January 19, 2024 • 48 mins
Katie and Yves delve into the often overlooked yet impactful role of Black artists in times of war.
Join us as we unravel the stories behind the artwork, songs, and poetry that have played a crucial role in shaping perceptions, challenging systemic injustices, and advocating for change on the frontlines and beyond.
We also talk with surrealist blues poet, aja monet, about how she uses art to support Palestine.
Read aja’s poems in My Mother Was A Freedom Fighter
Listen to aja's album When the Poems Do What They Do
Follow us on Instagram @onthemeshow
Email us at hello@ontheme.show
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and Fairweather Friends Media.
You Are the Starless, I'm Katie, and I'm Eves.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
In today's episode, The Art of War, we embark on
a journey to explore the often overlooked yet profoundly impactful
role of black artists in warfare. From the trenches of
World War II to the guerrilla warfare of Vietnam and
the rubble of occupied Palestine, black artists have wielded their
creativity as a poignant tool for expression, resistance, and change.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
These artists bring to light the stories that the smoke
of war has obscured, but persist in the enduring canvases, melodies,
and words of those who refuse to be silenced.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
These stories go beyond the visible scars of war and
delve into the nuanced and air arratives only art can capture.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
As we find ourselves witnessing the genocide of Palestinians, it
begs the question, what role does art play in the
theater of war? And how have Black artists shaped the
narratives that endure in the wake of conflict.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
The theater of war is a good way to put it.
The powers that declare war have an agenda right, a
message they're trying to convey. Like World War Two, the
United States position was to foster democracy across the world.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Despite the fact that Black Americans couldn't participate in sit democracy.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
And just like theater, there are sets. Both world wars
were fought in the trenches, and now you'll see countries
using drones, the costumes, read uniforms, the dialogue No.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
We don't negotiate with terrorists.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
It is a performance, and the actors are yes, soldiers
and military officials, but often too civilians, civilians who have
no say on how their lives will be impacted.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
So true war effects us on so many levels, down
to family units and individuals.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
For sure, World War two's messaging lean heavily on what
families and individuals could do on the home front to
support the war effort, and black artists lent their talents
to further that message.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
So black artists produced pro war propaganda during World War Two.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
They sure did.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
In fact, black artists were hired specifically to appeal to
Black Americans. Take Charles Austen, for example, The Office of
War Information hired him to create a series of motivational drawings,
especially for African American newspapers during World War Two. His
sketches ranged from famous black heroes to the necessity of
growing fruits and vegetables at home, all in an attempt
(02:40):
to boost morale and African American war contributions. Ease, Can
you describe this sketch by Austin?
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Yeah, So it says at the top, America needs your
strength plan nutritious meals, and at the bottom it says,
a well fed nation is a fighting nation. And then
in the foreground you see a black family for people.
In this family, there are two parents and a child,
and the young child is holding a plane in his hands,
(03:10):
and then there's a swallowed baby that the mother is holding,
and they're all kind of looking up and off to
the right like they're looking into the distance, kind of hopeful,
also kind of forlorn, and the father is dressed in
work clothing and he's holding a lunch box. In the background,
at the very bottom, so that they're super small, you
(03:31):
can see formations of soldiers with their weapons all lined up.
And it's interesting that the propaganda was so targeted.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
I mean, it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Many Black Americans were pretty ambivalent about the United States
involvement in World War two, They felt it was impossible
to fight for freedom abroad when black lives were not
valued at home. That's a word like you want folks
to risk life and limb to quote spread democracy. And
we can't even sit at the front of the bus
or go to certain restaurants or be hired at certain
(04:02):
retailers like be Sefero right now. And that's where the
double V campaign comes in. On February seventh, nineteen forty two,
The Pittsburgh Courier, a weekly black newspaper, orchestrated the double
V campaign, which stood for two victories for Black Americans,
defeating fascism and Nazism abroad while also defeating Jim Crow
in Inequality at home. And it's February fourteenth issue, the
(04:25):
Courier stated.
Speaker 5 (04:26):
We have adopted the double V war cry, victory over
our enemies at home and victory over our enemies on
the battlefields abroad. Thus, in our fight for freedom, we
wage a two pronged attack against our enslavers at home
and those abroad who will enslave us. We have a
(04:47):
stake in this fight. We are Americans too.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
The personification of about that action girl.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Yes, And while Charles Austen was using his drawings as
a way to count the ambivalence Black Americans felt about
fighting for a country that constantly beat them down. Noted
poet Langston Hughes drew inspiration from the Double V campaign
and wrote the lyrics for Freedom's Road, with music by
Emerson Harper and performed by Josh White. The catchy tune
(05:16):
spoke directly about fighting fascism and Hitler, but also spoke
to the dangerous Black Americans faced in their home country,
with the lyrics united.
Speaker 6 (05:24):
We then divided, we fall. Let's make this land fameful
one and all. I've got a message, and you know
it's right, Black and white together, you night and fight.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Did Langston Hughes ever say what his intent for Freedom's
wrote was?
Speaker 4 (05:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
When Freedom's Road came out, Hughes wrote in a letter
that the songs dimmed from his concerned about how black
soldiers were being treated in the South.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
He said, the lower southern elements resent colored boys in uniform,
and so go out of their way often to be
rude and unpleasant. He pointed out that it reflected poorly
on the US government that even as they fought for
freedom abroad, they couldn't protect their soldiers in certain parts
of their own country. Hughes finished the letter by saying
that he had a lot more to say, but Freedom's
(06:13):
Road was the best he could do.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
I think as artists we can be our own harshest critics,
So I think it's interesting that he said it was
the best he could do. Like a lot of times,
black people who created really potent and impactful works like
downplay them. But I think Freedom's Road it was simple,
but it was still a song that got the point
across that he was concerned about how black people were
(06:37):
being treated here, but we're still having to fight abroad.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
So while the art from black artists during World War
two mostly had a positive spin with either outright pro
war propaganda or the hopefulness of the Double V campaign,
the sentiments from the Vietnam War and the art that
came out of it were very different. We're on that
after the break. So the Vietnam War was the first
(07:06):
fully racially integrated American war. It lasted from nineteen fifty
five to nineteen seventy five and was extremely unpopular.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Who could forget Muhammad Ali's stance on the war.
Speaker 6 (07:18):
My concils don't let me go shoot my brother.
Speaker 5 (07:21):
Are some darker people?
Speaker 6 (07:23):
Are some four hundred people in the month for big
powerful a.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Miracle, and shoot them for what they never called me, Niga.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
It's similar to the concerns that the World War II
propaganda was so desperately trying to.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Squash YEP because black people were still facing discrimination and
outright violence in the US, and Ali was not the
only well known black person to speak out against the war.
You got to remember that the nineteen sixties was a
period of significant social upheaval, marked by the civil rights
movement and the anti Vietnam War protests. Many black activists
(07:55):
and leaders, including Martin Luther King Junior and Malcolm X,
linked the fight for civil rights with opposition to the war.
In March nineteen sixty five, King criticized the war during
the Selma March when he told a journalist that quote
millions of dollars can be spent every day to hold
troops in South Vietnam, and our country cannot protect the
rights of negroes in Selma. And two years later, during
(08:17):
King's first anti war march in Chicago, he reinforced the
connection between war abroad and injustice at home, stating quote,
the bombs in Vietnam explode at home. They destroy the
dream and possibility for a decent America.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
We are definitely seeing a thread of Black Americans connecting
wars abroad to the treatment we face at home, like
why would we help you harm people like y'all do us?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
And Initially African American troops had a much higher casualty
rate than other ethnicities. In nineteen sixty five, nearly a
quarter of troop casualties were black, which inspired Fred to
pains Bring the Boys Home. In the song pain does
it Min's words about the senseless violence of the Vietnam
War and who is paying the ultimate price? She sings
(09:05):
you marched them away. Pain song received a lot of
airtime nationally. Billboard's May twenty second issue of nineteen seventy
(09:27):
one named it the best new record.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Of the week.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
By July of that year, the single reached number four
on the Billboards Soul Singles chart. Bring the Boys Home
spent thirteen weeks on the Hot one hundred, peaking at
number twelve. But the protest anthem was banned by the
American Forces Network because, according to them, it benefited the enemy.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Benefited the enemy or gave hope to the soldiers who
were fearing for their lives for a senseless war. Yeah,
this song has a little bit more bite than the
last song we talked about did the way that she
expresses herself in the song, I think it's a little
bit more exuberant, Like you can feel a lot of
the sorrow and the desperate longing for them to come
(10:08):
back in the way that she expresses herself in the song.
Of course, I have all the other context of reasons
for what my politics would be around around wanting them
to come back home. But just from listening to this song,
like I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of
someone who hasn't decided what side they would be on, Like,
I feel like I could listen to this song and think,
maybe I need to think about this little a little
(10:29):
bit more, Maybe I need to do a little bit
more research, because this is clearly something that means a
lot to her and so many other people.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Had you heard this song before.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
I had heard this song before, but it's not like
something I listened to all the time, and it's not
something I heard in a long time. So it's a
song that it could have applied to other wars, so
it's something that can be applied universally as well. And
I think that's a good thing about it, because it's
a piece that can live on.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
So I had never heard this song before, and when
I was doing the rece this song and then of
course Marvin Gaye song What's going On came up, and
then that one song like.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Whoa huh, yeah, what is it good for?
Speaker 2 (11:13):
So both of those ones came up, But I went
with this song because, like you said, you like you
can hear the longing in her voice and you can
tell she's like really means what she's singing. And I
think because it was banned at one point, maybe.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
That's why I've never heard it before.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
As opposed to the other songs, I feel like What's
going On it's just kind of a groove, you know
what I'm saying, Like you can not know that it's
about war if you're not really paid attention to the
song or to the lyrics. And then like the other
one is just kind of like you always hear the
movies and it's like when people getting pumped up or whatever.
But this song, it's like clearly about a war, that's unpopular.
(11:53):
And when I was playing it out loud, my mom
was saying how her mom would sing the song around
the house while her dad was in Vietnam, and like
that song to the people who were in Vietnam. It
really gave them hope that people were wanting them to
come back and were thinking about them while they were
facing all this danger, like participating in this guerrilla warfare
(12:14):
for what to stop the spread of communism. And to
know that Black Americans were suffering disproportionately during the war,
from the casualties, the injuries, the people that did end
up coming back, the PTSD, it was all just like
off the charts for these black soldiers. And her song
(12:35):
really gets to that and gets like the feeling of
what Black Americans were feeling for their family members, their friends,
their neighbors who were in that war and really wanting
them to make it out safely and get out of
harm's way.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
So a couple of things considering you had never heard
it before, so you went from never hearing it till
knowing that your grandmother, Yeah, listen to it. I feel
like that could bring up a lot of feelings.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Yeah, it made me.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Think about like what she was going through listening to
that song, knowing that her children's father was there and
you know, not wanting him to die, and seeing all
the people coming back in body bags, because that's what
was the impetus of this song, like seeing the black
soldiers coming back in body bags. And I think at
the time the average age of people dying for black
(13:23):
soldiers dying was like twenty years old, because like people
who really hadn't started their lives getting shipped off to a.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
War just to die.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
So yeah, knowing that she sung that around the house
around my mom when she was how old my mom
had been a little girl, not even in double digits yet, Yeah,
that made me was like, oh wow, kind of like
having that connection and kind of like stumbling upon the
connection too, right, because that's kind of not something my
mom would bring up unless she heard me listening to
(13:51):
the song, you know.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
And speaking of death. That is something that was mentioned
in the song. There's a part I can't remember the
exact lyrics, but where she sings about seeing them in
the sky and coming back home. So there was while
there was hope in the lyrics of the song saying
bring them back, you have to believe that they're going
to make it through the war. But then there was
also a part in the song that acknowledges a lot
(14:14):
of these people may not come back at all if
you get the body back, because a lot of people
didn't even get that. They didn't get to see their children,
their spouse, their cousin, you know, their uncle, whoever that,
whoever that person was to them. They never even got
to see them after they were deceased. Bring them back
home before we never before they their home is no
(14:36):
longer this home anymore.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Yeah, so definitely more pointed than the World War two example,
But I think the thread of the sentiments of like
why are we as black people doing this fighting was
still very much present in Vietnam, and it wasn't something
that we had to think about afterwards. I think sometimes
like with wars, like like the invasion of Iraq, it's
(15:03):
like a couple years later, we're like, oh, we need
fucked up, But like Vietnam, it was like, nah, y'all
fucking up right now, which I think is interesting and
really did play into the art that was created during
that time.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Mm hmm. And it was a long war, so there
was a lot of time to contemplate over.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
That, so the wars we've talked about up until now
have been wars we weren't alive for.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
But there have been plenty of wars since.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
We were born, plenty.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
And now that our frontal loaves are finally fully developed,
where witnessing yet another as Israel targets Palestinian civilians and
reduces Palestine to rubble.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
But Israel's oppression of the Palestinians isn't a new phenomenon.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
Not at all.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
It dates back to nineteen forty eight, when Zonis forces
declared the establishment of the State of Israel, triggering the
first Arab Israeli war. Zinus military forces expelled at least
seven hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians from their homes and
lands and captured seventy eight percent of historic Palestine. The
remaining twenty two percent was divided into what are now
(16:03):
the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
And I imagine Black artists have been speaking out like
they did during previous wars. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
A noted example is a poet June Jordan. Her poem
Apologies to All the People in Lebanon, is dedicated to
the six hundred thousand Palestinian men, women, and children who
lived in Lebanon from nineteen forty eight to nineteen eighty three.
In the poem, Jordan speaks to the complicity of Americans
who remain ignorant in silence as the Palestinian people suffered.
(16:34):
She repeats the phrase I didn't know and nobody told
me in what could I do or say anyway.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
A common refrain we hear today while discussing what's currently
going on in Palestine.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Yes, and this poem was originally written in the eighties,
but it was striking to me how it could have
been written today, Like.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Which parts do you mean? Honestly all of it?
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Like there's a part where she's talking about the Zionists
saying never again, referring to the Holocaust. But then on
the same hand, they're making close to one million people
in Palestine homeless and killing them and maiming them and
bragging about their military accomplishments instead of seeing what they're doing,
which is killing civilians, blowing up their homes, their hospitals,
(17:19):
making sure that aid can't get to them. It's like
what we're seeing right now.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Thinking about the phrase she repeated, and how many people
say the sources of the same things. Today was a
call to self reflection, a call to question people and
their capacity to be able to do research, a call
to ask us what things we think we're responsible for
and that we are not responsible for, and how we
think about those things. And Yeah, I do think it
(17:44):
is upon that crosses the barriers of time. And I
can read that and sit there and think what could
I do? What could I do? What could I do?
Like I'm already reading this thing, so like what else
could I read? She uses numbers, you know, she uses
imagery specific to the devastation. So we get to think
about what the demolishment looked like, we get to think
(18:06):
about how many people, We get to think about the
ages of the people, And in reading this today, we
get to think about how many more people have been
added to that account since this poem came out.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Yeah, and June Jordan, well, I don't think this poem
ever got banned. She did speak about how speaking up
for Palestinians, because this isn't the only poem that she's
written that was talking about what's going on in Palestine.
There's like a gap in her career where she couldn't
get books published because she was so outspoken. There's one
(18:40):
and since where she says, like I have become a Palestinian,
Like that's how closely she felt was like their plight.
She's like, I was born a black woman and I've
become a Palestinian because she was like that much in
solidarity with them. But yeah, I mean, and we see
that now people speaking up about Palestine, like they're getting
buyed from their jobs, like they can't publish what they
we're publishing. So it's just interesting to see from the
(19:03):
inception of this conflict to right now the same tactics
from the Zionists and then the same tactics of like
trying to silence people who are anti Zionists.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
We also see the repression of people sharing their anti
Zionist messages yeah, and pro Palestinian messages. Yeah, very clearly,
and not just from government but from agents of the
government that weren't sanctioned by them but just want to
do their bidding.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Yes, like licking that brick baby, how it.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Tastes salty, salty, bloody.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Right after the break, we'll talk with Monet about how
she shows solidarity with the palestinin people through her artistry.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
My name is Azamnet and I am a surrealist blues poet.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
We see that the Black artists has a long history
of using their art to speak out against wars abroad.
What do you think is behind that tradition?
Speaker 3 (20:12):
So if one is in touch and in alignment with
one's values around you know, justice, freedom of quality, love, community, connection, liberation,
then one must respond when those things are attacked or
oppressed or violated. Any feeling sentient being that is investigating
(20:38):
themselves but also their relationship to the people they love
at some point comes to question how does the world
reflect the values that they live by and that they
love by, and what is disrupting them from being able
to live out those values. It requires a certain kind
of art to survive this setup we have here.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
You know, I know there's a lot of conversation around
how desensitized we've been in so many different ways that
we're constantly bombarded with these images of atrocities. What role
does sensitivity play in the work that you do, and
how you're able to enliven or awaken folks hearts, and
how that relates to resistance work.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
We have to learn to be sensitive to each other,
to understand and listen to each other's where we ache,
where we where we aspire, where we imagine, where we envision,
and where we suffer, where we struggle. I mean, all
those things are determined based on our sensitivity to them,
Our closeness, our proximity to the pain, our proximity to
(21:43):
the healing dictates a lot of our strategies for our survival.
We have normalized a society that is not aware or
compassionate with the sensitivity of children, you know, which creates
adults that are you know, terrifying. And so I think
(22:05):
that that is why we need to be more than upset.
We need to be intolerable with our disgust around what
is happening to Palestinian children, What is happening to the
children and Sudan, what is happening to the children in
the Kongo. Yes, of course our elders matter. Yes, of
(22:27):
course our you know, moms and fathers matter. But if
we cannot protect if there's no sanctity of innocence of children,
if we have yet to protect that, if that is
being come up for negotiation, we are I don't think
we're savable any child that is born is a new lesson,
(22:48):
a new opportunity for us to grow, to evolve, to
be more sensitive, to be more present, to be more aware.
And if the youth today are telling us this is horrible,
this is horrific, this is not okay, we must stop
this and this now, and we cannot listen. You know,
(23:10):
I think, I think I don't have to say much else.
You know, we are seeing what that, what that is
resulting in. And I'll say this. You know, I don't
want any more children to die. I don't want anyone
to die. But there are libraries in our children too.
(23:32):
There is important technological information that is being wiped out
right now for the future that is inevitable. And and
you know, there is a there is a dark, There's
a there is an evil in the world that is
(23:55):
resisting every every possibility of being wiped out. You know,
it's literally. This is why I think we're winning in
the grand scheme of things, because the heart of humanity
is awakening and people are our need to continue to
rise in that truth of sensitive, vulnerable, aware presence with
(24:21):
each other, collaboration, strategy for other ways of governing, other
ways of loving. But I'm going to stop there because
I could ramble forever.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
I love talking to poets. It feels like y'all just
talk in poems. I'm like, oh, I love.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
I would not have considered that rambling at all. I
was there with every single word.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
And you mentioned strategy, and I've heard you talk in
TED talk about how the arts can be more integral
and strategy and not just a prop for entertaining. Do
you have examples of how you've seen that play out
with Palestine.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
There's my poems, there's the ways that the world may
see me as a visible, outspoken person. But there are
things that a lot of work, a lot of work
that has gone into all the many things that people
don't see and they don't see being done as strategically
(25:24):
as they have been. Let's put it that way, And
there's a reason for that, because not every action we
can announce. You know, look at what I did, Look
at what happened, look at the way that this worked.
You know, some things are effective for people to learn
in the lessons, but our elders left enough for us
to learn from. Some things. We have to we have
(25:47):
to create and practice now and use what lessons have
been given to us and create even if it fails,
we must experiment, We must continue to try every possible
avenue we can for for us to be free, you know,
for us to love and live. So for me, that
(26:08):
one that's most example, that's most visible was when we
did our ted talk, which you were talking about with
my my ex partner Phil. We did as he's you know,
was a lover or comrade of mine, but also just
an incredible you know, co conspirator. And one of the
(26:32):
things that I think we really valued was the sanctity
of our home. And I think in some ways we
didn't understand boundaries around that, but we knew that there
was that without certain resources, we could use that space
two to gather people on one accord, under one roof.
(26:54):
With with the love that we had for each other,
we redistributed that into our into our communites, and we
knew that we were gifted and had skills that we
loved about each other and about ourselves and things that
we wanted to see celebrated more in other people in
our movement. That oftentimes the organizing space was seen as
(27:14):
you know, how many in a very kind of sterile,
pragmatic way of how many doors were knocked on how
many people respire, how many members were, how many people
showed up to a meeting, etc. But what were we
pouring into people's hearts and minds? So that's truly what
folks moves people, That's what stains people, That's what keeps
people in the face of so much horror and adversity
and torment and heartbreak. People need to be poured into.
(27:39):
And while we have physical material conditions, our immaterial conditions
are just as crucial. You know, we want our bread
and our roses too, says the poem. You know, so
I think that we need to remind each other that
this isn't new, you know, this is a legacy or tradition.
When I glean on Surrey being a surrealist blues poet,
(28:01):
I think of the surrealist movement, what they were doing,
what they were practicing in the imagination, what they were
trying to organize and gather around, what ideas they were implementing.
I think of the black arts movement, which is rooted
in the blues, and you know, starts from the blues.
You know, even though we don't talk about it, contextualize
(28:21):
what the blues was an organizing strategy towards our response.
It was our response towards our oppression, and it was
a way that we felt deeply together we addressed the
ailments and issues of our times, and it was a
way that we masked and covered a lot of our
issues without having to be so overt. So a love
(28:43):
song about you know, a man who couldn't love us back,
or a woman who couldn't who couldn't, who beats on
us or doesn't take care of us is is seen
as a song about a lover. But you know, little
did we know that that was the way that people
could hide messages about a system, about a politic, about
(29:08):
a force. So, you know, a society that doesn't understand
art doesn't receive the people that are not rooted and
grounded in what is being done in the art is
a lost people to people without a culture, without an idea.
That's why the first thing they try to break when
(29:28):
they colonize is our songs, our rituals, our spiritual practices,
our belief systems, our language. All those things are crucial
to our survival, to our liberation. So as long as
we can continue to manifest those things, not for the
goals and objection of validation by their institutions or the
(29:50):
rewards of a very limited scope of our realities. Right,
But to be in better communication with our people, to
be in better cultivation and collaborate with the people. That's
what the art should be, you know. It should be
about being able to express things so that we can
get to the nitty gritty of what it is that
(30:10):
we are feeling and how we must address it. It's
a diagnosis, it's not a prescription. It is a process
by which we start to heal. This is why I
think what makes art fundamentally strategic is when it's used
as a practice and not a product. Yeah, when it's
(30:30):
strategized around how do we create artistic process and practice
in our movements rather than the objective being how we
produce this thing for this event or this moment or
this action or this campaign. No, how do we create
more sentient people that understand the jewels and gems of
(30:54):
the creative process. And then we can really resonate with
the artists who have voted their lives to that craft,
and we can say we see you, we receive you,
we lift you up, not because you're divorcing us or
you're making us escape our realities, but in fact, because
you have gone into the depths of self and you
(31:14):
have discovered there's so much more for us to experience
here together, and you've given us a way through, a
way out away, with a way beyond.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
I really appreciate how clear you are about that and
your work, about how crucial artists are, about how es
central and strategic their work is. And I was thinking
about that when I was listening to your album, and
specifically in a song for Sonya, and you have these
two lines, and one of them is you say, who
(31:45):
will feed our activists our organizer's freedom if not the poets?
And then there's another line in that poem in which
you say a strategy for organizing the heart. So there
is just so much clarity in your work and speaking
about the actual work that you're doing. And I was
wondering about your process of conceiving of that poem and
(32:09):
continuing to work on that for the album.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Well, that poem came about right after Nipsey Hustle was
murdered and I was invited to read a poem at
Sonya Sanchez celebration for her, and I knew that a
poem for Sonya would be bash She would be bashful,
you know, she wouldn't be okay with me just going
off and telling her how amazing she is. And so
(32:33):
I had to find a way for me. I thought
the best way to honor her was to honor the
moment and to honor the current story of what it
is to organize and be a poet at this time.
We glorify the past and romanticize it often, but I
think that there's lessons that we learned, and you know,
(32:54):
there's things that I love about how we we wrote
and created, and there's things that need to change. You
need to develop and evolve, and so I think that
poem was about my struggle not just with the poetry community,
but with the movement.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
You had align that said, great art is not a monologue.
Great art is a dialogue between the artists and the people.
And I was wondering what dialogue were you having about
Palestine when you first became aware of what was going on?
And then how has that dialogue evolved as times has
gone on.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Well, there are moments that poems serve a purpose and
there's moments that they have real limitations. And I struggle
with that, you know, I struggle with the struggle of that.
So when I came back from Palestine, while the expectation
was that I would write all this work about it,
and I in some ways I regret that I had,
(33:53):
and I thought that I should have wrote all these
essays and all these things that June Jordan had done
that I was like, ah, but she did that, you know.
So to me, Palestine radicalized me. Visiting Palestine radicalized me
in a way that had not been before. And I
was disappointed in the poetry community. I was discouraged by poems.
(34:16):
I was disgusted by the pursuit of you know, individual
you know careers. I didn't understand how else to exemplify
my anguish and my frustration until I came back and
(34:37):
met my partner Philip in Palestine and we learned some
invaluable lessons together. But for me, it was really rooted
in the love that was shared with Palestinian people. The compassion,
the heartbreak, the joy, the anger, I mean, all these
things that were deeply no longer just an issue outside
of me. Over there, those people is an intimate part
(35:01):
of my life, and I now had a full understanding.
So for me coming back, I was I wrote poems,
you know, there's a poem. There's poems in my book.
My mother was a freedom fighter about it. And but
I was. I was on one, you know, I was
going to every possible pro Palestine panel, discussion event, you know, organizing,
(35:27):
meaning that I was that I was invited to anything
that people asked me to do. I to the to
the point of, you know, great exhaustion, But I but
I was on it, you know, And I believe Palestine
would be free in all lifetime, you know. And I
think the naivete of my conviction is part of what worked.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Can you think a little bit more to what radicalized
you from the lens of a black person from America?
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Because I know a lot of.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
People are like, why are are y'all worried about Palestinians?
They're not black? So what was it about going there
that really radicalized you in that moment?
Speaker 3 (36:08):
That's some bullshit. Okay, Nothing discussed me more than when
people respond to outrage or injustice with what about me?
What about my injustice? What about what I went through?
It's just ridiculous, you know, how about and and we're
(36:34):
going through this too. Look at how this is connected,
Look at how this is different for me. I didn't
look to Palestine and be like, well, you know what,
everything they're experiencing we're experiencing. There was no way what
is happening in Palestine was extremely vastly different than what
we experience in the States. While there are similarities and
(36:56):
there are connections to our oppression, that's not why I went.
That's why Ahmed Abusne tried to organize a delegation because
he wanted, as someone who had been organizing with black
people in the state of Florida, he wanted to make
it clear that he was committed to black liberation because
his people were also committed to their liberation, and that
(37:19):
he wanted to make sure that we saw that connection
for him in his personal life. So this was a
personal relationship. But you know, the first time I think
relationships is how we get organized. It's not because all
these facts on a paper and some articles you see
(37:39):
or posts on Instagram. We get organized, We get involved,
We get invested, invested because we feel and we see
our our lives tied up with others. We see our
dreams and visions and joys and aspirations tied up with others,
our struggles that is where the organized comes in. So
(38:01):
for me, when I was a young poet, I learned
about Palestine through another young poet, to Honey Solla. We
were fourteen fifteen years old, running through open mics with
our hearts on our sleeves, talking about the issues of
injustice that we were facing and the things that it
brought us outrage and the anger towards those things and
the heartbreak, and we were convinced, we were convinced our
(38:24):
poems were going to change the world, that people were
going to understand that. Clearly it is obvious what is
happening and how horrible and horrific it is. Clearly any
feeling sentient being could see what harm is being done
and saying, no, this is wrong. If it happens here,
and if it happens anywhere, it's happening here, it happens anywhere.
(38:45):
It's you know, it's an issue, it's an issue, it's
our issue. It's all our issue. So yeah, we dealt
with that. We dealt with people on the delegation who
were like, well, what about Africans and what about the
way Arabs treat Africans, And let me tell you, it
is a struggle no relationship. Tell me a relationship you've
(39:08):
been in that hasn't been a struggle. Tell me a love,
a lover you've loved that you haven't argued tooth and
nail until you couldn't do anything else but hug and
hold them and kiss them and just say, you know what,
I don't want to I don't want to disagree with you.
I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to
argue with you. I just want to be understood. I
(39:29):
just want to express where I'm coming from and why
this hurts so bad. And until we can get to
the root of our feelings rather than being reactionary, I
don't think we can truly tap into our humanity. And
so that's where the solidarity lives. The solidarity lives, and
I shared, you know, values around the quality of life
(39:54):
for all people. If I want to be free, if
I know what it's like to see people devalue, belittle, oppressed,
locked up, persecuted, shot done dead in the streets, and
I see that, and I have a heart, and we
want people to stop this. We want people to be
moved to say this is wrong. Who are we to
(40:15):
not see that somewhere else? And say no, this is wrong.
If we want other people to be as motivated in
our struggle, in our and our and our issues, then
we must be motivated about each other's you know, pains
and and and and and injustices and struggles. So like Palestine,
you know, it was, It's crazy. There's nothing like it.
(40:39):
You can't. You know, the Congo has its struggle, Haiti
has its struggle. Poverty is a is a genocide in
and of itself across the globe, and it's and it's rampant,
and colonization has its fucking dirty hands all over it.
But if you really understand what's happening in Palestine, if
you go and you witness, I mean, it's a kind
of evil that is so specific, and it's so targeted,
(41:04):
it's so strategic, it's so transactional, it's so contrived, it's
so evil that, I mean, if it could happen there,
you wonder, like, how can I coexist with anyone who
(41:25):
believes that this is okay? Clearly, if they think it's
okay there, they're going to think it's okay here. You know,
And young people, Jewish people are being radicalized and seeing
what's wrong. I mean, I learned from being in conversations
with JVP and Jewish voices for peace and you know,
seeing what if not now is doing. I mean, the
(41:48):
world wants something else. The world is demanding a different
kind of sensitivity to our interconnectedness, to our relationships being here,
and so black people need to get on board, get
on board or get left. You know, the train is
not waiting. You know, people get ready for a train
is coming.
Speaker 5 (42:09):
You know.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
All right. So I know Aza that you have a
book coming out Florida Water. I was wondering if you
wanted to talk about that a little bit or anything
else you would like to shout out as we close
out here.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
No, I think that's the book will be out when
it comes out, hopefully soon. But there's a song that
will probably come out in February, a poem for the
kids who live and I'm looking forward to that being
in the world. And I'm really just looking forward to
collaborating with more intentional musicians and you know, creatives to
(42:49):
make the next thing. So keeping my head head in
the work and hopefully the right energy will gravitate towards
the work and allow for more creative, innovative things to
be made as a poet, I want to take the
(43:10):
poetry into places that I have not yet been able to,
so I'm strategizing around that. And then of course I'm
also the artistic creative director of an organization called v Day,
which works to end violence against women and girls. And
there's an audio play that we created called Voices that
we launched in Ghana in last December twenty two and
(43:35):
so we're looking to launch that this year in the States.
That is you know, anchored around Black women's stories of
the diaspora and the continent. So that's something I'm very
much excited about, which is still rooted an artistic practice,
but is more about lifting up other voices as well
(43:59):
as it's you know, the vision that I've created, but
it's really anchored by the voices of women across the globe.
So I'm really looking forward to that being in the
world more publicly.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
And now it's time for role credits, the segment where
we give credit to a person, place, or thing that
we encountered during the week. And we have Aja with
us joining us for this segment. Who are what would
you like to give credit to?
Speaker 3 (44:28):
Yeah, I mean, if I'm going to give credit to
anyone or anything. I think the most immediate thing is Daphne.
I'm just a constantly an utter on gratitude for her
support and her love of the work that I've been
doing for years and without that. She's more than a manager.
(44:50):
She's my sister, she's my friend, she's my comrade. And
there are many days when I want to give up
and feel very discouraged and very alone, and she's a
real one, and so I'm just constantly and awed and
ingratitude of her. So I think the rollout credits will
go to her.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
Eves who are what would you like to give credit to?
Speaker 1 (45:13):
I want to give credit to Travel because we had
a lovely conversation with Aja, and Ija talked about how
going to Palestine radicalized her. And I think going to
different places and experiencing new people and actually getting to
know them, actually learning about the history, listening to things
that people have to say, reading their works, experiencing their art,
(45:37):
all of those things, but like deeply witnessing and experiencing
a place versus just touching it on the surface as
a person who's an outsider, is a really nice thing
to do. And of course there's so many things that
come with travel, like accessibility and money and environmental impact
(45:59):
and all those things. But at the root of it
all is extending ourselves beyond where we've been, learning new things,
being new in general, and talking to other people, like
being with other people. And I think that it was
(46:21):
clear that that experience, you know, really affected Aja. But
just it's nice to be able to give credit to
it here because it's a way that we can get
more in touch with our sensitivity and our feelings and
our knowledge basis and our power.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
I would like to give credit to My credit is
also influenced by Aja a conversation with Azja. I want
to give credit to babies. There's so many babies in
my life right now, and they're just so it's so
cool to like see someone like grow up like from
(46:58):
like day one. Loki and I could definitely tell Ojia
was passionate about children, and they are so innocent and
it is our job to protect them. So I just
want to give credit to all the babies out there,
especially the ones in my immediate circle. Gay Gay, thank
(47:22):
you so much for joining us, Aja, this was a
great conversation. We really appreciate you.
Speaker 3 (47:27):
Thank you, guys, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
And Next week, we'll be continuing this conversation about art,
war and resistance in a different way. We'll be talking
about protest songs, so tune in if you want to
hear more.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
We will see y'all next week.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Bye, y'all. Hi on Theme is a production of iHeartRadio
(48:05):
and Fairweather Friends Media. This episode was written by Eves
Jeffco and Katie Mitchell. It was edited and produced by
Tari Harrison. Follow us on Instagram at on Themeshow. You
can also send us an email at Hello at on
Theme dot show. Head to on Themet Show to check
out the show notes for episodes. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(48:27):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and Fairweather Friends Media.
You Are the Starless, I'm Katie, and I'm Eves.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
In today's episode, The Art of War, we embark on
a journey to explore the often overlooked yet profoundly impactful
role of black artists in warfare. From the trenches of
World War II to the guerrilla warfare of Vietnam and
the rubble of occupied Palestine, black artists have wielded their
creativity as a poignant tool for expression, resistance, and change.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
These artists bring to light the stories that the smoke
of war has obscured, but persist in the enduring canvases, melodies,
and words of those who refuse to be silenced.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
These stories go beyond the visible scars of war and
delve into the nuanced and air arratives only art can capture.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
As we find ourselves witnessing the genocide of Palestinians, it
begs the question, what role does art play in the
theater of war? And how have Black artists shaped the
narratives that endure in the wake of conflict.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
The theater of war is a good way to put it.
The powers that declare war have an agenda right, a
message they're trying to convey. Like World War Two, the
United States position was to foster democracy across the world.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Despite the fact that Black Americans couldn't participate in sit democracy.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
And just like theater, there are sets. Both world wars
were fought in the trenches, and now you'll see countries
using drones, the costumes, read uniforms, the dialogue No.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
We don't negotiate with terrorists.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
It is a performance, and the actors are yes, soldiers
and military officials, but often too civilians, civilians who have
no say on how their lives will be impacted.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
So true war effects us on so many levels, down
to family units and individuals.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
For sure, World War two's messaging lean heavily on what
families and individuals could do on the home front to
support the war effort, and black artists lent their talents
to further that message.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
So black artists produced pro war propaganda during World War Two.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
They sure did.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
In fact, black artists were hired specifically to appeal to
Black Americans. Take Charles Austen, for example, The Office of
War Information hired him to create a series of motivational drawings,
especially for African American newspapers during World War Two. His
sketches ranged from famous black heroes to the necessity of
growing fruits and vegetables at home, all in an attempt
(02:40):
to boost morale and African American war contributions. Ease, Can
you describe this sketch by Austin?
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Yeah, So it says at the top, America needs your
strength plan nutritious meals, and at the bottom it says,
a well fed nation is a fighting nation. And then
in the foreground you see a black family for people.
In this family, there are two parents and a child,
and the young child is holding a plane in his hands,
(03:10):
and then there's a swallowed baby that the mother is holding,
and they're all kind of looking up and off to
the right like they're looking into the distance, kind of hopeful,
also kind of forlorn, and the father is dressed in
work clothing and he's holding a lunch box. In the background,
at the very bottom, so that they're super small, you
(03:31):
can see formations of soldiers with their weapons all lined up.
And it's interesting that the propaganda was so targeted.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
I mean, it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Many Black Americans were pretty ambivalent about the United States
involvement in World War two, They felt it was impossible
to fight for freedom abroad when black lives were not
valued at home. That's a word like you want folks
to risk life and limb to quote spread democracy. And
we can't even sit at the front of the bus
or go to certain restaurants or be hired at certain
(04:02):
retailers like be Sefero right now. And that's where the
double V campaign comes in. On February seventh, nineteen forty two,
The Pittsburgh Courier, a weekly black newspaper, orchestrated the double
V campaign, which stood for two victories for Black Americans,
defeating fascism and Nazism abroad while also defeating Jim Crow
in Inequality at home. And it's February fourteenth issue, the
(04:25):
Courier stated.
Speaker 5 (04:26):
We have adopted the double V war cry, victory over
our enemies at home and victory over our enemies on
the battlefields abroad. Thus, in our fight for freedom, we
wage a two pronged attack against our enslavers at home
and those abroad who will enslave us. We have a
(04:47):
stake in this fight. We are Americans too.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
The personification of about that action girl.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Yes, And while Charles Austen was using his drawings as
a way to count the ambivalence Black Americans felt about
fighting for a country that constantly beat them down. Noted
poet Langston Hughes drew inspiration from the Double V campaign
and wrote the lyrics for Freedom's Road, with music by
Emerson Harper and performed by Josh White. The catchy tune
(05:16):
spoke directly about fighting fascism and Hitler, but also spoke
to the dangerous Black Americans faced in their home country,
with the lyrics united.
Speaker 6 (05:24):
We then divided, we fall. Let's make this land fameful
one and all. I've got a message, and you know
it's right, Black and white together, you night and fight.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Did Langston Hughes ever say what his intent for Freedom's
wrote was?
Speaker 4 (05:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
When Freedom's Road came out, Hughes wrote in a letter
that the songs dimmed from his concerned about how black
soldiers were being treated in the South.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
He said, the lower southern elements resent colored boys in uniform,
and so go out of their way often to be
rude and unpleasant. He pointed out that it reflected poorly
on the US government that even as they fought for
freedom abroad, they couldn't protect their soldiers in certain parts
of their own country. Hughes finished the letter by saying
that he had a lot more to say, but Freedom's
(06:13):
Road was the best he could do.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
I think as artists we can be our own harshest critics,
So I think it's interesting that he said it was
the best he could do. Like a lot of times,
black people who created really potent and impactful works like
downplay them. But I think Freedom's Road it was simple,
but it was still a song that got the point
across that he was concerned about how black people were
(06:37):
being treated here, but we're still having to fight abroad.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
So while the art from black artists during World War
two mostly had a positive spin with either outright pro
war propaganda or the hopefulness of the Double V campaign,
the sentiments from the Vietnam War and the art that
came out of it were very different. We're on that
after the break. So the Vietnam War was the first
(07:06):
fully racially integrated American war. It lasted from nineteen fifty
five to nineteen seventy five and was extremely unpopular.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Who could forget Muhammad Ali's stance on the war.
Speaker 6 (07:18):
My concils don't let me go shoot my brother.
Speaker 5 (07:21):
Are some darker people?
Speaker 6 (07:23):
Are some four hundred people in the month for big
powerful a.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
Miracle, and shoot them for what they never called me, Niga.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
It's similar to the concerns that the World War II
propaganda was so desperately trying to.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Squash YEP because black people were still facing discrimination and
outright violence in the US, and Ali was not the
only well known black person to speak out against the war.
You got to remember that the nineteen sixties was a
period of significant social upheaval, marked by the civil rights
movement and the anti Vietnam War protests. Many black activists
(07:55):
and leaders, including Martin Luther King Junior and Malcolm X,
linked the fight for civil rights with opposition to the war.
In March nineteen sixty five, King criticized the war during
the Selma March when he told a journalist that quote
millions of dollars can be spent every day to hold
troops in South Vietnam, and our country cannot protect the
rights of negroes in Selma. And two years later, during
(08:17):
King's first anti war march in Chicago, he reinforced the
connection between war abroad and injustice at home, stating quote,
the bombs in Vietnam explode at home. They destroy the
dream and possibility for a decent America.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
We are definitely seeing a thread of Black Americans connecting
wars abroad to the treatment we face at home, like
why would we help you harm people like y'all do us?
Speaker 2 (08:43):
And Initially African American troops had a much higher casualty
rate than other ethnicities. In nineteen sixty five, nearly a
quarter of troop casualties were black, which inspired Fred to
pains Bring the Boys Home. In the song pain does
it Min's words about the senseless violence of the Vietnam
War and who is paying the ultimate price? She sings
(09:05):
you marched them away. Pain song received a lot of
airtime nationally. Billboard's May twenty second issue of nineteen seventy
(09:27):
one named it the best new record.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
Of the week.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
By July of that year, the single reached number four
on the Billboards Soul Singles chart. Bring the Boys Home
spent thirteen weeks on the Hot one hundred, peaking at
number twelve. But the protest anthem was banned by the
American Forces Network because, according to them, it benefited the enemy.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Benefited the enemy or gave hope to the soldiers who
were fearing for their lives for a senseless war. Yeah,
this song has a little bit more bite than the
last song we talked about did the way that she
expresses herself in the song, I think it's a little
bit more exuberant, Like you can feel a lot of
the sorrow and the desperate longing for them to come
(10:08):
back in the way that she expresses herself in the song.
Of course, I have all the other context of reasons
for what my politics would be around around wanting them
to come back home. But just from listening to this song,
like I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of
someone who hasn't decided what side they would be on, Like,
I feel like I could listen to this song and think,
maybe I need to think about this little a little
(10:29):
bit more, Maybe I need to do a little bit
more research, because this is clearly something that means a
lot to her and so many other people.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Had you heard this song before.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
I had heard this song before, but it's not like
something I listened to all the time, and it's not
something I heard in a long time. So it's a
song that it could have applied to other wars, so
it's something that can be applied universally as well. And
I think that's a good thing about it, because it's
a piece that can live on.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
So I had never heard this song before, and when
I was doing the rece this song and then of
course Marvin Gaye song What's going On came up, and
then that one song like.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Whoa huh, yeah, what is it good for?
Speaker 2 (11:13):
So both of those ones came up, But I went
with this song because, like you said, you like you
can hear the longing in her voice and you can
tell she's like really means what she's singing. And I
think because it was banned at one point, maybe.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
That's why I've never heard it before.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
As opposed to the other songs, I feel like What's
going On it's just kind of a groove, you know
what I'm saying, Like you can not know that it's
about war if you're not really paid attention to the
song or to the lyrics. And then like the other
one is just kind of like you always hear the
movies and it's like when people getting pumped up or whatever.
But this song, it's like clearly about a war, that's unpopular.
(11:53):
And when I was playing it out loud, my mom
was saying how her mom would sing the song around
the house while her dad was in Vietnam, and like
that song to the people who were in Vietnam. It
really gave them hope that people were wanting them to
come back and were thinking about them while they were
facing all this danger, like participating in this guerrilla warfare
(12:14):
for what to stop the spread of communism. And to
know that Black Americans were suffering disproportionately during the war,
from the casualties, the injuries, the people that did end
up coming back, the PTSD, it was all just like
off the charts for these black soldiers. And her song
(12:35):
really gets to that and gets like the feeling of
what Black Americans were feeling for their family members, their friends,
their neighbors who were in that war and really wanting
them to make it out safely and get out of
harm's way.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
So a couple of things considering you had never heard
it before, so you went from never hearing it till
knowing that your grandmother, Yeah, listen to it. I feel
like that could bring up a lot of feelings.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Yeah, it made me.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
Think about like what she was going through listening to
that song, knowing that her children's father was there and
you know, not wanting him to die, and seeing all
the people coming back in body bags, because that's what
was the impetus of this song, like seeing the black
soldiers coming back in body bags. And I think at
the time the average age of people dying for black
(13:23):
soldiers dying was like twenty years old, because like people
who really hadn't started their lives getting shipped off to a.
Speaker 4 (13:28):
War just to die.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
So yeah, knowing that she sung that around the house
around my mom when she was how old my mom
had been a little girl, not even in double digits yet, Yeah,
that made me was like, oh wow, kind of like
having that connection and kind of like stumbling upon the
connection too, right, because that's kind of not something my
mom would bring up unless she heard me listening to
(13:51):
the song, you know.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
And speaking of death. That is something that was mentioned
in the song. There's a part I can't remember the
exact lyrics, but where she sings about seeing them in
the sky and coming back home. So there was while
there was hope in the lyrics of the song saying
bring them back, you have to believe that they're going
to make it through the war. But then there was
also a part in the song that acknowledges a lot
(14:14):
of these people may not come back at all if
you get the body back, because a lot of people
didn't even get that. They didn't get to see their children,
their spouse, their cousin, you know, their uncle, whoever that,
whoever that person was to them. They never even got
to see them after they were deceased. Bring them back
home before we never before they their home is no
(14:36):
longer this home anymore.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Yeah, so definitely more pointed than the World War two example,
But I think the thread of the sentiments of like
why are we as black people doing this fighting was
still very much present in Vietnam, and it wasn't something
that we had to think about afterwards. I think sometimes
like with wars, like like the invasion of Iraq, it's
(15:03):
like a couple years later, we're like, oh, we need
fucked up, But like Vietnam, it was like, nah, y'all
fucking up right now, which I think is interesting and
really did play into the art that was created during
that time.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Mm hmm. And it was a long war, so there
was a lot of time to contemplate over.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
That, so the wars we've talked about up until now
have been wars we weren't alive for.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
But there have been plenty of wars since.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
We were born, plenty.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
And now that our frontal loaves are finally fully developed,
where witnessing yet another as Israel targets Palestinian civilians and
reduces Palestine to rubble.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
But Israel's oppression of the Palestinians isn't a new phenomenon.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
Not at all.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
It dates back to nineteen forty eight, when Zonis forces
declared the establishment of the State of Israel, triggering the
first Arab Israeli war. Zinus military forces expelled at least
seven hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians from their homes and
lands and captured seventy eight percent of historic Palestine. The
remaining twenty two percent was divided into what are now
(16:03):
the occupied West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
And I imagine Black artists have been speaking out like
they did during previous wars. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
A noted example is a poet June Jordan. Her poem
Apologies to All the People in Lebanon, is dedicated to
the six hundred thousand Palestinian men, women, and children who
lived in Lebanon from nineteen forty eight to nineteen eighty three.
In the poem, Jordan speaks to the complicity of Americans
who remain ignorant in silence as the Palestinian people suffered.
(16:34):
She repeats the phrase I didn't know and nobody told
me in what could I do or say anyway.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
A common refrain we hear today while discussing what's currently
going on in Palestine.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Yes, and this poem was originally written in the eighties,
but it was striking to me how it could have
been written today, Like.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Which parts do you mean? Honestly all of it?
Speaker 2 (16:56):
Like there's a part where she's talking about the Zionists
saying never again, referring to the Holocaust. But then on
the same hand, they're making close to one million people
in Palestine homeless and killing them and maiming them and
bragging about their military accomplishments instead of seeing what they're doing,
which is killing civilians, blowing up their homes, their hospitals,
(17:19):
making sure that aid can't get to them. It's like
what we're seeing right now.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Thinking about the phrase she repeated, and how many people
say the sources of the same things. Today was a
call to self reflection, a call to question people and
their capacity to be able to do research, a call
to ask us what things we think we're responsible for
and that we are not responsible for, and how we
think about those things. And Yeah, I do think it
(17:44):
is upon that crosses the barriers of time. And I
can read that and sit there and think what could
I do? What could I do? What could I do?
Like I'm already reading this thing, so like what else
could I read? She uses numbers, you know, she uses
imagery specific to the devastation. So we get to think
about what the demolishment looked like, we get to think
(18:06):
about how many people, We get to think about the
ages of the people, And in reading this today, we
get to think about how many more people have been
added to that account since this poem came out.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Yeah, and June Jordan, well, I don't think this poem
ever got banned. She did speak about how speaking up
for Palestinians, because this isn't the only poem that she's
written that was talking about what's going on in Palestine.
There's like a gap in her career where she couldn't
get books published because she was so outspoken. There's one
(18:40):
and since where she says, like I have become a Palestinian,
Like that's how closely she felt was like their plight.
She's like, I was born a black woman and I've
become a Palestinian because she was like that much in
solidarity with them. But yeah, I mean, and we see
that now people speaking up about Palestine, like they're getting
buyed from their jobs, like they can't publish what they
we're publishing. So it's just interesting to see from the
(19:03):
inception of this conflict to right now the same tactics
from the Zionists and then the same tactics of like
trying to silence people who are anti Zionists.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
We also see the repression of people sharing their anti
Zionist messages yeah, and pro Palestinian messages. Yeah, very clearly,
and not just from government but from agents of the
government that weren't sanctioned by them but just want to
do their bidding.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Yes, like licking that brick baby, how it.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Tastes salty, salty, bloody.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Right after the break, we'll talk with Monet about how
she shows solidarity with the palestinin people through her artistry.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
My name is Azamnet and I am a surrealist blues poet.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
We see that the Black artists has a long history
of using their art to speak out against wars abroad.
What do you think is behind that tradition?
Speaker 3 (20:12):
So if one is in touch and in alignment with
one's values around you know, justice, freedom of quality, love, community, connection, liberation,
then one must respond when those things are attacked or
oppressed or violated. Any feeling sentient being that is investigating
(20:38):
themselves but also their relationship to the people they love
at some point comes to question how does the world
reflect the values that they live by and that they
love by, and what is disrupting them from being able
to live out those values. It requires a certain kind
of art to survive this setup we have here.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
You know, I know there's a lot of conversation around
how desensitized we've been in so many different ways that
we're constantly bombarded with these images of atrocities. What role
does sensitivity play in the work that you do, and
how you're able to enliven or awaken folks hearts, and
how that relates to resistance work.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
We have to learn to be sensitive to each other,
to understand and listen to each other's where we ache,
where we where we aspire, where we imagine, where we envision,
and where we suffer, where we struggle. I mean, all
those things are determined based on our sensitivity to them,
Our closeness, our proximity to the pain, our proximity to
(21:43):
the healing dictates a lot of our strategies for our survival.
We have normalized a society that is not aware or
compassionate with the sensitivity of children, you know, which creates
adults that are you know, terrifying. And so I think
(22:05):
that that is why we need to be more than upset.
We need to be intolerable with our disgust around what
is happening to Palestinian children, What is happening to the
children and Sudan, what is happening to the children in
the Kongo. Yes, of course our elders matter. Yes, of
(22:27):
course our you know, moms and fathers matter. But if
we cannot protect if there's no sanctity of innocence of children,
if we have yet to protect that, if that is
being come up for negotiation, we are I don't think
we're savable any child that is born is a new lesson,
(22:48):
a new opportunity for us to grow, to evolve, to
be more sensitive, to be more present, to be more aware.
And if the youth today are telling us this is horrible,
this is horrific, this is not okay, we must stop
this and this now, and we cannot listen. You know,
(23:10):
I think, I think I don't have to say much else.
You know, we are seeing what that, what that is
resulting in. And I'll say this. You know, I don't
want any more children to die. I don't want anyone
to die. But there are libraries in our children too.
(23:32):
There is important technological information that is being wiped out
right now for the future that is inevitable. And and
you know, there is a there is a dark, There's
a there is an evil in the world that is
(23:55):
resisting every every possibility of being wiped out. You know,
it's literally. This is why I think we're winning in
the grand scheme of things, because the heart of humanity
is awakening and people are our need to continue to
rise in that truth of sensitive, vulnerable, aware presence with
(24:21):
each other, collaboration, strategy for other ways of governing, other
ways of loving. But I'm going to stop there because
I could ramble forever.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
I love talking to poets. It feels like y'all just
talk in poems. I'm like, oh, I love.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
I would not have considered that rambling at all. I
was there with every single word.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
And you mentioned strategy, and I've heard you talk in
TED talk about how the arts can be more integral
and strategy and not just a prop for entertaining. Do
you have examples of how you've seen that play out
with Palestine.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
There's my poems, there's the ways that the world may
see me as a visible, outspoken person. But there are
things that a lot of work, a lot of work
that has gone into all the many things that people
don't see and they don't see being done as strategically
(25:24):
as they have been. Let's put it that way, And
there's a reason for that, because not every action we
can announce. You know, look at what I did, Look
at what happened, look at the way that this worked.
You know, some things are effective for people to learn
in the lessons, but our elders left enough for us
to learn from. Some things. We have to we have
(25:47):
to create and practice now and use what lessons have
been given to us and create even if it fails,
we must experiment, We must continue to try every possible
avenue we can for for us to be free, you know,
for us to love and live. So for me, that
(26:08):
one that's most example, that's most visible was when we
did our ted talk, which you were talking about with
my my ex partner Phil. We did as he's you know,
was a lover or comrade of mine, but also just
an incredible you know, co conspirator. And one of the
(26:32):
things that I think we really valued was the sanctity
of our home. And I think in some ways we
didn't understand boundaries around that, but we knew that there
was that without certain resources, we could use that space
two to gather people on one accord, under one roof.
(26:54):
With with the love that we had for each other,
we redistributed that into our into our communites, and we
knew that we were gifted and had skills that we
loved about each other and about ourselves and things that
we wanted to see celebrated more in other people in
our movement. That oftentimes the organizing space was seen as
(27:14):
you know, how many in a very kind of sterile,
pragmatic way of how many doors were knocked on how
many people respire, how many members were, how many people
showed up to a meeting, etc. But what were we
pouring into people's hearts and minds? So that's truly what
folks moves people, That's what stains people, That's what keeps
people in the face of so much horror and adversity
and torment and heartbreak. People need to be poured into.
(27:39):
And while we have physical material conditions, our immaterial conditions
are just as crucial. You know, we want our bread
and our roses too, says the poem. You know, so
I think that we need to remind each other that
this isn't new, you know, this is a legacy or tradition.
When I glean on Surrey being a surrealist blues poet,
(28:01):
I think of the surrealist movement, what they were doing,
what they were practicing in the imagination, what they were
trying to organize and gather around, what ideas they were implementing.
I think of the black arts movement, which is rooted
in the blues, and you know, starts from the blues.
You know, even though we don't talk about it, contextualize
(28:21):
what the blues was an organizing strategy towards our response.
It was our response towards our oppression, and it was
a way that we felt deeply together we addressed the
ailments and issues of our times, and it was a
way that we masked and covered a lot of our
issues without having to be so overt. So a love
(28:43):
song about you know, a man who couldn't love us back,
or a woman who couldn't who couldn't, who beats on
us or doesn't take care of us is is seen
as a song about a lover. But you know, little
did we know that that was the way that people
could hide messages about a system, about a politic, about
(29:08):
a force. So, you know, a society that doesn't understand
art doesn't receive the people that are not rooted and
grounded in what is being done in the art is
a lost people to people without a culture, without an idea.
That's why the first thing they try to break when
(29:28):
they colonize is our songs, our rituals, our spiritual practices,
our belief systems, our language. All those things are crucial
to our survival, to our liberation. So as long as
we can continue to manifest those things, not for the
goals and objection of validation by their institutions or the
(29:50):
rewards of a very limited scope of our realities. Right,
But to be in better communication with our people, to
be in better cultivation and collaborate with the people. That's
what the art should be, you know. It should be
about being able to express things so that we can
get to the nitty gritty of what it is that
(30:10):
we are feeling and how we must address it. It's
a diagnosis, it's not a prescription. It is a process
by which we start to heal. This is why I
think what makes art fundamentally strategic is when it's used
as a practice and not a product. Yeah, when it's
(30:30):
strategized around how do we create artistic process and practice
in our movements rather than the objective being how we
produce this thing for this event or this moment or
this action or this campaign. No, how do we create
more sentient people that understand the jewels and gems of
(30:54):
the creative process. And then we can really resonate with
the artists who have voted their lives to that craft,
and we can say we see you, we receive you,
we lift you up, not because you're divorcing us or
you're making us escape our realities, but in fact, because
you have gone into the depths of self and you
(31:14):
have discovered there's so much more for us to experience
here together, and you've given us a way through, a
way out away, with a way beyond.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
I really appreciate how clear you are about that and
your work, about how crucial artists are, about how es
central and strategic their work is. And I was thinking
about that when I was listening to your album, and
specifically in a song for Sonya, and you have these
two lines, and one of them is you say, who
(31:45):
will feed our activists our organizer's freedom if not the poets?
And then there's another line in that poem in which
you say a strategy for organizing the heart. So there
is just so much clarity in your work and speaking
about the actual work that you're doing. And I was
wondering about your process of conceiving of that poem and
(32:09):
continuing to work on that for the album.
Speaker 3 (32:11):
Well, that poem came about right after Nipsey Hustle was
murdered and I was invited to read a poem at
Sonya Sanchez celebration for her, and I knew that a
poem for Sonya would be bash She would be bashful,
you know, she wouldn't be okay with me just going
off and telling her how amazing she is. And so
(32:33):
I had to find a way for me. I thought
the best way to honor her was to honor the
moment and to honor the current story of what it
is to organize and be a poet at this time.
We glorify the past and romanticize it often, but I
think that there's lessons that we learned, and you know,
(32:54):
there's things that I love about how we we wrote
and created, and there's things that need to change. You
need to develop and evolve, and so I think that
poem was about my struggle not just with the poetry community,
but with the movement.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
You had align that said, great art is not a monologue.
Great art is a dialogue between the artists and the people.
And I was wondering what dialogue were you having about
Palestine when you first became aware of what was going on?
And then how has that dialogue evolved as times has
gone on.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Well, there are moments that poems serve a purpose and
there's moments that they have real limitations. And I struggle
with that, you know, I struggle with the struggle of that.
So when I came back from Palestine, while the expectation
was that I would write all this work about it,
and I in some ways I regret that I had,
(33:53):
and I thought that I should have wrote all these
essays and all these things that June Jordan had done
that I was like, ah, but she did that, you know.
So to me, Palestine radicalized me. Visiting Palestine radicalized me
in a way that had not been before. And I
was disappointed in the poetry community. I was discouraged by poems.
(34:16):
I was disgusted by the pursuit of you know, individual
you know careers. I didn't understand how else to exemplify
my anguish and my frustration until I came back and
(34:37):
met my partner Philip in Palestine and we learned some
invaluable lessons together. But for me, it was really rooted
in the love that was shared with Palestinian people. The compassion,
the heartbreak, the joy, the anger, I mean, all these
things that were deeply no longer just an issue outside
of me. Over there, those people is an intimate part
(35:01):
of my life, and I now had a full understanding.
So for me coming back, I was I wrote poems,
you know, there's a poem. There's poems in my book.
My mother was a freedom fighter about it. And but
I was. I was on one, you know, I was
going to every possible pro Palestine panel, discussion event, you know, organizing,
(35:27):
meaning that I was that I was invited to anything
that people asked me to do. I to the to
the point of, you know, great exhaustion, But I but
I was on it, you know, And I believe Palestine
would be free in all lifetime, you know. And I
think the naivete of my conviction is part of what worked.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Can you think a little bit more to what radicalized
you from the lens of a black person from America?
Speaker 3 (35:57):
Because I know a lot of.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
People are like, why are are y'all worried about Palestinians?
They're not black? So what was it about going there
that really radicalized you in that moment?
Speaker 3 (36:08):
That's some bullshit. Okay, Nothing discussed me more than when
people respond to outrage or injustice with what about me?
What about my injustice? What about what I went through?
It's just ridiculous, you know, how about and and we're
(36:34):
going through this too. Look at how this is connected,
Look at how this is different for me. I didn't
look to Palestine and be like, well, you know what,
everything they're experiencing we're experiencing. There was no way what
is happening in Palestine was extremely vastly different than what
we experience in the States. While there are similarities and
(36:56):
there are connections to our oppression, that's not why I went.
That's why Ahmed Abusne tried to organize a delegation because
he wanted, as someone who had been organizing with black
people in the state of Florida, he wanted to make
it clear that he was committed to black liberation because
his people were also committed to their liberation, and that
(37:19):
he wanted to make sure that we saw that connection
for him in his personal life. So this was a
personal relationship. But you know, the first time I think
relationships is how we get organized. It's not because all
these facts on a paper and some articles you see
(37:39):
or posts on Instagram. We get organized, We get involved,
We get invested, invested because we feel and we see
our our lives tied up with others. We see our
dreams and visions and joys and aspirations tied up with others,
our struggles that is where the organized comes in. So
(38:01):
for me, when I was a young poet, I learned
about Palestine through another young poet, to Honey Solla. We
were fourteen fifteen years old, running through open mics with
our hearts on our sleeves, talking about the issues of
injustice that we were facing and the things that it
brought us outrage and the anger towards those things and
the heartbreak, and we were convinced, we were convinced our
(38:24):
poems were going to change the world, that people were
going to understand that. Clearly it is obvious what is
happening and how horrible and horrific it is. Clearly any
feeling sentient being could see what harm is being done
and saying, no, this is wrong. If it happens here,
and if it happens anywhere, it's happening here, it happens anywhere.
(38:45):
It's you know, it's an issue, it's an issue, it's
our issue. It's all our issue. So yeah, we dealt
with that. We dealt with people on the delegation who
were like, well, what about Africans and what about the
way Arabs treat Africans, And let me tell you, it
is a struggle no relationship. Tell me a relationship you've
(39:08):
been in that hasn't been a struggle. Tell me a love,
a lover you've loved that you haven't argued tooth and
nail until you couldn't do anything else but hug and
hold them and kiss them and just say, you know what,
I don't want to I don't want to disagree with you.
I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to
argue with you. I just want to be understood. I
(39:29):
just want to express where I'm coming from and why
this hurts so bad. And until we can get to
the root of our feelings rather than being reactionary, I
don't think we can truly tap into our humanity. And
so that's where the solidarity lives. The solidarity lives, and
I shared, you know, values around the quality of life
(39:54):
for all people. If I want to be free, if
I know what it's like to see people devalue, belittle, oppressed,
locked up, persecuted, shot done dead in the streets, and
I see that, and I have a heart, and we
want people to stop this. We want people to be
moved to say this is wrong. Who are we to
(40:15):
not see that somewhere else? And say no, this is wrong.
If we want other people to be as motivated in
our struggle, in our and our and our issues, then
we must be motivated about each other's you know, pains
and and and and and injustices and struggles. So like Palestine,
you know, it was, It's crazy. There's nothing like it.
(40:39):
You can't. You know, the Congo has its struggle, Haiti
has its struggle. Poverty is a is a genocide in
and of itself across the globe, and it's and it's rampant,
and colonization has its fucking dirty hands all over it.
But if you really understand what's happening in Palestine, if
you go and you witness, I mean, it's a kind
of evil that is so specific, and it's so targeted,
(41:04):
it's so strategic, it's so transactional, it's so contrived, it's
so evil that, I mean, if it could happen there,
you wonder, like, how can I coexist with anyone who
(41:25):
believes that this is okay? Clearly, if they think it's
okay there, they're going to think it's okay here. You know,
And young people, Jewish people are being radicalized and seeing
what's wrong. I mean, I learned from being in conversations
with JVP and Jewish voices for peace and you know,
seeing what if not now is doing. I mean, the
(41:48):
world wants something else. The world is demanding a different
kind of sensitivity to our interconnectedness, to our relationships being here,
and so black people need to get on board, get
on board or get left. You know, the train is
not waiting. You know, people get ready for a train
is coming.
Speaker 5 (42:09):
You know.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
All right. So I know Aza that you have a
book coming out Florida Water. I was wondering if you
wanted to talk about that a little bit or anything
else you would like to shout out as we close
out here.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
No, I think that's the book will be out when
it comes out, hopefully soon. But there's a song that
will probably come out in February, a poem for the
kids who live and I'm looking forward to that being
in the world. And I'm really just looking forward to
collaborating with more intentional musicians and you know, creatives to
(42:49):
make the next thing. So keeping my head head in
the work and hopefully the right energy will gravitate towards
the work and allow for more creative, innovative things to
be made as a poet, I want to take the
(43:10):
poetry into places that I have not yet been able to,
so I'm strategizing around that. And then of course I'm
also the artistic creative director of an organization called v Day,
which works to end violence against women and girls. And
there's an audio play that we created called Voices that
we launched in Ghana in last December twenty two and
(43:35):
so we're looking to launch that this year in the States.
That is you know, anchored around Black women's stories of
the diaspora and the continent. So that's something I'm very
much excited about, which is still rooted an artistic practice,
but is more about lifting up other voices as well
(43:59):
as it's you know, the vision that I've created, but
it's really anchored by the voices of women across the globe.
So I'm really looking forward to that being in the
world more publicly.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
And now it's time for role credits, the segment where
we give credit to a person, place, or thing that
we encountered during the week. And we have Aja with
us joining us for this segment. Who are what would
you like to give credit to?
Speaker 3 (44:28):
Yeah, I mean, if I'm going to give credit to
anyone or anything. I think the most immediate thing is Daphne.
I'm just a constantly an utter on gratitude for her
support and her love of the work that I've been
doing for years and without that. She's more than a manager.
(44:50):
She's my sister, she's my friend, she's my comrade. And
there are many days when I want to give up
and feel very discouraged and very alone, and she's a
real one, and so I'm just constantly and awed and
ingratitude of her. So I think the rollout credits will
go to her.
Speaker 2 (45:10):
Eves who are what would you like to give credit to?
Speaker 1 (45:13):
I want to give credit to Travel because we had
a lovely conversation with Aja, and Ija talked about how
going to Palestine radicalized her. And I think going to
different places and experiencing new people and actually getting to
know them, actually learning about the history, listening to things
that people have to say, reading their works, experiencing their art,
(45:37):
all of those things, but like deeply witnessing and experiencing
a place versus just touching it on the surface as
a person who's an outsider, is a really nice thing
to do. And of course there's so many things that
come with travel, like accessibility and money and environmental impact
(45:59):
and all those things. But at the root of it
all is extending ourselves beyond where we've been, learning new things,
being new in general, and talking to other people, like
being with other people. And I think that it was
(46:21):
clear that that experience, you know, really affected Aja. But
just it's nice to be able to give credit to
it here because it's a way that we can get
more in touch with our sensitivity and our feelings and
our knowledge basis and our power.
Speaker 2 (46:38):
I would like to give credit to My credit is
also influenced by Aja a conversation with Azja. I want
to give credit to babies. There's so many babies in
my life right now, and they're just so it's so
cool to like see someone like grow up like from
(46:58):
like day one. Loki and I could definitely tell Ojia
was passionate about children, and they are so innocent and
it is our job to protect them. So I just
want to give credit to all the babies out there,
especially the ones in my immediate circle. Gay Gay, thank
(47:22):
you so much for joining us, Aja, this was a
great conversation. We really appreciate you.
Speaker 3 (47:27):
Thank you, guys, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (47:29):
And Next week, we'll be continuing this conversation about art,
war and resistance in a different way. We'll be talking
about protest songs, so tune in if you want to
hear more.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
We will see y'all next week.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Bye, y'all. Hi on Theme is a production of iHeartRadio
(48:05):
and Fairweather Friends Media. This episode was written by Eves
Jeffco and Katie Mitchell. It was edited and produced by
Tari Harrison. Follow us on Instagram at on Themeshow. You
can also send us an email at Hello at on
Theme dot show. Head to on Themet Show to check
out the show notes for episodes. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(48:27):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen
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