In honor of Black History Month, Atwood Magazine has invited artists to participate in a series of essays reflecting on identity, music, culture, inclusion, and more.

•• •• •• ••

Today, acclaimed New Orleans singer/songwriter and guitarist Joy Clark shares shares her search for connection and community and how she incorporated those experiences into her debut album ‘Tell it to the Wind’ for Atwood Magazine’s Black History Month series!

Louisiana born-and-raised artist Joy Clark is charting her own path with her debut album, ‘Tell it to the Wind.’ As the youngest of five children born into a tight knit, deeply religious family just outside of New Orleans, her release is both a declaration of her independence and a love letter to the traditions that shaped her.  The album marks Clark’s arrival on the national stage as a proud, queer, Black woman blending the social consciousness of folk, the rhythms of Southeast Louisiana, and the soul-centered music she grew up with.

Joy honed her guitar chops and was introduced to the stage in her parents’ church, leading worship services with her siblings every Sunday in Harvey, Louisiana. While her duties at her parent’s church combined two of her favorite things – her family and music – she knew she just didn’t quite fit. Home schooled for most of her childhood, Joy had the freedom to study her craft, but was isolated as a young queer woman growing up in a devout household.

While studying at the University of New Orleans, Joy ventured into New Orleans’ legendary music scene, soaking up the city’s traditions – most notably its “do whatcha wanna” attitude, a far cry from her religious home just a few miles from the city center. Her newfound community of queer folks, poets, artists, activists, and people living as their authentic selves combined with her social science studies brought Joy closer to the self she was still defining. Eventually Joy earned herself a regular spot touring with living legend and Grammy winner Cyril Neville.

“Over the last several years, I’ve had the privilege of playing music and touring and learning from so many people I admire. And I continue to learn the same lesson – there’s room for all of us and the world is only made more beautiful when we all shine as our unique selves,” Joy says. “‘Tell it to the Wind’ is my story of how I learned to shine, and I hope that it might encourage others to stand out as their whole, true selves too.”

Joy’s songcraft, paired with sophisticated progressions, and themes of freedom, love and self-acceptance gained her notice on the national folk and Americana scenes just a few years ago with appearances at AmericanaFest and beyond. ‘Tell it to the Wind’ is an announcement, an arrival heralding an era for Joy and for those tuned in enough to dive into the album. Read Joy’s essay below, and listen to her debut album wherever you stream music!

•• ••

•• ••

FINDING INSPIRATION, CREATIVITY, & CONNECTION RIGHT AROUND ME

by Joy Clark

I’ve had long periods of feeling disconnected from myself and my voice.

I think it has something to do with the ways society separated me from my own lineage as a Black woman and the ways my strict, fundamentalist Christian household dismissed any kind of ancestor witchcraft as being pagan or not of Jesus. I felt a little lost  in the whitewashed world of fundamentalist Christianity.

I co-wrote “Lesson,” one of the tracks from my album Tell it to the Wind, with the help of my producer and friend Margaret Becker just one week after my grandmother Catherine Johnson’s passing. But in all truth, the song had been percolating in my subconscious in the form of blues riffs well before we put pen to paper. And in some ways, my grandmother actually wrote the song through the course of almost 40 years of our conversations. She told me about growing up in New Orleans during segregation, about not having indoor plumbing, or many of the things we take for granted today. She’d tell me about how her very fair complexion made life difficult for her among white people and Black people.

On one instance, she entered the bathroom labeled “Blacks Only,” only to be told by a white woman that she was going into the wrong bathroom. I can’t imagine that pain. She’d tell me about her family making a pot of gumbo with everyone bringing the little they had to fill the pot. When I think about these stories, I feel more connected to her because I know that maybe she felt a little disconnected from herself at certain times in her life. And yet, she depended on support from her community even if circumstances weren’t perfect.

I am often asked what inspires and informs my music and songwriting, and for a long time I’d feel stumped. I thought that in order to be viewed as a legitimate artist, I needed my story to match with others.

Too often I think we forget about the people who make their daily lives art, like my grandmother. We called her Bumaw. Despite all her struggles living in the Jim Crow South, she made a beautiful life and in doing so brought so much beauty to the lives around her.  She was the kind of woman who knew how to make a lot with a little. She knew how to stretch a meal and find the best deal.

Saturdays were reserved for going to multiple stores with her. My siblings and I would pile into her Oldsmobile, knowing good and well she’d take all day. She knew how to keep us holding with the promise of a Rally burger after her shopping quest. Bumaw was thorough in her shopping. She’d stop at the fabric store, Carpet World, make groceries as well as pay the utility bills; all in one day.

She curated her world along with my grandpa, Samuel Johnson. She knew what colors she loved, and she adorned her home and surrounded herself with those things. A red themed bedroom, and a pink kitchen, a pink Christmas tree. And her outfits matched from head to toe. She dreamed of having a family and when she met my grandfather, they accomplished that very thing. It’s that kind of living that inspires me. It takes a lot of courage to realize your dream and then take action. In the segregated South, and in the United States; that requires so much courage. Her memory pushes me to create what I want to see in my world.

Instead of trying to compare my story with others, I’m always learning to draw from things that are right around me, whether they are my experiences or the experiences of those who came before.

The beautiful thing about this is that, no matter how personal a story is to me, someone from the other side of the world resonates with it and it becomes theirs. I just played my first shows overseas, and after my set, a woman came up to me with tears in her eyes and told me that she’d been feeling frozen and stuck and that my songs motivated her to move forward to pursue her dreams.

Therein lies the connection. This is what inspires me and what calls me to keep writing and creating and imagining a better world for myself and my community. – Joy Clark

•• ••

:: stream Tell It to the Wind here ::

:: connect with Joy Clark here ::

•• ••

•• •• •• ••

Connect to Joy Clark on
Instagram, X, TikTok, Facebook

Discover new music on Atwood Magazine

 © Steve Rapport

:: Stream Joy Clark ::