[music]

Kousha Navidar: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Kousha Navidar in for Alison Stewart.

It's time to read this month's Get Lit with All Of It Book Club pick. For May, we are reading Memory Piece by Lisa Ko. The novel follows three friends first drawn together in the 1980s by their shared ambitions for arts and tech. They want a future defined by freedom, activism, and creativity, but as New York City changes over the decades, their ambitions and their friendships also change.

Author Lisa Ko will join us at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library. That's on Tuesday, May 28th. You can grab your free tickets, yes, your free tickets, and borrow an e-copy thanks to our partners at the New York Public Library. Find out how. Just go to wnyc.org/getlit.

We're excited to announce our musical guest for this month's event, Lightning Bug.

[MUSIC - Lightning Bug: The Quickening]

Kousha Navidar: Band leader Audrey Kang will join us on the heels of the New York City indie rock group's new album. It's called No Paradise. Catch her for an intimate set right before she takes the stage at Forest Hills later that week.

Grab your free tickets for our May 28th event at wnyc.org/getlit. That's coming up in exactly one week. Now let's have a listening party of a new album.

[music]

Kousha Navidar: A new genre-traversing album and music essay illuminates aspects of the Black experience in America. It's titled Chrome Valley. The album is inspired by author Mahogany L. Browne's critically acclaimed poetry collection of the same name where she recalls tragic events such as the killing of Michael Brown by Police. She discusses anti-Black racism and misogyny and balancing both joy and sorrow. Let's listen to a little bit of the first track titled Homer, Louisiana (Prelude).

[MUSIC - Mahogany L. Browne & Sean Mason: Homer, Louisiana (Prelude)]

When I say freedom

What I mean is American flag

knotted in the spine and ripped from the root

When I say root

What I mean is Detroit Red

What I mean is Malcolm X

What I mean is Barack Obama

What I mean is history repeating itself

What I mean is history rewriting itself

What I mean is apple pie

with a slave owner on the side

Kousha Navidar: Wow. The album features 10 tracks set to music by composer Sean Mason. Chrome Valley draws from multiple musical traditions, there's spoken word, jazz, R&B, gospel. Mahogany L. Browne joins us today to discuss. She is a poet, a playwright, an organizer, an educator. She's also the executive director at Just Media, which is an open-access media archive, and she is the artistic director at Urban Word, which is the youth literary arts organization. Mahogany, welcome back to All Of It.

Mahogany L. Browne: Thank you. Thank you so much.

Kousha Navidar: Also joining us is Sean Mason. Sean is a jazz pianist, a producer, a composer, and the leader of the Sean Mason Quartet. In 2023, he released his well-received debut album, The Southern Suite. Sean, welcome to All Of It.

Sean Mason: Kousha, thanks for having me.

Kousha Navidar: It's such a pleasure to have you both here. I've so enjoyed getting to listen and partially read this album and this poetry. Mahogany, tell us about the first track on the album that we just heard, Homer, Louisiana. Why open with this poem?

Mahogany L. Browne: We thought it was important to open with the reason that I was able to write anything, which is my grandparents from Homer, Louisiana. Looking at my lineage, I wanted to be mindful of the archive and not just think about today, but look back at yesterday and show the people, not just those reading, but those listening, how we traverse time and space through language, through music, and through land.

It was also not just my idea. It was Sean's. It was his masterful energy and direction that told me, "I think this is how we begin."

Kousha Navidar: Why for you, Sean? Why start with that?

Sean Mason: It gets straight to the point.

[laughter]

Sean Mason: As soon as you play the first track, it gets straight to the point of what the album is. It also is genre-ambiguous. You don't know what the next song is going to sound like because of the rubato nature of it. You're immediately drawn into Mahogany's words. I just wanted to start with this song, with just me on piano and Mahogany saying her words, just to further crystallize that this is a duo album. We wanted to just hit people right in their heads with what the meaning of this album is about.

Kousha Navidar: It's so funny to say that it gets straight to the point, but it's also kind of ambiguous. I think that's such a cool dichotomy there. Mahogany, a little over a year ago you published the book Chrome Valley, the collection of poems this is all based on. At what point were you like, "All right, you know what, this really should be an album"?

Mahogany L. Browne: What's funny is this is my thesis from grad school, so it's 10 years in the making.

Kousha Navidar: Wow.

Mahogany L. Browne: When the book was picked up by Liveright Norton, I didn't want to have a regular book release party. I didn't want to just do the usual, you read the book and you tour. I wanted it to really have a life outside of me. I was having a conversation with Sean while we were doing a different project, and I just thought this would be an amazing way to see this book have a life. I asked him if he was interested in a collaboration and that begat this idea of this breathing, evolving, expansive thing that you see now.

Kousha Navidar: What drew you to Sean as a collaborator?

Mahogany L. Browne: I love that question.

[laughter]

Kousha Navidar: Sean, do you love that question?

Sean Mason: I love the question.

Mahogany L. Browne: In your lobby is an upright piano We were in--

Sean Mason: Charleston, was it?

Mahogany L. Browne: Yes.

Sean Mason: Or it was in New Orleans?

Mahogany L. Browne: It was South Carolina.

Sean Mason: South Carolina.

Mahogany L. Browne: We were in a museum and it was a broken-down piano that did not look like it played at all. He just picked up, like literally picked up, parts of it and just started tinkering around. I thought, "Oh, whatever. Fine." But then music started happening, and I got chicken skin. I thought, "If he can make music happen with something that feels unalive, what can he do for the pain that I've written in this book? Can he make it that alive too?"

Kousha Navidar: Wow.

Listeners, if you're just joining us, we're talking to Mahogany Browne, who's the writer and playwright, and Sean Mason, who's a jazz pianist, a composer, and producer. Their debut album, Chrome Valley, is out now.

Sean, you mentioned earlier the different musical genres that go into this album, and how in the beginning you wanted to be ambiguous to tease the listener in. The album borrows from spoken word, blues, R&B, gospel. How did you find the sweet spot between all of those genres?

Sean Mason: Well, Black folk have their stamp in all of these genres, and I'm able to see a throughline. I'm also a history nerd, and I love dealing with music of the different centuries. It draws from the 18th century, I wouldn't say anything before that, until the present moment. I wanted to see the throughline first in the words and honor the words and bring the words to life, and then figure out how I can play the balance between the sorrows and the joy and to ultimately push the album forward and say the unspoken thing that music can do.

Kousha Navidar: How do you find that unspoken thing? Is it just through tinkering? Is there a collaboration that you need to go through? Is it mostly an isolated experience? Talk us through that.

Sean Mason: It's isolated. It's without devices, it's without phones, it's without any electronics. It's just me at the piano isolated from pretty much society in general. I have to be in a very, very spiritual place to compose. Once I get the first idea, it sounded like a blues song, I think was the first idea. Once I'd figured out what that sounded like, the album kind of wrote itself after that.

Kousha Navidar: Wow. Let's listen to a track from the album. This is Mahogany L. Browne and Sean Mason's The Blk(est) Night from Chrome Valley, the album. Here it is.

[MUSIC - Mahogany L. Browne & Sean Mason: The Blk(est) Night 1993]

Jesus came to the crib

Saw the Blackest girl with her box braids and hammer in hand

Climbed past the steel gated screen door

Looked at the shorty with the gleaming scalp

Shining bright

Black girl lips smack at the side of Jesus

Everybody around these parts bend corners quick

So she like, where you been

She questions his arrival late as a summer sunset

But still hot and on time

Praise be

Jesus don't hold grudges

Come right into the crib

Black girls staring with salty eyes as fly as he made her, and he like

Kousha Navidar: Mahogany, I've been bouncing up and down [unintelligible 00:10:07] to put that out there.

[laughter]

Kousha Navidar: The poem was written in response to a picture you found taken of you during your junior year of high school. What did that photo remind you of, and what did you want to capture in that piece?

Mahogany L. Browne: Like I said, this book was really an archive of a time that I felt forgotten and lost, thinking about system-impacted individuals coming from Oakland, California. There's so much loss, and there's so much joy, and it is inextricably tied together, but it's difficult to parse through that when you're writing. The picture allowed me to parse through some of that.

I was thinking, one, shout out to James Weldon Johnson, the first poet I memorized. That's the ending of that poem. That was his line. I was also thinking, side-eye, pop-gums, braided hair. I wanted to keep it real. I wanted to keep it honest, and I wanted a song for us. When I say us, I mean Black girls.

I love that, again, that you are bouncing to it. I love that. I love that so much, because when I finally got this book published, like I said, it's 10 years in the making, I was tired of the poems and you-- I'm saying you to-- I'm looking at Sean. Sean revived it, gave it life, a life that I forgot was a part of it, a living that I forgot was a part of it. I wrote that to remember that girl from Oakland.

Kousha Navidar: Can you describe that life to me? What is that new life that Sean provided to you, to your poems?

Mahogany L. Browne: Sean gave new breath, an expansive breath, a hope. There's memory that we have as young people, and then there is memory that we have as adults. The music allows me to look at it as an adult. I'm looking now like, "Oh, this meant this." The objectivity is different. I don't read the poem angrily, as I may have once before. I have a softness to it now. I think music is an equalizer in that way. It gives an access for different emotions, and I appreciate that as a reader, and I appreciate that as the writer.

Kousha Navidar: There's this whole phrase that a lot of people are familiar with. It's the music underneath the words, which I hear. There's colors, there's shades. Not to mix metaphors, but that's what I hear when you talk. I think that's so beautiful.

Sean, songs on the album like Trivia explore the trauma of seeing Black people murdered but in a question form. I want to talk about Trivia for a little bit. What are sound cues you experimented with to emphasize the importance of this question?

Sean Mason: I wanted to, one, go back to the type of human beings that ask the most questions, which are children, in a very innocent way. I wanted to play with the melodies that children sing and the ethos of those melodies. I went backwards and eventually wrapped my way around to composing Trivia but the melody is very kid-like. You'll hear a five-year-old singing that. It's very kid-like. The harmony is a little bit more mature and I wanted to play with that dichotomy.

The melody itself makes you think you're in this bop and this groove and you're like, "Oh, wow." Then eventually you think about what you're saying, or what you're listening to. Then that's when it hits. I wanted that effect and I wanted to go all the way back to children when they ask questions. You're like, "Yes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." Then all of a sudden you realize what the child is asking and you're like, "Wow, you're five years old and you're on to something that I never thought about." I wanted that same effect with Trivia.

Kousha Navidar: Is that also in the melody yourself? Because I hear you're going, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Are you thinking of that lilt a little bit, I guess, is the word for it? Is that part of what you're thinking of with the sound cue?

Sean Mason: There's a lightness to the melody but the harmony roots it. The harmony is very mature and the harmony comes from, I'd say, the 1960s of modal music and jazz and probably the late 1800s with romantic music as well. It matures the childlike melody. I'd say it does have a lightness, but it breathes. The end of the song takes a complete different turn where we, again, like the first song, put it right in front of the listener's face.

Kousha Navidar: Let's listen to a little bit of Trivia. This is Mahogany L. Browne and Sean Mason's Trivia from Chrome Valley, the album. Here it is.

[MUSIC - Mahogany L. Browne & Sean Mason: Trivia]

What is a bullet?

What is a bullet?

What is luck to a Black body?

What dies when no matter whom it loves wrongly?

What is a hollowing instrument, what else is there?

What is a certain gone, a collapsing, or even an implosion if you're lucky?

What is luck to a Black body?

What dies when no matter whom it loves wrongly?

What is a hollowing instrument, what else is there?

What is a certain gone, a collapsing, or even an implosion if you're lucky?

What is luck to a Black body?

Kousha Navidar: You're listening to All Of It. We're talking about the album, Chrome Valley. It's the debut album from Mahogany Browne, the writer and playwright, and Sean Mason, the jazz pianist and composer. It's out now. I want to dive right into another track Working Title. Let's listen to a quick piece of that, and then I want to follow up with a question about it. Here we go.

[MUSIC - Mahogany L. Browne & Sean Mason: Working Title]

The name of this poem is

How to write a poem about Ferguson

Or

The name of this poem is

How a Black man dies and no one makes a sound

Or

The name of this poem is

Everywhere is Ferguson

Or

Kousha Navidar: Mahogany, the album reflects on feelings of sadness and grief, but there are also reclamations of joy, and I wanted to make sure that we explore that duality there. How do you balance that duality in your poetry?

Mahogany L. Browne: Well, I think because as a writer, an educator, a freedom fighter, that is what we're fighting for. While we are entrenched and disoriented by the chaos, while we are marching and picketing and witnessing so many atrocities, we are doing it to assure that joy is available to all and liberation is joy. I know joy, like the Black community, we have jokes always. Even in the midst of the most terrible times, there's a joke there. It may not be understood outside of the culture, but within the conversation, it's clear.

The poetry allows that conversation to happen naturally. I think whether you are a part of the Black culture or not, as a human, the human experience allows you to traverse it and to see it, to feel it, the ebb and flow. There is no room for just angst. There is no room for just pain. There is no room for just anger. There has to be healing. There has to be love. There has to be joy. That is how we balance it. The poems exist in that way.

Kousha Navidar: Sean, as you're listening to Mahogany describe that duality through words, how does that resonate for you through music?

Sean Mason: Well, I try to use the elements that we have. In this specific album, I really wanted to emphasize the acoustic sound. When I started to compose, I was battling with my head of what instrumentation to use and how to really bring these words to life. Acoustic nature is where I started, and with that, it allowed me to start with the centered. I think the harmony, for the most part, is a very mature soundscape that roots us in these sorrows. Every melody, I think, is joyful and it's the harmony that gives it that dichotomy.

Kousha Navidar: It feels like it's community as a part of that because that's what I think of when I hear harmony is just the collection coming together. Thank you all so much for joining. We're going to play a quick clip to send us out, but before we do, I just want to say thank you so much to Mahogany L. Browne, the writer and playwright, Sean Mason, the jazz pianist, composer, and producer. We've been talking about their debut album, Chrome Valley. It's out now. Thank you both so much for your work-

Mahogany L. Browne: Thank you.

Kousha Navidar: -and for coming here.

Mahogany L. Browne: Thank you.

Sean Mason: Thank you, Kousha.

Kousha Navidar: Absolutely. To send us out, let's listen to a little bit of one more track from the album. This is If We Praise (We Are Beautiful). Here it is.

[MUSIC - Mahogany L. Browne & Sean Mason: If We Praise (We Are Beautiful)]

We are beautiful

Beautiful

Beautiful

We are beautiful

Beautiful

Beautiful

We are beautiful

Beautiful

Beautiful

We are beautiful

Beautiful

Beautiful

The names of our fallen

We lift the broken with our light

[00:21:08] [END OF AUDIO]

 

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