“Act like royalty, if I please…
Play dress up, in these streets…
Fierce, strong, seldom weak.
Accessorize with her comb, a tease.
Wont explain the rebel in Me.”
Creative Direction, Styling, Words | Vane Karolle Photography; Artistic Direction | Manny Jefferson; Beauty Direction | Awoyemi Oluwakemi; Model | Ifeoma Nwobu; Fashion | Grey Projects, Doo By Iyanu, Retrospective Shop, FRUGIRLS.
]]>HANNAH Deputy Editor, Aja K. Riddick and Aja Burrell Wood, ethnomusicologist and adjunct professor of African American music at The New School and Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music, discuss why ethnomusicology is about people first, what Black music is and more.
]]>I’m meeting Joy Bryant for the first time. Well, possibly.
Confirmation emails have finally been exchanged. Still, the chill of a stalled social media conversation lingers on. I’ve readied myself for disappointment by scheduling two early meetings at the same venue to soften the blow of a possible cancellation.
Sitting in LaMill Coffee on Silverlake Blvd, I stare with a bit of shock at the “Here!” text message I just received, before taking the last sips of an iced latte and making my way to the other side of the café.
As if reading my mind, or perhaps my vibe, Bryant stands up from the teal faux croc seat she had just parked in and exclaims with a wide smile, “Oh my god, I promise I’m not shady!” She presses her hand to her chest to further emphasize sincerity. The physical gesture is unnecessary. I immediately believe her. All 5’9” of her vibrates a palpable combination of warmth and cool. And as she hugs me while explaining that she has not looked at her Instagram DMs in over a month, I barely listen. I’m too busy imagining that we are in fact childhood best friends from the Bronx, eating icees and trading stories about boys on the stoop.
There is a certain grounded quality about Bryant that is apparent without a verbal exchange. She’s no frills, no fuss. Low-to-no maintenance. Pure. Not in the virginal sense. Rather, in the “no bullshit to cut through” sense. Her intentions are expressed clearly in her eyes. And while Bryant’s million-dollar smile is an absolute asset to the numerous professions she has had as a model turned actress turned apparel brand creator, it is nonetheless 100 percent genuine.
She has a lot to smile about. In her career, she’s done everything from working alongside Denzel Washington and Michael Ealy on the big screen to completing a five-year run with NBC’s critically acclaimed drama Parenthood. Not to mention her most recent role as Dr. Erica Kincaid, a mysterious doctor and the love interest of Morris Chestnut on Rosewood. The project that excites her the most, however, is Good Girls Revolt, an Amazon Studios series based on the true accounts of Lynn Povich (author of the book The Good Girls Revolt) and the 45 other female employees at Newsweek who charged the publication with discrimination in hiring and promotion in 1970. The case became the first female class action lawsuit and the first by women journalists. Bryant depicts the not often talked about yet extremely instrumental civil rights activist and attorney Eleanor Holmes Norton who helped them pull it off. “It’s finally a role that I can embrace, about someone of historical importance whom I respect and admire. It’s not me as a prop in someone else’s life or story.”
It is the kind of intellectual challenge Bryant loves. The research and preparation appeal to her cerebral side. Her brain (she attended Yale, by the way), and the fact that she looks like any given “After” photo (she was discovered by Next Models Management and booked multiple exclusive modeling contracts in her twenties) both add to her appeal. But her girl-next-door persona is what shines through in everything she does—from her 15-year acting career to the comfy-chic pieces in her blossoming apparel brand, Basic Terrain.My Uber pulls up to the steep stone staircase that ascends to Bryant’s home. Our very candid conversation about the music industry, family history, the realities of being Black in America, feminism, skiing and Hollywood had concluded with an invite to her home and promises for a forever friendship. I am determined to make good on both. Tucked away on a hill in Glendale, California, her abode is not one you can stumble upon. You have to seek it out. And you have to like dogs. Bubba, an eight-year-old pit bull greets me at the top of the stairs.
“He’s nice. Don’t worry.” Bryant’s husband/business partner Dave Pope stands in the doorway of their ranch style home, smiling. The two have had Bubba since he was a pup.
I’m not so worried. Bubba has kind eyes and we quickly fall in love. But I also feel very safe with Bryant’s husband in all of his 6’5.5” frame present to intervene if necessary. Dave Pope is pretty damn fit, a residual from his 15-year career as a movie stuntman. He’s a manly man. I mean the guy has four motorcycles that he has taken apart just to rebuild. He’s good with his hands and a fast learner. So it shouldn’t be so much of a surprise that he knows how to sew, taught himself how to make patterns and that two weeks after reading a book on knitting he had already completed a hat embellished with the couple’s initials.“I was blown,” Bryant says, as we sit at her kitchen island shoveling large portions of salmon spread on pita into our mouths. Neither of us are the kind of girls to not eat. “He just said, ‘I think I want to get back into sewing.’ And I’m like ‘Um. When the hell were you into sewing?’”
Pope bought a practice sewing machine from Target and soon began creating gifts for his wife: a military canvas hammock, then a denim version of Bryant’s Thai fisherman pants. The pants soon became the spark for Basic Terrain; friends would request a pair whenever she wore them. Bryant bought her husband his first professional sewing machine for his birthday, and one year later, they launched their company.
Now they design the pieces together, she handles sales and marketing and he handles the nuts and bolts of the operation. “I never thought I’d have an apparel company. I never saw myself with a fashion line. Ski gear, sure. But my own fashion line? My own company? Why would I do that? That’s ridiculous.” It’s not so absurd. Basic Terrain is entering its third year and growing every month. Plans for menswear additions are in the works and the brand is already being sold in London at Selfridges as well as online through ShopBop and the Basic Terrain site. She’s got a handle on her business. Yet true to her personality, she keeps things lighthearted and chill. I ask her where she wants Basic Terrain to be in five years and she responds in her best Chris Rock impression, “Makin’ a profit! I sho’ is hungry.”Michael, Basic Terrain’s brand consultant, is repositioning a print against the T-shirt Bryant is wearing. I’m looking on from an ottoman while getting in some cuddle time with Bubba. This particular collection of Basic Terrain shirts is called Playlist Poetry and the shirts feature pairings of track names from Bryant’s alphabetically ordered playlist that read as serendipitous messages. Coincidental notes like “I’m Cool, I’m Designer” and “No Expectations, No Future Shock” she noticed one day while scrolling through her massive collection of music.
Bryant’s hubby is sitting in the corner quietly observing the process. Her creativity, I’m certain, is high on the list of things he admires about her. And vice versa. That kind of reciprocity is one of the reasons they are celebrating their eighth wedding anniversary this month. A mutual respect is prevalent. As is a solid friendship and the way they simply keep it all the way real with one another.
“Um. My wife is crazy,” Pope shares. “Clearly,” Bryant agrees furrowing her brow.
“Fortunately we like being around each other most of the time,” he finishes, looking at her and smiling. Bryant flashes her wide smile before replying, “I’m glad you added ‘most of the time’.”The two met on the Shreveport, LA set of Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins, a 2008 Martin Lawrence movie in which Bryant played the main character’s high maintenance fiancé, and Pope worked as one of the stuntmen. He begins to share the story of how it went down. “Wait, you never tell the story right,” Bryant interrupts with an eye roll. A bit of her Bronx roots are showing. “Stop tryna go for dramatic effect! That’s my job!” Pope laughs and shakes his head as his wife takes over the story. On their first date they ended up hanging out in a Mexican restaurant parking lot. That was followed by a skateboarding date. They quickly realized they shared the same laid back style and a mutual love for outdoor adventure: skiing, surfing, hiking, skateboarding…It only makes sense that they created a brand based around the same theme. One of the pieces that prompted Pope’s return to sewing was actually a pair of snow pants to fit his giant build. “We wanted to make the things that we wanted to see and have fun doing it,” Bryant tells me. Their sun-filled dining room subsequently became a yearlong incubator. Its walls covered with all forms of inspiration and ideas flung up to see what stuck. In the end, they concluded that it was really just about the fundamental elements. In life, in work, in play, in love.“That’s just it. Keep it basic. Fun. Simple,” Pope shrugs as if he can’t understand why people complicate life to be more than that. He looks at his wife to see if she agrees. I observe their eye contact. The admiration and comfort. I think about the way in which Bryant has seamlessly expanded her life to include extensions of her energy, her style and her nature. Her husband, her home, her business, her career… All real. All attained without compromise. All genuine.
I descend the stone steps of the Bryant-Pope abode with a few gifts. Among them, a real-life forever friendship, a heart full off puppy love and grown folk love and a valuable lesson learned: Keeping it simple and remaining true to yourself are truly the keys to mastering all terrains.
—words & photos, Qimmah Saafir
]]>
ON MINDING HER OWN BUSINESS:
Entrepreneurship lives inside me. I am proud to say that all four of my great-grandparents owned businesses in the segregated south during the 50s and 60s.
ON HER LONGTIME JONES FOR MAKEUP:
I am from Texas. Southern women are born with big hair and lipstick. I started wearing makeup at age 16. I was permitted to buy makeup because I had a job and earned the right to buy and wear my own makeup! I wore mascara and lip gloss.
ON THE POWER OF A FRESH FACE:
My mantra is “there is beauty in taking it off.” I am a proponent of clean skin and radiant beauty. Makeup shouldn’t wear you! My approach to makeup is sheer skin. Less is more!
ON SKIN NO-NOS:
The most significant mistake is covering and disguising blemishes with makeup instead of treating the skin. Sleeping in makeup is high on my list too — BIG mistake! Skin replenishes itself at night. Whatever is on your face absorbs into pores. This causes congestion and results in break-outs. Remember to cleanse before bed!
ON THE BIRTH OF CLEANSE:
I was stuck in a window seat during a flight to Dubai. I wanted to cleanse my skin, cool down a bit. The packaged wipes I used irritated my skin. I was desperate to freshen up, so I reached in my bag and my wipes were bone dry. At that moment I was struck with the idea for my product.
ON WHY IT’S SO BOMB:
I used to drag a ton of products with me everywhere I went. I’d have to tote my complete skincare routine. CLEANSE’s ingredients eliminate having to travel with an entire cleansing system. I travel with CLEANSE, a moisturizer and a lip treatment. It’s also environmentally conscious; I use solar energies to engineer CLEANSE, and ensure the absence of micro beads.
ON WHAT’S TO COME:
New products will launch in 2017! The collection is innovative, infused with rich botanicals and skin nourishing ingredients. I will continue to encourage women to feel beautiful despite the high beauty standards we are faced with.
“My mantra is ‘there is beauty in taking it off.’ I am a proponent of clean skin and radiant beauty. Makeup shouldn’t wear you!”
SOME OF NAPIER’S SUMMER PICKS:
BABESCRUB GREEN TEA BODY SCRUB
I am a summer bunny. I live for warm weather and keep my skin prepped for it with this yummy scrub.
$17, BABESCRUB.COM
—
MISCHO BEAUTY NAIL LACQUER SET
Exposed toes are part of summer, so there is not a day that my toes aren’t varnished with one of the delightful shades of Mischo Beauty. They are formaIdehyde, paraben and cruelty free, as well as vegan! I can’t single out one favorite color; I adore them all!
$54, MISCHOBEAUTY.COM
—
LILAH B. DIVINE LIP + CHEEK DUO
I am a big fan of these duos infused with nourishing elements from earth and sea. It’s my new favorite environment-friendly go-to.
$46, LILAHBEAUTY.COM
—
My new favorite skin and hair care product is called Fur, hair oil for your lady parts. It’s innovative and the natural progression to maintaining your nether regions! Fur leaves you feeling smooth and is perfect for soothing the bikini line. Definitely a must have!
$39, FURYOU.COM
]]>In this premier episode of HANNAHChat, HANNAH EIC speaks with Hillary Crosley Coker of Parlour Magazine and Metanoya Webb of Globetrotting Stiletto about the ups and downs of traveling and motherhood.
]]>Born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, Wekulom grew up the second of four children. At age 11, she moved to America with her family, following the death of her little sister, Winner, who succumbed to sickle cell disease at 5 years old. “Hearing that [she passed] was awful. And then the day after, we had to move,” she remembers. Amid the burden of leaving Nigeria, the family withstood a financial strain after her father lost his job and used their $30,000 life savings for a visa lottery. Following a brief pit stop in Atlanta, the family settled in Peoria, Illinois; it was a drastic cultural shift. “I was the only black kid in my school, which was a crazy transition,” says Wekulom. “My dad got to the point where he couldn’t afford to buy us clothes. People in our school would look at me like, ‘Damn, this girl wears the same clothes every day.’
At a young age, Wekulom leaned on faith as she braved life’s unkindness. “Spirituality is a huge thing in Africa,” she says. “You can go home and not have money, but still feel like the richest person in the world. That inner spiritual wealth is important.” Ten years later, she is financially independent as her fashion business flourishes. Wekulom remained in America when her father returned to Nigeria, but she maintains her African culture. It is evident even in the way she blends audacious prints with a minimalistic sophistication in her design work. “I want to inspire people to be a part of my culture, because my culture is a huge part of me,” she says. “It’s embedded in my being.”Pride in her culture caused Wekulom to hone in on the glaring absence of black girls in the style bloggers’ space. Coupled with her love for beauty and fashion, it drove her to carve out a space of her own. “When I created my blog, I saw all of these white girls killing it,” the creative recalls. “But you stop and think, ‘Where the fuck is the black girl?’” She decided to take her craft a step further. “I wanted to tell a story. Photography is supposed to move people in the same way that music moves people, so I wanted to create a platform that made people ask themselves questions. If there’s anything that my platform can inspire anyone to do, it would be to live your best life.”
Wekulom witnessed the reach of her influence once while in France during a sit-down with one of her young followers who had traveled 45 minutes by train to see her. “I made it a priority to not wear any makeup,” she says of the meet-and-greet. “You could just see that she was happy to see a black woman out there who is relatable. While we were talking, I was thinking, Man, I can’t believe living my truth would inspire someone else to want to live their life. She looked at me and she didn’t see a Beyoncé, she saw a human being. That’s what made her feel like she was able to call me her sister.”
In another kind-hearted act, last year, Asiyami made a wig from scratch for a woman battling breast cancer. “When a disease kicks in, you forget about self-care and what it means to be a woman,” she explains. “We possess so many powerful things and we lose all of them [to breast cancer]. Your dignity, your self-esteem. Wigs allow you to feel ‘yourself.’ I wanted to give someone the opportunity to feel whole again.”
Wekulom blesses us with another mantra as Trader Joe’s wine and vulnerabilities flow within our impromptu sister circle. “As long as you know that you’re going to be successful in life, you don’t have to be ashamed about where you are. That’s why I always say the glo’ up is gonna be so real, because there’s so many people who have given up on me. Who didn’t believe in me, and said my life is stagnant,” Wekulom says of the people she has obviously proven wrong.
I walk away from our heart-filled session with an unfinished U-part wig, but I’m awash with hope and happiness. Wekulom’s message is clear: she doesn’t simply do it for the ’gram. An alternative to the oversaturation of selfies and tummy teas, her Instagram is a conscious effort to help people nourish their souls and get in tune with the world. Her story is a powerful reminder that hardships and pressure create diamonds. Or, better yet, Asiyami Gold.
—Tyler Mitchell, Niki McGloster; photos, Oliver Olivella
]]>When it comes to Fazlalizadeh’s now widely known Stop Telling Women to Smile campaign–she’s plastered hundreds of portraits of women and captions about street harassment on walls around the globe–her choice to display her illustrations on the sides of buildings rather than on white gallery walls was quite intentional. In choosing the former, the painter and public art activist takes the issue directly to the victims, the offenders and the otherwise oblivious, for the strongest impact. “It’s one thing to talk about street harassment online through blogs and social media, and another to see conversations happening right on the walls of the streets.” Simply put, it is hard to see one of her posters and not formulate an opinion about it. The opinions of some, whether in favor or against the messages, can be seen scribbled on the art itself. However, Fazlalizadeh has gotten the most feedback from the subjects of her series. “While I have heard and seen conversations where men are taking a look at themselves and the idea of masculinity that perpetuates this behavior, it’s been women whom the work has had the biggest impression on. From women telling me they feel more assertive when responding to men in the streets, to women stopping me in Brooklyn to say thank you.” And while a lot of Fazlalizadeh’s art reflects the realities of women, her work overall is rooted in sociological study encompassing more than women’s issues.
Aside from the STWTS campaign, she has also painted portraits of some of the young Black men who have been slain, Mike Brown, Sean Bell and Oscar Grant, the latter two with targets on their chests. “I’m generally interested in how individuals experience the world, or how the world experiences someone, based on that person’s identities,” she explains. “Both gender-based street harassment and violence against black people are examples of this.” It is clear that her art and the parts of her identity it reflects are just the beginning of the world experiencing her.
Fazlalizadeh on some of her favorite artists:
LORNA SIMPSON
“I love Lorna Simpson’s work, and she’s always been a source of inspiration for me since beginning of my art career. Her use of text and its relationship to the image is brilliant. I think her images and her text are beautiful on their own, but together they incite thought so beautifully.
I’m hoping that in my own work where I’m incorporating text, the same is true. I also love the way Lorna presents her subject matter to the viewer in her early photography work. Her images of the black woman body are framed in captivating ways – with their backs to us, or from the neck down – that quietly tell stories and reshape our ideas of representation.”
—
BARKLEY L. HENDRICKS
“I’ve always found a connection to Barkley Hendricks’s work. He paints black portraits, mostly on flat colored backgrounds. So do I. Examining his works closely, we even paint in similar styles. His subjects are always reflective of the current time we live in. I’m not sure how Barkley feels about blackness or race, but to me his work is very black. The figures are vibrant with personality and style, bold in a black aesthetic and type of cool.
I love solitary portraits that are seemingly simple, yet make such compelling pieces of art. I’m usually working with a single figure, painted straightforwardly, on a flat colored background. And I’m questioning how I can make the painting complex within that framework. I’m also painting people that are reflective of a current culture and time – young, queer, black. Inserting this representation of everyday blackness into a style of oil painting that’s historically represented whiteness.”
—
ZANELE MUHOLI
“Zanele Muholi’s work is fantastic. What’s unique about her work is the idea and practice of archiving real lives. Her work is saying “We were here. We are here.” And there’s something so beautiful about that. She’s addressing the violence against lesbians, cis and trans people, by presenting these people directly to us. As their beautiful, fly selves.
We are both working with portraiture and a sort of storytelling. My work is about taking women, their voices and their faces, and forcing the public to view them – to hear them. And the process is to talk with these women, to hear their stories and experiences, and to reflect those stories to a larger audience through the art. Zanele is similar in that she’s experiencing these people she photographs – she knows them, and is reflecting their lives to us. One of my favorites is Refiloe Pitso Daveyton, Johannesburg, 2014 (above).”
—
SHIRIN NESHAT
“Shirin Neshat’s work is bold and confrontational and beautiful. Words that I’m referring to when creating my own work. I sometimes go back to Rebellious Silence from her Women of Allah series. There’s so much to unpack in this one, stark, beautiful photograph. What I’m mostly drawn to is her gaze paired with the rifle.
As a Black and Iranian woman who identifies firstly as a black woman, my work is focused on women of color but, firstly, black women. Even within that, I’m concerned with the greater treatment of women in general. Shirin is an Iranian woman and her work is very much so for and reflective of that experience. I see in her work the celebration of personal identity, cultural experience and imagery, while simultaneously challenging a larger oppression of women.”
Jenna Wortham: Morgan, not only do you have an incredible radio voice, you really do, it’s really easy to listen to you! But the things you’re speaking about are just so interesting that we sometimes forget how important a soundtrack is. And I don’t mean a collection of songs that accompany a film, but just that audio landscapes define and accompany and inform us. It matters when you’re walking down the street and you hear that summer song or you’re in church and you hear a particular hymn—
Morgan Rhodes: Right, right!
JW: The way we experience… I think we’re so used to taking in information visually that we forget how important sound is—
MR: Right, right!
JW: And how that is shaping us at the same time. So, it’s really incredible to hear you speak on it, basically.
MR: Thank you!
JW: Of course. Do you feel like a music historian? Because as much as you are a curator and a supervisor and a selector and all of these things, you really are an archive. You have all of this knowledge, it’s very contained, but it is a very rich repository. Do you feel that way? Do you feel like a keeper of sound, so to speak?
MR: Um…that’s nice! I’d like to be. I’d like to be a keeper of sounds. I hope to be a historian. I think there’s ethnomusicologists out there that are doing great work as music historians. I think I’m on a music reconnaissance mission. I’m just digging and searching and finding and I’m looking for you. If you’re a brand new indie artist and you’re hanging out on SoundCloud, I’m listening and I’m looking for you. If you’re an old blues artist and you’re recording is real scratchy and the quality is poor and you don’t think there’s anyone… this person had a great hit and no one remembers that, I’m looking for you. And so I do feel like, I don’t know, some sort of person on a music expedition. And it’s so much for me. I know it’s really geeky but it’s so much fun. [laughs]
JW: Of course!
MR: So that’s how I feel about that. It’s worth looking for these artists, particularly as it relates to black music.
JW: [Of] Course.
MR: That’s just how I feel; I’m passionate about it.
JW: Especially for black American culture and really, actually, the cultures that make up the African Diaspora. Music is such an important part of the connection to each other, the connection to the culture, the connection to life. It’s everything!
MR: Right, right!
JW: It’s everything to us. Are there songs that you’ve always wanted to play that you haven’t gotten to place yet? Do you have a wish list of artists or albums or maybe even decades that you’re sitting and waiting for the perfect opportunity to use? What are they? What are some of them?
MR: The short answer is that there are hundreds of songs that I have posted on sticky notes, in notebooks all across my house. I hope I have enough time to use all of that stuff. [laughs]
JW: [laughs]
MR: I’ll be working for another 20 years, so I’ll have enough time. I would say my number one priority is I want to find a place for Shirley Horn.
JW: Oohhhh!
MR: She’s one of my favorite voices ever. And also Carmen McRae.
JW: Awesome!
MR: Those two women, those two sisters I’m trying to find a place for. So I hope that I’m given the opportunity to pitch them for a project and to hear them on the screen.
JW: I’m wondering, too, if… I’m interested in some of the selections you made for Dear White People that allowed you to add a dimension to a character or scene or things that stand out to you as particularly memorable placements or moments in the show.
MR: Sure. I love Troy’s character. Like all of the characters in Dear White People, he’s complicated. But I think his development as a character is testament to the brilliance of Justin Simien. And it makes a statement about how not just black people but people in general are complicated. I wanted to make him an old soul. I wanted him to be the guy that listens to seventies soul music.
JW: That’s so cool!
MR: So it was fun to play with older soul music and older soul artists in the scenes where he is involved. When he’s going across campus to make his pitch for him to be president, we’re playing Lee Fields’ “I’m the Man.” And I love Lee Fields’ voice. It’s weathered, it’s strong. It’s got power. I wanted to have that be a part of Troy’s experience.
There’s a…The Softones song [“My Dream”] where he and Lionel, he’s cutting Lionel’s hair and Lionel is swooning over him. And I thought, everyone can relate to having a crush, we’ve all had a crush. And being up close and personal with your crush… Some of us are cool enough in those moments, some of us are not. But I didn’t want to play any…anything current, I’d say. I thought the moment was sweet and sort of old school, so The Softones, which is a group from Philly, seventies soul. And someone reached out to me online and said “where did you find The Softones? That’s a favorite group of my dad’s.” And, to me, that’s worth all the hours you spend looking for something. I want to be asked that question because I want to be able to talk about The Softones [laughs]. I really want to talk to somebody about The Softones! So that’s what you pray for. Those are some of the moments. I just like to develop a character, making him an old soul, making him a guy that secretly listens to old seventies soul music.
JW: Mmmm. It’s so neat, too, because this is something I expected… But listening to you talk, there of course is a script and there are character descriptions and then there’s the actual casting of the characters, but then choosing the music in this way you get to add this whole other dimension, you get to shade in the character a little bit more in these ways, which is really incredible.MR: Thank you! I like that there were a lot of romantic and sexual moments in Dear White People. One of the other moments I liked was when Sam was trying to make the decision about going into Reggie’s room. That’s a tough decision. And they sort of lingered at the door for a while. Oh, great job of including sexual tension on the part of the director! But I wanted to speak to the vulnerability of the scene. To me it wasn’t just like should we hookup? It’s should I let you see that part of myself?
JW: Oh my gosh, yeah.
MR: Should I be vulnerable right now? For both of them. Reggie’s got these feelings for Sam but they haven’t really been requited here before. And that’s a big decision to make. Not should I let you have me? Should I let you see me. And so I picked a song by Vicktor Taiwò called “Digital Kids.” For part of the chorus he says “I see you but you look lost” and I thought that was powerful for the moment because in a sense they were lost and found. Lost in the emotion but they had found themselves in close proximity in this moment.
JW: Oh my God, so romantic!
MR: Now, what do you do? It’s a British future/ soul singer. I loved the build of the song, I loved how slow it was. I didn’t want anything to be rushed and for me that was a good moment.
JW: Incredible. I don’t want to take up too much of your time today. I am interested in hearing… I have two more questions for you. One is how do you balance work and downtime or pleasure time since you do spend so much time working and cataloguing music? How do you balance not working too much, if you even have to find that balance because it sounds like you enjoy your work too much. Are there any tricks you’ve adapted to help facilitate that work-life balance?
MR: Such a good question. I don’t know that I’ve found the balance [laughs]. I love spending my days around music. Even when I’m doing regular stuff, cleaning up the house, being with family, we all love music. So it’s in and around everything I do. It gives me a lot of joy. I think the difference is when I’m working on a project there are deadlines to consider. Television is fast past so I have an obligation to find these songs and get them prepared to pitch. In my downtime around music I’m looking for music. And in between projects I’m just so happy doing that that it feels like fun it doesn’t feel like working. It gives me so much joy.
JW: That’s so lucky. That’s amazing!
MR: [laughs] thank you!
JW: And then the last thing I wanted to know, which is: what do you think the song of the summer is going to be? And what’s in your rotation right now?
MR: Oooh. Let me pull out my phone because of course I was listening to music before we started talking because it’s really all that I do.
JW: Nice!
MR: I will say a highly anticipated project will be SZA’s next project. I think we’ve been waiting on her; we love her voice. And I think that’s gonna be my anticipated project. Actually, what I’m listening to now, which is so crazy, I’ve been listening to [laughs] Nancy Sinatra and Percy Sledge. So I’ve been stuck in a time. And I don’t know what day SZA’s album is coming out, but I think we’re anxiously waiting for it. I think it’s going to be a great album.
]]>Jenna Wortham: I really want to start off just hearing about your relationship to music and your earliest memory of really being engaged with sound or song or a sample.
Morgan Rhodes: I think my earliest memories are sitting in the car with my father. My father is a very cool guy and growing up [he] didn’t talk that much, but was really into music. And so we would take these really long drives together, I guess I was just his road dog, and I’d be in the front seat and he would play music. And every now and again he would jump into the conversation and tell me a little bit about the music. So, those are my earliest memories of music. But music has been in my life for a really long time. I treasured opportunities to go to record stores when record stores were still a thing. That was my favorite thing to do on Sundays after church…was change my clothes and my friends and I would jump into the car and go to record stores. And it was just a thrill, shopping for music and then getting in the car and comparing what we all bought and then playing it on the way home. So music has been like a best friend for me for a really long time.
JW: Oh, I love that. I really love that. And then you were a DJ for some time as well?
MR: I was on the radio, and I’m still on the radio. I started my career at KCRW in the early 2000s and I sort of worked my way up to be a production assistant for two DJs there. Then I ended up getting my own show in 2007. But before that, I went to Clark Atlanta [University] and I would hang out at WCLK all the time because I was a fan of two of the DJs. They had a show called “Hot Ice in the Afternoon.” And I would hang out all the time. I was a mass communications [and a] film major, but of course the radio station was in the mass communications building. And I would just hang out because I was a music junkie. So that lead me, later on, to be a DJ at KCRW. I was there and then I was on several other stations. I’m still on the radio, except now I talk about music on the air instead of play music on the air. I’m on a show called “Tuesday Reviewsday” on KTCC here. There’s a revolving panel of music critics and commentators and we talk about our favorite new releases that we think you should buy and why we think you should buy them. It’s still a part of the same love. I’m still digging for that fire, but I’m talking about it now as opposed to playing it.
JW: That’s amazing! What are you looking for in a sound? What appeals to you? Is it something that is very much attuned to a mood or a season or just a headspace you’re
trying to get into? Or is there a certain sound you’re always interested in?
MR: The way that I get attracted to certain songs and sounds is really organic. I can always tell if I’m going to love something in about the first 15 seconds. I have this weird reaction like “Oohhh.” It’s always the same [laughs]. I don’t know how to describe that in words, but it’s always the same. I’m looking for something across genres and tempos, it doesn’t matter, that makes me feel that way. There definitely has to be an emotional component to me. And it doesn’t matter what that emotion is. Happiness, sadness, joy… But I base my interest in that song on that first 10 or 15-second reaction. I do that on the radio and I do that when I’m looking for source music for a project.
JW: Let’s talk about that, too, when you look for source music. Because you have one of those jobs that sounds so incredible. I remember growing up I used to read this magazine called ReadyMade and they had a column in it called “How did you get that awesome job?” You belong in that column. I really want to hear about how you got into this work.
MR: Well, I wasn’t aware of music supervision as a career. If you go back into television and film 20 years ago I don’t think music supervision was a thing like it is today. We heard certain things but it wasn’t really a career. So I wasn’t that aware of it until I started working at the radio station [KCRW]. A few of the DJs there were music supervisors. I was hanging out at the radio station because I was interested in doing voiceovers. I didn’t even know I was going to end up being a DJ. It was just a great place for me as a music fanatic, listening to sounds and just honing my craft as a DJ. By chance, if you believe in chance, I was at another radio station and that show was the show that launched me into this career. It was just complete happenstance…ordered steps by God, if you believe in that thing. Whatever you believe, that’s what happened to me. I happened to be doing a show and Ava [DuVernay] heard that show and that’s how I came to do her first project Middle of Nowhere. It took me a while to catch on that this is actually a real job because, to me, I just thought, Well, this is like a two-hour radio show. Except it’s going to be in a film. I prepared in the same way; I researched the same way. My thing is digging for indie and obscure music across genres. Certainly soul music, but certainly everything across genres. Obscure folk, obscure pop, obscure country. Current stuff and old school stuff. I’m digging. I’m trying to find stuff. And so I prepared the same way. And that’s what started it. (continued)
JW: Can you talk a little bit about your process when it comes to selecting? You’re watching the scenes and then…what is that like?
MR: You come into the project at the script phase. Generally the script phase…I read the script and I make notes in the margins about what my feeling is about that scene. Oftentimes, writers and directors have written songs into the script or they’ve written music moments into the script. Certainly background music moments. If your character or characters are at a diner or they’re in the car listening to the radio, those moments… Or [if] they’re at a dance, they might put a music cue in there. Either they have something in mind or that’s left up to my imagination. So when I’m reading the scripts I make those notes. After the project is shot, then I watch the cuts. And by that time I’ve gathered up like bunch of material and I run the songs over the cut and under the cut over and over until I find something I like.
JW: That’s great!
MR: And then I pitch those 10 or 15 or 20 [songs] to the director and we decide on what works and go from there.
JW: How many songs are you looking at for one scene?
MR: Whew!
JW: Right!
MR: I listen to so many songs in preparation for both cues, I think because my sensibilities are as a DJ. So I keep pulling and pulling until something in my heart says, “Okay, you should probably chill now.” I think there’s never too many songs. I just keep pulling. And you want to work closely with the showrunners and the director. It’s their baby. Your job is to help them carry the story; navigate them and the audience through the scene. The more I pull, the better prepared we are.
JW: This might be a silly question, but how are you finding all the music that you work with? Are they songs that you remember from your childhood and your younger days spending time with your friends at the record store? Is it stuff you’ve accumulated over the course of your career? Are you still going to concerts now? What is the collection process like?
MR: I look everywhere. I have stuff in my old collection. I love vinyl records. I have a lot of records. I go to shows. I search online. Every place you can think of… If I’m in a restaurant and I hear something that I like I Shazam it. I stock away material for projects I don’t even have yet just in case. I amass music from every place you could think of.
JW: You mentioned Shazam. Are there other ways the collection process has changed since technology has gotten… I was going to say better but I should say how technology has evolved.
MR: I think Shazam has made it easier because it’s instant. Before Shazam I would just ask someone. If I heard a song in a coffee shop I’d say, “What is it that you’re playing?” I love record stores! So that’s my favorite place to dig. I’d give myself homework, as the child of a college professor. I’d give myself assignments. I come home, study genres, study movements…time periods. Just to make sure I am fluent in all genres. If I don’t feel like I’m fluent enough I keep researching. I just want to grow as a music supervisor and hopefully make elegant choices.
JW: So what is your personal set up when Morgan is just on Morgan time, vibing out at home or maybe with a glass of wine? What is your setup and what do you use?
MR: I have two turntables and speakers in my living room. I play music on records. I have a wireless speaker in my office. Sometimes I just go off on tangents and start playing stuff. And I read a lot about music. I don’t recall the last time I listened to music just out of leisure. I love music so much, but I always see music now as ripe with possibility for a project. I think growing up and falling in love with music I always try to soundtrack my own experiences. So I could experience the same thing that someone else did, but let’s say…you mentioned you were on a slow train. I would be thinking, What should I play if a character is waiting on a slow train? I’d be thinking, This needs a soundtrack. What do you play if you find out shoes are on sale on a day that you happen to have money? It’s hard for me to just listen to music without an agenda. I’m already in love with music, but I see it as having a place in our experience of how we view film, how we look at television now.
JW: I was going to say, too, it’s interesting because there are so many classic moments from TV shows and movies that you associate with a song or a sound. Now, it’s interesting, too, because there’s so much TV and there’s so much music, it kind of feels like there’s such an interesting opportunity to create an audio book just because there is so much more music to choose from.
MR: Oh yeah, oh yeah!
JW: Do you have a sense of your favorite music moments from a show or a scene or a film that you feel are iconic… that made you want to create a music moment that would evoke the same kind of response?
MR: That’s a great question. Taking it back a couple years, one of my favorite moments is in The Color Purple when Shug Avery comes back to church. And her father’s standing at the rostrum. And she walks in and you hear that “Speak Lord” start to build into “God’s Trying To Tell You Something.”
It’s a moment that belongs to everyone. It’s a sense of coming back home. It certainly has spiritual aspects. It’s personal. It is a larger than life moment. A big moment for a small church. So that, to me, resonates a lot with me. I think because I grew up in the church. And I know the relationship between gospel music and the black church experience. To me that moment was a flip on the Prodigal Son. The Prodigal Daughter. And the song said what the characters didn’t say. God is trying to tell you something. And what he’s trying to tell you is that you are welcome to come back home. And I like that the music carried that moment. I’m getting chills thinking about it [laughs]. But it was just a moment that for me was so big and I’ll just never forget that. I think that the music choices in film and television should be elegant. They should be poignant. And they should speak to the moment without beating you over the head with emotion. I think that big, powerful moment, to me, underscore what I think is the still, small voice of your conscience and of God. I thought it was a beautiful juxtaposition between the silent voice of your conscience and that big musical moment. I’ll never forget it.
JW: Amazing. Is there a moment from your career that you feel like you got close to doing that? Not the exact same sense of emotion, but something as iconic and as memorable? Maybe all of them are, but I’m wondering if there’s something that stands out from your work on “Queen Sugar” or “Dear White People” where you were just like this is my moment from Shug and the church.
MR: Well…I’ll say this: I aspire to have someone experience a musical moment in the same way that I experienced The Color Purple. I think my responsibility is to hold the moment and the music equally as precious. With Selma, I had my own history in my hands.
JW: Exactly.
MR: And I had to be delicate. Bloody Sunday for me will always be a moment I remember. It was the hardest moment to cue, to soundtrack, because it’s a historical moment. It took me a long time to find the right song. And I came to that moment because I had my Mom to pray for me. I was struggling. And she said “I am going to pray for you.” And shortly after that, I found that song “Walk With Me,” a song that belongs to generations of freedom fighters, but it was a new seventies, soul, rock interpretation. And that’s a moment that I will never forget. I know how I experienced it and I just hope that people experienced it the same way, that it resonated with people.
JW: Absolutely!
MR: And I think the purpose of music supervision is to hold these stories in your hand and do the best you can to interpret them sonically. For me, all of the deep digging is because I think I owe the music as much as much as I think it’s given me personally and spiritually and for those moments in my life where it’s been so important. I owe music that. I owe music and some of these artists that are obscure, that maybe people have forgotten about, I owe them that search. It’s worth looking for them. Because the stories are worth that search, and the people that have invested their time writing and creating these, getting these stories through the system, certainly as black creative and black producers and show runners, writers, directors… For whatever it took them to get wherever they are, I want to make sure I give the due diligence on my end to serve their stories the best. It’s worth the waking up at two o’clock in the morning to listen to my heart or running across a store in stilettos to get close to where I can Shazam it… going in the stacks in a record store, trying to go to shows in crappy places, all that is worth it because the music is worth it!
–More of the conversation between Jenna Wortham + Morgan Rhodes in Seeing Sounds Pt.2.
]]>I constantly ask of the Universe that I become the woman I am supposed to be, doing the work I am supposed to be doing, surrounded by the people I should be surrounded by. When Oxfam America, a global organization working to right the wrongs of poverty, hunger, and injustice, reached out to television host, interior designer and my dear friend, Genevieve Gorder, to view their work empowering women farmers and dealing with the rising refugee crisis in Tanzania, I was invited to capture the experience. I did not hesitate. Sixty-five million people around the world have been forced to leave their homes because of violence, persecution and war. If I could help in any way, I was going to. I immediately began preparing as best as I could for the unknown. I meditated on being out of my comfort zone. I let myself feel fear. Fear of getting sick or not being able to perform—I let it all in.
I was exhausted upon touching down at Kilimanjaro Airport. Sleep was all I wanted and could focus on. I knew that I needed rest to prepare for the more physically challenging portion of the trip. As we traveled throughout the country, I stared out of car windows constantly refocusing to really see what I saw. The first few days I kept my camera packed. Sometimes as a photographer, I need to lean into a trip; respect the locals and get to know the air. Starting out in a bustling and colorful city where everyone is always outside was a good way to learn the nature of the city of Arusha. Bikes. Motorcycles. Cars. Manual labor: building individual bricks, carrying heavy loads of stacks of wood and water on heads. Bed frames for sale. Bumpy roads and no rules. One stoplight. Music. Street food. Animals sharing space with humans. Seeing Maasai men in the same crowd as young boys with Supreme T-shirts and beanies tilted on their heads made me imagine our country if the Native Americans were left alone. It reminded me of the importance of travel in seeing and feeling things that are dramatically different to understand and connect with and without my camera.
We traveled throughout the Arusha region spending a fair amount of time and shillings on the traditional beadwork of the Maasai women before watching in awe as the terrain changed from lush jungle to the crisp air and vast landscape of Ngorongoro Crater. My soul was at ease. Witnessing a family of elephants eat together, the mesmerizing lines of the zebra, the seductive walk of a lion—it brings you a specific type of peace. It readied me for the work.
My first assignment was in Monduli, a small town in the Arusha region of Tanzania. The purpose of the assignment was to shoot stills while they were filming an Oxfam run reality TV show that features women farmers performing a range of individual and team challenges under nearly 24-hour TV surveillance. The aim is both to empower the women and to elevate their profile nationwide as strong, capable contributors to society. The show airs nationwide and in surrounding countries and viewers vote on the winner, but the winner and all the contestants return to their communities with newfound respect and a stronger voice in order to advocate for farming rights for women.
Genevieve was asked to give the contestants a challenge focusing on the design of traditional homes of the Maasai villages. The collaboration was dynamic. Before making this trip, I couldn’t help but be curious how they would respond. Would they wonder who this white girl was coming in to tell them about design and questioning the efficiency of their homes that have worked for them for centuries? But when the filming began, I realized that not only did the women work tirelessly to win the challenge, but they thrived on the idea of making something in their homes look as beautiful and elaborate as the patterns they wear on a daily basis. They came together in ways that only women can. As I ran from house to house, I watched them draw out ideas, encourage and lead one another in supportive ways and work with smiles and wonderment. Watching the women realize their creativity and impress themselves is what made my heart dance.
From Monduli we traveled back to Arusha, spent a night before heading through the Kilimanjaro region to fly to Dar es Salaam, then hopped on another plane to Kigoma. From Kigoma, we drove to Kasulu where we would be staying for the next three nights while visiting the Nyarugusu refugee camp. The refugee camps in Tanzania are currently hosting more than 110,000 Burundians within two camps. Those camps, Nyarugusu and Nduta, were recently opened to relieve overcrowding. Refugees continue to arrive in the hundreds every day, and aid agencies facing difficult decisions about where to use their limited resources. Burundi is one of the world’s poorest countries on the planet and more than a decade of war has left the country in a constant state of instability. The political unrest and election tensions led to weeks of violent protests in 2015, which badly affected the economy and left the most vulnerable people in an even worse situation. Now, more than 250,000 Burundians have left their homes in fear of the violence and fled to neighboring countries, particularly Tanzania and Rwanda.
Visiting the camps and bearing witness to the current challenges Burundi refugees face was heavy. I had two cameras around my neck at any given time but more than ever was mindful of when I picked them up. Being in the camps brought me back to being in tune with the deep nature of photography. The relationship between subject and camera. The sensitivities. I found myself mindful and full of pause. Thinking longer and harder before taking a photo. I realized how much of a foreign character I was as the little children laughed and held anything they could find from the ground up to their faces to mimic what I was doing. I also recognized that without the spirit and energy of the children, the camps would be mayhem. I couldn’t help but to hope that I became a good memory for them to stow away.
Weaving our way through the camp I realized that it was huge, like a mini city. The land was dry and the deep red color of the dirt blanketed everything. Amongst the scale of this crisis, I was able to witness how effective an aid organization like Oxfam can be. The distribution center dispersed things like Vaseline, underwear and towels, and people were able to earn cash for helping distribute the buckets to the thousands of people waiting in line to receive their share. But it also brought to mind the surrounding town that still lacked basic necessities and I wondered how the aid could be extended. I began to feel so thankful for the luxury of a sit-down toilet, a hard floor, any type of bed, and small moments of privacy.
We visited some of the makers within the camp. People who were tailors in their home country and could sew in the camp to stay busy, keep working and feel useful, like the women who made baskets, sewed blankets and cooked meals for large amounts of people. I couldn’t help but to ask myself how I would survive. How do you spend your time when everything has been taken away from you? How do you carry on after being displaced, hearing your husband has been killed and having your kids ran off to avoid conflict never to be seen again? How do you process all of this on top of managing basic survival within a camp with no walls, floors and very little privacy? How would you remain sane?
As we all walked out of the car—myself, a local translator, and two white women—I heard the voices of children shouting, “mzungu” which loosely translates to “white person.” In those moments, as a biracial woman, I couldn’t help but wonder if they were referring to me. Were they meaning Westerner? Or were they reacting to a completely different skin type? And because I had a camera was I just naturally clumped into being a mzungu despite the color of my skin? Each day as we would drive to and from the camp I would use that time to quietly decompress. In the camp, I had to put on a thick layer of muscle in order to keep up with strength and resilience of a people who have endured so much—circumstances that never make the news. When does something become big enough or important enough for it to make it to our news? The similarities in attention in the media, aid efforts, between Africa globally and African-Americans in our own country was a comparison that entered my mind frequently. Having three years and deep family roots in our public education system back home, I couldn’t help but draw the connection numerous times to the similarities in policy, lack of attention to inner city schools, underserved neighborhoods and the pipeline to our incarceration system. How do we fix a problem so big? I witnessed plenty of deep grief, confusion and stoicism, recollections of the trauma, the fear. But as I strove to capture the pops of light, the smiles when asked about their imaginations or loved ones—those moments were the powerful ones.
That light and power is something that I didn’t anticipate would be a part of my personal experience. Nothing could prepare me for the beauty within the country of Tanzania. Yes, the beaches and the ancient streets of Stone Town in Zanzibar were stunning but beyond all of that—the overall acceptance of who I am and acknowledgement of my beauty and soul was something I have never experienced. Hearing the women and men call me “dada” (sister in Swahili) made me feel welcomed in a way that felt different than when called that in the United States. The experience has prompted many questions for myself as I move through the next phase of my life. What part of this experience feels like home? Will I feel this when I go explore my Italian-American side?
I understand being African-American in a new way, and that is giving me more power than I have ever felt. After seeing Tanzania I feel a sense of urgency to see more of Africa. To connect more. To find out what part of me is from where and to search out the parts of me that feel African. This trip has fueled a greater sense of identity and expanded my desire for personal growth in a way that I could have never predicted.
—words + photos, Lauren Crew
]]>