Black & Blues Album Review by Emmett G. Price III, Ph.D.
www.emmettprice.com

She flows, she sings, she slams, she jams, she writes and she produces much more than recorded spoken word. She produces complex emotional exercises for all to experience. She produces intimate portrayals of life's experience from a position that the listener thinks she's in our heads. She produces a password into the intimate, vulnerable place that many aim to escape but need to approach in order to face their "black and blues."
She "hit the ground running" "between the lines" as a "solitary girl" leaving the "shadow" of "yesterday's blues" in effort to "pass it on."

This magnus opus deserves recognition as an independently unique expression of passion, confusion, anger, frustration, love, empowerment and the struggles and challenges of life. Iyeoka's voice is powerful, not only in tone but in effect. She makes you feel, she makes you think, she makes you proud to be where you are while simultaneously encouraging and empowering to go where you desire to go. A motivational poet, an inspiring performer, a skilled wordsmith but more importantly a life coach who we trust.

Her robust voice opens our ears while her piercing words convict our hearts. Backed by skilled and sensitive musicians, Iyeoka takes the forefront as the leader of a movement. The movement towards enlightenment, empowerment, encouragement and self-determination. Iyeoka is powerful not due to her stature, voice or approach but because she understands the challenges and obstacles of life and the two options that they offer. Her response is to "hit the ground running."

Black & Blues Album Review by Susan M. Asai
Ethnomusicologist and Professor of Music

Within the lineage of Jayne Cortez and other women poets of the Black Arts Movement who set their poetry to jazz, Iyeoka diverges, modernizing the settings of her verses to the pulses of R&B, house music, and semi-classical piano stylings in addition to jazz. The mostly jazz-inflected music heard on this album maintains a musical thread to her predecessors of the 1960s, firmly rooting her in African American expressive culture. Reaching to her Nigerian past, the steady, melodic and rhythmic ostinatos that emerge in the music connect her artistry to such stylings heard in many African musics.

Iyeoka showcases her mellifluous voice by singing as skillfully as she speaks. The variety of musical styles accompanying her poems and the alternation between singing and speaking from one poem to the next, and even within the same poem, helps to hold the listener's attention. She carefully chooses music to fit the expressive quality and sentiments of her poetry. Iyeoka's musical settings set up the rhythmic flow of her words, yet are sparsely conceived to avoid being a distraction.

The narrative style of her poetry bespeaks of searching, self discovery, courage, and the vagaries of love. Iyeoka's delivery in expressing heart-felt sentiments range from a torrent of words and emotions to soothing hushed tones. "She Doesn't Know Her Beauty" without musical accompaniment is a particularly striking piece. Within she employs a Benin-inflected accent that affirms the beauty of blackness, of Africaness and cultural referents to her ancestral homeland. Here she relies on her Nigerian origins as a foundation for her strength and pride.

One aspect of the recording that could be further considered is the vocal delivery in "Solitary Girl," "Hit the Ground Running," and to some extent "She Doesn't Know Her Beauty," which contain many emotional peaks and valleys that may leave the listener fatigued at the end of the poet's journey. The torrential flow of words could be more measured, phrases terraced in building to a climax, followed by phrases that decompress in stages as well. On the whole, Black and Blue is thoughtfully conceived, flowing like a river that knows where it wants to
go in its unbounded energy and verve.