The Happy Musicians

023/024 Isaiah Smith – Laughing Barrels and Nitroglycerin: Music and Black Lives Matter

by tannerguss on

Utah pianist, composer, vocalist, and historian Isaiah Smith joins me to share a black perspective on American history and music. In pt. 1 we discuss racism in Utah, how music schools overlook the African influence on European composers, and his interpretation of American history from the start of slavery up through Dr. King. Pt 2 focuses on modern day problems of Trump, police brutality, and class warfare, and offers solutions and actionable advice for confused white people like myself. 

I have an ego that only manifests really in music because that’s the one thing I really do well. Despite that, I have evolved to a place of being open to learning anything from anyone about my craft and it’s made me a better musician, and a better listener, and more like water.

Listen

Pt. 1   Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Google Podcasts • YouTube

Pt. 2   Apple Podcasts • Spotify• Google Podcasts • YouTube

Actionable Advice

Music

  • I think white musicians should be doing a lot less talking and a lot more listening right now. We don’t know what’s it’s like to be black in the US. We never will. So it’s weird to have our minds made up on racial issues when we have no personal experience to bass those opinions on. If we truly want to understand we need to read, watch, listen, and engage in conversation with Black Americans.
  • Just before the turn of the century, in the Reformation period. What you begin to hear is that the European composers were actually being influenced by the music they were hearing coming from the black musicians of America. That is the part that I think could use a little bit more discussion in the collegiate world. It’s well past time to step up music schools!
  • European composers have been using Afro-centric rhythmic conventions sine the hight of slavery. It’s always been there it’s just we’ve never been taught to fully study that part of it. We’ve been taught to accept that these musicians were geniuses on their own and never received outside input. Which to me is the biggest lie. If you’re a composer almost by default it means that you’re gathering your inspiration from outside sources. Because you have to observe life in order to write that into art. So I think everything that we’re suffering now in terms of our thoughts about music, our interpretations of race, how we deal with that, ultimately stems from miseducation. The solution to that is reprogramming.

Race

  • When you think about the need for human beings to connect. Even though we do this nasty stuff to each other, there is that innate need to be connected with it in some way. You gravitate towards what you hate. I think it’s because you’ve been conditioned to hate it but you haven’t been conditioned to understand what it is you’re pushing away from. There’s something about that I want to understand. It’s just I don’t have the humility to say, “Hey I really don’t understand: I need help.”
  • I can use more humility about life. I don’t know everything and that’s frightening but true. Therefore it’s ok to admit ignorance on what I don’t know and ask for help so that I can be educated toward knowledge and that will help feed self-assurance. This is as true for learning music as it is for becoming more aware of our prejudices.
  • We as black people need to reeducate ourselves. We have some self healing that we need to do apart from the homogenous culture because there is so much that we carry psychologically, emotionally, and mentally that reinforces how we deal financially, politically, socially. Black fold need serious therapy to deal with the trauma from the The Willie Lynch Letter . I didn’t know what this was, but it’s truly awful. Click the link if you aren’t aware of this dark piece of history.
  • If you want to start the process to understanding how inherent racism is in America. Go in the dictionary and look up the word black. Find out how many adjectives in there denoted evil character. Then look up the word white and you find hundreds of ways in which white is associated with everything that is pure.
  • As black people let us be cranky for a while. We’ll get back to you, but we deserve after 450 years to be a little bit irritated. Let us do that for a minute and then come ready to listen to us, and why we’re angry, and don’t be so ready to come with suggestions. Come with your presence as we figure out how to heal and rejoin you in a collective human effort to save our humanity.

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