An Angel Takes Flight: Angela Bofill (1954-2024)

“We have here a city sound, sensual and glittering and full of promise, we all know about the devils who lurk in the shadows, but Angela Bofill tells us that angels lurk here too. All we have to do is look for them and listen.[i]

So wrote the iconic New York city journalist Pete Hamill in the liner notes to jazz artist Angela Bofill’s 1979 sophomore album, Angel of the Night.

News of Angela Bofill’s recent passing in California at the age of seventy makes us think of just that: angels—of song. For Jazz and R&B listeners of the last four decades, from the casual fan to the more inclined, the title of songstress evokes the exquisite of voice and performance: Anita Baker and Sade certainly come to mind. Preceding them, though not in mainstream popularity, would be Angela Bofill.

Capable of enchanting with uncommon vocal and emotional range and still rarer authenticity in song delivery, was Bofill’s hallmark talent. The aforementioned Hamill wrote that Angela Bofill’s art was “an art of the voice of writing, of music, and most important, of feeling.”[ii]

Feel it, you did. To listen but once to the 1979 signature single, “I Try,” is to know that beauty exists and that you have been there.  

         Although never released as a single, “I Try,” from Angel of the Night (album) is one of Bofill’s most beloved songs. The silken self-penned ode to defeatism in romance immediately found a home on Quiet Storm and smooth jazz stations, where the song is still heard.[iii]

I heard it on Chicago radio today, a serenade still. The 1991 remake of the song by the equally incomparable Will Downing, beautiful homage that it is, just adds to the experience of the original.  

A New York city native of Cuban and Puerto Rican ancestry, Bofill demonstrated original talent from an early age (a Manhattan School of Music graduate), signing with Dave Grusin and Larry Rosen’s GRP records before she was twenty-five (and then on to Arista records during the 1980s).  Bofill’s sound gained unique crossover appeal, from Jazz to R&B to Funk to mainstream balladeering as she recorded/performed with, among others, George Duke, Stanley Clarke, Kirk Whalum, Dave Valentin, Johnny Mathis, and Boz Scaggs.

The varied attraction proved a career challenge.

         Her sound was inviting, passion-soaked, beautifully soulful. But where did it fit exactly?[iv]

Bofill’s voice found a home in more than a dozen albums which produced more than twenty chart-worthy singles. But health issues (two debilitating strokes in 2006 and 2007) would sidetrack a still promising career. Nothing, however, could take away from the gift that is Angela Bofill’s legacy. Just listen.  

Tim Weldon teaches philosophy at the University of St. Francis in Joliet, IL. tweldon@stfrancis.edu

[i] https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-n5Q-AkiUNM8/TyqLixuBvxI/AAAAAAAAKeM/CfgHmVOl_hk/s1600/a.tif

[ii] https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-n5Q-AkiUNM8/TyqLixuBvxI/AAAAAAAAKeM/CfgHmVOl_hk/s1600/a.tif

[iii] https://www.pilotonline.com/2016/10/20/angela-bofill-an-overlooked-80s-star-2/

[iv] https://www.baltimoresun.com/2004/01/08/passionate-sound-of-angela-bofill-endures-for-years/