In order to keep that thought from being depressing, I searched for ways to celebrate love as an act of resistance. We love people all the time who, for whatever reasons, we’re not ‘supposed to’—and often it’s a source of strength.”

ammons asked Hart for music to help her explore unfamiliar territory. “I wanted to challenge the notion that there’s a formulaic process to who makes what type of music,” she says. “You can put those variables—class, race, sex—into a machine and spit out a record that somebody of those experiences isn’t ‘supposed’ to make.”

The album’s guests include Indigo Girls and Meshell Ndegeocello, an early inspiration. “Before I found Meshell, I didn’t know black people could write with such fluency, genre defiance and power,” says ammons. “I try to apply what I learn from the people I respect, and craft those understandings in my own voice.”

—j. poet