Speaker 1: Good morning, Keeps, and welcome to wok F Daily with
Speaker 1: me your Girl Danielle Moody pre recording from the home Bunker, Folks.
Speaker 1: So often on WOKF, I try to find the good
Speaker 1: balance between delivering sometimes really difficult news of the day
Speaker 1: as well as providing some voices of inspiration and hope
Speaker 1: and creativity and just a way for us to tap
Speaker 1: back in to joy. And today, I am really excited
Speaker 1: to bring onto the show a musician, an artist, a
Speaker 1: fellow podcaster, MacLea Hadero, who is an ethio jazz performer
Speaker 1: as well as the host of the podcas cast movement
Speaker 1: that uses music to talk about varied migration stories. And
Speaker 1: you know, so often I talk about on WOKF that
Speaker 1: my purpose has always been to try and make you
Speaker 1: know the news more digestible and to have in depth
Speaker 1: conversations that are worthy of twenty minutes as opposed to
Speaker 1: you know, the thirty second or ninety second soundbites that
Speaker 1: you get on cable news. That some things are worth
Speaker 1: more than just that hot take, right, that they're worth
Speaker 1: a conversation. And that's what I hope that you're able
Speaker 1: to receive on WOKAF because that's my goal. But when
Speaker 1: I think that mccleat is doing by being able to
Speaker 1: tell these stories, for other musicians from around the world,
Speaker 1: to be able to tell their stories of migration through
Speaker 1: their music is something that is just extraordinarily special. And
Speaker 1: she'll say something in this episode that I think is
Speaker 1: just so important, which is about our collective and our
Speaker 1: shared humanity that I'm going to be talking about at
Speaker 1: nauseum because folks, we are losing it. We are losing
Speaker 1: it as well as losing our fucking minds on a
Speaker 1: regular basis with following the headlines and if we are not,
Speaker 1: I can't say this enough. Taking care of ourself. If
Speaker 1: that is turning up some music and dancing around your home,
Speaker 1: if that is swaying, if that is creating, if it
Speaker 1: is knitting, if it is gardening, if it is listening
Speaker 1: to poetry, if it's walking, if it's lifting, if it's
Speaker 1: doing anything. You need to do it every day. You
Speaker 1: need to double down on it and triple down on it,
Speaker 1: because I feel pieces of ourselves being pulled away from us,
Speaker 1: you know, and just getting down to the bone. And
Speaker 1: I want to keep feeling. I want to keep having
Speaker 1: and compassion and love and not just sitting in a
Speaker 1: place of rage, because I'm telling you, folks, if rage
Speaker 1: truly was the answer, then the doors would have been opened,
Speaker 1: piece would have happened, right. And so there this is
Speaker 1: where I am in my life right now, which is
Speaker 1: trying to figure out if there is another way. And
Speaker 1: I believe that compassion and love, thoughtfulness and critical thinking
Speaker 1: and reflection are those ways, are those pathways forward? And
Speaker 1: I really hope that you enjoy this conversation with mcleat Hadero.
Speaker 1: The podcast is Movement, and I hope that you check
Speaker 1: it out wherever you get your podcasts, folks. I am
Speaker 1: very excited to welcome to OKAF Daily for the very
Speaker 1: first time mcleat Hadero, who is the host of a
Speaker 1: fantastic podcast, radio series and live show that stories of
Speaker 1: global migration through music. Mcleed is a vocalist, songwriter, composer
Speaker 1: and has found this medium as a way to tell
Speaker 1: the stories that I tell that you listen to on
Speaker 1: a regular basis, but much more interesting, mcleid, how did
Speaker 1: movement get started and why?
Speaker 2: Well, movement got started quite a few years ago, and
Speaker 2: it really began because I was out there in the
Speaker 2: world going to all these music festivals as a songwriter
Speaker 2: composer and meeting people from every corner of the globe
Speaker 2: who had these really interesting, dynamic migration stories, and we'd
Speaker 2: kind of find we'd learn about each other in like
Speaker 2: the green rooms of festivals or those places that they
Speaker 2: set up for all the artists to have dinner together.
Speaker 2: And I started to realize that, you know, I'm a refugee.
Speaker 2: I make ethio jazz, I make music that I think
Speaker 2: of as migration music, and it's not just me, you know.
Speaker 2: And I started to think about how many people had
Speaker 2: stories similar to mine, that were making incredibly genre bending, innovative,
Speaker 2: bumping music, and that had these stories that had resonance
Speaker 2: with each other, but that weren't being put together in
Speaker 2: the same spaces to kind of build solidarity share narratives.
Speaker 2: But you know that we were being put together in
Speaker 2: the sense of like we would be at music festivals together,
Speaker 2: but people weren't thinking of our music as having anything
Speaker 2: in common because it might be like an electronic artist,
Speaker 2: a hip hop artist, and me being in this more
Speaker 2: acoustic ethio jazz space. So I started to think about,
Speaker 2: and I've always thought about, how can I tell bigger
Speaker 2: stories together with others than I can tell by myself,
Speaker 2: and Movement was born out of that. We started as
Speaker 2: a podcast, but very quickly became a live show because
Speaker 2: I just love the experience of not just being able
Speaker 2: to tell our stories with our voices, which is so
Speaker 2: incredibly important and the spoken stories are narratives, but also
Speaker 2: be able to shine that through the songs that we
Speaker 2: make and the way that those songs together get to
Speaker 2: give an experience, an actual, like visceral, physical, bumping, musical,
Speaker 2: creative experience of just a radically diverse world.
Speaker 1: I love that, Oh my god. So first of all,
Speaker 1: I am a fan of jazz. I've never heard of
Speaker 1: ethio jazz, so I want you to describe the sound
Speaker 1: for me so that then I can when we get off,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pull it up and listen to it. But
Speaker 1: what is the vibe? Can you? Can you explain it
Speaker 1: to us? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely? And there are great stories in this so
Speaker 2: Ethiopian jazz. Ethio jazz was born in late sixties and
Speaker 2: early seventies. It was created by a person by the
Speaker 2: name of Mulato Astatke, who was the first African to
Speaker 2: ever attend the Berkeley College of music in Boston, and
Speaker 2: then after he attended Burke, he was this like incredible composer.
Speaker 2: He was really really really inspired by the Cubans, and
Speaker 2: so he was in New York after Berkeley College of
Speaker 2: after he went to Berkeley, and he was like listening
Speaker 2: to the Cubans bring their traditional music into jazz. And
Speaker 2: then he had this fateful encounter with John Coltrane, who
Speaker 2: was like Coltrane in the in this like back green room,
Speaker 2: was like, man, you gotta do this with your traditional music.
Speaker 2: Latoastak went back to Ethiopia and he built Ethiopian jazz,
Speaker 2: bringing together the pentatonic scales of Ethiopian music with the
Speaker 2: kind of chordal approaches to jazz. He was building a
Speaker 2: hyphenated hybrid sound that was incredibly African. I mean, jazz
Speaker 2: is already African, right.
Speaker 1: Right, right right, yeah, it was.
Speaker 2: It was like it for me, like I love and
Speaker 2: found my space in ethio jazz because like jazz as
Speaker 2: this black music as a music born rooted in black
Speaker 2: communities and an experience of a forced migration. And then
Speaker 2: Mulatasatke migrates to the United States, absorbs this, collaborates, learns
Speaker 2: about it, with reverence and respect and this real depth
Speaker 2: and then migrates back to Ethiopia and then me as
Speaker 2: a refugee coming to the United States, like I found
Speaker 2: my space in Ethiopian jazz to be like deeply, deeply
Speaker 2: rooted as a black person in America while being able
Speaker 2: to hold on to express, evolve and can remain connected
Speaker 2: to my Ethiopian nests and my Ethiopian sounds.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, such a vibe. I love this so much.
Speaker 1: And you know, because oftentimes I feel like artists, all
Speaker 1: different types of artists, whether it's musicians or you know,
Speaker 1: visual artists, call there's you know, chefs paining. You know,
Speaker 1: the realm poets are the ones that can better tell
Speaker 1: our stories. And I wonder some of the stories that
Speaker 1: have come up, you know, in your pod and in
Speaker 1: Movement now that it's grown into you know, a live show,
Speaker 1: what are some of the stories that you can share
Speaker 1: with us to kind of you know, whatet our appetites
Speaker 1: for for your show, but also what surprised you that
Speaker 1: you learned?
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, you know, when we started making
Speaker 2: Movement as a live show, what we really discovered and
Speaker 2: what we really wanted to honor is that you know,
Speaker 2: immigrant communities are not the same in every space that
Speaker 2: you go to, and so we actually remake our live show.
Speaker 2: We remake half the live show to be local to
Speaker 2: the place that we go. So half the show is
Speaker 2: my songs and stories, and then half the show is
Speaker 2: local to the spaces that we go to. On October
Speaker 2: twenty eighth, will be in la and will be featuring
Speaker 2: Choum Nimo, who is an incredible Cambodian vocalist. She's actually
Speaker 2: telling the story of her of a song called twenty
Speaker 2: two Nights, which was based on a time when she
Speaker 2: was where she was detained by border control in an
Speaker 2: ice facility with other women and had this incredible experience
Speaker 2: though connecting with women from all over the globe and
Speaker 2: then wrote music based on that. We're also working with
Speaker 2: Clarissa Bitar, a beautiful Queer Palestinian ood virtuoso who like
Speaker 2: shines her the spirit of her community through this virtuosic
Speaker 2: ood playing, as well as a singer called Sancha who
Speaker 2: is a Mexican American singer who grew up in the
Speaker 2: queer communities and the and the drag communities of the
Speaker 2: San Francisco Bay Area. Specifically and then found her home
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles, and she is just an incredible songwriter
Speaker 2: grounded in Rancherira music, and it has reclaimed Rancheria as
Speaker 2: her own. What has really surprised me is how how
Speaker 2: important intimate storytelling is. I once heard someone say that
Speaker 2: the more specific you get, the more universal you are.
Speaker 2: So we are like taking this very, very very you know,
Speaker 2: almost a microscopic look at people's lives. We're thinking about
Speaker 2: brothers and sisters and aunties and uncles. We're thinking about
Speaker 2: an instrument that was hung in a home for an
Speaker 2: entire life and then finding the stories that resonate out
Speaker 2: of that. We're thinking about the ways that people and
Speaker 2: communities surprise you. You know. Sancha tells an incredible story
Speaker 2: of just being welcomed by what might from the outside
Speaker 2: look like a very conservative community in Mexico, but then
Speaker 2: finding her home as a queer person able to claim
Speaker 2: her tradition music from that space. And so we're what
Speaker 2: we're finding is that when you get to this intimate,
Speaker 2: intimate level, you can really explore these large scale issues
Speaker 2: in ways that are just people living their lives and
Speaker 2: you laugh, you like you dance you know, I'm always
Speaker 2: talking about the ways that music is like this ancient
Speaker 2: technology that we have for bringing people together. You know,
Speaker 2: there's this thing called entrainment. So when you listen to music,
Speaker 2: your brain waves they synchronize to the rhythm. And that
Speaker 2: means that everyone in an audience like think whatever you
Speaker 2: want about that music. Think it's strange, think it's new,
Speaker 2: think it's incredible. It actually doesn't matter. Your brain is
Speaker 2: responding to that, Your heartbeat is responding to the music.
Speaker 2: When people sing together, they breathe together. This is like
Speaker 2: an ancient technology that we have for bringing people together.
Speaker 2: And these are the spaces that we need to create,
Speaker 2: spaces where we can be surprised, where we can be
Speaker 2: like taken from a space of like reflection to joy,
Speaker 2: where you want to dance, where you want to sing together,
Speaker 2: and then you want to just you know, you want
Speaker 2: to reflect on the world differently. And so that's why
Speaker 2: we do what we do, and every show is a
Speaker 2: surprise because it is local to the place that we go.
Speaker 1: You know, I think now in particular about how much
Speaker 1: music is needed, right, like I think about trying to
Speaker 1: make sense of the world we are living in. Right,
Speaker 1: everything has been. I don't care where you are, right,
Speaker 1: it's been utterly disrupted, like the reality, the norms that
Speaker 1: we that we knew, everything has been utterly disrupted, and
Speaker 1: it's really hard, I think, for our brains to make
Speaker 1: sense of it. What do you think it is? You know,
Speaker 1: and you described it a bit about the wavelengths and
Speaker 1: the and the shared vibrations that you have with music,
Speaker 1: But what do you think it is about art and
Speaker 1: in the importance of it in times of crisis, in
Speaker 1: times of deep trauma, to really remind people of our
Speaker 1: shared humanity.
Speaker 2: You're absolutely right, we do need art to remind us
Speaker 2: of our shared humanity. I think that, you know, I
Speaker 2: have a lot of answers to this question, and some
Speaker 2: of them come from my heart, and some of them
Speaker 2: come from my mind, and some of them come from
Speaker 2: the places that I've stored trauma in my own body.
Speaker 2: But what I think the most basic thing is that
Speaker 2: we are in this for the long haul. We have
Speaker 2: got to have the medicine. We have got to have
Speaker 2: the medicine in the struggle, because if we don't have that,
Speaker 2: like we actually like, we're not going to be able
Speaker 2: to keep showing up for each other. As an artist,
Speaker 2: what's really important for me is the simple act of
Speaker 2: singing is an act of connecting to my own body.
Speaker 2: And as I practice, I've learned that I have a
Speaker 2: practice where when I sing, Oh, okay, now I'm gonna
Speaker 2: resonate the sound in my cheekbones. Now I'm going to
Speaker 2: resonate it in my heart. Now I'm gonna let it
Speaker 2: go all the way down into the bottom of my lungs.
Speaker 2: And you know, in Chinese medicine they say that the
Speaker 2: lungs are the place where you store grief, where you
Speaker 2: process grief. Okay, now I'm gonna let the sound resonate
Speaker 2: in there for a while. And so for me, it
Speaker 2: is literally my medicine where I check in with myself,
Speaker 2: where I connect with my body. That can happen. You
Speaker 2: don't have to be a singer for that to happen.
Speaker 2: You can do it through dance, You can do it
Speaker 2: through listening. You could, but an attentive listening, you know,
Speaker 2: not a background music. But yeah, let it wash over
Speaker 2: you and you let it. You let yourself res with it,
Speaker 2: you know, because there's this funny thing where Okay, the
Speaker 2: air in our lungs is like have you ever felt
Speaker 2: the base in your chest? Have you ever felt have
Speaker 2: you ever like listened to base and you feel it like.
Speaker 1: A big base, like yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 2: That's the air and the space in your body. The
Speaker 2: air you know, sound waves travel through air. Okay, there's
Speaker 2: air in your lungs. When when that base frequency hits
Speaker 2: your lungs, where there's the air and your lungs resonating,
Speaker 2: like this is how we get to our bodies. And
Speaker 2: so it's both like the medicine for when I'm feeling
Speaker 2: in crisis and trauma. It's how I remember that I
Speaker 2: am here and that I can ground to my physical being.
Speaker 2: I can say, Okay, in this moment, I am safe,
Speaker 2: I'm in this room. Now what can I do now?
Speaker 2: What can I do now? How can I reach out?
Speaker 2: And so for me, it's about the long haul. Musicians
Speaker 2: are natural storytellers, you know, we need storytellers in the
Speaker 2: spaces that we are trying to build a better world together.
Speaker 2: We are all storytellers. Actually would look at anybody like
Speaker 2: I see the stories that are inside of them. So
Speaker 2: these are tools that we have to keep going to
Speaker 2: be the medicine for ourselves and for each other.
Speaker 1: I love it. When you said medicine and the struggle,
Speaker 1: for so long I have been looking for the bomb,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying for the wound, right, Like
Speaker 1: I often talk about where we are in this certain
Speaker 1: in this climate, which is that we are just a
Speaker 1: bunch of open wounds walking around that have not excavated
Speaker 1: the cause, right, and we just keep bumping into each other,
Speaker 1: bumping into each other. We need to clean it out
Speaker 1: in order to heal it. And there needs to be
Speaker 1: a bomb, a soothing for it, right Otherwise like we
Speaker 1: just were always going to be reacting. We can never
Speaker 1: get to a place of creating because we're in consistent pain.
Speaker 1: So when you said medicine and the struggle, I'm like, yes, yes, yes, Yes.
Speaker 2: Actually wrote a whole album for that. It's like, oh,
Speaker 2: people need a ball, but you know, and it's also
Speaker 2: to share it that we're not alone in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. What what do you want folks, you know, to
Speaker 1: take away from movement? Like when they you know, when
Speaker 1: they connect and they are able to see it in
Speaker 1: person when they listen to the pod, Like, what do
Speaker 1: you want people to take away?
Speaker 2: I mean there's so many things. One is that the
Speaker 2: sound of a radically diverse world is bumping. The soundtrack
Speaker 2: is bumping, and like and so, and learning about other
Speaker 2: people's cultures is a way that we get to experience
Speaker 2: that that has joy and so celebration and communal, communal
Speaker 2: spaces in it. Even as we are in this state
Speaker 2: of crisis, we don't want to disconnect. I don't want
Speaker 2: to disconnect from my capacity for joy. I don't want
Speaker 2: to Yes, every time I sing, I can connect to
Speaker 2: my capacity for joy, every time I hear music, I
Speaker 2: can connect to that. I want people to, you know,
Speaker 2: have an understanding that immigrants, migrants and refugees are like
Speaker 2: wildly creative people who are contributing so much culturally. And
Speaker 2: I want folks to understand that. You know, the ways
Speaker 2: that we are open to each other, the ways that
Speaker 2: we are curious about each other, the ways that we
Speaker 2: approach each other with question rather than and I don't
Speaker 2: mean like judgmental question, but like genuine curiosity rather than
Speaker 2: judgment opens up the stories inside of all of us.
Speaker 2: And that space can be a space where we can
Speaker 2: find solutions and where we can find ways of advocating
Speaker 2: for each other across struggles as well and looking at
Speaker 2: intersectionality is really important for us as well.
Speaker 1: Beautiful. So you said November twenty eighth is where? Hey,
Speaker 1: what do you say?
Speaker 2: October twenty Hey?
Speaker 1: October okay? October twenty eighth, you are in.
Speaker 2: La Yes, Yes, at the new Nimoy Theater at UCLA.
Speaker 1: Okay, And then how can people stay connected? Find the
Speaker 1: dates of where you're going to be? When do you
Speaker 1: ever come to the East coast? Do you ever come
Speaker 1: to the East Coast?
Speaker 2: Yes? We did a live show at Lincoln Center in
Speaker 2: March in New York. We'll be back, don't worry. And
Speaker 2: we're going to Washington, d C. To the DMV area.
Speaker 2: We'll be in Silver Spring, Maryland at Montgomery College on
Speaker 2: February fifteenth for the live show as well. And of
Speaker 2: course you can get the podcast anywhere you listen to
Speaker 2: podcasts Movement with macleadero, and you can stay in touch
Speaker 2: with me, you know. Okay. So I'm based in San Francisco,
Speaker 2: And even if you forget my name, if you google
Speaker 2: Ethiopian singer San Francisco's right.
Speaker 1: I love that, like I'm at the top of the list.
Speaker 1: I am the list lickly.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 1: It's such a pleasure to meet you. I'm so grateful
Speaker 1: for the work that you're doing, for the inspiration that
Speaker 1: you're providing, for the art that you're bringing in to
Speaker 1: the world. Because yeah, we and especially especially in times
Speaker 1: of pain, in times of prices, in trauma, we cannot
Speaker 1: forget our joy and we cannot forget our shared humanity.
Speaker 1: And music is a wonderful, wonderful balmb So, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for making me time.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me. It's been such
Speaker 2: a pleasure.
Speaker 1: M That is it for me today. Dear friends on
Speaker 1: woke f as always, power to the people and to
Speaker 1: all the people power, get woke and stay woke as fuck.