Everything I Need is Mine

from Ancestry by Samantha Lindo

/

  • Record/Vinyl + Digital Album

    Limited Edition 12" Vinyl of my forthcoming album, 'Ancestry'.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Ancestry via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 5 days

      £22 GBP or more 

     

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      £1 GBP  or more

     

  • Buy the Full Digital Album

about

The most energetic and classically ‘soul’ track of the album, ‘Everything I Need is Mine’, is about my great grandfather, Eric Brown, who was the conservator of forestry for Jamaica and British Honduras.

With one foot in the past, connected to his distant but strongly felt roots to the indigenous Taino peoples of the Caribbean, affecting his vision and connection to land; and one foot in the future, he worked to establish the reserves to protect and conserve the forests in Jamaica.

The only person of colour on the lawn in front of Jamaica house when receiving his MBE from then princess Elizabeth in 1951, the trees that he planted in his first days as a forester nearly 100 years ago are now at risk as we face the disproportionate effects of climate breakdown on small island states. His story links colonial extractivism and the injustice of the unbalanced effects of ecological breakdown on the majority black the global south.

However, ‘Everything I Need is Mine’ is me harnessing his legacy of vision, to try to help create a future that is mindful of our future ancestors at this crucial moment in human history. The last single, it’s also a celebration that through exploring and claiming my history, that I have, and always have had ‘everything I need’ within me, to be who I am in the world and respond to this time we are in.

The track, with its massive harmony crescendo, has elements of a show tune. It was this that provoked the idea of creating a multi-disciplinary piece of 'gig-theatre' based on the album; to push the boundaries of my live performance to hold enough space and creativity for these stories to be told. Funded by Help Musicians UK’s Creative Collaboration fund, I’m currently working with Dramaturg, Eli Lower, from Bristol's Rising Arts Agency, on the research and development of a script, to be made and produced to follow the album in 2024.

lyrics

EVERYTHING I NEED IS MINE

I trace your steps
I want to feel the forest
I’ll take your quest
I want to make real the promise

I’ll take shelter under you
You planted and you grew
Now this canopy
Is all that it can be
Your watching over me
And my memory

It goes beyond a lifetime
It goes behind my lifeline
I feel your words and
I make them mine
This urgency and this ticking time

And I’m shaded
In a world that has faded from view
In this tainted time
Now I found my own

My head rest on the bark
With all my mind and heart
This ancestry, completing me
I’m finding a part
Of my whole

It goes beyond my lifetime
It goes beyond my lifeline
I feel your words and
I make them mine
This urgency and this ticking time

Now everything I need is mine
Now everything I need is mine
Now everything I need is mine

A fine man of spirit
Your duty to preserve
What was erased by the paper
But chosen by the earth
I’ll take your gift of vision and
Blaze a dream of light
I’ll take the drop that you give me
And bring it back to life

It goes beyond a lifetime
It goes beyond my lifeline
I feel your words and I make them mine
This urgency and this ticking time

Now everything I need is mine
Now everything I need is mine
Now everything I need is mine

credits

from Ancestry, released November 10, 2023

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Samantha Lindo image

Samantha Lindo London, UK

Samantha Lindo is a multidisciplinary RnB and Soul artist whose sound spans the realms of spiritual jazz, gospel and spoken word.

Her forthcoming album, 'Ancestry', was funded by Arts Council England and the MOBO awards and uses the stories from her family history to explore themes of dual heritage identity, inter-generational healing and climate justice. ... more

contact / help

Contact Samantha Lindo

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this track or account

If you like Samantha Lindo, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Featured guests are the golden-voiced Baby Rose and psyche soulsters Brainstory.
listen now