Alright Ms. Nesby!!! Thank you for sharing this amazing live rendition of "Optimistic ". Still sounds fresh 30÷ years later! In fact, I rank this song among the top songs of ALL TIME - and I'm not talking about the top gospel or soul or rock or country - I'm talking about one of the top SONGS period! What an extraordinary group of brilliant, gifted artists. Sounds of Blackness is more than a choir - they are artists, teachers, mentors, historians, storytellers, griots, activists, movers, shakers, warriors, and revolutionaries! They ARE the Black Diaspora, the link between each one of us and our African foremothers and fathers. From Alabama sharecroppers,Harlem poets, Louisiana Creole debutantes and South Carolina Gullah fishermen to Brazilian Quilombolas, Haitian Vodou Mambas, Venezuelan revolutionaries and Mexican Presidents, Black people were among the leading founders, visonaries, innovators and architects of Western culture and civilization for just as long (and longer) as the European terrorists who first invaded the so-called "New World ", standing alongside our Indigenous American brothers and sisters and courageously defending and maintaining our dignity and beauty and humanity amidst one of the most unimaginably horrific and utterly evil periods of history ever known to humankind. And yet here we stand today, strong and proud and victorious, a living testament to the unyielding resilience, bravery, innovation and genius of the human race.
