BRIANNA: Is it okay if I pick the first song?

KIANA: Yeah.

BRIANNA: Okay… (Grabs corded phone). This is me talking to you... on the phone. (Laptop makes a noise) You are plugged in! Don’t start with me. (Proceeds to take 50-11 hours finding the playlist and chosen song).

KIANA: You got some good ones in here!

BRIANNA: Yeah, that’s why I’m going so slowly. To give you a chance to see what I put on the playlist. This was strategically planned (laughs).

KIANA: Oh, I see.

BRIANNA: Mhmm, always thinking…. I don’t know! How do you work stuff…oh, they’re right here, where it says “playlists.”

(Fast forward several more minutes of Brianna being technically challenged while Kiana offers patient, low energy encouragement).

Brianna plays All My People ­_ Kindred The Family Soul

KIANA: Wow. Kindred The Family Soul. I’ve never heard of them.

BRIANNA: I caught wind of them at my job, we have some international equity and liberation consultants, (coaches, trainers?)… they play music at the beginning of every meeting. This is one that they played and I thought that it was an easy start, a nice chill vibe, and pretty self-explanatory.

KIANA: Yeah, I love that.

BRIANNA: Wait, we’re supposed to be using our phones (grabs corded phone).

KIANA: The whole time?! Or just for the photos?

BRIANNA: Where’s the fun in that. Authenticity.

KIANA:: I don’t want to hold it the whole time. That is my true authentic self.

(Both laugh)

BRIANNA: You right! You right….you right. Yeah! (hollers into phone) You better watch how you talking to me, when you talking to me, the way you’re talking!

KIANA: (speaks directly into the receiver) Yeah! And next time, don’t call me!

(Both hang up their phones)

KIANA: But that hit me really hard. “Everybody eatin’ good, all my people around me.” Right before you stopped it he said something about sharing being the foundation. And I had specifically been talking to my saxophone player Trevin about this and that being the motto that we’re bringing into, first our friend group, and then passing that on to the music scene in Louisville.

BRIANNA: Yeah I think that can get difficult, especially among creatives when you’re trying to have your voice heard, to remember, like they said at Creative Capital to “raise the water and all boats will rise.” So it’s not one ship trying to get ahead, but that we’re cultivating an entire ecosystem for everybody to thrive. And I wonder if people are thinking about that sometimes when they’re like “I’m going to do revolutionary things” or “I’m gonna break the mold or the ceiling or the whatever it is – are they thinking about that? One is cultivating just yourself and is it even sustainable or connected? Is the resulting behavior sometimes mirroring the toxic norms that we’re trying to get away from?

KIANA: Totally.

BRIANNA: But the other: “all boats will rise” is the opposite. All my people.

KIANA: And speaking on sustainability, for me, lifting up the musicians below me so that when I am ready to leave the city, the environment that we created for them, continues to be passed down. So that welcoming, that family environment… setting that up so it continues and doesn’t go back to that competitive eye-for-an-eye scenario.

BRIANNA: Right and I know you well enough that you didn’t mean it this way but even the language of “below” is something that catches my attention, language being so important—you know this, you write songs. But being in conversation and being on the same level as the people that we’re even “serving”….because we’re all supposed to be serving each other as a collective community. Even a plant tells you what it needs and if you don’t listen, it dies. As we cultivate each other how do we actually pay attention to one another in a way that we understand that nobody wins if we don’t… (mumbles) Poor plants.

KIANA: That’s a good point and even something that I didn’t catch: the use of the word below. But I just meant, you know—

BRIANNA: Yeah.

KIANA: I mean people younger than me that are coming up in a different part of the scene than I did.

BRIANNA: And that’s important to be in conversation as things move forward because, what has happened will inform what will happen. And I guess, because I’m always in these spaces of trying to undo white supremacist culture norms, that we have been entrenched and conditioned in. I think about how in some other cultures that’s already understood. You live intergenerationally and pass wisdom between each other with the understanding that at different stages of life, there are different offerings for the complete, holistic nourishment of that community. So, I feel what you’re saying, when you say younger and cultivating that relationship.

KIANA: Thinking about how I have reimagined the way that I teach and the way that I lead, too. Specifically with my band, I have been trying to practice leading by listening and letting them know that it’s more of a collaborative space than a hierarchy. There is no “band leader” so to speak. Sure we are “Kiana & the Sun Kings” and I am Kiana but I am nothing without the Sun Kings. We call them Kings for a reason.

And I feel like I learn as much teaching – talking about my students – as they learn from me, or I hope so!

BRIANNA: Yooo, when I teach community organizing and creative projects in the Bronx, I was like “help!” They give you so much to freaking think about. You come in thinking you have your lil lesson plan and you’re feeling good about what you’re going to share that day. The way people think! The way they can receive something, transform it, and bring it back to you—and how that builds on itself—it’s a beautiful gift. One that the creative community especially gets to hold in ways that other people don’t because creativity isn’t as prioritized in other professions….

What’s the next song?!

KIANA: Next sooooong. Let’s go to the Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah_ Diaspora. I chose this one because, thinking about Cultivate, bringing in traditional elements of music into an otherwise academic medium, jazz, and saying bump that academic shit. We are here to create and to feel and to synthesize. So that’s why I picked that one.

(song plays)

BRIANNA: That’s so nice.

KIANA: So each of those elements are interdependent on each other. I like this because there is no technical lead time you need to know, you can just understand that they’re having a conversation. I like how the piano and the wind instruments respond and wouldn’t be what it is without the other.

BRIANNA: Yeah.

KIANA: How did you feel?

BRIANNA: Nothin else to say after that.

KIANA: Well and so much happens in the call and response. Later on in the piece there’s a section that gets more pointed in the rhythms, they’re responding back and forth to each other in a more rapid manner. 

BRIANNA: That’s why I don’t think we need to really say anything else because it was captured just in the music. We don’t really need the words and that’s kinda the point a little bit. So I don’t have any words that could do it justice. I’m sure somebody could like a writer...you know, that was lovely thank you for that.

KIANA: Yeah for sure, what’s next?

BRIANNA: I’m still hearing it a little in my head

KIANA: I made myself a playlist called makes me feel good (laughs) and that one’s on there.

BRIANNA: That’s a good one to have– necessary. Goes in the essentials toolkit. Do you see anything on here that you would want to play?

KIANA: I wanna talk about why you chose the Jimi Hendrix tune.

BRIANNA: Ok. Yeah, we can talk about it. I’ll play a little bit of it (Plays Jimi Hendrix_All Along the Watchtower).

Ok, so I chose that one, All Along the Watchtower written by Bob Dylan- performed by Jimi Hendrix because it really focuses on the roles in society. It’s not talkin about anybody’s personal narrative. Those are important but I think, almost to the point where you could miss it, they’re talking about social class…the dynamics of that and the misery of that, and how at the end they’re riding in to hopefully dismantle it. I think that type of analysis and awareness is really important when thinking about cultivating community. Because… we can’t de-politicize things and you can’t dismantle something you don’t know.

KIANA: Yeah

BRIANNA: When we try to silo ourselves, or just come from our perspectives, our experience, or our community’s experience even, it can end up being dangerous, I think. So looking at the whole thing.. and I mean to be a little radical they shot Martin Luther King Jr after he started talking about class more, and they killed Malcolm X talking about class, Fred Hampton talking about class. International proletariat revolution right? And so they are having this conversation past their lived experience, being in the same boat. So yeah I like that song. The riff kills me!

KIANA: Yeah!

BRIANNA: I passed out at the beginning like I can’t get through the rest of the song!

KIANA: I mean I don’t know how deep into this we’re gettin but Jimmy interpreting Bob Dylan’s word.. And thinking about it even sonically like the Bob Dylan version and the pure piercing emotion coming from the Jimi Hendrix version. And as like a Black man in America at that time what the interpretation of those words meant to him, right?

BRIANNA: He said that he felt like sometimes the songs that he got from Bob Dylan were so close to him he felt like he could've written them. I think that’s really interesting in this context because I didn’t think that (about) the versions sound differently because of the reality. So, he still brought his lived experience into it. Just musically to the same story to the same reality that they both existed in. 

KIANA: Yeah whooo. That’s a good one! That’s a good segway.. “Interpretations” how connotations change through time.. Let’s go to Robert Glasper_Cherish The Day.” This is originally a tune by Sade and the vibe of Sade one is really somber, smooth. But then Robert Glasper’s arrangement of it I think takes you somewhere else emotionally. I feel a little ethereal when listening to it. So get that on the horn (Picks up phone and puts it to her ear and starts laughing)

BRIANNA: Get that on the horn! Who is she? Ok. Cherish The Day. 

MUSIC: “Cherish the day, won’t go astray.. You move in the way that I move.. I breathe your air..”

KIANA: You got lost in it. Lost in it!

BRIANNA: Yeah.

KIANA: I’ve been trying to teach music through emotion lately, because I have been really trying to deconstruct any barriers around music learning and the assumption that you have to know a certain language to understand it. That can come later. We can talk about theory later if you want to. But what’s the one thing that we connect to every person beyond barriers of language. So the interpretation of the feeling of that piece “If you were mine I wouldn’t want to go to heaven,” we all know that feeling. We can all listen to that piece and like (touches chest emphatically with her fist) you know? (Laughs)

BRIANNA: what? 

KIANA: Just watching your face.

BRIANNA: I mean it feels very healing, in a very positive way, because some healing doesn’t feel good but this does. It reminds me of why, from a visual performance art standpoint, I do Black Love Blooms to have some love and some happiness, and some joy and some healing that’s labor free. In the midst of everything else that’s happening… Awwwww I’m getting emotional.

KIANA: Let’s talk about that, let’s talk about Black Love Blooms and Black Girl Telephone we did a while ago. 

BRIANNA: Uh.. let’s talk about Black Girl Telephone with our telephones! (holds telephone back to ear) Full circle aaaaaay.

KIANA: (holds phone up dramatically like an actress from a black and white film)

BRIANNA: Yeah we can talk about Black Girl Telephone. I look really awkward, the rest of me you just can’t see it. But it’s strangely comfortable so I’m just gonna. (Holding phone with right hand against left ear leaning her body to the right).

KIANA: You look comfy. I like that shirt.

BRIANNA: Thank you! It has some holes in it... But it’s fine. It has pockets (does pocket display showcase). We like pockets... Ok. Let’s talk about Ruth Ellis Brown and her magic and how fantastic she is. And how that came out really organically like out of a need to. Well first her nurturing her whole life, being ninety-one, ninety two nurturing her whole life. And then her children... You know? Her daughter, Cynthia Brown, then wanting to nurture her back and like also, miss Ruth nurturing a room. Like, coming to an art exhibition singing her song, expecting nothing. Just to support and bring energy to the room. Thinking about their family we also have an article in this issue with the Lindsey family, Ramona Lindsey, Faith, Zach. And like how you said, with your friend and your band group– cultivate that sense of collectivity and community and nurturing expands. It continues to grow out. So, I’m thinking about that with their (the Browns) family, and that happens so naturally because they were sharing in a way that was pure, for lack of a better word. Then you popped up as a perfect fit to actualize the music...and she was so happy! (Happy smiles).

KIANA: I was amazed that she thought, like she said, “I can’t write songs, I don’t know anything about music. I just have these words” and I was like these words are incredible! Her words were the catalyst to the whole thing and just to see that generational joy, when we had her at the opening, the reveal of the project and like her daughters and just to see like... How happy they were. I think about it all the time.

BRIANNA: Yeah and just all the people in the room. Just from her sharing what she had to share she created a ripple effect of different communities coming together, different relationships forming.

KIANA: I’m looking for that.

BRIANNA: Hold on, I’m bout to play one of her songs… which one you want? 

KIANA: Let’s do I Can’t Imagine. I might cry…

BRIANNA: You’re gonna cry? If you cry I’m gonna cry. So you, let’s not cry.

KIANA: Stay strong. 

(both laugh)

MUSIC: “I can’t imagine never seeing you again and never seeing you smile, or hearing you laugh, my love... 

I can’t imagine not having you here on summer days and winter nights…”

KIANA: Haha it didn't work. It didn’t work, I’m weak. (lifts glasses to wipe tear)

BRIANNA: You’re not weak. That’s beautiful. A beautiful song.

KIANA: That was one, that was one we wrote on feeling– feeling alone. And then I had her words and her telling you and then you showing me what she wanted it to be about. Then I had to convey that to Dèquan Tunstull who plays piano. 

BRIANNA: Killed it.

KIANA: Ruth Ellis Brown.

BRIANNA: Ruth Ellis Brown everybody. Um, and she’s so sweet. 

KIANA: So sweet, how is she? Have you heard from her ?

BRIANNA: That’s a good question I’m gonna ask. I’m gonna see if she has any more bangers.

KIANA: C’mon now. I need to make her some money.

BRIANNA: Right?! Sometimes I think about trees. I know that sounds random, but sometimes I think about trees and how they adjust and adapt to the environment around them. So, if they get struck by lightning. They grow this way (angled hand gesture). If there’s rocks in the terrain they learn how to wrap their roots around them. If you put concrete around them, ‘cause humans are trash, they just can adapt and go about their business to continue to grow. And then they give as well. They give to everything around them. Shade, environment, seeds, homes.. And so I think about trees and like how could I be more like a tree, sometimes I guess. I think Miss Ruth maybe has that figured out. 

KIANA: Omg yeah. I was gonna say let that be the continuing motto for how we cultivate in our spaces “grow, adapt, give.”

BRIANNA: Yeah and the tree is not like “Ugh! I’m not getting enough” It just does.. It takes what it needs and it does what it does. I’m lookin at a tree right now. You do yo’ thing out there tree.

KIANA: Thinkin about the Bradford pears just out here stinkin... (scrunches face)

BRIANNA: Wait. Are there pears on them?

KIANA: Nah. I mean I don’t know if they grow pears but they’re called the Bradford Pears.

BRIANNA: That’s misleading. That’s false advertising and I’m upset.

(Kiana laughs)

BRIANNA: I was like, snacks! But fine. How many more of these... Let’s see do we wanna go through… Because we're gonna have to...

KIANA: Maybe two more? Two or four more. But we could just go. 

BRIANNA: We’ll share the whole list, we may take a few of these off. Cause some of these I feel like we’ve hit. Cause Stay Alive_Mustafa is like you know… sayin that “traps and the street signs, none of these are gonna be yours or mine. But I’ll be your empire. Just stay alive.” So that I feel like we’ve touched on that. We don’t know if or when we’ll find our sense of glory but if we have each other and doin right by each other, we’ll still have a sense of glory. Maybe one we didn’t know we needed as much.

KIANA: That hit me when you said that. A different sense of glory that we didn’t know we needed as much. I think recently, I have been so focused on what material success means. Like, getting more streams on my songs, and making money off of my music, and money so we can tour, and making more money and this this and this and feeling like I’m not successful if those things don’t happen… But what if that success is just that… we’re trying to give to the community in a way that it appears that the music has not been given to the community before. And what if that success is just setting up the stage for future generations?

BRIANNA: You’re already doing your thing, you know? You’re making your music, how do you.. I was gonna say your publishing music but I’m not sure that’s the right term.

KIANA: Whaaaat? No.

BRIANNA: You’re having a lot of your creative visions manifest even visually. You’re participating in conversations like this... You’re doing community initiatives... Like what you want?

KIANA: Ok, you’re right I need to be like the tree. I got it, I got what I need. 

BRIANNA: You’re gonna keep growing. That’s not anything to fuss about. Just enjoy the growth while you’re in it. Cause when you’re done growing that means you’re dead so.. So we gotta enjoy the growing. That’s it. That’s all we got. Unless you like filthy capitalist rich. Then you ain’t gotta grow but then you’re dead on the inside. And that’s my sermon for the week, Thank you. 

(Both laugh)

KIANA: What about Reality Check_ Noname. Why is that?

BRIANNA: Why is that on here? (big breath) Because I think sometimes I talk a lot about community and us getting in our own way because we don’t sometimes understand the dynamics of society we grew up in and just how entrenched that it is and how it doesn’t have to be this way. But also, the individual still matters. Just because I don’t like individualized culture and society doesn’t mean that I’m not concerned about the individual. Cause at the end of the day you wakin up and you fallin asleep with yourself. Like, yes we’re nurturing the community, giving to the community, participating in the community but in order to give the best.. This has been said, you gotta be at your best to give your best, I guess..I guess, poetry (laughs). So just embracing what is there for you and not sacrificing everything for a sense of trying to change things. Or like imposter syndrome cause I know that’s so real. I don’t know. So many people supported me early on when  I was like “ I’m not an artist.” Also what Creative Capital said, “You gotta be your first Yes.” The world’s gonna have a whole lot of no’s for you. Be your first yes, and when yeses come to you, you feel good. Don’t get in your own way about it for any reason. Don’t get in your own way about it. Serving our calling, which is serving ourselves, is also serving community. You gotta be doing both at the same time, they feed each other. That’s a whole thing I was getting to during this whole ramble of confusion.

KIANA: We gotta be feeding each other. You’re not holding the individual above the collective, but individually you have to be healthy.

BRIANNA: You gotta be straight. That’s it.

KIANA: Yeah, but like you gotta give to the collective in a way that won’t be toxic to you and toxic to them.

BRIANNA: Exactly. Concise. Put that on a t-shirt. 

KIANA: That’d be a big...

BRIANNA: But that’s still a paragraph.

KIANA: But then it’s consumerism so we can’t put that on a t-shirt. (laughs)

BRIANNA: We’ll donate the proceeds. We can get the shirts from the thrift store. And screen print them on those and then give the proceeds to a good cause.

KIANA: Ok OK OK

BRIANNA: Where there’s a will. So yeah that’s why I put that one on there. And that’s also on my “no pressure” playlist so I listen to it when I have a lot going on. Cause she also just like… she sounds so casual during the whole song. She’s not saying “oh this was my sob story. Oh I missed my chance this time. Oh I struggled.” It’s kinda like a this is life. Like this is life and I need to have a reality check that this is gonna be life and I’m gonna live it.

KIANA: Can we hear it? Can we hear a little bit of it?

BRIANNA: You wanna hear it?

(Plays song).

MUSIC: “Not gonna stay here forever... She dreamin’ technicolor in Black and white... My Granny really was a slave for this? Don’t feed the lie…You are powerful beyond what you imagine.”

KIANA: Yeah!

BRIANNA: So good. And you know she goes historically, too. You also gotta stand up and fight for things... Her whole career right now is based off social justice through rap and through music and this book club that she does.. Like y’all afraid to rap about real shit.. While they was whippin’ us, like..what’re you doing? I dunno there’s just so many reality checks in this song that.. Like facin’ up to the truth, like… 

KIANA: Yeah

BRIANNA: She kills me when she says, “Can I get my two sugars please?”

KIANA: Damn. Yeah. 

BRIANNA: It’s a wake-up call.

KIANA: It is, yeah. I was thinking like the contempt in the statement. I feel like this is what we were talkin’ about before about reality checks. We got this conversation, we have a quick reality check, and now we’re back to… Rest In Pleasure_The Esperanza Spalding tune. The metaphor is a relationship ending but to me I interpret that as anything in general, be content for the fact that you went through it. It was good for you in that moment. In that moment.

BRIANNA: Yeah. 

KIANA: And back again to the thing you said about trees we lived through this thing and we didn’t stick around and I’m gonna grow anyway. I’m gonna grow afterwards and I’m happy that that happened.

BRIANNA: Cause all life.

KIANA: Yeah because you live through it and rest in pleasure. 

BRIANNA: Let’s put that on the, on the thing. 

(bass intro plays) 

BRIANNA: Why didn’t you tell me it has the longest intro in the world?

KIANA: It’s good though! And we’re gonna talk about it.

MUSIC: “Now what are we gonna do with our two famished souls?”

KIANA: What did you feel?

BRIANNA: So as a Pisces when I think of rest I don’t always think of pleasure, because Pisces we like all the emotions, they all teach us something. Whatever. Because I feel that way I feel like I’m always in a state to learn through whatever I’m doing. The emotions that I’m having and I’m just now realizing that I don’t always know how to just “rest in pleasure.” I think after incidents… More than an incident. What happened in Louisville with all the pain after the murder of Breonna Taylor, how a lot of times we’re resting just so we can get up again, or resting just so we can get up and go to work the next week. But I don’t know, I really enjoyed this song. I heard you have to bring laughter to the revolution and stuff, but I think this is even more. I think this is hitting even deeper. What is rest?

KIANA:: Yeah. If you think about it from the standpoint of revolution and specifically with Louisville I think that the tendency with us to feel like we didn’t, like there’s constantly more that we could be doing. I think rest in the pleasure of knowing you gave what you can give. And rest so you are restored to give when you can give again. Like let your body absorb, photosynthesize, process.

BRIANNA: I agree. And I mean, we don’t plan for rest really. 

KIANA: Well it’s not… It’s not…

BRIANNA: We ain’t supposed to.

KIANA: It’s not built into the way that society functions. It’s just like work and yeah maybe lay down for three hours so you can get up and work. You know? 

BRIANNA: Yeah, rest is something you do when you’re not working. But I don’t… As I realize that I haven’t really been very much in this culture of resting enough, I think about my life; what am I gonna do to imagine a more liberated future? And so it has to include rest, it has to include exploring. It has to include growth that has nothing to do with a career or a relationship. Like it has to include pleasure. So I like that song.

KIANA: Yeah and that’s something to carry on to the community too. Like build that rest in. In the music business we’re told “practice six hours a day, practice eight hours a day.” Practice as hard as you can. Practice till you’re crying... Like literally that is how you’re going to be better and that’s the only way. But if I could pass anything on it’s just gonna be like... Take a break when you need it. I didn’t want to play music the summer after I graduated, I was so burnt out from the one thing that saved me from everything else. So, rest. You will still be the powerful being that you are and even more so after that. Rest.

BRIANNA: I didn’t make art at least a year after I graduated undergrad.

KIANA: It beats you down.

BRIANNA: Also, humans are exhausting! So, that means I’m exhausting and if I gotta carry my whole-ass self every day of my life, Imma need some rest. Please. Give me some rest. (bangs on the wall) Somebody stage an intervention. I need extra rest. Lord.

KIANA: Good job. Hang on. (picks up phone) Hello?

BRIANNA: (picks up phone) Helloo?

KIANA: Give me Brianna Harlan, Space Maker, Change Maker. Let me speak to the one.

BRIANNA: you always doin this. Oh my god.

KIANA: Let me speak to the one. You did a good job.

BRIANNA: What do you… What do you mean I did a good... Who’re... What are you talking about?

KIANA: You did a good job being you.

BRIANNA: I’m getting better at it everyday. The whole being me thing.

KIANA: Yeah. You’re killing it. 

BRIANNA: I don’t know if I’m killin’ it but I’m doin aight. We out here, we doin it. Y’know? We’re resting, we’re eating well.

KIANA: Well.. eating well? Who eatin’ well?

BRIANNA: You better be eating well.

KIANA: Ummm, I think I hear my mom calling I think I have to goooo… (laughs)

BRIANNA: I was just thinking about that. Your mom... Somebody needs to tell her. What, I ain’t eatin’ well?

KIANA: Because I’ve been eating like pizza.

BRIANNA: Okay...

KIANA: And McDonald’s.

BRIANNA: Wait with cheese on it? 

KIANA: Yeah.

BRIANNA: Omg okay. Why are you eating pizza?

KIANA: We’ll talk about my eating habits in another conversation.

BRIANNA: I’m cultivating, right now.

KIANA: (Laughs) I’m hanging up the phone (hangs up phone).

BRIANNA: Cultivating support. Oh, you hung up on me!

KIANA: I did. 

BRIANNA: That was rude as.. Lemme dial these numbers, click these numbers again (presses phone buttons). Let me call you back. Wait now I’m remembering I can’t because I don’t know your number by heart. So… (hangs up phone) shut up, you don’t know mine! Is that it?

KIANA: Yeah I think so. I feel good, you feel good? You be easy now.