“Human Too”

Nina Simone famously said, “An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times.” D.C. singer-songwriter Carly Harvey couldn’t agree more. “The [current] climate, it was just boiling up, and I was like ‘I need to take blues and folk blues back to where it began,’ which was to be an expression of the times,” says the singer. With that in mind, Harvey wrote “Human Too,” a song that discusses the Black Lives Matter movement, the death of George Floyd, caging undocumented immigrants, and the former name of the Washington Football Team. For Harvey, the song’s subject matter is deeply personal. “Both of my parents are Afro-Indigenous and also multi-racial. My mother’s side is Cherokee. My dad’s side is an Iroquois mixture, mainly of Tuscarora. So I grew up as a person who just embraces all of that,” she says. The song earned her seven nominations at the Wammies, including Best Folk Artist and Best Blues Artist; the virtual Wammies will take place on March 28. For Harvey, her nominations are a sign of acceptance for her multi-genre style of music. “It’s important that cross-genre music is recognized by the Wammies and other organizations like it,” Harvey says. “It provides a platform to share the message with broader audiences and maybe influence them to expand categories for music that doesn’t fit into one box.” The track is available on Bandcamp. Free—$1.