September 20, 2022 • 40 mins
Growing up in church, there were a couple times I threw away my “secular” music. There are whole eras of music I missed because of this. Listen in for how I went back for the music I missed and why I no longer use the term “secular” music.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Hey, y'all, welcome back to this week's episode of her
with Amina Brown, and last week we were talking about music.
We were talking about Janet Jackson, whom I love very much.
I hope that you were inspired to go back and
listen to some of her music. Like if you ever
had like a work day that you were like struggling
to get through some or you have like a monotonous
(00:59):
task that you you know, you're cleaning up or you're
working with an excel sheet, you just need like some motivation,
you can turn on Janet's music and or if you
just need a little dance party for yourself, you need
to get that, you know, I need to get that
dance it out moment that Shonda rhimes loves to give us.
You know what I'm saying. You can do that with
Janet's music. So I hope you did that. And that
(01:19):
reminded me as I was trying to think about like
why were there certain eras of time that I remember
like listening to Janet's music and other eras I didn't,
and then I remember that's because I went through some
seasons where I threw my music away and I wanted
to dedicate an episode to this. I want to especially
dedicate this episode to people who grew up in a
(01:41):
very particular Christian environment. I want to dedicate this to you.
For those of you that are listening and are like,
what are you talking about? Why would you ever throw
your music away? I'm gonna Bring you a little bit
into some conservative Christian culture, some Evangelical Christian culture that
maybe you didn't want to know about, but I'm just
gonna take you in there so you know how some
things went. So I'm even I'm even gonna go back
(02:03):
beyond my own history, because my family on both sides,
my Mom's side and my dad's side, both have roots
in the Pentecostal Holiness Church and one of the tenants
of I guess, I guess I should say it's almost
not a tenant of the faith, but it's a tenant
(02:23):
of what was supposed to be your social behavior if
you were a person who consider yourself to be a
Christian and you also attended a pentecostal holiness church, because
my mom also shared this with me that this was
true for her generation as well, that your your social
behavior was supposed to be as non secular as possible
(02:46):
and secular in these environments meant the world, right, because
one of the tenants of the faith, if you were
in more of a pentecostal holiness kind of Christian environment,
is that people who were Christians were supposed to be
separated from air quotes the world right, that the world
(03:08):
was the dint of Sin. Okay. This is why, even
when we think about early Blues Music and UH different
like Juke joint scenes that you may have seen in
the movies, right, that there were always people who were,
you know, supposed to be very churchgoing folks and they
would not either want to be in sort of this
(03:31):
juke joint setting where there was gonna be music about
about love, romance, sex, about things that weren't considered to
be godly, right, Um. Or some of them did want
to go if they just didn't want to be caught
or seen there by other church people. Right. So this,
this narrative has been going on for a very long
time in different cultures, but in very specific ways. Went
(03:54):
on in a lot of black church culture in America, right,
and went on in many other Christian cultures as well,
because I have white friends who also say they have
these experiences growing up too. So by the time I'm
growing up, my mom is back in church, the church
that I grew up in. I have to have to
say I give Kudos to the church I grew up
(04:16):
in because we were allowed as teenagers to explore the arts,
you know. So this is a time when, you know,
we were wanting to do rap and hip hop dance
and all sorts of, you know, things that were popular
in mainstream culture. We wanted to do that in church
(04:37):
and I have to give Kudos to our church. They
allowed us to do that. That they weren't like, oh no,
we don't want to hear that wrap in this church.
They would allow us to do it, you know, as
long as we agree that those wraps, those dances, would
be about God. Right. Okay, so I became a Christian
when I was twelve years old and I don't remember
(05:00):
anyone telling me to do this, but I just remember
having this and maybe someone did and I just can't
remember it, but I just remember having this instinct to
throw my music away. And I've always been a person
that loved music. I have musicians on both sides of
my family. My Dad himself as a musician. So I've
just always loved music. Any of you that have been
(05:23):
reading my work, my work like my books, for a
while or have been to my shows or, you know,
been exposed to my art, uh know that music is
a big part of that. For me, music is very
foundational for me. You know, my dad was a big
earth linded fire fan. Um, any of you that listened
to my behind the poetry episode on the Poem Key
of g you'll hear me talking about there a lot
(05:46):
of the early music that was really foundational for me.
So my initial growing up was not a growing up
where US, air quotes, secular and air quote sacred music,
were separated. My initial upbringing, until I was twelve years old,
everything was kind of meshed together. You know, I would
(06:07):
hear Earth when in fire, when I was with my dad.
You know, I might hear Tremaine Hawkins with my mom.
I might hear a James Cleveland Song or an Andre
Crouch Song at my grandmother's Church. You know, there were
there were all sorts of places where that music was
coming to me right as a kid. And then when
(06:27):
I turned twelve we moved to Texas. By this time
to San Antonio. My mom had had a period of
time where she wasn't going to church and then um
she started going back to church and I decided, okay,
you know, I think I want to become a Christian
like seems seems all right from what I'm learning in church,
and I just had this instinct to start getting rid
(06:49):
of my music. And at that time this is three
so I was listening to I bought my first CDs.
My first two CDs were T LC s on the
TLC tip and S W V's debut album. Those were
both my first CDs that I ever bought and played
in my little boom box in my room. And this
(07:09):
was in the era of the magazines, right, so I
remember right on magazine. I'm sure there are a bunch
of magazines I'm forgetting, but if you were a person
who loved hip hop at this time and loved Black Music,
loved R and B, there were magazines where you'd like
look through them and they'd interview your artists and have
(07:30):
these posters and stuff that you could take out. So
my wall was all posters of artists I loved and
little cutouts from the magazine and I just threw everything
away in in my attempt to do what I felt
I needed to do to sort of be devoted to
this faith that I had just discovered or rediscovered, because
(07:54):
I grew up around Church going folks, but I had
never really made that decision for myself. Right. So from
don't ask me a lot about the music that was
on the radio because I don't know now. Like what
I was saying in last week's episode, I was still
(08:17):
watching music videos sometimes because at this time of my upbringing,
you know, there were shows that came on around that
time that we were just getting home from school, so
we would rush home to try to watch trl or
catch one oh six in park. You know, we would
want to watch these TV shows and we would call
our friends and stuff. So I remember still watching music
(08:38):
videos sometimes, but I wasn't really listening to the radio
and I wasn't really listening to the artists enough, ninety six,
to buy their music and listen to it. Okay, this
is when I entered my era of listening to Gospel
Music and of course, like I told Y'all, you know,
I grew up in a very churchgoing family. So My
(09:01):
grandmother and my dad both played piano for choirs Um
as I was growing up, so I knew a lot
of choir music that way, but I never really listened
to it on my own until my mom started going
to the church that we went to while I was
growing up and I started singing in the choir and
so I just got all like swallowed up and trying
(09:22):
to listen to as much gospel as I could. So
I was listening to John P key and has a
Kaya Walker. This was the Arrow where Kirk Franklin originally debuted. Um,
I think the ninety six was really when Fred Hammond
was still a part of the group commissioned. So I
wasn't listening listening to commission then. For those of you
who are Gospel Music heads, I didn't actually get into
(09:45):
Fred Hammond until later in the nineties, which we'll talk about.
But all of that like early to mid nineties. That Um,
Donald Lawrence, any of the choirs. I listened to a
lot of Gospel choir music. I listened to you, Linda Adams,
I think maybe Mary Mary was sort of starting to
come around when when we're getting into sort of the
(10:06):
late nineties, but I really just fell in love with
choir music and one of the things that I really
loved about it obviously it was music that just had
a message I believed in. But I also loved the
baselines and Um, I loved the Oregon and the drum
patterns and I love the harmonies and I love the
parts in Gospel Music where the music would cut out.
(10:26):
So Um, it was cool because even though I wasn't
listening to a lot of what would would what would
have been mainstream music or or pop music or hip
hop music of the time, I was still listening to
black music. So it's still had these Bluesy um R
and B kind of rootedness and I think gospels just
(10:47):
a fascinating genre of music to me because there are
ways that the mainstream music of the day Informs Gospel
and there were eras of time where it was gospel
that was informing how the singers and musicians and artists
were performing, even when they weren't performing in church settings. Right.
(11:07):
So I I love this for me, even though I
discovered later as I got older and, you know, had
more friends talking about what they were doing in ninety
four and ninety five, like I missed out on a
lot of that. Like I I knew. I'll tell y'all
a fun fact. I knew some of the instrumentals to
biggie's music better than I knew Biggia's wraps, because my
(11:28):
friends that I wrapped with in church, they would take
bigg east instrumentals and we would wrap two biggiest instrumentals
at Church. So we would wrapped all our little Jesus
raps two biggest instrumentals and the rest of our youth
group would be singing some other music to it and
I had no idea what they were singing. I'm pretty
(11:49):
sure we did a Jesus rap two totals. Can't you
see to the instrumental? I'm pretty sure we did that
and I was like, why are they singing along? What
are what are their mouths moving to? I didn't know
anything about that song. That's how like sheltered away from
that I was. So at some point in N I
(12:10):
get really interested in rap music because this is when
the cipher was really popular and I would see kids
at school a lot. I'll have to think about this, y'all.
was I seeing kids at school? I think I saw
it at Church first, because I was in Private School
for ninth and Tenth Grade and my private school was
predominantly white, so nobody was really like you know, knocking
(12:35):
beats on the table and stuff like that, that that
really was not happening at my private, predominantly White Christian
school that I went to ninth and tenth grade, but
for eleventh and Twelfth Grade I went to a public
school in San Antonio, one of the largest public schools
in the city, and so that like changed everything for
me culturally and in a lot of ways. So at Church, though,
(12:56):
was the first time that like, after the service, a
lot of the guy is that we're in our youth
group would sort of pull together this cipher and I would,
you know, step into the circle and listen to them
wrap and I just found it so fascinating because I
had been writing poetry since I was twelve, you know,
so I could hear that what they were saying, you know,
in the cipher sounded kind of like poems and I
(13:19):
had memorized other people's poems, and so I stepped into
the cipher and tried to do a part of Maya
Angelo's phenomenal woman to the beat box and one of
my friends, shout out to Iron Lee. I don't know
if Iran listens to this podcast, but shout out to him,
because after the cipher. He was like Yo, like why
don't you? Why don't you rap, like you were able
(13:40):
to do that with my Angelo's poem? Like why don't
you try like writing a rap? And this is this.
You know, they'll say, what's the story you could tell
about yourself? That would be really on brand. This story
I'm about to tell y'all is very on brand for me,
because as soon as he said that to me, I
immediately went to researching. This is this is very own
(14:02):
brand from me. No, okay, immediately went to researching and
I just found or bought. I don't know how I
did this in my mother's house. I'm trying to think
about this, although I will say from my mom, though,
(14:31):
my mom like like. I think if I had tried
to buy like a bone thugs and harmony album at
the time, like my mom want to let that fly,
because she would have looked at that and been like
I'm not gonna have the devil in my house. And
those of you who know bone thugs and harmony know
exactly what I'm talking about, but if you don't know
and you Google it, you will look and see what
I'm talking about. My mom wouldn't have been for that,
(14:52):
but my mom was was more like open minded about
that than some other people's parents. My mom did want
me to like listen to good music, so she let
me listen to the the rest of development. You know, if
she listened to it and it didn't sound like it
was somebody like talking real crazy, you know, and she
felt like she could you know, at least like a
(15:12):
test that they were not saying terrible things that I
need to be listening to, like, she would be with it,
you know. So I don't know how I came across
these things. No, I do know how. Some of these
things that I didn't have at home, some of my
friends did. So they would make cassette tapes from the
CDs that their parents let them by. If we weren't
(15:33):
sure that, my mom let me listen to it. So
this is how I got a cassette of some of
the songs off of the Fujis the score. Um, my
friend trey had a cassette of the roots album. Do
you want more? Because I think that's the album that
has silent treatment on it, and he handed me that.
My little high school boyfriend, Um, he gave me a
(15:56):
cassette tape of the boss know it wasn't the boss,
it was boss, but her single was called deeper and deeper.
It was like a cassette that had bosses, the bosses
Bruce Springsteen, just to be clear. So boss it was.
It was a cassette that had deeper and deeper like
(16:16):
the radio version on one side and then on the
other side it had like different remixes and, you know,
other other songs that we didn't know of bosses yet. Right.
So I just went and like studied as many woman
MCS as I could. You know, I listened to as
(16:37):
much Lauren Hill as I could. I would fast forward
to get to her versus on that little cassette tape
and listen to her and rewind it and listen to
her and rewind it. Um, missy Elliott had also come
out around this time, so I was listening to her
a lot. Um, I listened to boss, I listened to rage.
I would fast forward through TLC songs to listen to
(16:59):
left ive. So just getting a chance to hear like
the sounds of their voices and what they were talking about. Uh.
That sent me back into an era where I basically
started listening again to all the music I threw away
so I did that through the late nineties. I graduated
(17:19):
from High School in and came to Atlanta to go
to college. So this is a really it was sort
of an interesting era for me to return to listening
to music that wasn't Gospel, because it was almost like
a perfect era for hip hop and what was going
to become, uh, the new soul music of the time.
(17:43):
So by the time I'm going to college, Lauren Hill
has released the miseducation of Lauren Hill, outcast has released
a quim and I, and I'm in Texas right. So
it's interesting to think I feel like a historian talking
to Y'all now, but I like to say these things
because things are different, you know, than they were then
and one of the things that I really appreciate now
(18:06):
about my time of growing up is how regional music
was then. So in some ways I appreciate in other
ways it made things hard, right. So for those of
us who were hip hop fans, it was sort of like,
you know, because hip hop was born in New York,
it took a long time for hip hop from the south,
or hip hop from the Midwest or hip hop from
the West to get that same respect right. So those
(18:27):
parts of it being regional were not so great, but
there were great things about some things being regional, and
that me living in Texas. We were hearing more like
masterp no limit, you know. We were hearing more like
slim thug, we were hearing more of our regional music.
Then we were New York music at the time and
(18:48):
the music that really infiltrated in Texas, at least a
part where I was in San Antonio, that infiltrated US
sooner than a lot of New York music was music
from the south. Like I remember when outcast it was
like right at that like nine seven, going into that.
I was hearing people, you know, at the lunch table
(19:09):
being like who is this? You know, come listen to this,
he said, am I crooked letter, like everything okay. So
I just remember like feeling sort of that cultural wave coming.
It's really interesting to think about that and that that
wave was happening at the time that I was graduating
high school going into college. So, of course, coming from
(19:31):
Texas and then going moving to Atlanta for college, then
it was like I was getting exposed to this whole
other new music on the outcast was obviously a huge
deal here in Atlanta and Um, you G K and
you know, there was just man, there was like it
was almost like being in Atlanta. I was getting even more. Ironically,
(19:53):
I was getting exposed even more Um Texas music and
then other southern music, because all of that was really
popular in Atlanta period. Right. So it's just a fascinating
thing to think about that era of time moving here. Okay,
so then I get to college. You're all gonna Laugh.
(20:14):
I get to college in Ninety Eight. I am coming
from this very, you know, sheltered kind of church girl
background and I was basically sort of given my marching
orders by, you know, my family and all of the
people that were in my church community that really, you know,
just were behind me and supporting me and wanting me
(20:36):
to succeed, you know, and sort of the marching orders
were like, all right, you need to get to Atlanta,
you need to find a church to join and go
to and just kind of like bury yourself in that
so Atlanta doesn't turn you out. Was Pretty much what
they were saying, without saying it quite that way. So
I basically, even though I'm a Jannat Jackson Fan, and
(20:56):
she was like, when I'm when I was seventeen, I
did what people told me. I'm pretty sure I did
that long passed being seventeen years old, because I was like, well,
that's what they said, that's what I'm gonna do. I
came to Atlanta, found a little church to join, got
to be a part of this campus ministry. So I
was doing that and then I went through another period
of what, throwing my music away, and this time I'm
(21:20):
pretty sure I remember some people telling us that, that
we were getting that that message, you know, sort of
like you know you, you are what you listen to,
and some of why you're struggling with this or that
is because, you know, you don't listen to enough music.
That's about God, you know. So, child, I throw away
(21:42):
my music again, y'all, I was talking about got to
college and through my music away again, and I know
I'm not alone in this. If you're listening and you
also threw your music away at various times because of
your church upbringing, please do me so I know I'm
not by myself. If you give me permission, I would
(22:03):
totally share your stories in my instagram stories, because I
know that I have other friends who also are like yeah, no,
I don't know the music during that time period because
I I threw all my CDs away. So I threw
my CDs away, bless my heart. I threw away the
miseducation of Lauren Hill. And during this era was when
(22:25):
Fred Hammond's pages of life double album had just come out,
and so that that piece of Gospel Music is still
just a very important piece of music for me and
really carried me through a lot of those early years
of college. And so I just you know, Fred Hammond
(22:45):
put out quite a few albums after that and I
would buy his albums and it was during this time,
during my college time, that I was more exposed to
like White Church and White Church music, what we would
consider to be like your CCM, more a lot of
what worship music sounds like. Right. It's very different from
like the Gospel Worship Music that I grew up with
(23:07):
growing up. So as I got exposed to that CCM
music between college and my early Um early twenties after graduating,
you know, I was listening to more of that. So
there's an era between like ninety nine and two thousand five.
Don't ask me much of anything about what was on
(23:27):
the radio tour at that time, because I just don't know.
You know, I was in my friends cars. They were
listening to different CCM artists of that time. We were
listening to jars of clay and we were listening to watermark.
At that time. You were really an old school uh
CCM listener, if you know who I'm talking about when
(23:49):
I said that we were listening to wow two thousand
two thousand one. We were just listening to those CDs.
So we were listening to radio and by then it
depended on where I was living if I had a TV.
So I also wasn't watching music videos. So there's a
whole era of time right there that I was just
(24:10):
listening to worship music. And those of you that have
been listening to the podcast to know that right out
of college was really when my poetry career, air quotes,
you know, started and that started in a lot of
white church environments. So I also got exposed to a
lot of those CCM artists from that day and kind
of started listening to them and, you know, initially, I
(24:33):
think it was cool to me at that time to
hear this music that to me sounded like this, you know,
love letter to God that that found Um that. That
seems like very intriguing to me at the time, you know.
So I got really involved in that. Okay. Then somewhere
around two thousand five, some things started to go awry
(24:58):
at the church I was going too. So it's sort
of like, I think the other thing that happened between
ninety nine and oh five is that I was back
kind of in a church bubble too. I was working
in church when I graduated, as far as traveling with
Christian organizations, going to different church environments. I was very
(25:19):
heavily involved in my local church, with the college ministry there.
So I really outside of church activities. I really didn't
have a life, you know, like I wasn't going on dates,
I wasn't going to concerts, I wasn't going to you know,
comedy shows or art galleries. It was like church stuff
(25:39):
people's houses that I went to church with. If I
went to the movies, I was going there with people
I went to church with. And then it was like
all of a sudden it got to be two thousand
five and things at the church were getting wildly unhealthy
and people were leaving the church and we were all
left to decide where we gonna stay. What do we
(26:01):
think of the people who leave the church? Like it
was all this turmoil, and it was then that I
think I was really having more of a creative crisis
where I was like, and I think I've shared this
story on the podcast before, but I'll say it here
in brief again for those of you that may just be,
you know, getting to this episode and you're like, I
just got here, so I'm gonna tell you the story.
But I think it was also around this time that I,
(26:23):
you know, I have been performing poetry, but I wanted
to have time to go back out to the open mic,
because the open mic was not necessarily where my career
started in the sense of where I started to get paid,
but the open mic was where I started to learn
how to how to write well and how to find
my voice, how to perform well. So anything I took
(26:45):
into these sort of career and professional settings that were
paying me, I learned that from the roots of these
environments that I had been in, and they were, truthfully,
most of them very specifically black poetry environments, right, and
so I think I started to feel kind of untethered
from that, you know, and I returned back to the
(27:06):
open mic setting and I had this poet shout out
to Megan Voert Um, who said to me, Hey, like,
I really like your work, but I just feel like
I never get to know you. I never I never
see you, you know, in your work. And it was
really odd to me, Um, to hear her say that,
because it kind of shook me a little bit and
(27:27):
she moved she moved on. We talked about something else,
but I remember driving home after she said that and
just really like thinking about what is it about my
work that she can't see me? And the truth is
the idea, and a lot of CCM and worship Music Um,
is this idea that we we are not supposed to
(27:49):
be seen as humans. The idea is that God is
supposed to shine, so God is all of this something
and as humans, that we're nothing. That's a lot of
the basics you know of Um, a lot of worship
music then and a lot of worship music that's out now.
So as a poet that was doing poetry in these environments,
I had started to take on that type of writing
(28:12):
and that type of mentality in my poetry and when
she said that to me, it really shook me because
I did think about sort of the roots I was
coming from, and even in a lot of Gospel Music,
especially the Gospel Music I grew up on. You know,
I don't listen to current Gospel Music, so I cannot
speak to that, unfortunately, but, Um, the gospel music that
was formative to me. It had this way of acknowledging
(28:36):
you as a human, acknowledging that you are a person
who struggles, acknowledging sometimes so you are a person who, Um,
who is oppressed, you know, who is dealing with things
and systems beyond you, know your own control, and that
there is a god who liberates right and so I
think I started to think about that. You know, I
started the question like why am I feeling like I
(28:58):
need to disappear from my work and what God would
actually want that of me, Um, in general, but also
want that of me as a black woman. Why would
God want me to disappear? Why does God need me
to disappear for God to shine? Like God's gonna Shine Anyway.
And isn't God shining through all of this creation, like,
if we believe that God is the one making all
(29:21):
of us, isn't God shining through, you know, each of
our you know skin tones and hair textures and all
the things, you know. So I was contemplating a lot
during this time, and so I ended up returning not
only to some of the music I threw away but
in a way, returning to some of the roots of
(29:43):
music that I loved. So I remember I went back
and started listening to these Jackson five records. Like I
would get a lot of my music from Walmart because
there was some music that I wanted to listen to
that was mainstream music, but I didn't want to listen
to like all a cursing and everything. Sometimes I still don't, y'all,
(30:03):
to be honest. Sometimes I do, though. I'M NOT gonna
lie about that. Um. But back then, really so I
was buying a lot of music from Walmart, and so
I'd go into Walmart to get whatever rapper was out.
You know, I want to get their music so I
could listen to it, but I don't want to hear
the cuss words, right. And then Walmart was sometimes have
like on sale these compilation CDs and stuff, and so
(30:24):
that's really how I went back to listen to a
lot of older music, even music that, Um was popular
before I was born. So that was how I started
digging back into these old Jackson five records and I
remember I was just listening I don't remember what record
it was, but I was listening to this Jackson Five
(30:45):
C D and before I realized it I had just
been listening to that three weeks straight, just over and
over and over. Just the rhythms, the background vocals and, uh,
the Ad Libs, Oh man like, the way they were
produced just just fascinated. And then I would just go
down a rabbit hole like that. Went through the Jackson
(31:06):
fire for a while and then after I got through
all their records, went through, went back through Michael Jackson's
early records. Like some of these songs I knew, you know,
like a new thriller, and I knew, you know, working
day and night, like I knew some of the hits,
but I had never actually listened to the albums through
and through. So I went back and listened to those
early like off the wall and all the thriller the album,
(31:29):
and then that sent me to wanting to listen to
bill withers. Once I started looking more into like some
motown things, and then I got down a Shaka Khan
rabbit hole and then wanted to go back through stevie
wonders albums, and so I think in a certain way,
that returned to me this rooted nous in black music,
number one, but I think number two it also returned
(31:51):
to me this idea that Um music is not sacred
or secular, you know, like it was around this time
in my life that I decided I don't want to
categorize music like that anymore and that there are songs
that other people would deem to be secular that are
(32:11):
very sacred to me. Um, and truthfully, I would say
this is true of me today. There are many songs
that people today would call sacred, especially people who are
in the environments I used to be in that are
still in very evangelical environments, are Very Wide Evangelical spaces.
There are songs that they would consider to be very,
very sacred that are secular to me, you know. So
(32:35):
for me, I feel like what I discovered there and that,
you know, early, not even early twenties, probably mid twenties,
two into my early thirties, what I discovered about music
that's so powerful is that I think music really exists
to help us express all of life, to help us
express our humanity, and the holy moments as well, you know,
(32:59):
and at our humanity will experience holy moments. You know, Um,
that music is there to talk about leaves on the trees.
It's there to talk about how much your heart is
breaking when you have a breakup. was there to talk
about what it feels like to fall in love, what
it feels like to have good sex, you know, like
(33:20):
music is there for all of these things. Music is
also there to sing about, you know, your your thoughts
and feelings or prayers to God, like music is there
for for all of that, and I found that to be, uh,
something so powerful. You know, Um, I actually I was
on a tour once and Matt and I um. When
(33:42):
I say Matt, I'm talking about my husband and also
the producer of this podcast. And Uh, we have been
talking about for a while just as a podcast team,
Matt Lee and I um Lee, who's my podcast production
assistant and assistant and friend, just everything. Anyways, we have
been talking about me doing some episodes here where we
tell some road stories, and I am going to do that.
(34:05):
So I'll come back and share some of those with you.
But I thought about one in particular as it relates
to this episode. And Uh, Matt and I were on
a tour. I'm I'm I'm ciphering through the details of
the tour so that I cannot tell you enough details
that you would know how I'm talking about. But anyways,
we were on a tour and, uh, there were multiple acts,
(34:27):
multiple bands and and such and us, and we had
this you know, which which kind of happens when you're
on tour. You you sort of have these periods of
time during the day, because all the shows are at night, where,
you know, you kind of end up hanging out, whether
you want it to or not. You know, because you're
all on a bus, you kind of end up hanging
out with the production crew, the lighting folks or the
(34:51):
other bands, maybe on tour with, and we were on
tour with at that time what was a really well
known Christian band, and we were talking about music and
really kind of talking about the state of what was
considered to be Christian music at that time and how,
you know, a lot of people loved the message in
that music, but musically a lot of that music was
very like uninteresting. You know, it didn't jam, you know,
(35:13):
it didn't have good baselines, it didn't have musicality to
it that you also felt like wow, like impressed by
or that you felt impacted by even, you know. And
so we were talking about that with this very, very
well known Christian band that I won't say the name
of and, Um, although even if I said the name
somebody that are listening a lot, I don't know those people.
(35:33):
But anyways, and the leader of this very well known
Christian band he said, you know what, you know my
my wife and I, you know, we have however many
kids they had, and he was like, you know, Um,
and we only let our kids listen to Christian radio
because we never want our kids to hear all the
bad stuff that's in, you know, secular music. And so
(35:55):
I said, I said, you know, I don't have any
kids and I was like, but I kind of feel
like if I had kids, I don't know that I
would want them to just listen to Christian radio because, like,
how are they gonna know what a really good baseline
sounds like? How are they gonna know what an amazing
horn section could sound like? How are they gonna know
about harmonies and really good background vocalists or a very
(36:19):
well written song? You know. So I hope that if
I have kids, they get to listen to stevie wonder
or the Jackson five or some of those old motown records.
You know, I hope they get to hear some run
D M C and, you know, some other stuff so
that they know what good music sounds like, because that's
the one thing I feel like Christian radio is missing,
(36:41):
is actually good music. You know, and Y'all, some of Y'all,
are picking up on the fact that maybe I should
have picked up on the fact that I was totally
offending this man, because this is clearly how he makes
his money. It's making the music that I was basically
saying it's not good music. But I really didn't pick
up on it because I just thought, like shouldn't he
know that? Like shouldn't he know like shouldn't he know that?
(37:02):
But he didn't and he huffed and puffed and he
was very offended. But I never saw him again and
I really couldn't tell you his government name to this day,
to be honest. But I still stand by what I said,
you know, even though my my mom, you know, I
don't know, I have to ask her because I know
she listens to the podcast sometimes, like how she feels
about you know how her own spiritual journey like impacted
(37:24):
me as her kid, because I experienced sort of both
errors of her, you know, I experienced my mom, you know,
before she was going back to church and I experienced
her afterwards. But what I love about that is that
I got to experience a wide variety of music and
that's how I like to listen to music to this day.
I'm not, I will be honest with y'all, I'm not
(37:45):
a super ECLECTIC music listener. I like what I like,
you know, Um, inside the genres I like, I can
get interested in being eclectic, but I like what I like.
I like the type of hip hop where the MCS
are lyricists, where they are poets, where they are good writers.
That's the type of hip hop I like. I like
soul music. A lot of the hip hop I like
(38:08):
would also technically fall in the category of being soul
music on a level. I Still Love Gospel Music, I
still love Tremaine Hawkins and some of those old formative
songs for me, Um, I still love a good classic,
you know, Kurt Franklin Song, Um, and there's some new
music that I love, you know, like I totally fell
(38:30):
in love with Cardi B and I did not think
that I would, you know, love her music like I do.
Like I love Cardi B, I loved seeing Kendrick Lamar
come onto the scene as like a new MC Um.
I just I find different artists that I fall in
love with all the time. But I love that there's
a lot of music out there that we are not just,
(38:52):
you know, only into this one genre. Like. I love
that there's a lot of music to hear. I love
that music has the power to express a lot of
things to us and I love that I think music
is sacred, Um, but I don't necessarily categorize it as secular.
I think music is sacred, I think it's human, I
(39:13):
think it's beautiful and I don't really want to go
a day without listening to music. I was dating a
guy once who one of my questions I would ask
us when I was dating them is, you know, if
they could pick a song that they would want to
wake up to every day, or if they pick a
song that was like a motivator to them, what would
they pick? And I dated this guy once. He literally
(39:34):
got quiet and he was like, man, I don't know,
I don't really listen to music very much and I
was like wow, this dates over, this date is over.
I literally married a musician. What are we talking about?
That is one of the things that bonded my husband
and I is our love for music. It's one of
(39:55):
the things that bonds us to this day, all of
the Djs we've had opportunity to see to together all
of the live music acts we've had the chance to see.
So that's my story, Y'all, the music I threw away
and found again. I would love to get D M
s from you if you two throw away your music.
And another thing that I love about right now, about
all the access we have to music, is there's so
(40:17):
much music that you can find again. There's so much
music that maybe you were never even exposed to that
you can find. So I hope you do that. Talk soon, y'all.
(40:40):
Heart with Amina Brown is produced by Matt Owen for
SOB fee productions as a part of the Seneca Women
podcast network and partnership with I heart radio. Thanks for
listening and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the PODCAST.
Hey, y'all, welcome back to this week's episode of her
with Amina Brown, and last week we were talking about music.
We were talking about Janet Jackson, whom I love very much.
I hope that you were inspired to go back and
listen to some of her music. Like if you ever
had like a work day that you were like struggling
to get through some or you have like a monotonous
(00:59):
task that you you know, you're cleaning up or you're
working with an excel sheet, you just need like some motivation,
you can turn on Janet's music and or if you
just need a little dance party for yourself, you need
to get that, you know, I need to get that
dance it out moment that Shonda rhimes loves to give us.
You know what I'm saying. You can do that with
Janet's music. So I hope you did that. And that
(01:19):
reminded me as I was trying to think about like
why were there certain eras of time that I remember
like listening to Janet's music and other eras I didn't,
and then I remember that's because I went through some
seasons where I threw my music away and I wanted
to dedicate an episode to this. I want to especially
dedicate this episode to people who grew up in a
(01:41):
very particular Christian environment. I want to dedicate this to you.
For those of you that are listening and are like,
what are you talking about? Why would you ever throw
your music away? I'm gonna Bring you a little bit
into some conservative Christian culture, some Evangelical Christian culture that
maybe you didn't want to know about, but I'm just
gonna take you in there so you know how some
things went. So I'm even I'm even gonna go back
(02:03):
beyond my own history, because my family on both sides,
my Mom's side and my dad's side, both have roots
in the Pentecostal Holiness Church and one of the tenants
of I guess, I guess I should say it's almost
not a tenant of the faith, but it's a tenant
(02:23):
of what was supposed to be your social behavior if
you were a person who consider yourself to be a
Christian and you also attended a pentecostal holiness church, because
my mom also shared this with me that this was
true for her generation as well, that your your social
behavior was supposed to be as non secular as possible
(02:46):
and secular in these environments meant the world, right, because
one of the tenants of the faith, if you were
in more of a pentecostal holiness kind of Christian environment,
is that people who were Christians were supposed to be
separated from air quotes the world right, that the world
(03:08):
was the dint of Sin. Okay. This is why, even
when we think about early Blues Music and UH different
like Juke joint scenes that you may have seen in
the movies, right, that there were always people who were,
you know, supposed to be very churchgoing folks and they
would not either want to be in sort of this
(03:31):
juke joint setting where there was gonna be music about
about love, romance, sex, about things that weren't considered to
be godly, right, Um. Or some of them did want
to go if they just didn't want to be caught
or seen there by other church people. Right. So this,
this narrative has been going on for a very long
time in different cultures, but in very specific ways. Went
(03:54):
on in a lot of black church culture in America, right,
and went on in many other Christian cultures as well,
because I have white friends who also say they have
these experiences growing up too. So by the time I'm
growing up, my mom is back in church, the church
that I grew up in. I have to have to
say I give Kudos to the church I grew up
(04:16):
in because we were allowed as teenagers to explore the arts,
you know. So this is a time when, you know,
we were wanting to do rap and hip hop dance
and all sorts of, you know, things that were popular
in mainstream culture. We wanted to do that in church
(04:37):
and I have to give Kudos to our church. They
allowed us to do that. That they weren't like, oh no,
we don't want to hear that wrap in this church.
They would allow us to do it, you know, as
long as we agree that those wraps, those dances, would
be about God. Right. Okay, so I became a Christian
when I was twelve years old and I don't remember
(05:00):
anyone telling me to do this, but I just remember
having this and maybe someone did and I just can't
remember it, but I just remember having this instinct to
throw my music away. And I've always been a person
that loved music. I have musicians on both sides of
my family. My Dad himself as a musician. So I've
just always loved music. Any of you that have been
(05:23):
reading my work, my work like my books, for a
while or have been to my shows or, you know,
been exposed to my art, uh know that music is
a big part of that. For me, music is very
foundational for me. You know, my dad was a big
earth linded fire fan. Um, any of you that listened
to my behind the poetry episode on the Poem Key
of g you'll hear me talking about there a lot
(05:46):
of the early music that was really foundational for me.
So my initial growing up was not a growing up
where US, air quotes, secular and air quote sacred music,
were separated. My initial upbringing, until I was twelve years old,
everything was kind of meshed together. You know, I would
(06:07):
hear Earth when in fire, when I was with my dad.
You know, I might hear Tremaine Hawkins with my mom.
I might hear a James Cleveland Song or an Andre
Crouch Song at my grandmother's Church. You know, there were
there were all sorts of places where that music was
coming to me right as a kid. And then when
(06:27):
I turned twelve we moved to Texas. By this time
to San Antonio. My mom had had a period of
time where she wasn't going to church and then um
she started going back to church and I decided, okay,
you know, I think I want to become a Christian
like seems seems all right from what I'm learning in church,
and I just had this instinct to start getting rid
(06:49):
of my music. And at that time this is three
so I was listening to I bought my first CDs.
My first two CDs were T LC s on the
TLC tip and S W V's debut album. Those were
both my first CDs that I ever bought and played
in my little boom box in my room. And this
(07:09):
was in the era of the magazines, right, so I
remember right on magazine. I'm sure there are a bunch
of magazines I'm forgetting, but if you were a person
who loved hip hop at this time and loved Black Music,
loved R and B, there were magazines where you'd like
look through them and they'd interview your artists and have
(07:30):
these posters and stuff that you could take out. So
my wall was all posters of artists I loved and
little cutouts from the magazine and I just threw everything
away in in my attempt to do what I felt
I needed to do to sort of be devoted to
this faith that I had just discovered or rediscovered, because
(07:54):
I grew up around Church going folks, but I had
never really made that decision for myself. Right. So from
don't ask me a lot about the music that was
on the radio because I don't know now. Like what
I was saying in last week's episode, I was still
(08:17):
watching music videos sometimes because at this time of my upbringing,
you know, there were shows that came on around that
time that we were just getting home from school, so
we would rush home to try to watch trl or
catch one oh six in park. You know, we would
want to watch these TV shows and we would call
our friends and stuff. So I remember still watching music
(08:38):
videos sometimes, but I wasn't really listening to the radio
and I wasn't really listening to the artists enough, ninety six,
to buy their music and listen to it. Okay, this
is when I entered my era of listening to Gospel
Music and of course, like I told Y'all, you know,
I grew up in a very churchgoing family. So My
(09:01):
grandmother and my dad both played piano for choirs Um
as I was growing up, so I knew a lot
of choir music that way, but I never really listened
to it on my own until my mom started going
to the church that we went to while I was
growing up and I started singing in the choir and
so I just got all like swallowed up and trying
(09:22):
to listen to as much gospel as I could. So
I was listening to John P key and has a
Kaya Walker. This was the Arrow where Kirk Franklin originally debuted. Um,
I think the ninety six was really when Fred Hammond
was still a part of the group commissioned. So I
wasn't listening listening to commission then. For those of you
who are Gospel Music heads, I didn't actually get into
(09:45):
Fred Hammond until later in the nineties, which we'll talk about.
But all of that like early to mid nineties. That Um,
Donald Lawrence, any of the choirs. I listened to a
lot of Gospel choir music. I listened to you, Linda Adams,
I think maybe Mary Mary was sort of starting to
come around when when we're getting into sort of the
(10:06):
late nineties, but I really just fell in love with
choir music and one of the things that I really
loved about it obviously it was music that just had
a message I believed in. But I also loved the
baselines and Um, I loved the Oregon and the drum
patterns and I love the harmonies and I love the
parts in Gospel Music where the music would cut out.
(10:26):
So Um, it was cool because even though I wasn't
listening to a lot of what would would what would
have been mainstream music or or pop music or hip
hop music of the time, I was still listening to
black music. So it's still had these Bluesy um R
and B kind of rootedness and I think gospels just
(10:47):
a fascinating genre of music to me because there are
ways that the mainstream music of the day Informs Gospel
and there were eras of time where it was gospel
that was informing how the singers and musicians and artists
were performing, even when they weren't performing in church settings. Right.
(11:07):
So I I love this for me, even though I
discovered later as I got older and, you know, had
more friends talking about what they were doing in ninety
four and ninety five, like I missed out on a
lot of that. Like I I knew. I'll tell y'all
a fun fact. I knew some of the instrumentals to
biggie's music better than I knew Biggia's wraps, because my
(11:28):
friends that I wrapped with in church, they would take
bigg east instrumentals and we would wrap two biggiest instrumentals
at Church. So we would wrapped all our little Jesus
raps two biggest instrumentals and the rest of our youth
group would be singing some other music to it and
I had no idea what they were singing. I'm pretty
(11:49):
sure we did a Jesus rap two totals. Can't you
see to the instrumental? I'm pretty sure we did that
and I was like, why are they singing along? What
are what are their mouths moving to? I didn't know
anything about that song. That's how like sheltered away from
that I was. So at some point in N I
(12:10):
get really interested in rap music because this is when
the cipher was really popular and I would see kids
at school a lot. I'll have to think about this, y'all.
was I seeing kids at school? I think I saw
it at Church first, because I was in Private School
for ninth and Tenth Grade and my private school was
predominantly white, so nobody was really like you know, knocking
(12:35):
beats on the table and stuff like that, that that
really was not happening at my private, predominantly White Christian
school that I went to ninth and tenth grade, but
for eleventh and Twelfth Grade I went to a public
school in San Antonio, one of the largest public schools
in the city, and so that like changed everything for
me culturally and in a lot of ways. So at Church, though,
(12:56):
was the first time that like, after the service, a
lot of the guy is that we're in our youth
group would sort of pull together this cipher and I would,
you know, step into the circle and listen to them
wrap and I just found it so fascinating because I
had been writing poetry since I was twelve, you know,
so I could hear that what they were saying, you know,
in the cipher sounded kind of like poems and I
(13:19):
had memorized other people's poems, and so I stepped into
the cipher and tried to do a part of Maya
Angelo's phenomenal woman to the beat box and one of
my friends, shout out to Iron Lee. I don't know
if Iran listens to this podcast, but shout out to him,
because after the cipher. He was like Yo, like why
don't you? Why don't you rap, like you were able
(13:40):
to do that with my Angelo's poem? Like why don't
you try like writing a rap? And this is this.
You know, they'll say, what's the story you could tell
about yourself? That would be really on brand. This story
I'm about to tell y'all is very on brand for me,
because as soon as he said that to me, I
immediately went to researching. This is this is very own
(14:02):
brand from me. No, okay, immediately went to researching and
I just found or bought. I don't know how I
did this in my mother's house. I'm trying to think
about this, although I will say from my mom, though,
(14:31):
my mom like like. I think if I had tried
to buy like a bone thugs and harmony album at
the time, like my mom want to let that fly,
because she would have looked at that and been like
I'm not gonna have the devil in my house. And
those of you who know bone thugs and harmony know
exactly what I'm talking about, but if you don't know
and you Google it, you will look and see what
I'm talking about. My mom wouldn't have been for that,
(14:52):
but my mom was was more like open minded about
that than some other people's parents. My mom did want
me to like listen to good music, so she let
me listen to the the rest of development. You know, if
she listened to it and it didn't sound like it
was somebody like talking real crazy, you know, and she
felt like she could you know, at least like a
(15:12):
test that they were not saying terrible things that I
need to be listening to, like, she would be with it,
you know. So I don't know how I came across
these things. No, I do know how. Some of these
things that I didn't have at home, some of my
friends did. So they would make cassette tapes from the
CDs that their parents let them by. If we weren't
(15:33):
sure that, my mom let me listen to it. So
this is how I got a cassette of some of
the songs off of the Fujis the score. Um, my
friend trey had a cassette of the roots album. Do
you want more? Because I think that's the album that
has silent treatment on it, and he handed me that.
My little high school boyfriend, Um, he gave me a
(15:56):
cassette tape of the boss know it wasn't the boss,
it was boss, but her single was called deeper and deeper.
It was like a cassette that had bosses, the bosses
Bruce Springsteen, just to be clear. So boss it was.
It was a cassette that had deeper and deeper like
(16:16):
the radio version on one side and then on the
other side it had like different remixes and, you know,
other other songs that we didn't know of bosses yet. Right.
So I just went and like studied as many woman
MCS as I could. You know, I listened to as
(16:37):
much Lauren Hill as I could. I would fast forward
to get to her versus on that little cassette tape
and listen to her and rewind it and listen to
her and rewind it. Um, missy Elliott had also come
out around this time, so I was listening to her
a lot. Um, I listened to boss, I listened to rage.
I would fast forward through TLC songs to listen to
(16:59):
left ive. So just getting a chance to hear like
the sounds of their voices and what they were talking about. Uh.
That sent me back into an era where I basically
started listening again to all the music I threw away
so I did that through the late nineties. I graduated
(17:19):
from High School in and came to Atlanta to go
to college. So this is a really it was sort
of an interesting era for me to return to listening
to music that wasn't Gospel, because it was almost like
a perfect era for hip hop and what was going
to become, uh, the new soul music of the time.
(17:43):
So by the time I'm going to college, Lauren Hill
has released the miseducation of Lauren Hill, outcast has released
a quim and I, and I'm in Texas right. So
it's interesting to think I feel like a historian talking
to Y'all now, but I like to say these things
because things are different, you know, than they were then
and one of the things that I really appreciate now
(18:06):
about my time of growing up is how regional music
was then. So in some ways I appreciate in other
ways it made things hard, right. So for those of
us who were hip hop fans, it was sort of like,
you know, because hip hop was born in New York,
it took a long time for hip hop from the south,
or hip hop from the Midwest or hip hop from
the West to get that same respect right. So those
(18:27):
parts of it being regional were not so great, but
there were great things about some things being regional, and
that me living in Texas. We were hearing more like
masterp no limit, you know. We were hearing more like
slim thug, we were hearing more of our regional music.
Then we were New York music at the time and
(18:48):
the music that really infiltrated in Texas, at least a
part where I was in San Antonio, that infiltrated US
sooner than a lot of New York music was music
from the south. Like I remember when outcast it was
like right at that like nine seven, going into that.
I was hearing people, you know, at the lunch table
(19:09):
being like who is this? You know, come listen to this,
he said, am I crooked letter, like everything okay. So
I just remember like feeling sort of that cultural wave coming.
It's really interesting to think about that and that that
wave was happening at the time that I was graduating
high school going into college. So, of course, coming from
(19:31):
Texas and then going moving to Atlanta for college, then
it was like I was getting exposed to this whole
other new music on the outcast was obviously a huge
deal here in Atlanta and Um, you G K and
you know, there was just man, there was like it
was almost like being in Atlanta. I was getting even more. Ironically,
(19:53):
I was getting exposed even more Um Texas music and
then other southern music, because all of that was really
popular in Atlanta period. Right. So it's just a fascinating
thing to think about that era of time moving here. Okay,
so then I get to college. You're all gonna Laugh.
(20:14):
I get to college in Ninety Eight. I am coming
from this very, you know, sheltered kind of church girl
background and I was basically sort of given my marching
orders by, you know, my family and all of the
people that were in my church community that really, you know,
just were behind me and supporting me and wanting me
(20:36):
to succeed, you know, and sort of the marching orders
were like, all right, you need to get to Atlanta,
you need to find a church to join and go
to and just kind of like bury yourself in that
so Atlanta doesn't turn you out. Was Pretty much what
they were saying, without saying it quite that way. So
I basically, even though I'm a Jannat Jackson Fan, and
(20:56):
she was like, when I'm when I was seventeen, I
did what people told me. I'm pretty sure I did
that long passed being seventeen years old, because I was like, well,
that's what they said, that's what I'm gonna do. I
came to Atlanta, found a little church to join, got
to be a part of this campus ministry. So I
was doing that and then I went through another period
of what, throwing my music away, and this time I'm
(21:20):
pretty sure I remember some people telling us that, that
we were getting that that message, you know, sort of
like you know you, you are what you listen to,
and some of why you're struggling with this or that
is because, you know, you don't listen to enough music.
That's about God, you know. So, child, I throw away
(21:42):
my music again, y'all, I was talking about got to
college and through my music away again, and I know
I'm not alone in this. If you're listening and you
also threw your music away at various times because of
your church upbringing, please do me so I know I'm
not by myself. If you give me permission, I would
(22:03):
totally share your stories in my instagram stories, because I
know that I have other friends who also are like yeah, no,
I don't know the music during that time period because
I I threw all my CDs away. So I threw
my CDs away, bless my heart. I threw away the
miseducation of Lauren Hill. And during this era was when
(22:25):
Fred Hammond's pages of life double album had just come out,
and so that that piece of Gospel Music is still
just a very important piece of music for me and
really carried me through a lot of those early years
of college. And so I just you know, Fred Hammond
(22:45):
put out quite a few albums after that and I
would buy his albums and it was during this time,
during my college time, that I was more exposed to
like White Church and White Church music, what we would
consider to be like your CCM, more a lot of
what worship music sounds like. Right. It's very different from
like the Gospel Worship Music that I grew up with
(23:07):
growing up. So as I got exposed to that CCM
music between college and my early Um early twenties after graduating,
you know, I was listening to more of that. So
there's an era between like ninety nine and two thousand five.
Don't ask me much of anything about what was on
(23:27):
the radio tour at that time, because I just don't know.
You know, I was in my friends cars. They were
listening to different CCM artists of that time. We were
listening to jars of clay and we were listening to watermark.
At that time. You were really an old school uh
CCM listener, if you know who I'm talking about when
(23:49):
I said that we were listening to wow two thousand
two thousand one. We were just listening to those CDs.
So we were listening to radio and by then it
depended on where I was living if I had a TV.
So I also wasn't watching music videos. So there's a
whole era of time right there that I was just
(24:10):
listening to worship music. And those of you that have
been listening to the podcast to know that right out
of college was really when my poetry career, air quotes,
you know, started and that started in a lot of
white church environments. So I also got exposed to a
lot of those CCM artists from that day and kind
of started listening to them and, you know, initially, I
(24:33):
think it was cool to me at that time to
hear this music that to me sounded like this, you know,
love letter to God that that found Um that. That
seems like very intriguing to me at the time, you know.
So I got really involved in that. Okay. Then somewhere
around two thousand five, some things started to go awry
(24:58):
at the church I was going too. So it's sort
of like, I think the other thing that happened between
ninety nine and oh five is that I was back
kind of in a church bubble too. I was working
in church when I graduated, as far as traveling with
Christian organizations, going to different church environments. I was very
(25:19):
heavily involved in my local church, with the college ministry there.
So I really outside of church activities. I really didn't
have a life, you know, like I wasn't going on dates,
I wasn't going to concerts, I wasn't going to you know,
comedy shows or art galleries. It was like church stuff
(25:39):
people's houses that I went to church with. If I
went to the movies, I was going there with people
I went to church with. And then it was like
all of a sudden it got to be two thousand
five and things at the church were getting wildly unhealthy
and people were leaving the church and we were all
left to decide where we gonna stay. What do we
(26:01):
think of the people who leave the church? Like it
was all this turmoil, and it was then that I
think I was really having more of a creative crisis
where I was like, and I think I've shared this
story on the podcast before, but I'll say it here
in brief again for those of you that may just be,
you know, getting to this episode and you're like, I
just got here, so I'm gonna tell you the story.
But I think it was also around this time that I,
(26:23):
you know, I have been performing poetry, but I wanted
to have time to go back out to the open mic,
because the open mic was not necessarily where my career
started in the sense of where I started to get paid,
but the open mic was where I started to learn
how to how to write well and how to find
my voice, how to perform well. So anything I took
(26:45):
into these sort of career and professional settings that were
paying me, I learned that from the roots of these
environments that I had been in, and they were, truthfully,
most of them very specifically black poetry environments, right, and
so I think I started to feel kind of untethered
from that, you know, and I returned back to the
(27:06):
open mic setting and I had this poet shout out
to Megan Voert Um, who said to me, Hey, like,
I really like your work, but I just feel like
I never get to know you. I never I never
see you, you know, in your work. And it was
really odd to me, Um, to hear her say that,
because it kind of shook me a little bit and
(27:27):
she moved she moved on. We talked about something else,
but I remember driving home after she said that and
just really like thinking about what is it about my
work that she can't see me? And the truth is
the idea, and a lot of CCM and worship Music Um,
is this idea that we we are not supposed to
(27:49):
be seen as humans. The idea is that God is
supposed to shine, so God is all of this something
and as humans, that we're nothing. That's a lot of
the basics you know of Um, a lot of worship
music then and a lot of worship music that's out now.
So as a poet that was doing poetry in these environments,
I had started to take on that type of writing
(28:12):
and that type of mentality in my poetry and when
she said that to me, it really shook me because
I did think about sort of the roots I was
coming from, and even in a lot of Gospel Music,
especially the Gospel Music I grew up on. You know,
I don't listen to current Gospel Music, so I cannot
speak to that, unfortunately, but, Um, the gospel music that
was formative to me. It had this way of acknowledging
(28:36):
you as a human, acknowledging that you are a person
who struggles, acknowledging sometimes so you are a person who, Um,
who is oppressed, you know, who is dealing with things
and systems beyond you, know your own control, and that
there is a god who liberates right and so I
think I started to think about that. You know, I
started the question like why am I feeling like I
(28:58):
need to disappear from my work and what God would
actually want that of me, Um, in general, but also
want that of me as a black woman. Why would
God want me to disappear? Why does God need me
to disappear for God to shine? Like God's gonna Shine Anyway.
And isn't God shining through all of this creation, like,
if we believe that God is the one making all
(29:21):
of us, isn't God shining through, you know, each of
our you know skin tones and hair textures and all
the things, you know. So I was contemplating a lot
during this time, and so I ended up returning not
only to some of the music I threw away but
in a way, returning to some of the roots of
(29:43):
music that I loved. So I remember I went back
and started listening to these Jackson five records. Like I
would get a lot of my music from Walmart because
there was some music that I wanted to listen to
that was mainstream music, but I didn't want to listen
to like all a cursing and everything. Sometimes I still don't, y'all,
(30:03):
to be honest. Sometimes I do, though. I'M NOT gonna
lie about that. Um. But back then, really so I
was buying a lot of music from Walmart, and so
I'd go into Walmart to get whatever rapper was out.
You know, I want to get their music so I
could listen to it, but I don't want to hear
the cuss words, right. And then Walmart was sometimes have
like on sale these compilation CDs and stuff, and so
(30:24):
that's really how I went back to listen to a
lot of older music, even music that, Um was popular
before I was born. So that was how I started
digging back into these old Jackson five records and I
remember I was just listening I don't remember what record
it was, but I was listening to this Jackson Five
(30:45):
C D and before I realized it I had just
been listening to that three weeks straight, just over and
over and over. Just the rhythms, the background vocals and, uh,
the Ad Libs, Oh man like, the way they were
produced just just fascinated. And then I would just go
down a rabbit hole like that. Went through the Jackson
(31:06):
fire for a while and then after I got through
all their records, went through, went back through Michael Jackson's
early records. Like some of these songs I knew, you know,
like a new thriller, and I knew, you know, working
day and night, like I knew some of the hits,
but I had never actually listened to the albums through
and through. So I went back and listened to those
early like off the wall and all the thriller the album,
(31:29):
and then that sent me to wanting to listen to
bill withers. Once I started looking more into like some
motown things, and then I got down a Shaka Khan
rabbit hole and then wanted to go back through stevie
wonders albums, and so I think in a certain way,
that returned to me this rooted nous in black music,
number one, but I think number two it also returned
(31:51):
to me this idea that Um music is not sacred
or secular, you know, like it was around this time
in my life that I decided I don't want to
categorize music like that anymore and that there are songs
that other people would deem to be secular that are
(32:11):
very sacred to me. Um, and truthfully, I would say
this is true of me today. There are many songs
that people today would call sacred, especially people who are
in the environments I used to be in that are
still in very evangelical environments, are Very Wide Evangelical spaces.
There are songs that they would consider to be very,
very sacred that are secular to me, you know. So
(32:35):
for me, I feel like what I discovered there and that,
you know, early, not even early twenties, probably mid twenties,
two into my early thirties, what I discovered about music
that's so powerful is that I think music really exists
to help us express all of life, to help us
express our humanity, and the holy moments as well, you know,
(32:59):
and at our humanity will experience holy moments. You know, Um,
that music is there to talk about leaves on the trees.
It's there to talk about how much your heart is
breaking when you have a breakup. was there to talk
about what it feels like to fall in love, what
it feels like to have good sex, you know, like
(33:20):
music is there for all of these things. Music is
also there to sing about, you know, your your thoughts
and feelings or prayers to God, like music is there
for for all of that, and I found that to be, uh,
something so powerful. You know, Um, I actually I was
on a tour once and Matt and I um. When
(33:42):
I say Matt, I'm talking about my husband and also
the producer of this podcast. And Uh, we have been
talking about for a while just as a podcast team,
Matt Lee and I um Lee, who's my podcast production
assistant and assistant and friend, just everything. Anyways, we have
been talking about me doing some episodes here where we
tell some road stories, and I am going to do that.
(34:05):
So I'll come back and share some of those with you.
But I thought about one in particular as it relates
to this episode. And Uh, Matt and I were on
a tour. I'm I'm I'm ciphering through the details of
the tour so that I cannot tell you enough details
that you would know how I'm talking about. But anyways,
we were on a tour and, uh, there were multiple acts,
(34:27):
multiple bands and and such and us, and we had
this you know, which which kind of happens when you're
on tour. You you sort of have these periods of
time during the day, because all the shows are at night, where,
you know, you kind of end up hanging out, whether
you want it to or not. You know, because you're
all on a bus, you kind of end up hanging
out with the production crew, the lighting folks or the
(34:51):
other bands, maybe on tour with, and we were on
tour with at that time what was a really well
known Christian band, and we were talking about music and
really kind of talking about the state of what was
considered to be Christian music at that time and how,
you know, a lot of people loved the message in
that music, but musically a lot of that music was
very like uninteresting. You know, it didn't jam, you know,
(35:13):
it didn't have good baselines, it didn't have musicality to
it that you also felt like wow, like impressed by
or that you felt impacted by even, you know. And
so we were talking about that with this very, very
well known Christian band that I won't say the name
of and, Um, although even if I said the name
somebody that are listening a lot, I don't know those people.
(35:33):
But anyways, and the leader of this very well known
Christian band he said, you know what, you know my
my wife and I, you know, we have however many
kids they had, and he was like, you know, Um,
and we only let our kids listen to Christian radio
because we never want our kids to hear all the
bad stuff that's in, you know, secular music. And so
(35:55):
I said, I said, you know, I don't have any
kids and I was like, but I kind of feel
like if I had kids, I don't know that I
would want them to just listen to Christian radio because, like,
how are they gonna know what a really good baseline
sounds like? How are they gonna know what an amazing
horn section could sound like? How are they gonna know
about harmonies and really good background vocalists or a very
(36:19):
well written song? You know. So I hope that if
I have kids, they get to listen to stevie wonder
or the Jackson five or some of those old motown records.
You know, I hope they get to hear some run
D M C and, you know, some other stuff so
that they know what good music sounds like, because that's
the one thing I feel like Christian radio is missing,
(36:41):
is actually good music. You know, and Y'all, some of Y'all,
are picking up on the fact that maybe I should
have picked up on the fact that I was totally
offending this man, because this is clearly how he makes
his money. It's making the music that I was basically
saying it's not good music. But I really didn't pick
up on it because I just thought, like shouldn't he
know that? Like shouldn't he know like shouldn't he know that?
(37:02):
But he didn't and he huffed and puffed and he
was very offended. But I never saw him again and
I really couldn't tell you his government name to this day,
to be honest. But I still stand by what I said,
you know, even though my my mom, you know, I
don't know, I have to ask her because I know
she listens to the podcast sometimes, like how she feels
about you know how her own spiritual journey like impacted
(37:24):
me as her kid, because I experienced sort of both
errors of her, you know, I experienced my mom, you know,
before she was going back to church and I experienced
her afterwards. But what I love about that is that
I got to experience a wide variety of music and
that's how I like to listen to music to this day.
I'm not, I will be honest with y'all, I'm not
(37:45):
a super ECLECTIC music listener. I like what I like,
you know, Um, inside the genres I like, I can
get interested in being eclectic, but I like what I like.
I like the type of hip hop where the MCS
are lyricists, where they are poets, where they are good writers.
That's the type of hip hop I like. I like
soul music. A lot of the hip hop I like
(38:08):
would also technically fall in the category of being soul
music on a level. I Still Love Gospel Music, I
still love Tremaine Hawkins and some of those old formative
songs for me, Um, I still love a good classic,
you know, Kurt Franklin Song, Um, and there's some new
music that I love, you know, like I totally fell
(38:30):
in love with Cardi B and I did not think
that I would, you know, love her music like I do.
Like I love Cardi B, I loved seeing Kendrick Lamar
come onto the scene as like a new MC Um.
I just I find different artists that I fall in
love with all the time. But I love that there's
a lot of music out there that we are not just,
(38:52):
you know, only into this one genre. Like. I love
that there's a lot of music to hear. I love
that music has the power to express a lot of
things to us and I love that I think music
is sacred, Um, but I don't necessarily categorize it as secular.
I think music is sacred, I think it's human, I
(39:13):
think it's beautiful and I don't really want to go
a day without listening to music. I was dating a
guy once who one of my questions I would ask
us when I was dating them is, you know, if
they could pick a song that they would want to
wake up to every day, or if they pick a
song that was like a motivator to them, what would
they pick? And I dated this guy once. He literally
(39:34):
got quiet and he was like, man, I don't know,
I don't really listen to music very much and I
was like wow, this dates over, this date is over.
I literally married a musician. What are we talking about?
That is one of the things that bonded my husband
and I is our love for music. It's one of
(39:55):
the things that bonds us to this day, all of
the Djs we've had opportunity to see to together all
of the live music acts we've had the chance to see.
So that's my story, Y'all, the music I threw away
and found again. I would love to get D M
s from you if you two throw away your music.
And another thing that I love about right now, about
all the access we have to music, is there's so
(40:17):
much music that you can find again. There's so much
music that maybe you were never even exposed to that
you can find. So I hope you do that. Talk soon, y'all.
(40:40):
Heart with Amina Brown is produced by Matt Owen for
SOB fee productions as a part of the Seneca Women
podcast network and partnership with I heart radio. Thanks for
listening and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the PODCAST.
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