"Inseparable" -- how I always want authentic Black women to be!

For a myriad of reasons, it's been a few years since I've watched American Idol.  So you can imagine my surprise and delight in stumbling upon it last night, to not only find that my beautiful, "homegirl," Candice Glover -- had won the whole shebang!!

And unlike the Changeling and his "homeboy," Lincoln -- I'm certain it's safe for me to say that we are not just from the same place, we are of that place, sharing in a collection of innate life experiences and "systems of reality" (as James Baldwin put it) unique to our existences in that place (I'm homesick y'all, can you tell?). This young sister, like my family, is from one of the Sea Islands of South Carolina, all of which (along with those in North Carolina, Georgia and Florida), continue to struggle mightily to preserve our West African heritage through the Gullah and Geechee cultures.  I'm not at all surprised at this young woman's voice, because I know "from whence it came."

Candice, as I'm sure everyone in St. Helena and Beaufort are -- I am so damned proud of you (Whitney lives on, Sister) and your stick-to-it-tiveness!  Hope this is the start of our hearing and having some more great singers, and more great music like you shared throughout the show -- before I drop dead (and yes, I went to YouTube today and listened to all of her performances for the entire show)!

But wait y'all!  Here's the absolutely wonderful icing on the cake -- this, soulful, double-dose of sweet, young, Black womanhood:



Jennifer:  "Sang Candice!" -- I swear, homegirl took me back home to those incredibly, powerful Black choirs, in churches all across the South with those two little words!  And "sang" Candice did!


(P.S. Screw you, Simon Cowell!)