The Singles Jukebox

Dorian offers us a prayer…

[Video]
[8.25]

Dorian Sinclair: OKAN’s invocation of the goddess Oshun has real power to it, and, as befits a deity so strongly associated with water, real depth as well. The layers of percussion, synth and violin are ever-changing, finding new ways to refract off each other as they wrap around Elizabeth Rodriguez’s vocal lead. And what a voice it is — expressive, forceful, and somehow simultaneously commanding and vulnerable. I don’t speak Lucumi, but Rodriguez easily conveys both loss and resilience, as the shifting tides of the instrumentation pool around her.
[10]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: The religious services that I have always found meaning within are all exercises in tension and release — the interplay of hunger, memory, and forgiveness embedded within the day long arc of a Yom Kippur service, the slow, trance-like waking of the early-morning Thai Buddhist rituals my mother and aunt would take me to as a kid. “Oriki Oshun” is not of those particular traditions, but it captures in its four minutes a similar build, sticking tight to a perfectly struck groove until the track flowers into something more, a feast of guitars and chants and rushes of drums that feels like exaltation.
[8]

Will Adams: The urgency and energy cultivated in the song’s main section — with bustling percussion, Rodriguez’s commanding vocal, that blazing guitar solo — feels like it could be sustained for over ten minutes. OKAN know better, though, and restrict themselves to four minutes, allowing the silence following the prayer to speak volumes.
[7]

Ian Mathers: That guitar solo feels a bit late period Santana-core in context, but in context it actually really works for me. Even without reading the description on YouTube and knowing the (personal, harrowing) context behind its creation “Oriki Oshun” feels like it earns the sense of drama and grandeur that builds and builds throughout the song.
[7]

Peter Ryan: Magdelys Savigne’s blistering percussion is so overpowering that it took me a few listens to key into Rodriguez’s vital rhythmic violin-work that underpins most of the track, two obvious virtuosos propelling each other from vibey ceremonial first half through a tenacious conclusion. More prayers should have this urgency.
[8]

Michael Hong: As prayer music should be, OKAN’s offering is lively, trading electric guitar licks and urgent drums in exchange for a demand for protection. If the chant offers something repetitive, Rodriguez forces her voice to offer something more, wailing as if wondering if it’s all enough.
[6]

Nortey Dowuona: One of the many public narratives about Lido Pimienta was her leadership capabilities for young brown girls. But the best example of leadership is by example; Lido brought OKAN on tour with her, four months after their first album dropped. And in the time since, they have released a second, even better album, collaborated with Bomba Estéreo and Lido again, featured on Miss Colombia and lost a child. They now ask Oshun for protection for their new child’s life, with a stunning violin solo that winds across the branches of the drums and trunk of the bass into an outstretched hand, waiting, the ebbing synth notes a question mark on whether they have received the blessing. A prayer we are all allowed to hear because of Lido.
[10]

Tara Hillegeist: My fondness for popular culture often runs me at odds with my personal interest in leaving a stranger’s grief at their doorstep, out of my earshot, where I believe it belongs unless I’ve already been invited in to share, communally, in their lives beforehand, to such degree that I can no longer credibly accuse myself of being unknown to them anymore. I am not willing to play the thief of another’s sorrows nor call that performance “compassion.” As such, upon being presented with the very real experience inspiring this song’s creation, I personally felt it would be too inappropriate to engage with the song within the confines of the Jukebox format, and thus… I chose to set it aside, until or unless I could find a means to reconcile my own convictions about the use case or lack thereof for a blurb and the material at hand. It’s been about a month since then. What changed my mind?  Well — I couldn’t stop listening to the song itself. And it was somewhere in those listens that I realized I was making a stiff-backed fool of myself for the sake of my principles. It’s difficult to hear something as welcoming, as open, as purely delightful-as-in-“full of delight” as “Oriki Oshun” and feel something besides invited in. This is songcraft as community-healing practice, whatever its origins: a plea rooted in hope, motivated by its grievous origins to kick up a righteous enough noise that it can chase that pain far, far away, where its echoes can reach home no longer. And I, at least, shall not continue to fear dancing with it, together.
[10]