Golden performance from Kimmy Gold
Singer thrills with tracks from ‘Black Woman’s Glory’
Published:Friday | June 2, 2023 | 1:41 AMYasmine Peru/Senior Gleaner Writer
Kimmy Gold is perhaps not a name that is easily recognisable within the music ecosystem, but it certainly should be and the chants of “More Gold!” from the audience at her intimate album listening last Wednesday at Pon Top Bar and Grill on Westminster Ave are an indicator of great things to come.
With her smooth five-piece backing band, Gold Rush, throwing down some heavy one-drop beats, while ignoring the one and two drops of rain which ominously threatened to beat down on the open-air venue, Kimmy Gold held the order and never missed a beat, not even when assistants hurriedly covered up the keyboard and the player, as well as the speaker boxes with plastic.
She focused on delivering passion-filled performance of songs such as Black Woman’s Glory – the title track – Let My People Go and the unexpectedly flirtatious Riddim of Life with its sexual under and overtones which exhorts listeners to “ be fruitful and multiply ... mek yuh feel so nice ... back it up pon di left and back it up pon di right ... whine all night”. For the encore, which was totally genuine, Kimmy Gold excited the audience with Harambe, and seemed to dance in the footsteps of Rita Marley.
“I was a bit worried that the rain would come pouring down,” Kimmy Gold confessed at the end of her thrilling performance, and suggested that instead of a distraction, the early rain was spiritual blessings on the proceedings.
Her Rastafarian locks, which she wrapped with a fashionable black head-covering, would indicate obeisance to Emperor Haile Selassie, but rather than a tribute to Rastafari, the album took listeners through a thoroughfare of biblical warfare, warnings and apocalypse. “Choose ye this day who you will serve ... Let my people go … He will appear so ye prepare ... What is man that thou visited him ... What is the conclusion of the matter?” were all part of the lyrical messages in song.
“It is always a pleasure for me to deliver the word of God through music and especially on roots rock reggae,” Kimmy Gold shared, as she explained the genesis of album.
“When writing these songs, I always ask for inspiration from the Most High as to what to write … for I am a Christian … and I hail Haile Selassie as a Christian king. When writing roots rock reggae I try my best to stay on the right path and Black Woman’s Glory came to me from a scripture of a woman’s glory being her hair. And I thought, well, black women … hmmm? Oftentimes as black women we do not wear our glory and I thought to myself that I would write a song about black women’s glory and that’s where it all started from. I see it necessary for black women to start sporting their glory,” she elaborated.
Black Woman’s Glory was recorded in Switzerland in 2019 and there is a back story. Kimmy Gold explained that the producer was staying at Bridgett Anderson’s Nature’s Eye in Kingston and he heard that she could sing, did an audition and decided to take her to Switzerland to record the album at his studio there.
“It was my first time in Switzerland and it was a wonderful experience. I didn’t go in the snow, it was in the spring. All the songs were written at Nature’s Eyes,” the Tarrant High School music teacher shared.
The album had a soft release in April 2020, and last Wednesday’s event was twofold. It served as the official introduction to this body of work, post-pandemic, and also to “show the world that Kimmy Gold is ready”.