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“He’s not just an attorney.” Celeste quickly picked up a call and transferred it back to another receptionist. She looked at me and her eyes narrowed as she lowered her voice in secret. “He’s the former director of A&R for SonyWorldMusic ... and he’s going to be the president of the new imprint.”
“Really?” I asked, remembering the humble and soft-spoken man sitting beside me on the plane. “But he said he just does contracts.”
“That’s part of his job, but it’s not everything. Kweku discovers, grooms, and packages every artist that comes into the new imprint. It’s all a part of Sony’s new world music vibe. He knows the best of the East and over the last year, he’s been learning the best of the West by operating out of SonySouth.” She paused and looked into my eyes, which, I was sure, were glazed with confusion and wonder. “Basically, what I’m telling you is that Kweku is the only ‘bigwig’ you need to impress up in here.” She winked at me and leaned toward me. “The meeting is a bit of a formality to let everyone here see who you are, but I’m pretty sure Kweku wants to sign you to a deal today. He’s been with legal all morning.”
I was dumbfounded ... past surprised and speechless. This didn’t make any sense at all. Kweku was just a man I’d met on a plane. Someone who’d opened his ears to me when I needed to be heard and whose candor and cool demeanor soothed me into letting go, for only a few hours, of a pain I was sure would burn up my insides forever. He did say he worked in music and did contracts, but never in ten million years would I have imagined that he was who Celeste was saying he was. I guess I never got this answer because I never asked the question. And while I was a bit upset that I hadn’t known who Kweku was and what man I was talking to and singing to over a fifteenhour plane ride halfway around the world, a part of me was happy that I didn’t know. I hadn’t yet made up my mind about where I was going or what I was doing and maybe it wasn’t time for me to know who I was sitting next to. Maybe I was finding out just when I needed to. But there was still that question in my head: Out of all of the millions of people flying in the world on that day, how was I sitting next to that one?
“Are you okay?” Celeste asked.
“I’m fine,” I answered. “I’m actually ... good.”
There is this song one of the mothers at the church used to sing whenever my father walked into the pews and handed her his microphone. We never asked what she was going to sing and my father never once made a request. There just would come a time in a service when someone who’d come from our church family or from someplace outside and lay themselves, broken and beaten on the altar, and my father, at a loss for words, would walk out and hand Mother McDonald the microphone. And she’d sing “You’re Next in Line” as the entire church rose, some crying and others in prayer, to their feet. It is a meditative and comforting gospel song that tells of a miracle coming to knock at the door of someone’s life. That after years of wondering how they would ever get by, ever see a change in their life, a voice comes and says to get ready for a miracle. “The Lord always comes just in time ... move to the front of the line ... you’re next in line for a miracle.”
I sat in that chair, watching Celeste work the two phones on her desk and stab away at the keys, hearing this song in my head. I was next in line. Somehow, some way, my time had come to receive what God had to offer me and here I was, just sitting and waiting for it all to happen. That was the only way I could explain where I was and what was going on. A divine intervention. A ray of light from the sky. My name being called out loud. And it was so funny because I hadn’t even known that I’d gotten into a line. Just months ago, I was a restless somebody, trying to figure out how to live my life—not change it. But somehow, something from my past interrupted everything in the present and drastically changed my future.
After waiting for so long that my feet fell asleep, Celeste led me toward the back of the office where long glass windows lined the wall of a room that was filled with faces surrounding a huge meeting table. At the front of the room stood Kweku, speaking to their attentive eyes as they wrote down nearly every third word he said. He looked like an easy
leader in the room and seeing his calm face again almost immediately put me at ease.
“This is it,” Celeste said, waving Kweku to the door.
“I guess so.” I smiled back at a woman seated toward the top of the table.
“Greetings, ‘Journey Cash ... just living,’ ” Kweku said, coming out of the room and closing the door behind him. Celeste quickly turned and headed back to her desk.
“Kweku,” I answered, hugging him like he was an old friend. And he really did seem like one—his delicate smell, the muddy, smooth tone of his skin, and the way his suit hung flawlessly on his body had been marked in my mind after the short time we’d spent together. “I can’t believe this.”
“Well, you ought to. You don’t have a choice,” he said. “I just told all those people you’re better than Miriam Makeba.”
“Stop!” I cringed and cut my eyes at Kweku.
“Look, this is a mere formality. You don’t need to sell yourself. Just do what you do. I have confidence in your talent. After hearing what I heard in Amsterdam, I’m already sold.”
“But I don’t know what to sing ... what they’re expecting. . .”
“Sing what you sang to me. Sing ‘Happy Birthday. ’ ” Kweku laughed. “Just let them hear what I heard.”
Kweku turned to the door and took my hand.
“Wait,” I said, pulling him back to look at me. “I have to know something. Why didn’t you tell me who you are? What you’re doing?”
“Hmm... . Well, I’ll sum it up like this: Someone I really trust once told me that when you’re looking for someone—even in a crowd of a million—if it’s meant to be, the one will just show itself. I was looking for you. For a sound ... a look.” He looked into my eyes. “And when I saw you, I didn’t want you to audition for me. I wanted you to just be yourself. To sing in your own way and not try to be what I was looking for. I wanted you to be you. You understand?”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I heard that from someone before, too.”
“Now”—Kweku took my hand again—“let’s go in there and knock them out.”
“Good music is born in culture,” Kweku said after taking his place at the front of the room again. I sat toward the back in an empty seat. “This is the vision at SonySOULjourn, a new imprint of one of the largest record labels in the world that we’ve all been charged with developing. It is a marriage of the sound of world music into the contemporary sound of soul that dominates the charts. I’ve searched far and across continents for an artist who could pull this together and be the face of the imprint. At first, I thought I could find it in my home, and then I went East, North ... West. And finally, appropriately enough, I found it up in the air above it all.” Kweku looked at me and smiled. “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the voice of the Deep South that pulls together a sound that mirrors the passion of my homeland and the determination of this new land. Journey Cash.” He waved me to the front of the room and everyone began to clap.
My father had lied about a lot of things. And his lies, and the lies of others, including myself, led to a lot of pain. A lot of heartache. A lot of unnecessary tears. But the one thing my father told me the truth about, the one thing I would need to get me through the thirty-third year of my life when every lie I ever knew would burn to bits was that when God puts something on you, there’s nothing you can do about it. You can wrestle, you can fight, tear yourself inside out, or stand still and hope the moment will pass, but it won’t work. When God has an assignment for you, it just is. And everything I’d been through. Everything I’d left. Everyone I’d hurt. Just was. And I’d have to live with that for the rest of my life, but I still had to accept my assignment and take a walk in faith that it would all work out. And while I hadn’t been to church in over a month, didn’t know when and if I’d ever go back, and still wasn’t saved, realizing this when I rose to sing my song, I felt more spiritual than I had in my whole life. I had died, and I was ready to rise again. But I had to do something first.
When I got to the front of the room, I made a decision.
“I don’t want to bore you all with a speech,” I started, “but before I begin, I have to say, I didn’t expect any of this today. I thought this was just an opportunity, a chance for me to come here and share ... just to sing, you know.... And after hearing. . . hearing”—I paused because I was already crying and could hardly see for the tears in my eyes—“all of the wonderful things that you have planned for me, I’m overwhelmed. Because I don’t know why you chose me. I don’t even know how I got here.” I stopped again and laughed a bit as I wiped my eyes. “And when I was walking up here, I realized that I couldn’t sing the song that I’m supposed to sing for you today because I have to express my thanks, my emotion in this moment. And someone once told me that when you hear that voice inside telling you to do something, you have to follow it. So instead of singing my love song, Kweku, I want to sing a song that’s on my heart.” I looked to Kweku, and he, eased back in a huge chair at the head of the table, nodded with a supportive smile.
I sang “Swing Slow, Sweet Chariot” with every last scrap of affection I could find in me. I sang it from my heart in a way that made me know that for the first time, I wasn’t singing a song I was teaching or giving my words or talent to an audience listening. No. This time I was singing for the sweet chariot to swing low to me. To pick me up and carry me over and deliver me into my purpose. I was praying and praising, being hopeful and thankful all in words that I’d known all my life. I sang so hard that I had to close my eyes to keep the vibrations from pushing me to the floor.
When I opened my eyes, when I was near the last line of the song, I saw that everyone at that table, including Kewku, was blinded, too. Their eyes were closed and they cried, not bothering to wipe away tears. On the last note, I looked up, the only one with my eyes open, and saw someone in the doorway.
