Sitting with Shambo’s Blues: A Review of Black Talk Radio by Shambo Medina
Writer’s Note: This is not a professional (meaning White) album review wherein I rank each song by its “goodness” or attempt to tell you everything I think of it. I intend to elevate a talented musician and griot of our time and to honor the lessons learned from this beautiful Black project. I want you to listen to the album yourself. Also, this is not an attempt to tell you what Shambo wants us to understand. That is his work to do and knowing what I know about Shambo, he can damn sure handle it. Engage his work at @ShamboMedina
As I begin writing, the weight of the world presses down on me. Gaza, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti — the names echo with the sounds of ongoing tragedies. It is from this place that I wrestle with the weight of Shambo’s album, Black Talk Radio, in search of solace in the midst of destruction. It is also from this place that I encourage you to wrestle with your blues too. Let’s get started:
Black Talk Radio opens with the truth. The opening track, The Storm, unfolds with the sounds of a radio being tuned to Black Talk Radio. Clicks. Scratches. Distortion. Only to land on several mentions of the realities that we are situated in at this moment in time. We hear clips about the rising death toll in Gaza (which has now reached an estimated 35,000 lives), remarks on antiblackness in the levers of power, and cobalt mining in the Congo. While listening, I paused the music. What came up for me, when hearing the line about cobalt mining, is that one of my primary contradictions is that I own an electric car, specifically a Tesla, which has been named a primary actor in the destruction of the lives of Congolese people in the name of accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy (Tesla’s tagline). I feel some guilt around it and think…damn, I need to get rid of this car to feel better. And not just morally. Not just emotionally. But to feel better about how I show up in my principles, especially in things I can control. Hmm. And this is what Shambo is so incredible at waking up for us. Introspection. But we aint even 45 seconds into the album so let me continue.
Moments after we are tuned into the proper frequency, Shambo’s deep, resounding voice booms over the airwaves declaring, “Lately I been staying up at night. Watching storm clouds gather. Round this house built on death.” Gotdamn. He continues to make the connection between looming storms and the awareness raised within our people, Black/African people I assume, that we are more than this madness. We are more than that which is imposed on us though we still somehow find ourselves persevering. As a child of the coast of NC, I know all too well the smell and feel of the wind and the look of the skies when a storm is approaching. I am from a place where storms mean many things. Storms call us to sit down somewhere and be quiet. Storms allow us the break to go inside. I know well what the storms might tell us. So does Shambo.
“Somewhere in us, deep down, many of us know that we are even more than this.” — Shambo
Then good God hot damn, the Babylon blues begin. First of all, I aint heard a Blues record or album in years. Second, if you know anything about genres, the Blues are as Black as our politics. The Blues are Black politics. Shambo removes the wool from our eyes right away. Naming genocide. Genocides. Babylon, for me, highlights the historical and present utility of Black music in depicting exactly what Black people with any awareness of the realities of imperalism might feel. There’s one line that resonates with me specifically:
“It’s a fight to survive // paying bills til ya die, Babylon.” — Shambo
When I first heard that line I said, out loud, “Damn, I’m not trynna pay bills til I die.” Because I realize the truth in it. I don’t come from money so my expectation is what I see in those who came before me. My family members are descendants of African slaves, then sharecroppers, living in rural Eastern North Carolina in Pantego NC. I know something about folk paying bills til they die. And after if we’re being honest. Again, Shambo is right where I am, present, naming the thing as plain as day. It’s almost unsettling.
Shambo then takes it further, closing the song out with a monologue that plucks at the thread woven through the project, “Plottin to turn the whole planet, into a plantation…DAMN.” It is at this point that I realize, this man is not cutting any corners. Truth-telling just is what it is.
Next, Shambo demonstrates what makes him the artist that he is and the artist that I admire. Shambo brings in community voices, which sound to me to be gathered in person to discuss the truths within the Black experience. What Do We Want? (Interlude) brings to light the contradictions that exist in our community and what may be holding us back from observing and obtaining liberation. A voice on the track says, “We have the tools, but do we want to do it?” And follows up with a straightforward question, “Are we free?!”. Then to elevate the conversation, the voice brings in a grand Black thinker, Fred Moten, amplifying that we are not just working for the freedom of a group of people but for the future of sustaining human life on this planet. Pause to sit with that.
These are the moments that sit with me between the five musical records on this album. Shambo demonstrates the discipline of the artist as a scientist, researcher, and practitioner, and being curious about where change and transformation are happening in our communities. This is where Shambo shines. Shambo is an artist in practice.
The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.” — James Baldwin
Speaking of practice, damn damn damn, the next record almost made me weep. Knockin’ On Massa’s Door (feat the Soulyghost). This record to me is the star player. I have caught myself over and over yelling loudly, “What kind of negro are you?!!!”. I don’t know if it is the soul and spirit of the music or the pulling in of the voice of the Soulyghost, another Bull City voice that sends fire into my heart. But let me tell you what happened for me. I listened to this album at 2 am after it was released on Friday, March 10th. In the song, Shambo and the Soulyghost go through a rhythmic blend of rap, sangin, and dialogue calling forward those who align themselves with Massa. Those misleadership ass, bourgeoise, Black elite, bought and sold, milquetoast negros who find themselves thinking they can integrate their way to freedom or might one day benefit from trickle-down economics. There are enough examples of that. Yet, towards the end of this record, I heard a Cornel West-ish voice, advocating that one could go back into the master’s house with a so-called “revolutionary disposition”, and that it might somehow change the outcome of our experience as an enslaved people. And we know this has never worked, yet it seems that we keep trying. And damn I am tired of it. Yet, the Lorde told us this long ago.
For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women (people) who still define the master’s house as their only source of support. — Audre Lorde
BUT then we hear Shambo repeating, along with a blaring alarm, that the house is on fire! For me, I fear that our people are always attempting to return to the master’s house. And I so badly want our people to be free. Shortly after the alarms on the record fade out, along with the scream of the person who thought they could return to the burning plantation house, we hear a wave of voices. And this is where I felt chills, heat, and grief in my body. These voices. African voices. Black voices began to chant. Voices I heard as ancestors telling each of us, as if they died on the grounds of master’s house, that the house will not save us either. It can and will only consume us. I hear them saying on this record, run away and never return.
The next set of records are likely the crowd favorites. Nubian Queen begins with an intro where Shambo brings in the voices of Black men who work with or love Black women. He asks them, “In your opinion, what makes the Black woman special?” From here, we get some of the most heartfelt, clear, thoughtful responses from Black men about what they love about their wives and the women they work with in one case. Things like making them who they are, inspiring them to show up, encouraging them to be at their best, their discipline, their drive, their quality of parenthood or motherhood. In this brief interlude, I find relief. Today, there are so many ridiculous conversations about the state of Black men’s love or compassion towards Black women. Many of the ongoing myths, that Shambo gracefully dispels, are about what Black men, namely working-class Black men, think about Black women in their lives. This type of narrative shifting is powerful and meaningful whether it is six brothers or 600. But then, shit gets sexy.
Shambo opens with a declaration about the Black woman. Those we call Nubian Queens. Melanin. Magic. Magnificence. Aint nothing like them. And Shambo and the Soulyghost make that clear. “Nubian Queeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnn. You speak to the deepest parts of meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.” And this is where I get lost in the sounds. This record is sexy all by itself, from vocals to the transcendent falsettos, these fellas put it down on this one. If you indeed are in love or belong to a Nubian Queen, I’d suggest you put this one on and two step in the living room if you got the time.
As the album comes to a close with Freedom (Interlude) and Freedom Time (my baby’s favorite song), I sit with the truths found in freedom. Another group of people, who all sound Black/African, discuss all of how they find themselves defining Freedom. There are those who define freedom in the simple act of walking outside barefoot and free from glass, needles, broken things that might harm them. There are those who define freedom as freedom TO, move, love, and enjoy what they wish. For me this interlude affirmed that freedom is experienced in the simple act of defining freedom for yourself. I also believe in the personal freedom or liberties that make up a collective freedom for our people. Again, Shambo calls on the community to be a voice in this project, and we need this form of artistic practice more than ever. Then there’s Freedom Time.
At first, I didn’t know whether this record was blues or country. And at this point in my life, it doesn’t really matter. What I know is that this melody captures the reprieve that I need so much in this heavy-ass world. Freedom Time, positions itself as a reminder of our collective need to recognize that we need more love and more peace to get through these tumultuous times. In that, we are invited to experience Freedom Time. This record sits in the tender spots of my heart and allows my heart not to be hardened by the world. When I need a break, when I need to breathe, when I need to catch my breath, I have to put on Freedom Time.
To conclude the project, Shambo wraps it up with Keep Goin’. Another blues-filled jam in which Shambo belts out affirmative messages to those of us who are hard on ourselves, and entertain negative self talk, it is the power of the artist as a pillar of the community that can draw from the well of tough times and find a way to buoy us in these waters of white supremacy and calamity. Black Talk Radio is full of clarity at the pick-up that we all need. Thank you for encouraging us to keep goin Shambo.
Again, this album review is not the authority on what Shambo is leaving with us, but I can say that I am truly moved by the intentionality of this project. As a musician/writer, I understand the weight of making music that speaks to the realities of the times we are in, that is introspective and political, and intended to function as a balm in a culture of domination. I don’t know if artists like Shambo will always be amplified above all of the nonsense music being released these days, but I do know that I feel a sense of responsibility to Community™️, to turn our gaze to the prophets and healers of our time.
To Shambo, I hope that you know how much this project has carried me through ongoing human collapse. I hope you know how much I really needed to be brought to the light of what people could be. I hope you know how much humanity is lifted in this project. I hope that you know that the World we wish to live in on the other side of Liberation will require a soundtrack like this. I hope you know how much of an honor it is to have covered your work.
Thank you for being.
