The Canadian Soul Music Scene - Living in a Racist Illusion

Vibrations

The on-line Magazine (e-zine) of The Soulful Expression
 

"Living in a Racist Illusion"

by:  Aisha
 

“I’m a cultural worker, not an Entertainer… Hustler’s Revolution is the second CD on “The Soulful Expression” my independent label.  This is the story of how it and "The Soulful Expression" came to be.  When I told my Uncle about "The Soulful Expression", in Canada,  he said it sounded a little like facing god (in that I had  truly been tested for what I believed in).  I think that he was right... but being loved, loving what I do, knowing the value of my culture, who it really belongs to, and being given the gift to carry on the tradition is the Sweetest Inspiration..."

 

The title cut to my new cd opens with a dialog between two ordinary brothers and sisters in America talking about day today things.  They then say together "This Ain't No Hustler's Revolution it's a People's Revolution"…That's my anthem for today, things are very serious...but some people don't believe it's real.  I hope that people who read this will be inspired and know that they can do anything!  

In 1998 I moved to Toronto, Canada with my husband Bankole because I was tired of being persecuted by the U.S. government (I believe that African-Americans are a subjugated national minority, not really citizens, although I carry an American passport).  And I was fed up with the entire American experience.   The government wasn’t happy with our move, and decided to treat Bankole and I like run away slaves and continue to persecute us over an international border.  This led to us filing a refugee claim. 

We spent three years in Canada under the protection of the U.N. having been found eligible by the Canadian government to file a refugee claim.

During the three years I lived in Canada I saw the need to become a cultural worker because of racism that I encountered in the music industry there.   I do not consider myself an “entertainer”, although I try to make what I do entertaining.  Entertainers will do whatever they are told for money.  On one track they will sing about revolution and building a strong Black nation, on the next track, bitches and hoes, Afro-centric rhetoric which none one really understands on the next, and loving the Black woman on the next track.  Which does nothing but misleads people and continues to perpetuate  a state of confusion.  We’re not about that…we do what we do to preserve and protect the culture…our message is clear…

Since they went to such great lengths in Canada  to make sure that I wasn’t heard (or anyone who really had something to say, and talent) I began to realize how powerful of a tool for change music is, and how it influences people in a very positive or negative way.  In the 70’s when I was a teenager I was influenced in a very positive way by the music I heard!  They call it “Soul” because that’s what it does, it touches your soul, gives you hope and life!  It helps you to struggle and be yourself.  I realized in Canada that’s why they had taken the drum from us, and that they are still keeping the drum from us today.  The new drum is “Soul Music”. 

A Culture in Context

In 1999 I formed my own label and music company “The Soulful Expression” and in 2000 I began teaching workshops in Canada on the African origins of African-American music.  I preached to large and small audiences in Canada (and later in Sweden) about how Jazz, Blues & Soul are African-American art forms that comes from our experience exclusively. I also produced my first CD that year “The Soulful Expression of an African from America” recorded live in Canada.

I started holding these workshops called “A Culture in Context”  because I felt a need to teach people about the obvious…that we DO HAVE A CULTURE THAT IS ALIVE AND WELL, although there is a billion dollar industry that is trying to wipe it out. 

I began to get asked to hold these workshops in libraries, etc.  When no one was asking, we held them in our home and sold cds! 

I also did children's storytelling with music at many libraries in Toronto.

I found myself in Toronto, Canada feeling probably a lot like the jazz musicians from the past.  I was being told the most outrageous things by Canadian music promoters and festival booking people, like “what do mean by authentic African-American music?…we’ve had a Soul scene here for 50 years…” 

I noticed that what they were calling the “Soul Scene” in Canada was all white and without a soul at all.   And that there was in fact a segregated music system in Toronto with  paid gigs for white musicians playing Black music and take the door  (your pay was based on how many people came to the gig, if 5 of your friends came and paid three dollars each the band would make $15.00 Canadian for the gig) for the rest of us.  Some well established clubs were even refusing to pay musicians a wage at all, but were paying people in food and drinks!  I refused to play our music for a  plate of food, a beer or the door while white musicians were making money playing our music and refusing to even acknowledge that it is our music!  I spent a lot of time reading books about how James Brown and Sun Ra did things.  And that was very inspiring.  In the end I figured that I could make more money and have greater success if I controlled things, produced my own shows, and hired my own musicians.  Thus “The Soulful Expression”  One of Canada’s only African-American owned music companies was born.

It was very hard running “The Soulful Expression” at first.  I ran into the same old garbage.  The musicians didn’t understand why I wouldn’t play for the door, some people actually wanted to argue with me about it…and they were very afraid of the establishment.  Most of the white musicians in Canada were so arrogant and racist (and unable to play our music correctly) that I decided to only hire African musicians from the Diaspora. 

There weren’t hardly any African-Americans in Toronto (I met 3 in three years!) so I hired our people from Africa, Germany and the Caribbean, and African-Americans when I could.  My best friend Percy Dixon from Chicago who is a prolific song writer and fantastic keyboard player who plays with heavy hitters like Oscar Brown Jr., came up to help me out on keyboards and that was one of my greatest inspirations! 

 People in the industry in Canada did everything they could to keep my music from being heard.  After “The Soulful Expression” became popular they still refused to give us gigs or  to publicize our events even if we paid for the advertising…They refused to do things like posting my picture on websites or in brochures.  Sometimes they even refused to run free ads about my shows.

Nonetheless “The Soulful Expression”  became the “underground buzz” in Toronto, attracting hundreds of listeners and eventually over 120,000 people to one of our websites!  This was due largely because of my husband and manager Bankole Irungu who is a smooth radio host and  small business marketing genius.    Bankole is also a lover of “African-American classical music” (J-a-z-z) and this helped me beyond words!  Thank you Bankole!  I always say that there would not be a “Soulful Expression” without him.  His infinite wisdom in judging people’s character and situations has been fantastic.  I feel like the luckiest person in the world. 

“The Soulful Expression” became popular in 2000 in Canada and there were TV performances, newspaper write ups and Bankole and I were making really good profits at the events we sponsored.  We were employing African musicians for a decent wage and giving them excellent working conditions. 

The Freedom Train

As a last ditch effort the Canadian government stepped in and decided that my message wasn’t wanted in Canada (that African-Americans could run a dignified successful business with their own true culture).  They told us to leave in 30 days or be arrested and ".you can neither return to the United States nor can  you transit through the United States to another country.  DO NOT  ATTEMPT TO ENTER THE UNITED STATES WITHOUT PERMISSION..."… That was the day that I became stateless. 

Our last concert in Canada was a farewell fundraiser for our trip to Sweden.  People came  out and some paid up to $150.00 to get into an Anarchist space in Toronto.

A  few good friends raised funds for us to be able to leave the country, and the next stop was  Stockholm, Sweden and “The Soulful Expression” continued to be a music company in exile…I have been riding the modern-day freedom train every since.  Today’s stop is London, England where I am writing these liner notes at the home of  friends.

Stockholm, Sweden

The activists that we met in Stockholm who gave us housing and support inspired me to the point where I found myself writing all of the time…The quiet of a Swedish country house of a friend, Sylvia just outside of Stockholm, her sweet and affectionate cat Rufus and the midnight sun all inspired me to write the music for Hustler’s Revolution.  I had no idea I was making another cd.   I was just relaxing and writing about my life, the past, the present, and what I felt….I brought along my 4 track recorder from Canada and I found in the middle of the night that Mårten’s keyboard had some fantastic sounds!   So every night was a different experiment with what I felt and the music, nature and life and  before I knew it I had written about 10 new compositions over a few short weeks. 

Before I came to Toronto, I was really mainly a singer.  But the arrogance and lack of professionalism among many musicians in Toronto who played what they thought was Soul, Blues  & Jazz (they don’t really even know what it is…) put me in a position where I had to learn to accompany myself at the piano.  I have always been stubborn and I refused to play with people who wanted to take the Soul out of the music, and who said they loved the music and the culture, but couldn’t respect us, the people, and admit that it is our culture.

 So, in the quiet of Sweden, away from the hostility of Toronto, I learned about bass lines,   more loosely fitted keyboard parts with inversions, 9ths, 11ths & 13ths, flatted notes and reached back into my church past for the background vocals, and I remembered that I am also a percussionist.  Mårten’s keyboard has wonderful percussion sounds.  That was one of the best discoveries!   And most of all, I learned how to relax!  I heard some of the best live playing ever in the subways of Stockholm, by Al & Larry two brothers from the states.  It was so wonderful that, I felt learned something right away.  I said to myself " they’re relaxed that’s why they sound so good! "

At the grand piano in Stockholm, Sweden

Stockholm photos:  John Dill

I took the time to lay down each track individually playing each part throughout the song on the keyboard.  I don’t believe in using sequencers unless it’s an absolute emergency.  Actually right now I don’t even know how to use one!   So, I played each part (bass, flute, percussion, keyboards, strings) note for note on the keyboard on several tracks, using a drum machine for the trap set.

ExiledOne on Radio Östberga & Hustler's Revolution

Bankole was starting to host his own show ExiledOne on Radio 101.1 FM a community station in Stockholm which doesn’t play label music, so he asked me to write some short musical segues for his program.  This was the inspiration behind On a Sunday Afternoon and Cimarron.   Cimarron was finished on the first take and hasn’t been changed since.  Bankole was so excited that he couldn’t sleep and he played both songs on the radio the next day.

After that night the concept of  a second cd was born.  I write about what I feel and I wanted to create  a song that describes the state of affairs of our people in the U.S. who call themselves our leaders, and who say they are about the struggle (for justice for African people).  You have to think about this a lot when you’re in exile.  It’s what every exiled person from everywhere on the planet agonizes about…the state of their people…

One day I was talking to Bankole about how  many once sincere and caring people have resorted to simply hustling people and their causes in America for a buck.  They weren’t (and still aren’t) fighting for anything but the right to fly around the world to conferences and conventions where they talk about the problems.  Then they come back to America or Canada and refuse to do anything to help the people on a practical level.   Bankole and I and other activists have always had long discussions about this one. 

I started trying to deal with how I felt about it, and I said to myself, these people are modern day hustlers…they are revolutionary hustlers.  Then I started writing about how they think that our legitimate fight for justice and human rights is a just a hustle to talk, make money for themselves and put people down who came of age after the era of the 60’s or the 70's.

Having been in exile in 3 countries over the last three years, I felt the need to address this because it’s a serious problem.  And I’m saying it because the only way that things will change is if THE PEOPLE decide they aren’t going to stand for it.  And that their HUMAN RIGHTS are paramount.  Our people’s greatest challenge in the States is to reclaim their humanity.  The worst thing that has happened over the last 30 years besides massive government programs is that America  has been stripped away our people’s humanity completely and replaced the desire for freedom and dignity with an obsession for acquiring material things…this is what everybody is singing about, (material things, who has them and putting down people who don’t)  Hating the Black man is also a popular topic…So, I wrote words and music and created Hustler’s Revolution…And of course, Bankole had some ideas about it! 

Bankole is a prolific writer and a wonderful orator!  He’s a very serious person who also has a good sense of  humor.   And he is very good at imitating famous people!

A few weeks ago a friend of ours hosted a “good or evil” party for us in Sweden to raise funds for our trip to England and our daily expenses. 

It was here that Bankole made his debut getting the point across about the Hustler’s Revolution.  Because people in Sweden speak English as a second language we thought that rather than speaking it would be good to do a skit about our “leadership”, so that people could understand why we needed practical help in Sweden. 

It was hilarious and people really understood and came forth to help us.  So, on Hustler’s Revolution I had this idea to create the sounds of the ghetto with music over them and to have Bankole do some speaking.  Then we had this idea to have sort of a dialog. 

This didn’t really happen until the mastering process was almost done.  Jonas did the mastering out of the goodness of his heart and didn’t always have a lot of time, so that was tense for me, because I needed to get the project done before we left Sweden.  After we had burned the first cd, I had some more ideas and I decided to try to call him one last time to see if he’ be willing to help fix a few small problems, and I was delighted that he was…

Dr. so-in-so

So, on the last day of the mastering process Bankole took Hustler’s Revolution to another level.  He is the voice of  the cops, (incompetent and brutal) the doctor/preacher/leader/activist (Dr. So-in-So) who looks down on the people, flies to conferences and gets grant money or works at a University while he claims to be fighting for the people.  He doesn't really care about the people or their causes, he’s really just running a high-level international hustle.  He (or she) is very convincing.  His hustle is that he gets money to fly all over the world to conferences and talk about the problems, then he returns to America, or Canada without finding  any practical solutions.  

 In this case he’s going to Washington, DC.  In the song they all blame the young woman for her predicament in the ghetto which is actually created and maintained by America  and the hustlers who stand in the way of practical solutions being implemented.  (“Young woman are you registered to vote?”) He also plays what I call the Afro-Centric trash talker who lives in the ghetto but thinks he’s not of the ghetto…The sister needs simple and practical help and he’s telling her about something that absolutely nobody can understand, (“My sister, our problem is a universal one caused by a Diasporic divide…”) He talks trash and puts himself above the people so that he doesn’t have to really address the issue of her despair or formulate any practical solutions.   Finally the background vocals hold the true meaning of the song…”We’re in a fight for our humanity, this ain’t no hustler’s revolution…we need unity and dignity and some concrete life solutions.” When I wrote Hustler’s Revolution  I thought about all of things I miss about America (there aren’t many) like roller skating in Brooklyn or at U.S.A. Rainbow in Chicago, and just being in a place with a lot of my own people (Africans from The States).  I am in exile, so I tried to imagine my people skating and dancing to this song, ExiledOne, Mårten’s Morning, Lover’s Windstorm and I Dream, getting a warm feeling, having fun, being together and being influenced in a positive way.   So, I hope that you all  will dance, skate and “see the light”…as the song says!

I have a lot of hope for our people, and the future.  I know that the dehumanization that exists within  within our people in America cannot continue and will end when they decide to look up and love themselves truly…it is like a cancer, it can only be cured if people look at it, deal with it and decide that THEY will treat it!  Governments of the world don’t care, and all over the world people profit off of the suffering and dehumanisation of African people from America.  Most of our people who are running around calling themselves doctors, lawyers, entertainers and preachers  are too busy trying to make money talking about  the problems and what great things they did yesterday (in the 60’ and 70’s) to recommend any real workable solutions.  In dealing with their own pain and the mistakes that they made they have forgotten about us…the people.   They have begun to think that they are free and they are diplomats representing all of us, although they have no state themselves, no humanity and no character.  I am lucky, I’ve been told I can’t come back…I go all over the world singing and speaking, I never claim to represent our people (I can’t 60 million people, 60 million views) but I can tell people the truth about what’s happened to us and the terrible things that are happening, I can shed some light, and try to be a good example of a wife, cultural worker and mother (someday).

I believe in the good of people, and I know that music and culture are powerful.  Hustler’s Revolution  is intended to touch the hearts, minds and souls of people and inspire them to work together for a better world.  That’s what I Dream (track 3) is all about.!  I know we can have a better world!  I’ve very optimistic that we will!  And that has become evident to me after meeting people in Europe, both Africans from all over the African Diaspora, and people of other races who are working IN PRACTICAL WAYS  in solidarity for it!  You won’t hear about them or see them on tv they’re too busy WORKING and getting things done!  And the news media doesn’t want you to know.  This has given me a lot of hope and I want to spread it!

Mårten’s Morning

The fourth track on the cd is dedicated to my friends in Sweden and Canada.  Mårten’s Morning  is about my friends in Sweden who inspired me to put together this cd and showed incredible love, compassion, friendship and humanity. 

Mårten from Stockholm came to dinner one night, while we were staying at our friends place while they were in Cuba and he brought  me a keyboard so that I’d have something to practice on.  He also made a documentary about Bankole & I.  I was so moved by his compassion and kindness that I stayed up all night (in the midnight sun) checking out the different sounds on the board, and then writing a song for him called “Mårten”. 

A few weeks latter after I went back to Sylvia’s I added a bass line, flute solo, background vocals  and some lyrics and “Mårten’s Morning” as born!  I believe that these people that I’m singing about (in Mårten’s Morning) and all of the people that it is dedicated to are a shinning example of what people need to do to move forth in the 21st century to make the world a better place.  They shared their material things with us while we were in exile in Sweden, they also shared their love, and friendship.  I really miss them!  Their help is practical and from the heart!  They are long on practicality and love, and short on rhetoric!

I feel that this is a great example for people and it is my hope that in producing this cd that you will feel the vibe of love, light and strength and for our people in The States, the light of humanity that must be reclaimed, that’s what’s missing…

I learned very well in Canada that the objective of the establishment and those musicians who want to continue to profit off of our culture is that they want to make music something only available for the privileged, not musicians or people who are talented, but those who have money and access to equipment and are able to produce expensive and high cost cds, videos and dvds.   The odd thing about this to me is that this is the exact opposite of what our music is about and where it comes from, the field holler, the church and just plain soul, and creativity!  They can’t get there so they create an ivory tower to define our music and get the gate locked to only let themselves in and keep the people and African-American musicians out!

Hustler’s Revolution was produced because of  the gifts from the ancestors and the kindness of friends in Sweden.  True Soul, Jazz & Blues music are a gift everybody can’t get there, and many people misuse the gift when they do.  I have tried to use it in a positive way.  I recorded all of the material first on my four track recorder and Eskil, Fredrick and Jonas got their heads together and figured out a way to upload my tracks from the 4 track machine into some music editing software on a computer which allowed us to add things like reverb, some extra background vocals and things like that.  It was a real challenge technically, but we got the job done! 

You may notice that there is no studio listed, that’s because we didn’t have one.  Our studio was that the genius of two music computer software guys, who also write music, and the friendship of  Eskil in Stockholm who put Bankole and I in touch with them.

Well…this is the story of Hustler’s Revolution.  With some good fortune and a little help from my friends you will be seeing it for sale at a location near you!  When you hear it, sit back, relax and Come feel the Love from your spirit.  If you are an African in America, reclaim your humanity!   ‘Cause it’s time for a revolution of the self that will change our lives and help our babies.  This is a people’s revolution, not a Hustler’s Revolution!

Love, Love, Love, Peace & Life!