Budding filmmaker Nosarieme Garrick is on a mission to change the world’s perceptions about Africa. She, along with Kathleen Bomani, are the forces behind My Africa Is, an upcoming independent documentary series which aims to show a different side of the African continent. The show is focused on profiling young people who are overcoming adversity and creating change within their communities however they can.
We spoke with Nosa about her project, misconceptions about the continent, and what her Africa is.
How did you come upon the idea of creating My Africa Is… It actually started out when I was writing for AfriPOP! I was contributing to the mag, and initially it was about getting my clips up and getting some experience. I got sent to cover a lot of cool events, and interviewed people who blew my mind. For the first time, honestly, I started being proud of being African, because there were so many inspirational stories I heard. Then I headed to Nigeria to do some work around our elections, and there I met even more people doing great things and decided to go full speed ahead with the documentary series. It was time for us to actually tell these stories, because these were the stories that inspired me to want to do something, and contribute to Africa’s growth. Africans are insanely talented, and it’s important that we contribute our talents to our continent’s development. I see this as a something that will push people to think about how they personally can contribute to Africa in their own creative manner, and hope that the stories of their peers living and working in Africa could inspire them.
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What do you hope to achieve with it? Beyond getting young Africans to fall in deeper love with Africa, I hope it will push them to want to protect it even more, and help unleash it’s humongous potential. I also think the world has been done a disservice with their skewed view of Africa. They don’t know what they are missing out on. Since I moved to the US, I found myself constantly defending the continent, to people who made uneducated assumptions, and it’s not their fault, it’s the broad and homogenous narrative that you see on the news. Consider this to be alternative reporting, we’re not trying to win ratings, by pulling at heart strings, neither are we trying to gloss over the obvious short comings of the various countries. We are in effect on a mission to give a more complete view of what Africa is, in her size, her diversity, her population, and her reality.
The West is saturated with images of an impoverished Africa. Which Africa will you be showing? We won’t be showing the minority of the African elite popping champagne in the clubs. We will be showing the Africa we encounter, as we do profiles on young people who are living on the continent, and are trying to create something to benefit their communities. We’re not trying to put a “spin” on Africa. So I’m not sure we can put a label on the Africa we’ll be showing. We’ll be showing Africa with an emphasis on the different cities within Africa.
What, do you think, are still the greatest misconceptions about Africa? There are the obvious ones of poverty, war, famine. I wouldn’t say these are misconceptions, so much as generalizations. Most of Africa’s population lives below the poverty line; there’s been a recent coup and insurgency in Mali, and the DRC is still not rid of war. There are leaders on their deathbeds, who fight to hold on to power. The problem is that’s where the narrative ends. A lot of people can’t name a dictator, they just know that there are dictators. They see poverty, they don’t see people rising out of it. They hear famine, and talk about the famine in Africa, not in a specific location. So that’s the issue, the misconceptions are that everyone is living the same way, in a jungle, where there is no food, and there’s a dictator sending troops to terrorize them.
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Do you think social media has helped dispel some of the myths about Africa? If so, in what way? Social media has given a voice to people from all around the world. So we’re more readily able to hear someone’s point of view who’s actually living in a country where a news report is being done. It’s created a watering hole for Africans to talk about what it is to be African, but I wouldn’t say it has reached the mainstream. We’re still able to pick and choose what is interesting to us. You’ll find despite all the information out there, there is still not a whole lot of interest, because the poor Africa narrative has been so deeply engrained in people in general. While we Africans are able to talk about how fabulous life is there, turn to mainstream channels, they show the exact opposite, and people are still tuning into those.
Why is it important to you to dispel the myths? I think it’s important to put the myths into context. What areas are rural, where is there poverty, where is there a war, why is there a war. The battle is about the oversimplified narrative, that scares people from discovering Africa, from traveling, from investing, from establishing businesses there. Change on the continent is not going to come from aid, that gets siphoned off by the administrative bodies. It’s going to come from the creation of opportunity for the layman, and that will come from trade and investment, leading to the demand for skilled workers, leading to employment, which is empowerment. It’s about creating a narrative that advocates sustainable development.
What can we, as everyday Africans, do to help the world be more aware of our beautiful continent? Find ways to tell our stories, be responsible to our culture, and remember that we are representative of it.
Finish the sentence: “My Africa is…” My Africa is waiting for it’s potential to be unleashed.
Adds Kathleen: As of late there seems to be a ubiquitous (and failing if you ask me) global effort to “Rebrand Africa” (yes, now they are doing us a favor) ,this is not what My Africa is, Nosa and I deeply believe in the need to preserve and tell our own stories from our own perspectives (we are not team band wagon). In addition there seems to be a growth of “fatigue” from the counter punch stemming from the more amplified African voices of disapproval at oversimplified narratives and our shoddy portrayal in the mainstream, all i ask is to challenge ourselves as Africans is to always speak out when things appear amiss, when our story no longer appears to be our own. if not us, then who?
Click here to help Nosarieme and Kathleen fund the My Africa Is documentary series.
Saxophone jazz musician Lakecia Benjamin has evolved from her beginnings as a saxophonist at Fiorello Laguardia High School for the Performing Arts, to working as a touring musician with Clark Terry's Big Band, and in her current incarnation as horn section femme-fatale leading the Hot Spot Horns playing for the likes of Stevie Wonder, Alicia Keys, and Keyshia Cole. Courtesy: http://revivalist.okayplayer.com/
LAKECIA BENJAMIN
Lakecia Benjamin’s
Retox Release Party
This past week Lakecia Benjamin brought her SoulSquad along with a slew of special guests to Le Poisson Rouge to celebrate the release of her new album Retox. As you will see below, the energy they brought that night kept the crowd on their feet. Check out their opening tune as well as a highlight of the night as dueling keyboardists Chris Rob and Jesse Fischer took it to each other with Fischer on the Motif and Rob rocking the keytar.
2012 Poetry Chapbook Contest (Click here to download the submission form) Accents Publishing is happy to announce its 2012 Poetry Book Contest. Two winners will be selected – one by an independent judge, Lynnell Edwards, and one by the Senior Editor and founder of Accents Publishing, Katerina Stoykova-Klemer. Each winner will have his/her submission published and will receive a $250 cash prize and 25 perfect-bound copies. All contest entries will be considered for regular publication with Accents Publishing, as well. The entry fee is $10.00. Multiple submissions are allowed, as long as each one is accompanied by a separate entry fee and submission form. Winning books may be pre-ordered at the time of submission for $5.00 each. A complete submission should include the following:
Two title pages – one with name and contact information, one without
Your biography or CV
A check or a confirmation of payment via Paypal (see below) covering the $10 entry fee, plus any optional book preorders
Please do not include a SASE, as notification will be made by email only. We will accept submissions between February 1st and June 30th. Winners will be announced in July. The contest is open to any poet writing in English. Employees of Accents or family members of judges are ineligible to participate. Simultaneous submissions will be accepted, but please notify us immediately if your manuscript is accepted for publication elsewhere. Manuscripts should conform to the following guidelines:
20 to 30 pages of poetry
Table of contents
Single spaced
Numbered pages
11 pt font minimum
Your name should not appear anywhere within the manuscript. Please do not send the only copy of your work, as manuscripts will be recycled. Entries should be mailed to: Accents Publishing Attn: Katerina Stoykova-Klemer P.O. Box 910456 Lexington, KY 40591-0456 U.S.A
Lynnell Major Edwards is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Covet (October, 2011), and also The Farmer's Daughter (2003) and The Highwayman's Wife (2007), all from Red Hen Press. Her short fiction and book reviews have appeared most recently in Connecticut Review, American Book Review, Pleiades, New Madrid, and others. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky where she is on the Board of Directors for Louisville Literary Arts, a non-profit literary arts organization that sponsors the monthly InKY reading series and The Writer’s Block Festival. She is also Associate Professor of English at Spalding University. She also teaches creative writing at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and is available for readings and workshops in a variety of settings.
We are an independent press based in New York City. The founding editors are Kate Angus and Christine Kanownik and can be reached at augurybooks@gmail.com.
At this time Augury Books is not accepting unsolicited material for the website or for general publication.
Our Editors’ Prize in Poetry is now open for submissions between May 1st–July 31st, 2012
-The winner will receive a $750 honorarium and publication with Augury Books as well as 20 complimentary copies of the book. Additional copies can be purchased at a discounted price.
-This contest is open to anyone, except personal friends, colleagues or former students of the editors.
-Multiple submissions are accepted as long as each manuscript is submitted individually with separate reading fees.
-All entries will be considered for publication.
-Submit up 40-75 pages of poetry and an acknowledgments page. Please do not include a bio.
KorloueNow is a platform for promoting creative thoughts through writing. It hopes to shift the attention of youths from violence as a means to an end to writing. It is an intellectual platform for developing creative ideas and thought.
KorlueNow is inviting entries for its inaugural poetry competition, where the top three winners will receive:
1st Prize N50, 000
2nd Prize N30,000
3rd Prize N20,000
The top 10 will be given certificates, and their pieces published on www.korloueNow.com
GUIDELINES
Inspirational Poem to be on contemporary Nigeria
Open only to unpublished authors (published here refers to having books )
Must not exceed 30 lines
An individual is entitled to only one entry
Entry must be an original work by the entrant not published in any book or on any website
Entries are to be sent in the text of the email (no attachments) to also include the full name, residential address, and telephone number(s) of the entrant. In the subject area, write ‘The KorloueNow Poetry Competition’ and send to competitions@korlouenow.com
By sending in your entry for this competition, you grant KorloueNow the right to publish and broadcast the work on www.korloueNow.com. The authors will however retain the copyrights.
The writer is wholly responsible for any actions that might arise as a result of plagiarism.
Please note that the prizes will be presented at Port Harcourt.
Submission ends at 11:59pm on the 1st of August, 2012, and winners will be announced on the 15th of August, 2012.
Several years ago I was at a mall in Philadelphia buying a meal from KFC. Because I didn’t want my cole slaw to run all over my fried chicken and biscuit—having had this not so pleasant experience in the past—I asked the cashier to put the side dish in a separate paper bag. As it had begun raining when I entered the mall and because I was riding public transportation back home, I also asked the cashier to double bag my entire order. I did not expect my effort to avoid eating a soggy biscuit or arriving home with a soaked container to yield a comment about my marriage prospects. But that it did. Exasperated at my two requests, the cashier said while handing me my food, “You’re probably never going to get married, are you?”
I share this experience with my students during our section on marriage and the family in Introduction to Sociology, a course I teach regularly. I tell the anecdote for a couple of reasons. One, I found the situation rather funny even as I recognize that the cashier’s comment was, as many of my students point out, rude and overly-familiar. Two, and more importantly, it serves as a basis for interrogating the beliefs about marriage found in the majority of sociological research on inequality and assimilation as well as in public policy and more recent debates about gay marriage.
There is usually an audible gasp from the class when I finish the story. Most of the students’ comments express a preoccupation with me being deprived (at least verbally) of marriage. Some also raise concerns about the gendered aspect of me being perceived as too “dominant” a woman (which could also be racial since I am Asian American) for marriage since I felt comfortable asking for what I wanted, in this case, the separation of my cole slaw and an additional bag. While kind, underpinning my students’ reactions is the belief that I am somehow being denied something of value if I cannot get married. As we read and discuss sociological articles about marriage as an institution, including more contemporary literature on gay marriage, students tend to express the same argument found in most social science research and political analysis: marriage is the goal. Although some students do not seem totally comfortable with homosexuality—judging from their responses to our readings on gender and sexuality—most who do participate in the class debate about gay marriage appear to support lesbians’ and gays’ right to wed. Not surprisingly, then, most of these students are perplexed when I present sources that indicate ambivalence or even aversion to marriage from gays and lesbians and some LGBT organizations.
Given this, I also think many of my students would be surprised to find out that marriage is not necessarily a right that has been “kept” from people in the way often suggested in political debate, a point I want to explore further here.
According to the dominant narrative, marriage is a social right that minority groups have been prevented from accessing, thus limiting their full citizenship. Having the legal right to marry, then, is proof of citizenship and social inclusion. In this case, citizenship through marriage entails not only the legal recognition of one’s relationship and commitment to another individual (and only an individual given the emphasis on monogamy in U.S. marriage policy), but also the social rewards associated with spousal ties, such as property rights, benefits, child custody rights, medical decisions, etc. While true there are many such “rewards” only recognized in the case of legally married couples, the belief that marriage is a coveted right that minorities have been excluded from accessing due to their status as social “others” underpins the push for gay marriage, a political agenda that emerged only fairly recently in the 1990s and notably in the “post-Civil Rights era.” Embedded in this access narrative is the assumption that the government, federal and local, does not want minorities to be married; thus minorities being granted the right to marry supposedly means that the state has evolved in terms of its gender and sexuality politics and is working to progressively dismantle the social hierarchy rather than enforce it. The narrative also promotes the belief that once married, it gets better: specifically, after the marriage barrier is broken the government is presumably no longer “in your bedroom” or regulating your relationship beyond protecting the aforementioned rights and benefits institutionally available to married couples. In sum, it’s often assumed that the government’s only repressive role in this situation is preventing people from getting married.
These assumptions are inaccurate.
While some have described how Americanization campaigns encouraged marriage among immigrants during the Progressive Era or how gay marriage was facilitated by some city and local governments in the early 2000s, the most striking example of governments promoting marriage among U.S. minorities is the targeting of African Americans. The reason why the state’s push for Black marriage is so important to consider is because it goes against what many in the general public believe—that the government actively works against Black marriage—and also exposes the limitations of the access narrative regarding exclusion and post-marriage rights promoted by gay marriage supporters.
As several scholars and analysts emphasize, contemporary welfare reform, primarily targeted at the mythical “Black welfare queen” (despite the diversity of welfare recipients), pushed marriage among poor women as a solvent for poverty and female-headed households. Indeed, as Priya Kandaswamy points out, the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) begins with the following “finding” from Congress: “(1) Marriage is the foundation of a successful society.” The “most dramatic restructuring of the US welfare state since the New Deal,” PRWORA enacted, among other draconian measures, “stricter paternity identification practices” designed to force poor women to become more dependent on men with whom they had children (men who were most likely also poor). With little consideration for the dynamics of the relationship (be it violent or collegial), poor women were expected to maintain a particular type of relationship with men than to continuously access state support for taking care of themselves and their children. While the PRWORA’s disciplining of women’s sexuality and relationships is emphasized by critics of the act, we can also consider how poor men and specifically poor Black men figure in the PRWORA and related initiatives proposed before and after 1996. One notable antecedent to PRWORA was the 1965 Moynihan Report, which was preoccupied with “emasculated” Black men unable to take their “rightful” position as heads of Black households. Specifically, such policies were preoccupied with gayness, often referred to sociologically as “gender confusion” among Black men, i.e., not knowing how to have heterosexual relationships that involved constraint and “appropriate” gender roles in relationship to Black women in the domestic sphere.
About a hundred years prior to the Moynihan Report, marriage was promoted among emancipated slaves by states after the Civil War. This gesture was less recognition of African Americans’ “free” status and their right to have rights, but more, as Angela Onwuachi-Willig describes, an example of how laws serve as a form of “oppressive state monitoring” of Blacks post-emancipation. Oppressive indeed, as African Americans were aggressively pushed to marry and register their marriages with the state. Registration policies (and the granting of certain rights to Blacks in general) also became a means to police and criminalize African Americans. For example, Blacks who married and failed to register with the state were prosecuted. Demonstrating the afterlife of slavery, the attempts of slaves to express some emotional autonomy and forge their own marriages (without the legal ability to contract) on plantations became the basis of social control in the post-Emancipation period. Black codes in different states declared slave couples who lived together during slavery as legally married. Former slaves who had multiple spouses due to forced separation were prosecuted for bigamy. In cases where a Black man might have multiple spouses, Freedmen’s Bureau agents would designate the Black woman with the most children to be his wife. Additionally, these policies and practices served as forms of privatization and anti-Black austerity as “the government used marriage to financially and socially domesticate newly freed Blacks to ensure that the white public faced minimal responsibility for former slaves’ economic security.” Put simply, instead of reparations, African Americans got marriage.
What marriage advocates, particularly those supporting gay marriage, can learn from the Black experience is that marriage politics is much more than who has access to marriage or being told, as I was by the KFC cashier, that I probably would not get married. Marriage politics also encompasses the political purpose of marriage, or why it is encouraged, whose agenda it serves beyond those who exchange the vows, and the use of the institution to justify a range of austerity campaigns that privilege certain classes as well as promote the surveillance and criminalization of those structurally deemed unfit for full citizenship or who reject or “fail at” marriage. Marriage promotion as a punitive measure has been most aggressively targeted at African Americans and for that reason alone, marriage as a purportedly benign right should be questioned. We can also consider why, in the context of an anti-Black civil society in which we all exist, marriage serves as an explanation for enduring social inequalities, particularly during the era of mass incarceration, the HIV AIDS crisis, and the most severe financial meltdown since the Great Depression. As Kandaswamy succinctly puts it, “the language of marriage has displaced the question of political economy almost entirely.”
To be clear: my exploration of the state’s aggressive promotion of marriage among African Americans is not to equate the contemporary call for gay marriage with Black striving for full citizenship or to imply that those in the Black community (or of any background) who want to get married shouldn’t do so. Rather, it is to discuss marriage politics beyond access to legal recognition and to consider what the African American experience reveals about marriage as an organizing principle of the structure, under which we all attempt to carve out emotional meaning and have a variety of relationships. It may also help us better understand why gay marriage has received, to an extent, bipartisan support during a global financial crisis in which governments and institutions are seizing the time to enact austerity campaigns and restructuring in a ruthless, no holds barred fashion. While doubtful that non-Black gays and lesbians will experience the degree of disciplining that African Americans have upon obtaining the right to marry, the Black experience nevertheless suggests that we should all have some skepticism about the push for marriage among politicians, civic organizations, and activists, even as some of us negotiate our very real desires for long-term love, or at least, companionship.
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Tamara K. Nopper is a writer, professor, and Sociology PhD. Her work can be found at www.tamaranopper.com and she is on twitter at @tnopper.
Here's an exclusive clip from the feature documentary on the lives of Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee we previously told you about.
Directed by their grandson, Muta'Ali Muhammad, it's the first of its kind ever! And don't they (Ossie & Ruby) deserve this kind of filmic recognition?
Titled Life’s Essentials with Ruby Dee, and described as "a documentary style film about Love, art and activism," the film will tell the life and love story of Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, for the first time, incorporating candid and revealing conversations and much more.
Below, you'll find a new clip from the project featuring actor/activist Danny Glover talking about art and activism.
And if you haven't seen the video pitch, it's embedded again underneath, so watch it and hopefully be inspired.
And the after watching both clips, head on over to the project's Kickstarter page (HERE) to contribute - the goal is to raise $50,000, with 29 days left in the campaign.
The understated Bill Withers is a Soul music legend, respected for his elegant songwriting and an exceptional voice that compliments his words. We tried to get a sense for why his songs have had such impact, and were treated to a thought-provoking discussion on transference, the X-factor, and making the complicated simple.
Carl Wiser (SF): Your songs have endured, and we're hoping you can tell us about some of them. "Ain't No Sunshine," can you tell us what inspired you to write that?
Bill Withers: It's pretty obvious what it's about. I was watching a movie called Days Of Wine And Roses (1962) with Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon. They were both alcoholics who were alternately weak and strong. It's like going back for seconds on rat poison. Sometimes you miss things that weren't particularly good for you. It's just something that crossed my mind from watching that movie, and probably something else that happened in my life that I'm not aware of.
To me, songwriting is you sitting around scratching yourself and something crosses your mind. There are probably more great stories made up about the writing of songs after they've been written and received, because you've got to say something. I love listening when there's some song like "Eat My Funky Sweat," and then somebody makes up this profound story about what inspired him to do it. Sometimes the stories are much more profound than the songs. I've gotten into trouble a lot of times. Being at the age now where I'm a certified curmudgeon, you get a little grouchy when you pass 65, I used to do it when I was younger sometimes, I've learned to try to probe a little deeper. Somebody would ask, "What were you thinking when you wrote so and so," and the obvious answer was, "I was thinking what I wrote." So I won't do that to you, Carl.
SF: Thank you for that. So "Ain't No Sunshine" was not based on a personal experience, it was based on the movie?
Mr. Withers: Watching the movie probably affected me and made me stop long enough to putz around, and that phrase crossed my mind, so you just kind of go from there.
SF: When you were in the studio recording that and you get to the classic part where you're doing the "I know, I know," was that a placeholder at the time?
Mr. Withers: Whatever a placeholder is. I wasn't going to do that, then Booker T said, "No, leave it like that." I was going to write something there, but there was a general consensus in the studio. It was an interesting thing because I've got all these guys that were already established, and I was working in the factory at the time. Graham Nash was sitting right in front of me, just offering his support. Stephen Stills was playing and there was Booker T and Al Jackson and Donald Dunn - all of the MGs except Steve Cropper. They were all these people with all this experience and all these reputations, and I was this factory worker in here just sort of puttering around. So when their general feeling was, 'leave it like that,' I left it like that.
SF: How about your song "Lean On Me?" Can you tell me about that one?
Mr. Withers: A lot of time you go back and fill in the blanks. This was my second album, so I could afford to buy myself a little Wurlitzer electric piano. So I bought a little piano and I was sitting there just running my fingers up and down the piano. That's often the first song that children learn to play because they don't have to change fingers - you just put your fingers in one position and go up and down the keyboard. In the course of doing the music, that phrase crossed my mind, so then you go back and say, "OK, I like the way this phrase, Lean On Me, sounds with this song." So you go back and say, "How do I arrive at this as a conclusion to a statement? What would I say that would cause me to say Lean On Me?" Then at that point, it's between you and your actual feelings, you and your morals and what you're really like. You probably do more thinking about it after it's done. Being from a rural, West Virginia setting, that kind of circumstance would be more accessible to me than it would be to a guy living in New York where people step over you if you're passed out on the sidewalk, or Los Angeles, where you could die on the side of the freeway and it would probably be 8 days before anyone noticed you were dead. Coming from a place where people were a little more attentive to each other, less afraid, that would cue me to have those considerations than somebody from a different place. I think what we say is influenced by how we are, what's been our life experiences. Now, I notice young guys writing about shooting each other in the city and stuff like that, well that was not my experience, so I would never have said anything like that because it was not my experience. I'm not from a big city. I think circumstance dictates what people think.
SF: It almost sounds idealized. I'm wondering if this was your life back then that you were thinking of when you were writing it.
Mr. Withers: It sounds idealized if you are from an environment where it's not practical to do that. I'm from an environment where it was practical to do that. That's probably why somebody from New York did not write that song, or somebody from London, or somebody from a large city. It's a rural song that translates probably across demographical lines. Who could argue with the fact that it would be nice to have somebody who really was that way? My experience was, there were people who were that way.
SF: Who would help you out? Mr. Withers: Yes. They would help you out. Even in the rural South. There were people who would help you out even across racial lines. Somebody who would probably stand in a mob that might lynch you if you pissed them off, would help you out in another way.
I can think of a specific incident. When I was in the Navy, I must have been about 18, 19 years old, and I was stationed in Pensacola, Florida. It was some holiday, I had this car that I was able to buy and I was driving from Pensacola, Florida up to West Virginia. As is the case with young people with cheap cars, the tires weren't that great, so one of my tire blew out on this rural Alabama road. This guy comes walking over the hill that looked like he was right out of the movie Deliverance. Did you see that movie?
SF: With the banjos - yes.
Mr. Withers: He says to me, "Oh, you had a blowout." Well, I didn't have a spare tire. This guy goes walking back across the hill, and I'm not too comfortable here because I know where I am. He comes back walking with a tire, and he actually helps me put the tire on the car. My circumstance, this was not an idealized concept, this was real to me. Now, if you have a tire blow out on the West Side Highway in New York, people who would probably be less inclined to participate in your lynching wouldn't give a fat man if you sat there for 2 years. So, just like the whole American experience, it's very complex and it has it's own little rules and stuff. I thought it was funny when everybody got worked up over Strom Thurmond having this daughter, and I thought, "What else is new?" It depends on your socialization. My socialization was, it was very likely and very practical to expect a Lean On Me circumstance to exist. My adjustment was not adjusting to that circumstance probably being real and probable, my experience was trying to adjust to a world where that circumstance was not the rule rather than the exception. Now I've got you all confused - you started this, Carl.
SF: I did. I can talk about this all day, but we have limited time so let's move on to "Lovely Day." Can you tell us what that means to you and what was the inspiration? Mr. Withers: The inspiration was the co-writer. We're all sponges in a sense. You put us around very nice people, and the nice things come out in us. You put us around some jerks, and we practice being jerks. Did you ever notice the difference between your own personality when you're hanging out in a room full of jocks or when you're hanging out in a room full of Clarinet players? We all adjust. Or the difference in the way you speak to your grandmother or your best contemporary friend.
So Skip Scarborough, who was a songwriter that did Earth, Wind & Fire stuff, whenever I've collaborated with anybody, their role is predominantly music and mine is predominantly lyrics. People seem to leave me alone with that. Skip, just the way he was - he died recently - was a very nice, gentle man. He would cause me in probing my thoughts, something would occur to me that was more like he is. The way Skip was, every day was just a lovely day. He was an optimist. If I had sat down with the same music and my collaborator had been somebody else with a different personality, it probably would have caused something else to cross my mind lyrically.
SF: So it was more the person than the music itself?
Mr. Withers: No, it was a combination of the music and the person and the ambiance in the room. If you're in a room with a person that's a little bit frightening, you're going to think differently. If somebody had sent you to interview John Wayne Gacy, I don't think there'd be too much humor in your writing, but if somebody sent you to interview some funny guy, something less threatening, then the frivolity in you would have come to the surface.
SF: You play off what's there, I see. Another collaboration you did with Grover, "Just The Two Of Us," can you tell us about that? Mr. Withers: Grover and I didn't do anything at the same time. My friendship was with Ralph McDonald, who was a writer and a producer, then he has a partner Bill Salter. They had written this song, and I'm a little snobbish about words, so they sent me this song, and said "We want to do this with Grover, would you consider singing it?" I said, "Yeah, if you'll let me go in and try to dress these words up a little bit." Everybody that knows me is kind of used to me that way. They said, "Fine." I actually met Grover when I went over there to sing the song. It was with today's technology and overdubbing and stuff, so I really never got to know Grover that well. My friendship was with Ralph McDonald. I'd admired Grover because Grover did the first cover version that I knew about of any song I'd written - he did an instrumental version of "Ain't No Sunshine." I think it was on his first album. The connection there was with Ralph McDonald, it just happened to be a Grover Washington album.
SF: OK. Anything you can tell us about the lyrics?
Mr. Withers: Some of them were already written. I probably threw in the stuff like the crystal raindrops, as opposed to what it used to be. I don't remember what it used to be. The Just The Two Of Us thing was already written. It was trying to put a tuxedo on it. I didn't like what was said leading up to Just The Two Of Us.
SF: You mentioned you're a lyrics snob, when I thought you were exactly the opposite when listening to some of your songs. You have a way of making your lyrics so simple yet understandable.
Mr. Withers: That's why I'm a snob about it, it's very difficult to make things simple and understandable. You ever sit down and have a conversation with somebody who took their formal education too seriously.
SF: Yes
Mr. Withers: And they're speaking and throwing in a bunch of words that you don't have a ready meaning for? You're sitting there nodding because you don't want them to think you're stupid, but what you really think is, there's a lot of easier ways to say it, and you wonder if they even know what the hell they're talking about or if they're just showing off. So to me, the biggest challenge in the world is to take anything that's complicated and make it simple so it can be understood by the masses. Somebody said a long time ago that the world was designed by geniuses, but it's run by idiots. When I say I'm a snob lyrically, I mean I'm a snob in the sense that I'm a stickler for saying something the simplest possible way with some elements of poetry. Because simple is memorable. If something's too complicated, you're not going to walk around humming it to yourself because it's too hard to remember.
SF: It's relatable too, and it's refreshing to hear someone say what they mean.
Mr. Withers: Yes, and the key is to make somebody not only remember it, but recall it over and over and over again. When you mention that some stuff I have written has lasted a long time, I think that's because it's re-accessible. Is that a word, re-accessible?
SF: It is now.
Mr. Withers: That's why the simpler forms of music, which are my favorites, like Country music and The Blues and stuff that states something in a way that everybody can understand and you remember it. There are lines that are so profound, like "The first time ever I saw your face," or Billy Joel's "I love you just the way you are." For somebody to state that in that simple a form - I heard this Country song the other day that really stuck to my ribs, and it was just a simple phrase - "And when the time comes for you to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance."
SF: Yeah, the Lee Ann Womack.
Mr. Withers: Come on man, you can't say that any better. One thing that I said once, that I've never heard anybody say before or since - "Hello like before." That's one of my favorite things that ever crossed my mind. Try saying that in any shorter form, you can't do it. So when I say I'm a snob lyrically, that means, OK, the gauntlet is down - how clear can you make it and in how few words.
SF: Any other ideas on why your songs might be so enduring?
Mr. Withers: Yeah, I have ideas on it. First of all, I don't write a lot of them. I've only done 9 albums in 2000 years. It's not an accident - when I sit down to say something, I not only try to say something to somebody else, but say something for myself. And I don't walk around with a piece of paper in my hand all the time, so if I don't remember it, it means it wasn't very memorable so it's probably in the wind somewhere.
The other thing is that there's an X factor that we all function under. And that has nothing to do with you, it's an accident of birth. That's the gift that you have. That's why it's called a gift, it means you can't go out and buy it, you can't go out and get it from anybody, it has to be given to you. I'm doing the best I can trying to explain this stuff, but I don't have any explanation as to what separates me from anybody else, except certain things were given to me. The real and most profound answer to anything you've asked me - why did you say this or why did you that - is because it crossed my mind. Why did it cross my mind versus crossing your mind or anybody else's mind? I was probably walking around thinking and wondering if the pimple on my cheek was as obvious to anybody else as it was to me and something crossed my mind. The challenge is to make up stories as to why you write a song after somebody becomes interested in it.
The funny thing is, your personal experience, when you're first trying to get started, these songs that now people are interested in, trying to find out how you came up with it, in those days, you couldn't get anybody to sit and listen to the damn thing. They'd start talking halfway through the first verse. You know the most annoying thing in the world? When you've got this new song and you're trying to play it for somebody, and instead of listening to the damn song, they're talking. Then 30 years later, after this song becomes something else, now you're trying to accommodate everybody - and it's flattering, don't get me wrong here, I'm just talking about the irony and the humor in the whole thing - now 30 years later, 50,000 people want you to explain it to them. When at the actual point when you were doing it, when it was fresh in your memory, nobody would even listen to the shit without interrupting.
SF: I told Mrs. Withers I'd use a half an hour and I'm going to honor that. I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us.
Mr. Withers: Well, it was fun Carl. I hope I didn't bore you.
