Motown / Pgd
2002
The Colored Section
About This Album
What a marvelously audacious introduction The Colored Section is. Emerging from the same Jazz Café-centered alternative Atlanta soul scene that nourished and nurtured fellow hippie-soul singer/songwriters like Joi and India.Arie all the way into the public consciousness, Donnie's first LP is a topical, unapologetically conscientious, and even righteously stinging declaration that, yes, can only be likened to the classic sociopolitical masterworks of spiritual heirs Donny Hathaway and especially Stevie Wonder. Songs like "Cloud 9" and "Wildlife," in fact, may be too indebted to genius-era Wonder -- the former with its wah-wah guitar and warm gusts of squelchy synth vibrato, the latter with its prominent clavinet and crisp harmonica ad-libs -- but are such stunning vintage impersonations that both easily could have slipped somewhere onto Innervisions. No matter from which angle you choose to approach such a statement, it couldn't really be taken as a criticism, nor should it be with The Colored Section. The music is consistently empowered and empowering: gracefully buttery, always deeply moving, and at its core profoundly idealistic. Generous melodies abound, rising from a gospel-derived groundwork, spun around street-tinged jazz rhythms, and enlivened by wonderful touches of humor like the Dixie frills of "Big Black Buck" that underscore an otherwise valuable criticism of consumerist society.
Track List (try tracks 2,5,6,7,8,10 and 12)

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