“Thank You, Oni”
It’s April 5th, 2008. 12:27pm. It’s 83 degrees and a single bead of cold sweat slides from behind my ear and stops at the top of the collar on the only dress shirt that I own — a crisp white button down paired with a power blue necktie. A combination of this caliber is only meant for special occasions and important church services. I’m sitting nervously with 25 of my classmates who matched each other in dress and in sweat, on a non-ventilated activity bus headed toward the North Davidson neighborhood. This was going to be our first music performance outside of school and my first performance after learning a new instrument. I found myself stuck as fear and faith were pulling me in two different directions.
Ms. Murray was my first band director and a recent graduate of Norfolk State University. Against my denial, she found a way to convince me that I would sound good playing the saxophone. There were no Black people that I saw playing the saxophone at the time and I refused to have anything in common with someone who looked like Kenny G. She got me to agree to it by teaching me how to play a Webbie & Lil Boosie song before I committed to taking the horn home to practice. Four months later, she booked our band class for a performance at the local Art & Soul Festival. We built a 30 minute repertoire of James Brown, Duke Ellington, WAR and a few Latin Jazz charts to be concert ready for our community. The only thing that motivated me to get on that stage was the girl I had the crush on. Her name was Trina — she was the finest girl I ever saw and my only goal as a musician was to step to her and ask her out. She loved music so much that she was already recording her own songs, so I figured I was gonna be the best saxophonist alive so she would fall in love with me and my music. Simple enough.
We hit the stage and I played like Kobe when he went for 81 points. I didn’t miss a note, a cue or even a beat of rest. I had a goal and the bullseye was bigger than it ever had been. It might’ve been more people on stage than in the crowd, but we played like it was a stadium tour. Our performance was met with a hearty applause from proud parents and community members who just witnessed a group of teenagers coming together to operate outside of their comfort zone. Once we loaded our instruments on the bus, Ms. Murray stopped at the front to give us a speech that ended with her giving each of us of a cardstock certificate from the festival that thanked us each of us by name for our performance. The sentence before she took her seat is what would keep me going for the next 18 years.
“Congratulations, you are officially a professional musician.”
As I reflect on the past two decades, I understand this journey to be more than chasing a dream. It ultimately boils down to a process of facing and accepting yourself, along with your choices. The greatest choice of all being between fear and faith. They’re two forces that pull you in different directions daily. Not choosing one in a timely fashion will break you at your center. Both choices are equally intimidating; but they both yield different results. The times that I’ve chosen fear, I’ve felt immediate relief, but inevitable hardship down the line. The times that I’ve chosen faith, I’ve had to work tirelessly in the beginning, but the reward on the other side restores all strength exerted and then some. The intersection of faith and fear is where we’re forced to see ourselves with no filter. Most people can’t handle that level of honesty, so they find various coping mechanisms to avoid seeing themselves. Our life is the result of the times we’ve chosen one force over the other. In the event that our spirit is too tired to choose, sometimes God sends people into our lives — not to save us, but to remind us of who we were before fear convinced us to shrink.
I remember being at a performance last year and I felt myself being on my last leg. I had been running on my own for a while and I was working out of exhaustion. My fire was dwindling and I was considering hanging it up for good. I took some hits along these 20 years that turned my thick skin into a shell that I worked myself to live in. My then jaded spirit drove me to find a way to be just present enough to fulfill my obligations — nothing more. I finished my set and I joined the crowd to see the other performers for the evening. There was an artist named Oni whose set that struck me out of every one. She moved from Virginia to Charlotte like I did and her music choices reminded me of my own instincts. She was rapping over afrobeats and was talking to the crowd like we were in her living room. She was unapologetic in her verses but warm in her personality. Her originality was something I wasn’t used to hearing. I remember the first time I shook her hand after the show, neither of us could contain how much of a fan of the other we both were. When I listened to her songs, I couldn’t find the fear in them. When she heard my songs, she couldn’t deny the faith in them. Ever since that night, she was the first to purchase any music I released on my website and the first to promote anything I posted on instagram. Sometimes she was the first to support. Other times, she the only one to support. She was paving on her own path and reminded me of when I started back in 2008. The same hunger, same drive, same delusion — just a smarter source of motivation than I had. I saw the starpower the minute I heard her music. Before I left, I told her to reach out if she needed a feature or a flyer designed. She texted me less than a month later to discuss business.
Working with Oni has been both a blessing and a challenge. The faith in her forces me to face the fear in me. The thing about faith and fear is that they can’t live in the same setting. You HAVE to choose which one is going to live. Over time, I’ve allowed fear to keep me limited and I’ve been feeling faith pull on me in these last few months, most recently in the form of Oni calling on me. Each challenge she faces reminds me of various points of my own journey that I’ve seen the other side of. I talk to her with the same faith that I had at one point, which then in turn brings me back to when I heard Trina in 2008. The faith rushes back to my spirit and I realize that working through the fear is the only way I can get back to dropping 81. Just because you feel fear, doesn’t mean you have to choose it.
As I seek guidance for my next 20 years on this journey, my motivation is shifting. My motivation is no longer to impress a woman with my peacock feathers. The goal is simply to face myself and live with the result of my choices. I’m going to be remembered as a man who chose faith and lived to see the results of it. Trina had a song in 2008 called “Look Back At Me” and I knew we would be good together because we were both fearless. I appreciate her for being the catalyst, but I understand that the journey is the ride of remaining myself. I never got the chance to ask her out, but I did get the opportunity to understand myself and build a beautiful life as a result of my choices. I take that as a win. The only thing left to do is continue.
On May 30th, I’ll be joining Oni’s band to support her for her second show at Sip City. We hope to see you there so we can show you how faith works.
Thank you, Ms. Murray.
Thank you, Trina.
THANK YOU, ONI.