A Place to Scream
A Place to Scream is not a place but a chasm. A scream can be a shout into the void or a protest song—a cry, a catharsis, a celebration. Or this space can entangle itself into its own parts: a lingering in between-ness, a spell, a perfect uncertainty. A Place to Scream is interested in the collective intersections between disciplines, where rupture and disparity can morph into a grander diasporic consciousness, holding each other with urgency.
A Place to Scream
Ep.9 The Landslide Brought Me Down (From White Mediocrity)
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Buckle up kids, cause you're in for a ride!
Why should I accept and herald the pilfered art of a colonized people presented to me through the gaze and institutional backing of whiteness? Well, we don't! And on today's episode you're gonna hear exactly why.
It is time to deprogram from the centering of mediocre culture "creation" that does nothing but steal, co-opt or attempt to emulate the brilliance of Black & Brown art and culture. It is time to break free from white dominated media narratives about how to perceive ourselves as the global majority and champion the artists and creatives who's work continues the dialogue and heartbeat of the generations of artists who came before.
Hello, my name is Saf and I'm Logna Jita, and you're listening to a place to scream podcast. Today's episode is The Landslide Brought Me Down from White Mediocrity.
SPEAKER_03White Mediocrity, let's talk about it.
SPEAKER_02Since no one seems to want to talk about it for some reason.
SPEAKER_03Since we've seen so much of it lately. Since it team seems to be plaguing my timelines and consciousness so much, let's give it let's give it the spotlight it is it's begging for.
SPEAKER_02If the if the gray skies weren't enough to to and the and the and the current affairs enough to spiral us into the pits of hell, we we also have white mediocrity to look forward to.
SPEAKER_03Oh god. You know, with how egregious and horrific and violent the West is acting, it needs this mediocrity to push its fucking agenda, dog. And I've just about had it. Like I just want to name the rage before the grounding in of just like go off. Y'all actually need this heinous ass, like absolutely BC level tiered buffoonery artistry coming out. Y'all need to have these shit ass pop culture takes, y'all need to have all of this literal like mediocrity to like the truest extent. Because if you don't have something so plain to center, to say this is the best, to say this is what taste is, this is what music, cinema, like all of these things are, then you're like the baselessness just keeps happening, the veil keeps unlifting. And I'm just like, oh my god, in this, you know, deprogramming whiteness, which is part of like neurodecolonization, it's the whole thing that we're doing here. When you are aware of how fucking ridiculous this centering is and how gaslighting it is, I'm just like, ooh, I've had it! I have had it. I've had it. I'm so bored and angry about it, like, oh my god.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I mean tell them. I think connecting it, Defoe, to the to the unpacking of it It's hard to decolonize if if you're again it's what we discussed last time. Like if the center is in the wrong place, right? Again, if you want to center yourself on some mediocre ass shit, then that's the only way whiteness keeps going. We've talked about whiteness as a death cult. The only way that we as a world can center, you know, extraordinary things is if we destroy, you know, whiteness and whiteness can't destroy itself. Um diving straight in to not only the somatic grounding work that you are doing, um, but also to, you know, I just want to bring attention to the fact for the last several weeks, both of us have different yes, of course, through pop culture, like we'll we will get to that and all of and all of that, but even in interpersonal situations, we've had um different, not necessarily revelations, but di like re-rememberings, if you will, um, of situations that like maybe have happened in the past that you know seems like we've like you know moved on, yet the body keeps the motherfucking score and it comes back.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, you know, I'll I'll just be having a normal ass, you know, maybe I'm dri trying to drift off to sleep and then I'll remember some shit. And it'll miss so much in the middle of the night to remember our past interactions with with whiteness and with white mediocrity to the gaslighting that you definitely mentioned um that definitely happened um in order to shift our in order to shift the power scales and the power dynamics and and who's the villain as we've discussed before and who's the hero and who was wrong and who was right. Like we've had on a personal note, we've had that happen the last few weeks where we're like, what the fuck was all that about? Um so I think there's no I think we've been storing up this topic for a long time to discuss. We've discussed it just you know, off mic. Um we've we've had kikis about it, but I think yeah, we we've collected enough evidence to bring to the public forum.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely, and that that that you know, core evidence uh for me coming from this cohort that I'm a part of. Shout out Liberation Practice Field. Um yeah, we just had a guest spot by Erica Hart. Shout out to Erica Hart, absolute icon, sex uh educator, gender educator, you know, radical public kind of uh figure, I guess. Very humbled and grateful for that experience. And the topic was technically like gender 101, like gender theory 101. However, what I found really moving and really cool about this particular lecture was like um it was really like reframing and understanding binary like the binary makeup of like white settler colonialism through the gender binary. Um and how like the gender binary exists as like basically the bedrock of binary thinking through white supremacy and capitalism. And uh one of the exercises that they had us do was like describe the characteristics of a woman and then describe characteristics of what makes a man and in like today's society, like not you know, the woke version of this, but like what does our society say is a woman, what does society say is a man? And then you know, we share da-da-da for woman like being subservient, being quiet, being like uh clean, quote unquote, um all of these things. And as we're going through it, we go like she posits, like, okay, and what do you say like how would you describe a black man? How would you describe a Latina man, etc. etc.? Uh making the case that all of the other examples that are not white are seen as bad examples. And how regardless of like how the gender binary uh affects white people, like the binary uh fucks us all over, yeah, is the point she's that they're making. But in particular, like, why is being small being small is attributed to white womanhood, but being clean is attributed to white womanhood. Being these specific attributes are what we think of woman, which makes us think of white woman. For uh anyone who is non-white, in particular the grunt of this experience by black people. Um whatever we do is trying to get in accordance to this idea of woman, even though that simple idea is still oppressive. Um, like our our the way that we imagine ourselves must be through an oppressive lens in order to survive. Um, so either experience the oppression you experience by being what the world characterizes you as this loud, aggressive, you know, opinionated, lazy, but also somehow uh hardworking and labor-bearing, you know, instead of existing as quote unquote who you are under oppressive lenses, like you are still having to beat yourself into the submission of what a woman is. Um and then same with men, where it's like you are having to fit two standards in one, uh, and whatever. So this but this idea of like, okay, so what happens when you no longer center whiteness and the question is actually genuinely asked, what is a woman? Well that then allows like for the actual nuance of what a woman means, either through your culture, through you know, what ethnicities, through race, cul environment, ecology, etc. etc. It also asks what is a woman in the philosophical sense of like, okay, well, if whiteness is no longer the center, that means transness can exist. That means all these other options exist because the container is no longer such uh like uh stifling limitation.
SPEAKER_02Just gonna chill down my spine.
SPEAKER_03No, literally, dude, like, oh my god, in the way that they were facilitating, I was just I was gagged the whole time. I was just like, oh, this is a professional motherfucker right here. Like she they are really doing the damage. I know, but you know, like when you see somebody on social media, like you don't and you don't experience like them actually teaching because she's there she's not teaching right on social media. It's just like here's my analysis. And analytics is not necessarily teaching. Right. That's a good point. And so when you're in an actual teaching session, it's like, damn, I just got taught. Like figure out like, well damn. Um, and yeah, and so I just, you know, that was a fairly recent uh lesson that we went through, but um allowed me the space to kind of like grieve or feel some of this grief at least of what happens uh when you decide to decenter or deprogram from whiteness. And like it is a decision, also. You know, I was also like there's a lot of media I've been consuming lately. It's been pushing on the overconsumption side, I'll I'll admit to that. For sure. Me too. Yeah, you know, uh it's it's unfortunate, and I can feel it like I can feel it, and that's part of why I'm exhausted. It's like, well, bitch, you're drowning yourself in stimulation. Uh, but this podcast I listened to, I've been listening to for uh almost 10 years now, I think. Nearly 10 years. Um, Last Born in the Wilderness. Shout out to Patrick Farnsworth, who runs that. Uh really fabulous host, and just like what a great inquisitive mind. Love it. Dare Caraschio. Sorry, Dare, if I am pronouncing your last name incorrect incorrectly. But they were also talking about this, you know, literally the whole two hours of it was talking about like the choice of neurological decolon decolonization, of like the literal neurology of decolonization and how like when whiteness does not exist in your literal survival lizard brain, when it is not in the center of your amygdala, your literal fear response when it's not embedded in your frontal cortex for your language and relation to things, there's a huge grieving process with that that you have to like keep keep choosing to take on.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Because the option to fall back into whiteness is so often uh given up on a plate through pop culture, yeah, through uh the way that we treat our neighbors on a day-to-day basis, through the way that we talk about ourselves in the mirror or to other people, of like, you know, I'm not doing XYZ enough, I'm not doing blah blah blah blah blah. Like it all functions under this th rudimentary binary system of good or bad, uh, of worthy of and what Dare says literally or no, what uh Erica Hart said in the cohort many times was is your body worth slash allowed to survive or not? Are you allowed to live or die?
SPEAKER_02Which we we've discussed before.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and yeah, this is the whole whiteness is a death goal, and it it like literally like I don't know any other way to like emphasize more as of uh whiteness makes you believe that you are going to die or not. Yeah, if you follow it or not. If you don't follow it, then you're you and possibly your whole people get to be annihilated off this planet.
SPEAKER_02And not it not even if you and not even if you disagree with it. As you said, if you don't follow it. Um I mean I I I also just want to do a quick shout out to a book I've been reading. It's called uh it's by a South Asian theorist called Deadly and Slick Sexual Modernity and the Making of a Race. Shout out to Sita Balani. Um similar kind of I I've never studied like sexuality in the sense of like sex, right? Um and and the physiology of of all of it um in this kind of extended way. But it's it's similar to kind of what you're saying of like there's all these case studies in the book about how like literal sex and like and and this the the policing of bodies and you know there's so much history of that throughout colonialism and throughout um you know black and brown struggles, but yeah, it's it's making me think as well of about like survival differently, right? It it is it is not just like a sense of and yes, I've been watching Survivor. So survivor survival is really on my mind, but in a way that is like what brought a chill to my spine when you know you were speaking earlier in a way that it is yes, it's life or death, sure, but it there's so many grey like zones within life and within death. Um I think I think you know if we're talking necropolitics, akilimabembe, if we're talking there's so much out there on like you know, the politics of death and as you said, who gets to live and who gets to die, and um but it's like I think this discussion is more about who gets to live in what way. Um and I think whiteness as a as a trap um but also as a as a mechanism as a failed mechanism for escape um is what creates white mediocrity, but also allows white mediocrity to continue, proliferate, exist, and then fucking poison the rest of our minds. Um and yeah, I think what you're saying about amygdala and like the the actual mind, not the philosophical mind, but the actual brain and the actual body and like how are we coping with what the fuck is going on how are we coping with what the fuck is very blatantly being told is going on and is cool apparently um only to then whiplash into what we're also being told is good art or good music or a a good a good game or a good player or a good um a good person at the end of the day. Um yeah, I don't know if I have like a proper point, but I think when you're speaking, I it led me to think about how historically like this has been a category um of binary, um like literally scientifically, you know, as it relates to colonialism, as it relates to migration, movement, forced migration, etc. etc. However, like how doesn't it also then impact us? Totally where we are right now.
SPEAKER_03I don't know, man. Big questions here on the pod today. You know, I think what I when I think about of where I see white mediocrity the most is just like through music. I think it's like the easiest genre uh or the easiest form of art to point to of like mama, this is garbage. And there's so much of it. And there's so much of it, and I mean, you know, this is as early as I mean, I'm not I'm not gonna get into the crazy the history of Western music. However, uh if you've never read the book Segregated Sound is really good, um don't remember the name of the author right now, but y'all can figure that out. It's through University of Austin Press. But anyways, the you know the segregated sound highlights a lot of um, you know, the early makings of genre music in the United States, and um it's just really, really, really, really, really wild how like how so much of what like drives and allows and I would say at times like perpetuates white mediocrity is its profitability. Truly, where's the ding? Uh James, where's the ding? But and and like that's like feel so easy, but it's also like so fundamentally true. And if you look at like, you know, the Beatles copying Chuck Barry and copying Woody Guthrie, even though that's a white man, but you know, copying copying black blues and uh soul singers from the forties, fifties. That's that literally their first three albums were basically all cover songs. Of black rock and roll artists from the United States.
SPEAKER_02We have black, black, and South Asian solidarity on this topic alone. Let's check it out.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, and then, you know, they literally, because of their, you know, oh, we're gonna pivot. It's not as you know, we want to do something more. It's not enough for us to take uh deep inspiration, quote unquote, from these artists, blah blah blah, cut recover their music, da da da. Now we're bored of that. We got too famous, and now my you know, I'm unsatisfied. So now we're gonna turn to South Asian music as well as British uh classical music, and we're gonna, you know, hybrid this kind of Eurasian whatever the hell while also still co-opting, literally, while still co-opting rock and roll, like you're doing both at the same time. Um, but that also reified segregated charts in the United States and Britain. They allowed for this kind of proper versus unproper, clean versus unclean rock and roll, clean versus unclean sitar music, clean versus unclean, like etc. etc. Jazz. For jazz, all this shit. So this has just been replicated over and over and over again. It happened with folk music as well. It happened with Bob Dylan, who was also a big, they were a huge influence on, like, or they were influenced by, you know, it keeps going back, of course. Um, but now we see shit like a Harry Styles album that pisses me off so much.
SPEAKER_02Sabar has been waiting very long to chat shit about this album, mind you. So let us let us hold space.
SPEAKER_03Let hold some space for me because I'll, you know, I'll be first to admit, loved the self-titled. Big fan. Love a little queer baity white man wearing tight little Gucci suits. Do you want to go on record saying that? Of course. It's well documented.
SPEAKER_02If Meta wants to read my text messages, they'll see it. I don't care. I just want to disclose, um, I've never heard a single up to this point still have yet to listen to a single Harry Styles album. So I find this conversation very enjoyable. Go on.
SPEAKER_03And you know what? And you and you don't need to. Like, I will also be the first to say I'm not mad about anyone who doesn't like him. I understand it.
SPEAKER_02I think I just saw, like, you know, I was at the theater and like uh it was a fucking car ad as per usual, and it was uh watermelon sugar.
SPEAKER_03And I was like, yes, what it what is this? The man loves talking about sexy fruit. Watermelon sugar. Yeah, I I will say, you know, first to say, big fan of the self-titled. I'm not gonna I'm also not gonna say that it's like great songwriting. I'm not gonna say that it's anything that, you know, it was not earth-shattering. I just enjoyed the lad.
SPEAKER_02Fair.
SPEAKER_03And uh I did see him on that concert tour and it slayed supremely. I didn't know this. It was an extremely slay show. I had so much fun. Yeah. Um, but always, always a critic first. I cannot believe it. I cannot believe that that man is allowed to be revered as a pop male genius. Because I guess he's our only big white pop guy. I guess. There are plenty of other big pop white guys, but I think they're all uh predecessors or not predecessors, they are uh offspring of him, in a way.
SPEAKER_02I'm really trying to think about it. Yeah, I was I was just gonna I've literally I've never seen like heard a single note that's come out of Benson Boone's mouth, so I don't really know what genre that is.
SPEAKER_03I mean they are in the same genre, but I whatever. Yeah, I I I struggle to think of anyone.
SPEAKER_02Besides Justin Bieber, Harry Stiles is the white boy. He also doesn't have a song like Yukon. Just joking. I'm not I'm no longer a believer. Don't worry. But Anne Frank was though. I mean, baby one l whatever that what is it?
SPEAKER_03That opened. I'm gonna tell you one time one time.
SPEAKER_02Bangers. Bangers for days. Uh what never say never. Uh we'll fight. Will J Smith and JB. Can you handle it? I that now he's bigger than me and stronger than me, and he his arm's a little bit longer than me, but he ain't on a JB song with me. Oh my god! I know the whole rap. Don't worry about it. I loved Karate Kid.
SPEAKER_03It on it ain't it ate. It ain't uh sorry I'm saying all I'm trying to get to is I will not be gaslit into thinking that these lyrics are worth any fucking artistic weight whatsoever. I am so sick and tired. And like music analysis slash critique has been in such a state for so long now that I'm just like, girl, give it a rest. Like, y'all don't need to print no more reviews. Oh my god, y'all are pissing me off. Because where is the analysis? This is sure, just because an artist makes a departure from a previous sound that they were playing with, and for the case of Harry Styles, that was on the album before, kind of new wavy, but still disco stuff, both rooted in either black or brown communities, that genre. Then we had 70s style rock and roll, which was a again white co-opted version of rock and roll. Like all of these things, like all of your references are still co-opted expressions of a core genre. So it's no surprise when this man comes up with a quote-unquote dance album, Girl Where.
SPEAKER_02Girl Where My ass is planted firmly on a chair.
SPEAKER_03It's like so firmly plant like the way that I listened at the times that I listened to this album, I listened to it twice. Both were sitting down. I was on the bus! And I didn't want to wiggle for nothing. Not even a head bop. Aperture, you get a head bop from me. The girl, no.
SPEAKER_02Scathing.
SPEAKER_03Because what are you doing? Kissing all the time, disco occasionally. Heavy on the occasionally. If you're trying to play in a white boy who does a genre created by black people well, like David Byrne. Yes. If you're trying to play in David Byrne's closet, yeah. If you're trying to play up in that closet. Cool. So where's the George Clinton references? That's what I mean. Where are the where are literally like where are the actual references? Hmm. Where are oh your references L C D sound system? Where's your references to black techno music? Hmm. Hmm. Where Mr. Brad got his taste in music from. Actually, he got his taste in music from this band called Can, which were a bunch of privileged white children who went to different, various, well-esteemed schools of music, who traveled around Europe and learned from all of these, like, you know, uh experimental jazz people to develop their own academic version of ska and jazz. So that's actually what his biggest influence was, and Daft Punk. I'm actually so angry. It's like if we're really, really, really gonna clock the references, then let's clock the references. I'm fanning myself because I'm so hot. And you're not gonna sit there and tell me that this person writing the same, not developing any kind of a writing ability across four albums, has still been describing using the almost the same exact phrasing and sentences as you used for previous albums. None of like you're both exposing yourself and not exposing anything at all. It's mediocrity. With respect and love, it's mediocrity, my guy. You're not a musician, you're an entertainer, and that's fine, but be committed to being at least entertaining. This is scathing. I live listen, I love your little wiggle dance at the Brit Awards. Love the I love seeing you have fun, bud. But if you're charging that much money for your motherfucking shows, if you're going to every single music publication being called a like genius, or being treated as a genius, you're not being called a genius, you're being treated as a genius. You're actually never being called a genius, except by your young female fri fans, which listen, whatever. That's fine I'm not coming for the fans. I don't really I don't care. Don't care for them. Don't care. I'm not, you know, not on the misogyny train of like women don't have taste. I'm not gonna I'm not saying that. But your fans are who call you a genius. The publications uplift you as if you're a genius, but don't ever blankly say that this happened, that you are. But everything else around you tells you that you are, which allows you to just do the same shit over and over and over again. But where it's packaged back to us. Oh, this is genius. That's how you win album of the year over Renaissance, which I get it. I get it. I'm not here to be a Beyonce apologist at all. But the fact of the matter is, is that motherfucker should not have won over that album. Just on a pure artistic merit, that shouldn't have happened. And I'm just really, really, really tired of like the fact that just because something is profitable, Harry Stiles brings magazine sales, he brings online attention, he brings concert sales. Same thing with Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift brings economy. Beyonce brings economy. Like these people that emulate whiteness bring economy. That serve as a scapegoat? I don't know. Actually, not scapegoat, but it's a um it's the same thing as using Bad Bunny as for the NFL to like make them seem woke or make them seem yeah, you know, creative spectacle. I can't whiteness gets to Yeah, whiteness gets to hide behind mediocrity. Yeah. And whiteness itself. And whiteness itself. And it's just uh it it it's it's it's just so blatantly playing in our face.
SPEAKER_02It's it's so blatant that like even when I think like I work in a shop um that I work a lot of gigs. Um very often we have white folks uh doing jazz standards. Um recent memory, there was a white girl that came in that did a Ella Fitzgerald tribute night. Mega mix. Yeah, but mind you there was there was more Gershwin than anything. Um and I just I like got in a discussion with my co-workers about this because you know I think one of them was like, it's interesting that like like jazz is kind of like black classical. Um and for me every time I see these these white folks get up on the stage, you know, I've always wondered, I mean, and this has happened within things I've been a part of, um, in which when a white person sings like a black person, uh that is considered the pinnacle, the beacon of talent. If you're a jazz singer, that means you're a you are super impressive, and it's really just an elitist form of these white folks go to school to study jazz, then they come out, then they come out doing these covers and get praise for s trying to emulate black women. You're missing the soul, like you're going up there doing a standard, doing a Billy Holiday cover, and there's not my there's not a tear. There's not a tear in the crowd, there's not a wet eye for miles. I feel nothing. You trained yourself to sound a certain way, and you have no fucking clue what you're singing. And to me, that is a signal of white mediocrity. Mediocrity isn't just oh, you have a good voice, you have a bad voice, you have good lyrics, you have bad lyrics. It's not so simple as a binary. But if you are going up there and you are singing songs of black pain as a white person, treating it like it's a fucking like you've got your fucking sheet music, okay, because it's black classical, um, and you get up there and sing the most lifeless, lifeless cover of like the song that I've ever heard, and you expect me to praise you because you're trying to make it sound similar. Yeah. And I'm like, again, you're telling on yourself because if I and I think, you know, I bring up jazz because I think it's a very blatant example of them telling on themselves with with rock and with, you know, like this, these other, you know, white white folks have been able to craft their voices in different ways to folk. I folk is you know, everyone's music, and you know. Yeah. Um, but the kinds of folk these people are saying, obviously. We we know we don't need to get into music history, but like read segregated sounds. Segregated sounds, uh but like the kind of voice that you have craft, like it's like it's like you took piano lessons to to play Mozart or something, it's like that's what you're doing, but it's it's your voice, which is it's not a tool that you're playing, it's like part of your own body. Um, it is a part of your own somatic practice, it is breath work, it is you know the emotional core. It's like I am repulsed. I am I am repulsed night after night because I sit there and not only is it hollow, the hollowness makes it bad. It's then not even mediocre to me. You know what I mean? It's just bad at that point, yeah. And I think, yeah, I think when you're like analyzing, you know, a mediocre album or like a just a vacant album, or like you're calling it one thing, but it's really something else, and you're not even you've not even done the research or whatever. I think we need to stop calling shit appropriation and just call it stealing from now on. Because this appropriation talk has gone way out of control. People on the right are obviously making fun of us. People on the left are like, uh, and then your appropriation is just it's the tip of the iceberg. Like, why are you mad that they're calling it a Scandavia Scandinavian scarf when it's a dipata? Like what like it's become trivial trivialized. This conversation about appropriation has become so trivialized that it's like, oh, there's bigger things to worry about. Actually, actually, it's all part of the same fucking shit. It's stealing, it's theft, and there has been no reparations from the jump, and motherfuckers continue to leech, take, co-opt, and spit back out in a digestible fashion, as you said, for profit, or for fucking, you know, clout, or for or for acclaim, whether you be a pop star or like you know, an indie star, whatever it is, you're fucking stealing still. And it's it's come to a point, it's it gets to a point where you're like, kind of like how I've stopped reading white authors, it's like at this point, at this point, what are you giving me that isn't repackaged and stolen from someone else that can do it better?
SPEAKER_03Something I meant to mention earlier about the guest lecturing by Erica Hart was her, you know, almost subversively kind of putting land acknowledgements back on us as like people experiencing the lecture, and like she opens with No, she doesn't so she doesn't do the land acknowledgement, she asks for volunteers. And this is like before she even intros herself or anything. And it's a um native peoples, like uh tribal kind of boundary area of where she lives in New Jersey. Um, and then the other map is a redlining map from like the I think she said it was like 1920s-ish of Manhattan. And asks in a very analytical sense, like what are we looking at? And, you know, people are kind of, you know, having their feeling a little awkward, like, ooh, is this like a trick question, blah blah blah, whatever. And so we're answering, kind of experiencing this moment. And we go through, you know, identify who the people are, identify the specific land and what her house sits on, and the land that she used to live on in Manhattan. And in Brooklyn, da da da we go through it, and she just like asks, like, what's missing here? What was missing from what we just identified? Um, and like what did we or she asks, what did we what did we just achieve by doing that? And you know, we're like, oh we named these things, and she goes, and what did that do?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03And you're just like forced to sit with the discomfort of like, oh, literally nothing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Because there was no reparations made, there was no pledge to reparations, you don't know if I'm donating some of my money to like uh a land back cause. We don't even know how you like you don't know how I define land back, you don't know how like the native people of this specific land define land back. Like, there are so many things missing from this general acknowledgement that is inherently itself a pretty mediocre attempt at being like decolonized, you know what I mean? But ultimately, you know, the people who are uh who we memeify basically of doing land back or like land acknowledgements, corporate white people, nonprofit white people, whatever. When in fact, land acknowledgement is just how many indigenous people just open their community discussions and like, you know, whatever, of thanking the land that we're meeting on, da-da-da, let the session begin. And so even like this mediocre attempt at, you know, suturing uh harm done, yeah, genocidal violence done to indigenous peoples of Turtle Island, uh, or wherever you find yourself where Indigenous people were scurried and genocided out. Um this is doing nothing. Yeah. This is doing nothing. And it made this kind of, you know, that is leading me to think about like I'm I'm stuck in the 60s and 70s right now thinking about music. And I another another book shout out, uh, Black Diamond Queens, really amazing book about influential black women in rock and roll, um, and the culture of rock and roll. It's cunt, it's so good. Um, and Hanifa Durkheib. Shout out to him for highlighting the story. But uh thinking of Mary Clayton, who was the background singer for Gimme Shelter and a few other Rolling Stones um songs, the Rolling Stones in general, I mean literally, they're just like, oh, we're stealing this shit from black people. Like, so ver so blatantly we're going to the black sides of towns, we're going into their jupe joints, we're going into their places of uh which ooh, that's gonna tie into sinner so well in a second. Yeah, but it all connects, honey. But they literally in multiple of their memoirs, Keith Richards and um old motherfucker Mick Jagger now crusty motherfucker, Harry Styles looking at very explicitly used to like would just insert themselves into the black areas um of the United States when they were touring. Yeah, it's so awesome, it's so fucking cool, love it, love it. Um and but also a part of that was recruiting uh black female singers to uh who weren't finding jobs in the states to go uh to travel to the UK, they would fly them out to the UK. Um this happened with Pink Floyd, even though they were notably much nicer to black women than many other bands. But uh Mary Clayton was pregnant at the time of recording um uh Gimme Shelter, it's famous uh like screeching, really intense, powerful vocals for anyone who doesn't know that song, uh, which would be wild. But the point being is that she after getting called into a recording session, middle of the night, 2 a.m. ish, uh, she was also due to have her child that week. And or soon, very soon, maybe perhaps not that week, but soon. Uh, after recording this song, Give Me Shelter, which is about going through absolute hell, essentially, of like begging somebody to uh uh this dialogue of like sh safety is only a shot away, you know what I mean? Yeah. She miscarriages her child after being called into the studio. And literally there are takes where she had to like, she had to, she was a gasping for air because she was singing so hard, so rapturously. And I obviously am not saying that is the reason this woman miscarried, but you can imagine the material conditions, the survival of a black artist who now is having to figure out ways to perform artistry, to perform how they want to perform, who to make a living for themselves, to make a name for themselves, whatever the motive may be. But she her voice is what made her artistry, you know. For that to be used, for the her voice to be used, the connection of the pelvic floor to the voice, I can only imagine what was being radiated like to this baby through this labor. And it's just like she's gone on record saying like that she enjoyed the her experiences with the Rolling Stones. You know, I'm not gonna speak on like what her day-to-day experience was living through with this in this scenario. She did go on to have children after this. Um however, it's just like some that is so I remember reading that for the first time. I remember watching different interviews about this, etc. etc. And the way that these white men talk about black women in general at the time, as these just m sex muses, fuck their fuck their actual artistry that they're capable of, that they're trying to attempt for themselves, but just as muses, as these bodies to be intrigued by. He, you know, McJagger liter famously was in the recording of Aretha Franklin's Grace alb Amazing Grace album. Why the fuck was that man in a black church doing it like experiencing this unbelievable like moment of divinity being done by the Southern California Baptist Choir as well as Aretha Franklin with her whole family and line like spiritual lineage there? Why the fuck do you think it's appropriate to insert yourself in that space?
SPEAKER_02And and how does it feel for like one of your hits to be a quite literally a death?
SPEAKER_03Literally, like I cannot, I actually can't hear that song without crying. And I get that's like, you know, again, I'm not gonna speak about that woman's pert Mary Clayton's specific experience. It to me invokes so much pain to hear her singing on that song. Knowing yeah, knowing anything about black women's experiences with with labor and men, but in general that these women went unnamed for years, for decades. Their labor was unknown. It was just some black bitch on the on the background vocals. That's what people thought of blacks women as singers. Just some just some black bitch. It's like no, that was a mother. That's a mother who experienced a lot of fucking pain. Who was in survival. But go ahead and make millions off of your copies sold, where she only gets credit for her performance on the record one time, but you're gonna recoup the royalties for the rest of your life. No for sure. Yeah, totally. Angie Stone being all being basically tricked into fucking bankruptcy because of her management. Countless example. Motown was huge in stealing from black women their bodies, stealing their looks, stealing their voices from each, like, stealing their money. It's just like, you know, there's just so much violence in in appeasing whiteness. And that's just in the in the art form of music. Of just of just Western music.
SPEAKER_02I mean, first off, now we all know musicians are some of the worst people on earth. And and that is why musicians will always be at the bottom of the totem pole of what I identify as let it be known. Let it be known. Um I mean this hits obviously close to home, but also I I've been sitting in the silence because fucking violence is so fucking diabol. I I don't even know the word, like there is no adjective. I have been sit sat here like I I didn't know this. Um and so I mean I knew I know, you know, Motown Angie. I know that, you know that, but like this this particular story, I I've if you haven't It's extremely heroin If you haven't heard anything from my end, it's just because I'm sat here, like what the fuck's going on? Um But yeah, I think yes, this is not a this isn't a new take to say that, you know, black women and their bodies have been fucking again stolen, um, desecrated, and then and then used to proliferate um whiteness. Um I just I just also think I think music's a good example, like a really good example of all of this, not just because as I said, musicians fucking suck. Um as people, I swear that has to be a criteria.
SPEAKER_03Um shout out to our friends who are musicians, not you, sweetie.
SPEAKER_02But maybe you actually um you those if you know, you know, you know who the fuck I'm talking about right now. We will get to that. We will get to that. We will get to that. But I think the the the platform of music is so it's what you were saying, like with the the voice box and the and the connection to body is as I was saying before, I think music comes from uh such a ancestral place. Um it predates it predates l certain language, it predates certain visual uh iconography and coding. Um it is something that is felt not just on this plane, not just in this time, um, but a drum beat is like, you know, like the the white hippies will be like, yeah, the dr the jembe, you know. The the fucking the the drum circle, bro. Um drum circle at four, bro. Like, I don't mean like that, okay. I do not mean like that. Um don't get it twisted. Um but it being like a it being a mirror of like the rhythms of of of nature, it being a a a very, very fucking old and and black practice, um, straight up. So I think when you get to the modern state of music now, which started in in the times that you were talking about, um, once music became a sellable thing, um, and you see like the clear nod to this past, however, not a single ounce of recognition. I think like you are doomed to be mediocre. You are doomed to be mediocre because I promise you I've sat in rooms with aunties and uncles that can sing better than you. I have sat in rooms with aunties and uncles that can play a table, that we can clap on the beat, we can fucking dance on the beat. This isn't special. Your talent isn't special. It's not, and the moment we started thinking or attributing value, obviously it was to whiteness, but the moment we tried started attributing value to the ancestral practice of music making is when we fucking lost the plot because you don't get to tell me who a real singer is, you don't get to tell me that because I've grown up on the laps of them. Right? I've been passed down shit from generations and generations of Bengali folk in my DNA that is pre-verbal and that is pre-my like any knowledge of music whatsoever, right? So if I were to then sing a Bengali folk tune, it's not it's not to emulate the practice of oh, how can I get closest to the purity of the best version and the best way to sing this Bengali folk tune? It's not, it's how can I add my voice to the fucking chorus of those that came before me. It is not purity, it is not perfection, it is connection. Yeah. And I'm not see and I'm not fucking seeing that. I'll be so fucking real with you. Yeah, I'm not seeing that. I know you wanted to fucking talk about the Jack Harlow Focation of it all.
SPEAKER_03Bruh. I don't I don't even I don't all I need to say on that is get that motherfucking Kangle hat off your motherfucking head. And if you ever ever go on the airways and claim that your artistry led you to blacker spaces, if you ever infer as a white man with that scraggly blacker lace front beard with your scraggly ass, strawberry, ginger hair, blue-eyed motherfucker. If you ever claim to be blacker because of the proximity you keep to blackness, it is so on site. It is so on site.
SPEAKER_02I don't I can't even like I can't even come up with words to how we got to this moment. Like I I know there's a clear through like a a thread running through this conversation. However, are you real? I just think you know, in the whole land acknowledgement of it all, it is it's we've come to the the point in which white people are now admitting it they are admitting that like not even I want to sound blacker, like I sound blacker.
SPEAKER_03Right, no, a definitive claim. I'm like, this is a Portlandia bit. What the fuck are you talking about? I mean, they're like I respect to those that came before me. And fuck Joe Caramonica. Sorry. Sorry, I just he's never gonna obviously he's never gonna listen to this shit. But Joe Cara Monica, I'm calling you out your name, dog. I cannot stand the way you interview, and I cannot. You are the huge perpetuator of white people assuming they're genius because of the way you ask them questions. How are you gonna ask Haley Williams why black people like your music? That's so fucking crazy. Hey, so like why do black people like your music? God, I don't know. Ask them. Why are you so obsessed with white people who have the acceptance of black people?
SPEAKER_01Hmm.
SPEAKER_03I'm not actually gonna even say that all black people accept Jack Harmony. I mean it is like it's a it's a meme on the internet on how down black people get with Pamore. Like it's like it's fun, ha ha ha, whatever. I don't want to get into the HB Williams of it all. I just I can't stand the idea of hey, it seems like you have a proximity to blackness, person A. How did you accomplish that? Well, how do you seem blacker than I am? So how did you do that? A fellow white. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's like, hey, could you give us insight onto how you got blacker? Huh? Hey, hey, hey, let me tie this into the Oscars for you. Hey, insert director of one battle after another. How did you cause I don't remember the white man's name, I don't give a fuck.
SPEAKER_02Paul Thomas Anderson. You would have never guessed that.
SPEAKER_03Thank you. Paul Thomas Anderson. Hey, Paul Thomas Anderson. It seems like you have a unique proximity and positionality uh to blackness because of your wife and her lineage. Uh, how'd you do that? I can see actually your really insanely weird sexual complex about proximity to black femaleness, cis femaleness, and your basically inferiority complex about being a scrawny white man. Boop. Who think who thinks he's down for the cause. Boop.
SPEAKER_02But yet won't answer any questions about the political movie that you made. Doesn't want to talk about the politics of it.
SPEAKER_03Doesn't want to talk about the politics of it. It has nothing to do with, you know, it's just it's just something that he conjured up. He's such a genius. Just something from his imagin he's such a genius. How could he how could a white director explain his genius? Understand and explain how how you how brilliant he is about how how in how in tune he is with the black radical female tradition. Gee, I just I you know, how can we how dare we expect him to be able to give any kind of uh critique or analysis on such a complex uh subject?
SPEAKER_02Maybe don't make a film about it then. Maybe don't do that. Maybe just don't do that.
SPEAKER_03Maybe don't air your fetetizations in a blockbuster film. Now let's let's let's talk about this. Because the silhouette of Tiana Taylor with the machine gun and pregnant might as well be a Kara Walker silhouette. Within the first like five minutes, mind you. Liter I mean, like that literally looks like a satirical silhouette cutout from Kara Walker. Like, huh? You're gonna tell me that that's not a purposeful image to be used.
SPEAKER_02Let's get into it, folks. Uh we'll we're I'm gonna come back we're gonna come back to the music because I wanna I wanna discuss the new Gorillas album at the end. But this okay this has been this has been on the fucking tip of the zeit, guys, for enough time now, and it has been like those moments I discussed earlier, reawakened by the the caricature that is the Academy Awards, um in which we knew we knew what was going to happen. We knew what was going to happen, um however, even when you know it's going to happen and you see it play out in front of you, it is jarring to say the least, um, how you could give Sinners best actor, best original screenplay, best cinematographer, and yet not best film or best director? Is that not all of the elements of film? Am I missing something? You just said it's the best in everything except the thing itself. Is that not white mediocrity? First off. First off. Second off, I mean, it does not take a fucking neurosurgeon to watch a film like Sinners and know that it's a cinematic masterpiece. That's all I'm gonna fucking say about about that. Okay, it is It is an undisputed fact, okay, that that was there is no competition for best film that was nominated. I had some other best films, you know, but for different different reasons, definitely not nominated. Um undisputed fact, um we had Wound Me, we had Delroy Snubbed, snubbed like because you wanted to give that motherfucking award to motherfucking Sean Penn, who motherfucking wasn't even there. You could have given that shit to Delroy for a lifetime achievement award at this fucking point, but no. Literally, but no, but no. You you wanna praise the white man, the angry white man for ang for acting like an angry white man. Okay. Okay, cool. Um not to mention Timmy Timmy Tam was ever in consideration for best acting. In comparison to America's sweetheart Michael B. Jordan. Side note, Erica actually spoke about this um recently, um, talking about how it's interesting that in Sinners, yes, there's a lot of like there's proper field research done, and like, you know, you just need to look at the fucking rolling credits of like all of the people they consulted. I will give Erica this point that um yes, you guys were homies since college. However, however, however, did we really need a white Swedish boy to do the score for a Mississippi Delta Blues film? Hmm. Was there not anyone perhaps not Was there not anyone else you could have hit up perhaps from the Mississippi Delta? This is not ish like trying to be shade, it's just goes into the conversation about white mediocrity in the way that I think like I think Ludwig is someone who's not mediocre. So like the praise that someone like that gets when it's like white genius, do you know what I mean? In comparison to like Mississippi Delta Blues being a very like of the earth of the earth for sure kind of uh we're not thinking of our of the of the Mississippi Delta Blues greats in the past as geniuses, right? We're looking at them as pioneers, perhaps.
SPEAKER_03We're looking at them as you know, listenable, or even just as survivors, survivors as like oh they this is you know the music that we're emulating is a product of their survival and less of not seeing survival also as a tool of mastery, yeah. Like exactly, yeah, it's like you see you can also become a pro prolific uh artist.
SPEAKER_02Then we have on the flip side bro, it's just battles after battles for us, bro. I swear. Like within mere minutes of me watching this film, aghast. Aghast! I was I was appalled, aghast. You have jungle pussy like screaming on the do you know what I mean? I was like, yeah, what incarnation is what is actually going on here? And then and then we discuss, obviously, like we will discuss we will discuss the Sean Penn of it all, but I think I even without the idea of co-opting several multiple archetypes and stereotypes of black women, let's let's even set that aside because there's every almost every single one of them has been covered in this film. Um did we need yet another film about white mediocrity explicitly? Did we did you really need to make a point of like, oh look at these dumb white radicals? They're so hypocritical and they can't do anything correctly. One by introducing a very flawed black woman revolutionary character within mere moments to for why? How does that relate to white mediocrity? How does that relate to your larger message about the failure of white political movements? I don't know. Um we did not need another fucking Eddington. We did not we do not need another film where quote unquote, you know, it's a gotcha at the end where it's like, well, that's the point. That's the point. It's not PTA wasn't fucking fetishizing black women. It's like it's the character, the character was fetishizing black women. Are we watching the same film? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Fundamentally, in what world Well, it really is a cycle though, because think about honestly, that little nugget right there, think about that. How it's really interesting. It's almost like I don't even know how to like architecturally think about how this whiteness works because they're chasing these white men, are chasing academic um validity. Right? They're chasing these awards, and what the awards, uh like the Academy Awards or the voting body tells them is your mediocrity is not spectacle enough to give an award to. You have yet to create the spectacle that you needed to garner this award. And until you do so, you are not basically going to get this. Or we're gonna blue ball you until you to f for you to keep making profitable movies, and then we'll just give you an award for, you know, hey, a little slap on the butt and is like, hey, thanks for your work out there. Because a film like Sinners, where white people die, yes, where white people die, but also where blackness is given is so multidimensional. Not just in like singularity of experience, but literally through time and space, multidimensional, how it's represented in the movie. There's nothing mediocre about that. And what's interesting, what really is like making the brain turn about the uh because whiteness is its own um contradictory cycle. So you're like, oh, so so with the mindset of mediocrity pace, sinners breaks all of these whiteness narratives because it is the breadth and multi-dimension of black representation, of black art making, of black tradition, culturally, artistically, etc. It is cinema uh on a cinematic note, unbelievably researched and detailed. It's shot in multiple angles, you can watch it in multiple different like film settings. Like it's it's almost to a degree that like bitch Ryan Kugler, what the hell? Like, how like oh my god. Oh yes, yes, like how did y'all do that? Like, how did you how can a human do those things? How can a team of people do that thing? And it is the highest grossing Oscar nominated movie in years. It made so much money. So what are we talking about? What are we talking about? The value of the black dollar. Because yes, white people were going to go see this movie as well, but it's the black people re-watching it and re-watching it and re-watching it. Who keeps going back to the theater to see it? And who had already booked the tickets when they saw Kugler MEJ? Absolutely absolutely. Who called out Variety's bullshit about the way that they talked about the bo box office day? You know, so Sinners broke every white narrative that we've been building up this whole conversation. And won multiple awards that should have equated in a best film win.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03And yet, the Academy And yet, but and that is why. Yeah, and correct. And that is why they were not given the crown of the night, essentially.
SPEAKER_02And that is why you have motherfuckers in the comments, like, I don't understand sinners. I don't get it. What's the it's it's it's that. It's that.
SPEAKER_03I I don't get it because the white people died, to be honest. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02Just say the quiet part out of it.
SPEAKER_03You don't understand the significant part of any of it.
SPEAKER_02They're like, is it horror? Is it like shut the fuck up? Actually shut up. Because if it's not for you, it's not for you. That's fine. Why are you so why are your panties in a twist? Why are your p and it's always the same motherfuckers that are like one battle after another isn't amazing. How can you understand a film like one battle and not understand a film like Sinners?
SPEAKER_03Because one battle tells you exactly what it is. And this is my thing about was it Paul Thomas Anderson? Is that his name? Yeah, PTA. Parent teacher fucking Association.
SPEAKER_02Association out here.
SPEAKER_03FD Signifier talked about this with Sinners. He did a great video on sinners if anyone wants to watch that. Um really amazing video about sinners. And it's literally like the thing about white mediocrity is that the masses are being told that it's genius because it's being postured as genius. So, but it's actually a quite easy narrative to break down and in and digest in the theater because oh, oh, I understand. I understand exotifying black women in this white supremacy society. Oh, I understand. Well, that's just how black women, that's how we all see black women. Bringing it back to Telling on your discard. Tell me what a woman is. Tell me what telling on yourself. You know what I mean? So when they say I don't get centers, what you're actually saying and admitting is I actually don't understand the black creative genius. I actually don't understand blackness as a creative genius, as a creative epicenter. I actually don't understand the origins of these references that these musicians are talking about. I actually don't understand the origins of these dances, the origins of these instruments, the origins of this land. I actually don't understand it, and I refuse to understand it because this is more digestible.
SPEAKER_02And I don't I I don't I don't want to understand history. That's what you're saying. Because one battle is set in a dead zone of the the current day, I don't even fucking know. What you're saying is you don't want to admit or acknowledge that black people existed in the south of the United States, coinciding with Irish folks, coinciding with Asian people. You don't want to admit that you know a black person can own a juke joint.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Either. This is so surreal. It's not about the vampires for you. It's not about the vampires, right? Like you you want to use the vampires as a as a vehicle for the unbelievability of the whole thing. Whereas on the opposite end of the spectrum, you wanna use the believability of what you think racist white men actually want to do to legitimize a film that is to me unbelievable. Yeah, it is unbelievable at the end of the day Lockjaw and fucking perf you think fucking perfidia Beverly Hills in any real life scenario is gonna allow for that narrative to play out. Yeah. We're not talking about assault, the assault of it all. Of course, that's anytime a white man wants to put assault on a fucking screen, I just I already fucking don't believe you. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03But like I already checked out.
SPEAKER_02And now with a black revolutionary and a neo-Nazi, yeah, you want me to believe that?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And we have hordes of white people believing that. Like, oh yeah, the sexualization of of black women, that's what happens. And I'm like, okay, is this person a fucking slave? Is this person their master? What are we talking about?
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02What are what are you talking about? Right. And then you can you cannot believe that you know stack and smoke can exist in the same universe. Literally. I it is it is deeply actually like it's fucked, but it's really troubling. It is it is really troubling that we are still caught within these like confines, I guess, of whatever if you want to say music criticism, if you want to say film criticism. It's kind of what you said earlier, like you uh you cannot criticize one battle in front of a film, bro, without them trying to explain all of the fucking devices that are it's a fucking obvious plot to follow, like you said. Like you I don't need this to be explained to me. I just A, don't like it, and B don't think it works, and C don't understand why it needs to exist. And that is, you know, if you're gonna say that about sinners, you don't see why sinners doesn't need to exist, then we don't live in the same reality. Period.
SPEAKER_03It really makes me think of like, oh, you actually like for, you know, with the uh, you know, willful ignorance of whiteness, it also assumes um, you know, the full the whole film bro archetype assumes that black and brown people are not smart enough to understand our own experiences and history. It's it's like, oh no, you don't get it. You don't you actually don't know. No, no. Let me teach you about what your bodies have experienced. Boy, if you don't get a hundred feet away from me, you are going to get mauled to death. Like you're actually gonna get attacked. My talents are going to eject from my knuckles like like fucking X-Men. And you are going to get mauled.
SPEAKER_02And then you're gonna really understand how a uh how a black person can be a werewolf. Like, oh my god.
SPEAKER_03Like I got that dog in me. Please do not bring it out. But it really it's like what an absolute and that it's just like the fact that the arrogance of white mediocrity is crazy.
SPEAKER_02I I gotta bring up the Gorillas album.
SPEAKER_03Yes, please.
SPEAKER_02It's just I mean, my friend asked me my thoughts on it last night, and I hadn't listened purposefully because I just I Were you a Gorillas fan previous? I would never say I was a fan. Okay. I liked that I liked Feel Good Ink, but also I I thought that when I when it came out, I was like, I mean, this is kind of like I like the I I'm bumping, but at the same time, like I got sunshine in my bag. You know what? I mean, I'm like, hmm. What's going on here? So I stayed kind of far away from this album due to all the weird South Asian marketing. Um interesting. And you know, just from the weird, like AI ass like album art, just weird like I don't know what the fuck was you need to look up the visuals for the like just go on the gorilla's Instagram or something. I don't know. Like it from the jump, I was kind of like, what the fuck is this like cartoon Hanuman ass? Like I'm sorry, like I grew up on the Hanuman cartoons, like on the background. I don't know what's going on here. Um so you know, if I if I see a bunch of my community uh praise somebody, oh I did not realize how Salvation is.
SPEAKER_03I didn't realize that bitch. I had no idea.
SPEAKER_02Oh, this is gaggy. Do you see what I mean? Do you see what I mean?
SPEAKER_03So oh, this is profoundly gaggy. Oh wow. I don't think I've ever seen an alb their album roll out like this before. Well uh oh wow. Isn't this about going to like experiencing different like spiritual hells or something? It's like a bunch like uh the album's about grief or something.
SPEAKER_02The mountain, the happy dictator, the god of lying, the manifesto, the plastic guru, Damascus, randomly. Yeah, right. Casablanca. Shout out to Syria, Casablanca, randomly. Uh the sad like okay, so and you know, let it be known as well. Anytime I see my community celebrating an exaltation of anything, I immediately am skeptical. Because I I will roast my own people given any day. Um I was like, I cannot listen to this. This is it's gonna piss me off. I already knew it was gonna piss me off. Um, but then Parker shot up Parker uh asked me what I thought of it, and I was like, I haven't listened to it. And he was like, I wanna know he said exactly direct quote. Um you heard the new gorillas record? Very curious for your thoughts. There's been a documented phenomenon where the first song on it has been making white people spontaneously weep for reasons they can't understand. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_03Fierce.
SPEAKER_02And I was like, I bet.
SPEAKER_03Uh oh, dude, the tour visuals are crazy. Exactly. Oh no.
SPEAKER_02And you already know, you already know just because uh I have the fucking misfortune of being a South Asian on the on the Instagram that I kept getting fed this shit. Yeah. Uh do I follow any of these people involved? No. Uh was it on every single recommended page for like uh months? Yes. Off the rip, off the rip, we have um the the Anushka Shunk on deep close collaboration. I'm not gonna say much about the shunkers at all. I think there's enough evidence and research you could do. Um I give hats off to where it's due. I also, this is important for the discussion at hand, acknowledge that the success came off of the Western gaze. The success came when exalted by whiteness, uh signed off by whiteness. It's not to say you're not successful there, and it's not to say that you don't deserve praise, etc. etc. etc. The lineage is a very, very historic and respected lineage. I'm from Kolkata, obviously. It is just to say that sitar music as we know it in the West, pioneered by Ravi Shankar, pioneered by the Shankar Karana, is in deep collaboration with the actors of the Western Orientalist state. Okay? Yeah. We've already discussed the Beatles. Um now we're on to the gorillas, okay. I was like, oh, of course. I was like, of course. Cool. Um, who else? Like, there is there's really no one else you could like you want a bit of sitar sounds, cool. Like it's always gonna be white adjacent people. That is it's just gonna happen. You look at the sitar landscape, that's just what it is. Um then we then we've got okay, we've got features from you know the legend Ashaputli. We've got this, oh, this one did me in. We've got the legend. Um a different track to the Ashaputli one. We've got the legend Ashabushle, like uh just a South Asian icon on a track with gruff Reese. Um, and again, it's it's her voice, it's her singing, it's hollow. Everything has been stripped out. Every ounce of feeling of like soul of history has been fucking vacuum sealed out that bitch, okay? I don't understand how your career your career, okay, is built off with the co-opting of all of these artists. Not just that you're stealing their work, you literally have the fucking capital and the clout to have these legends as features. And yet your project is fucking hollow. I don't you uh you know that you can't make something on your own. First off, you've already admitted it that through the fucking track list here that I'm looking at. Second, you wanna you wanna take all these benefactors of the state for some reason. Like, whatever. Like, I don't that's not no shade.
SPEAKER_03It's just yeah, like but you wanna legitimize yourself through safe uh pillars.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. It's it's what we discussed at the top of the show, where it's like eye candy, you know. Yeah, black folk, if they see Bobby Womat, if they see fucking Black Thought on an album, for sure. Is out here South Asian people, if they see Asha Puthle, if they see Asha Bosle, if they see Anishika, they're gonna be like, okay, what's this about then? And that's what the reaction has been. These people know something I don't because when I listen to this album Safara, let me tell you my whole day was fucking ruined. Let me tell I was just trying to have like a little bit of semblance back into reality. I was like, I just need a little reality chest. Let me let me dip my toe into reality first. No, my whole fucking day. My whole fucking day was ruined because as you said, it's on this it's we're still on the fucking weird South Asian spirituality, like bullshit, as if to say like South Asia has mastered spirituality in some form that like I don't even it it is old, it is played out, like Safara. I felt absolutely nothing in terms of spirituality, in terms of emotion, in terms of none of that. Not to mention sound wise, boo-boo. I wouldn't even I won't be so mean to say boo-boo. It is mediocre at best. It is it is mediocre in my view. I this is a hot take. I'm gonna get cancelled for this one. And you know, if I'm gonna die on a hill, I'm gonna die on the hill of the mountain.
SPEAKER_03It's it's it's not about how a melancholy hill to the mountain.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's not about how fast you get there, it's about what's waiting on the other side, okay? It's the climb, and I climbed up there, I was exhausted, and I felt nothing, and I was like, now I have to fucking climb back down.
SPEAKER_03Well, time makes you bolder. Children get older.
SPEAKER_02Exact I I wish there was a landslide to crush my head in.
SPEAKER_03Landslide bro and down.
SPEAKER_02I've been afraid of changing because I built my life around you, bitch.
SPEAKER_03Around you, bitch. Landslide is actually about deprogramming whiteness.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. And let me tell you, let me tell you. We are in the year of our not Lord, because the year of our Lord was 2025. We're in the year of the plastic guru. And um I cannot believe we have a bold face rip-off of South Asian spirituality this year when all of this just just blatant racism against South Asians are taking place, like on all the things.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I was about to say I didn't think South Asians were really on the pop girly list right now. You know what I mean? I don't think y'all are in. I think it's being Chinese is in that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think everyone's apparently like in the Chinese time and of their life, but like I think they're there's like two seconds.
SPEAKER_03I thought we were all Japanese and Chinese now. That's definitely we've moved. That's why me. We're making our way back, we're backtracking. Yeah, yeah. They went so far east. Now we're backtracking. Now we have to go back west. Like we're we're going backwards on the Silk Road.
SPEAKER_02This is all apployed to get us back to to have us be reborn again, like eventually. Like we're gonna come root return back to Christian rock. Now all of a sudden, we're trying to make South Asian spiritual like yoga cool again, like the false gurus cool again. Um, I don't know if Mans was like, oh, I feel bad for them. I don't know exactly the motive here, um, apart from oh, I feel bad for them as a people, but I love India. And I love all the things I can take from India. Yeah. And you know, maybe I'll just, you know, toss the bone to a few brown people here and there. And I think it's gonna be a hit. But I think f the the the question for people's not just judgment, I guess, of like taste. I think this is not a con conversation about taste at all. No. I think that's a different conversation. I think it's more just like again, reframing appropriation as theft and like where does it begin and what does it end?
SPEAKER_03I think it yeah, absolutely. I think what and perhaps this is just what the ongoing theme of the pod this year is gonna be. At least for me it is, um, because it's just kind of what where my brain is migrating towards. But um it's the question of uh why why why do we hold the values that we hold? Where did they come from? Why are we why do we still remain gripped to them? Why do they pro what type of narrative do they provide for us? And I think when we see, you know, we've been making uh connections across time of when this happens, uh, when an appropriation or co-option uh or some kind of violent mishandling of uh a person's culture or a people's culture or artistic expression. What was going on sociologically uh at these times? In the 60s, we entered the Vietnam War. This is at a time where whiteness is has both been whiteness in a Western way was redefining itself because they flew too close to the fucking sun uh with uh Nazi Germany. Let it let it be so definitively clear that the West did not give a fuck about Jewish people. They did not give a fuck about POC, Jewish or gay people or disabled people that were getting killed, much as they don't give a shit now. The issue was a power imbalance of Western uh who got to be the dominant Western power. Germany didn't get was late on the game on colonization, they didn't have as much power globally as Britain or France or the Netherlands or Spain. America is now a superpower. You know, all of this historically is going on. So what happens when the victor gets to become the culture uh on the pedestal? We have to steal from everything else. We have to redefine ourselves over and over and over again to maintain power, to maintain narrative control. The when you see white mediocrity being shoved in your face through media, it is telling you that your culture is in a tailspin. That your society is in a tailspin.
SPEAKER_02Eating its own tail.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. And this happens, I think people have a misunderstanding of how empire works. In that it's not one, it's not like, oh, there's one thing that is going to disarm and disembody an empire. This spiral for narrative happens over and over and over and over again. The deconstruction of it happens when you make the choice to engage in spectacle or not. Why do why am I entertained? Why am I holding on to there only being one truth in the way that this art or media can be perceived? Why and what does it tell me when I refuse to accept a narrative that is outside of the one that I am comfortable with? Why do I feel like it is an immovable force to go against a popular narrative? You know, I just think that there's so many there's so many questions to ask yourself that I'm asking myself, uh, why does my survival on this god forsaken historical time that we're living through require me to feel entertained at some point or I feel like I can't survive another day. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. What does that tell me? You know, we have to think of ourselves as more capable than we are see that they make us feel that we are. That make that they make us believe that we are. They are hinging on us being having no mental fortitude to choose otherwise.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_03That our human spirit is in fact not intelligible, and that and that it can be hindered, that it can be quieted. You know, this playing in Ryan Cooler's face about not getting film of the year. You're that is Master saying, like, try again.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03We own this narrative.
SPEAKER_02Not till I say so.
SPEAKER_03Not till I say so. We are going to continue to shove these white men in your face. Either as a reinforcement tool or as a trick of hand saying, actually excuse me, actually we know that this other piece of art far better represents the capabilities and you know whatever creative expression that this community is putting forward. We actually do know that this is better.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But that does not serve the narrative at large.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_03That doesn't bring investors, that doesn't bring that doesn't allow my power to stay. That doesn't there is some by giving Ryan Kugler an institutional award, you would be admitting that there is power to be given away.
SPEAKER_02Right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03It's all all of it is such a smoke and mirror. It's a a true magic trick, whiteness.
SPEAKER_02Yes, and while while, you know, black and brown people race to become whiter, now white people are racing to become browner and blacker. And it's it is, yeah, it's the smoke and mirror thing of the it's like a double-sided mirror almost of like you're all Bro, who's performing what? Exactly. Who's performing what? You're striving to exist in the fucking fun house. Yeah. Everyone's a fucking monkey in the circus, bro. Yeah. Well, them's the question, ain't it? Them's the question. Uh this is not targeted towards the whites. Please don't come in our DMs trying to have a conversation about the I mean it's targeted towards the whites, but you know what I mean. Like it I we don't I don't want to talk to you.
SPEAKER_03Um this is a dis This is a discussion on how whiteness affects the world.
SPEAKER_02Right. Whiten is a discussion about how we as a community and how our communities can for sure wake the fuck up, right? Um white people, you most of y'all already know you suffer from crippling insecurity. So I don't need, you know, we we don't need this. Is this part one of the land acknowledgement, you know, we're we're aware, we understand, and We hear you.
SPEAKER_03Your imposter syndrome is valid, and we hear you.
SPEAKER_02We hear you. Um, however, however, yes, and um y'all go off into your little little corner um and make some shit that you made on your own. I don't think it's possible, but you know, I would love to see. I would love to see, you know. Let's bring back trad folk. I don't know. I don't I don't fucking know. Like y'all just stick to what you do best. Um and the rest of us, let's convene, let's have a symposium. Um let's take back the means of production.
SPEAKER_03Amen. Amen, brother. I'll meet you at the the black and brown Citadel Conference.
SPEAKER_02The black and brown Eurodite.
SPEAKER_03Oh, not Eurodite is crazy. Ohridite. I don't know why that's the first word. It can just be black and brown entertainment symposium.
SPEAKER_02Entertainment symposium, perfect. Babes perfect. See you at the babes um next month. Uh, we're sorry that this episode was one week late, but as before mentioned, um it is a hellscape of. We've been going through the gigs. We have, and we will see you next month.
SPEAKER_03Uh yeah. Follow us on Instagram and Substack. Instagram place the number two scream. We are a safe word on Substack. Linked below. Um God, I don't know. That's it. That's all I got.
SPEAKER_02That's it. I was gonna come try to come up with a don't be nice um be something, but I think I'm just gonna say don't be nice fierce, period.