Shirlette Ammons Shares New Single From Upcoming Album
Black, queer, Southern artist shirlette ammons releases her third single, “Temperature,” from her upcoming album, Spectacles.
Poet, musician, and award-winning TV producer shirlette ammons recently released her newest single from her upcoming album, Spectacles. The single, “Temperature,” is a collaboration with Jessamyn Stanley, a yoga instructor who grew popular on Instagram for her posts showing her doing yoga as a plus-size woman of color who self-identifies as a “fat femme.”
“Temperature is special to me because it gave me an opportunity to be bold and queer alongside the fabulous Jessamyn Stanley,” shirlette explains. The song itself is an anthem of self-confidence, of the power that comes from existing and supporting each other.
Spectacles is a reflection on the duality of “being someone’s spectacle” and being objectified by the proverbial, patriarchal, white gaze, while also wanting to cultivate attention while performing on stage. As a queer Black woman, she is used to being ‘othered’ and seen as a spectacle her whole life. This album is an expression of her own multitudes and complexities that are often passed over when culture simply marks you as ‘other.’
It is also a representation of Black Southern brilliance as shirlette features collaborations with genre-and-gender-defying performance artist Mykki Blanco, MacArthur-winning poet Fred Moten, Nigerian writer and chef Tunde Wey, Amelia Meath of Sylvan Esso, and radical feminist writer Alexis Pauline Gumbs, “the Beyoncé of yoga” Jessamyn Stanley (featured on “Temperature”), as well as her twin sister Shorlette Ammons and niece, Anansi Stephens.
Outside of her work in the music industry, shirlette is also very accomplished in film and television. She was a producer on the acclaimed documentary May the Lord Watch: The Little Brother Story and the Emmy and Peabody award-winning series A Chef’s Life. She is also an award-winning poet and a Cave Canem Fellow with two published collections of poetry.
Photo courtesy of press release
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