Artist: Anya Hinkle featuring Graham Sharp
Hometown: Asheville, North Carolina
Song: “What’s It Gonna Take”
Release Date: February 12, 2021
Label: Organic Records
In Their Words: “On May 26th, 2020, my neighbor Graham Sharp and I had planned to get together to do some songwriting. On that day, we had all woken up to the new reality, the first day without George Floyd in this world. ‘What should we write about?’ we asked each other, and we began to process the horror of his death through a song. We asked, what’s it gonna take? How can we speak to the brokenness of our country and our complicity in that? As we watched the nation convulse, we continued to write, trying to comprehend the pain we saw on display in the soul of our country and in ourselves.
“When we went into the studio to cut the single, we asked a master of the sacred steel, DaShawn Hickman, and gospel singer Wendy Hickman to join us in asking ‘what’s it gonna take?’ Bringing in their voices was an important part of processing the difficult summer, building trust and beauty through song. Only by listening to Black voices are we going to know what it is gonna take. We are still so divided and will remain ignorant until we can absorb what it’s like to be Black in America.” — Anya Hinkle
Photo credit: Rose Kaz
