In each episode of our podcast “Life in Seven Songs,” we ask the world’s brightest minds and leaders: What songs tell the story of your life?
Rhodessa Jones is a Bay Area performance artist who overcame a hell of a lot to find her voice — then helped a generation of incarcerated and underrepresented women find theirs.
As a teenage single mother living in San Francisco, Jones paid the bills by taking a job as a dancer in a peep show.
“There was a curtain that would open, and there was a nude girl sitting behind glass,” said Jones, who often performed to “Soft and Wet” by Prince. “The stage was turning. I’d be sucking my finger. It was titillating.”
Jones took notes on the experience, which she turned into “The Legend of Lily Overstreet,” a landmark, one-woman play about gender, race, and sexuality. From there she founded the Medea Project, a theater program that teaches incarcerated women how to perform their stories. On this week’s “Life in Seven Songs,” Jones says she has always used her personal story “as a way to lift the people up” and is proud of her legacy helping other women do the same.
Here’s her full playlist.
- Mahalia Jackson, “How I Got Over”
- Sam Cooke, “Cupid”
- Aretha Franklin, “I Say a Little Prayer”
- Bob Dylan, “Mr. Tambourine Man”
- Prince, “Soft and Wet”
- Marvin Gaye, “What’s Going On”
- Sam Cooke, “A Change Is Gonna Come”