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Life in Seven Songs

Actress Rhodessa Jones on the 7 songs that catapulted her from nude dancer to theater icon

The performance artist and mentor faced an uphill battle as a 16-year-old single mother. This is the music that inspired her to keep on going.

Rhodessa Jones, in a black hat and a patterned shirt, adorned with a large necklace, gazes upward with eyes half-closed, hands pressed together as if in prayer.
Podcast art by Clark Miller
By Sophie Bearman

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 (opens in new tab) 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 (opens in new tab). 

“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.”

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Jones took notes on the experience, which she turned into “The Legend of Lily Overstreet,” a landmark, one-woman play (opens in new tab) about gender, race, and sexuality. From there she founded the Medea Project (opens in new tab), 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.

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  1. Mahalia Jackson, “How I Got Over”
  2. Sam Cooke, “Cupid”
  3. Aretha Franklin, “I Say a Little Prayer”
  4. Bob Dylan, “Mr. Tambourine Man”
  5. Prince, “Soft and Wet”
  6. Marvin Gaye, “What’s Going On”
  7. Sam Cooke, “A Change Is Gonna Come”

Listen to Jones’ playlist on Spotify (opens in new tab), and find a transcript of the podcast episode here (opens in new tab). Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected].

Sophie Bearman can be reached at [email protected]

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