February 9, 2022 • 26 mins
Dr. Alexander Lloyd Blake found his passion for music singing in a gospel choir in his church as a young boy. But as a gay Black man, he found a lack of representation for his community and the gospel genre as a whole. In this episode, learn more about Dr. Blake’s story and his choral group Tonality, which tells the untold stories of Black lives through song as a tool for healing.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Have you ever wanted a safe space where you can
just exist, where for a moment in time, you can
be you, with all the intricacies and parts of you
that people don't always understand. Welcome to in the deep
stories that shape us. I'm your host, Zach Stafford, and
each episode we create a space to be you, all
of you and all your messy and complicated glory. Every
(00:25):
story shares what it means to be a black and
Latin X man living with different hardships, whether it's a
struggle of identity, discrimination or health, and how they've managed
to push forward despite the circumstance. We hope to get closer,
even it's just a little to a road of healing
and understanding. Hi everyone, Welcome back. One of life's biggest
(00:53):
mysteries is why exactly music is so powerful for our souls.
You probably have a soundtrack to your life, jam for
those happy days, maybe one for the tough days too,
and you can't forget those special songs that keep you
in your driveway until they play all the way through.
But undoubtedly music has the power to heal and in
our communities, it is an auditory expression of our cultures fabric.
(01:15):
It's who we are and what we believe in our
guest today is not only a testament to this that
his story gives us something even bigger, because the music
he is creating is not only helping us see the
world and all its complicated glory, but it's also creating
a future that heals us all. Dr Alexander Lloyd Blake
is a lot of things. He's an award winning conductor,
he's a composer, he's an arranger, he's a vocal contractor,
(01:39):
he is a singer, and he is a music activist.
But before this, he was a young boy in North
Carolina where his first introduction to music was in a
church where he was a little kid singing in the
adult choir gossip. Music to me is something that resonates
really deeply. I think a lot of music that seems
from Black tradition is based in experience and stories. Even
(02:04):
in the joyous songs, they come from a place of
either dealing with or coming from trauma, from resistance, and
there is an emotional pool. I tie that to a
spiritual realm and purpose, and this is where I feel
fed really more than any other relationship experience. Was listening
(02:28):
to a gospel choir. You can feel people's emotion on
when they're singing. And not to say that that is
specific to gospel music, but I think it is tangible
in a way that other genres might not have the
same access to. And so I think that's why so
many people enjoy just the environment that comes around that
type of music. Yeah, I agree completely. And you know,
(02:50):
we're speaking the week of Martin Luther King Junior's official
holiday in the United States, and I think a lot
about how back when he was doing the work and touring,
he called gospel singers and have them sing to him.
And I think that really speaks to what you're saying.
And I want to ask you about that, as someone
that's been in the church, what types of things were
you turning to gospel too as a young person as
a teenager to help you move through the world. Who
(03:13):
so many things my own struggles personally, you know, things
that I was dealing with at home. I felt like
I turned to gospel music to vent, you know. Not
every time was negative. I love singing and jumping around
when I was younger, but there are definitely songs that
I think spoke to me and allowed me to deal
(03:34):
with things that I I didn't feel like I could talk
about openly. And even now, I think some of these
songs I listened to that really kind of speak to
specific emotions and about really getting through and trusting and
having hope and faith. I feel like it kind of
served as a therapy or a friend. Really. Yeah, that's
(03:54):
so beautiful to hear you say that I had similar
experiences as a young person, and you know, we both
I did. If I's being black, ay men, I know
personally how complicated that relationship is because you find so
much hope in gospel music and then you go to
church on Sunday and you hear words that don't make
you feel so hopeful. Did you have that experience? Was
there ever a time that you were in the church
feeling that you weren't supposed to be there? You know,
(04:16):
it's interesting my pastor never openly spoke towards any gay topics.
It really wasn't mentioned in my church. However, it was
certainly mentioned in the community. I mean really, even up
through my college years, I was running into experiences with Christians,
people who I considered friends who didn't know about me.
(04:37):
I would say harmful things. I learned from a very
early age that to be gay, especially in the religious environment,
was not something that I could be freely. You use
this word freely. And I was telling the producers before
this that my grandmother, who still even in the pandemic,
(04:58):
she was doing the drive through church, she was going
to going every week and her mass windows up, all
these things. Very religious woman. Love her to death. And
she called me because there was a sermon at her church,
the church I grew up and where the pastor said, hey,
y'all should love your LGBTQ children. You know we're gonna
just say it, because they hadn't said it ever. And
she called me crying. She was so relieved to finally
(05:22):
be like, yo, God says I can love you in
the ways I do love you, or that God also
loves you the ways that I love you. Have you
found that kind of complicated experience to be your own
damigating the Black church, especially as a young person, a
lot of things were spoken in the unspoken. I feel
like everyone knew about me, but no one said anything.
And to me, I'm learning in my older age of wisdom,
(05:46):
silence is a response. And you know, everyone took touring
around and being asked questions about girlfriends, and everyone knew
that was not the case. Uh, those things are triggering.
People are asking you when you're gonna get married. So
I was older. I didn't really start coming out to
people in North Carolina until I was you know, luckily,
(06:10):
I started with low hanging fruit. So I started with
friends that I had made in l A. One of
my best friends, you know, she had asked me earlier
when we were at U C l A together, and
I lied because you know, that was that was what
I was used to. And then I ended up actually
in like a romantic relationship situation. You know. She was
a friend, So I talked to her about it, and
(06:32):
I was finding more and more people out here. I
would tell them and they'd be like, okay, and your
shirts blue. Next. I mean, it was nothing, and I
realized that, you know, how much of this am I
carrying from home. I was in my thirties before I
started talking about it with my family, and yeah, the
(06:54):
comment that came to me was, you know, well, yeah,
I always knew, and I think I can feel the
intent to be one of support. That's not how I felt,
because you know, I was walking our exshells, and I was,
you know, trying to prey away and do all these
things and living in shame. The child and me could
(07:17):
have really used someone to reach out and say you
are okay as you are. For Alex, this juxtaposition of
two worlds, one very liberal and one very conservative, one
in l a versus one in the South became very complicated.
But as a gay black man, music was the way
he could make sense of himself in this world because
(07:39):
it's where he found comfort in learning of the enormous
contributions his culture made to music as a whole in
both the past and the present. As vocalists who sings stories,
I think we have a huge responsibility to treat all
those stories well inequitably. And then I saw Considering Matthew
Shepard actually, which was our piece that was done by
(08:00):
Conspiary Professional Choir in Texas, and it told the beautiful
perspective of the not so beautiful murder of Matthew Shepard,
a gay student who was killed. And that was the
first time I was able to see what music can
(08:20):
do in a space where it is everyone is held
for a moment, a couple of hours and really kind
of forced encouraged. Might be nice to consider, you know,
all of the aspects and feelings around such an incident
and then really have to kind of sit with the
feelings around the issues and the people. Yeah, why do
(08:42):
you think that is possible only through music? And you
know I used to write a lot about death and people.
Never changes the behaviors, you know, we do all these
stories and you watch the news everynight, you hear about
people dying tragically, and is change anybody? But when you
put music or create music as a space to tell
a story, you know, the where that comes to mind
is the song telling. Dolly Parton uses that phrase song
(09:03):
telling a lot, which I love. It does make it
sick with people a bit deeper. Why do you think
that is? I think when we read or what we
see stories to protect ourselves, I think we keep the
stories distant from us emotionally. And when you see and
hear so many stories, I'm gonna you know, talk about
(09:25):
police brutality, for instance, as extreme as it might seem,
when you start to see so many people being shot
on Facebook or you know, other platforms, you become desensitized.
And I don't think that's people intentionally just saying I
don't care. I think it's this is way too much
to take in, so I'm just going to treat it
(09:46):
as this incident and I will get mad from an
intellectual point of view. But when you hear these stories
of music, I think music is used to express and
I think naturally people mirror that, and so the emotions
I think are brought back into the stories, and then
people have to think. It's not just anger, it's grief,
(10:10):
it's sadness, it's embarrassment, it's frustration. And when you are
in a musical environment, your emotions are allowed to take over,
and I think then people feel a lot more intimately
connected to the story, stories of injustice or heartbreak, you know, loss, joy,
(10:30):
love as well. I think it really allows people to
engage in a different way, and it's harder to turn
that off in a musical environment. I don't know why
this has popped to mind. I think a lot about
Tilcs Waterfalls. What is that song about? And why do
you think that's an example of this? You know, it's
funny because I remember seeing the words for years before
(10:52):
I even knew what happened. But the three letters took
him to his final arrest, gives me chills just saying that,
Like when I finally understood what that song in the
video was about. Again, I think it just becomes I
think it makes what seems distance so much more accessible.
And there are experiences I think many of us will
(11:14):
never ever have to endure personally, but I think music
allows a lot more proximity two issues that might not
be our own. And I think there's something to people
learning these songs and finding out later what they mean.
So Waterfalls, again, we were younger, probably did understand the context,
and then later someone tells me, oh, you know that's
(11:35):
about HIV eight or Together Again by Janda Jackson. Everyone
knows that song and that's about her losing her friends. Yeah,
and then it makes people question, you know, you've sung
these songs, you have internalized these words, So it kind
of makes people feel like, oh, well, I've been I've
been a part of this narrative unknowingly. And again it
(11:55):
makes it your story too, in a sense, or at
least your opportunity to be empathetic. So here's Alex, a
young man learning about a very traditional Western music with
empathy and respect, but he didn't feel that love back
when it came to the sounds of his community, that
rich gospel music he grew up with, and after seeing
(12:16):
his culture missing in that high level discourse that revolved
around classical music, those conversations about richness and impact on
the genre overall, he decided to build Tonality, an award
winning choral ensemble that emphasizes spreading messages of social justice.
And this idea that originated as a tool for inclusion
grew but in ways that he did not anticipate. So
(12:40):
Tonality is a vocal ensemble, and we use music and
we use stories to speak to issues of injustice, of inequality,
and as we've been talking about here, really using music
as a catalyst for people to be activated and not
just to learn, but how to get involved and create
being a more just world for all of us. Our
(13:03):
focus actually at first was not about social justice directly.
It really was to address some of these inequalities within
classical music that I saw. I heard someone misrepresent a
genre or a style that I grew up singing, guessing
the ways that gospel music was described. Don't use beauty,
(13:26):
use energy, m hmm, right, as if this music is
not beautiful, yeah, And the attention we would spend towards
the music of the classical cannon and the composers and
knowing their history. I said, I knew how Bok could
tie his shoe before he wrote one of cantatas. Meanwhile,
(13:46):
I mean, we'll be lucky if we even hear the
names of the composers of spirituals and gospel music and rehearsal.
And so, you know, I started to feel that way
about music that I knew personally, and in going through
my schooling, my education, different performance environments, I realized it
wasn't just black music, Hispanic music, hinderstining music, really music
(14:11):
again that was not coming from Western European cultures was
treated in that way. And I said, we could do better.
There's a way to do better. And so I thought,
how can we give the intentionality and respect through our
musical practices two more cultures and we're seeing now. And
(14:31):
that's how Tonality started. And so when we started that
first meeting, even with most of the people in that
room not knowing each other, you could immediately feel when
we started singing, the intention was there, and I think
it makes people sing differently, and we felt that with
our audience. Our first concert was free, because again, who
(14:51):
were we to charge anyone? It was jam packed. I
think people were really interested in what does this mean.
I have found that a lot of people have resonated
with this same call to find an equitable space, and
we weren't. Really we received a lot of support, I
think from outside musical organizations and core organizations. When you
(15:16):
were just telling that story about the first concert, I
thought back to your earlier story about your first time
in which gospel really had a big impact on you
when you were sitting there seeing kind of the environment
of the church. Do you see these two experiences as
being similar, did you when you were sitting there the
first concert, thinking back to that first time you heard
gospel music as like the powerful thing it is? I think.
(15:37):
So we've done this piece called seven Last Words would
be Unarmed by Joe Thompson, and it takes the last
words of seven black men who have been shot and
killed by police, and obviously in a very different way,
but music bringing out such a strong emotional response is
(16:01):
what I felt and what I know. Uplifts and encourages
and challenges and activate to me and has since my
days in the church. And I feel like that is
what I believe music can do if we choose to
use it in those ways to speak about issues of
our time. And again, our audience doesn't always reflect the
(16:25):
families of those stories, and so maybe for the first
time someone has to sit there for a couple of
minutes and engage emotionally. When men are hitting themselves, slapping
themselves on the chests and saying, you shot me, you
shot me. That's intense, and it's a very different experience
(16:46):
than seeing it or hearing about it or reading about it.
And so I think, yeah, I think the way that
gospel music moves me, I would like to think that
the music that we do, in the ways that we
tell stories in our concerts all so helps to move
people to a heighened emotional state, and in that state,
then we hope to help them find ways to get
(17:07):
involved now that they're emotionally connected. Tonality was finding its
voice and sharing the experiences of Black Americans, pulling the
curtain back and delving into the emotions of black identity
rather than just an explanation on paper. But then something
happened that propelled the discourse into center stage. George Floyd's
murder on May Floyd was killed by the hands of
(17:31):
police in Minneapolis after a convenience store clerk called nine
one one over an alleged counterfeit twenty dollar bill. As
they detained him, former police officer Derek Chauvin tak a
knee to his neck. Eight minutes and forty six seconds later,
he was gone. For Tonality, an organization that has become
known for making you feel what it meant to be
black in America through music, this moment was a turning point,
(17:54):
and suddenly the whole world was watching. So yeah, George
Floyd's murder did a lot. Actually, I think fra Tonality
and it's obviously unfortunate circumstance, I think it, like the
whole world, it turned people onto the realization that everyone
needs to look inward, that that injustice wasn't just that
(18:15):
particular incident, but really so many systems, especially within our country,
helped perpetuate or at least do not resist the racism
that we see. And so when that work was seen
within our choral environment, I think a lot of people
turned to leaders and organizations that has been doing this
(18:40):
work well before, because I think people were really inspired
to actually make the real changes. But maybe didn't have
the answers have had to do that. And so because
Tonality has been doing this work really since sixteen, I
kind of felt, I think, like so many black people,
kind of felt thrust into a spotlight. And for me,
(19:03):
this is a work I wanted to be doing. I
know a lot of people felt uncomfortable. It's like I
did not I don't walk around as a diversity expert,
but these are conversations that I was hoping to have,
you know, again, it's why Tonality started, and so it
really allowed us to move intentionally and to help people
move with us. You know, A group of colleagues and
(19:25):
I started a Black Voices Matter pledge, which listed out
some very practical steps about how to get involved. We
worked with an amazing artist from and Jeer and Arthur
who made this song build Me Up, which kind of
became an anthem for us around the Black Lives Matter movement.
I wrote my first piece about criminal justice and how
(19:46):
that affects communities. So I think really this allowed us,
you know, as we were doing this thing on the side,
at least from my perspective, of talking about these things
directly and really engaging our audiences and our singers and
composers in this way to have more of a platform.
I brought a platform to say, you know, this work
(20:06):
doesn't have to be this thing on this side. We
all care about these things, and we're all musicians, so
we can use our gifts to bring more people into
this conversation. I love that because so many people I
hear constantly say, you know, I feel so much, I'm
so sad, I'm seeing the news. I don't know what
to do. Where do I fit into this? And what
(20:27):
I'm seeing from what the work you're doing is you're saying, well,
you can do the work and everything that you do
because the genre of music the Tonality typically does is
not what I would ever think of seeing on Kelly
Clarkson show thinking about black lives mattering, right, it's not
the thing. It's true. I know it was interesting. That
was special to say, oh yeah, you know. The song
(20:50):
that they chose to play was a song on the
three Strikes Law, which talks about the issues of criminal
justice and how they are certainly unjust. Okay, something I'm
thinking about right now. I don't know if you relate
to this is uh, you know. I get asked a
lot how am I feeling about the world around me.
You know, it's so dark. We're seeing all these stories,
and you know, we as black people, not only do
(21:13):
we know that these stories have already existed, but we
also come from a deep history of knowing that we
overcome them. You know, we had foreign years of slavery.
We overcame them. And I always tell people, you know,
I feel good a lot of days when I think
about it, when I let myself think about it at scale,
because I see more and more people talking about my
life and it feels good to see people fighting for
my life in the various ways that they can do.
(21:34):
You feel good these days as you do this work,
because it makes you feel more hopeful as you keep
the battle going for justice. Mm hmm. I'm certainly inspired
by the attention that's given. I feel that sometimes we
get in our own way. We as I'm going to
see liberals, get in our own way by letting intention
(21:56):
sometimes override impact how we feel about situations. How we
feel about ourselves in those situations sometimes causes us to
pause in shame of frustration. I do feel like we're
moving out of that. But those have been a lot
of conversations I've been having un centered yourself, and I
think you'll find that you can move freer to help
(22:17):
those around you. I do feel though, yes, I mean certainly,
I think it's easy to say the conversations that we're
having now we're not happening a couple of years ago.
And now I think it's really you know, how do
we keep this up when it's no longer trending and
it's no longer the post that everyone's talking about Because
(22:39):
this work, as you mentioned, you know, this injustice trend
has lasted a long time, and I think the more
we uncover how ingrained some of these patterns are, the
harder it gets. In a lot of this work. It's
not fun and it's not public, and it's frustrating and
it's hard and it takes a long time. But I
(23:02):
do feel again that people are open to learning how
they can be a part of the change, no matter
how faster slow that moves. And I'm learning too in
my own growth and awareness about patients that you know,
you're not going to move anyone faster than they want
to move. I think I'm learning that politically as well.
(23:24):
So I do feel encouraged and I feel seen in
a different way. Tonality continues to stay on course and
its goal of delivering authentic stories and for Alex, bringing
choral music into the mainstream using the message of inclusion
and storytelling is a big opportunity, and thanks to this mission,
the group is catching the attention of artists like the Ork,
(23:46):
who Tonality recently shared a stage with in Los Angeles.
But with more attention comes more responsibility, which is not
a challenge Alex has to take on alone. With his
community at his side, collaborating every step of the way,
the vocal ensemble continues to share the stories and spread understanding.
I mean, really, Fra Tonality, what an amazing opportunity to
(24:09):
be brought in, you know, I think we certainly don't
consider ourselves on the sidelines. Obviously, we consider the work
that we do important, but we also we are aware,
and I'm aware that choral music is not exactly the
most trending type of music out there, So to be
able to do that on such a huge stage is
really exciting. I'm excited to see what might come from
(24:32):
these opportunities. I think it's so difficult to get involved,
to have organizations and different people in Like you said,
kind of the more famous identities to be able to
reach out and say, this group is doing the work
that I care about, and this is my way to
(24:52):
help them. And I think for York, for us, for
Keyliy Clarkson, like, you don't have to do the work
all your own. I think, you know, there are people
who maybe feel that burden that I need to take
on all the things, And I think this is where
collaboration really helps. There's a group that's during this, there's
a choire this, during this, you can get involved in
(25:13):
this way. So I would say it certainly would be
a great model, and I'm sure many other artists who
are involved in this work would appreciate if this kind
of collaboration became more of a mainstain. I love that
we are ending on this idea that if you yourself
are too overwhelmed to do the work, that maybe the
path forward is collaboration or community building. Is that right? Absolutely?
(25:41):
When two worlds collide and are drastically different, it can
be difficult to pinpoint where you fit in or where
you can bring your authentic self. Alex found a real
need in elevating his culture the sounds of gospel choirs
that introduced him to his own passion and then turned
it into a community vessel that heals it's own members
and the world. And it's within the richness of this culture,
(26:04):
the one they know deeply and is ingrained in their
own identity, is where they find support and one another
to face what is next. This has been in the
deep stories that shape us. Find this episode and others
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to podcasts. Don't forget to share, rate, and
(26:24):
review if you enjoyed this conversation. The show is produced
by Ivan Chien and mastered by James Foster. Our show
researcher is John and Raggio and our writer is Vette Lopez.
A shout out to our guest Dr Alexander Floyd Blake.
I'm your host, Zach Stafford.
Have you ever wanted a safe space where you can
just exist, where for a moment in time, you can
be you, with all the intricacies and parts of you
that people don't always understand. Welcome to in the deep
stories that shape us. I'm your host, Zach Stafford, and
each episode we create a space to be you, all
of you and all your messy and complicated glory. Every
(00:25):
story shares what it means to be a black and
Latin X man living with different hardships, whether it's a
struggle of identity, discrimination or health, and how they've managed
to push forward despite the circumstance. We hope to get closer,
even it's just a little to a road of healing
and understanding. Hi everyone, Welcome back. One of life's biggest
(00:53):
mysteries is why exactly music is so powerful for our souls.
You probably have a soundtrack to your life, jam for
those happy days, maybe one for the tough days too,
and you can't forget those special songs that keep you
in your driveway until they play all the way through.
But undoubtedly music has the power to heal and in
our communities, it is an auditory expression of our cultures fabric.
(01:15):
It's who we are and what we believe in our
guest today is not only a testament to this that
his story gives us something even bigger, because the music
he is creating is not only helping us see the
world and all its complicated glory, but it's also creating
a future that heals us all. Dr Alexander Lloyd Blake
is a lot of things. He's an award winning conductor,
he's a composer, he's an arranger, he's a vocal contractor,
(01:39):
he is a singer, and he is a music activist.
But before this, he was a young boy in North
Carolina where his first introduction to music was in a
church where he was a little kid singing in the
adult choir gossip. Music to me is something that resonates
really deeply. I think a lot of music that seems
from Black tradition is based in experience and stories. Even
(02:04):
in the joyous songs, they come from a place of
either dealing with or coming from trauma, from resistance, and
there is an emotional pool. I tie that to a
spiritual realm and purpose, and this is where I feel
fed really more than any other relationship experience. Was listening
(02:28):
to a gospel choir. You can feel people's emotion on
when they're singing. And not to say that that is
specific to gospel music, but I think it is tangible
in a way that other genres might not have the
same access to. And so I think that's why so
many people enjoy just the environment that comes around that
type of music. Yeah, I agree completely. And you know,
(02:50):
we're speaking the week of Martin Luther King Junior's official
holiday in the United States, and I think a lot
about how back when he was doing the work and touring,
he called gospel singers and have them sing to him.
And I think that really speaks to what you're saying.
And I want to ask you about that, as someone
that's been in the church, what types of things were
you turning to gospel too as a young person as
a teenager to help you move through the world. Who
(03:13):
so many things my own struggles personally, you know, things
that I was dealing with at home. I felt like
I turned to gospel music to vent, you know. Not
every time was negative. I love singing and jumping around
when I was younger, but there are definitely songs that
I think spoke to me and allowed me to deal
(03:34):
with things that I I didn't feel like I could talk
about openly. And even now, I think some of these
songs I listened to that really kind of speak to
specific emotions and about really getting through and trusting and
having hope and faith. I feel like it kind of
served as a therapy or a friend. Really. Yeah, that's
(03:54):
so beautiful to hear you say that I had similar
experiences as a young person, and you know, we both
I did. If I's being black, ay men, I know
personally how complicated that relationship is because you find so
much hope in gospel music and then you go to
church on Sunday and you hear words that don't make
you feel so hopeful. Did you have that experience? Was
there ever a time that you were in the church
feeling that you weren't supposed to be there? You know,
(04:16):
it's interesting my pastor never openly spoke towards any gay topics.
It really wasn't mentioned in my church. However, it was
certainly mentioned in the community. I mean really, even up
through my college years, I was running into experiences with Christians,
people who I considered friends who didn't know about me.
(04:37):
I would say harmful things. I learned from a very
early age that to be gay, especially in the religious environment,
was not something that I could be freely. You use
this word freely. And I was telling the producers before
this that my grandmother, who still even in the pandemic,
(04:58):
she was doing the drive through church, she was going
to going every week and her mass windows up, all
these things. Very religious woman. Love her to death. And
she called me because there was a sermon at her church,
the church I grew up and where the pastor said, hey,
y'all should love your LGBTQ children. You know we're gonna
just say it, because they hadn't said it ever. And
she called me crying. She was so relieved to finally
(05:22):
be like, yo, God says I can love you in
the ways I do love you, or that God also
loves you the ways that I love you. Have you
found that kind of complicated experience to be your own
damigating the Black church, especially as a young person, a
lot of things were spoken in the unspoken. I feel
like everyone knew about me, but no one said anything.
And to me, I'm learning in my older age of wisdom,
(05:46):
silence is a response. And you know, everyone took touring
around and being asked questions about girlfriends, and everyone knew
that was not the case. Uh, those things are triggering.
People are asking you when you're gonna get married. So
I was older. I didn't really start coming out to
people in North Carolina until I was you know, luckily,
(06:10):
I started with low hanging fruit. So I started with
friends that I had made in l A. One of
my best friends, you know, she had asked me earlier
when we were at U C l A together, and
I lied because you know, that was that was what
I was used to. And then I ended up actually
in like a romantic relationship situation. You know. She was
a friend, So I talked to her about it, and
(06:32):
I was finding more and more people out here. I
would tell them and they'd be like, okay, and your
shirts blue. Next. I mean, it was nothing, and I
realized that, you know, how much of this am I
carrying from home. I was in my thirties before I
started talking about it with my family, and yeah, the
(06:54):
comment that came to me was, you know, well, yeah,
I always knew, and I think I can feel the
intent to be one of support. That's not how I felt,
because you know, I was walking our exshells, and I was,
you know, trying to prey away and do all these
things and living in shame. The child and me could
(07:17):
have really used someone to reach out and say you
are okay as you are. For Alex, this juxtaposition of
two worlds, one very liberal and one very conservative, one
in l a versus one in the South became very complicated.
But as a gay black man, music was the way
he could make sense of himself in this world because
(07:39):
it's where he found comfort in learning of the enormous
contributions his culture made to music as a whole in
both the past and the present. As vocalists who sings stories,
I think we have a huge responsibility to treat all
those stories well inequitably. And then I saw Considering Matthew
Shepard actually, which was our piece that was done by
(08:00):
Conspiary Professional Choir in Texas, and it told the beautiful
perspective of the not so beautiful murder of Matthew Shepard,
a gay student who was killed. And that was the
first time I was able to see what music can
(08:20):
do in a space where it is everyone is held
for a moment, a couple of hours and really kind
of forced encouraged. Might be nice to consider, you know,
all of the aspects and feelings around such an incident
and then really have to kind of sit with the
feelings around the issues and the people. Yeah, why do
(08:42):
you think that is possible only through music? And you
know I used to write a lot about death and people.
Never changes the behaviors, you know, we do all these
stories and you watch the news everynight, you hear about
people dying tragically, and is change anybody? But when you
put music or create music as a space to tell
a story, you know, the where that comes to mind
is the song telling. Dolly Parton uses that phrase song
(09:03):
telling a lot, which I love. It does make it
sick with people a bit deeper. Why do you think
that is? I think when we read or what we
see stories to protect ourselves, I think we keep the
stories distant from us emotionally. And when you see and
hear so many stories, I'm gonna you know, talk about
(09:25):
police brutality, for instance, as extreme as it might seem,
when you start to see so many people being shot
on Facebook or you know, other platforms, you become desensitized.
And I don't think that's people intentionally just saying I
don't care. I think it's this is way too much
to take in, so I'm just going to treat it
(09:46):
as this incident and I will get mad from an
intellectual point of view. But when you hear these stories
of music, I think music is used to express and
I think naturally people mirror that, and so the emotions
I think are brought back into the stories, and then
people have to think. It's not just anger, it's grief,
(10:10):
it's sadness, it's embarrassment, it's frustration. And when you are
in a musical environment, your emotions are allowed to take over,
and I think then people feel a lot more intimately
connected to the story, stories of injustice or heartbreak, you know, loss, joy,
(10:30):
love as well. I think it really allows people to
engage in a different way, and it's harder to turn
that off in a musical environment. I don't know why
this has popped to mind. I think a lot about
Tilcs Waterfalls. What is that song about? And why do
you think that's an example of this? You know, it's
funny because I remember seeing the words for years before
(10:52):
I even knew what happened. But the three letters took
him to his final arrest, gives me chills just saying that,
Like when I finally understood what that song in the
video was about. Again, I think it just becomes I
think it makes what seems distance so much more accessible.
And there are experiences I think many of us will
(11:14):
never ever have to endure personally, but I think music
allows a lot more proximity two issues that might not
be our own. And I think there's something to people
learning these songs and finding out later what they mean.
So Waterfalls, again, we were younger, probably did understand the context,
and then later someone tells me, oh, you know that's
(11:35):
about HIV eight or Together Again by Janda Jackson. Everyone
knows that song and that's about her losing her friends. Yeah,
and then it makes people question, you know, you've sung
these songs, you have internalized these words, So it kind
of makes people feel like, oh, well, I've been I've
been a part of this narrative unknowingly. And again it
(11:55):
makes it your story too, in a sense, or at
least your opportunity to be empathetic. So here's Alex, a
young man learning about a very traditional Western music with
empathy and respect, but he didn't feel that love back
when it came to the sounds of his community, that
rich gospel music he grew up with, and after seeing
(12:16):
his culture missing in that high level discourse that revolved
around classical music, those conversations about richness and impact on
the genre overall, he decided to build Tonality, an award
winning choral ensemble that emphasizes spreading messages of social justice.
And this idea that originated as a tool for inclusion
grew but in ways that he did not anticipate. So
(12:40):
Tonality is a vocal ensemble, and we use music and
we use stories to speak to issues of injustice, of inequality,
and as we've been talking about here, really using music
as a catalyst for people to be activated and not
just to learn, but how to get involved and create
being a more just world for all of us. Our
(13:03):
focus actually at first was not about social justice directly.
It really was to address some of these inequalities within
classical music that I saw. I heard someone misrepresent a
genre or a style that I grew up singing, guessing
the ways that gospel music was described. Don't use beauty,
(13:26):
use energy, m hmm, right, as if this music is
not beautiful, yeah, And the attention we would spend towards
the music of the classical cannon and the composers and
knowing their history. I said, I knew how Bok could
tie his shoe before he wrote one of cantatas. Meanwhile,
(13:46):
I mean, we'll be lucky if we even hear the
names of the composers of spirituals and gospel music and rehearsal.
And so, you know, I started to feel that way
about music that I knew personally, and in going through
my schooling, my education, different performance environments, I realized it
wasn't just black music, Hispanic music, hinderstining music, really music
(14:11):
again that was not coming from Western European cultures was
treated in that way. And I said, we could do better.
There's a way to do better. And so I thought,
how can we give the intentionality and respect through our
musical practices two more cultures and we're seeing now. And
(14:31):
that's how Tonality started. And so when we started that
first meeting, even with most of the people in that
room not knowing each other, you could immediately feel when
we started singing, the intention was there, and I think
it makes people sing differently, and we felt that with
our audience. Our first concert was free, because again, who
(14:51):
were we to charge anyone? It was jam packed. I
think people were really interested in what does this mean.
I have found that a lot of people have resonated
with this same call to find an equitable space, and
we weren't. Really we received a lot of support, I
think from outside musical organizations and core organizations. When you
(15:16):
were just telling that story about the first concert, I
thought back to your earlier story about your first time
in which gospel really had a big impact on you
when you were sitting there seeing kind of the environment
of the church. Do you see these two experiences as
being similar, did you when you were sitting there the
first concert, thinking back to that first time you heard
gospel music as like the powerful thing it is? I think.
(15:37):
So we've done this piece called seven Last Words would
be Unarmed by Joe Thompson, and it takes the last
words of seven black men who have been shot and
killed by police, and obviously in a very different way,
but music bringing out such a strong emotional response is
(16:01):
what I felt and what I know. Uplifts and encourages
and challenges and activate to me and has since my
days in the church. And I feel like that is
what I believe music can do if we choose to
use it in those ways to speak about issues of
our time. And again, our audience doesn't always reflect the
(16:25):
families of those stories, and so maybe for the first
time someone has to sit there for a couple of
minutes and engage emotionally. When men are hitting themselves, slapping
themselves on the chests and saying, you shot me, you
shot me. That's intense, and it's a very different experience
(16:46):
than seeing it or hearing about it or reading about it.
And so I think, yeah, I think the way that
gospel music moves me, I would like to think that
the music that we do, in the ways that we
tell stories in our concerts all so helps to move
people to a heighened emotional state, and in that state,
then we hope to help them find ways to get
(17:07):
involved now that they're emotionally connected. Tonality was finding its
voice and sharing the experiences of Black Americans, pulling the
curtain back and delving into the emotions of black identity
rather than just an explanation on paper. But then something
happened that propelled the discourse into center stage. George Floyd's
murder on May Floyd was killed by the hands of
(17:31):
police in Minneapolis after a convenience store clerk called nine
one one over an alleged counterfeit twenty dollar bill. As
they detained him, former police officer Derek Chauvin tak a
knee to his neck. Eight minutes and forty six seconds later,
he was gone. For Tonality, an organization that has become
known for making you feel what it meant to be
black in America through music, this moment was a turning point,
(17:54):
and suddenly the whole world was watching. So yeah, George
Floyd's murder did a lot. Actually, I think fra Tonality
and it's obviously unfortunate circumstance, I think it, like the
whole world, it turned people onto the realization that everyone
needs to look inward, that that injustice wasn't just that
(18:15):
particular incident, but really so many systems, especially within our country,
helped perpetuate or at least do not resist the racism
that we see. And so when that work was seen
within our choral environment, I think a lot of people
turned to leaders and organizations that has been doing this
(18:40):
work well before, because I think people were really inspired
to actually make the real changes. But maybe didn't have
the answers have had to do that. And so because
Tonality has been doing this work really since sixteen, I
kind of felt, I think, like so many black people,
kind of felt thrust into a spotlight. And for me,
(19:03):
this is a work I wanted to be doing. I
know a lot of people felt uncomfortable. It's like I
did not I don't walk around as a diversity expert,
but these are conversations that I was hoping to have,
you know, again, it's why Tonality started, and so it
really allowed us to move intentionally and to help people
move with us. You know, A group of colleagues and
(19:25):
I started a Black Voices Matter pledge, which listed out
some very practical steps about how to get involved. We
worked with an amazing artist from and Jeer and Arthur
who made this song build Me Up, which kind of
became an anthem for us around the Black Lives Matter movement.
I wrote my first piece about criminal justice and how
(19:46):
that affects communities. So I think really this allowed us,
you know, as we were doing this thing on the side,
at least from my perspective, of talking about these things
directly and really engaging our audiences and our singers and
composers in this way to have more of a platform.
I brought a platform to say, you know, this work
(20:06):
doesn't have to be this thing on this side. We
all care about these things, and we're all musicians, so
we can use our gifts to bring more people into
this conversation. I love that because so many people I
hear constantly say, you know, I feel so much, I'm
so sad, I'm seeing the news. I don't know what
to do. Where do I fit into this? And what
(20:27):
I'm seeing from what the work you're doing is you're saying, well,
you can do the work and everything that you do
because the genre of music the Tonality typically does is
not what I would ever think of seeing on Kelly
Clarkson show thinking about black lives mattering, right, it's not
the thing. It's true. I know it was interesting. That
was special to say, oh yeah, you know. The song
(20:50):
that they chose to play was a song on the
three Strikes Law, which talks about the issues of criminal
justice and how they are certainly unjust. Okay, something I'm
thinking about right now. I don't know if you relate
to this is uh, you know. I get asked a
lot how am I feeling about the world around me.
You know, it's so dark. We're seeing all these stories,
and you know, we as black people, not only do
(21:13):
we know that these stories have already existed, but we
also come from a deep history of knowing that we
overcome them. You know, we had foreign years of slavery.
We overcame them. And I always tell people, you know,
I feel good a lot of days when I think
about it, when I let myself think about it at scale,
because I see more and more people talking about my
life and it feels good to see people fighting for
my life in the various ways that they can do.
(21:34):
You feel good these days as you do this work,
because it makes you feel more hopeful as you keep
the battle going for justice. Mm hmm. I'm certainly inspired
by the attention that's given. I feel that sometimes we
get in our own way. We as I'm going to
see liberals, get in our own way by letting intention
(21:56):
sometimes override impact how we feel about situations. How we
feel about ourselves in those situations sometimes causes us to
pause in shame of frustration. I do feel like we're
moving out of that. But those have been a lot
of conversations I've been having un centered yourself, and I
think you'll find that you can move freer to help
(22:17):
those around you. I do feel though, yes, I mean certainly,
I think it's easy to say the conversations that we're
having now we're not happening a couple of years ago.
And now I think it's really you know, how do
we keep this up when it's no longer trending and
it's no longer the post that everyone's talking about Because
(22:39):
this work, as you mentioned, you know, this injustice trend
has lasted a long time, and I think the more
we uncover how ingrained some of these patterns are, the
harder it gets. In a lot of this work. It's
not fun and it's not public, and it's frustrating and
it's hard and it takes a long time. But I
(23:02):
do feel again that people are open to learning how
they can be a part of the change, no matter
how faster slow that moves. And I'm learning too in
my own growth and awareness about patients that you know,
you're not going to move anyone faster than they want
to move. I think I'm learning that politically as well.
(23:24):
So I do feel encouraged and I feel seen in
a different way. Tonality continues to stay on course and
its goal of delivering authentic stories and for Alex, bringing
choral music into the mainstream using the message of inclusion
and storytelling is a big opportunity, and thanks to this mission,
the group is catching the attention of artists like the Ork,
(23:46):
who Tonality recently shared a stage with in Los Angeles.
But with more attention comes more responsibility, which is not
a challenge Alex has to take on alone. With his
community at his side, collaborating every step of the way,
the vocal ensemble continues to share the stories and spread understanding.
I mean, really, Fra Tonality, what an amazing opportunity to
(24:09):
be brought in, you know, I think we certainly don't
consider ourselves on the sidelines. Obviously, we consider the work
that we do important, but we also we are aware,
and I'm aware that choral music is not exactly the
most trending type of music out there, So to be
able to do that on such a huge stage is
really exciting. I'm excited to see what might come from
(24:32):
these opportunities. I think it's so difficult to get involved,
to have organizations and different people in Like you said,
kind of the more famous identities to be able to
reach out and say, this group is doing the work
that I care about, and this is my way to
(24:52):
help them. And I think for York, for us, for
Keyliy Clarkson, like, you don't have to do the work
all your own. I think, you know, there are people
who maybe feel that burden that I need to take
on all the things, And I think this is where
collaboration really helps. There's a group that's during this, there's
a choire this, during this, you can get involved in
(25:13):
this way. So I would say it certainly would be
a great model, and I'm sure many other artists who
are involved in this work would appreciate if this kind
of collaboration became more of a mainstain. I love that
we are ending on this idea that if you yourself
are too overwhelmed to do the work, that maybe the
path forward is collaboration or community building. Is that right? Absolutely?
(25:41):
When two worlds collide and are drastically different, it can
be difficult to pinpoint where you fit in or where
you can bring your authentic self. Alex found a real
need in elevating his culture the sounds of gospel choirs
that introduced him to his own passion and then turned
it into a community vessel that heals it's own members
and the world. And it's within the richness of this culture,
(26:04):
the one they know deeply and is ingrained in their
own identity, is where they find support and one another
to face what is next. This has been in the
deep stories that shape us. Find this episode and others
on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to podcasts. Don't forget to share, rate, and
(26:24):
review if you enjoyed this conversation. The show is produced
by Ivan Chien and mastered by James Foster. Our show
researcher is John and Raggio and our writer is Vette Lopez.
A shout out to our guest Dr Alexander Floyd Blake.
I'm your host, Zach Stafford.
Host
Zach Stafford
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