Anjimile Just Can’t Wait To Be King

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Anjimile’s debut album, Giver Taker, is out Sept. 18. Courtesy of the artist hide caption

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Courtesy of the artist

Anjimile’s debut album, Giver Taker, is out Sept. 18.

Courtesy of the artist

“My partner tells me that apparently I only sing when I’m happy,” says Anjimile Chithambo, who performs and records music mononymously as Anjimile. It’s a slightly surprising admission. For one thing, the singer-songwriter’s new album, Giver Taker, is full of piercing self-knowledge; it seems like they don’t need anyone to explain their musical process to them. For another, the album is the product of some extremely trying situations: Anjimile wrote many of the songs while in treatment for alcoholism and while coming to terms with their identity as a trans and nonbinary person. Still, it’s a warm, beautiful album, full of moments of wonder and joy at having emerged on the other side of hardship.

Giver Taker, out Sept. 18, is being billed as their debut album, though Anjimile’s previous self-produced releases have steadily earned them attention in Boston, where they’re based. Their Tiny Desk Contest entry from 2018 earned them the title of WBUR’s favorite Massachusetts entry, and GBH named them a Slingshot Artist to Watch in 2019. Thanks in part to a grant from Live Arts Boston, Anjimile hired producers for the first time to record Giver Taker: their bandmate, Justine Bowe, and multi-instrumentalist Gabe Goodman. Anjimile says the trio brought a range of influences — from Bob Dylan to Kate Bush, from Radiohead to India.Arie — into the studio, which refract across the album’s nine tracks of introspective indie-folk. On songs like “1978” and “Not Another Word,” Anjimile’s fingerpicked guitar and choir-trained voice are reminiscent of Sufjan Stevens, filtered through the ’80s divas they grew up on; on “Ndimakukonda,” they sing in Chichewa, the language spoken in Malawi where their family is from.

Ahead of Giver Taker‘s release, Anjimile spoke to NPR Music about the process of healing that led to these songs, their deep love for The Lion King and their feelings about releasing their debut album in a time of great social upheaval.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Marissa Lorusso, NPR Music: There’s a real range of sounds across Giver Taker. What did you listen to growing up?

Anjimile: Growing up, I listened to what my parents listened to — and the older I get, the more I’ve been able to recognize how awesome their taste in music is. So there was always a lot of Bob Marley, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Tina Turner, Whitney Houston. And there are also super into Celine Dion and Dolly Parton.

A lot of iconic singers.

Yeah. I was introduced at a very young age to some very epic and iconic singing.

You grew up singing in choirs, right?

Yes. I have two older sisters and they both grew up singing in the school choir. I would go with my family to see the performances, and I just thought it was the coolest thing ever to see middle school choir concerts; I was enamored. [Laughs.] So as soon as I was old enough — fifth grade — I joined the Plano Children’s Chorale and and it was on.

Did singing in choirs have an impact on the way that you write and sing your own music?

Definitely. I had a very imperious choir teacher in high school — he was all about long vowels and super-obsessed with tonality. We would do warm-ups, and we would be singing our pieces, and if you were sharp or flat, he would look you dead in the eye while conducting the chorus — it was very frightening and also super helpful. I didn’t I didn’t realize how much I learned from him until I started recording this album; I practiced the warm-ups I learned in school and I am very acutely aware of tonality.

I ask, too, because faith is something that comes up across your music — and you’ve said your song “Maker” is about the relationship between your gender identity and your spirituality. What do you mean by that?

As I’ve come to recognize that I am trans and non-binary, this realization has coincided with a deepening of my spiritual life. I have a deep-seated belief that if I do the next right thing, I’m going to be alright — and part of doing the next right thing, for me, was recognizing that I was trans and that I needed to come out to myself and to my loved ones and to my parents.

When I was growing up in Texas and I came out to my parents, it was not a positive reception. They were devastated; my sexuality — at the time I identified as a lesbian — felt like it was in direct conflict with their conservative Christian beliefs. That’s something that I held on to for a long time. When I wrote “Maker,” it was the beginning of the realization that just as I could build my own sense of spirituality and build my own faith and relate to a God of my understanding, I could do the same thing with my gender and my sexuality. And that’s what I did.

I know you were also dealing with some other mental health challenges when you were writing the album; you’ve said many of the songs were written when you were “literally in the process of improving [your] mental health.” What did that process look like for you?

For me, that was rehab. I’m a recovering alcoholic and my addiction reached a peak, or, I guess, a low point, at the end of 2015, and I went to rehab and at the beginning of 2016. I brought my guitar and I brought a plastic bag with some clothes and I went to Florida and I ended up staying there for a year; I think I brought my guitar because I reckoned I might be there for a while.

I was a mess, and I wrote a lot of this album in the process of becoming not a mess — or, I guess, in the process of healing. Up until that point, I kind of had just resigned myself to the fact that I was going to die an alcoholic — and so my subsequent sobriety and recovery feels like a huge plot twist to me, four and a half years later. And the more days I had sober, which turned into months, which turned into years, the more mental clarity I developed and the more emotional clarity I developed. And with that, my creative spark came back and I started writing and signing again.

This record was the first time that you worked with producers — all your previous recordings were made by you, and this feels like a real step forward in your production and songwriting. What was that like?

My bandmate Justine Bowe co-produced Giver Taker with Gabe Goodman, the principal producer. He’s an indie artist based in New York; he plays bass, he does arrangement stuff and programming and engineering. And Justine plays a variety of keys and does vocals and plays the clarinet, and also has an incredible ear for arrangements as well. It was inspiring for me to work with folks who were working at that level of musicianship.

Before working with them, I didn’t really know anything about what production means or what a producer does; I was just doing stuff DIY, but Giver Taker came with a budget because I got a grant from Live Arts Boston last year, so I was able to hire Justine and Gabe. I showed them demos of each song and they gave me their thoughts, like, “This one sounds good, maybe let’s take out that second chorus,” or “What if this had drums here? What if this had bass there?” They just presented so many ideas that I never would have thought of. … And every time they would suggest an idea, I would be like, “Please try it out,” and then we would listen to it and it would sound great.

[For example,] for the last song on the album, it’s called “To Meet Me There.” We had a hard time with it, figuring out where the peaks and valleys of the song should be, how it should rise and fall. There’s a bridge; in an older recording of the song, the bridge was a choral situation. Gabe had the idea to bring in like a conga sound to the bridge — and Justin was like, “Make it a filter sweep,” so it starts off muffled and then gets clearer and clearer. So this bridge went from being something that had a choral vibe to just like the funkiest, in my opinion, most interesting point in that song. It’s a folk tune, and then all of a sudden there’s this really smooth, sexy, African drumming. It was amazing.

The album cover for Giver Taker is a painting of you. Can you tell me a little bit about it? I feel like for artists who are marginalized in any way, the idea of representing yourself on your own terms can feel especially important or valuable.

Well, it’s a big old painting of my face. I’ve released DIY records in the past that have all been like some sort of portrait of me, and I started doing that basically I thought it was important to have to have a visual of a black queer person prominently featured.

You know, if it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t do it — because the last thing I want to see is a picture of my own face. I know what my face looks like! I don’t need to see it. [Laughs.] But I think it’s an important statement about representation. And if another queer person, another queer black person, can be like, “Hey! That’s Anjimile on this album cover, like, that’s so sick,” then it’s totally worth it.

Did you do the painting?

It’s by Rebecca Larios. She is an incredible painter. My bandmate Justine Bowe took the photo that the painting is based on, and we wanted to incorporate — because I’m a hippie — some sort of greenery that relates to me. So there’s sugarcane in the back behind me; sugarcane is an indigenous crop to Malawi, where my family is from.

And then, behind that, there’s a river which is based upon The Lion King. There’s one scene in “I Just Can’t Wait To Be King,” which is one of my favorite songs of all time, where Zazu is standing on a log and he’s about to go down a waterfall. We sent Rebecca a bunch of stills from that and she literally painted me into the scene from The Lion King… I was really pumped.

Wait, tell me about your love for The Lion King!

It’s my favorite movie … When I was growing up, the first Disney movie with Black people that wasn’t, like, Uncle Remus was The Princess and the Frog. And that was years after I was a kid. And so, in my mind, as a kid, seeing The Lion King based in Africa, I was like, “Holy s***, my parents are from Africa, like, I’m in this movie!” [Laughs.] My parents were like, “Well, not exactly…” [Laughs.]

Just the fact that there was like an African language, Swahili, spoken in the songs and the fact that it was set in Africa, even though there were no people — it was a big deal for me as a young, African-American kid who had never seen representation like that in Disney. I just love everything about that movie; I love the singing, I love the animation, I love Mufasa and “I just can’t wait to be king” is more or less a mantra for my life.

When you think about everything that is going on in the world right now — the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, the economic crisis, all of it — I imagine these aren’t exactly the circumstances that you were expecting to release your debut album into. How are you feeling?

I’m feeling like I just — all I can do is try to take good care of myself and show up for another day. Like, yeah, we have music coming out and there’s a pandemic, and there is also what appears to be an upsurge of Black death in the news. But I was thinking about it the other day and I realized that if I was to stop promoting stuff every time there is police violence or racist violence, I would never promote anything. Which is, you know, a pretty demoralizing thought. But, also, I don’t know what great circumstances are, so — it is what it is, and it’s a bright spot in my life right now. And my friends are a bright spot, and my family. Working with the record label is wonderful. And the fact that this album is coming out after so much work is a bright spot.

Is there anything else you think people should know about this record or about your music when they hear it?

So, I’ve got a tune on the record called “In Your Eyes.” And a lot of it has to do with the pain of me coming out to my parents and just how much it sucked. And I recently came out to my parents again as trans, and my dad was super supportive. He sent me the most kind, most loving email, and he was like, “I don’t want you to think that you can’t come home,” like, “I love you and accept you for who you are, and I believe that God created all folks, you know, even, especially trans folks, in his image. So feel free to come home any time.” And before that point, I hadn’t shared anything about the album with my parents. And now I get to show him everything. It’s really nice to be able to feel accepted within my family by someone who I really care about. I’m going to send him over some vinyl a little bit.

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COMMUNITY VOICES: Complicated Pilgrim legacy

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I was delighted to see Peter Mancall’s article on the Pilgrims (“Complicated legacy of the Pilgrims finally coming to light,” Sept. 5). I had intended to write a similar piece closer to the actual anniversary of the Pilgrim’s arrival, but Mancall beat me to it – and he has more authority as he is a historian. I will, however, add a few personal observations.

My background gives me a bias which, hopefully, I have overcome. My mother was the governor of the local chapter of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants. She had proven ancestry going back to both William Bradford and William Brewster. We had always celebrated Thanksgiving as both a family and national holiday. I will never forget the meeting and luncheon we had out at Col. Allensworth State Park. Not only was this site steeped in Black American history, my sister had brought her adopted Micronesian son to the occasion. Although he was legally adopted, we were informed that he was not eligible to join in the society with his family! All of this led me to re-examine the “Pilgrim story.”

First of all, we need to answer the question put forward by Mancall as to why glory is heaped on the Pilgrims. A good part of the answer lies in the writings of Bradford. As part of my family’s inheritance, I have a copy of his rather weighty tome. A lot of history is made simply by there being a record of happenings. Unfortunately, however, any such reckoning is the opinion of the author and does not include opposing views.

The Mayflower compact may be considered a beginning on American democracy, but it was the basis of a racist and self-serving “democracy.” Although the Pilgrims, of necessity, formed an alliance with the Wampanoag, they continuously disrespected Native Americans and eventually joined most of the New England colonies in slaughtering them in a ruthless war.

It is interesting that the only New England colony which remained neutral in this war was Rhode Island, a colony founded by my father’s ancestor Roger Williams, who had been expelled from Salem because of his religious beliefs. It is an interesting footnote on history that he was hired as a translator by the New England colonies during the war. He had lived with the Narragansett after his exile and had learned their language and customs.

It is important to learn that American history contains both good and bad. Hopefully, by acknowledging mistakes, we can build a better future. 

Bruce J. Hargreaves is a retired biologist with a bachelor’s degree in field biology, master’s degree in public health and a Ph.D. in parasitology. He taught parasitology at the University of Malawi, botany at the National University of Lesotho and was head of natural history at the National Museum of Botswana.

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UN Women Calls for Accelerating its Unfinished Business

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Civil Society, Featured, Gender, Global, Headlines, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, Poverty & SDGs, TerraViva United Nations, Women’s Health

Opinion

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director, UN Women

Women in Bangladesh stand up for gender equality. Credit: UNICEF/Jannatul Mawa

NEW YORK, Sep 7 2020 (IPS) – Twenty-five years ago, the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing set a path-breaking agenda for women’s rights. As a result of the two-week gathering with more than 30,000 activists, representatives from 189 nations unanimously adopted the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

This historic blueprint articulated a vision of equal rights, freedom and opportunities for women – everywhere, no matter what their circumstances are – that continues to shape gender equality and women’s movements worldwide.

A quarter century on, the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, calls for urgent action: “With nations around the world searching for solutions to the complex challenges of our age, the leading way for all of us to rebuild more equal, inclusive, and resilient societies, is to accelerate the implementation of women’s rights – the Beijing Platform for Action. That vision has been only partly realized. We still live in a male-dominated world with a male-dominated culture, and this simply has to change”.

The Beijing Platform for Action imagined a world where every woman and girl can exercise her freedoms and choices, and realize her rights, such as to live free from violence, to go to school, to participate in decisions and to earn equal pay for work of equal value. As a defining framework for change, the Platform for Action made comprehensive commitments under 12 critical areas of concern.

Twenty-five years later, no country has fully delivered on the commitments of the Beijing Platform for Action, nor is close to it. A major stock-taking UN Women report published earlier this year showed that progress towards gender equality is faltering and hard-won advances are being reversed.

Women currently hold just one quarter of the seats at the tables of power across the board. Men are still 75 per cent of parliamentarians, hold 73 per cent of managerial positions, are 70 per cent of climate negotiators and almost all of the peacemakers.

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

The anniversary is a wake-up call and comes at a time when the impact of the gender equality gaps is undeniable. Research shows the COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating pre-existing inequalities and threatening to halt or reverse the gains of decades of collective effort – with just released new data revealing that the pandemic will push 47 million more women and girls below the poverty line.

We are also witnessing increased reports on violence against women throughout the world due to the lockdowns, and women losing their livelihoods faster because they are more exposed to hard-hit economic sectors.

While much works remains on fulfilling the promises of the Beijing Platform for Action, it continues to be a global framework and a powerful source of mobilization, civil society activism, guidance and inspiration 25 years later.

It was at the Fourth World Conference on Women, specifically at the Women & Health Security Colloquium, where Hillary Clinton coined the phrase, “Women’s rights are human rights, and human rights are women’s rights”.

In a recent article in The Atlantic, she recalled her participation at the Conference as the Honorary Chairperson of the US delegation, and the significance of the Beijing Declaration: “A 270-page document might not lend itself to bumper stickers or coffee mugs, but it laid the groundwork for sweeping, necessary changes.”

Underlining the urgency for implementation, she added: “As the changes laid out in the Platform for Action have been implemented, what’s become clear is that simply embracing the concept of women’s rights, let alone enshrining those rights in laws and constitutions, is not the same as achieving full equality. Rights are important, but they are nothing without the power to claim them.”

Years after, global activists continue the hard work and those who participated at the 1995 Beijing Conference remain touched by this historic meeting. Zeliha Ünaldi, a long-standing gender advocate from Turkey, said it was a life-changing experience: “When I recall those days, mingling around the tents with thousands of women committing to a better world, two words immediately come to my mind: sisterhood and peace. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the subsequent five years helped me understand the power in us and of us as the global women’s movement.”

The upcoming UN General Assembly later this month will be a key opportunity to bring to the forefront the relevance of the Beijing Declaration and move the needle on implementation, with a High-Level Meeting attended by global leaders on “Accelerating the Realization of Gender Equality and the Empowerment of all Women and Girls” on 1 October.

The event will showcase how building equal and inclusive societies is more urgent than ever, as the COVID-19 pandemic ravages lives and livelihoods.

Calling on world leaders to use their political power to accelerate robust action and resources for gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls: “This is a re-set moment. On this important anniversary, let us reaffirm the promises the world made to women in 1995. Let us draw on the activist spirit of the Beijing Conference and commit to forging new alliances across generations and sectors to ensure we seize this opportunity for deep, systemic change for women and for the world.”

The anniversary will be further commemorated in the context of the Generation Equality Forum, a civil society–centred, global gathering for gender equality, convened by UN Women and co-hosted by the governments of France and Mexico, foreseen to take place in the first half of 2021.

Exactly 25 years after the opening of the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, its significance is undimmed. In that quarter century we have seen the strength and impact of collective activism grow and have been reminded of the importance of multilateralism and partnership to find common solutions to shared problems.

Back in 1995, the deliberations of the Conference resulted in the framing of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action: a bold agenda for the change needed to realize the human rights of women and girls, articulated across 12 critical areas of concern.

The Platform for Action provided a blueprint for the advancement of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls, adopted by 189 UN Member States and universally referenced.

The continued relevance of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action cannot be overstated today. The far-reaching social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the significant increases in violence against women, threaten to reverse many of the hard-won advances made in the last 25 years to empower women and girls.

At the same time, the outstanding value of women’s leadership through the COVID-19 pandemic is in plain sight, along with the recognition of just how much women’s work and women’s movements have sustained the world, from domestic life, the fight for human rights, to national economies.

We also know that by next year, 435 million women and girls are likely to have been reduced to extreme poverty. Governments, local administrations, businesses and enterprises of all sorts must not let this happen.

To tackle persistent systemic barriers to equality, we need transformative approaches and new alliances that engage the private sector alongside governments and civil society. This is a re-set moment. The economic and policy lifeboats for our struggling world must put women and children first.

The political will of leaders can make the difference. World leaders convening at this year’s United Nations General Assembly have the opportunity to use their power in action to accelerate the realization of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, and to support the role of civil society organizations and youth.

Our humanitarian responses to COVID-19, our economic stimulus packages, our reinventions of working life and our efforts to create solidarity across social and physical distance – these are all chances to build back better for women and girls.

For success, we need to work together on these transformative actions. In 2019, we launched a global campaign called Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights for an Equal Future, with a call for renewed commitment by governments in partnership with civil society, academia and the private sector.

It included clear timelines, responsibilities and resources towards realizing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, an ambitious long-term framework that included goals to achieve universal gender equality.

On October 1, 2020, when a High-Level Meeting on the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action is convened by the President of the General Assembly, Member States can put into action their commitment toward a more gender-equal world.

On this important anniversary, let us reaffirm the promises the world made to women and girls in 1995. Let us draw on the activist spirit of the Beijing Conference and commit to forging new alliances across generations and sectors to ensure we seize this opportunity for deep, systemic change for women and for the world.

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Americans By Force

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Civil Society, Democracy, Headlines, Human Rights, North America, TerraViva United Nations

Opinion

The explanation for black Americans endemic discrimination is the contrast between their implantation in the United States and the way the rest of the public settled in the “American dream.” Almost everyone came to this idea that is the United States of free will.

Protests have been taking place in cities across the United States. Credit: UN News/Shirin Yaseen

MIAMI, Sep 4 2020 (IPS) – Why, in the United States, where change is the most pronounced hallmark, do some aspects never change? Why do many bad habits resist giving way to novelties that prove to be the basis of the success of the most developed country on earth and still the leading power?  Why is the explanation for that leadership due to a few factors? Why does Trump profess a visceral opposition to immigration, knowing that it is the key to the country’s success? Because millions of his compatriots interpret the sinew of American DNA as a threat to their comparative social advantage.

Meanwhile, in this drama, blacks continue to bear the brunt of it all. The explanation for their endemic discrimination is the contrast between their implantation in the United States and the way the rest of the public settled in the “American dream.” Almost everyone came to this idea that is the United States of free will.

No one can say that their grandparents were forced to change residence. Although it can be argued that hunger, religious persecution, and the desire for economic improvement were important factors in driving emigration from Europe, Africa, or Asia, it is also true that voluntary americanization is the key to the success of the United States.

Joaquín Roy

This country is the most genuine example of national construction opposed to that based on ethnicity, religion, race. America is the most definite specimen of the nation of choice, based on personal conviction.

It is not by chance that theorists of nationalism call this alternative “liberal.” The “American dream” explains its survival. As long as millions of citizens of other continents answer Ernest Renan’s question with a negative vote every night in his imaginary “daily plebiscite”, and decide to opt for the residency trick, the United States will exist.

The day a majority of Americans vote negative for residency, the country would be deserted. There is nothing that unites Americans, except their desire to be. Their religion is summarized in the offer provided by the Declaration of Independence: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He does not give them a guarantee, but a promise. And it is enough for them.

However, the absence of a residency obligation has two crucial exceptions: black and indigenous minorities. These two sectors contrast in their implementation in what for them is, more than a dream, an “American nightmare.”

Although it can be argued that hunger, religious persecution, and the desire for economic improvement were important factors in driving emigration from Europe, Africa, or Asia, it is also true that voluntary americanization is the key to the success of the United States.

The original owners of the immense territory, although their immemorial ancestors crossed the Straits of Alaska at the dawn of North America, have been reduced to their reservations, marginalized, eaten away by poverty and alcoholism. Even in the sporadic mythos in Hollywood movies, Sitting Bull and his imitators do not overcome the mystique of Buffalo Bill.

The blacks were unfortunately marked by the original sin of not having booked a ticket for the forced trip to the United States. Their implantation has been resisted from the beginning by themselves and by the descendants of the merchants who deposited them in America.

With their emancipation and its disastrous execution, the peculiarity of their residence became more apparent. When they were stripped of the benefits that they had given away to their owners for free, their value was lost in Wall Street.

The successive corrective measures of discrimination and segregation only made the division of society even more evident. Despite the actions of Martin Luther King, who paid for his daring with his life, legal advances supercharged racist resentment from a part of society that resisted reform. “Affirmative Action” and food stamps multiplied the opposition.

Simultaneously, the black community, which had ceased to call itself “colored,” to take a curious journey back to being classified as “African,” watched with amazement as other newcomers from other continents were climbing ranks.

Latin Americans began to outnumber blacks not only in economic resources, but in numbers. As a result of the new census parameters, while whites held 63%, Hispanics (15%) and Asians (10%) cornered blacks (13%).

Internally, the new “African-Americans” decided to opt for a peculiar nationalism: they defended themselves with their signs of “black is beautiful”, they enthroned their peculiar English inherited from their owners, and they monopolized some entertainment professions.

Some were more fortunate and co-opted the rosters of basketball teams. For their part, some managed to settle on the ladders of power as senators and congress people, thanks in part to the restructuring of electoral districts.

Then they even aimed, with the decisive support of white sectors, to opt for the incredible: the presidency of the United States. It was already too much and the opposition to this impudence did not forgive Obama or the rest of the community, and even less the Democrats and liberals.

The mirage of the election of the first black president bypassed the resistance of deep America and the withdrawal of the “silent majority” that Nixon tried to awaken. Now Trump has reinvented it.

It was forgotten that only about a third of the electorate voted for Obama, while another third chose the Republican candidates. Another third stayed home. Among those 60-70% of Americans who abstained from voting on the traditional electoral correction, crouched was the mostly white sector, both high-income and lower-middle-class that followed the sounds of the piper Trump.

Those who rejected the candidate Hillary Clinton believed, and still believe, that their faltering economies have been pierced by the rise of the historically vanquished. They now believe that their pristine suburbs, real or imagined, are threatened by the “socialist” hordes of predominantly Latino origin, and the “terrorists” who insist on protesting against what they consider dangerous interference by the security forces in daily life.

The only thing missing is that the statistical evidence of the black overpopulation of the prisons and the number of crime victims of the same origin is “enriched” with sad deaths of blacks at the hands of white policemen.

Joaquín Roy is Jean Monnet Professor and Director of the European Union Center at the University of Miami

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Music Collective ‘Megative’ Dubs Out the Negative

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Arts, Civil Society, Global, Headlines, Health

Arts

Even as their income dries up and their touring opportunities disappear because of the Covid-19 pandemic, some artists are using their work to call out injustice, criticize inept leaders and spark social change. The members of Megative - a Brooklyn-based, reggae-dub-punk collective - are among those aiming to fight negative global currents, and they’re doing so through edgy, scorching music.

The members of Megative, with Gus van Go (far left).
Credit: Daviston Jeffers

PARIS, Sep 2 2020 (IPS) – Even as their income dries up and their touring opportunities disappear because of the Covid-19 pandemic, some artists are using their work to call out injustice, criticize inept leaders and spark social change.

The members of Megative – a Brooklyn-based, reggae-dub-punk collective – are among those aiming to fight negative global currents, and they’re doing so through edgy, scorching music.

“I think activism is the most important thing we have right now in 2020. It’s do or die right now for humanity. The injustice absolutely must end, and it will not end with silence,” says music producer Gus van Go, leader and co-founder of the group.

In a year of uncertainty and division, Megative stands out for its multicultural composition as well as its fusion of styles and thought-provoking lyrics. This past July, watching the incompetence of certain heads of state in the face of the pandemic, the group released the song The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum, a cover of the Fun Boy Three hit from the early Eighties, combining dub and punk music.

The original was a critique of the Ronald Reagan-Margaret Thatcher era, and Megative thinks the track is just as pertinent in 2020, with the current presence of problematic leaders on both sides of the Atlantic.

“We still believe the message is important, and it’s almost more relevant now,” van Go told SWAN in a telephone interview from Montréal, Canada, where he grew up, and where he has a studio along with one in Brooklyn.

The group was due to take their songs on the road – scheduled to perform at “five or six festivals” in France, for instance – but the pandemic has caused all these events to be cancelled. The musicians now find themselves, like so many other artists, struggling to maintain an income and to keep their overall work going.

“I think Covid-19 is exposing something that I’ve always thought about in the music industry,” said van Go. “So much inequality. We’ve always had this one percent of artists who have been insanely rich … and the rest of us are working our asses off, in order to eke out a living.”

“The universe took away the one single piece of the pie that the artist still had. All of a sudden, nearly every single musician cannot make a cent. One day, the universe just said ‘no you cant have that’. There is no income for all these artists. You see how dangerous it is to have just one source of income? Do we not need music in this world?

He explained that with the massive decline in album sales over the past decade, musicians had turned to touring in order to “just barely make a living – travelling together in a shitty old van”. But now even that has dried up with the global health crisis.

“Covid has shone this giant light on it,” he added. “The universe took away the one single piece of the pie that the artist still had. All of a sudden, nearly every single musician cannot make a cent. One day, the universe just said ‘no you cant have that’. There is no income for all these artists. You see how dangerous it is to have just one source of income? Do we not need music in this world? What if Covid continues for two or three years, what if this goes on for multiple years?”

He said it’s time for artists to band together and demand change – in their industries, communities and countries. “Megative supports activism,” he declared.

Discussing the origins of the group, van Go said the idea for the collective grew out of an overnight drive from New Mexico to California that he took with fellow musician Tim Fletcher 10 years ago. There were only two CDS available in the car – Combat Rock by The Clash, and More Specials by the 2 Tone and ska revival band The Specials, both English. The sounds got van Go thinking about the “conscious lyrics” and the history of the musical styles and their influences.

“We have a love for Jamaican reggae and dub culture of the early Eighties with bands like Steel Pulse and The Clash. But reggae in North America, where we are from, is associated with vacation spots, coconut trees and irie vibes. We were lamenting the darker reggae of the early Eighties. Our Clash discussion morphed into how a reggae band would look in 2018,” he said.

Back in New York, they invited a producing-engineering duo called Likeminds and Jamaican MC Screechy Dan to join the conversation. The enthusiasm for the project was so strong that they recorded three songs which almost immediately led to a signing with Last Gang Records and the subsequent release of their debut album in summer 2018.

The collective now brings together disparate artists including the Grammy-nominated Likeminds (Chris Soper and Jesse Singer); Jamaican-born singer, MC and dancehall veteran Screechy Dan; singer-guitarist and punk rocker Alex Crow; percussionist-DJ-singer JonnyGo Figure; and the rising Brooklyn drummer Demetrius “Mech” Pass.

All the members have their own individual projects but contribute their respective skills to create the Megative sound – a fusion of UK-style punk, Jamaican dub and reggae, and American hip-hop. The music is a response to today’s world, to everything that’s happening including the “hyper-noise of incessant information”, according to the collective.

The overarching theme is existentialist angst amidst precarious conditions. Tracks such as Have Mercy, Bad Advice and More Time call upon listeners to take control and rely on their own sense of what’s right, with lyrics set against dub beats and a punk vibe, and skilful singing mixed with mindful rapping.

For van Go, born Gustavo Coriandoli in Argentina and raised in Canada, the historical alliance between punk and reggae was central to Megative’s formation. He recalls growing up in Montréal in the late 1980s and early 90s, when the “punk rock movement was taking hold” among the youth.

“The shows had trouble finding venues, so they always tried to rent space … and sometimes that would be at Jamaican community centres. All these punks would be at these shows, but also the Rastafarian community. So, dub music was playing. I was 16, had never heard dub, had never been been to a punk show, so it fused in my brain,” he told SWAN.

Similar congregations or collaborations in the UK had led singer Bob Marley to release Punky Reggae Party in 1977, a reflection of the bridging of cultural divides; and punk-dub pioneer Don Letts wrote about the movement in his 2006 autobiography Culture Clash: Dread Meets Punk Rockers.

“It’s all about social message – in punk and reggae, so they’re natural allies or they should be,” said van Go. “There’s a positivity but also a dark side. I love the energy that this creates, in punk and reggae and in early hiphop.”

When asked about Megative’s views on the current discussion around cultural appropriation in the arts, van Go answered: “This is an ongoing discussion with us, and we really encourage dialogue on the subject.” He added that the group takes a multicultural approach to creating music, as can be seen from their output so far.

Regarding the future of the collective, van Go said Megative planned to continue producing music with a cause, and to get back to touring when possible. They are currently “writing new material” but aren’t certain in which format(s) it will be released.

“Like nothing else can, I think music can definitely help heal,” van Go told SWAN. “We have to topple these terrible people who are in power right now. We have to find concrete ways to end systemic racism. Music has to play a part as it did in the Sixties. It needs to.”

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