HOW GLAD I AM Suite is a sonic journey looking at the ins and outs of an overwhelming love affair. How Glad I am Suite is the first offering from Melanie's first solo project "The Girl In The Green Shoes"
*"How Glad I Am" is a jazz standard written by Jimmy Williams and Larry Harrison and was made famous by Nancy Wilson.

Side A
How Glad I Am
Produced by Melanie Charles
*w/ segments of
Manchilds "Especially For You"
Its Routines "Pretend"

Recorded at Zuercher studios and Love Science Studios
Mixed by Josh Guinta
Mastered by Bae Bro

B SIde
Produced by Swarvy and Melanie Charles
Mixed and Mastered by Swarvy

Watch the short film-----> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZgGqlIERTs

How Glad I Am Suite

B Side
Produced by Swarvy and Melanie Charles
Mixed and Mastered by Swarvy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZgGqlIERTs

2/20/2017

How Glad I Am (B side)

How Glad I Am
Produced by Melanie Charles

2/20/2016

How Glad I Am

Although Charles may be new to some, she has held a long spanning relationship with music that goes back to girlhood. She was raised by a Haitian mother in Brooklyn where the sound waves in their home was filled with artists like Johnny Hodges, Frank Sinatra, Chaka Khan, and Nat King Cole. She attended the famed arts high school, LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts where she studied flute and vocals. Her early life was full of stage performances; as a kid she participated in musical theater, pageants, and talent shows in New York City. Eventually, she landed at the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music at The New School for college where she met artists like alto saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin and others. Perhaps better known as a singer, Charles has earned her title as a bonefide flutist. Her playing adds vibrant swaths of color and emotional texture to her music.

The album opens with a breathtaking rendition of Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child.” This song, and the album overall, flexes Charles’ impressive arrangement skills. The song features a powerful group of musicians—Benjamin Julia on electric guitar, Dezron Douglas on upright bass, Anwar Marshall on drums, Shedrick Mitchell on organ, and Tayzaro on cello. On flute and vocals, Charles floats above the soulful current of the band, singing the song over a dramatic blanket of electronic sound. The lyrics ring with equal power as the music. When Charles sings the lines “Yes, the strong get more/While the weak ones fade,” the connection to black women’s struggle is palpable. “My experience moving in the world as a black girl has always been, I have to be strong. I have to keep it together; I have to sort of live up to the standard,” says Charles.

At its core, Y’all Don’t (Really) Care is a clarion call for a more intersectional vision of the world in which black women can live more freely. The interlude “Pay Black Women” offers the most explicit instruction on some of the ways that care can be expressed. It contains a sample from a film project produced by Charles in 2021 entitled Love Letter to Black Jazz Girls.  Through the voices of three black women, the track draws attention to the racial gender wage gap but also to the treatment of black women artistic producers more broadly.

How Glad I Am Suite

Melanie Charles is D'flower