Joan Armatrading’s Track Record… and Marriage Equality today!

I thought it would be cool that my article on Joan Armatrading’s Track Record would come out on a day coinciding with LGBT Pride weekend in NYC. I had no idea how *perfectly* timed it would be!

Thanks to the wonderful folks at Biff Bam Pop! for the opportunity to write a bit about why Joan Armatrading is a musical joy and a cultural inspiration.

Robin Renee On… Joan Armatrading’s Track Record

… and Happy Marriage Equality to one and all!!

Love, Robin

Happy Loving Day! Read my essay today @ Black & Poly

a happy day w/ my friends Ray & Preeti, Philly LGBT Pride 2013

Happy Loving Day to all those who celebrate it.  I wrote a bit about it from a polyamory perspective, and it’s posted today @ Black & Poly.  I hope you’ll check it out, comment, & share it:

 Today is Loving Day! Here are 5 of the Many Reasons to Celebrate

 

A more personal essay on this blog from a Loving Day past is here: Embraced By Loving Day

Thanks for reading!

Robin

New Robin Renée song: All I Am

 

 

I am happy to announce the release of “All I Am.”  It is a shout out to all those who color outside the proverbial lines.  I hope it encourages everyone who listens to embrace their own beautiful differences.

Find out more and download “All I Am” here.  20% of proceeds from the CD Baby sales of “All I Am” will go to support the You Will Rise Project. The mission of the You Will Rise Project is to provide a multimedia showcase for people who have been bullied to share their stories through the arts.

Thanks for your support!

www.robinrenee.com

 

What I Learned from Richie Havens

I experience a certain amount of reflexive apprehension whenever I hear an NPR commentator mention the name of someone I like and haven’t heard about on the radio in a long time.  Often enough, I’ve learned, I am about to hear an obituary.  Sadly, I was right this morning.  The news of Richie Havens’ passing hit me hard. When I caught my breath, tears wanted to follow the shock, but I was out and about, so they had to wait. Instead, I had time to meditate on what Havens means to me and all the good he did for the world through his words and music.  He was the real deal, and just by being so, he shared and taught so much.

In 2003 and 2005 I had two opportunities to speak with Richie Havens. I had a singular kind of nervous excitement on the morning for which our first conversation was scheduled.  What is there to do while waiting, knowing that the next time the phone rings the person on the other end will be the guy who struck the very first chords at Woodstock?  Two pieces came from our telephone interviews – a short preview of a show at Duke Island Park in Bridgewater, NJ in the Courier News and “Richie Havens—Touch the Planet with Honesty, Optimism, and DIY,” Songwriter’s Market, 2006.  It was an extra blessing to talk with such a kind and insightful artist and I am so glad I was also able to meet him and say hello on a couple of occasions at his shows around New Jersey and New York.

Some of the things he told me shifted my attitude in fundamental ways.  I didn’t always know it, but his sound and image had its affect on me pretty much from my beginnings.  These reflections came together for me as I remembered him today.

Here are a few of the things I learned from Richie Havens:

 

Be your best self everywhere.

 He spoke of some early gigs when he’d never know how he was billed until he got there. Maybe he’d find that the promoter sold him to the venue as a folk-blues singer. Maybe he’d show up and the sign would say “Richie Havens – folk-jazz.”  The makeup of the audiences was just as much of a tossup.  Would it be a mellow listening room or a crowd of rowdy bikers? Either way, he played his best. He found he crossed over and gained fans.  It seemed to me that he had the knack of just being real when it mattered most.

I know something of this kind of experience.  I was once hired sound-unheard by someone who assumed I played R&B.  Another time I was told “we just need any kind of mellow music,” only to find that the event was billed as a jazz brunch.  I’ve been in that awkward moment singing in a gay club where the few women who have come to hear me are outnumbered by the puzzled guys who wonder when the dance music is going to start.  At first in those situations, I’d try playing faster or louder, inventing scat vocals – I’d try to morph on the fly into someone more likely to be understood.  Slowly but surely I’ve been learning the difference between responding in real time to the energy in a room and flat out trying to become something or someone else.  Richie had it right.  And what a lesson for how to show up for life in general.

Stealth influence runs deep.

 I don’t remember which state I was in, which song I was playing, or how many years before the interviews it was.  I was playing an all acoustic gig in the midst of one of my most energetic tunes like “Spiritual Ink” or “Silent Partner.” Suddenly in the middle of the song I was startled by a realization: “Whoa – Richie Havens is the reason I play this way.  He might be the reason I play at all.”

My mom was a huge Havens fan.  I can still call up a very clear picture of the old stereo on the front porch with Mixed Bag on heavy rotation.  I do believe that one way or another, I would have found my way to music.  In my house, I was instilled with the love of melody and lyric and cultural relevance.  But I discovered in that moment that a little bit of Havens’ sound made its way into my hands, perhaps even more so than later artists I would name more immediately as favorites. And there’s another huge piece of this: Long before I would hear all of negative feedback and deal with being questioned and ostracized for my love of rock music, Richie Havens had given me permission to look as I do and play how I play. That turns out to be a gift beyond measure.

Once & for all, music is beyond black or white.

 Of course, I know this. I knew it in junior high school when black kids would tell me there was something wrong with me for being into David Bowie and The Stones. I knew it when I was told by a few people in the music industry that they didn’t know how to sell what I do. Still, it was exhausting to feel as though I was constantly made to withstand overwhelming forces intending to knock down what was different in favor of what was status quo, forces that insist that black and white are to stay separate when it comes to skin color and music.

I asked Havens if he ever got flak for playing guitar, covering songs of artists like The Beatles and Dylan, and playing what some might think of as “white music.”  What he said amazed me completely.  He said when he was coming up in the Greenwich Village music scene, there truly was no such scrutiny.  The artist community then was all about expression and experimentation. It made no difference if you picked up a guitar, a banjo, a piccolo, or trash can lid.  It was about making sounds, telling stories, and telling truths.  That was it. I still believe hearing and seeing Havens gave me a jump start before the full weight of this kind of outside opinion came down on me.  I hadn’t imagined the kind of creative microcosm he described – so purely “anything goes.” I was fascinated that a confluence of people and energies could come together to bring about such a place and time.

Be the change and SEE the change.

 For so many progressive Americans I knew at the time, the George W. Bush presidency represented a particularly dark time.  Frustration and disillusionment were common, and though I try not to dwell in anger, it was the place that many of us went to in light of what felt like the twilight of meaningful communication between the major parties and other perspectives. Essentially, it seemed as though the idealism of the sixties had given way to a reality of growing conservatism and the culture of war.

I asked how he felt about the world today, having been in the vanguard of the protest song and the music of social change and responsibility.  His answer was by far the most surprising thing he said to me.  He talked about how when he started out in folk music very few performers – maybe as few as five – were singing songs of social consciousness.  Most popular music was still the “moon and June” love song.  But as the folk movement grew, people became empowered.  The idea that we all have voices spread, and over time there were songs of social change in all genres and from all corners of the planet. Today, everyone knows inherently that it’s possible to pick up a guitar or any other instrument and sing to protest, sing for change, for nature, for celebration, and yes, for love.  What’s happened is that the protest song hasn’t disappeared, but it has expanded.  All manner of expression has become possible in every musical style and every other form of communication.  It is simply part of the fabric of our world.

I was floored.  I had been the inheritor of a shift so complete that what came before it had been invisible to me. My faith in the world and a sincere optimism were restored in an instant.

 Community is possible.

 My conversations with Richie Havens led me to realize this: Change, growth, and gatherings of loving, powerful, creative people aren’t relics of Woodstock or the Greenwich Village of the 1960’s.  We have all we need to be all of who we are.  We can write it.  We can sing it.  We can speak up.  We can create the communities where we will thrive. Though these simple facts might sometimes hide in plain sight, we have only become increasingly more equipped to know our own power.  The time is now.  It always is.

 The last time I saw Richie Havens perform live it was an outdoor show in the theater district of New Brunswick, NJ, with The Indigo Girls also on the bill.  It was just up the street from my old apartment. I have always had very positive memories of that show, and today they have become that much sweeter.  It still hurts to say it, but Farewell, Richie Havens.  I could never thank you enough.

 Richard Pierce Havens

January 21, 1941 – April 22, 2013 – Earth Day

 

 

 

Embraced by Loving Day

I have a very distinct memory of being next to the kitchen in my New Brunswick, NJ apartment somewhere in the 90s. I had a startling realization: I am biracial.  Suddenly, I had a new, very useful, consciousness-shifting lens through which to view and understand myself.  It is the nature of my family, and it’s very much who I am. 

I was equally startled that I hadn’t fully understood myself as having biracial identity before that moment.   I had been too busy listening to others’ ideas of me.   Those people in school who told me I was “acting white” or “not black enough” – They were just plain wrong. It was scary to say all that out loud to myself then, and it still is. Regardless, I have to continue to speak up.

This past Sunday I performed at Wilmington Delaware’s first Loving Day Celebration. Loving Day is celebrated on June 12th to commemorate the Supreme Court Case Loving v. Virginia, which in 1967 finally struck down remaining state laws against interracial marriage. Mildred and Richard Loving were married in 1958 in Washington, D.C., but when they came back to their home in Virginia, were arrested. My parents were married in 1963. Lucky for them, there were no laws against their marriage in New Jersey. Still, I have come to appreciate over the years how difficult it must have been and how much they must have loved each other to go against the grain in that era.

My good friend Jenn Phillips organized the indoor/outdoor Loving Day Celebration of music, food, information, and positive, good times. I had never seen her quite as focused and intense while creating or overseeing anything. Just how much it meant to her was apparent, and I am so pleased that her efforts turned out so wonderfully. Karen Rege and Brandi Chavis performed some well-crafted jazz and R&B standards and originals. I loved hearing Scratchy Catfish’s fun and funny blues tunes (“Rockin’, rollin’, getting’ bizarre/Doin’ the Catfish Stomp!”) I played my set and encouraged audience participation and sing-a-long wherever I could. Jenn asked me to write a song for the occasion, and I came up with a tune called “(Color My Love) Indigo.” This first performance of it went well enough. I was so emotional at the end of the event, that it was hard to leave and hard not to cry. It felt so good to have that deep a sense of acceptance and belonging.

Two or so years ago when I discovered the Mixed Chicks Chat podcast, I felt immediately at home. I got in touch with the co-hosts Fanshen Cox and Heidi Durrow and eventually was a guest on the show. I spoke about overall blended identity encompassing bisexuality, polyamory, and mixed music and spiritual practices as well as issues of race. When they asked their tongue-in-cheek yet serious question “What are you?” I told them: On my mother’s side as far as I know I am African, Haitian, Irish, and Hopi. I was adopted by my maternal grandmother and her second husband – my mom and dad. I felt so blessed to be among fellow “mixed chicks” where a description of nationalities and family circumstance is informational and conversational, never accusatory or confrontational. It truly felt like a homecoming. I am sorry that I missed their Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival in Los Angeles this past weekend, but I am sure that the Wilmington celebration was exactly where I needed to be this time around.

Trying to cope with people’s expectations of me based on assumptions about race has been one of the most painful challenges of my life. I wish I could have dialed down people’s anger and misunderstanding at times, but I would never trade my biracial and multicultural family experience. Among many things, it has helped me know that I may love whomever I love. It has helped me know that yes, a dark-skinned girl can indeed sing rock songs and play a guitar. And if she wants to add Indian chants or electronica or bluegrass or funk to that somewhere down the line, more power to her. That little awakening moment in my old apartment was the beginning of my understanding the importance of being all of oneself, even in the face of culture’s most strident artificial divisions. Every new celebration like Loving Day wears down those walls.