Now Jendayi and Gyasi are back, telling a musical
story as Black artists who don’t necessarily make the kind of music that
society expects.
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Charlie Belle (L-R): Gyasi Bonds, Jendayi Bonds. Photo by Kees2Life.
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PLAY, POST & SHARE
[STREAM]: https://Fanatic.lnk.to/CharlieBelle-LookingForMagic
[VIDEO]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEWV8zccZMM
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Charlie Belle | “Looking For
Magic”
Check out “Looking
For Magic,” the new video from Charlie
Belle over at Glide
Magazine, which says it “captures the close chemistry between brother
and sister, and the fun that they can have together making music. There is a
smoothness... that is conveyed both in the laid back groove and in Jendayi’s effortlessly cool vocals that
linger in your mind long after listening.”
Gyasi weighs in about the video, too, saying, “This music
video is the first and purest piece of art that isn’t our music that we created
as us, as ourselves, as Charlie Belle.
Even down to the collaboration, to have had our friend Ben Root edit our music video, being that we’ve known him since we
were kids, it feels like it’s meant to be. We’ve had so much help from friends
and that feels good.”
Jendayi clues us in about the song's origins: “I wrote this
song during my senior year of high school. Around then, Charlie Belle had already released a couple of EPs and we thought
it was time to release an album. I’d never written a whole album before and was
still in shock from all of the attention the first EPs got, so that whole
senior year I was kinda worried, like ‘am I gonna be able to write a good
song?’ So, that’s what the lyrics are about. It’s like I was given a black top
hat, and I’ve got no choice; I’m really bad at magic shows, but I’ll put one
on, and maybe we can hear a song.”
Jendayi and Gyasi
Bonds of Charlie Belle are available
for interviews. Contact Josh Bloom at Fanatic for more information.
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Charlie
Belle | About
When national attention came to the sibling duo Charlie Belle in 2014, Jendayi and Gyasi Bonds were literally just kids.
Sixteen and fourteen-years-old at the time, they were
both already veterans of the Austin music scene when their debut EP “Get To Know” blew up. Press came from NPR, Nylon, MTV, Vice, Wired and others, and Jendayi
and Gyasi appeared together on the
cover of their local paper, the Austin
Chronicle.
“It was weird and exciting and interesting and fun and
flattering to say the least, that randomly by chance, our debut EP really hit
it out of the park, right?,” Jendayi
says of that crazy time. “Man was it cool!”
She continues, “Nothing in my life until that moment
showed me that perhaps I could truly pursue this. Maybe I had a perspective
that other people might want to hear. Maybe I could make an impact on people
with my music in the same way that bands like Arctic Monkeys, The Strokes,
and Local Natives made an impact on
me.”
“I’ve been the drummer in Charlie Belle for 12 years,” Gyasi
says, now a 19-year-old college student.
Jendayi has graduated college, she’s 22 now, and while the
pair took time away from schooling us with pop tunes too damn accomplished for
teenagers, it was the right thing to do. They were always plotting a return,
and now they are educated, wiser, and ready to present new music to a world
that is much different from the one they played for just six years ago. The new
tunes are clearly by two independent, self-actualized artists, who know exactly
what they’re doing.
“He went off and became his own human,” Jendayi says of her brother, “I went
off and did that too, and I jumped into my songwriting. We were supposed to
move and grow like this, so we could tell our story with intention.”
Part of that story is of being Black artists who don’t
necessarily make the kind of music that society thinks they would be, or should
be, making.
Look, Jendayi
and Gyasi just want people to know
that they are creative, multifaceted artists, who happen to be a brother and
sister who grew up gigging around town in Austin. But they also want people to
know that as Black artists, their lives and experiences are just as rich and
nuanced as everyone else’s.
“I want more of our stories to be told,” Jendayi says.
It’s important to the band that their sociopolitical stance
and their personal cultural awareness co-exist in harmony alongside their pop
sensibilities. Those blown away by the catchiness and thoughtfulness of Charlie
Belle’s debut can look forward to new songs by young adults who have now been doing
this for half their lives.
What was already great is even better: Fun, upbeat,
buoyant, while also keenly aware of the moment in a way that only Jendayi and Gyasi can speak to.
Two new singles by sister-brother duo Charlie Belle arrive this fall. “Looking For Magic” is out now, with “What About Me” following on Oct. 9th.
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Charlie Belle | Links
ASSETS : WEBSITE : FACEBOOK : TWITTER : YOUTUBE : INSTAGRAM
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Josh Bloom at Fanatic
Promotion | Contact
WEBSITE
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