Before the Dust Settles: My 2020

This has been a strange year for everyone, and, as with many others, it called for me to think about changes in direction.

It's been a year when I've all but let go of the idea of myself as a music journalist, yet I started the year with two personal favorites from that work. Thank you Chris Lester and Michelle Bacon for giving me the chance to write about two albums and bands that changed my life:

The Clash, who played as big a role as anyone in giving me a sense of my own time and place in the world, and that band's great album London Calling--

https://bridge909.org/news/clash-40-london

And the Pedaljets, who, in 1987, were the first KC band who sent me sprawling for pencil and paper and whose 33 year long friendship has served to keep me asking all of the essential questions over and over again in reference to their work--

https://bridge909.org/news/pedaljets

Quarantine brought on a lot of reflection, captured in two different interviews, a long video-taped talk with the great poet Matt Sedillo, whose compelling book Mowing Leaves of Grass I'm still processing--

https://www.facebook.com/danny.dalexand/posts/10158557515906209

And then an enormously in-depth dialogue with the wonderful Chinese reporter Rong Zhou. No one's ever gotten me to talk so freely about so much--

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/6qV0uYdY9uRA4JrAiIKxvg?fbclid=IwAR3JGDbt510BOuoY6qsmQ_Jju72o2jvzi827b7qDub0oODt_mzLi3JHhSmE

Finally, in October, I got the chance to reflect with my college on the book that first told me I had to write--

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd8K1aJaTSc&list=PLHhe-2tIHRqHtEXJo8jtVPWvnKjxX5aiI&index=22&fbclid=IwAR3Llmy2xjYv2gKEzraFOLbEPhHSoX3W8MJANFGukCmywuluhIRk_3pBY1M

I did some good work in an effort to support the most on-time/exciting local organization I've ever seen, KC Tenants, particularly through the outlet of the movement paper The People's Tribune, which allowed me to profile my hero Tiana Caldwell--

http://www.peoplestribune.org/latest-news/kansas-city-tenants-and-the-power-of-community/ 

As well as celebrate the life of one of the first hard losses (for me personally) to COVID-19--

http://www.peoplestribune.org/latest-news/john-prine-tribute/

I spent most of my time collectivizing the thought and experience of members of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, putting out half a dozen copies of our paper Rally Comrades and 26 weekly articles highlighting a "Ray of Light Inside the Pandemic"--

http://rallycomrades.lrna.org/ray-of-light-inside-the-pandemic/  

Meanwhile, I made a series of pandemic playlists, that started off as an assessment of things past that I needed to hear right now and evolved into the 2020 singles that most speak to the moment for me. I've written about only four of those here, but I will return over the holidays.

I worry a great deal about my mother, who has been alone and quarantined for most of  her 84th year; my brother, who looks after her and, despite his own high-risk status, works in public schools helping the kids who most need that one-on-one help at a time like this. I worry about all my dear friends in the schools and hospitals facing this threat head-on every day.

And I also juggle worry and pride thinking about my eldest daughter, who not only fought on the front lines in an assisted living facility throughout the year but also managed to become a Licensed Practical Nurse during this time. 

Both of my daughters inspire me every day, as do my friends. (Everyone says this, but I do have the best friends in the world.) So, though I'm not done with this year, I go into 2021 with a renewed sense of priorities, and though they certainly involve writing, they rest upon my love and appreciation for all of the wonderful people in my life and all of the wonderful work going on around me. In this unluckiest of times, I know I have boundless gifts to be thankful for, starting with anyone who would bother reading this post, and culminating in the opportunity to do more and better work in the year ahead.

Songs 2020 #4, "I Can't Breathe" H.E.R.

Dedicated to Jenay Manley, who (alongside Dominique Walker of Moms for Housing; Nicole McCormick of West Virginia United Caucus; and Maria Estrada, President of Southern California League of United Latin American Citizens) delivered an incredibly moving speech at a national women's leadership forum yesterday, and to all of the KC Tenants, who have inspired me endlessly in 2020, most recently fighting week in and week out to keep people from being thrown into the streets during this pandemic.

H.E.R.'s "I Can't Breathe" is 4 minutes and 47 seconds of claustrophobic struggle that stands as a singular musical statement for 2020. 

Yes, it's a direct response to the George Floyd murder and the moment when 26 million Americans hit the streets in protest against police brutality and the white supremacy that too often instigates and justifies it. But it's also a record that musically ties together all of the killings in the current pandemic. It works on multiple levels because it's clear on "black lives matter" as a call for human liberation.

"I Can't Breathe" grabs your attention with an echoed percussive slapping of guitar strings, like a straining heartbeat, and then H.E.R. (Gabriella Wilson) launches a harmony vocal riding that slow, steady beat, her unsung breaths caught in the close-walled mix. 

The layers of the mix grow into a suffocating wall of sound. Ghostly voices, many (perhaps mostly) Wilson's own and occasional cries of pain that sing out on and around that original bass melody she initiated at the start. Her lead vocal strikes high, insistent, trying to make sense of a head-spinning set of contradictions:

"Starting a war screaming peace at the same time...."

"Always a problem if we do or we don't fight...."

"The protector and the killer is wearing the same uniform...."

"We breathe the same, and we bleed the same, but still we don't see the same."

A low, harmony vocal offers loving support--when Wilson asks for "empathy," knowing she's been labeled the "enemy." And the sympathetic harmony strokes reassurance again.

The song doesn't reach a resolution, but it hits a spoken word bridge that lays out the fundamental contradictions of the American dream and reality since Day One. The summation is part Baldwin's The Fire Next Time as a warning. "Be thankful we are god-fearing," she begins a series of conclusions, "because we don't seek revenge, we seek justice."

Then Wilson demands, "Do not say you don't see color!"

"When you see us, SEE US."

"We can't breathe," she concludes and sighs.

The wall of voices, slightly muffled as if muted by a veil, grows as loud and strong as it can, begging to be heard. It's the ghosts of those we've lost and those who've lost their friends, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers and significant others, from Eric Garner to George Floyd to all those brutalized in other ways, including those forced out of their homes, and those who may well find themselves, in a best case scenario, fighting to survive on a ventilator.

She hopes against hope that she might be heard, but every aspect of this record shows H.E.R. knows what she's up against: "This is the American Pride: it's justifying a genocide." 

"I Can't Breathe" (Official Video)

Songs 2020 #3: "Esta En Ti," Adriana Rios

 

Rios starts with a deep breath, like she's uncertain before a big statement, maybe she's bracing herself for saying anything at all in the middle of the pandemic. Guitar arpeggios lay a path for her careful first steps. 

It doesn't take long for her to pick up the pace and emphasis, singing of people stripped of the familiar, losing their past identities and finding unity in a common cause. The guitar bangs out flourishes that expand the music's limits. Her voice pushes harder with each verse.

As she sings of doctors and nurses fighting a war that others fight from home, the sound grows epic in its reach. She finds a way to hope and a new kind of freedom, against a rising sun. 

Sure, it may be romantic. She may even sound naive. 

But she's not wrong. 

This is the world the pandemic could show us, is showing us in our best moments, and, as this record's playing, you hear the echo of your own flickers of hope in quiet moments, those moments when the reason for hope seems plain as day. Not just the possibility but the practicality of the vision is unmistakable. 

Of the moment and more demo than finished record, Adriana Rios's "Esta En Ti" ("It's In You") still matters now and matters deeply. After all, Rios isn't talking about anything intangible. She's talking about a real fight to contain a real virus and what it all means. 

Some of us have had the sense of possibility she expresses, at least at the beginning of the pandemic. We thought surely we would come together before a million died, before 11 million in the U.S. alone (versus 1 million in Mexico) contracted this unpredictable and deadly illness.

The fact that no one came through with PPE until too late, the fact that whole cities lay under siege while many speculated about hoaxes, the fact that the public good failed to take precedence over the hungry maw of the stock market, the fact that billionaires grew richer than ever while eight million Americans faced evictions, all of these things may well have cost us our sense of possibility.

But if you listen to this voice, you can't turn away, and if you can't turn away, you can't miss her call. And if we could find ourselves talking about what it would take to answer her--past our old identities and ideas about how things work, we might live in a better world, overnight. Listen to Rios sing and tell me you can't hear that new world aching and fighting hard to be born.

Esta En Ti

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU5US8h7u5E

 

Songs 2020 #2: Lil Baby's "Bigger Picture"

 It’s hard to imagine a musical form more suited to 2020 than trap, and it’s hard to imagine an artist tackling it better than Lil Baby does here.

The record starts with the sound of thunder and striking (but halting, uncertain) piano. It’s a soundtrack for the uprising after George Floyd’s murder. It ends with the crowd shouting, “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.”

Then, as if harnessing breath control from the streets, Lil Baby begins to talk about what he’s seen all his life, memories and thoughts on memories spit in desperation. People being shot after being told to freeze, moms breaking down with sons in prison, friends packing weapons to keep their heads, everyone being harassed every second of every day by what can only be called an occupying force.

That kick drum and 808 has turned the thunder into another force under the crowd’s control, the keys all but doubled with the snare in insistent emphasis on each shift in the lyric.

He’s telling you why he’s here in the streets even if he knows it’s just a step in a process—“You can’t fight fire with fire, I know, but at least we can turn up the flame some.” He knows he’s surrounded by the blind following the blind, but they’re working this chink in the wall that’s beginning to shine some light.

And then there’s that refrain:

“It’s bigger than black and white/It’s a problem with the whole way of life…”

He’s clearly not turning that call inward, it’s outward. As he’s already mentioned, it’s the whole system. It’s all the questions we can’t even figure out how to ask.

He continues, “It can’t change overnight ---right.” He knows he’s at a stage in a process, and he knows it’s a leap of faith to work it. “But we gotta start somewhere/Might as well gone head start here/We done had a hell of a year.”   

Truer words have never been spoken, and a truer rap, a truer use of hip hop, musically and politically, shouldn’t even be looked for. This is an anthem for 2020 in the streets. And it’s all the better for being reflective. It deals with fears and vulnerability and limitations and the greatest yearning of them all, for a little bit of peace only possible with justice.

 Bigger Picture Official Video                        Bigger Picture Rap Life Live