How Active is Activism?

Oh wow, I feel like so much has happened since I wrote my last blog post.

I've been meaning to write another one for months now but have been totally slammed with work/life/music/work/work/work/work/work but now I have my morning coffee break to get some thoughts out of my brain so as per, figured I'd share them!

Just to give some context as to where I am now, on the 7th July I woke up, scrolled through my facebook feed and saw Philando Castile dying on camera. The 32 year old school cafeteria supervisor was in the car with his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds and her four year old daughter when he was pulled over by a policeman. When Castile told the policeman he had a gun (as you're supposed to in America - you have to declare to the law when you have a registered firearm) the policeman fatally shot him in the arm. He died and the policeman was sent on paid leave. Watch the video and read the full story here.

Two days beforehand Alton Sterling, a 37 year old father of five, was pinned down by two police officers at a convenience store for selling CDs and shot several times at point blank range. You can also watch the video via the above link.

Ever since Sandra Bland's dashcam footage and resulting death in police custody, I have woken up fast. It wasn't enough anymore to only talk about the struggle when it was comfortable or to explain different points of view in docile terms because...we're beyond that. When I saw Akua Naru perform last year I remember her saying, "this has been going on in America for a long time, it's just y'all know about it now." We are incredibly fortunate that the internet and social media give us access to things that would otherwise be hearsay - there is no denying the truth when it's laid out for you in the way these deaths are, but I wasn't ready for it. 

That day, I felt so sick. Sick with fear and anger but mostly overwhelming sadness. Throughout the day I got 4 calls from friends who cried with me down the phone while I sat in the bathroom at work. The overwhelming question of... Why? Why is this happening? Why is this being allowed to happen? Why isn't everyone crying right now...? Why?

That weekend I was going to go to London to be part of the Black Lives Matter march because I had to do something - anything. Then I asked a friend of mine why one wasn't happening in Bristol. She said she'd been talking about it with a couple of other members of the community, I was joined to the conversation and within 24 hours we organised a Black Lives Matter march to which a thousand people joined and it was one of the proudest moments of my life. To see such a wide variety of ages and races come together to say collectively that Black Lives Matter gave me hope.

Since that march I've been thinking about how 'active' activism is. Does it always have to be a thousand strong march through the city? Or can it be something so small as challenging perceptions, asking a question that others would rather ignore - because in a lot of ways I think that's harder. To talk to people you like or may even love about issues that don't affect them in the same way. I've grown up predominantly around white, middle class people and my Facebook page reflects that. Over the past couple of years, that demographic has changed as I meet new people, join different discussions and what I'm left with now is a mix of people who are 'Woke' and 'Somewhat Aware'.

As someone from a mixed heritage I'm not unfamiliar with being in this middle ground but my god, it was FAR easier organising a Black Lives Matter march than having to explain to people who you may have known since childhood about the daily struggle because ultimately...you don't want to have to keep explaining. You just want them to:

A) Understand that they are living a different life to you

B) Listen to what you're saying and not see your frustration at the system as a personal attack
C) Not make you into an 'angry black person' because you're sparking questions they don't want to think about

Now, just because I'm loud and opinionated, does NOT mean I think I'm always right. Ever. I'm always up for a healthy discussion. But if we come to the discussion of race I would never think to tell a white person or a darker skinned person, how they should feel...because it's not my place. I do not know their life experience, only my own.

I am very aware that I benefit from white privilege as a mixed race, lighter skinned black person. So if someone begins to tell me how they experience the world, how arrogant do I have to be to say, "actually I think you're wrong"... Because how would I know?! There are some who can't help but feel the need to be relevant - to always have an opinion and often those people are the ones who are 'Somewhat Aware'. Maybe they feel somewhat guilty - but your guilt is doing nothing but derailing the conversation.

Those conversations are the hardest ones to have - the small challenges that can occur everyday because those are the ones where you may actually have an argument with someone you like, where you may both find yourselves in an uncomfortable position. I remember having a conversation about racial prejudice with one of my friends once and she was telling me about this horrible guy she works with that makes derogatory racial jokes all the time and I asked her why she hadn't confronted him. She said "coming from a skinny white girl, it's not exactly my place"... but it is your place. It's everyone's place because he's going to pay more attention to your outrage than he is mine.

“People won’t listen to you or take you seriously unless you’re an old white man, and since I’m an old white man I’m going to use that to help the people who need it.” – Patrick Stewart

This is why, for now, I leave my politically motivated Facebook posts public. I have a network of pretty intelligent people from different backgrounds, most of whom's opinions I respect and will listen to...but there are still questions to be asked, perceptions to be challenged and difficult conversations to be had. Even when I'm not trying to start a debate it seems to happen, every time my phone vibrates I get a little pit in my stomach thinking "Fuuuuck, what's kicking off now?"... but I can handle that pit in my stomach, I'm used to it.

Nothing ever got solved on Facebook and I'm not under any illusions that my opinion is any more valid than anyone else's but I'm not afraid of conflict. More often than not, I think it's something we can all learn from.

Freetown Sound: A Review of the Political New Album from Blood Orange

The blues, a genre born from songs sung on slave ships to release pain and spark hope, is one

that is deeply embedded in the black community. Maturing in Mississippi Delta, just upriver from New Orleans (the birthplace of jazz) the two have been closely linked ever since; strongly rooted in African-American history.

Over the past couple of years, a new strain of hip hop has incorporated jazz and taken on embedded that history. As a mainstream genre, that fusion is now recognised as the sound of resistance. The first artist to come to mind of its use in this particular way is D’Angelo - his Black Messiah embodied the swagger of jazz throughout with a sea of fists on the seen on the sleeve to secure its meaning as a political album.

Kendrick Lamar followed with the groundbreaking, To Pimp a Butterfly in 2015. Opening with the mantra ‘Every nigger is a star’ before strutting into For Free where Lamar’s quick talk, harmonising horns and walking double bass transported the listener to a 1920s smoky piano bar. Fusing upbeat jazz with swiftly delivered bars early on in the album, resulted in hip hop, jazz and black politics becoming inexplicably linked.

By opening Freetown Sound with hauntingly jazzy chords from the beginning, Blood Orange, perhaps subconsciously references there recent works. Which is not to take away from the mark he himself has made on this concept. The first song quickly moves into what I’d describe as gospel music; another facet of black music not often heard in the UK. Whenever I’ve heard this type of sound, personally, it has been used as a soundtrack for pain and remorse. Dissecting the words of the song, ‘They took and skinned my name. Try to raise the feeling. I saw right through, tried to love them.They threw it in your face, tell you what you're feeling.”

Who are those words speaking about? Are they being spoken by a black man, as a first hand description of how it feels growing up in a society that sees you as less than others, despite your efforts to bridge that gap? Or are they being spoken by a young boy, picked on at school in East London?

Blood Orange, real name Dev Hynes, was born in Ilford, London and has spoken about the unhappier parts of his childhood where kids from the black community would target him. Ostracisation at a young age may be identifiable to those who feel segregated from society because of the colour of their skin.

When Ashlee Haze’s spoken word breaks through, this theme of ostracisation develops into the struggles that can come when attempting to form an identity; especially when those that look like you are rarely seen in positive roles. Haze speaks: ‘If you ask me why representation is important…  I will tell you that right now there are a million black girls just waiting, to see someone who looks like them.’ This theme of representation and the necessity in being able to connect with visions of yourself elevating in society rather than being pulled down, is one the recurred in the album.

Augustine mentions Trayvon Martin early on; a 17 year old from Miami who was fatally shot by a white man on neighbourhood watch who mistook him for a criminal due to the hoodie he was wearing. By referencing the incident almost naturally, Hynes shows the audience how naturally he himself connects with this young boy. Two young black men, one of them alive. 

‘But You’ further explores this confused sense of identity. It’s a song that speaks of the battle inside Blood Orange when trying to decide whether or not to cross the road, because a white woman walking towards him seems uncomfortable. ‘Teach yourself about your brother. Cause there's no one else but you.You are special in your own way’ .This idea that someone’s skin colour, the one thing that can’t be chosen, can leave them vulnerable to prejudice - a fact that seems to be all too familiar for Blood Orange. The negative connotations that automatically come with being a tall, slim black man with dreadlocks, can make Hynes seem like a threat to the person walking opposite him, seeing him through fear.

This shift in focus could be an uncomfortable experience for the audience; it’s getting harder to pretend racism doesn’t exist when social media is circulating with videos of death. I first became aware of Blood Orange when I was trying to come to terms with the dash cam footage of Sandra Bland’s arrest. She was stopped and tasered for no reason; after being in custody for three days she mysteriously died. When I saw the footage and realised that she was taken down for defending her rights, that was the moment I identified with the reality of what people in America were going through.

Blood Orange wrote about the incident, releasing Sandra’s Smile. Staccato words sang: ‘Why the fuck do you even speak? t's not a choice of speech, and it sure ain't free.’ This is where we come to a point that, in some ways, is more disturbing; had she kept quiet, maybe she wouldn’t have had to die. This ‘keep your mouth shut or else’ mentality is one that has been a route of domestic violence for a long time. Sandra’s Smile was the last song brought out before Freetown Sound and I believe it to be a catalyst for a feminist side of the album.

Desirée uses an extract from Paris is Burning in Venus where Venus Xtravaganza (a transgender performer) speaks about prostituting herself to men in order to afford her gender realignment surgery. Queerness, feminism and trans issues are not widely represented in black music and to see it seamlessly sewn into the album, no bells or whistles, is moving. Blood Orange has welcomed a marginalised group into a genre which has not often been readily accessible to them, in terms of representation.

Each time I listen to Freetown Sound, I find a new layer of meaning. It is a complex album that looks at identity and representation in an incredibly gentle way. It is musical and thoughtful and almost listens like you’ve wandered into the middle of someone’s deep thought and decided to stick around. When I look at the previously mentioned political albums, they are angry, or at the very least defiant - Freetown Sound is neither. Blood Orange is just… Tired. Tired of having to explain his actions and question his thoughts based on how other’s choose to interpret him. It is not an easy insight to express - but Freetown Sound has managed it.

Lemonade: Beyoncé's sweetest lemons

Pray You Catch Me

The album opens with Beyoncé looking down with graffiti in the background, presented in fur and corn rows. A vulnerable admission of infidelity begins:

'I'm praying to catch you whispering, I pray you catch me listening'

As the word 'intuition' comes up on the screen Warsan Shire's words spoken by Beyoncé.

'You remind me of my father, a magician. 

Able to exist in two places of once. 

In the tradition of men in my blood, 

you come home at 3am and lie to me.'

Shire's resonant words weave each song together making the album unbearably intimate at times. 

It adds an inescapable depth of every day endurance that women of colour experience. Adapting the self to a world that doesn't accept easily or graciously.

‘I tried to change. Closed my mouth more. Tried to be soft, prettier, less awake.’

Hold Up

The sunshine reggae vibe of this song comes from an Andy Williams sample from the 60s and the chorus is a rework of "Maps," sung by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It is hypnotic.

Beyoncé’s familiar, unassuming smile etched into her face while she smashes up cars on the street with a baseball bat.

It's an easy listen and fun to watch but the music does become monotonous. Saying that, as is the case with the whole album, it's not really about the music but the words. 

'Let's imagine for a moment that you never made a name for yourself

Or mastered wealth, they never had you labeled as a king

You never made it out the cage, to locked up, movin' in the streets

Never had the baddest woman in the game up in your sheets'

Don't Hurt Yourself

Led Zeppelin are sampled in this Jack White collaboration. The immediate, driving drums from 'When The Levee Breaks' takes it to next level swag with Beyoncé growling over a filthy bass:

‘Who the fuck do you think I am?

You ain't married to no average bitch boy

You can watch my fat ass twist boy

As I bounce to the next dick boy’

The layers peel back with a Malcolm X sample:

'The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. 

The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. 

The most neglected person in America is the black woman.'

The edge sharpens as she unashamedly inhabits the angry black women; looking at the camera with pouting lips and snarling, 'I'm just too much for you.’

This could be a wife saying it to her husband but it could also be any disrespected black woman saying it to the world where descriptions like 'ghetto, loud, opinionated and sexual' have been used as weapons against them.

Sorry

Watching Serena Williams, a fantastic athlete whose aesthetics have been mocked time and again, expressing her sexuality in this video is glorious. She smiles and twerks, swapping roles with Beyoncé who sits stoically in a chair singing 'I ain't sorry’.

Black women are rarely allowed to own their own sexuality without it being drenched in animalistic shame or constant comparison. 

'He only want me when I'm not there.

He better call Becky with the good hair'

For me, this is the most important line in the whole album. Forget who Becky is, she is irrelevant. So is the affair. The symbolism of this line being sung whilst drenched in symbols of Africa is poignant.

'Becky with the good hair' is every billboard that women of colour see advertising Western beauty as the epitome.

It is every time I go somewhere and someone feels the need to mention or touch my 'interesting' hair. 

It is every time someone approaches you only to inquire about your skin colour, your sass, your Nubian twist. It is the everyday microscope that magnifies your difference.

Daddy Lessons

Beyoncé’s foot tapping, ye-hawing country/blues debut starts in New Orleans and ends in her hometown, Houston. 

It is the only song on the album she produced solo, co-written with Wynter Gordon, Kevin Cossom and Alex Delicata.

'Came into this world, daddy's little girl, 

Daddy made a soldier out of me.'

Singing in West African print along rhythm guitar, the song speaks of complex family relationships. 

It shows how the expectation to be strong and independent starts at home and is carried on through generations where we fail to avoid picking our fathers.

Forward

This short, poignant collaboration with James Blake is truly heartbreaking. 

It features grieving mothers Sybrina Fulton, Lezley McSpadden and Gwen Carr who hold portraits of their passed sons, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner.

It drives home the dark reality that we live in this world, that our black children are not safe.

Freedom

A gospel collaboration with Kendrick Lamar that samples 60s band Kaleidoscope to psychedelic affect, this is the albums’ ear-worm.

‘I break chains all by myself

Won't let my freedom rot in hell

Hey! I'ma keep running

Cause a winner don't quit on themselves’

Supermodel Winne Harlow said of working on the project:

“(Beyoncé) sang acapella with the courage of our ancestors who worked the grounds we were celebrating them on.”

Filmed on a plantation with women of all different shades of brown dressed in Victorian clothing, this song celebrates the generations of strong black women who have come before us and will come after us. 

It is an intensely emotional part of the album with French-Cuban soul duo Ibeyi and actresses Zendaya and Amandla Sternberg standing with the grieving mothers of the Forward.

It shows us the journey we endured together as a people but passes on home to the next generation. It cannot help but leave anyone feeling informed, aware, awake.

The cynical part of me accepts that Beyonce knows what she’s doing. When Formation dropped at the Super Bowl (the ultimate in capitalism) I questioned the timing as well as the intention. 

This isn't groundbreaking musically - the prominence lies in a specific message for a group of people to stand up and be proud. 

But then Lemonade tour tickets went out at £80+ each....pretty steep for the supposed target audience.

Despite this, Lemonade (which is still on repeat) is about much more than a man cheating on a woman. It digs deeper to how the world sees black females, and tells us to be stronger than others. 

Standing together, that strength can make us more fiercely capable than anyone.