[MUSIC - Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC Studios in Soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. We also ask you to share your thoughts about Tina Turner. We'll be reading some of your texts on the air. You can text us at 212-433-9692. Send a text to 212-433-WNYC. Quick programming note on tomorrow's show. We're going to send you into the holiday weekend with a great book recommendation.

We're going to be playing excerpts from our recent live Get Lit With All Of It event, our conversation with Author Victor LaValle whose book, Lone Women, follows a black woman homesteader in 1915 Montana and the secret she brings with her from California. We'll also hear a performance from our special musical guest banjo player, Kaia Kater. That is in the future. Let's get this hour started with Aja Monet.

[music]

Alison Stewart: Aja Monet couples her poetry with music on her debut album called When Poems Do What They Do. Let's listen to a track. This is part of the first track called I Am.

[drums bunging]

Aja Monet: I am a flowerpot sitting on the subway platform dreaming of the southern sky

I am the southern sky

Bruised hues of blues

An inner city with an ocean-front view

A holy ghost tongue possessed between the pews

Sleepless in the twilight

A vision board invisible to eyesight

Loose hips humming under summer porch lights

I am the djembe drum

Alison Stewart: As a surrealist blues poet, Monet's work often explores gender, race, migration, and spirituality. She's been creating since she was very young. In 2007, at just 19 years old, she became the youngest Grand Slam poetry champion in Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Her 2018 debut poetry collection titled My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter received an NAACP Image Award nomination, and now her latest project engages with trumpet, piano, flutes, bass, djembe drum. Say it for me.

Aja Monet: Djembe.

Alison Stewart: Thank you. Djembe drum accompanying her words recited in a conversational style of a salon. Throughout the album, Aja touches on themes such as black liberation, love, harm, and joy, subjects that factor prominently in her work as a community organizer. When Poems Do What They Do drops on Friday, June 9th, and she's going to host an album release event at Legacy Dumbo at 7:00 PM that evening, but she joins us now in studio. So nice to see you.

Aja Monet: It's so, so great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Alison Stewart: I know last time was on Zoom, so I'm happy to be able to look you in the eyes in real life. What themes came to you when you decided you were going to go for a debut album? What themes did you know you wanted to tackle?

Aja Monet: Well, the album is really a reflection of years of work as a poet. It really comes in the legacy new tradition of poets who came before me who made records. There were many poets who have made records before. I think that history has been really erased from the music industry. We think about Amiri Baraka, Jane Cortez, Sekou Sundiata, Gil Scott-Heron, and the list goes on and on.

For me, it wasn't so much about needing to come to the album with a theme as much as it was how do I reflect the years of writing poems and being a performer who always saw what I do in some form of fashion, an extension of music and blues and soul. I wanted to reflect the years of work in a really good way and I wanted it to feel live. I wanted it to feel like a live album where people were in the room with us experiencing the poems in the movement of them.

Alison Stewart: What do you know about making an album that you didn't know before you started?

Aja Monet: Ooh. [laughs] I learned a lot. I've helped a lot of artists over the years and I've been very supportive of other people in their process of making records so I know. I was familiar with the record-making process, but this was really unique in the sense that, one, it was COVID, it was the middle of lockdown. There was an air of, I think about being among each other as musicians and as performers. There was this sacredness of really appreciating and valuing what it was like to perform together again after a year or two of really being away from the thing that you feel called to that is your purpose. There was that.

Then there was just the awareness that recording is its own unique special experience where you're not necessarily in front of an audience, so you don't have that same engagement. You have to bring that spirit into the room. It's really important to have good engineers. Having a great engineer is, as you know, recording every day, but having people who really, really understand what sound is and what it is to document sound and archive good sound, that's a whole other world that I really became fascinated with.

Alison Stewart: Did you come out of COVID differently as a creative? Some people grew during COVID. Some people, the isolation wasn't good for their creative process. Did you change at all creatively?

Aja Monet: Yes. I think it would be remiss of me not to say I didn't. All of us were changed, I would hope. I think that that's what made the sense of urgency around life and presence and being aware of the gift of gathering with people and the ability to share your gifts and the ability to be with one another. I think in some ways, many of us took for granted the just mundane reality of sharing presence with each other and so I think there is a new-found sense of urgency and a need to connect and a longing to be among the people that make me feel most present and most aware.

Alison Stewart: I want to play another track from the album. This one is called-- My glasses on. Sorry about that. This one is called Why My Love from Aja Monet.

[MUSIC - Aja Monet: Why My Love?]

Aja Monet: My love be a front line

My love be a fighter

A shade that sisters and saves

My love survived the middle passage

Waded the waters

My love be grassroots

Organises movements, the birds the bees

My love be butterflies beaming

My love be indigenous, ocean-wide, sky deep

My love listens to the land

All natural no preservatives

My love be homemade from the scratch

Scribbled handwritten notes, adoration

My love be scripture

Be ritual, baptism, revival

A cathedral built from bare hands

A taj mahal, all the temples

My love creates new ways to worship

Serenity, sorcery, hieroglyphs across your chest, tongue-tied

My love be sacred geometry

Past life premonitions

Revelations and gratitude

Prayer hands

My love be call and response

Praise the eyelashes and the eyes

My love be a river like the Nile, ancient and long

My love be a crowd of shyness

Secret messages in the rosy red of deep dimples

My love be a--

Alison Stewart: That's from the forthcoming album When The Poems Do What They Do. My guest is Aja Monet. That began as a list poem?

Aja Monet: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What is the process of taking a list poem and making it a piece of music? Is it easier? Is it different than other poems?

Aja Monet: No. I think that as a poet, I guess, in the tradition of black radical tradition of making poetry, we are sonic beings. We understand that what we're doing is sound as much as it is language and I guess sound is language and language is sound. For me, it was musical writing it. The way that I deal with words, I see words as sounds, as a capturing sound in some way, symbols of sound, and so it's really important to think about what words sound good together. As I'm writing, I'm also saying and speaking and so I have a really big relationship to the oral tradition.

I think that when I'm making this poem, it wasn't any different. It was just also thinking about what is love and what are the things that come up for me with love in a sentimental way, but also in a sonic and an emotional-- What are the things you want to hear someone say when you're talking about love and what are the things that we neglect to acknowledge as a part of love as complicated as it is? That poem came, yes, as a list poem, but it was always musical because I think language is musical.

Alison Stewart: Aja, you should say that because sometimes I'll write something or someone on my team will write something and it's beautiful on the page, but when you say it out loud, it maybe doesn't have the same energy that you wanted it to have. Whereas when you read it, it's like, oh, wow, that's really something, but when you say it out loud because we're in this oral and oral [laughs] medium, you have to make sure that it sounds inviting. You have to make sure it sounds like a good question for the guests that they can understand what you're saying. Whereas when you read it, you're like, "Oh, yes," but when you hear it, it's different.

Aja Monet: Well, it's also your energy that you bring to it. There's certain things that-- If they read the newspaper, they read the label off of the back of this Clorox disinfectant bottle. Then they could still make you be like, "Wow, I need to go buy that or I need to use that." I think it's also about what you put into words, what energy you put into them that can get the other person, the listener, to really feel and resonate with what you're saying because it's all vibration at the end of the day.

Alison Stewart: Some of your social bios say that you are a surrealist blues poet, teacher, and community organizer. When you think about surrealism, how does it work with poetry, or what about poetry works with surrealism?

Aja Monet: You think of like Aimé Césaire or his wife or the negritude poets. Surrealism is a part of our tradition. This is surreal right now. Let's be clear, being here with you, talking about this project that one day was a dream, and now it's about to come out and people are listening to me somewhere in New York City right now where I grew up, walking these streets, imagining, envisioning and dreaming up a world where I could be this artist. This is surreal. I think when we recognize and tap into our surrealist visions for ourselves, I think that's when we can transform our current reality and we can reach the imaginative possibility of who we are.

I think surrealism is always a part of our everyday lives. It's the thing that we do when we're wandering or daydreaming in the middle of the day. It's how we access and harness our most creative imaginative selves on a day-to-day basis. The poem is not just the written word. The poem is a way of being, it's a way of seeing the world. I think that that's what I want to invite people into is how do we embody the poetry of our lives and how do we become the poets that this current world needs.

Alison Stewart: When did you first become aware of the blues?

Aja Monet: Oh. Well, growing up with a single mom in New York City was a way to learn the blues for sure. I think everybody knows the blues. Just like everybody knows love and joy. They're human experiences that we have where we feel sometimes at our wit's end, we feel like we can't go on, you don't see a way out or another possible avenue into a conflict or in a situation, and you want to give up. I think blues is the wailing of that exhaustion. The longing to connect, the longing to be connected. I think I learned it very young, but it connects when you hear music that really really touches on that and gets you to express something that maybe you couldn't have expressed before.

I think everything great in American music comes from the blues. The blues is probably the greatest invention we've ever had as American people as a culture. I think really honoring the blues, you can find the blues in almost any song coming out of this country. Really the blues is African. If you think about really the first blues, [laughs] that African people sang on the shores of this land. I think the blues is integrated in so much of the music we hear in hip-hop and R&B and soul. Tina Turner, talk about someone that was a blues musician and really took it into the extent of what we call rock and roll.

The blues was the first rock and roll. It was the first time to rock the ship of this country. I think that if we trace any music in America, we would always find the blues.

Alison Stewart: My guest is poet and performer and musician, Aja Monet. The name of the forthcoming album is When The Poems Do What They Do. It's coming out on June 9th. We're having a pre-release listening party. Let's listen to another track from the album, The Devil You Know. What would you want our listeners to listen for as we play a little bit of this? About a minute or so?

Aja Monet: Oh. The devil's in the details and we should be paying attention because there's a lot that's happening right now that we need to be aware of, and we can always do something about it.

Alison Stewart: This is The Devil You know.

[music]

Aja Monet: The Devil You Know taxes the air we breathe

Privatizes the water

Profits of homelessness,

Strangles the land and injects hormones and animals

Rapes the people and rewards the rich

Charges you for being sick

Sends a bill to your loved ones with interest when you die

Laughs at us coughing up our lungs

Gulping water lead dripping off our chins

Buys private ships to the moon

Dancing with your demons

The selfish, individualistic part of you, the one who rather not have a foot on your neck

Or who shows up to the rally after sipping sweet comfort at a corporate gig that pays you just enough to die a little slower

Tired community, fostering care, how being black or woman or queer or trans or other

Or human or inhumane computer or code, able body,

10 fingers, 10 toes running all right or wrong

How none--

Alison Stewart: That is Aja Monet. Who are we hearing? Who are the musicians on that track?

Aja Monet: We have some incredible musicians that were a part of this album. Christian Scott on trumpet. We have Samora Pinderhughes on keys. We have Luques Curtis on bass. We have Elena Pinderhughes on Flute. I don't know if she's on this specific one. We have Weedie Braimah on djembe and congas as the band. I think that's everyone. Oh, Marcus Gilmore. How could I forget? Marcus Gilmore on drums, the legend himself who's actually based here in New York.

Alison Stewart: Now there's a short film that goes with The Devil You Know about nine minutes. Did you storyboard that project? How did you begin to try to figure out what the imagery would be for that piece?

Aja Monet: Oh, that's such a good question. I was working with an incredible filmmaker named Kahlil Joseph in La. He has a project called Black News, and he's working on a film. He brought me in and asked me if I would like to be a part of the process. In that process, I got to see his editing team and he has this crew called Parallax. I've always wanted to be a filmmaker or at least direct at some point. It was really beautiful to see that. Really the film is made in the editing. Working with some of the editors, I knew that at one point I would love to use the process at which they use, which they work a lot with archival, and I'm an archival head. I'm always archiving things.

Alison Stewart: Oh, really?

Aja Monet: Before it was a thing on social media, I was always saving videos, clips, things like that, photos.

Alison Stewart: You got a lot of folders.

Aja Monet: Yes. Oh my God. I'm like, they think I'm a hoarder, but it's all archiving, I promise. Then when it came to doing this, we had documented the album-making process at Westlake Recording Studio in LA. We had a film crew, the [unintelligible 00:17:39] and Amani, they both came and filmed. We didn't know for sure how we would use the footage. When I look at some of these songs, a lot of them, the power in them is the presence of the performance and the actual live performance. I knew I wanted to bring that for people I knew I wanted people to experience that.

It's also going to be part of a larger film. That edit that we put out for The Devil You Know was a sketch that we did that was for the vision of a feature-length film.

Alison Stewart: Oh, wow.

Aja Monet: We were experimenting and one of the editors made that experimentation with some of the archival that we've been gathering. I had described the vision for this visual that I had and he literally created the most accurate representation of what I saw in my head. It's a really powerful piece and I hope people really do get to enjoy it.

Alison Stewart: What was the first song you recorded?

Aja Monet: During this process for the record?

Alison Stewart: For the record. The first one.

Aja Monet: Whoa, that's a good question. It's the first time I've ever been asked this. How do I-- What did we do? What was the first one? I don't remember. I don't know if it might have been I Am, but they didn't come out the way that they are. The way that they are in the album it's not how they came out. You know what, it might have been-- Give my regards to Brooklyn, but we didn't put it on the record, but you guys did share it last year before we did celebrate Brooklyn. I think that was the first thing we recorded. I have to go back and find out now. Oh my gosh, this is a good question. Thank you.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] Our last track we're going to play is Yemaya. Am I saying that correctly?

Aja Monet: Yemaya. Yes.

Alison Stewart: Tell us about it.

Aja Monet: Yemaya is the Orisha of the ocean. She's a feminine mother of all Orishas. She's an Orisha that's dear to my heart. For those who don't know Orishas, these are the gods, goddesses of the Afro-Cuban or Yoruba religion. This poem was a poem that is for all intents and purposes, very true to an experience I had when in ceremony. I knew that I wanted to do something in homage to her. I want to shout out Jodel who's the incredible vocalist at the end who helps me conjure this praise of Yemaya.

Alison Stewart: The name of the album is When the Poems Do What They Do. It drops on Friday, June 9th. There will be an album release event at Legacy Dumbo that night at 7:00 PM. My guest has been Aja Monet. Aja, thank you for being with us in studio.

Aja Monet: Thank you so much for having me.

Alison Stewart: Let's go out on, you say it.

Aja Monet: Yemaya.

[music]

I went to see someone about my pain and he told me

That I had to meet the warrior at the edge of the sea

"Do not carry anger that is not yours"

Says el brujo

And just like that

The sand is a quiet prayer rug under fold the knee deep washed asshore

Rain passing the cheek

A lick of salt from the lip

Longing for the wide arms of wind

Woozy and restless.

 

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