When DJ Nabs of Boom 102.9 drops the needle on tracks by One Voice Holiday, his social media immediately begins lighting up like a Christmas tree.
“It’s instantaneous,” Nabs said, regarding listener reaction to this Atlanta-based vocal group, currently putting a candy cane-style twist on classic Outkast songs.
An Instagram video capturing Nabs spinning “Bells Over Baghdad,” a mashup of Outkast’s 2000 single “B.O.B. (Bombs Over Baghdad)” and “Carol of the Bells,” finds the DJ bouncing to the tune’s frantic beat, the jingling of Christmas bells in the forefront.
Taking Outkast tracks, stirring them together with Christmas tunes and baking them into some sort of audio confection for the holiday season sprang from the mind of Keisha Jackson. In 2014, the professional singer, who's been providing backup vocals for Outkast for the past 20 years, had just come off the group's 20th anniversary tour.
“I was still on a high from the Outkast tour and so was the city,” Jackson said. “Atlanta has such a love for Outkast music.”
Just after the tour ended in November 2014, Jackson joined Outkast co-founder Antwan André “Big Boi” Patton for a solo performance in California. While on the road, Jackson hit Patton with an idea. She wanted her One Voice Music Group, made up of students from Jackson’s various vocal workshops, to perform three Outkast tunes revamped as holiday songs for Patton’s annual Christmas party for his nonprofit, Big Kidz Foundation.
“You should’ve seen the frown on his face,” Jackson recalled with a laugh. “He didn’t hear it. He didn’t get it.”
Yet, Patton trusted Jackson, a longtime collaborator and music industry veteran. Jackson, the daughter of R&B diva Millie Jackson, not only grew up in the entertainment world, but signed to Sony in 1989, and became an in-demand backing vocalist, recording and performing with the likes of Whitney Houston, Erykah Badu, Bobby Brown, Joss Stone and others.
So Jackson gathered members of One Voice Music Group and rearranged Outkast musical tracks with lyrics from timeless holiday material. Along with the holiday retooling of “B.O.B.,” the group meshed Outkast’s “Aquemini” with “Christmas Time Is Here” from the “A Charlie Brown Christmas” soundtrack. Big Boi’s own “Shutterbug” intermingled with Donny Hathaway’s “This Christmas.”
Just days before Christmas 2014, Jackson and company performed the songs at Patton’s Stankonia Studios for the Big Kidz Foundation holiday bash. It was then Patton heard for the first time Jackson’s idea come to fruition.
“He was blown away,” Jackson recalled. “He said, ‘Oh my, God. I had no idea what you were talking about. This is amazing.’”
According to Jackson, Patton asked her if she had recorded the songs. When she answered “no,” Patton encouraged her to head into the studio immediately. He wanted to get it to radio. So the next night, Jackson and her choral group filed into Outkast DJ Cutmaster Swiff’s Atlanta studio. An all-night recording session resulted in three complete songs. By Dec. 23, 2014, One Voice Holiday made its debut on Atlanta radio.
DJ Swiff passed the cuts to several of his fellow DJ friends, who had shifts on the Atlanta dial. One of them would be DJ Nabs, who soon became the project’s strongest radio advocate.
“Everyone was on it by Christmas Eve,” Jackson said. “Every radio station I turned to was playing it. I was so excited. It’s crazy, because I’ve been in the industry so long. But let me tell you, there’s nothing like hearing your record on the radio for the first time.”
Shortly after the holidays, Swiff told Jackson they should record an entire album. At first, Jackson was unsure she could properly pair enough Outkast and Christmas songs together. Then on the way back from a spring break trip with her children, Jackson began brainstorming, singing Christmas lyrics over Outkast tunes as she drove.
Self-funding the project herself with DJ Swiff, Jackson gathered 32 singers who had supported her workshops over the past decade. If someone wanted to be involved, Jackson made a spot for them, some even traveling from out of town to attend a session. When vocalist Naybu Fullman of Washington, D.C., couldn’t make it to Atlanta, Jackson recorded him in D.C. while she made a tour stop singing background for Johnny Gill. By summer 2015, after three and a half months of recording, a full album was complete.
Currently available online for donations — the album can be purchased for free, if desired at https://onevoicemusicgroupatl.bandcamp.com/releases — the project simply remains a labor of love for Jackson. It's the opportunity for her students, some of them professional vocalists and others hobbyists, to get exposure, airtime and experience. On Dec. 17, the group will perform three One Voice Holiday songs at the First Congregational Church of Atlanta. And Jackson is hoping that with the support of Patton, they will potentially secure an official album release.
In the meantime, radio jocks such as DJ Nabs spin One Voice Holiday for the masses, spreading an unconventional yet popular form of Christmas cheer.
“This year, I was looking forward to the day after Thanksgiving to play it again on the air,” Nabs said. “As far as classic hip-hop goes, it’s great for me. It gives me something new to play even though it’s based on something old. That’s hip-hop anyway, taking something from the past and making it new.”
EVENT PREVIEW
One Voice Holiday
4:30 p.m. Dec. 17. First Congregational Church of Atlanta, 105 Courtland St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-659-6255, onevoicemusicgroupatl.bandcamp.com/releases.
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