Ernestine Deane

'She sounds like she lives close to the sea. Before I knew who she was (or even knew her name or where she was from), I asked Kalamu whether or not she was from an island country. He told me no, but she was from a town that was right on the water, near the intersection of two oceans. I wasn’t surprised. There’s this melancholic, slightly morbid vibe to her sound. She sounds like New Zealand singers and Icelandic singers and some Jamaican singers. Like they’re floating down into the depths and don’t really care whether or not they drown. I’m not saying they sound similar to one another and I’m not even sure I’m making sense, but there’s a certain sadness that ocean people seem to have. I don’t know what that’s about. Ernie attains the level of serious Black music, a level both futuristic and ancestral. This is music not only appropriate for all ages, this is music for all the ages/eras that our people have seen, now see, and will see. Keep pushing that subtly nuanced and simultaneously politically conscious music you are making, that community you are healing. On the one level your efforts are personal, based on your own decisions within your particular circumstances, but on another level your work is emblematic, exemplary of the work that all conscious elements must do. We must seek, identify, collect and nurture ourselves if we are to have any future worth living. '
Mtume ya Salaam, for Breath of Life, New Orleans
on Cape Town singer Ernestine Deane