I'm Major Jackson, and this is The Slowdown.

I don't get to hear live music too much these days, but last summer, I found myself on

the rooftop deck of the National Museum of African American music awaiting the next band.

The DJ kept the crowd hyped in between sets by playing house music and classic R&B hits.

The fashionally dressed attendees sipped mojitos behind sunglasses for the most part, keeping

it chill, cool, blasé.

But when the DJ threw on the opening bars of before I let go, by maze, featuring Frankie

Beverly, everyone abandoned their postures of cool, stopped doing whatever they were doing,

and jumped up to dance.

Here's the moment, one of my favorite occurrences in life, shortly into the track, everyone.

I mean, 400 people or more started singing simultaneously with immense feeling, not missing

a beat or word.

You made me happy, this you can bet.

A collective spirit of joy, course through each person, our voices rising in the melodies

seem to enlarge us, as though our collective singing fused us into one.

We were strangers brought together by the sheer happiness of the song, well, maybe less

so by Beverly's lyrics, and more by the places the song took us and our memories.

For me, my first basement party, where my pre-teen crush, Sheree Atler, the most popular

girl in school, pulled me onto the dance floor because I was the closest person to her.

Shy, I think I did a two-step side to side.

She sang while holding my hands, the two of us laughing.

Amid the welter of adulthood, where did the gentleness and tenderness from those days

...