Thanks for joining us for another episode of Patrons & Partnerships, presented by the Library Partnership Branch of the Alachua County Library District.
Our guest today is E. Stanley Richardson, here with us today to discuss his role as poet laureate of Alachua County, his organization ARTSPEAKSgnv, and his book, Hip Hop Is Dead – Long Live Hip Hop: The Birth, Death And Resurrection Of Hip Hop Activism. With so much to talk about, this discussion has been split into two parts - the first half of the interview can be found here in Episode 9.
To view other interviews and performances by E. Stanley Richardson, visit his website.
Visit the Alachua County Library District website to browse our collection and to find other resources and services offered at your favorite, local library!
You can view a transcript of this podcast on ACLD's YouTube Channel.
Thanks for joining us for another episode of Patrons & Partnerships, presented by the Library Partnership Branch of the Alachua County Library District.
Our guest today is E. Stanley Richardson, here with us today to discuss his role as poet laureate of Alachua County, his organization ARTSPEAKSgnv, and his book, Hip Hop Is Dead – Long Live Hip Hop: The Birth, Death And Resurrection Of Hip Hop Activism. With so much to talk about, this discussion has been split into two parts - the first half of the interview can be found here in Episode 9.
To view other interviews and performances by E. Stanley Richardson, visit his website.
Visit the Alachua County Library District website to browse our collection and to find other resources and services offered at your favorite, local library!
You can view a transcript of this podcast on ACLD's YouTube Channel.
Hey. Thanks for joining us for another episode of the Library Partnerships podcast, Patrons & Partnerships. Today we have the second half of our interview with E. Stanley Richardson, the inaugural Poet Laureate of Alachua County.[music]
Tina:Speaking of writing, you have written a book, Hip Hop Is Dead, Long Live Hip Hop -
Stanley:The Birth, Death, and Resurrection of Hip Hop Activism.
Tina:Yeah, that's right, exactly, that was - I wrote it in my notes. [laughs] Stanley: Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. After I finished reading, I realized how important that subheading is. Can you talk a little bit about your book? What inspired you to write it? Your process?
Stanley:Um, what inspired me is for my love of music. Not necessarily for my love of hip hop, but for my love of music. I love hip hop, you know, but I grew up with R&B, soul, and funk. That was the music that I grew up with. My first crush was Gladys Knight.[laughs] But I started trying to understand the relationship between social justice struggle. So I’m a child of the 60s. I was born in 62. I'm 59. And that, so I grew up with all this - the civil rights movement all around me, people being assassinated, you know, King and JFK and his brother, and Malcolm and Medger, and that was all around. And I’m a little kid growing up, but I'm seeing all this turmoil in the streets. When integration took place here in Alachua County, I was in second grade. So I'm just - was kind of aware, and I'm looking for the connection between social justice struggle and art, specifically music. So I had the opportunity to, to accompany the UF Samuel Proctor Oral History Program a few years ago on their Mississippi Freedom Project. They take a group of grad students throughout the Mississippi Delta, and take oral histories and do a lot, a lot of - it’s an incredible, incredible trip. And when I went, we went to the museum, the lynching museum had just opened, but I had the opportunity to travel with Dr. Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons, who was a young woman at Spelman doing sit-ins and part of SNCC. While we were traveling, she was telling me all these stories, and she was like, it was the music, those songs we sang. They could jail us, they could beat us, they could do this, but they couldn't stop us from singing those songs. So music is very important to social justice struggle. Every movement has a soundtrack - so I'm always looking for the soundtrack. And so I started doing a little research and what I found out, there's this phenomenon, what happens to black creative expression in a colonial environment. And there's been a conscious effort to separate black youth from any kind of critical thinking or any kind of radical, what they deem radical, movement. And a lot of times these messages, this radicalization - but to me, it's just fighting for justice or civil rights. It's not radical at all. It's just truth telling. And so a lot of times these, this radicalization comes about through art, and the songs you sing. So what happens to our art form when you have young kids and hip hop, for instance, the Bronx, who create this art to speak about their oppression, and to give voice to their suffering, what happens to it? And what happens to this, these - and this happens all through time, through our existence here in America - they don't seek this art out to be destroyed, they seek it out to fix it in a colonial form. So what happens with hip hop is now this thing, this, this art, this, this beautiful art that was created to testify for the community - And I always get in trouble, because I think sometimes I don't say it right. But now this thing that was created by these brilliant young people, once the corporate claws get in it and once it gets, I guess -
Tina:Commodified? Stanley: Commodified, there you go, commodified - it’s different. It's like, it sounds - the beats the same, it sounds the same, but the words are different. Now, this art form, the words no longer testify for the community, but against it. So that's why you may start to see all these derogatory type of - and this toxic music. And then you have some young people who would think I'm coming down on the music, but stories are important. So you can't tell me there's only one story coming out of the ghetto or coming out of these marginalized communities. There’s one story, everybody's singing, everybody got the same story? There’s not a story about some little kid who's scared of gangs, and he hides out in a library, so he reads all these books? Where's that story? Surely it exists. So all the - and that's what I'm saying, it's the stories, who shapes the narrative, who chooses what is shared, and not shared? The beautiful music of hip hop and the art of hip hop is beautiful. But you have to - you won't hear that on your regular urban or corporate radio station, you have to go look for it. And that's what's my motivation for writing the book. If you read the beginning of it, it talks about me looking at the Occupy movement and thinking, that was the revol - is this the revolution, is this the revolution? But I know whenever there is a revolution, if there ever is a revolution, or whatever that looks like, it's got to have a soundtrack. And I use that Birth, Death, and Resurrection. I hope some people don’t - you know, Christians don't get... I mean, I stopped calling myself a Christian, matter of fact, I call myself something else now. I don't know. I don't know, sometimes I look at what they call Christianity, I don't understand it. I don't think Jesus would understand that either if He came back. What is this y'all doing in my name?, kind of thing. Now that ain't it, you know. And I shouldn't be off on religion, but I figure, this is how I am, I'm a follower of the teachings of the person we call Jesus. Well, I mean, you do structure it as sort of like a sermon. Stanley: Yeah, yeah, yeah! But one of the things when I was reading it that really struck me was the different - when I was reading each poem, I was envisioning who is actually narrating it. Stanley: There are, there - Because it's not you - Stanley: No - It's, there are different voices.
Stanley:So is that - is that apparent? Tina: That was apparent to me. Okay, because these are all these voices in my head that, that were part of my village that raised me. The old man under the tree. My mom is heavy in there. My - her sisters, my aunts, and, and uncles, and people down the street, little kids. They're all in there. And I think you asked the question, you sent me some questions or something like that, you asked about - I think I had a vision of actually creating a soundtrack and bringing the community together. And having, having like - where the voice is a young woman, a young girl, have a young girl read that. When the voice is older woman, have an older woman read that. Tina: Oh my gosh, I see a library program in the making. [laughs] You know, that was my vision and have - matter of fact, I'd forgotten about it until you mentioned it. So now I'm like, Oh, yeah, I need to do that.
Tina:Yeah, let's work on that together.
Stanley:Yeah, we - what - yeah, I mean. We won't - I think - I think the kids, the teens, or teens… We have, we have - ARTSPEAKS Courageous Young Voices is amazing. We have a teacher out at Eastside, Miss Selby Hemmans-Rich. She's the English teacher. And she supports ARTSPEAKS just, every year. You know, that's one of the things that I guess she marks on her board or whatever. And she has, she always has kids who come every year and participate. But there were other other schools too, but just her, I know, she is - is very, very, very supportive of the Courageous Young Voices.
Tina:Well, if - I'm not sure what type of help you want from the library,- but we can brainstorm. Stanley: Yeah, brainstorm, just - just ideas, ideas, ideas. You know, just what do you think could be, we could do a - I was just involved with UF Arts and Medicine, collaborated with a lot of different community programs around Gainesville. And we had a grant to do something cool. And it was a workshop film type thing with the teens. It came out, it was pretty amazing. And they had a panel and they're doing a talkback to discuss the, the workshop. This too. And then this was in the notes. The book is very - Actually, I'll just read what is written here.
As I was reading Hip Hop Is Dead, Long Live Hip Hop:The Birth, Death, and Resurrection of Hip Hop Activism, I get the impression that the performance of the poems would add more depth than conveyed by the words on the page alone. Do you feel that your poetry needs to be performed for full effect?
Stanley:Yeah, these, these poems - these poems are definitely - it's always good to hear the actual poet or the author of the work read the work, because they know the work and how it’s supposed to sound. I’ll never forget, I remember once going to see Maya, the amazing Mother Maya Angelou. So that was - like my son went to the hip hop thing in Miami. He says he's, his life is complete. That's how I felt when I went to - had a chance to go and see Mother Angelou when she was here at UF, she came some years back. And I remember her saying, when she read the Raven, how she read it - and it was like - [snapping fingers] a whole different thing. And so to hear somebody else read it, it’s like - that's not how that goes, you know, it goes like this, [snaps fingers] you know. So it's all about how you - how you read. So I always want to hear the original work read by the person, the individual that wrote it. So if I read something, it's jazz. I wrote it like jazz. It reads like jazz and hip hop and the blues and gospel music. There's a - there's a chapter in here called Brethren of the Same Rhythm Group. And it just shows the connectivity of all these different - jazz, blues, my interpretation of how jazz was - was created, how blues... I wrote one called Willie Green’s Blues. Willie Green is from here. I happened to be at the Thomas Center. They had a blues exhibit from all over the country. They collected all these, this blues memorabilia and everything. And Mr. Willie Green was there and he had his - he was sitting there with his guitar, he had his little thing that holds the harmonica and he was there playing, and I sat there and I jotted down some observations that later became Willie Green's Blues. And that's the poem that I read before the Arts Council when I was going through the selection process, because it's, you know, I mean, Willie Green was an actual person who lived - he just passed away, matter of fact. That voice is different from the voice that’s in the same chapter, The Birth of Funk, which is a tribute to James Brown. So yeah, I think if I were to read these to an audience, it would probably be different from someone that's just sitting down reading them, because I know the voices because they’re all the voices that were in my head. I mean, I know that there's a young - I know that this is a young girl. These are two young ladies talking about hip hop. You know, where hip hop came from. These are two young, probably teenagers. One is younger, one is older, and they're having a discussion about how hip hop came into existence.
Tina:After hearing and seeing your - you did a video for us for Juneteenth. Stanley: Oh, yeah. [BAD ECHO] After hearing you read that poem, it was - while I was reading this, I could… Even though I know the perspective, the actual voice in quotes seems like a different character telling the poem, I could still hear the cadence of your voice while I was - because I'd seen you and heard you perform before, which made it really interesting. It actually made it seem more alive for me when I was reading, if that makes sense.
Stanley:Yeah. I mean, if it makes sense to you, it makes sense. Tina: [laughs] Yeah.
Tina:I think we probably should wrap this up at this point - [laughs] Stanley: Oh, no, no, no - You can come back another time and - Stanley: I'll definitely want to come back. This has been an honor and a thrill to be here with you today. So thank you for allowing me to share space here at the Library Partnership. Thank you so much for coming. And I really, my favorite aspect of reading the book, Stanley: Mhmm. And actually just thinking about this whole interview, was the power for poetry to have a positive impact on social change. So maybe we'll leave that for the next conversation. But I really appreciate that you even made me think about it. [laughs] So thank you so much for being here.
Stanley:Thank you, and just let me say this, one of the things that - and I hope I can, I can get this across to young people is that it's not that - and I reside somewhere in between the space where I'm all about, you know, okay, once something happened to you, or something is happening to you, or someone is doing something to you, once you're aware of that, once you become aware, okay, this person is messing with me in this way. Now, you know how they're messing with you, you know, whether it be actually physically or psychologically or whatever. Once you have that information, that knowledge, then you can go forward and counteract whatever it is they're doing to you. You know, so that's the - what I want young people to get from this book is okay, just to understand what it is you're listening to, what it is that you're that taking in, the purpose of it, why is this story like this. And once you understand what you're listening to, you can, you can better understand how to listen to it. So that's, that's really what I want young people to take away with. And not that I'm - ‘cuz sometimes, people see, all they see is hip hop is dead, they don't, like, you know... [claps hands] No, hip hop is not dead, long live hip hop.
Tina:Even with poetry, I feel like that's a really important lesson is that, to be able to see what has been done to you or how you've been affected externally by things, the choice that you make of what you do with that. Poetry is something, a type of self expression that can be used so that there's no self harm involved in... You know, does that make sense to you?
Stanley:Yeah, yeah. Tina: So that instead of turning the negative things that have happened externally to you, out into a positive force. And that's the thing. You asked me about writing, and I've told you that I've always, for as long as I can remember, and then my first real serious poet, poem was back when I was in love with K - in the 10th grade I wrote her a poem. But writing is how I, I think best express myself. Talking, I think I'm going to say the wrong thing or whatever, it's not gonna come out, I’m going to mess something up, you know, but if I write, writing is how I can just be my most authentic self, putting words on the page, I think. And it's different from me just having a conversation. If I - Allow me to write. Because there's a, there's a spiritual aspect to it for me also. When this thing happens, sometimes you just - you don't... I go back and I read some stuff, and I’m like, Where’d this come from? Like, I wrote that? Oh, man. You know, that kind of thing.
Tina:Well, we'll have you back to talk more about that process. Stanley: Okay, because I’m gonna keep you here for another 30 minutes.
Stanley:Thank you so much. It's been - it's been - it's been a joy, a pleasure. I really appreciate it. And it's so cool to - I see the library stamp on that book.
Tina:Yes, we have - we have your book in our collection. Stanley: Wow. So anyone with a library account can check this book out from the library. Stanley: That is so cool. I am, I am now - I am complete.[music] Thanks for listening to Patrons & Partnerships. If you know of an individual or organization you’d like to recommend for an interview, email us at lpsfprogram@gmail.com. Storytime with the library is back with Storytime on the Green. Visit our site at aclib.us/storytimeonthegreen, one word, for times and locations. Partnership staff hold storytimes at Smokey Bear Park off of 15th every Thursday at 10am, and we have a representative from the Dolly Parton Imagination Library to help you sign up if you live in the 32609 zip code. The Dolly Parton Imagination Library provides preschool children with a free book every month until age 5 - if you have a child under age 5 in your household, it’s a great opportunity to encourage their love of reading. Residents of the 32641 and 32601 zip codes can pre-register now. The Millhopper School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is open for registration! Play games, compete for the House Cup, and prepare for your OWLs during this school year. Register at aclib.us/msww before September 1st to be part of this year’s sorting ceremony![music]