Good morning, peeps, and welcome to wok EP Daily with Meet your Girl Danielle Moody pre recording from the Home Bunker. Well, folks, it is the fourth of July, so happy fourth to all who choose to celebrate. And if you don't celebrate, at least you have the day off, So have some cocktails, do a meditation, go for a walk, spend time with friends and family. I hope that you're doing all of
that also while listening to me. Continuing on our theme for this week on wokf's Cookout, I am very excited for today's conversation with my friend, musician, composer, creative director, just all around artist, activists, bad ass Toshi Reagan. Now, friends, if you are a longtime listener of WOKF, then you know that I have had the pleasure of interviewing Toshi before.
Toshi has a wonderful place in my heart because many years ago, and I say many because time is a construct and pre COVID time just seems so so distant. But probably back in around twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, I had the awesome opportunity to interview Toshi for the first time for NBCBLK and it was a wonderful experience because Toshi introduced me to the one and only Octavia Butler and her writings. And it was during that interview where Toshi said to me, you must read Octavia Butler's Powable
of the Sewer and then we'll have a conversation about it. Well, lo and behold. Some years later after I would read Powable not once but twice and its companion book as well. Toshi would turn Powable of the Sewer into an opera, which she has been traveling around the country and is currently in Washington, d C. And will bring the opera to the Lincoln Center in New York City later in July.
And throughout this conversation that I have with Toshi today, you know, we talk about what it means to be black, queer and free. You know that freedom is truly about a state of mind and a state of being right that what does it mean to move free and to think free outside of systems that were created for your oppression, suppression and depression. Right throughout her years and throughout her work,
Toshi's voice. If you've never heard her music, my god, you know, please go on anywhere that you stream music and pull down some of her albums. But anytime that I have ever had the pleasure of hearing her in person, it's nothing short of soul stirring, you know. It's that music,
that voice that comes straight from the great beyond. And in this conversation we talk about so very much just this complicated relationship, this complicative and abusive relationship that we have as black queer people with the United States of America. So take a listen to my conversation with my friend Toshi Reagan. Folks, I am very happy to welcome back to wok F, which I think it has been years, Toshi,
welcome back to wok F Daily. Toshi Reagan, who is a singer, songwriter, producer, creative director, creative, brilliant mind but behind uh Parable of the Sewer the opera which you all know that I have talked about Parable of the Sower my God probably every week since I started Okay and Daily. And Toshi is the reason why I got
into Octavia Butler in the first place. Because Toshi, I don't know if you remember, it was like five years ago I didn't interview with you for NBCBLK and you were like, yeah, you need to go readout it, but it's parable of this seller and and wrap your mind around that, and then we can have another conversation. And my god, what a preamble to the current state of the world that we are living in. I'm so grateful
that you gave me that book as a guide. So I just want to start off by saying to you, you know, there has been a lot that has happened, a lot that is going on. We are in the thick of things as we are about to celebrate, you know, the nation's independence, and I'm just wondering for you, as an artist, as an activist, as a queer person, what that means. How does that land for you America's Independence day?
Independent from what you know, I think it's you know, yeah, I think there's a lot of conflict between the foundation of this country and the reality of existence.
You know how.
A lot of us have unfortunately been an abusive relationships, and you know, at the heart of an abusive relationship is a very big lie about what the terms are.
You know.
That something is happening that's really harmful and hurtful, and then you're told it's not or you're told it's your fault, or you're told that, you know, if only you didn't have a certain behavior, if only you weren't a certain way, then this wouldn't have to happen, or that this abuse that's happening is actually good for you and it's making
things right. And so unfortunately a lot of us as just individuals, have had this experience in our lives, and everybody who's had that experience knows how horrific it is,
and especially if you can't get out of it. To have somebody celebrate and anniversary of their abuse is really like outrageous, you know, And I think, like I am, I am down for the complexity sometimes of what this July fourth means, because there's a lot of revolutions that have happened inside of what America thinks is the revolution. You know, there's a lot of revolutions and evolutions, and
all kinds of people have a hand on that. And if they choose to say, like, you know, what, this is actually what has given us some meaning and meaningful independence, then I you know, I don't I don't like to, you know, rain on people's.
Parade of that.
But the reality is that we have all been suffering with the the energetic you know, I liked call it the energetic awesome of the idea of this country's independence because it's just based on so much brutality and violence, and it's we live on stolen land, and we live on stolen land that you know, it's cultivated and by stolen people. And we've been really bad with the planet as we've developed things. We've treated the planet like it's just something we can do whatever we want, and we've
had an abusive relationships with ourselves. You know, we're water people, like we need water, we're made of water, we need air, we get to breathe like it's you know, like most of the living things on the planet, and we've been so abusive to both.
And that same energy, those same lies.
That you know started the country, which is that there's like one race of people that's superior to others. There's there's one gender a person that's superior to others, that there's some kind of righteous right to all of this is the same thing that's holding us back from evolving out of the you know, horrific circumstances that created this country.
And so that's what I think.
About what did ly you know, it's there, you could do what you want, but you know, there's no way you will ever be able to really not come to the honesty of, you know, what has really happened with the creation of this country and where it leaves us now.
You know, I think that when you speak of America and the relationship being abusive, I think that that's probably the most resonant relational example I can actually wrap my mind around about America, about the toxic behavior of telling us as black people, as queer people, as people of color, that everything is okay, that what we're experiencing and what we're feeling and what we're being subject to is not actually really happening. We're making it up in our head.
Everything is actually okay. So for us to not want to celebrate the fourth of July or to say that we have a complicated relationship or I remember when former First Lady Michelle Obama said that she was proud of her country for the very first time, and the far right lost their mind. How dare you say that this is the first time that you're proud of your country? And it's just like we all don't have the same experience,
Like are you crazy? Like my ancestors were hanging from trees, their bodies were literally ripped apart, babies were ripped out of wounds, and families were broken up, and torture persisted right for centuries. Oh do you think that we look at the red, white and blue of the flag and recognize that the red is only has been, you know,
through the shed, the bloodshed of our ancestors. And so I find it so I find that this this place that we are consistently pushed and pulled in with America is one that is on balance of being infuriating, just filled with rage, and then on the other side still the beauty that particularly black people, indigenous people have created out of the brutality and like not being able to part and parcel those real heavy sentiments and just the the the paradox of it all right, And so it's
I feel like, you know, for America. You you are an artist and and have created so much art, so much song, so much beauty, and through your music you're able to, I think, mirror in a lot of ways, like the pain and the beauty that we all like
try and wrestle with. How do you think as a as a black queer artist, Toshi that like you've been able, like has it helped you, I guess, be able to kind of move through this relationship with this with this nation state, Like how does it help you understand and convey the complexity and the dichotomy and the polarization that we all embody.
Yeah, I think being alive and living and being inside of circles of diverse circles of people of who have different gender identities, who come from, you know, different parts of the world, like having having a global vision and not just like so focused on you know, this country has really been helpful. And obviously, like doing being creative
is really helpful. I mean I come from the people of Grace, you know, Like I come from the people of Grace, And there is a certain part of the population that has to have weapons, that has to have the right to murder, that has to have rights over other people's bodies, that tries to make like huge differences
between queer people and straight people. I just like, I don't even think straight makes any sense to me anymore, you know, Like I just like people, you know, gender identities and sexualities are very fluid, and they know it, even if they don't want to say it out loud. People who are against freedom but say the word freedom all the time. People who create a money currency that is out of control, like they can't even really keep up that.
People who build homes and apartments and don't solve problems around.
Homeless as people who you know, poison the water, poison the land, poison, poison, poison, poison, poison.
It's outrageous.
I don't have to I see how bad these systems are so clearly, and I don't need any more evidence to really understand a freedom within myself, the freedom within you know, my relationships with people, the freedom within you know, the eyes of my grandparents when I was born and I was the first child in a generation of our family that didn't pick cotton, and not that picking cotton is like, you know, the worst thing if you want to pick cotton, but if you have to pick cotton and you don't want.
To, it's horrible.
If you're used to found an economic system that you can't have, you know, like not only can you not have a part of, but it's against the law. You know, if you're upheld in institutional prisons, whether they be like you know, you have to work here, you have to work here or there's no way that you cannot get out of it.
It doesn't all have to be a jail. It's very clear to me.
That once people found the bottom of a slave ship, that is where the intention of most people were supposed to be in the conditions of a bottom of a slave ship, and what in order to build a land that where people you know, have like the right to be at the bottom of a slave ship means you will poison and kill yourself. So a lot of our issues, no matter how much money currency someone has or political power someone has, literally killing themselves.
You know.
In Texas right now, they have a heat wave that's like and Texas is hot, you know, so to think of Texas having a heat wave that affects everybody, they don't just affect the people you don't like. But did the governor go, like, you know, break something where they
can't be no water breaks for people? And I'm like, wait, what does it mean you can't have water breaks, like at the same time as there's a heat wave, like, you're killing yourself, you know, people working on boats, people working on that They say sixty percent of the people are from Latin X communities and He's like, no, we're going to cancel a water break.
You're killing yourself.
And this is why I really see, you know, this particular land, this gigantic piece of land, as a part of land for the global community and not like the citizens of America. This is land that was stolen from indigenous people. And you know, we don't own it, you know, and we never will. And people from all over the world are always going to come to this land and there is there is nothing that the Institution of America can do about it.
They will try.
It's so funny because I went down over to Dumbo. There's an exhibit that is made out of the same steel bars that are used to make the border wall, and the artists made this a huge structure that reads land out of this border wall. And the whole idea is about the fact that you borders are man made, right,
Like what are you talking about? Right? The only real border, the only real borders are are are water right Like that are you know, like that where the land meets the water and you can't actually go and let you have a vessel, right Like That's really like everything else is just made up because people wanted to claim space to your point, that is not theirs, right, And I feel like in so many ways what we are experiencing with climate change, and we saw a snippet of it
in COVID where mankind was forced inside, humankind was forced indoors. And what happened to the waters, what happened to the air, right, what happened in certain I mean this was all over the world. What happened in certain places that hadn't seen fish in canals that hadn't seen you know, serious blue skies that hadn't seen all of these things. Because we
did it right. And so when we see these wildfires and historic tornado after historic hurricane, after historic this, that and the other thing, we see a glow that is trying, that is literally fighting for its life rights, that is trying to fight back against humankind that thinks that we have another planet to go to, right, And I just
feel like there is just I never really understood. I feel like until recently, how sick the quest for power and land and property really is, How like devoid of empathy, of kindness of you know, humanity this quest really is. And you know, Toshi, like, I get so enraged when I think about the coverage that we saw a few weeks ago. Now with you know, billionaires who decided to try and go to the bottom of the ocean, which man has never been to before. Because I've conquered everything else,
because I'm so fucking bored with my life. I've conquered everything else. Let me go do this thing. Wall the wall coverage of their demise. Seven hundred migrants, hundreds die drowned because they are literally on a voyage to seek better life, opportunity and a future, right, the ability to work, to build, to exist. No one cares, right, those billionaires, they were explorers. Those migrants, Oh, they were just you know, poor people on a search for something. It's just the
way that we look at our humanity. Do you think that it is possible that we will ever really truly understand our connectedness and not just like our oppression, right, that we will understand the like there is no real top and bottom, right, that we're literally all breathing the same air, drinking the same water, and we need each other.
Yeah, I think I think most people know that. Honestly, I do think most people know that. I when we did the opera, I started a journey called the Parable Path and the parable path was so I could go in to the communities where the opera was and have like more intensive communications around some of the issues the conditions that the opera brings up. And all I meet is incredible people, like all kinds of people. People are doing so many things. People are living in so many
different beautiful ways. People are designing infrastructures in their towns and in their cities that are more imbalanced. People are doing a lot of the hard work.
You will not see this on the front pages. You won't see it on CNN.
You won't It's the kind of long term, every day, you know, work that is not made for commercial media because they have to make money and they have to
feel like they're appealing to something. And but I think every the good news that everyone should take in probably somewhere right near you or wherever you are when you look at this good people, is that there are people who are like no like we live on planet Earth, and we need to live inside of a of a of a harmony together or we'll just be at war constantly.
You know. Adrenaline is really really powerful, the adrenaline to do violence, the adrenaline of fear, the adrenaline of like trying to run away from things that are like right behind you, the adrenaline of denial, you know, the search for like goals or the idea of like enough currency that you would be more powerful than anyone else that you know. A lot of the things are really simplistic. Oh, a color of somebody's skin is making them so much
different than somebody else. You know, the right to have a weapon versus the right to decide what you know you could do with your body. We're gonna we're gonna save children by like you know, oppressing trans children.
However, we're not gonna we're.
Gonna let guns be in schools and murder kids every day.
Like some of these things.
Are really so simplistic and so violent and so like like it's like there's two choices instead of like the billions of choices that we all have to exist. And then the absolute ignoring ignoring of the natural world, which is like we are a part of the natural world. We are we have a place in the natural world, We have a place in the ecosystem. Like in natural world does not care what our skin color is. They care that we are human bodies on planet Earth and
what we are doing with our time here. So there is a lot of genius and a lot of room. There is a lot of care, There is a lot of love. There is a lot of you know, people of all kinds doing the work to get in right relationship with this planet that we have. And the thing that has always messed that up is really really systemic and outrageous violence.
So I'm always telling.
Every people, you know, when we go somewhere, we like really try to break down these systems, you know, economic systems and currency.
What is currency? It's not just money, you know.
We try to look at like how how we are inside of an ecosystem, like how much space are we taking up with our food, with our like you know, with our water needs, with our you know, what do our with our cars or with our like modes and transportations spiritual life like how are we spiritually in relationship with the world and and how are we like what are we doing with our spirits when we are being so unkind all the time?
Like how what is.
The effect of that on everything? You know, there's a lot of deep work being done. There's so many brilliant people, a lot you know, I've talked to neuroscientists.
I'm talked, I'm like, what's wrong with us?
You know, like breaking down was like I talked to a neuroscientists and a political scientist, and like all kinds of sciences, I said, what is wrong with us?
Like why are we like this?
Why are we so suicidal? Like why are we killing ourselves? Why are we killing the planet? Why are we Why when did like having this certain level of profit like like obliterate like having the joy of living and on a clean planet. You know, why why so much cancer? Like why do we have to have all these cancers? Why are you you know, selling us things that could give us cancer and then making us, you know, use the chemo that the same company built, Like all of
these things come on. These are the things like all humans have to take responsibility for in their own ways, which means like in your way. You may not like know how to solve any of these big problems because they are huge. There are collaborative big problems, but they're small accessible doorways where you are to something and you know, you I ask people to find the small accessible door that they can walk through to, you know, to work on the issue that.
Is closest to their heart where they are.
And I also ask people to like really acknowledge like when they have a level of currency that's more than other people in any way, it's not always money, you know, and that they like make room for other people and lighten their load, like do something to help somebody else, like get through some places.
And then I ask people like.
When you see a justice, Like when you see like that there's law, you know, infrastructure that really makes it very difficult for certain people to actually survive, that you consider yourselves that person. You know, if someone is making up laws that you know against trans children or trans people, or gender non conforming people, or women who want to have people really who want to have the right to
have abortions, consider yourself that person. Like give yourself the opportunity to feel the outrage is somebody naming you as a person that is dangerous to society and that you even though you you and your family have done though right things and pay your taxes and you know, pay your bills and live that you can't have the one hundred percent access to your body and what your body needs.
Consider yourself that person, you know, and get out there and like be really outraged because if anybody took something away from you, you would lose your mind. Like, these are the things that that people can do. They have to be like you know, know everything. They don't have to be like you know, have the answer to every big, big problem.
Don't.
Don't have the answer to every big problem, but access what is right next to you. That is the scariest things to people who are trying to run something very big. It is togetherness and the kind of empathy that would make you stand in front of people who are different from you.
It is the scariest thing.
It is also participating in the system that they create that they're trying to get you not to participate in. So like I'm always telling people, oh, why won't you get a party together and go and vote, Like show up, show up, show up, show up like, make it cute, make it hot, make it fun, go and show up,
bring your brilliant self to it. Because the system is designed to depress you and make you not participate so that more and more, you know, horrific kinds of people can be running the entire country because they do.
They make laws and they pay attention to them.
So if you don't become a part of it in any way, then the laws will get worse and worse and worse.
Folks understand that they are a part of it, regardless of whether they participate or not. It's how you want to be a part of it, right do you want to be? It to be by choice or by force? Because either way you are participating. Last question for you, my friend, No, it's not even a question. I just I want you to give folks who I try and tell to read the Powable who I try and tell to really get a guide and an understanding of, you know,
how the forces come to be. Tell folks about your opera and about you know it being you know, based on Octavia Butler's book Powable of the Sewer. But like why it's so extraordinarily timely, why it's so extraordinarily necessary in this time?
Sure, I mean octav E.
Butler's parable the Sewer, I have to imagine, you know, comes from research that she did in the eighties, in the early nineties. This is the thirtieth anniversary of the publishing of the book. It was released in nineteen ninety three. And this book, you know, really it's it's extraordinary. I've been reading it since ninety seven, and so when I first read the book, I was like, no way, you know,
this can happen. But she she tells the story of a community that has you know, walled themselves in, an upper middle class community in Los Angeles outside of Los Angeles, and they walled themselves in.
They got all their houses.
They never meant to be a community that was walled in together, but things had gotten terrible and so in order to like, you know, have some safety, they wall themselves in and slowly but slowly, they kind.
Of revert to kind of almost a rural life. Everybody's gardens and they're like growing their food, and they used to have dogs and stuff.
They just set the dogs free in the streets because they can't feed the dogs then feed themselves, and it's very dangerous to just you know walk around and be in neighborhoods. And the infrastructure the country really really falls apart. It's you know, privatization everywhere, the you know, leadership that just basically doesn't care about people, and the end of social services. So all of these things where somebody is being socialist is like a horrible thing. But that's how
we you know, have garbage picked up. That's how we our schools are designed there. You know, we pay into it and everybody gets to go type of situations, all of that disappears. You have to pay for the fire department, pay for the police, pay for every service that.
Used to just be available.
And she makes a fifteen year old girl see God as changed, and she makes a fifteen year old girl create a belief system called earth Seed, which is based really on her understanding of nature and the planets and and kind of our true relationship to to the world and to the universe. And so that's that's really like a very short version of it. What makes it so timely is that Octavia did this thirty years ago, and she kind of nailed it.
She nailed like our conditions.
And she never got on the New York Times bestseller list when she was alive, but she got on it in twenty twenty, you know, when we were in the heart of the pandemic. And I always read this book and as we when we first started, it was twenty seventeen, and I insisted we got to start at twenty seventeen because we got to need to be ready.
But I didn't know what we needed to be ready for.
I wanted us to be out telling this story. I wanted us to be singing and rooms full of people. I wanted people to be together here and hear us sing this story. I wanted to work around the performances and activate in different communities. And that idea that you talked about earlier is like, how do we bake break these borders and really see that we're all kind of in it together type of vibe.
So I wanted to do that.
But I never understood how twenty twenty four could happen. And then when the pandemic happened, I was like, oh, because something really traumatic has to happen to like rev up this like you know thing.
Where everywhere where infrastructure gets scared.
Oh, the people have seen that if they slow down and they do less, that they can stop pollution. If they slow down and do less, they can feed each other. If they insist that that money is spread around, you can take people out of poverty.
If we, like we all.
Learn this is our superpower of the pandemic is realizing that we actually have what we need to take care of each other, and we really do, like right now we have it.
It's not like yeah, yeah, so, so.
It's not for it's not for the lack of knowing. It's just for it's for the lack of desire. Right for those that are in power.
We are in wars.
The wars are against us. The wars are against the people of planet Earth. They are it's governments talking to each other. But the wars are on our bodies, on our houses, on our land, on our water, on our infrastructure,
They're on everything, and they're happening everywhere. And if people can like really find a way to have that understanding that we all know actually that we can live on this planet and balance, and that we're being kept from it by people who run many of the countries, which is like a group of a small group of men in every country all over the world doing this, you know, that's the way we will have to go to get somewhere we want to be for the future. So very
important for Octavia's story to be out there. All of her books really talk about us in really amazing, wonderful ways. There's also Adrian Marie Brown's work, and I really love Alexis Pauline Gums work. I collaborate with both of them. Adrian and I have a podcast Octavia's Parables, where we're reading every chapter of everything Octavia is written. And I'm doing the podcast this year with Alexis Paulling Gums and we're reading Kindred.
So amazing. But there, Octavia is not the only one out there.
There is a lot of other writers and storytellers who are really saying the same thing, from multiple cultures and multiple languages. We are really trying to reach each other, and I just my biggest thing is to say, keep reaching out your hands to each other and keep being in alignment with this planet as the best you can.
We all can't do the same things, and we all kind of in a system right now evolving, but do your best and really fight for the water and fight for the air, and don't let these like kind of racist lines. Fight for the people, fight for each other, fight for the trees, fight for you know whatever, fix something.
But you know you, Yeah, my friend, thank you so very much. Thank you for your work and your activism and your art and your time. I'm very excited. I am going to see uh Powable later in July. I got my tickets and I'm super excited to.
Lincoln Centner.
Yes, I'm so I'm so excited. I cannot wait. So thank you so much to shi Uh for your time, for your brilliance, for your space. I appreciate you so very much.
I appreciate you.
I always I always needed a good dose of outrage every day. So I'm so glad to in to you and get it because you be on fire and I love it and I'm grateful for you. Somebody got to say, hey, what about it? So I'm thankful to you and thanks for having me on.
Thank you. That is it for me today, dear friends on Woke a f as always Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.