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Inasmuch as any of my dreams came true via music, Atlantic was the architect, shaman and vehicle of fortune.

In the future, my existence will echo one of my favorite Frida Kahlo paintings: call me The Two Kandias. The first, the daughter of Anne and Ahmet in love with wax long-players and perpetually in thrall to sound, will never come again. The second, born on New Year's Day 2007, will linger on in a half-life, with complex polyrhythms of creolized African bluenotes falling on her ears like ash.

Atlantic Records made me and my whole world. Conversely, it doomed all of my personal relationships; it's been a lifelong struggle to love anyone more than "Bluebird," "In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed," "Someday We'll All Be Free," "Tighten Up" and that supernatural wonder in Neil Young's "Country Girl," when Graham Nash's voice kisses Olorun's cosmos. (Now, add "The Last Time.")

And yet Atlantic rescued my African redbone self from the aftershocks of Manifest Destiny. Certainly, the vital necessity of releasing the Allmans' Live at Fillmore East (Dowd's shining star) became clear at year's end when the music stopped, and I sat alone in the dark witnessing Apocalypto as '06 redskin bookend, Jaguar Paw knee-deep in blues and running for his life on the eve of Columbus' dance across the big water. Without my mother and other heroes, I now know the sound of Apocalypse.

The label's back catalog is how I understood the Jim Crow world of my parents and the souls of black folk in mid-century. Here's hoping that birthright blessing can never be undone. And so, next Monday morning, when I perform my annual ritual of spinning Hathaway's exhilarating, exquisite holiday classic, "This Christmas" (originally released on the Soul Christmas compilation, Atco 33-269/November 1968), I will also pour libation for Ahmet Ertegun and all of those who've returned this year to Afrolantica's regenerative, watery embrace.