anthony flammia is in ‘pieces’

With mid-afternoon sunshine peeking through the window, surrounded by plants in a restaurant, I met Anthony Flammia. He was familiar: he reminded me of my father and brothers I’ve known and lost. He was warm and rough, and then he said, “I’d love to play for you all in the office. I have a keyboard.”

Soon after our first meeting, he was in the AFROPUNK offices playing the piano and filling the room with a voice that matches his aura: both warm and rough. The honesty in his music and the soul in his voice was refreshing. The music  does remind one of the sweet pop-soul of Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, and Al Green: authentic, soulful, warm, and rough. In his new music video for “Pieces’, Anthony Flammia reminds us what a Black masculine softness can look and sound like while imaging himself in therapy, in love, in turmoil, but always keeping the soul.