Black Space: A Sankofa Music Series ft. Cecily

DC-based vocalist and songwriter Cecily, (pronounced ses-suh-lee), is known for her agile soprano and honest lyrics. Her sound, as soothing as it is rich, is rooted in a deep appreciation for mid-century soul and jazz, 90’s R&B, and re-imagined folk music.

In her songs you’ll hear the influence of growing up surrounded by her parents' vast record collection. Her father, a lover of Miles Davis, and her mother, a Smokey Robinson fan, filled their home with soulful sounds that captivated their daughter, and which she has channeled into her own work. This influence gives her work a unique sensuality that informs not only her vocal approach, but also her self-reflecting lyrics, grappling with self-acceptance, vulnerability, and rebirth. Soulbounce says that Cecily creates “music that pulls from the past but looks toward the future.”

Black Space: A Sankofa Music Series is an experience that  relates sound to space. Blackness names a relation to the social world,  but it can also name a relation people forge with each other, and to the  space we make for ourselves. Music is perhaps the most meaningful way  we offer to ourselves messages for how to live through this relation.  This series evokes the sounds that might emanate in spaces dedicated to  this question. It asks us what we hear when we listen for each other,  for Black life, in Black space.