Roderick Cox on Black Excellence and Breaking Barriers

in March. There's a story to that. So now, so now because I want to because I want to jump right in, because I've been excited to talk to you, and we're, you know, in the age of the coronavirus, in a global pandemic. We can't escape it. So it becomes a part of every conversation that we've been having

on PM Mood. So tell us what happened. It was the week of I think it was around it was March eleventh or something of the sort, and I had just come back from conducting in Mannheim, Germany, and some of the restrictions for coming into place there because Monday night, the first performance we had, the performance was delayed because the government just sent out orders that no more than a thousand people can be in the audience, like just like that, And so we're having to count people and

let people in specifically and turn people away. But still so Europe or starting to take aggressive measures before the United States. And the next week was my New York Philharmonic debut. It's obviously it's like on the pinnacle moments of a young conductor's career is to stand in the America's oldest orchestra and one of the biggest chers to lead it for the first time. And we have been working on this project or it seemed like over a year, and I was set to leave for New York on

that Saturday. I remember going to bed, arriving back from Monheim in Berlin on Wednesday, and going to bed, waking up on Thursday morning just from seeing a bunch of texts from friends. Have you heard the US travel band? The President said? This was before I knew everything about can Americans get in can American style? And I gotta also saw a message from the New York Philharmonic. They were obviously sleep asleep by the time I read it,

but said, can you get on a plane tomorrow? And I was trying to figure out does that tomorrow mean my today right now, or does that mean Friday. So I'm scrambling with my management in London, all of us trying to figure out what do they mean? And we realized they meant, let's try to get you out of Europe today. So I immediately packed my bags and scrambled

and went to the airport. I was on the next flight from Berlin to New York and midair, midair, I got the news that the Metropolitan Opera canceled, and then next Carnegie Hall cancels, and those huge pillars in New York cultural scenes if they're canceling. There was only a little a matter of time before the New York Filmonic cancels, and so like an hour later Near Harmonic cancels all events. And so I'm about five hours from JFK. Berlin's on the is in the backdrop and New York this way.

And so I arrived in New York. I had the option for staying a little bit longer, but I decided to stay two days. Yeah, because I realized it just felt like the US felt like this ticking time mom in the sense of during the nation's biggest city. There is no testing available, people are still going throughout their lives. And I was coming from Europe and seeing how serious

this is and how serious it's going to get. I said to myself, I didn't feel comfortable stay, not just in New York, but in the US in the sense of it just felt with the lack of information coming from all different parts, that it was going to get worse. And so I just left two days later and went back to Europe, and actually I had very little problems traveling.

Then I noticed on the news lines very very long from Americans trying to get back into America and people shuffling around, and so I was actually thankful that I made a pretty decisive decision to just get back home while I could, because then, as you know, a week later, countries started shedding down their course. So I didn't want to be stuck anywhere but home. So I'm that is

just so sad, you know, I can't imagine. It was kind of in the same news as they were announcing finally the shutdown of the Olympics, and thinking about the amount of training, the amount of preparation that you've put into this historic moment for it not to then transpire. You know, what I think is really uplifting. What I find really uplifting in this moment is how music has been playing such an incredible role in connecting people and

to giving them some type of hopefulness. Can you talk about that in the way that you know, musicians and artists in the midst of this pandemic leaning on their craft as a way to help, you know, usher people towards some type of light. Lots of music has this very hum and element of renewal and struggle and coming from something dark to something bright and light, and that has been a consistent theme from really the Romantic period,

this sense of rebounding or fighting for something greater. And so it's wonderful that music can play those roles in our everyday lives and in our culture. It is that ultimate release for us, and that's why it's so important for it to be in our lives and our culture.

And I hope that at this time our government and the people realize how important it is to maintain the artistic and cultural fabric of our society because they can go away just like this, and they have gone away, and I worry for many organizations, arts organizations that might not be able to really survive this, and musicians have been laid off all around the Orchestras can't or opera houses can't afford to pay their musicians, but the music

still lives within us. It's been very interesting as an artist being on the other side, as a person who's giving the music not being involved with it, because you feel like something is sort of ripped from you. You're trying to figure out when's the next time you'll be able to express yourself and express your art and share

it with others. Just some of those sensations of the electricity of having a live audience there to be a part of a performance with you, and really putting together a performance with your colleagues, it's just an absolute joy. And so it's been tough, but it's also been a time of reflection to think about music's role in my life and how I can approve upon it, and it makes me even more excited to get back to it one day and to really also realize that it's a

true blessing. But yes, even though with their Philharmonic did not go forward, I'm also just grateful for my safety and health and I know that I still live in this privilege in my life that you know, I get to wake up in the morning and study music and present that to people. And there are people who are actually who've lost everything in this and their jobs and worrying about how they can feed their families and make

ins meet. And I try to remind myself and especially others who are own social media, really just complaining, complaining about being in quarantine during this time, and that there are you know, you're you're in quarantine, and you're able to be in quarantine in an apartment three bedroom apartment, I mean three yeah, And there are certain people in societies that two families live in one room. And so

it's also a great privilege and blessing. I often in my work and the different iterations of shows that I do, some that are focused specifically around politics and progressive politics, and then this one really being about social influence and social impact. But you can't escape privilege. You really can't.

And I think that you know, for me, I think that the purpose of recognizing our own privileges in this particular moment is also about having gratitude, right you recognize that you have this privilege for us to be you know, engaged with one another from the safety and the comfort

of our homes. While there are people that don't have a home, right, while there are people who don't have the ability to work from home and they must go out and make a living in the midst of all of this, And just understanding that there is gratitude to have in the midst of tragedy, right, and understand your good fate and fortune. You know, I want to talk a bit because you are originally from Georgia, yes, right, And you know I would assume, and maybe I'm wrong,

but I would have assumed. I would assume that growing up you didn't have many other black conductors to look at for influence or as a guide and as a pathway in your career. How did you get here? How did you move from the church and the choir in Georgia to the world stage as one of the only African American conductors. So wonderful question. I mean, I still feel like it presents a problem today because it it's

always feels like I'm going into unchartered territory. Even if you have studied music and you've sort of accumulated a certain amount of accolades, it still feels like you're going into that rather exclusive room and navigating through that is something I think about today, what is possible. There was only one black conductor I met when I was younger.

In his name was James to Priests, and he I was studying conducting in graduate school, and he saw one of my videos and invited me to New York before he died to just give me some helpful advice, and that was so very important for me. I think what has helped me is to seek inspiration from other examples of black excellence. Also outside of music. I seek inspiration from watching Serena Williams play tennis, which you know, if

she can do it, then I can do it. In terms of breaking down these barriers, I seek inspiration from Barack Obama's presidency and all the curveballs he was thrown and still to triumph, and from Misty Copeland as a as a dancer. And so I like to feel that we as a community, even though it may sometimes feel like you're going into uncharted territory or into a room

that you're alone, that you're never really alone. You have a community of people who've done many excellent, great things and have been the first that you can seek inspiration from, and so I try to be my ankle of that. Even though I am in a profession where there are very few of us, and I think a number of us around the world, we know each other or know of each other, and we could probably call I probably

can't count us all on both hands. It would be tough to put together three in terms of counting us out there. But yeah, I try to support my colleagues where they are and hope and feel like we're all in it together. We know that it's not lack of talent, it's not lack of grit that keeps African Americans out of many exclusive industries, right, it's none of those things.

How do you use I know that you have an initiative where you provide scholarships to underrepresented groups, right to inspire young people to connect with musician try classical musician tury. How do you inspire them to connect with something where, even still now, there are very few reflections of themselves. I think, most importantly what you can control and what you can't control. You can't control some of these mindsets of other people, or you can't control other people icicles.

But what a musician can do. It's hopefully control, like you said, that talent and just nurturing it and growing it and stretching your imagination and putting your energy there and putting very much positive energy into that and hopefully not saying that if you have the talent you will make it, but hopefully if you put that energy there and become the ultimate professional of your craft, then you can hopefully make it and the doors will open onto you.

This is a profession. You can't, I suppose, yell your way into it, and with your frustration, you can't make people open doors for you. And I've seen this happen. And if you focus on that negative energy, it can really I think, hold you back and cripple you and push down that talent because I think then people aren't focusing so much on your talent, They're focusing on the negative energy you're putting out. It's very interesting. The great soprano Lanten Price, who was one of the most famous

black sopranos that ever lived. I mean she's still living. I think she's in her nineties there wow in New York. But she commanded the stages of the Metropo and Opera Moscala in Berlin, all of the world, and was born in the twenties and was born in Jackson, Mississippi. And for her every interview you listen to her on YouTube, she speaks so proudly of her country and so proudly of her being an American and the opportunities of being

an American her country afforded her. And I'm thinking, like, you had to go to Europe, you had to conquer Italy, you had to conquer Germany, you had to conquer all these great opera houses before the United States Metropolitan Opera gives you a chance to sing there. Why aren't you screaming about that? Why doesn't that frustrate you that you had to do that in order to have those opportunities

in America? And it just baffles me that she's able to keep this amazing positive focus and appreciation on being an American and what that meant for her. And I said, isn't that a wonderful constructive use of your time and energy? And so as a musician, especially a musician of color, we have to stay focused on the work. Serena Williams has to stay focused on the tennis and Barack Obama has to stay focused on governing. And that's what I think.

I try to tell the young people if I can help them with in my initiative, if I can help them get some of the tools that may keep them back, such as a new instrument or instruction from a great teacher, whatnot, that helps the talent move forward. And with the talent moving forward, hopefully people don't have anything else to say. But as you know, we have to be I hate to see it, but almost twice as good. I was gonna say ten times, but okay, twice as good. We'll

be it. I was gonna say ten times as good as many of the people that you have been naming are right, they are the extraordinary pillars of their industries. You know. One of the artists whose quote I often go back to and I ask other artists in a variety of spaces how they feel about it, is Nina Simone. And Nina Simone, when you reflecting on an artist's duty, said this, you can't help it. And artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times. What

do you think about that? About that statement in the times that we are living in right now, where you're speaking about the soprano singer who is born in the nineteen twenties, the times that she was born in. In many ways we can see the journey of how far our politics, our culture has come. But in the same respect, I'm speaking with you and we're still using in the twenty first century phrases like one of the first, right,

one of the only, and so. On one hand, you don't want to live a life that is steeped in anger and pain, justifiably so right to the barriers, purposeful barriers and obstacles that have been placed in African Americans and black people in the diaspora in their way. But at the other time, you also want to reflect the path and the trajectory. How do you manage to do both? Is it possible? Does it change with any given day

for you? Well, I think one thing that's really fortunate about Nina Simone Versusly and Team prices that she was a singer songwriter, so her artistry was coming very much from her own musical voice in terms of her language, her words of sharing and shedding light on that moment and shedding light on what was happening in classical music. A lot of the times we are as artists mainly vessels,

vessels for which the composer can shine through. So if you are conducting Tchaikovsky symphony or very opera, your job is to be this vessel, to bring for that composer's vision for its music, for the music, and sometimes if we let our personal visions or animal state get in the way of that, it's very hard to push that message forward. So it is quite the conundrum, a very good question. But I do believe certain artists in certain

other genres are better at shedding light on that. I mean, in terms of how hip hop was formed and what it grew into before it sort of became what it is today, was to kind of shed light on the political and social moments of the time. So I think giving those two figures Leotine and Nina Simone, I think their goals and the visions at that time were different. But I always say, you can lead. It's great to

lead by example. And I know that they're just so very few African American conductors in the world on the major stage, and there have been people who've tried to go there, and somehow we all there's this plateau ing. I think, well, I know in the top twenty orchestras in America. There are no African American conductors and as music directors, and still in today, they've never been an African American music director of a major orchestra in our country.

That's frustrating, and it's something I think about imponderon, and obviously I understand that it's a goal I have. One of the sad things is that in American society, our classical music industry tends to very much look to your morsel and in the next couple of years, I think, and Maren also steps down from the Baltimore Symphony. She's a female American conductor and was the first female conductor in the I think around two thousand and nine or so to be in charge of a major orchestra in America.

So still COSCO Music is this very it seems like

an even much more exclusive club than the government. Yes, yes, there are these pillars that you just have to really work at chopping them down, and so I just feel that I just have to stay focused on developing and nourishing my talent as an artist and continuing to do the work and not have too many distractions and hope that it will will work out and hopefully I'll be good enough and to take the small successes like a debut of the New York Kilharmonic as a great achievement

as a kid growing up in in Georgia and thinking or imagining these things to the point of you're stepping on stage with one of those orchestras you've dreamed about.

Is I think perhaps what Lantine was talking about in a way that our country is unfair in many ways, and there's a system that's been built over a hundred years for the systematic failure of a people, but also in this country, it is a country in which you can come from here and go there, and even in some of the most even in some of the other industrialized nations that are great and have many things going for them beyond ours, that type of achievement is not

necessarily in the minds of his people. That you can be born outside of a certain class or outside of a certain group and still go to such heights. I love that, and I think that's a beautiful sentiment and also beautiful advice piece of advice to give to young people and just people in general. I think that the harboring of anger, while for me it can fuel your work in some ways, but for others it can very

much stunt you. And I think that looking at who has come before you and how far they have been able to grow and to develop in spite of so many things, should be used as inspiration. I'm frankly in ammunition in a lot of ways. I think it's about also channeling that energy, like in James Ballwin's The Fire Next Time. Yeah, at the beginning, it just heally hit

me when he was talking. He said, there's no reason for you to try to become like white people, and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them, and I mean that very serious. So you must accept them and accept them with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are in effect still trapped in a history which they do not understand, and until they understand it, they

cannot be released from it. And so in the sense that it is a society that's built by them, with these systems and mechanisms in place, you cannot be burdened by a certain anger. You have to accept them and work with them. And work on yourself so that you can break through those boundaries and not become complacent or suffer in the system that was built for you to

fall down into. And sometimes even them, I hate using them, but them, in their privilege, don't realize that that system was constructed the way it was, and so I think it was even with the Surgeon General said something to black people about this that we all know that there's some truth to that, but it's also for me upsetting

because you're not telling the whole story. Now you're feeding into You're feeding into a pathology that has been created about black people in order to justify paternalistic policies that would have us say that we cannot be left to our own devices. And his presumption, the Surgeon General and his statement was like, well, stop drinking and stop doing these bad things, because you're doing these things is causing your illness as opposed to a system that was purposely

created to do you harm. Even being where I am right now in the middle of Berlin and a pretty nice neighborhood, if I went back home to parts of where my family lives in Georgia in making and I want to go get a wonderful kill salad. You go get it, go to a nice juice shop and get a nice fresh juice. I mean, you know, you put together their system where you put these people in these neighborhoods from decades and decades of discrimination, housing discrimination. Then

you pack those neighborhoods with with those liquor stores. Yep, put them in food desert that there are no grocery stores, there is no place to get fresh produced from. And you wonder where the underlying conditions came from. They weren't created on their own, you know. And that's the whole when you say, tell the whole story, right, tell the whole truth, don't just pick which parts help amplify this

agenda that you're trying to sell. Yeah, I think that's what bother certain people hearing them, because we have to be aware as black people of that system and try not to one another so greatly because it takes I talked about your ability to go this way in this country, but it takes an extraordinary effort from being born in the spaces in a place where you're having to fight versus your counterpart who's having many opportunities that are enhanced them just because of who they are and the color

of their skin. So all those people who you know layoutin price and all those people that got there like you said that it took an extraordinary effort and sacrifice that is beyond what we would consider a normal human being.

Absolutely true exceptionalism, true exceptionalism. The last question that I always ask folks on PM mood is how do you get in the mood to change the world just by your presence and your passion industry that still only has a handful of African Americans in creating and sharing and bringing music to life for you know, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people around the world, how do you get yourself in the mood to change the world?

That is a I tell you that mood changes every right now and then, and it's something that has us ups and downs, and you and I struggle with but I think it all comes from you, and it's about your motivation and termation within yourself because you get what you give if you in this art form to make it to the level you wish, you have to give

one hundred percent of yourself. And either you're going to decide if you're going to do it halfway or all the way, and that motivation, that motivation of knowing that I do not want to be at a certain place in my life or in my career where I have what if, What if I would have studied a little harder, what if I would have worked a little harder, what I have been there? And I may not get to where I want to be. But it's a journey, and just the pursuit of that it's the most important thing.

Because I also don't think this is a profession of real arrivals. I mean, you should always have this sense of wanting to learn, wanting to grow, wanting to stretch yourself. But also one of the big inspirations I feel, it's like what Leantine Price said was that as an artist is as an amazing gift you have and a responsibility you have to be able to move people in a positive way. And it would be such a travesty if you go on stage and neglect that and not give

it your all, and not give him you're all. Because I still truly believe that music is the ultimate door opener and music is the ultimate unifier, and through music we can come to understand each other. And like music in unifying us as a human race and understanding each other.

Oddly and unfortunately, this pandemic is that as well. It's a way of showing that no matter how bigger guns are, or how many nuclear weapons you have, or how many technological advances you have, we're all human and we're all organisms, and we all have no way of fighting this far as and so with that we have to realize that we must come together and work as one. So I think that's my motivation. Thank you Roderick so very much.

This was extraordinary. I am very hopeful about your return to New York and I hope that I will be able to be in the audience to see it, because I think it's going to be incredible and it will mean so much at that time by the time we get there, this reopening and this renewal and this rebirth for the world. So thank you well, thank you, and stay safe. I will I will do my best. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to this week's PM mood. My political podcast, woke af Daily is on Patreon for

just five dollars a month. That's five new hour long shows every week for just five dollars a month. Join the conversation now at Patreon dot com slash woke af and you can continue listening to PM Mood every week absolutely free. Now more than ever we see the importance of independent media, so thank you for your support and as always, stay in the PM mood to change the world