By: Kurt Beyers
When Jimii N°1 promotes a song or video of his, he is promoting hope and encouragement.
So it is with “My Wish,” the official video for a song he put out on his album Be Still and Know. The song is like a prayer, the music a meditation.
He wants with his music, as he says explicitly in another of his songs, to be a blessing to someone.
“‘My Wish,’’’ he said, “is a song that came out of mindfulness, I guess you could say. A relative of mine came to me with some drama that she was worried about, and I sat down thinking about her and some of the changes she had been through.”
And the prayer — the message, he says — is this: “The song says you’re not alone. It is what you would wish for anyone that you love.”
And should you find a moment
When life greets you with dismay
Know that I wish with all my heart
For you always
May your cup be overflowing
Let your heart be light
“My Wish” closes out his album, the ninth of nine tracks on what he calls “the CD.” At first, this song wasn’t going to be part of it.
“It’s funny, because it wasn’t going to be on the CD. I just started writing it at the very end of putting it all together, but I thought the message was very important for everyone.”
Hope, encouragement, good wishes, affirmation of love. That is what his music is all about. It is music that, when you are done listening to it, you feel better, whether it comes from the meditative “My Wish” or one of the Afrobeat, poppy, jazzy, orchestral, or R&B type tracks. The meaning comes in a variety of styles and instruments.
“My Wish” is meditational, and that was his aim for this song, but he strives to create music that will stay with the listener.
“With a lot of the CD, I wanted it to be something that someone could use to go into a zone or meditation to lead our thought processes. A lot of them are that way. That’s the way I intended them to be.”
The titles carry messages: “Grateful;” “Blessing”; “Always Good”; “I Will Make a Way”; “Use Your Faith.”
“I wanted them to be entertaining, but more than that, I wanted them to be affirmations of love and of the things that you would want to tell somebody that could help them affirm the goodness that is out there for them when they’re going through a hard time.”
His wish, and his faith, do not come from any kind of Pollyanna upbringing.
“There were times I thought I was going to die as a child,” he said, the product of a father who often took out his problems on him and his siblings.
He does not dwell on details, but there were times as a kid that “I was wondering whether I was going to exist the next day.”
That is aside from growing up as a Black child and man in a nation that was not generally friendly to Black people. The No. 1 in his name, Jimii N°1, partially reflects that reality.
Among his considerations when he was deciding on an artist name that would not share a url or a domain with another artist was this: “I started thinking about being the first Black person to hold many positions.”
He cites a quote from James Baldwin’s Collected Essays: “It took many years of vomiting all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.”
Through it all, it was his faith that bore him up.
“Me and God have always been close. I always felt a connection to God. That was my refuge, the one thing I always could count on was my prayers. My prayers are answered very often.”
His music, and this song in particular, constitutes prayers for other people, though he himself does not phrase it that way.
“It’s about wishing that people lived their lives with a glass full, or with the glass more than half full.”
He has always been a lover of music, as his parents and his family were.
“This CD was kind of like divine intervention,” he said. “It surprised me that I had something to say, inspired me that it came out the way it did. I’m grateful that I have been blessed by music in so many ways and wanted to pass that feeling on.”
Hope, encouragement and blessing, expressed in music that, fast or slow, with bongos, strings, sax, brass or piano, induces those feelings.
“I’m hoping that I can do that for somebody else. That’s my goal.”
Let in the blessings. Connect to Jimii N°1 on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.
“My Wish,” official video: YouTube
Published by: Nelly Chavez
