Latest / Stuff Mom Never Told You / SMNTY Interviews: Dara Starr Tucker

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SMNTY Interviews: Dara Starr Tucker · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and welcome to Stephan.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: I've never told you a production of iHeartRadio, y'all. Today
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: is a very exciting day for me because again I'm
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: bringing in the TikTok world, the social media world where
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: I get so much information and such good content into
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: our podcast with the multi talented She's a historian, a documentarian,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: of musician, just overall multi talent, so many things under
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: her belt, Dara star Tucker. Yeah, can you kind of
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: tell our listeners about yourself? Well, yes, I mean you
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: kind of you kind of said it. I'm a singer,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: I'm a songwriter. I think my bio says singer, song writer,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: social media commentator, and satirist. So I try to make
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: it a little bit alliterative so that it's it's easy
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: to follow. But those are the essential things that I do.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: I am, by trade a jazz singer, and I have
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: gotten into the social media space in the last three
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: years or so on TikTok and now Instagram, Facebook, I'm
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: you know, just everywhere these days, kind of sharing my
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: thoughts and feelings about cough culture. But then how race
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: and culture kind of intersect and intermingle with you know,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: all of the things that we spend our time consuming,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: and so then that sort of veers into a little
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: bit of the media literacy territory, which I love. And
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: then I've shared some of my so called deconstruction journey
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: out out of traditional religion. I've shared some of that
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: type of content. So yeah, I do a lot of things,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: a lot of things. There's so much and I love it.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie again. I'm so excited because I've
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: been following you for a while now and your TikTok
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: is so original. The content that you produce and come
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: out with is so thought provoking and original, and it's
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: just something that I feel like could be passed on
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: to my conservative family that they would actually listen and
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: have so much to think on because you give so
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: much good contact and information. But on top of that,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: you are so talented. Your rendition Moon River, it was gorgeous.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: It was gorgeous. So yeah, I obviously am fangirling a
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: little bit because you are a woman of so many
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: talents and I know you have so much that you
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: can tell us, And yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: give our listeners a warning because you do have such
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: great content. There's so many questions that we have. There's
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: so many things that we want to ask you and
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: get your opinions and expertise, because again, have so much
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: on your page weather it is all this information of
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: historical stuff or your satire of your mother. I love
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: it so much and so so good. But yeah, listeners
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: be warned. You if you've listened to it the show before,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: you know me as the person who jumps all around anyway,
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: But I'm super excited and you have so much, so yeah,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: that's probably gonna happen here and hopefully hopefully, as I
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: say with my with my content, I hope that it
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: lives together. Well I think it done ultimately, does I
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: think you so much goodness with a little bit of
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: break of like education as well as you got that
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: break for funniness as well as that beautiful music. I'm like, yeah,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: of course. And then we're going to talk a little
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: more about later. But you're also a podcaster too, so
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: obviously you're a part of the fam, right, oh yeah,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: but yeah, when it comes to your content, speaking of
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: how do you balance the education with the openness of
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: your own personal experiences as well as highlighting your career.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: How do you balance all of that just a variety
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: of content you're asking about. Yeah, honestly, I try to
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: just I try. It's going to sound really corny, but
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: I try to lead with the heart. I really do,
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: and I think, you know, until your content becomes corporatized
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: for lack of a better word, you can do that.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: You can say what type of content do I feel
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: like creating today, and you can just create that. And
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: that's the best part of what I do is that
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: it really is an expression of all of these various
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: parts of me. You know, I wrestled and wrangled with
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: myself even to get into the social media commentator space
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: because I am a singer. You know, that was a challenge.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: You know, in twenty twenty, it was like I really
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: wanted to speak out and I had so much to say,
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: and it was like, well, people only know me as this,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: they really only know me as a singer, and are
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: they going to accept me doing something else? And I
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: was that I had a real fear. I had a
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: real concern about even expressing that part of myself. But then,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: you know, I led with the heart when it came
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: to entering that space, and that is really the thing.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know how I quite feel about that, but
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: that's the thing, rather than my music, its represented. You know,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: this this kind of explosion into the you know, the
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: social media space where a lot of people now know
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: who I am, and so I have to I just
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: kind of have to take my cues from from that.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: It's like there was a there was a leading, there
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: was a guiding, there was an unction to use these
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: religious words that told me like, hey, this is your path,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: this is what you're supposed to do. And so I try.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: I try to lead with that no matter what I do.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: And I've had I have had literal um social media
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: manager companies, you know, say hey, we would be able
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: to work with you if you were to just post
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: this one kind of thing, if you were to just
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: do this one thing, like you're adding the music and
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: the comedy and this stuff is cool, and you know,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: some people are enjoying it, but they're not finding it
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: like they're finding these breakdowns. So you know, if you
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: just focus on this one thing, then you know that
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: could open you up to be able to get all
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: of these sponsorships. And I just I cannot subject myself
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: to that type of limitation because I know that that
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: would be cifling to me. So i'm I'm I just
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: enjoy what I do and if things get too heavy
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: and too intense with talking about things like racism and
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: you know that that kind of thing, then I can
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: just do a sketch by my mom, like I said,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: and then I'm happy again. And that's that's so interesting
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: because we know when it comes to social media, when
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: it gets to bleak, it's it's it's a lot of work.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: And one of the things that I know, as we
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: have come on to podcasting about feminism and women's issues
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: and marginalized issues, it gets heavy very quickly, and our
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: listeners will take that, I guess are a part of that,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: but they also love the parts that we are really
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: personal and breaking down the realities of who we are,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: and that means seeing our sense of humor and seeing
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: our backgrounds and seeing what we love. So boo on
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: the social media people they're wrong, tell them that, okay,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: and I appreciate all that content, thank you. I appreciate
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: that's the coolest thing. When people come along to a
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: post of me singing or opposed to me doing some
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: silly sketch about you know, I have a character called
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Shelby's mom who just stands at the door, yes members
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: that her daughter about being too woke and you know,
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: all the silly stuff. But I it's really cool when
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: people know me for you know, these breakdowns that talk
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: about you know whatever, racial and equity and these deep
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: cultural issues. And then they see this ridiculous thing that
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: I'm post seeing your you know, putting on a wig
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: and playing my mother and just being just utterly silly,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: and they're like, what, weren't you the same person who
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: was just talking about you know whatever it is jerry
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: mandering yesterday. And they're like, oh, this is really cool.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: But it takes a minute, I think sometimes for people
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: to kind of go, you know what, huh, And then
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: if they can embrace the totality of who you are
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: and what you have to offer, then you know, they
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: just relax into it. Then it just becomes like, Okay, well,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: this is you know what she's doing today. This is
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: somebody that I appreciate and who has a voice that I,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: you know, want to pay attention to. I appreciate her perspective,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: whatever she's doing, and I'm just kind of here for it.
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: That's the coolest thing for me, and we do appreciate it,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: thank you. But yes, you are a celebrated, award winning
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: musician and you do share your love of music with
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: your followers, including like a lot of really behind the
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: scenes stuff that's really cool, like on episodes on women
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: are around, like Martha Mirrors or Martie Nixon, like ghost singers.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: It's really really fascinating. So when you look at the
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: history of women like these, what are some of the
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: things that you find the most fascinating and why do
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: you think that stories like those are so important to tell? Well,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: I mean you mentioned Marnie Nixon, who is who was
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: known as Hollywood's greatest ghost singer. She did singing for
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Natalie Wood in West Side Stories. She sang for I Believe,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, and Deborah Carr and
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: The King and I And she was kind of known
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: as this, you know, person behind the scenes that was
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: known by Hollywood but wasn't known by the general public.
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: And it was like one of those kind of open
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: secrets that these actresses were not really singing for themselves.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: And then you have someone like Martha Wash who did
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: the singing for the song you know, everybody does now
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: the C and C Music Factory, and that was one
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: of my biggest videos last year. That's where a lot
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: of people came to know who I am because of
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: talking about her. But she's a plus sized black woman
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: who did this hook, this very famous hook, and sang
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: on a bunch of other stuff that people know, like
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: house music, and was kind of underacknowledged. So I think,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: when you know, we're talking about women like this, who
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: who have been kind of the voice behind the voice
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: for women that were perceived as more attractive, more palatable
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: for the general public, and who never got there, just
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: do I think there's a there's a point of identification
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: that'll let a lot of people have with that, because
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: you know who who among us has not felt like, well,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: well if I just had this, if I just you know,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: if I were just more this or less that or whatever,
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: then people would see me. They would see my talent,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: they would see my beauty, they would know that I
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: have all of these things to offer. I think we've
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: all felt that way to some degree, boxed in by life,
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: boxed in by expectations, especially if you have a career
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: in media in any respect or have aspired to have
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: a career in media. So I think there's just those
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: stories feel very personal. I think any story that I do,
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: and I tend to be attracted to those stories about
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: people who were cast aside or who were not given
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: something that they maybe should have had. I did a
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: story on a man named Eric Monte, who was a
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: black man who wrote for a couple of Norman Lear
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: shows and who felt that he was cheated out of
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: a lot of the credit and the profits that he
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: should have had. And those stories really spark, you know
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: something in people. It's just this and I have gotten
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: flooded with people reaching out saying the same thing happened
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: to me, and I did this, and you know this
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: credit was taken a way for me. It's just it's
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: just a universal topic. I think that just it just
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: hits a lot of people very very viscerally. It's true.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: And you know, speaking of one of the most famous
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: incidents inside of my lifetime, outside of the Milivanili controversy,
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: of course, is the C and C Music Factory controversy.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: I remember when that all came out and everyone's like,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: that was not her singing with Martha wash Again. You
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: do an amazing breakdown of that incident, and it really
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: highlights the prejudice within the industry. She's a plus size
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: black woman and they were trying to kind of hide her.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Do you think the prejudices is still present today in
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: the music industry. Yeah, absolutely, I mean, I think all
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: it would take is just kind of seeing seeing what's
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: what is amplified, what is celebrated. I mean, people always
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: point to like Lizzo, but we have Lizzo now, and
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: it's great that we do, and it's great that there
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: are other plus size heroes that we have that we
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: can look to, because it certainly is better than it
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: was when I was young. But I don't think it
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: has changed that much. I think we have some very
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: important exceptions that are out there, but I think, you know,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: those same rules still still apply, and I think people
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: will always be drawn to what they feel is beautiful,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: and those in power will always be in the position
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: to define what that is. And so I just I
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: don't think that that will ever fully go away. But
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: I'm thankful that there are some very important exceptions. That
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: there is a body positivity and body acceptance movement that
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: is much more mainstream than it was even ten years ago,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: so we can't deny that there has been progress, but
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, that those those standards still exist today, right,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: you know, and going into deeper conversations about like massage
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: noir within both hip hop and both R and B.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: Do you think that that is being spoken out more recently,
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: maybe because of Megan the stallion or is it just
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: the same as it was and we're just knowing a word?
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: Does that question makes sense? I think, you know, I
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: think there have always been those folks who have been
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: willing to talk about that, and you know, have been
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: just speaking out about a variety of topics. It's just
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: funny because now there's TikTok, Now there's social media, and
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: now we have a community of people who can get
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: together and say, oh wait, you notice that I noticed
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: that too, and this is my point of view and
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: this is how I experience it, and this is the
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: thing that I noticed that maybe other people didn't get
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: this kind of nuanced thing about. So that's the beauty
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: of where we are now, is that we are having
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: national conversations that everyone can participate in, and so I
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: think we can help to move the ball forward at
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: a much fasterated at least amongst people who get a crap,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: you know, and there's always going to be that element
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: of people who just you know, deny that there's a
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: problem or or or actively participating in in perpetuating those problems.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I think it's it's really cool that conversations
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: about massage and noir in hip hop, in R and
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: B are happening. But you know, I think the problem.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: It feels to me that the problem has not really
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: gotten much better unfortunately. Right, Yeah, Well, something else we
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: want to talk about. You also did a really cool
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: breakdown on the Elvis movie and the amazing musician Big
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: Mama Thornton. Can you talk about that in her life
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: and her contributions Big Mama Thornton, Yeah, she was. She
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: put out hound Dog in nineteen fifty two and it
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: was written by Lieber and Stoller. These are two Jewish
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: guys who wrote the song is incredible blue song for her.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: They wrote this for Big Mama Thornton. And she was
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: a blue sing who was just she was plus size,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: black woman, just big body. I mean, you know, when
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: you hear her version of hound Dog, it's just it's
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: unlike if you have never heard her original version of it.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: It's just it's it's so completely unlike Elvis Presley's version.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: But there were a couple of groups that covered hound
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Dog after her, and I'm thinking it was Freddie and
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: the Freeloaders that did a version of it that Elvis
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: ended up hearing, and then he later covered it as
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: did many people. But of course his version became the
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: iconic version that most people know. Big Mama Thornton's version
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: was a hit in nineteen fifty two, so it wasn't
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: as though, you know, she got absolutely no recognition from it,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: but she did not make a lot of money from it.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: It was definitely relegated to the R and B world,
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: which at that time would have been called race music.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: It was not played on mainstream radio, and she did
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: not become some you know, international phenomenon in the way
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: that was Presley did for for recording hound Dog. So,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: you know, the whole Elvis Presley conversation just it's just
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: with one of the topics I think that that gets
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: the most feedback in the commens Yeah. There, he's one
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: of those people that just will always have just avid
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: fans that feel the need to jump to his defense.
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: And you know, my feelings about Elvis are very complex.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: I'm I am actually an Elvis fan. I like Elvis Presley,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: and that is almost a curse. That's that's like a
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: scarlet letter in the black community. You just don't say that,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: and I don't say it that much, but occasionally I
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: will cop to being a huge Elvis fan growing up.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: But I think it's it's important to examine questions of
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: and I think you were speaking of the breakdown that
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: I did on the subject of cultural appropriation, but it's
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: important to talk about topics like that and Elvis just being,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: you know, just the number one representative of the idea
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: of cultural appropriation, whether that's deserving or not. He was
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: the most He just was the most famous. He was
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: the one that benefited from it more than anyone. Right,
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: even if he personally was not necessarily antagonistic in his
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: treatment of black people, he had a lot of There
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: were a lot of black musicians that actually appreciated him,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: and they embraced him, and they thought he was talented.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: But then there's the other side of things, where you know,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: he essentially took his sound from a black man named
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: Roy Hamilton. If people are not aware of who Roy
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: Hamilton Is. Just takes some time to look him up
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: on YouTube and you will know where elvis Is sound
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: came from. There was a writer named Otis Blackwell that
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: Elvis ended up getting partial credit for writing All Shook
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Up and a couple of other songs that ODIs black
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Will wrote. And Elvis sounds an awful lot like him too.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: There's a performance of his that's on YouTube where you
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: can hear, you know, hear what he would have sounded
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: like seeing the demo for Elvis, so you know it's
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: it's a multilayered thing. And no, I didn't like the
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: Elvis movie, if that's what you were specifically asking, Yeah,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: saying that we're Elvis fans. I felt guilty because I
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: actually did watch all of his movies as a kid.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: I love musicals, I love all the things. Um. And
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: then looking back at it's like even feminists you're like,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: oh man, he right, dat young babies, and that it's
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: real gross. Like looking at him historically, you're like, it's
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: not a good dude, but it's kind of that whole conversation.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: And music is the prime example of cultural appropriation, slash stealing,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: and erasure of black history, which we know, the origination
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: did come from the black community. Like we know all
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: of music where it came down to it is taken
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: from one culture. When we talk about this, how do
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: we do this in a respectful way where we yes,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: we like some of these music. K Pop is one
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: of those things that I think about too, because right
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: now that's a point in terms, Yes, this is cultural
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: appropriation to an extent, and so the kind of like
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: the fine balance of like how do we learn to
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: appreciate at this and acknowledge the origination but still like
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: these maybe problematic things. Yeah, I did, as I said,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: a breakdown called, you know, cultural appropriation versus appreciation, which
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: that that's been one of the more popular ones that
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: I've done because I think, you know, these are subjects
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: that if you if you just look them up in
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: the you know, the Encyclopedia definition or the dictionary definition,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: you can you know, make draw one conclusion. But they
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: are nuanced subjects that really have to be discussed sometimes
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: on a case by case basis, and it's not always
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: The answers are not always straightforward, the lines are not
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: always black and white, no pun intended, but you know,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: these conversations have to be had amongst people who are
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: deeply plugged into the culture and are deeply aware of
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: his historical context. And I think when you remove, especially
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: something like K pop from its historical context, then it's
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: you know, why are you guys getting so upset over this? Well,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: people borrow from each other all the time, and you know,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: people exchange cultures and ideas, and black people have taken
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: this and it just becomes you know, a big, a
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: big wash. It's just like, well, why are you mincing
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: over such silly things? Until you really step back and
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: start to examine the history, as you said, of where
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: a lot of you know, the music that we call
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: just popular music, where that really originated. And I did
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: another video called Who Invented rock and Roll? And it's
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: literally just a delineation, just a kind of a linear
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: delineation of the history of rock and roll. And there's
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: just so much that we take for granted. We just
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: kind of assume that certain things rose up from the
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: earth and that they're just here, because when you know,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: by time we got here, it was all here. It
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: was like we were just all kind of partying and
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: hanging out and enjoying what we were enjoying and you
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: don't really think about the roots of it. So I
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: think it's important me being a musician that when you
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: enter into that sphere, regardless of the kind of music
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: that you're doing, that you really do take time to
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: become a student of music history, of the history of
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: the culture or the environment in which you are creating
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: that art. And it's it's hard for young kids. If
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: you're fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old and you're a K
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: pop artist or you're someone who enjoys k pop, it's
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: it's it takes time to really become a scholar. It
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: takes time to become knowledgeable about these things. So I
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: just have to remember, you know, where I was at
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: fourteen or fifteen years old, I didn't know, you know it,
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: barely knew anything that I know now. But I think
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: we just we have to emphasize education, and that's you know,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: just in terms of musicality, just period. I think our
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: music would be better if people were better educated about music.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: And I think that musical expressions would be much more
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: respectful and much more meaningful if people were educated about
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: the history of where their music came from. And so,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: you know, you can't you cannot force the curiosity. You
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: can't force people to care about something. We just we
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: have to keep talking about these things and hopefully causing
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: you know, sparking conversations. And you know, there's just so
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: there's so much I'll just use the word ignorance. There's
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: so much ignorance out there around this stuff. And it's
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: things things that I take for granted that it's like, oh, well,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: you know, everyone knows that rock and roll originated in
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: the black community. Everybody knows that rock and rolls started
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: with jump blues, and jump blues came from the blues,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: and that this was something that was developed in the
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: South by black musicians who you know, who had nothing
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: and they were poor, and you know, everyone knows this,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: but no, everyone doesn't know this. A full grown people
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: don't know this. You know, it's just not something that's
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: commonly discussed. So yeah, I think we just we have
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: to become, you know, as curious as possible, especially as
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: as artists and musicians. Right and with you tackling these
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: large topics such as history and music and all of that,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: I know you have your fair share of trolls, so
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: you have to come through. Um, how do you deal
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: with that? That's the question I have to ask all
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: of those social media creators, how do you deal with that?
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah it's it's bad. The yeah it's it's bad. There's
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: a lot of negativity in the comments. I can't say
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: that I that I'm an expert on how to deal
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: with it when I first started, because my first huge
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: video about the the anjemima controversy, and that was bad.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: It was like a couple of years ago. Actually this month,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: they we're getting ready to come up on probably the
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: second or third, I guess, the third anniversary of that
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: video the anjemima should not be whatever on the cover
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: of a pancakee box. Um. And that was the worst.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: And when when that first video first blew up, um,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: it was just flooded. It was flooded by just hatred,
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: just vitriolic racism. It was it was terrible. And all
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: of this over a pancake box that supposedly, according to
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: a lot of these people, was just inconsequential. It shouldn't matter,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: what's the big deal. But then you know it's it's
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: igniting all of this this fury and so which is
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: obviously coming from some place other than being upset about
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: the branding changing on their their their pancake mix. Um.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: But at first I think I felt obligated to be
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: super gracious and to keep up this sort of dignified appearance.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: I had someone I'm just now starting to post this
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: stuff in the last year or so on Facebook, So
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: my Facebook is kind of just catching up with a
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: lot of my other social media And of course you
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: have an older audience over there. And I had someone comment,
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: you know, because I had clapped back at someone, and
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: he said, well, you should just you should be more professional. Oh,
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: you should be ashamed, you should be more professional. I said,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: why should I be more professional? I have no obligation
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: to be professional in the comments, you know, with the
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: way that some people come come at me. No, I
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: do not feel an obligation towards professionalism. I do not
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: represent an organization. I don't represent any sort of a
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: company or or any corporate interest of any kind. I'm
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: a human being who is sharing knowledge, and if people
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: choose to be disrespectful, then I can handle that in
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: any way that I choose. Now. I don't curse people out.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: I don't call people names generally if they are behaving
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: in a particular way. I may say, well, this is this,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: you are exhibiting this, and I will call a thing
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: a thing, but I don't know. I don't call people
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: out of their name. So I've I've kind of relinquished
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: myself of the need to be anything other than what
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: I actually am. And I want people to know this
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: is this is a different philosophy than a lot of
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: people will will uphold, which is, if you feel the
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: need to clap back at somebody in that moment, say
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: what you have to say, because holding onto that and
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: just internalizing that and allowing to just fester and grow
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: that is extremely unhealthy. So I've started. You know, people
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: will come back and say, well, you need to just
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: rise above it and take the high road, and you know,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: don't worry about these tools. You're above them, and you
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: really shouldn't know, absolutely not that approach. That approach was
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: was making me. It was just making me crazy, it
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: really was. And it's like, no, you have the right
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: to respond if you choose to in that moment, you
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: have the right to respond. Now, the other side of
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: that is we have to protect our energy and if
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: you do not have to have inclination or time to
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: engage with people who are sea lioning, or who are
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: time wasters, or who are being completely out of pocket
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: and disrespectful and who are not interested in any sort
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: of real intellectual exchange. You know, I know how to
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: block and delete, and I spend some time blocking and deleting.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: But if you know, if someone comes in and says, hey,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: this information is incorrect and you're wrong, and you're just
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: you are this, you know this personal attacks and if
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: I feel the need to respond, I will do that.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: I have absolutely no problem responding, and I have relinquished
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: the need to protect any sort of reputation or image
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: that anyone has of me, because if your image of
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: me was that I would not respond to you will.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Then you're gonna get a wake up call today. You're
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: going to get some new information to take with you.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: I love it, And you know what, your clips have
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: always been gracious, like with the more like education. I
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: acknowledged every bit of that because I'm like, okay, you
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: look at that, because you literally get back with let
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: me help you with this more information, and I'm like,
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: all right, she's got this right, So yeah, I think
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: it's gracious. I love how you're talking about energy and
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: space because we did come up on your article. They're
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: twenty sixteen Huffington Post article. But here's to the ladies
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: who cuss. Are they are they obliged? I loved it.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: I loved it, which aligns with a lot about what
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: we talk about about learning to take up space or
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: being just being there and being in the space and
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: not being apologetic about it. Yes. And also you do
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: talk about religion, which we really want to get into,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: because that is something that has haunted myself and I
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: think Annie would say yet that too, where we have
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: been so traumatized about what being a godly good woman meant,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: which oftentimes meant being little um And in that article
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: you write, but as a fully formed adult, I have
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: begun to understand that it is not only my option,
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: but my obligation to occupy that space, which you know,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: I'm all love. This brings me to this question, how
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: did you get to that point? How are you able
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: to say this in that moment of like I am
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: finally ready or I finally acknowledge this is what I
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: need to do. Oh well, it's such as so funny
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: that you bring that up. That was twenty sixteen. I
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: haven't read that article in years. We found you, right,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: I hope you didn't find anything else, would be like
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: in I don't know what the podcast xose right now. Um, yeah,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: it's been such a journey. I have to apologize in
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: advance for using the word journey excessively, um, because it
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: is just one of those cliches. Then I just giggle
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: that when I hear it. But anyway, it's been a
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: journey to myself. And I'm sure most people, especially most women,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: can recognize that process. It's a lifelong progression to get
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: to yourself something because you know, if you grew up
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: in a hyper religious environment in the way that I did,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: and in the way that a lot of people did,
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: what you're taught is to place layers on top of yourself,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: and those layers are placed up on you before you
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: even begin to gain consciousness of who you are in
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: the world. And so once I realized that my job,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: that that was my job, that that is the goal
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: to get to the core of who you are, that
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: was an eye opening point in life. It was like, oh, okay,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: so if I just sort of weirdly flag my nose
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: in the face of what you are telling me that
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: I'm supposed to be or want or do or think
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: or say like I will actually find freedom and redemption
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: and joy and peace and wait a minute, this is weird.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: And it was just kind of a you know, it's
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: kind of just like baby steps, and that probably started
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: to happen in my late twenties, and it was a
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: very pricy, it was just a very kind of slow,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: tedious thing to sort of begin to very slowly peel
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: off those restraints. And I'm involved in the deconstruction community
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: on TikTok, and I've watched some people who are who
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: are younger than I am, and who are not at
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: the place that I am in their deconstruction journey, and
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: they've done this, They've they've taken they've undertaken this process
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: in a matter of just you know, a year, a
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: year and a half, two years, three years. You know,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, at the beginning of the pandemic, they
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: were ardent evangelicals who were attending church and leading praise
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: and worship every Sunday. And then by twenty twenty one,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: a year later, they are speaking out and just doing
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: activism in the LGBTQ community or whatever. I'm like, how
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: in the world did you make this progression so quickly,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: because for me, it was you know, it was a
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: period of just it's it's still underway, but I mean
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: this was a process that started in my probably my
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: late teens of just like, you know, this is this
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: is oppressive, this this cloak that I have been raised under,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: this is an oppressive, weighty thing, and it's just a
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: slow process of giving yourself permission to to find the
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: you know, the truth and the core of of of
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: who you are and the the the genesis of that
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: for me, and this is a very personal journey that
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: I have been on. Um was was? I mean, I
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: mean there the real core of the work started when
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: my parents died, and they both died in twenty fourteen,
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: and so I noticed after that, you know, as horribly
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: tragic and sad and difficult and you know, just life
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: altering that that was. I started to notice that after
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: that happened, I started to experience a different kind of
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: freedom within myself to just be all of who I am.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: And you know that article was written in twenty sixteen,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: so the timing of that is not a coincidence. I
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: wish I had given myself that permission sooner because I
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: feel like, you know, I really wish my parents could
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: have seen, you know, more of the manifestation of who
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: I am in the world. But I needed that. I
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: needed the release that happened when they left, and so
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: then after they after they passed, it was like, well,
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: I know that speaking out and whatever. Even writing that
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: article for goingness sake, it was like, you know, I
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: think I ended up by saying something about not giving
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: a bleed if I won't say that because it will
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: be here and I'm not even really someone who cusses,
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: which is hilarious to have written an article like that.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: But you know, I if my parents were around and
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: I had written an article like that, but have been
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: mortified to see that. But you know, once they were gone,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: it was like, well, Auntie's uncle's cousins, friends of my parents.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Because my parents were ministers, my grandmother was a pastor,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: Holiness Pentecostal pastor. It was like, I can deal with
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: those tangential people being disappointed in me. I could not
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: deal with my parents being disappointed in me. I could
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: not deal with it. And I knew that to a degree.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: You know, half the decisions I was making were not
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: ones that they would would have made for me, but
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: I just couldn't really, you know, make a leap fully
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: until they were gone. So my whole philosophy at this
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: point in my life now you know, post you know,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: having parents, is that it is my job at times
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: to disappoint people. That's a process that I go through daily,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: and I tell any woman in particular women this oftentimes
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: is our hang up. But I tell younger women as
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: often as I can, your job in life at times
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: will be to disappoint people. You have to start to
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: get comfortable. It's really hard, but you have to start
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: to get comfortable with the idea of letting people down
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: and disappointing people, because that process will never stop. It
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter what you're doing. If you're trying to live
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: up to expectations, you're going to disappoint people. If you
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: are flagging your nose in the face of expectations, you're
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: going to disappoint people. So if you can be proactive
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: about that and just get ahead of it and say, no,
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: I'm going to wake up today and realize my job
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: is to disappoint people. If you're not disappointing somebody today,
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: then you're not doing it right. You are not making
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: any decisions at all, if you're not disappointing somebody, Okay,
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: that feels like an encouragement, as my parents and I
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: are not about things. Yeah, it is obvious that you
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: are a songwriter. In this post that you did because
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: I want to read this again is towards the end um,
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: but not the damn part, which you can say damn.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: Apparently that's not one of those extreme words on our
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: I didn't know either until I started podcasting. I can
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: say that one, but I can't say this, okay, but
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: it says in the coming year, I will be more
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: loving and I will be kinder. I will also stake
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: acclaim in my own life. I am compelled to make
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: room for myself. I will not always be pleasing or appropriate,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: but I will blossom again. You're obviously a poet songwriter.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: That one if you're proud of your own writing, because
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: that's such a statement in talking about taking a stake
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: in yourself, and as you're talking about you know you're
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: going to disappoint someone. Do you feel in your journey?
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: I want to say you too, in your journey as
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: you have blossomed. What would be the advice for young
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: people today slash the marginalized. Because we have a lot
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: of twenty something listeners and thirty something listeners. What would
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: be something that you would tell them in learning to
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: take up space? How how would you advise them to
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: go forward with that? Um? Well, as I said, just
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: just that, just engaging, actively engaging in the process of
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: letting other people down. It sounds, it almost sounds like
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: negative advice, but it is. It's really it's it's positive advice.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: It sounds it's it's it's it's paradoxical in learning how
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: to release the expectation of always being pleasing. That's you know,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: I was a church I was a church girl. I
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: was raised to be a church girl. And I know
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: this is not just exclusive to the church, but we
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: were taught to be obedient. I mean, obedience was a
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: lesson that my mother taught daily. We knew all of
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: the scriptures around you know, obedience is better than sacrifice,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: and children, obey your parents and the Lord for this
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: is right. And those lessons and obedience were just hammered away.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: And I understand, you know, my mother had seven children.
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: I understand why she felt the need to really, you know,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: turn us into these almost like robotic creatures where we
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: were just ready to step in line, you know, at
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: a moment's notice. I get it, but you know, to
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: take those attitudes into adulthood can open us up to
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: some very dangerous situations. I can only and we were
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: very well protected, but I can only imagine the dangers
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: that could have existed for me if we weren't as
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: sheltered as we were. Too so, because to be taught
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: to be that obedient and then to be exposed to
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: the world. You know, there was a period of time
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: where I had left my parents home and I still
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: had that mentality, and you know, it's just that's a
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: that's a it's a really dangerous brew um to just
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: step out into the world going, Okay, you know more
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: than I do, you know better than I do. Please
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: tell me where to stand and where to be, and
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: what to say and what to do. It's just, you know,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: it's unconscionable. Really, when I think back on it, I'm
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: I'm really glad that I didn't suffer more trauma than
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: what I did. I can't say that all of my
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: brothers and sisters were that unfortunate. You know, I don't
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: feel that I ever suffered abuse, in true abuse in
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: the world. But my I have siblings who did, and
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: so we have to we have to be self protective,
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: and we have to learn how to begin to draw
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: boundaries in our own lives. And you have to set
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: up those parameters individually, and you know, no one can
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: really tell you what those those aameters should be. You
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: have to make those decisions on your own. And so unfortunately,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: sometimes that can leave us in a place of isolation,
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: maybe temporary, hopefully temporary, because permanent isolation is it's not healthy.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: But if there are periods of time in our lives
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: where we have to remove ourselves from people who do
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: not understand those boundaries, then you got to do it
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: for the period of time. You know that that's necessary.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: I mean I had to move away. I had to
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: move away from my hometown and just really begin to
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: quiet the voices, quiet all of those external voices, because
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: in the world, you know, in the church world, my god,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: there's just NonStop people yapping in your ear and wanting
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: to tell you how things should be, like if they
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: could crawl in your brain there right in my world.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: But there was that intense We didn't just go to
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: church It wasn't just some polite experience of like We're
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: going to put on our nice clothes and just sit
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: here and sing a few songs and open the Bible
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: and have encouragement and go home. It was like, no,
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: this is like morning, noon and night. This is this
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: is the core of who you are. And so I
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: had to get out. I had to remove myself and
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: I felt guilty, you know, at the beginning of that process,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: I felt guilty for leaving me. Leaving home was a
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: traumatic experience. I had knocked down, drag out with my
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: father that I never thought I would have in my life,
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: just just from leaving. But I did it for survival.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: I knew that I had to. I had to do that.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: So you know, you're worth fighting for. I would say,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: if you're you're if I'm speaking to to you know,
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: uh gen z, young women, millennials, whatever, you're worth fighting for.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: You have to you have to believe that. And it's
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: not always going to be pretty. It will not always
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: be just the most beautiful zen experience of self discovery,
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: you know, wandering through Sometimes sometimes it's like you got
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: to get out that sword and you got to start
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: cutting cutting out the you know, the weeds and the
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: thing you just it's sometimes it's just ugly, but you're
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: you're worth the process and you have to believe that. Yeah.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: I love that, um Yeah, And it kind of goes
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: hand in hand with what you've been talking about, especially
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: with religious trauma. We're actually working on in episode so
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: we're gonna have to bring you back maybe for that
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: conversation itself, because the way that religious trauma has affected
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: women over the past forever, um and now it's kind
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: of coming back with the whole Christian nationalist idea. We're
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: not going all into that, but there's a lot to
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: be said. What when it comes to religious trauma, and
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: it was what it does to marginalize people, specifically specifically women,
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: UM and those who have heard throughout being told you
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: must obey, you must become a servant to ABC and D.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: But you're also a big part of the community because
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: you've talked about deconstruction quite a bit now. And I
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: love this. I love seeing this on social media because,
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: like you, I had a huge journey in ripping myself
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: away because I really thought I was going to be
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: a missionary. I was thinking that my life was to
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: serve this way because I had to be grateful for
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: being quote unquote say you know, that's such a thing
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: that plagues you. And even today, like I still can't
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: quite let that trauma go, that feeling of I'm not
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: grateful enough. By seeing these people coming together, yourself as
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: well so many others come into this community and talking
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: about what that looks like and learning to let that
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: go is such a powerful tool. But can you kind
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: of talk about that for us and what that looks
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: like and what that community is and how we can
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: be a part of it. Yeah, the deconstruction community on TikTok.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: And this is like something I didn't when I started
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: my so called deconstruction journey. Somebody needs to put a
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: counter up the number game somehow. The drinking game was
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: a journey drinking game. You know. When I started my
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: deconstruction process in my twenties, I that the word didn't
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: even exist, not in relation to religion. Nobody was talking
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: about deconstruction it which is I was just rebellious, you know,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: or as my grandmother who's who was a Pentecostal Minis,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: she would say, rebellious you know, if you if you
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: beared off the path. This is rebel. Just we're backsliding
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: to come home, you know, and so you were in
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: you were in danger. That's that's what it was. It
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: was like there was no organization around it at all.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: We knew people who had backslidden, and it was like,
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: you know, there. I remember when we were very young
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: and we always attended Christian schools. Parents always had us
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: in either Christian school or homeschool. But there was a
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: man who ran like a private Christian school was kind
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: of a real small school in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: was partly raised, and he we were thinking of switching
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: to Our parents were thinking of switching schools and not
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: you know, having us in the same school that we
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: had mostly grown up in. And we were like, well,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: can we go to this this other school? I think
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: it was all Bread of Life or something like that.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: And and I remember my father saying, well, baby called
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: us babies, he called us all his babies, Well, babies,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: the pastor of Bread of Life, he's backslidd he's backslid.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: And it was there was just this like oh, this
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: darkness that just came over the entire guard. It was like, oh,
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: oh my god, you know, I mean, he might as
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: well have just fallen off into the abyss. It was
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: just that was when I first became aware of that.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: I mean I knew the word, but to know someone
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: who was so you know, who we thought of as
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: such a pillar of like, man, this is a pastor
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: who runs a Christian school, and you're telling me that
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: he can just not be saved anymore. And so there
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: was there was just no worse thing that could happen
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: to you. So now to be a part of a
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: community of people who are, as you said, just having
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: conversations around the trauma that can be passed down through
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: this kind of dogmatic you know, religious these these experiences
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: is just I mean it's just so eye opening. It's
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: just kind of breaks you open and it's like wow,
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: this there's so many common experiences that we have, and
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: it really helps you to put the puzzle pieces together.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: It's like, this isn't just me. I'm not just rebellious.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Here's just kind of you know, veering off the had
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: and potentially you know, getting gobbled up by you know,
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: dragons or something like. This is this is a thing.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: It's just it's so amazing and so I think, you know,
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: the TikTok algorithm, It knows you. It starts to figure
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: out who you are and what you're about very soon.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: So that was not content that I ever sought out.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: I never I wasn't really looking for content around that,
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: but obviously it started to feed things to me and
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: it realized, you know, um, what I was about. And
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: I think I did a video on these what are
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: called tracks t r acts, these witnessing tracks that used
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: to be used in our evangelical circles, and they were
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: called chick tracks, and I just did a video on
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: them and kind of talked about the history of them
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: and the person who put them out, and there's really
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: some kind of sinister stuff behind these things. And I
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: think because of that, you know, they realized that. Well,
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: I ended up attracting I think a lot of the
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: evangelical people and they just kind of latched onto my content.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: And I think the other thing I think is because
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: I do a lot of work around kind of anti racism,
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: because a lot of these people who are deconstructing and
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: who have been in evangelical spaces are also doing work
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: around kind of decolonizing their faith and realizing how much
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: of this, as you said, this white nationalism kind of
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: gets mixed in with evangelical Christianity. I think a lot
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: of them just naturally found my content. So it's been
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: really cool to connect with that community. I participated. I
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: actually helped to organize an online conference called Dcon last
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: year or this ye earlier this year, I think, and
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: I was one of the speakers. The topic that I
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: spoke about was called letting Go of Hell, and so
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: it was all about just how this fear of Hell
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: is just drilled into us at a very early age
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: and just you know, in times and rapture stuff, and
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: just how that you know kind of thing is used
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: to really and still just just a lot of fear
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: just you know, not not as they say, the fear
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: of God, but just like literal fear into you from
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: an early age. And so you know, it's been it's
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: been a really liberating thing. I'm sort of sort of
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: out of the closet, I guess as a deconstructing Christian
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: I love it. Yeah, there's so much to that conversation
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: when you look at the content, and especially again like
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: when we talk about women, because rigging down, how a
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: lot of the Western religion really hate women, like they
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: really do everything they can to demoralize women and making
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: sure that they are subservient, and of course there's a
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: giant agenda to that, but to let go of that
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: and realizing that that is misinformation for so many things,
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: like there's religion in itself, of faith in itself is
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: not the problem and necessarily, but what has been made
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: out of it and so many things that we see
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: that is seeping into our politics today is just un nerving.
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: It is again right now, especially, I know we've been
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: through this before, but it feels like, how are we
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: back here again? Yeah, you know, and seeing other people
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: talking about this is not right. It's always so encouraging
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: to see and having someone to uplift that, Hey, this
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: is the other side. Let's let's let's look at that too. Yeah, absolutely,
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: it is. It is. It's very encouraging. I mean, you know,
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: as it pertains to so many things, you know, just
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: having a community of people who help you to know
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: that you're not you know, you're not off the wall,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: you're not crazy. It's like, yes, I'm seeing what I'm seeing.
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: I'm not the only one who's experiencing this. It's yeah,
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: it's so comforting. And yeah, to also have again, because
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: one of the biggest things for me when I walked
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: away from that was losing the community. I felt like
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: a lot of such a giant part of myself, and
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: that means a big, giant group of people that I
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: considered friends and family. So when you walk away from that,
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: you feel so alone, so knowing I love that you
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: and then the others have come together to make a community,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: which makes you feel like, oh, we're together, I'm not alone.
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: It's not this this where I felt like I got
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: such a huge divorce and I've lost the I lost,
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: you know, the main part of everything. It it felt
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: like it's such an amazing moment to see that that
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: you're being heard and you're being seen. Yes, it is.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: It's that's a that's a huge part of I think
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: why a lot of people never really cut that cut
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: those ties, because it really is, especially for black folks,
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: you know that that community thing with with church. Church
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: has played such a pivotal role historically in the black community,
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: just in terms of it's just been a meeting point,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: you know, a community center kind of environment and town
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: square and it's it's just it's it has substituted for
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: so so much with us, and you know can still
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: can still play that role. But I think that there
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: are a lot of people now who are who are
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: who are actively addressing some of the more toxic parts
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: of that environment. Yes, and we would say one of
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: them as you throughout, I feel like you've answered this throughout,
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: but you definitely don't shy away in your content from
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: hard questions around race, or politics or religion. Why do
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: you think that it's so important that we do address
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: those things and we do talk about those things. Um well,
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: I guess, as we've been saying, just the the idea
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: of of of having a sense of community around around
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: these things. I mean, you know, it's to to hear
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: someone reinforce something that you already knew in the back
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: of your mind, or to hear someone say it in
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: a way that makes it that allows it to kind
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: of lock in. And I hear that a lot from people.
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: It's like sometimes people will write me, they will inbox
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: me and say, you know, I can't remember what you
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: were quite saying about this, and I'm having a conversation
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: with my dad about this, or I was trying to
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: tell my friends about this thing that you were saying,
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: and you know, can you help me to to just
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: address this this finer point of whatever. And it's like, yeah,
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: here's the information, or they'll say your video just it
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: said it in a way that I couldn't say it,
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: like I knew that I felt this way. But thank
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: you for just hitting this nail head on and I'm
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: going to send this to my my family or conservative
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: or whatever. And it's it's, you know, they're oftentimes little
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: bite size, you know, one minute to I've started doing
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: some longer form content, you know, maybe seven minutes. Some
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: of the longer videos are but like you know, allowing
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: people to sort of get to home in on exactly
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: what they intend to say or what they they already
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: know that they feel about something, but just giving them
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: an organized way to present that information. I think it's
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: it's really important. I don't really target a lot of
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: my content to die hards that are just dug in
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: on the opposite side of things. My content is more
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: geared towards people who are maybe they're just curious about
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: these topics, or they're on the fence, or you know,
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: they've been debating with people and they're maybe just mulling
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: things around, and it's it just kind of helps you
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: lock into the core and the crux of those topics
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: a little bit more securely. I don't really have any
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: interest in debating people who just want to come in
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: with guns blazing. I just there's no as I've I've
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: moved forward with this process or you know, I just
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: I know that there's no thermal point. There are some
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: people who just they just like to argue, right, and
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: that I'm not interested in. So I think, yeah, it's
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: important to have the conversations to kind of help to
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: help the folks who are interested in doing better, who
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: are interested in learning, who don't necessarily have time to
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: go and read an entire book on anti racism. Maybe
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: it will encourage them to read a book on anti racism,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: but they haven't really taken that step. They haven't really
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: been proactive about it. But like, hey, it comes up
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: in your feed and maybe you're kind of curious about it,
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: and it helps to crystallize some things, you know. Yeah,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: that is so valuable. I mean, that's been one of
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: my experiences with podcasting as well. Sometimes you just need
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: somebody to give voice and words to what it is
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: you're trying to deal with or or figure out. So yeah, right, Well,
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: we couldn't end this interview without talking about your musical career. Yes,
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: you've won so many awards, from Nashville Industry Awards to Grammy's.
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: Can you talk about your experience in the music industry. Yeah,
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: well I don't. I don't have a Grammy. I wrote
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: for a Grammy winning album. I wrote the title track
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: for KEB Mo's He's a Blue Singer. He won the
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: Americana Album of the Year for an album called Oklahoma,
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: which is where I'm from, which is why he reached
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: out to me and asked me to co write the
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: title track with him, So that that was a really
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: cool experience, one of the only co writes that I
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: did when I lived in Nashville, and I just moved
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: away a couple of years ago, first to the New
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: York area, nam and Philly, and so yeah, the crux
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: of my music career was spent in Nashville. And you know,
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: being a so called quote unquote jazz singer in Nashville
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: is an interesting thing. So it helped me too. I
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: think it helped me to distinguish myself because are not
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: a ton of jazz singers there. There are plenty but
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: by the time we left, I really felt like we
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: had done everything that could be done in jazz in Nashville.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: You know, we had won the awards or what was it,
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: Nashville The Nashville scene had named me the best thing
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: jazzing or Nashville. My husband was the best jazz player
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: in Nashville. I'm like, okay, you win those awards. You
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: got to get the heck out of Dodge. You don't
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: just keep sitting around waiting for somebody to pat you
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: on the head again, like, get out and you know,
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: make your your career worth something. So there's a lot
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: to be said for being in what I call being
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: up under the spout, you know, physically. The proximity principle
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: is it's very real, you know, placing yourself in an
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: environment where people are are doing the kind of thing
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: that you're doing, and you can be interacting with people
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: who actually have some you know, the ability to make
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: decisions on your behalf and things like that. So that's
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: the portion of my career that I'm in right now.
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: It's just like I've put out I'm getting ready to
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: put out my fifth studio album in June, and it's
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: self titled Darstar Tucker. So we'll be putting up the
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: pre order link for that really soon. So I'm really
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: excited about that process. And we're working with kind of
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: a midsize or smaller label now called Greenhill Records, and
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: they're really going to help help us to kind of
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: get our music into more playlists and you know, we're
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: working on getting more placements, you know, with publicity and
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: just getting things up to the next level. Is I
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: experienced a lot of frustration, I think, just kind of
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: trying to do what I did in Nashville, and I
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: still have a lot of you know, residual like, oh God,
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: you know, I should have moved to New York ten
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: years ago. Why did I not start this process ten
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: years ago? But it just logistically just did not happen.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: It could not happen, could have happened until it happened,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: And so I'm just having to accept at this point
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: it's like, this is how, this is how it was
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: supposed to be. It's happening in the way that it
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: needs to happen. And it's really cool now to have
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: a social media following that I do, even though the
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: majority of them don't necessarily follow me. For music. But
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: now they're there, and so we're going to talk about
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: music from time to time. They're gonna hear about my music.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: You know, I feel like the algorithm will show it
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: to them. That's a whole other other issue. But you know,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: a video for me a few years ago, if if
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: I had on Instagram a couple hundred views, that was like,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: that was pretty cool, you know, put up a music video.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: And so now you know, I'll get a couple of thousands,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: you know, several you know, maybe ten thousand views or something,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: which is not amazing on TikTok or Instagram, but it's
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: exponentially better than it was just a few years ago.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: So it's really cool. And then so now the process
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: is how do I merge these personas, How do I
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: merge these identities? How do I make all of this
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: live together hopefully seamlessly, and to get a lot of
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: my followers to the point where you know, like you
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: were saying, Samantha, where you're like, Okay, you do this,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: and you do this, and you do this, and you know,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: I loved this version of this song that you did,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: and then you know your your activism thing also, that's
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: that's the goal. Now is just like make sure and
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: get the music out to people, because I think there
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: is there's a continuum between these these things. I think
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: that the essence and the core of who I am
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: with these videos, with these video essays, it translates to
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: the music once you start, once you hear I hope
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: that I mean. And that's probably more for you guys
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: to say versus me, But once you hear me singing,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: I hope it makes sense that like, oh, okay, this
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: goes with this. These are like partner things and it
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: feels like it's coming from the same space. I hope,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: Oh it does, Like I absolutely made perfect sense when
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: your music. Oh but also your voice in itself, just
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: you speaking is very melodious. So I'm like, yeah, of
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: course you can sing obviously, so like it translated to
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: me in that way. Um, And you know, because we
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: have to have your expertise outside of your own albums obviously,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: for those who are getting into the jazz and blues genre,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: can you give us like a starter pack for what
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: we should be listening as we go through this. I
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: love giving music recommendation in the in the sort of
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: jazz ish world. My favorites would be Number one. I
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: would say Gregor Reporter. If you don't know who Gregor
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: Reporter is, He's just magnificent and wonderful and there is
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: there's none greater in terms of his writing and his singing,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: his his his original music is really my favorite. I
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: would say someone named jazz. Yea Horne is one of
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: the just the finest jazz artist that's out there right now.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: Samara Joy just won the award for Best New Artists
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: the Best Jazz Album is She's one of the more
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: brilliant singers out there. And there's a singer called Cecile
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: McLaurin Salvant who is so quirky and just original and
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: so interesting and she's just incredible. I just love her.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: And then my fifth recommendation would be a singer named
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: Liz Right and she's been out there since the early
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: two thousands just being absolutely incredible. So those five singers
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: would be my top recommendations for jazz if you're interested
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: in that. And I don't go you know, my music
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: doesn't go deep. It's not like a bunch of really
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: complicated jazz solos all over the place. And you know,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: some people really really love that. The music that I
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: do as much more Pedestrian is really just kind of
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: singer songwriter stuff that's set to a jazz bed, So
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: it's very vibe and earthy, and you're going to hear
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: real instruments and you are going to hear solos. But
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: it is all very melodic, and I think it's fairly
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: easy to understand. I don't think the stuff is heavy
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: and hard to get into, and none of the music
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: that I recommended is either, So it's it's for us.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: I call myself a small brain when it comes to music.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: I'm not. I'm not a really you know, smart, complicated
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: jazz musician at all. I don't. I didn't study at
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: a conservatory, and I don't I'm not very good in
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: music theory. So it's it's music of the people. You're
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: great music history, though, I will say that. But you know,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: also the sounds like because I'm I don't know if
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: you know much about it, I'll have to talk about
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: a little bit. I'm starting to get into what it's
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: called cozy gaming, in which you try to play cutesy
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: games while you're all cuddled up that music. So I
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: was like, it might be right there where I So
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: I'm all like comfortable and getting into mind and good
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: vibes and good says. So I'm going to remember this
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: list because I think I'm going to need this as
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: please do. I hope, I really hope you enjoyed them.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: These are some of the more just the most talented
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: people on earth, and I just think they deserve just
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: all of the whatever, all of the publicity they can
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: possibly get, and that's what we need. We want to
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: hear more of that. And of course, yes, you have
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: talked about your album, so let's get that plug. When
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: is it going to be out? Where do we find it?
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: All those things? Well, it's going to be There's actually
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: a link in my bio and social media now where
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: you could theoretically be saved the album. I have not
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: even talked about it. I haven't put it out there,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: but it is in my bio and so it's called
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: Dara Star Tucker. It's its name, it's it's self titled,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: and it'll be out. I think the release date is
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: June third, but we're going to start releasing singles starting
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: April seventh, and so you'll see me talking about it online.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: And if you do, just say something, interact with it,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: share it something so that the algorithm picks it up,
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: because it can be a challenge to try to get
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: those music posts to get the same kind of you know,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: reach as the informational stuff that I do. So that's
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: my challenge now. She just like, how do I find
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: creative ways to share this stuff? And so we'll see
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: going forward whether I can create some visuals that really
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: help people to lock into that. But there's a there's
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: a singer that I really love named Emily King. I
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: don't know if you guys know who she is. I
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: love Emily King. If you don't know who Emily King is,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: she's not jazz, she's more like the pop R and B,
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: like alt R and B. One of my favorite performers
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: out there. But she's so good with these visuals and
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: helping to to get these little grooves and these beats
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: in people's minds, and just creating really interesting ways, you know,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: in the social media space to share her music. So
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: she's a real inspiration for that. So we're going to
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: see if we can be really creative about about the
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: messaging around this album. If you if you actually see
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: it in your fee, then you'll know we've been somewhat
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: successful with it. Well, that's amazing, congratulations, thank you. Yes,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: I can't wait to check it out. And we have
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: a tour a tour coming also, so I'll be posting
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: those dates too, like and album release shows. I'm so
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: sorry to jump in and interrupt, but yeah, that all
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: starts in June. We'll be doing an album really showing
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: my hometown in Tulsa. We'll be doing one in Nashville,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: where I spent fifteen years of my career. We'll be
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: doing one here in New York at Jazz at Lincoln Center,
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: so just yeah, and here here in Philadelphia at South
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: So all of that stuff I'll be sharing on the
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: social Yes, oh you come through Atlanta because we'll be there.
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: Have you come through Atlanta? We're gonna try we book ourselves.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: So we're still looking for a booking agent to kind
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: of help us to set up some real you know,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: true blue tours, but um, you know we would we
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: would love to come through Atlanta. Yes, that'd be so cool.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: In La. I think we're coming to La too. Nice. Well,
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: where can the listeners, the good listeners find you on
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: these social media to learn about all this stuff? I
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: am at Dara Star Tucker Indris tells me to say
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: Dara with one r s A star with two. So
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: Dara Star Tucker da r A stare our Tucker on
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: most socials, on Instagram, I'm Dara Tucker B. But everywhere else, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, everywhere,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: I'm Dara Star Tucker. Yes, so definitely go check that out. Listeners,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: thank you, thank you, thank you so much for joining us.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: It's been to like, thank you all for having me.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: I love having conversations like this with smart people, so
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: thank you for having me. Yes, thank you so much
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: for joining us. This has been amazing. Thank you. Yes,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: anytime come back. I would love it. Yeah, just just
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: let me know if you'd like me to participate in
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: any other conversations about I'm always up for it. If
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: I have the time to do it, I would be
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: up for it. Absolutely awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, listeners, definitely
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: go check out Dara Star Tucker if you have not already.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: If you would like to contact us, you can our
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: email stephaniea Mom stuff I hurtmia dot com. You can
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: find us on Twitter, I'm as podcast, or on Instagram
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: and TikTok at stuff. I never told you and on YouTube. Also,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: thanks as always to our super producer Christina, our executive
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: producer Maya, and our contributor Joey. Thank you very much, Yes,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: thank you, and thanks you for listening stuff I Never
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: told me. His production of I Heart Radio full podcast
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: from my Heart Radio. You can check out the I
• 1:09:16
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• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: favorite shows