Joy Oladokun: Live On KCRW

From the creator

Singer-songwriter and guitarist, Joy Oladokun, is a generational American talent. Based out of Nashville, Tennessee, where the National Museum of African American Music recently featured Joy as part of a new exhibition, her powerful voice, profound lyrics and intricate folk guitar melodies carry the spirit of the Black folk tradition into the 2020s with fervor and a whole lot of Joy. As a special treat for KCRW, Joy returns to her roots for a stripped down acoustic performance of four songs from her new record, Hope Is a Heavy Thing, along with a cover of Des’ree’s R&B anthem, “You Gotta Be.” In the performance you’ll find that her music doesn’t dance around the uncertainties of the times, it offers “Easy Company” and empowers us to be “Kind” to our truest selves. It boldly encourages you to overcome hate with love and turn radical hope into actions of change. As she introduces her song, “The End of the World,” she describes the record overall as “best listened to in a haze of smoke on a porch somewhere pondering conspiracy theories.” Joy ventures through each song with closed eyes, summoning a feeling deep inside that pours out with ferocity. While her songs are firmly rooted in her Black, queer, Nigerian and spiritual experiences, the feeling she evokes transcends from a personal well into a universal ocean. Her song about grief, “Time Is A River” features some of the most beautiful lyrics about the painful subject and during recording it moved most of the folks in the r

Published 2026-11-11 · Watch on YouTube ↗
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