July 16, 2025 • 49 mins
This week we're joined by award-winning scholar, ethnomusicologist, and cultural anthropologist Dr. Kyra Gaunt to explore the powerful intersections of music, play, and identity in the lives of Black girls and women. Dr. Gaunt, author of The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop, offers a brilliant breakdown of how musical play, like hand games, cheers, and jump rope rhymes, does more than entertain. It becomes a form of cultural transmission, identity-building, and resistance for Black girls navigating their earliest social worlds.
About the Podcast
The Therapy for Black Girls Podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a licensed Psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia, about all things mental health, personal development, and all the small decisions we can make to become the best possible versions of ourselves.
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Dr. Kyra Gaunt
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, a weekly
conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the small
decisions we can make to become the best possible versions
of ourselves. I'm your host, doctor Joy hard and Bradford,
a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or
(00:32):
to find a therapist in your area, visit our website
at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com. While I hope you
love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is
not meant to be a substitute for a relationship with
a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so much
(00:57):
for joining me for session four twenty of the Therapy
for Black Girls podcasts. We'll get right into our conversation
after word from our sponsors. In this insightful and soul
stirring episode, I'm joined by award winning scholar ethno musicologists
(01:20):
and cultural anthropologists doctor Kira Gaunt. Together we explore the
powerful intersections of music, play and identity in the lives
of black girls and women. Doctor Gaunt, author of the
Games Black Girls Play, Learning the Roles from Double Dutch
to Hip Hop, offers a brilliant breakdown of how musical
play like handgames cheers and jump rope rhymes does more
(01:42):
than entertain. It becomes a form of cultural transmission, identity building,
and resistance for black girls navigating their earliest social worlds.
If something resonates with you while enjoying our conversation, please
share with us on social media using the hashtag tvg
in session, or join us over in our Patreon community
to talk more about the episode. You can join us
(02:03):
at community dot therapy for blackgirls dot com. Here's our conversation. Well,
thank you so much for joining us today, doctor Gaunt.
Thank you very excited to chat with you. So I'd
love for you to get us started by saying a
little bit about who you are and your work as
an ethnomusicologist.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
I am a digital ethne musicologist. One of my missions
is to help emerging adults own their own greatness.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I have been an.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Advocate for black girlhood studies. Well I'm considered one of
the progenitors of the field with my book The Games
Black Girls Play, Learning the Ropes from Double Dutch to
Hip Hop, which won best prize in the discipline of
Ethnic Musicology Backhat in two thousand and seven. The idea
of black girl's handclapping, games, cheers, and double Dutch has
been a source and a resource of so many aspects
(02:56):
of how my work has been influencing a wave of
arts and culture. Since then, I have turned my dissertation
into a book that became an award winning book. That
book influenced Camille A. Brown and Dancers in twenty fifteen,
and a piece called Black Girl Linguistic Play that led
to being interviewed for a documentary that came out in
(03:19):
twenty twenty three called Black Girl's Play A Story of
Hand Games, which was produced by Marsha Cook, African American
woman at ESPNVP at ESPN Films and head of thirty
for thirty Films, and that is now still on Disney Plus.
And it won an NACP Image Award in twenty twenty
(03:41):
four and became shortlisted for the Oscars that year as well.
We lost out to a film that I adore, another
documentary on music called The Last Repair Shop. I highly
recommend both of those. I grew up in Rockhill, Maryland,
in the DC, Maryland, Virginia area the DMB, and I
now try to empower emerging adults to own their greatness
(04:04):
at the University of Albany in New York, Upstate.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
New York Beautiful.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
I love such a condensed but powerful biography, and so
I love that you own your place as one of
the pioneers in black girlhood studies. Now, did you know
that you were pioneering a field when you set out
to do this week?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
You know this is great for this podcast, therapy for
black girls. This work has been therapy for me. I
grew up an only child. I now understand, as I'm
working on my second book, that I've been trying to
heal some trauma, mostly emotional trauma, emotional manipulation from when
I was coming of age sexually. I was a late
bloomer around my sexual onset at nineteen, my diaries was invaded.
(04:48):
I was an only child that was very excruciatingly shy,
and I grew up in a household that this might
be the first time I've ever said this online or
in a public forum, but my mother was a single mom,
and she dated and had a boyfriend live with us
for quite a while in my adolescence. Who was a
(05:10):
big time My mom's going to kill me, But I've
been a big time drug dealer, who wasn't a street dealer.
He sold to earthwine and Fire and people like Gilt
Scott Heron in the DCA area, and I remember going
to a hotel with my mother's boyfriend to see Johnny
guitar Watson in his hotel so they could make a deal.
(05:31):
It was really difficult for me because I'm a truth teller.
I don't like lying until I do. Always say everybody's
got secrets and lies that they passed through and hopefully heal.
I ended up going to therapy to try and I
would say exercise that for myself. When I was in
graduate school at University of Michigan Goblu and so I've
(05:54):
been on a therapy journey. Twenty nineteen, I was at
another crossroads where I thought, I think I'm not going
to be able to finish my job. I was feeling
really overwhelmed, particularly at the beginning of twenty twenty, and
I went searching for a new therapist and I couldn't
find one. I really wanted a black woman, but I
(06:14):
couldn't find one. As soon as the government allowed people
to do therapy for free, I found the first person
who I could find who had an easy way to
access them. He's a white male who specializes in music therapy.
We don't even do that. He just listens to me,
and that has been the greatest gift I've gotten from therapy.
(06:35):
He's not telling me what to do.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
He's tesla.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
He was like, I don't really have anything to tell
you. You seem to process things for yourself very well, and
I'm glad to listen. So therapy, I would still prefer
to have a black woman as a therapist, but now
I have four years with him, and I'm like, not changing,
But I get a lot of resources from like all
of us do, from TikTok or YouTube or podcasts like
(07:00):
this to try and amplify that journey of healing. Music
is one art has become a new one.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
My drawing.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
My friend Pierre Benus says, have you arted today by
just sketching, drawing? Whatever it is.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
So, when you wrote the book, what was the reception like,
because I feel like there's more support maybe now, but
I feel like when you were writing this book, I'm
guessing it was a different time. What was the reception
for work, scholarly work around the games that black girls play?
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Maybe because I have been an only child and been
kind of a loner, a lone wolf ranger. I did
receive or experience a lot of resistance. My work really
was about hip hop at the time, and there were
very few scholars of hip hop. In fact, I just
wrote an article that the early scholars in that domain
(07:52):
and the music field were all black women. There's five
of us who were writing about hip hop studies and
helped launch hip hop music studies. But we weren't at
the same institutions many were at Indiana, I was at Michigan.
We weren't really connected, and so it was just the
journey of hearing to twin seven year old girls playing
(08:14):
a handclapping game when I was on an Ethny musicology conference,
a regional conference that happened at Michigan, and thinking it
sounds like hip hop.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
You exchange beats like you.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Can find the same game song, and I began to
see a really strong connection. So I think, on one hand,
while black girls games are minimized as not really serious
study or a serious play or a sport, at the time,
the music, the magic of music still drew people into it.
It's captivating. It's why the new ad for Asia Wilson
(08:51):
has the melody of Mary Max set to new lyrics
with a new framework, because music still is really one
of our oldest technologies. We used music when we started
walking up right, to sing a lullaby to a baby
on your back while you were hunting and gathering or foraging.
They say it's the root of our language, and I
(09:14):
like to say that it's all that we hear in
black speech, like hmmm, girl, you know what I'm saying.
He is fine. All of those tonnel things are what
shapes musical blackness.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
It shapes musical speech. It shapes all.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Of the period things that we do, including a good
curse word or two, the way that we say them.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Beautiful melody.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
It's an age.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
I would love to hear your thoughts about the way
that the games that black girls play has evolved, right,
because I feel like I see very few little black
girls playing hand games now because they are on TikTok, right,
and so I think it looks different. But yes, I'd
love to hear your perspective of how has evolved over
the years.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Yeah, it does look different.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
And there is not Unlike the history and the study
of music or in the applications of music, we're always
bemoaning new technologies violins were not meant to beat. Trees
were not meant to be violins. So sometime back in
I would guess as somebody was, like, why are you
using a tree to make some instrument to make some
music when you could just sing with your voice and
(10:24):
your body. But we don't have a lot of records
of that because European classical music is lauded. Whenever we
see the movement which is just continuous in the African
and African American diaspora, of new interpretations of the same beats,
the changing same amer.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Baraka called it.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
So black girls hand clapping games have whatever's new and innovative.
When I was first doing my research, they were talking
about Bobby Brown and Michael Tyson in hand clapping games,
and she and Harlem, and so we're constantly seeing an
evolution of it. So when we're older and we don't
(11:08):
see girls on the playground or the McDonald sitting in
the thing doing hand clapping games like we might have
seen in the eighties, nineties and maybe the early aughts,
we feel a loss of culture. But we also as
women and girls, particularly as girls, I like to distinguish
between us. I know we all call ourselves girls. But
(11:30):
little girls get lost, adolescent girls get lost in us
naming ourselves that way. As adults, we long for that,
we long for the nostalgia of our past, and so
we don't see that the transition has happened online it
has despite the fact. In fact, I will say there
are consequences that the play like The Renegade by Julia
(11:53):
Harmon is on TikTok because basically the social mobility that
we were seeking when we moved from protesting public accommodations
and being able to move into the public sphere have
now been reduced to a private sphere where some people
are still struggling to maintain good health because they don't
(12:14):
have enough literal mobility, and they don't have the same
social mobility that you had, say when you were in
the Green Book and you traveled up and down to
see cousins in the south or in the north. There's
so many things that are the same and many things
that are different. We still travel for funerals and weddings
and barbecues, but I think it's more disconnected because our
(12:40):
mothers in particular and our fathers.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Are working more, are hustling more.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Our gig economy more if they can maintain their job,
especially since COVID and so for girls, we don't see
their play the way we used to literally and figuratively.
But black girls still magic in their ways they do things.
Especially it is a favorite video of mine. It's probably
(13:05):
a little dated, but it's these four little, like five
year old girls dressed to go to the pool, and
Mama or an auntie or somebody is saying, They're like,
where are you going to the pool? Do it? Now?
That essence for all girls tends to disappear around the
age of nine, start to be socialized into externally focusing
(13:29):
on your body, thinking that you're too fat or not
fat enough, or it don't have a butt, You ain't
black if you don't have the right kind of butt,
or your hair is too kinky, your hair is too straight.
It's just disproportionately affecting people of color, women of color,
black women, the anti blackness, the misogynire, and I think
(13:54):
it's with the digital technology now in our bedrooms more
than when we just had a TV that was one way.
I think it's more harmful in many ways to young
girls because they don't see it coming, see the harm coming.
The same way you would watch maybe an older sister
go through stuff, or an older cousin, or learn from cousins.
(14:15):
Even as an only child, I've learned from people in
my black community. I grew up in Rockville, Maryland. It's
different when you got so much information coming at you.
And black girls and black boys are the largest consumers
of media on the social media landscape. We're occupying our
time with television or televised media more than any other demographic.
(14:36):
And I think it's to our detriment that we're not
outside getting green stuff, smelling air. I'm looking at the
park outside of my apartment, ripping branches off the trees
because you're so bored you don't know how to respect nature,
you know, I was looking. I'm a YouTube fanatic. I
(14:57):
know it's dated, but it's the archive, not actually, I mean,
you know for some people as dated, like YouTube, it's
where you archive things. It's not where you go. It's
where you go to find the thing you couldn't find
on TikTok or Instagram. But it's got everything. Like you
couldn't find Jamaican folk recordings of music on record before.
(15:19):
Now you can just search for a video somebody's home
movie that got uploaded. So I'm looking at the Library
of Congress is doing a special panel that's recorded on
YouTube of an African storyteller, and he starts to tell
a story about when Rwanda went through its genocide. They
sent white therapists mental health workers in and they were like,
(15:45):
why are you making us sit on a couch and
tell stories instead of telling us to do what we do,
which is go outside, run get some good air. And
I thought, Wow, how profound we have free aspects to healing,
and yet we're stuck in front of our devices most
(16:06):
of the time. I just was saying this to my
partner this morning. I am addicted to this technology and
I will want to quiet my nervous system more.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
But I'm so, you know, like.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
I can't get this phone away from me enough.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
It's designed to be that way.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah, I mean, but you know, I'm a scholar and
I know that. But just like losing weight, knowing how
to lose weight is not how you lose weight, practice
actually doing things and having a community to maintain that
in I think the best things that I have learned
for myself is I got to do it in a group.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
I can't do it alone, the only.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Child, and he really loves like even my partner sits
and listens to me writing my books on zoom.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
He says, I'm like, are you enjoying this? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (17:00):
More from our conversation after the break you'd left to go,
and I would love to hear. And I'm sure you
have so many years of research here about like some
of the therapeutic impact of the games that black girls play. Right,
(17:20):
So going back to the community that you just talked about,
what are some other ways that is really impactful, I
think in good for our mental health the games that
black girls play.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Thank you for asking. I'm trying to put these resources,
in fact on a website that I'm just developing called
my Black Girlsplay dot com. And it's neuroscience, it's physiological,
and it's a concept that I am really interested in
spreading its interroceptive awareness.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
So first, the.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Fact that I know Patty Cake has often thought of
as the first games, but that's between mothers and daughters
or daughters and parents. The games that black girls play
across age groups. Has you touch I don't know if
you've ever seen one of these ping pongs that when
you touch the little metal things that will light up
(18:11):
and go when you touch people in a circle. The
electricity between us can light up a ball that has
electrodes on it. If you let one person's hands go,
the ball won't light up. So there's a current, or
you could say a spirit going through our bodies that
(18:32):
once we close a loop, we actually may not be
conscious of it, but we're healing aspects of who we
are as human beings. It's this ancient thing that's what
I see as animating you is part of that energy
and sharing that energy is healing, and the brain knows
(18:52):
the difference between say, watching a video of that and
actually physically doing it. It's also that the hormones my
breath is touching is mixing with the air molecules that
touch your body, those things you cannot get from a screen.
And so there's that aspect that's really health promoting, health nurturing.
(19:14):
There's the idea that singing.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Together is really valuable.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
They call it entrainment. That's why military marching bands, which
actually came from black fraternities in the ROTCS, is a
way to form bonding. There's the musical aspect, Like I
said earlier about that it's one of our oldest technologies.
We use it to soothe ourselves in anxious moments, just.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
I love the Lord, you my cry.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
And then have a bunch of people sir, well, you're
doing the same things in girls' game songs. Zor Neil
Hurston documented a lot of children's game songs and a
lot of work songs and play songs. Those things have
a unifying community building process and property that's physiological, mental,
and psychological. And we take it for granted that playing
(20:09):
more games as you sing, a lot more black women
go out.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
And do double dutch.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
It really is healing, and not for competition, just for
the bonding that's created from within, instead of from recordings
from following the billboard charts singles or what's hot on TikTok,
but actually the things that we can generate with our bodies.
So there's the neuroscience behind that. There's a physiological entrainment
(20:38):
and connection, and it promotes sharing. It promotes what they
call the mirroragen. So if I look in your eyes,
I see myself in you.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
It builds empathy.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
There are just so many properties. You play these games
and call and response and you always get to have
your turn in it ule not ute, stay back, that's me.
Oo le ou leh not ute, stay back, this's me.
We all sing in unison, and then you go, Kira
is my name, and kickiness my game. I got the simple,
the potion and dot down be ocean and I go ooh,
(21:12):
she thinks she bad, baby, baby, don't get me man.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Ooh, she thinks she cute, cute, cute too cute. Ooh,
she thinks she.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Fine, fine enough for n oh, fine enough for ma cho,
fine enough for hululup, find enough for all your group,
and then singing in and the next person gets to go,
So it's do overs. You never get kicked out of
the game. You always get to be a part of
a community, and then that community changes constantly. You get
(21:40):
a biological family, but this becomes generations of logical family members,
logical moments of kin that help.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
You discover aspects of yourself.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
That your family cannot. Maybe you don't want to be
like your mother and your sister or your brother, and
you meet somebody who makes you your blood boy, but
it's because you kind of like the way that they are,
and then you're like, no, I could be like that,
Why can't I be like that. Yeah, got wear contacts
in my lens. You know, all of the experimentation that
comes from adolescents that people pooh pooh is and the
(22:15):
William May Rock camp for girls they call it Don't
Yuck my young mm hmm. Where you're you're experimenting, You're
not landing on anything yet, but you're experimenting. You might
do lots of things that you won't land on by
the time you're thirty. Yeah, but they're all a part
of creating the you that you are. So games bring
a lot of energy to them. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Yeah, And a lot of your work has also talked
about how frivolous girls' games have been right because girls
are playing them right, so they're not seen as like
these important things, which you've already talked about how important
they are for.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Lots of different reasons.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
What would you say for women and girls maybe who
are still struggling with affirmation and validation because people talk
about their work and the things that are important to
them as frivile is.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Yeah. Have to link to this piece that I just
wrote for the Asia Wilson Nike ad to mention Asia
Wilson's book that came out last year called Dear Black Girls.
She tells this story about and why this is relevant.
I'm in my sixties and this story seems like it
(23:19):
was right out of Jim Crow and we're talking. This
is from the late nineties early two thousands, that she
was in a school that was predominantly white. She had
some mixed a mixed group of friends, and one of
her besties she was having a birthday party and everybody
in the hallways was talking about the birthday party. And
(23:39):
then she ran into her bestie, one of her besties,
and she said, you heard that it's a slumber party, right.
She goes, yeah, of course I have. She goes, you
might have to sleep outside. And she goes, what do
I need to get boots or something? Is this like
an outside thing? She goes, no, my dad doesn't really
like black people. Like what, this is South Carolina? I
(24:02):
know it is South Carolina. That's the place that the
flat Okay, I got it, Confederate flag waving area. But
you still don't believe that this could be happening to.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Little black girls today.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
So her story is that you'll have many birthday party moments.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Like these throughout your life.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Asia's mom's job was for her was to have a
community or have somebody who really truly believes in you.
And for me, if I had been in her shoes
and it's not it's apples and oranges. Because I wasn't athletic,
I didn't have a lot of people around me, I
don't know if I would have found someone who I
(24:42):
thought saw me as valued worth listening to, not worth
bossing around. My mother did not fully grasp the being
who I was. I was a poet. She hated poetry.
I loved the romantic movie love story and stuff.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
She would always pooh pooh me about.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
I can't believe you like that romantic stuff. And so
I think the message to me as someone, if I
could impart some wisdom to even twenty year olds who
might be listening, is that you have to put yourself
first and get that everybody can't see you right away
Eve and your mother, even your siblings, and that your path.
(25:27):
You can't be afraid to pursue that path without dimming
your light. I think a lot of us. I would
say I even dimmed my light when people were giving
me shine because I had so little self esteem, because
I didn't have anybody saying you know it's okay.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
You're good the way you are.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
So sometimes I'm seeing the benefit of some of social
media that I wish I had had, which you find
some influencer or just another black girl, or maybe it's
not a black girl. This resonates with my spirit and
my soul. So I'm going to watch this every day
for a while. The thing that I would add that
I think comes from the lessons of Black Girls Play
(26:13):
is the repetition, and that repetition builds habits, and habits
build beliefs. So sometimes you'll need to stand in the
mirror and say I'm worthy, even if you're saying I
want to be I don't know Beyonce. Remember to say
that I'm not Beyonce, but I'm me. But I can
(26:33):
do anything with what I desire for my life. I
don't like faked till you make it. I like copon
attitude of confidence. And then you got to do something
behind that every day, do something little like, Okay, you're
trying to lose weight and you think you have too
much to lose, Okay, then walk for a minute today,
walk for two minutes tomorrow, Jog slowly. You ain't got
(26:56):
a job if you don't like jogging, walk, then just
increase that daily and maybe take a day off after
three days. My thing is you can do a lot
with a little.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
In psychology, we have something called play therapy right where
therapist we'll use play as a way of kind of
helping students, usually young people, but with adults even right
because play is still important throughout our lives.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Really help you to access some emotional things.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
And I understand that there is a similar model in
musicology called Luto musicology. Can you say more about what
that is and how it's used.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
This is really interesting. It's not a play therapy per se.
And I've been told by people who call themselves Luto
musicologists that my work is one of the progenitors of
that field. So this is the study of play in music.
I just spent a week interviewing candidates for our position
for a game audio and music tech person. So we're
(27:52):
talking about the music and the sounds that a company
for shooter games, games like Spider Man. There's some period
or menstruation games out there that young women have developed.
So the music the folly from the film perspective, the
footsteps in a drama, to the sounds that you hear
in the Asia Nike ad by Jennet and Kiu has
(28:18):
additional layers of sound to just the collapse. There's like
the sound of a basketball layered on top of it,
the sound of heavy baslike texture on top of it. Is
so that there's a sense of being immersed in a
social experience or lived experience because of the sound. So
little musicology is about that. I think about the ways
(28:40):
that we self soothe with music all the time. If
I may, I'm writing a book called played, How music
orchestrates violence against Black girls on YouTube, and it could
be from YouTube to TikTok, And the idea is that
I just spent the last couple of days really being inspired,
writing about how so many aspects of our young lives
(29:02):
as tweens or adolescents is about learning to accept pain,
and it's ironic that we use music to mitigate. For example,
I study a data set of tworking videos on YouTube,
and the music is there in your bedroom for play
like it was when I was young listening to Diana
(29:22):
Ross or Shaka Khan or Mini ripitin in my bedroom
with a boombox and a cassette player making mixtapes. But
I didn't have people commenting on what I was doing
in my play, so that if I uploaded a video
onto YouTube in twenty thirteen or twenty eleven from New Orleans,
I didn't have people saying, why don't you take off
(29:44):
more of your clothes in the next video? In my
own sanctuary of my bedroom, especially for only children like me,
or we tend to have, most of my students are
afraid of doing things in.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
Front of each other. They're just really there's a great.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Deal of mental anguish and anxiety and overthinking about what
other people might think of them because they're not being
exposed to real face to face interaction, so they're lacking
the exposure. Kind of like you know, the United States
has a lot of allergies. They say peanut allergies are
really a lack of exposure to peanuts. It's not that
you can't eat peanuts, it's just that you don't have
(30:21):
enough so that your body adjusts to exposure to it.
So we have been I call it like a kind
of a climate disaster for black girls through music, because
we're constantly exposed to music that is telling us that
we are a female dog, a female cow. For Megan
(30:43):
a male horse, animalization, adultification, treating you like you're older,
especially online, then coming below your video saying it's twelve
year olds video. I'm thirty one and I know I'm
a little old for you, but you're the one for me,
and then her responding board af and on. That is
(31:05):
the first connection. And all you do in child sexual
grooming is to treat a young girl who is looking
seeking attention like she's older. And you have the makings
of my probably millions of girls who've had contact with
adults that's been inappropriate, and despite the fact that they
may never meet Emotional abuse and violence can be far
(31:28):
more harmful than even the eventual physical the thing that
leads to physical abuse, because the power is manipulating your
sense of reality of what's right and wrong, what's truthful,
what's honest, and you may not figure that out until
you're fifty. You might not even understand how it all
(31:50):
fit together. They say the body keeps score. That stuff
is there, and so when we're repeatedly exposed to things
that we think is playful and entertaining, it can also
bring in a cipher of harm that we're not aware
of until much later. The thing about music therapy is
(32:11):
you can't have a plus and a minus to get well.
You can't be saying derogatory things while you love the music,
and when you're dancing to music, your prefrontal cortex is
not paying attention to the impact of what the words
are for you. So I was saying that the thing
that I've been writing about the last two days is
(32:32):
you remember when you were in my generation, when you
sat between your mother's knees while you're getting your hair done,
and if you complained about how it hurt, you were
called tender headed. So this is the first stop at
teaching you to ignore the most important thing. I think.
It's not just the neuroscience and the prefrontal cortext it's
listening to your body signal of fear, harm, abuse. Your
(32:55):
body automatically knows this isn't right, and you have a
visceral reaction. But then we've been tamed, or like animals
in husbandry, trained into not saying anything, not talking back.
I need more than a clap back here. I need
you to use your voice. I love the parents I
(33:16):
know in my network who have young girls who say,
tell Daddy, you didn't like that. You don't have to
sit on my uncle's lote. You don't have to. Grandma
kisses you on the lips. You don't like it, you
don't have to. You tell them I don't like that,
or you come tell me and I'll take care of it.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
So I tell a.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Story in the writing. My mother's best friend was a hairdresser,
and my mother took me to her apartment to get
my first PERM. I was ten and that thing was
burning my cerebral cortex and I was like, if it's
kind of burning, she says, you got to leave it
on longer, k if you want to look pretty. And
(33:53):
I hate the name Ka. My name is Kira. I
never liked that nickname. Throughout my life. People called it
that because it couldn't say here parcically, they can't.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
Say black girls names.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
I hated the idea that I had to suffer through
the label being tender headed, even as an adult. I mean,
I've left Solarans. When they bring that up, I'm like,
I'm not coming back. When you call me tender headed,
I'm telling you I'm in pain, and you just keep
doing what you're doing.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
All of these things.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Have shaped how we then say twerk as young girls,
or dance when I was young to she's a super freak.
She's super freaky. She's a very freaky girl.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
The time you don't take home to mother.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
So we've been entrained into an ideology that then, ultimately,
I want to say that people might not be happy
with this, but women are sustaining misogyny more than men,
and it's not intentional. It's that we've been entrained and
socialized into that oppression such that we are the progenitors
(34:56):
of the oppression to other girls and women. Girls and
women are trying to fight that off by If your
mother says, don't date that boy, you do it anyhow.
If someone says this is not a good thing for
you to be doing, you do it anyhow. This might
not be helpful. Like I said, it's only been since
I've been a late adult that I've begun to confront
(35:17):
those things through therapy, through journaling, through the research that
I'm doing for this book. When I have students sit down,
especially black women in my classes, and analyze the music
that they used to listen to and play with as
adolescents young adolescens, one woman was like, if my grandmother
knew what I was doing, I was interacting with all
(35:38):
kinds of adults. Said I never told her about why
because I don't want to lose my phone. I don't
want to lose my attachment to something that feels like connection.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
But it's false.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Oudro Lord calls that the pornographic, the erotic is real.
The pornographic is the thing that is not. It's plastic sensation,
it's plastic feeling. Don't get hormones from it. You don't
get the good hormones of just the thing that you
get when you have a child, or with a baby,
or with your line, with your partner. There are hormones
(36:10):
that make you feel human, and you cannot get that
from a phone, no matter how hard you try. You're
only getting your own hormones. Right.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
More from our conversation after the break, So, you mentioned
that you were, you know, one of the early women
writing that. You said there were only about five of
you writing about hip hop. I would love to hear
(36:41):
your thoughts around like the evolution of hip hop, because
it sounds like it nicely dovetails into the book you're writing,
right like, Yeah, I'm sure that you've seen quite a
difference in the content that's being discussed but I also
think there are probably more hip hop artists that are women. Now,
what are your thoughts around like how hip hop has
transformed and.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
What does that mean? Bra Black Ye I love to
ask a question, So I'm going to test you. Okay,
how many women do you think we're topping the billboard
charts in two thousand and four? Now, two thousand and five,
the Grammy Foundation introduced the first female rap category. Okay,
so how many women do you think topped the billboard
(37:21):
charts in two thousand and four? So this was about
five I give you choices, Okay, three, five, eight or fifteen?
Speaker 1 (37:34):
It's eight?
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Three, yeah, it was fifteen.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
There was Queen latifah MCOs Love, Missy Elliott was around,
Bill Kim has already been on the scene, Foxy Brown.
There were fifteen women on the top of the billboard
charts at that time. We had another resurfacing in twenty fourteen.
We're like, this is the year of the female rapper.
(37:58):
This era COVID has seen a plethora, just a wonderful
array of women. Maybe at the top of the charts
they all somewhat look alike, but from Rhapsody to Nicki
Minaje to I mean, we still have a little bit
of a spectrum, but at the top in the commercial realm,
it still looks kind of the same. But then in
(38:21):
the background there are just a host of women, So
it is related. It's funny. In mine, I teach a
hip hop class at U Albany, and I had one
hundred and forty students in two sections, at seventy in
each section, and we did a poster session. We have
a big research poster event where we paired hot girls
(38:42):
with hidden architects. So hip hop began by the latest
loure of history making hip hop again with Cool Herk
at a party in August eleventh, nineteen seventy three. But
it was his sister Cimby Campbell lastly through the party
and invited her little brother to come. And so that's
seventy three, and by seventy nine, Sylvia Robinson had the
(39:05):
first rap label, sugar Hill Records, with her husband Joe.
So we have a hot girl and a hidden figure.
I love for the girls to be young. There's Wonder Girl,
a Canadian beat maker and producer who was on Jay
Z's platinum selling album Magna Carter. She won a contest
when she was nine and then sixteen.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
There's MC Light, There's.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Rock San Chante at fourteen. There's Shah Rack, the first
female rapper on cassette, who was on the first group,
the Fwanky four plus one that appeared on Saturday Night
Live in nineteen eighty one. There's the Fantastic four Double
Dutch team, the Champions of nineteen eighty who are on
the first international rap tour in nineteen eighty two to France,
(39:52):
Germany and England. And I just found that a woman
who was a part of hip hop double Dutch and
rapping and be girling in France has been doing a
study since nineteen eighty four when she began being a
part of hip hop about probably the influence of the
Fantastic Four Double Dutch Champions when they were touring in
(40:12):
nineteen eighty two. Is the only girls, the only females,
the only women on that tour with Africa Manbada Graham, Mixer,
DST and Rock Steady Crew. I'm trying to with my book,
on one hand, heal the way we or help us rethink.
Have another think about how hip hop has not been
(40:34):
for us while black women, as I've just described, have
been dominating the architecture of hip hop. Behind the soundboard
in the CEO boardroom, there's a white woman named Monica
Lynch who was president of Tommy Boar Records. That's how
we got digital underground in Tupac. That's how Queen Latifah
(40:56):
got her first record label. There's just so many women.
I've just not been telling their stories. Half the story
has never been told. We don't tell. I've been at
four major social innovation conferences in the last five years,
and a lot of them during Black Lives Matter were
hiring women DJs, even at National Women's Studies two years ago.
(41:19):
And these female DJs come in and play male artists,
Drake when I go up and say, hey, can you
play more women? Because you know, if you don't play them,
they don't get paid, they still won't change. So we've
got a lot of work. And I think that these
posters that I did with my students, like maybe eighty
people came through our post to session, but I know
(41:42):
that the students have been changed. If each of them
tell three people, and then those three people tell three people,
we can impact three thousand people. And if those three
thousand people tell three people, it exponentially grows that women
have always been a part of hip hop. Girls in
particular happened really influential in the propagation of the perpetuation
(42:04):
of the promotion of behind the scenes on record in communities.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Of hip hop.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
The best story is Ava du Verna began as a
rapper and did in that no bit. Her first film
is based on an underground indie scene from South central
I mean in the hood run by a woman my age, beholl.
The documentaries on YouTube called The Good Life. They were
not allowed to cuss, don't touch the paintings on the wall,
(42:32):
and they were good to women. They really respected women.
They let them be a part of the community instead
of be one of the boys.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
You know.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
I'm trying to help people be inspired by the journeys
that black girls and women bring, not only to our
communities but to the nation because.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
We have had to do what.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Asia Wilson writes about about that story on the birthday party,
We have had to overcome a lot problem is who
comes for us, who comes, you know, nurturing us. Even
my partners like I can't really see when you're upset,
and I'm like, well, you got to train yourself to
do that. Because you know, if you just stop maybe
(43:15):
reading this and read the situation, you should know that
this situation ain't for anybody, and that I might not
be showing what I feel, but you could ask me.
You could ask me how was that? Because if I
was in your shoes, that would be challenging for me. Yeah,
(43:36):
we bear the truth of what African philosophy is all
about to me. Not the people who are corrupt in
the Congo, not the men who run these countries who
are corrupt, but the women who remind us that being together,
(43:56):
helping people heal, understanding that heard people hurt people, and
trying to both help but also sometimes help is to
distance oneself, to protect oneself first and foremost, put the
mask on yourself first. Nobody promised that it was going
to be easy. But you can find a way to
make life simple. But I like, I'm sure you're doing
(44:17):
the listeners to your podcast. No, you're not supposed to
do it alone. We were not designed to be alone.
We were not built to be alone. There's a lot
of noise up here, a lot of distortion, a lot
of things that need to be ironed out. Like I'm
always telling my students, I'm like, if your teacher says
(44:38):
write five hundred words, how many of you are written
over five hundred words? Didn't make a difference? No, then
why do you keep doing that? Or? Yeah, I learned
so much from my students. I have to give them
just much love, much flowers, much props. I asked my
(44:59):
student about how they felt. I was talking about Megan,
miss Stallion's name, which came from her being cat called
when she was fifteen, and she went home to her
uncle and said, unt, what does stallion mean? Who were
they used in the South to groom girls? He said, oh,
that just means you're tall and pretty. And I said,
how many of you in my class? How many of
(45:21):
you have felt uncomfortable when somebody talked to you in
a certain way when you were in high school? A
dozen women raise their hand, and when I asked them
how they felt about it, they said, I felt guilty,
I felt shamed. I felt this, And I'm like, why
are you feeling Why aren't you saying they should feel guilty?
They feel shame. But that's because we don't understand psychology.
(45:43):
We don't understand neuroscience, we don't understand how adolescent brain
is affected by things in different ways than the.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
Child brain or the adult brain.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
I wish we were teaching psychology and public health for
your everyday use like Black Girls play Mine. What do
I need to fit on.
Speaker 3 (46:03):
To this sixty year old body?
Speaker 2 (46:05):
That you need for your body and your background and
your place in the family and your place growing up
in abject poverty versus being in a wealthy family that
neglected you. Yeah, and so there's a lot you think
we should do. But you gotta always start with big door,
(46:26):
swing on little hinges. You gotta start small. It's overwhelming. Otherwise, Yeah,
it's really overwhelming. But we come from we are the
product of realized dreams, and we got to remember to
hold those two things. It might not look good today,
but this too shall pass.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
This sounds like this is gonna be a very powerful
follow up to already incredible Firend's book. So I know
people will be very excited to you tune in and
check it out once it's available. So tell us actter going,
where can we stay connected with you so that we
can stay updated about when the book and everything comes out.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me a Kira
Gaunt or some variation of that Curra non PhD. I
am not on Twitter. I have a website called Kiraosity.
Curiosity is my old brand from my Twitter days. Curiosity
didn't kill the cat, so it's kyr my first name,
the letter O and the word city Kira of the city.
(47:25):
My heart belongs to Brooklyn, really or my news site,
which is my Black Girlsplay dot com named after the
film Black Girl's Play. I'm trying to build a community,
trying to launch this baby book out into the world
with community. There are so many resources. You can find
(47:45):
Black Girl's Play, a story of handgames on Disney Plus,
and there's also a portal on YouTube where you can
probably buy for two dollars and ninety nine cents or
something from ESPN and I have a lot of content
on YouTube and search for. I'm a singer as well.
I'm a jazz vocalist, so you can find some of
my singing. And I have an album you can find
(48:08):
on iTunes called be the True Revolution, quoted after the
newly ancestored dearly departed Nikki Giovanni from one of her
poems called when I Die, I hope that life knows
that I know that touch is the true Revolution.
Speaker 3 (48:24):
So be the true revolution. It's the name of the
album beautiful.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
We will be short to include all of those in
the show notes so that people can access them. Thank
you so much for sending some time with me today.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Thank you so much, Good joy, thank you.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
I'm so glad Doctor Gaunt was able to join me
for this conversation. I hope today's episode reminded you just
how powerful our play has always been, how those claps,
steps and songs weren't just games but blueprints for our brilliance, creativity,
and resistance. To learn more about doctor go, make sure
to visit the show notes at Therapy for Blackgirls dot
com slash session four twenty, and don't forget to text
(49:06):
this episodes to two of your girls right now and
tell them to check out the episode.
Speaker 3 (49:10):
Did you know?
Speaker 1 (49:10):
You can leave us a voicemail with your questions or
suggestions for the podcast. Do you have books or movies
you'd like us to review, or even have thoughts about
topics you'd like to hear us discuss. Drop us a
voice message at Memo dot fm slash Therapy for Black
Girls and you just might hear it on the show.
If you're looking for a therapist in your area, visit
our therapist directory at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com slash directory.
(49:33):
This episode was produced by Elise Ellis, Indytubu and Tyree Rush.
Editing was done by Dennison Bradford. Thank y'all so much
for joining me again this week. I look forward to
continuing this conversation with you all real soon.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
Take good care.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
What's
Welcome to the Therapy for Black Girls podcast, a weekly
conversation about mental health, personal development, and all the small
decisions we can make to become the best possible versions
of ourselves. I'm your host, doctor Joy hard and Bradford,
a licensed psychologist in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information or
(00:32):
to find a therapist in your area, visit our website
at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com. While I hope you
love listening to and learning from the podcast, it is
not meant to be a substitute for a relationship with
a licensed mental health professional. Hey, y'all, thanks so much
(00:57):
for joining me for session four twenty of the Therapy
for Black Girls podcasts. We'll get right into our conversation
after word from our sponsors. In this insightful and soul
stirring episode, I'm joined by award winning scholar ethno musicologists
(01:20):
and cultural anthropologists doctor Kira Gaunt. Together we explore the
powerful intersections of music, play and identity in the lives
of black girls and women. Doctor Gaunt, author of the
Games Black Girls Play, Learning the Roles from Double Dutch
to Hip Hop, offers a brilliant breakdown of how musical
play like handgames cheers and jump rope rhymes does more
(01:42):
than entertain. It becomes a form of cultural transmission, identity building,
and resistance for black girls navigating their earliest social worlds.
If something resonates with you while enjoying our conversation, please
share with us on social media using the hashtag tvg
in session, or join us over in our Patreon community
to talk more about the episode. You can join us
(02:03):
at community dot therapy for blackgirls dot com. Here's our conversation. Well,
thank you so much for joining us today, doctor Gaunt.
Thank you very excited to chat with you. So I'd
love for you to get us started by saying a
little bit about who you are and your work as
an ethnomusicologist.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
I am a digital ethne musicologist. One of my missions
is to help emerging adults own their own greatness.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
I have been an.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Advocate for black girlhood studies. Well I'm considered one of
the progenitors of the field with my book The Games
Black Girls Play, Learning the Ropes from Double Dutch to
Hip Hop, which won best prize in the discipline of
Ethnic Musicology Backhat in two thousand and seven. The idea
of black girl's handclapping, games, cheers, and double Dutch has
been a source and a resource of so many aspects
(02:56):
of how my work has been influencing a wave of
arts and culture. Since then, I have turned my dissertation
into a book that became an award winning book. That
book influenced Camille A. Brown and Dancers in twenty fifteen,
and a piece called Black Girl Linguistic Play that led
to being interviewed for a documentary that came out in
(03:19):
twenty twenty three called Black Girl's Play A Story of
Hand Games, which was produced by Marsha Cook, African American
woman at ESPNVP at ESPN Films and head of thirty
for thirty Films, and that is now still on Disney Plus.
And it won an NACP Image Award in twenty twenty
(03:41):
four and became shortlisted for the Oscars that year as well.
We lost out to a film that I adore, another
documentary on music called The Last Repair Shop. I highly
recommend both of those. I grew up in Rockhill, Maryland,
in the DC, Maryland, Virginia area the DMB, and I
now try to empower emerging adults to own their greatness
(04:04):
at the University of Albany in New York, Upstate.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
New York Beautiful.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
I love such a condensed but powerful biography, and so
I love that you own your place as one of
the pioneers in black girlhood studies. Now, did you know
that you were pioneering a field when you set out
to do this week?
Speaker 2 (04:22):
You know this is great for this podcast, therapy for
black girls. This work has been therapy for me. I
grew up an only child. I now understand, as I'm
working on my second book, that I've been trying to
heal some trauma, mostly emotional trauma, emotional manipulation from when
I was coming of age sexually. I was a late
bloomer around my sexual onset at nineteen, my diaries was invaded.
(04:48):
I was an only child that was very excruciatingly shy,
and I grew up in a household that this might
be the first time I've ever said this online or
in a public forum, but my mother was a single mom,
and she dated and had a boyfriend live with us
for quite a while in my adolescence. Who was a
(05:10):
big time My mom's going to kill me, But I've
been a big time drug dealer, who wasn't a street dealer.
He sold to earthwine and Fire and people like Gilt
Scott Heron in the DCA area, and I remember going
to a hotel with my mother's boyfriend to see Johnny
guitar Watson in his hotel so they could make a deal.
(05:31):
It was really difficult for me because I'm a truth teller.
I don't like lying until I do. Always say everybody's
got secrets and lies that they passed through and hopefully heal.
I ended up going to therapy to try and I
would say exercise that for myself. When I was in
graduate school at University of Michigan Goblu and so I've
(05:54):
been on a therapy journey. Twenty nineteen, I was at
another crossroads where I thought, I think I'm not going
to be able to finish my job. I was feeling
really overwhelmed, particularly at the beginning of twenty twenty, and
I went searching for a new therapist and I couldn't
find one. I really wanted a black woman, but I
(06:14):
couldn't find one. As soon as the government allowed people
to do therapy for free, I found the first person
who I could find who had an easy way to
access them. He's a white male who specializes in music therapy.
We don't even do that. He just listens to me,
and that has been the greatest gift I've gotten from therapy.
(06:35):
He's not telling me what to do.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
He's tesla.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
He was like, I don't really have anything to tell
you. You seem to process things for yourself very well, and
I'm glad to listen. So therapy, I would still prefer
to have a black woman as a therapist, but now
I have four years with him, and I'm like, not changing,
But I get a lot of resources from like all
of us do, from TikTok or YouTube or podcasts like
(07:00):
this to try and amplify that journey of healing. Music
is one art has become a new one.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
My drawing.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
My friend Pierre Benus says, have you arted today by
just sketching, drawing? Whatever it is.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
So, when you wrote the book, what was the reception like,
because I feel like there's more support maybe now, but
I feel like when you were writing this book, I'm
guessing it was a different time. What was the reception
for work, scholarly work around the games that black girls play?
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Maybe because I have been an only child and been
kind of a loner, a lone wolf ranger. I did
receive or experience a lot of resistance. My work really
was about hip hop at the time, and there were
very few scholars of hip hop. In fact, I just
wrote an article that the early scholars in that domain
(07:52):
and the music field were all black women. There's five
of us who were writing about hip hop studies and
helped launch hip hop music studies. But we weren't at
the same institutions many were at Indiana, I was at Michigan.
We weren't really connected, and so it was just the
journey of hearing to twin seven year old girls playing
(08:14):
a handclapping game when I was on an Ethny musicology conference,
a regional conference that happened at Michigan, and thinking it
sounds like hip hop.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
You exchange beats like you.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Can find the same game song, and I began to
see a really strong connection. So I think, on one hand,
while black girls games are minimized as not really serious
study or a serious play or a sport, at the time,
the music, the magic of music still drew people into it.
It's captivating. It's why the new ad for Asia Wilson
(08:51):
has the melody of Mary Max set to new lyrics
with a new framework, because music still is really one
of our oldest technologies. We used music when we started
walking up right, to sing a lullaby to a baby
on your back while you were hunting and gathering or foraging.
They say it's the root of our language, and I
(09:14):
like to say that it's all that we hear in
black speech, like hmmm, girl, you know what I'm saying.
He is fine. All of those tonnel things are what
shapes musical blackness.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
It shapes musical speech. It shapes all.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Of the period things that we do, including a good
curse word or two, the way that we say them.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Beautiful melody.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
It's an age.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
I would love to hear your thoughts about the way
that the games that black girls play has evolved, right,
because I feel like I see very few little black
girls playing hand games now because they are on TikTok, right,
and so I think it looks different. But yes, I'd
love to hear your perspective of how has evolved over
the years.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
Yeah, it does look different.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
And there is not Unlike the history and the study
of music or in the applications of music, we're always
bemoaning new technologies violins were not meant to beat. Trees
were not meant to be violins. So sometime back in
I would guess as somebody was, like, why are you
using a tree to make some instrument to make some
music when you could just sing with your voice and
(10:24):
your body. But we don't have a lot of records
of that because European classical music is lauded. Whenever we
see the movement which is just continuous in the African
and African American diaspora, of new interpretations of the same beats,
the changing same amer.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Baraka called it.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
So black girls hand clapping games have whatever's new and innovative.
When I was first doing my research, they were talking
about Bobby Brown and Michael Tyson in hand clapping games,
and she and Harlem, and so we're constantly seeing an
evolution of it. So when we're older and we don't
(11:08):
see girls on the playground or the McDonald sitting in
the thing doing hand clapping games like we might have
seen in the eighties, nineties and maybe the early aughts,
we feel a loss of culture. But we also as
women and girls, particularly as girls, I like to distinguish
between us. I know we all call ourselves girls. But
(11:30):
little girls get lost, adolescent girls get lost in us
naming ourselves that way. As adults, we long for that,
we long for the nostalgia of our past, and so
we don't see that the transition has happened online it
has despite the fact. In fact, I will say there
are consequences that the play like The Renegade by Julia
(11:53):
Harmon is on TikTok because basically the social mobility that
we were seeking when we moved from protesting public accommodations
and being able to move into the public sphere have
now been reduced to a private sphere where some people
are still struggling to maintain good health because they don't
(12:14):
have enough literal mobility, and they don't have the same
social mobility that you had, say when you were in
the Green Book and you traveled up and down to
see cousins in the south or in the north. There's
so many things that are the same and many things
that are different. We still travel for funerals and weddings
and barbecues, but I think it's more disconnected because our
(12:40):
mothers in particular and our fathers.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Are working more, are hustling more.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Our gig economy more if they can maintain their job,
especially since COVID and so for girls, we don't see
their play the way we used to literally and figuratively.
But black girls still magic in their ways they do things.
Especially it is a favorite video of mine. It's probably
(13:05):
a little dated, but it's these four little, like five
year old girls dressed to go to the pool, and
Mama or an auntie or somebody is saying, They're like,
where are you going to the pool? Do it? Now?
That essence for all girls tends to disappear around the
age of nine, start to be socialized into externally focusing
(13:29):
on your body, thinking that you're too fat or not
fat enough, or it don't have a butt, You ain't
black if you don't have the right kind of butt,
or your hair is too kinky, your hair is too straight.
It's just disproportionately affecting people of color, women of color,
black women, the anti blackness, the misogynire, and I think
(13:54):
it's with the digital technology now in our bedrooms more
than when we just had a TV that was one way.
I think it's more harmful in many ways to young
girls because they don't see it coming, see the harm coming.
The same way you would watch maybe an older sister
go through stuff, or an older cousin, or learn from cousins.
(14:15):
Even as an only child, I've learned from people in
my black community. I grew up in Rockville, Maryland. It's
different when you got so much information coming at you.
And black girls and black boys are the largest consumers
of media on the social media landscape. We're occupying our
time with television or televised media more than any other demographic.
(14:36):
And I think it's to our detriment that we're not
outside getting green stuff, smelling air. I'm looking at the
park outside of my apartment, ripping branches off the trees
because you're so bored you don't know how to respect nature,
you know, I was looking. I'm a YouTube fanatic. I
(14:57):
know it's dated, but it's the archive, not actually, I mean,
you know for some people as dated, like YouTube, it's
where you archive things. It's not where you go. It's
where you go to find the thing you couldn't find
on TikTok or Instagram. But it's got everything. Like you
couldn't find Jamaican folk recordings of music on record before.
(15:19):
Now you can just search for a video somebody's home
movie that got uploaded. So I'm looking at the Library
of Congress is doing a special panel that's recorded on
YouTube of an African storyteller, and he starts to tell
a story about when Rwanda went through its genocide. They
sent white therapists mental health workers in and they were like,
(15:45):
why are you making us sit on a couch and
tell stories instead of telling us to do what we do,
which is go outside, run get some good air. And
I thought, Wow, how profound we have free aspects to healing,
and yet we're stuck in front of our devices most
(16:06):
of the time. I just was saying this to my
partner this morning. I am addicted to this technology and
I will want to quiet my nervous system more.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
But I'm so, you know, like.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
I can't get this phone away from me enough.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
It's designed to be that way.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah, I mean, but you know, I'm a scholar and
I know that. But just like losing weight, knowing how
to lose weight is not how you lose weight, practice
actually doing things and having a community to maintain that
in I think the best things that I have learned
for myself is I got to do it in a group.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
I can't do it alone, the only.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Child, and he really loves like even my partner sits
and listens to me writing my books on zoom.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
He says, I'm like, are you enjoying this? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (17:00):
More from our conversation after the break you'd left to go,
and I would love to hear. And I'm sure you
have so many years of research here about like some
of the therapeutic impact of the games that black girls play. Right,
(17:20):
So going back to the community that you just talked about,
what are some other ways that is really impactful, I
think in good for our mental health the games that
black girls play.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Thank you for asking. I'm trying to put these resources,
in fact on a website that I'm just developing called
my Black Girlsplay dot com. And it's neuroscience, it's physiological,
and it's a concept that I am really interested in
spreading its interroceptive awareness.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
So first, the.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Fact that I know Patty Cake has often thought of
as the first games, but that's between mothers and daughters
or daughters and parents. The games that black girls play
across age groups. Has you touch I don't know if
you've ever seen one of these ping pongs that when
you touch the little metal things that will light up
(18:11):
and go when you touch people in a circle. The
electricity between us can light up a ball that has
electrodes on it. If you let one person's hands go,
the ball won't light up. So there's a current, or
you could say a spirit going through our bodies that
(18:32):
once we close a loop, we actually may not be
conscious of it, but we're healing aspects of who we
are as human beings. It's this ancient thing that's what
I see as animating you is part of that energy
and sharing that energy is healing, and the brain knows
(18:52):
the difference between say, watching a video of that and
actually physically doing it. It's also that the hormones my
breath is touching is mixing with the air molecules that
touch your body, those things you cannot get from a screen.
And so there's that aspect that's really health promoting, health nurturing.
(19:14):
There's the idea that singing.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Together is really valuable.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
They call it entrainment. That's why military marching bands, which
actually came from black fraternities in the ROTCS, is a
way to form bonding. There's the musical aspect, Like I
said earlier about that it's one of our oldest technologies.
We use it to soothe ourselves in anxious moments, just.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
I love the Lord, you my cry.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
And then have a bunch of people sir, well, you're
doing the same things in girls' game songs. Zor Neil
Hurston documented a lot of children's game songs and a
lot of work songs and play songs. Those things have
a unifying community building process and property that's physiological, mental,
and psychological. And we take it for granted that playing
(20:09):
more games as you sing, a lot more black women
go out.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
And do double dutch.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
It really is healing, and not for competition, just for
the bonding that's created from within, instead of from recordings
from following the billboard charts singles or what's hot on TikTok,
but actually the things that we can generate with our bodies.
So there's the neuroscience behind that. There's a physiological entrainment
(20:38):
and connection, and it promotes sharing. It promotes what they
call the mirroragen. So if I look in your eyes,
I see myself in you.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
It builds empathy.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
There are just so many properties. You play these games
and call and response and you always get to have
your turn in it ule not ute, stay back, that's me.
Oo le ou leh not ute, stay back, this's me.
We all sing in unison, and then you go, Kira
is my name, and kickiness my game. I got the simple,
the potion and dot down be ocean and I go ooh,
(21:12):
she thinks she bad, baby, baby, don't get me man.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Ooh, she thinks she cute, cute, cute too cute. Ooh,
she thinks she.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
Fine, fine enough for n oh, fine enough for ma cho,
fine enough for hululup, find enough for all your group,
and then singing in and the next person gets to go,
So it's do overs. You never get kicked out of
the game. You always get to be a part of
a community, and then that community changes constantly. You get
(21:40):
a biological family, but this becomes generations of logical family members,
logical moments of kin that help.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
You discover aspects of yourself.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
That your family cannot. Maybe you don't want to be
like your mother and your sister or your brother, and
you meet somebody who makes you your blood boy, but
it's because you kind of like the way that they are,
and then you're like, no, I could be like that,
Why can't I be like that. Yeah, got wear contacts
in my lens. You know, all of the experimentation that
comes from adolescents that people pooh pooh is and the
(22:15):
William May Rock camp for girls they call it Don't
Yuck my young mm hmm. Where you're you're experimenting, You're
not landing on anything yet, but you're experimenting. You might
do lots of things that you won't land on by
the time you're thirty. Yeah, but they're all a part
of creating the you that you are. So games bring
a lot of energy to them. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
Yeah, And a lot of your work has also talked
about how frivolous girls' games have been right because girls
are playing them right, so they're not seen as like
these important things, which you've already talked about how important
they are for.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Lots of different reasons.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
What would you say for women and girls maybe who
are still struggling with affirmation and validation because people talk
about their work and the things that are important to
them as frivile is.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Yeah. Have to link to this piece that I just
wrote for the Asia Wilson Nike ad to mention Asia
Wilson's book that came out last year called Dear Black Girls.
She tells this story about and why this is relevant.
I'm in my sixties and this story seems like it
(23:19):
was right out of Jim Crow and we're talking. This
is from the late nineties early two thousands, that she
was in a school that was predominantly white. She had
some mixed a mixed group of friends, and one of
her besties she was having a birthday party and everybody
in the hallways was talking about the birthday party. And
(23:39):
then she ran into her bestie, one of her besties,
and she said, you heard that it's a slumber party, right.
She goes, yeah, of course I have. She goes, you
might have to sleep outside. And she goes, what do
I need to get boots or something? Is this like
an outside thing? She goes, no, my dad doesn't really
like black people. Like what, this is South Carolina? I
(24:02):
know it is South Carolina. That's the place that the
flat Okay, I got it, Confederate flag waving area. But
you still don't believe that this could be happening to.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Little black girls today.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
So her story is that you'll have many birthday party moments.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Like these throughout your life.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Asia's mom's job was for her was to have a
community or have somebody who really truly believes in you.
And for me, if I had been in her shoes
and it's not it's apples and oranges. Because I wasn't athletic,
I didn't have a lot of people around me, I
don't know if I would have found someone who I
(24:42):
thought saw me as valued worth listening to, not worth
bossing around. My mother did not fully grasp the being
who I was. I was a poet. She hated poetry.
I loved the romantic movie love story and stuff.
Speaker 3 (25:01):
She would always pooh pooh me about.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
I can't believe you like that romantic stuff. And so
I think the message to me as someone, if I
could impart some wisdom to even twenty year olds who
might be listening, is that you have to put yourself
first and get that everybody can't see you right away
Eve and your mother, even your siblings, and that your path.
(25:27):
You can't be afraid to pursue that path without dimming
your light. I think a lot of us. I would
say I even dimmed my light when people were giving
me shine because I had so little self esteem, because
I didn't have anybody saying you know it's okay.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
You're good the way you are.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
So sometimes I'm seeing the benefit of some of social
media that I wish I had had, which you find
some influencer or just another black girl, or maybe it's
not a black girl. This resonates with my spirit and
my soul. So I'm going to watch this every day
for a while. The thing that I would add that
I think comes from the lessons of Black Girls Play
(26:13):
is the repetition, and that repetition builds habits, and habits
build beliefs. So sometimes you'll need to stand in the
mirror and say I'm worthy, even if you're saying I
want to be I don't know Beyonce. Remember to say
that I'm not Beyonce, but I'm me. But I can
(26:33):
do anything with what I desire for my life. I
don't like faked till you make it. I like copon
attitude of confidence. And then you got to do something
behind that every day, do something little like, Okay, you're
trying to lose weight and you think you have too
much to lose, Okay, then walk for a minute today,
walk for two minutes tomorrow, Jog slowly. You ain't got
(26:56):
a job if you don't like jogging, walk, then just
increase that daily and maybe take a day off after
three days. My thing is you can do a lot
with a little.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
In psychology, we have something called play therapy right where
therapist we'll use play as a way of kind of
helping students, usually young people, but with adults even right
because play is still important throughout our lives.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Really help you to access some emotional things.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
And I understand that there is a similar model in
musicology called Luto musicology. Can you say more about what
that is and how it's used.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
This is really interesting. It's not a play therapy per se.
And I've been told by people who call themselves Luto
musicologists that my work is one of the progenitors of
that field. So this is the study of play in music.
I just spent a week interviewing candidates for our position
for a game audio and music tech person. So we're
(27:52):
talking about the music and the sounds that a company
for shooter games, games like Spider Man. There's some period
or menstruation games out there that young women have developed.
So the music the folly from the film perspective, the
footsteps in a drama, to the sounds that you hear
in the Asia Nike ad by Jennet and Kiu has
(28:18):
additional layers of sound to just the collapse. There's like
the sound of a basketball layered on top of it,
the sound of heavy baslike texture on top of it. Is
so that there's a sense of being immersed in a
social experience or lived experience because of the sound. So
little musicology is about that. I think about the ways
(28:40):
that we self soothe with music all the time. If
I may, I'm writing a book called played, How music
orchestrates violence against Black girls on YouTube, and it could
be from YouTube to TikTok, And the idea is that
I just spent the last couple of days really being inspired,
writing about how so many aspects of our young lives
(29:02):
as tweens or adolescents is about learning to accept pain,
and it's ironic that we use music to mitigate. For example,
I study a data set of tworking videos on YouTube,
and the music is there in your bedroom for play
like it was when I was young listening to Diana
(29:22):
Ross or Shaka Khan or Mini ripitin in my bedroom
with a boombox and a cassette player making mixtapes. But
I didn't have people commenting on what I was doing
in my play, so that if I uploaded a video
onto YouTube in twenty thirteen or twenty eleven from New Orleans,
I didn't have people saying, why don't you take off
(29:44):
more of your clothes in the next video? In my
own sanctuary of my bedroom, especially for only children like me,
or we tend to have, most of my students are
afraid of doing things in.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
Front of each other. They're just really there's a great.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Deal of mental anguish and anxiety and overthinking about what
other people might think of them because they're not being
exposed to real face to face interaction, so they're lacking
the exposure. Kind of like you know, the United States
has a lot of allergies. They say peanut allergies are
really a lack of exposure to peanuts. It's not that
you can't eat peanuts, it's just that you don't have
(30:21):
enough so that your body adjusts to exposure to it.
So we have been I call it like a kind
of a climate disaster for black girls through music, because
we're constantly exposed to music that is telling us that
we are a female dog, a female cow. For Megan
(30:43):
a male horse, animalization, adultification, treating you like you're older,
especially online, then coming below your video saying it's twelve
year olds video. I'm thirty one and I know I'm
a little old for you, but you're the one for me,
and then her responding board af and on. That is
(31:05):
the first connection. And all you do in child sexual
grooming is to treat a young girl who is looking
seeking attention like she's older. And you have the makings
of my probably millions of girls who've had contact with
adults that's been inappropriate, and despite the fact that they
may never meet Emotional abuse and violence can be far
(31:28):
more harmful than even the eventual physical the thing that
leads to physical abuse, because the power is manipulating your
sense of reality of what's right and wrong, what's truthful,
what's honest, and you may not figure that out until
you're fifty. You might not even understand how it all
(31:50):
fit together. They say the body keeps score. That stuff
is there, and so when we're repeatedly exposed to things
that we think is playful and entertaining, it can also
bring in a cipher of harm that we're not aware
of until much later. The thing about music therapy is
(32:11):
you can't have a plus and a minus to get well.
You can't be saying derogatory things while you love the music,
and when you're dancing to music, your prefrontal cortex is
not paying attention to the impact of what the words
are for you. So I was saying that the thing
that I've been writing about the last two days is
(32:32):
you remember when you were in my generation, when you
sat between your mother's knees while you're getting your hair done,
and if you complained about how it hurt, you were
called tender headed. So this is the first stop at
teaching you to ignore the most important thing. I think.
It's not just the neuroscience and the prefrontal cortext it's
listening to your body signal of fear, harm, abuse. Your
(32:55):
body automatically knows this isn't right, and you have a
visceral reaction. But then we've been tamed, or like animals
in husbandry, trained into not saying anything, not talking back.
I need more than a clap back here. I need
you to use your voice. I love the parents I
(33:16):
know in my network who have young girls who say,
tell Daddy, you didn't like that. You don't have to
sit on my uncle's lote. You don't have to. Grandma
kisses you on the lips. You don't like it, you
don't have to. You tell them I don't like that,
or you come tell me and I'll take care of it.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
So I tell a.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Story in the writing. My mother's best friend was a hairdresser,
and my mother took me to her apartment to get
my first PERM. I was ten and that thing was
burning my cerebral cortex and I was like, if it's
kind of burning, she says, you got to leave it
on longer, k if you want to look pretty. And
(33:53):
I hate the name Ka. My name is Kira. I
never liked that nickname. Throughout my life. People called it
that because it couldn't say here parcically, they can't.
Speaker 3 (34:01):
Say black girls names.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
I hated the idea that I had to suffer through
the label being tender headed, even as an adult. I mean,
I've left Solarans. When they bring that up, I'm like,
I'm not coming back. When you call me tender headed,
I'm telling you I'm in pain, and you just keep
doing what you're doing.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
All of these things.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Have shaped how we then say twerk as young girls,
or dance when I was young to she's a super freak.
She's super freaky. She's a very freaky girl.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
The time you don't take home to mother.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
So we've been entrained into an ideology that then, ultimately,
I want to say that people might not be happy
with this, but women are sustaining misogyny more than men,
and it's not intentional. It's that we've been entrained and
socialized into that oppression such that we are the progenitors
(34:56):
of the oppression to other girls and women. Girls and
women are trying to fight that off by If your
mother says, don't date that boy, you do it anyhow.
If someone says this is not a good thing for
you to be doing, you do it anyhow. This might
not be helpful. Like I said, it's only been since
I've been a late adult that I've begun to confront
(35:17):
those things through therapy, through journaling, through the research that
I'm doing for this book. When I have students sit down,
especially black women in my classes, and analyze the music
that they used to listen to and play with as
adolescents young adolescens, one woman was like, if my grandmother
knew what I was doing, I was interacting with all
(35:38):
kinds of adults. Said I never told her about why
because I don't want to lose my phone. I don't
want to lose my attachment to something that feels like connection.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
But it's false.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Oudro Lord calls that the pornographic, the erotic is real.
The pornographic is the thing that is not. It's plastic sensation,
it's plastic feeling. Don't get hormones from it. You don't
get the good hormones of just the thing that you
get when you have a child, or with a baby,
or with your line, with your partner. There are hormones
(36:10):
that make you feel human, and you cannot get that
from a phone, no matter how hard you try. You're
only getting your own hormones. Right.
Speaker 1 (36:21):
More from our conversation after the break, So, you mentioned
that you were, you know, one of the early women
writing that. You said there were only about five of
you writing about hip hop. I would love to hear
(36:41):
your thoughts around like the evolution of hip hop, because
it sounds like it nicely dovetails into the book you're writing,
right like, Yeah, I'm sure that you've seen quite a
difference in the content that's being discussed but I also
think there are probably more hip hop artists that are women. Now,
what are your thoughts around like how hip hop has
transformed and.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
What does that mean? Bra Black Ye I love to
ask a question, So I'm going to test you. Okay,
how many women do you think we're topping the billboard
charts in two thousand and four? Now, two thousand and five,
the Grammy Foundation introduced the first female rap category. Okay,
so how many women do you think topped the billboard
(37:21):
charts in two thousand and four? So this was about
five I give you choices, Okay, three, five, eight or fifteen?
Speaker 1 (37:34):
It's eight?
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Three, yeah, it was fifteen.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
There was Queen latifah MCOs Love, Missy Elliott was around,
Bill Kim has already been on the scene, Foxy Brown.
There were fifteen women on the top of the billboard
charts at that time. We had another resurfacing in twenty fourteen.
We're like, this is the year of the female rapper.
(37:58):
This era COVID has seen a plethora, just a wonderful
array of women. Maybe at the top of the charts
they all somewhat look alike, but from Rhapsody to Nicki
Minaje to I mean, we still have a little bit
of a spectrum, but at the top in the commercial realm,
it still looks kind of the same. But then in
(38:21):
the background there are just a host of women, So
it is related. It's funny. In mine, I teach a
hip hop class at U Albany, and I had one
hundred and forty students in two sections, at seventy in
each section, and we did a poster session. We have
a big research poster event where we paired hot girls
(38:42):
with hidden architects. So hip hop began by the latest
loure of history making hip hop again with Cool Herk
at a party in August eleventh, nineteen seventy three. But
it was his sister Cimby Campbell lastly through the party
and invited her little brother to come. And so that's
seventy three, and by seventy nine, Sylvia Robinson had the
(39:05):
first rap label, sugar Hill Records, with her husband Joe.
So we have a hot girl and a hidden figure.
I love for the girls to be young. There's Wonder Girl,
a Canadian beat maker and producer who was on Jay
Z's platinum selling album Magna Carter. She won a contest
when she was nine and then sixteen.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
There's MC Light, There's.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Rock San Chante at fourteen. There's Shah Rack, the first
female rapper on cassette, who was on the first group,
the Fwanky four plus one that appeared on Saturday Night
Live in nineteen eighty one. There's the Fantastic four Double
Dutch team, the Champions of nineteen eighty who are on
the first international rap tour in nineteen eighty two to France,
(39:52):
Germany and England. And I just found that a woman
who was a part of hip hop double Dutch and
rapping and be girling in France has been doing a
study since nineteen eighty four when she began being a
part of hip hop about probably the influence of the
Fantastic Four Double Dutch Champions when they were touring in
(40:12):
nineteen eighty two. Is the only girls, the only females,
the only women on that tour with Africa Manbada Graham, Mixer,
DST and Rock Steady Crew. I'm trying to with my book,
on one hand, heal the way we or help us rethink.
Have another think about how hip hop has not been
(40:34):
for us while black women, as I've just described, have
been dominating the architecture of hip hop. Behind the soundboard
in the CEO boardroom, there's a white woman named Monica
Lynch who was president of Tommy Boar Records. That's how
we got digital underground in Tupac. That's how Queen Latifah
(40:56):
got her first record label. There's just so many women.
I've just not been telling their stories. Half the story
has never been told. We don't tell. I've been at
four major social innovation conferences in the last five years,
and a lot of them during Black Lives Matter were
hiring women DJs, even at National Women's Studies two years ago.
(41:19):
And these female DJs come in and play male artists,
Drake when I go up and say, hey, can you
play more women? Because you know, if you don't play them,
they don't get paid, they still won't change. So we've
got a lot of work. And I think that these
posters that I did with my students, like maybe eighty
people came through our post to session, but I know
(41:42):
that the students have been changed. If each of them
tell three people, and then those three people tell three people,
we can impact three thousand people. And if those three
thousand people tell three people, it exponentially grows that women
have always been a part of hip hop. Girls in
particular happened really influential in the propagation of the perpetuation
(42:04):
of the promotion of behind the scenes on record in communities.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Of hip hop.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
The best story is Ava du Verna began as a
rapper and did in that no bit. Her first film
is based on an underground indie scene from South central
I mean in the hood run by a woman my age, beholl.
The documentaries on YouTube called The Good Life. They were
not allowed to cuss, don't touch the paintings on the wall,
(42:32):
and they were good to women. They really respected women.
They let them be a part of the community instead
of be one of the boys.
Speaker 3 (42:41):
You know.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
I'm trying to help people be inspired by the journeys
that black girls and women bring, not only to our
communities but to the nation because.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
We have had to do what.
Speaker 2 (42:53):
Asia Wilson writes about about that story on the birthday party,
We have had to overcome a lot problem is who
comes for us, who comes, you know, nurturing us. Even
my partners like I can't really see when you're upset,
and I'm like, well, you got to train yourself to
do that. Because you know, if you just stop maybe
(43:15):
reading this and read the situation, you should know that
this situation ain't for anybody, and that I might not
be showing what I feel, but you could ask me.
You could ask me how was that? Because if I
was in your shoes, that would be challenging for me. Yeah,
(43:36):
we bear the truth of what African philosophy is all
about to me. Not the people who are corrupt in
the Congo, not the men who run these countries who
are corrupt, but the women who remind us that being together,
(43:56):
helping people heal, understanding that heard people hurt people, and
trying to both help but also sometimes help is to
distance oneself, to protect oneself first and foremost, put the
mask on yourself first. Nobody promised that it was going
to be easy. But you can find a way to
make life simple. But I like, I'm sure you're doing
(44:17):
the listeners to your podcast. No, you're not supposed to
do it alone. We were not designed to be alone.
We were not built to be alone. There's a lot
of noise up here, a lot of distortion, a lot
of things that need to be ironed out. Like I'm
always telling my students, I'm like, if your teacher says
(44:38):
write five hundred words, how many of you are written
over five hundred words? Didn't make a difference? No, then
why do you keep doing that? Or? Yeah, I learned
so much from my students. I have to give them
just much love, much flowers, much props. I asked my
(44:59):
student about how they felt. I was talking about Megan,
miss Stallion's name, which came from her being cat called
when she was fifteen, and she went home to her
uncle and said, unt, what does stallion mean? Who were
they used in the South to groom girls? He said, oh,
that just means you're tall and pretty. And I said,
how many of you in my class? How many of
(45:21):
you have felt uncomfortable when somebody talked to you in
a certain way when you were in high school? A
dozen women raise their hand, and when I asked them
how they felt about it, they said, I felt guilty,
I felt shamed. I felt this, And I'm like, why
are you feeling Why aren't you saying they should feel guilty?
They feel shame. But that's because we don't understand psychology.
(45:43):
We don't understand neuroscience, we don't understand how adolescent brain
is affected by things in different ways than the.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
Child brain or the adult brain.
Speaker 2 (45:53):
I wish we were teaching psychology and public health for
your everyday use like Black Girls play Mine. What do
I need to fit on.
Speaker 3 (46:03):
To this sixty year old body?
Speaker 2 (46:05):
That you need for your body and your background and
your place in the family and your place growing up
in abject poverty versus being in a wealthy family that
neglected you. Yeah, and so there's a lot you think
we should do. But you gotta always start with big door,
(46:26):
swing on little hinges. You gotta start small. It's overwhelming. Otherwise, Yeah,
it's really overwhelming. But we come from we are the
product of realized dreams, and we got to remember to
hold those two things. It might not look good today,
but this too shall pass.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
This sounds like this is gonna be a very powerful
follow up to already incredible Firend's book. So I know
people will be very excited to you tune in and
check it out once it's available. So tell us actter going,
where can we stay connected with you so that we
can stay updated about when the book and everything comes out.
Speaker 2 (47:03):
Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. You can find me a Kira
Gaunt or some variation of that Curra non PhD. I
am not on Twitter. I have a website called Kiraosity.
Curiosity is my old brand from my Twitter days. Curiosity
didn't kill the cat, so it's kyr my first name,
the letter O and the word city Kira of the city.
(47:25):
My heart belongs to Brooklyn, really or my news site,
which is my Black Girlsplay dot com named after the
film Black Girl's Play. I'm trying to build a community,
trying to launch this baby book out into the world
with community. There are so many resources. You can find
(47:45):
Black Girl's Play, a story of handgames on Disney Plus,
and there's also a portal on YouTube where you can
probably buy for two dollars and ninety nine cents or
something from ESPN and I have a lot of content
on YouTube and search for. I'm a singer as well.
I'm a jazz vocalist, so you can find some of
my singing. And I have an album you can find
(48:08):
on iTunes called be the True Revolution, quoted after the
newly ancestored dearly departed Nikki Giovanni from one of her
poems called when I Die, I hope that life knows
that I know that touch is the true Revolution.
Speaker 3 (48:24):
So be the true revolution. It's the name of the
album beautiful.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
We will be short to include all of those in
the show notes so that people can access them. Thank
you so much for sending some time with me today.
I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Thank you so much, Good joy, thank you.
Speaker 1 (48:43):
I'm so glad Doctor Gaunt was able to join me
for this conversation. I hope today's episode reminded you just
how powerful our play has always been, how those claps,
steps and songs weren't just games but blueprints for our brilliance, creativity,
and resistance. To learn more about doctor go, make sure
to visit the show notes at Therapy for Blackgirls dot
com slash session four twenty, and don't forget to text
(49:06):
this episodes to two of your girls right now and
tell them to check out the episode.
Speaker 3 (49:10):
Did you know?
Speaker 1 (49:10):
You can leave us a voicemail with your questions or
suggestions for the podcast. Do you have books or movies
you'd like us to review, or even have thoughts about
topics you'd like to hear us discuss. Drop us a
voice message at Memo dot fm slash Therapy for Black
Girls and you just might hear it on the show.
If you're looking for a therapist in your area, visit
our therapist directory at Therapy for Blackgirls dot com slash directory.
(49:33):
This episode was produced by Elise Ellis, Indytubu and Tyree Rush.
Editing was done by Dennison Bradford. Thank y'all so much
for joining me again this week. I look forward to
continuing this conversation with you all real soon.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
Take good care.
Speaker 3 (49:53):
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