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Speaker 1: Not Listen closely now to today's episode, The Other of
Speaker 1: a Magical Negro.
Speaker 4: I'm Katie and I'm Eves.
Speaker 1: Now, Katie, let's talk about the different kinds of magical
Speaker 1: niggas or dare I say, melanated magicians, colored conjurer exhibit
Speaker 1: a actually magical black folks or people who use things
Speaker 1: like charms and spells as part of their religious and
Speaker 1: spiritual practices. People who know divination, who are healers, mediums, psychics,
Speaker 1: and things like gifted seers and dreamers. People who are say,
Speaker 1: colleagues with the supernatural.
Speaker 4: If you forget to come back from Madame's rone, you
Speaker 4: and your family will be pushed for always and deternity.
Speaker 4: And then there's the trope of the magical negro. You know,
Speaker 4: the black character with some invaluable skill or gift, and
Speaker 4: mind you, that gift doesn't usually benefit them. This brand
Speaker 4: of magical negro uses their powers to help out the
Speaker 4: main read white character in some grand way, often at
Speaker 4: a high cost. Their magic is really just a plot
Speaker 4: device used to move the story along and get the
Speaker 4: leading character to point in their development.
Speaker 1: Last, but not least, though, is the black person who
Speaker 1: performs magic, the one who gets up on a stage
Speaker 1: or in front of an audience, or on the street
Speaker 1: or something like that and does acts that seem impossible.
Speaker 1: There are people who study the craft of magic and
Speaker 1: entertain crowds with harmless shows of mundane but still fascinating sorcery,
Speaker 1: and that is who we will be talking about today,
Speaker 1: Black magicians who work with the art of illusion.
Speaker 4: All magicians are performing artists who use magic tricks to
Speaker 4: wow their audiences. They create illusions making it look like
Speaker 4: they cut a person in half. They use everyday objects
Speaker 4: like cards and pens, and tactics like misdirection to get
Speaker 4: people to fall for their sleight of hand.
Speaker 1: And magicians even perform things like mentalism or the acts
Speaker 1: where they make it look like they're reading people's minds
Speaker 1: or telling the future by reading body language, or communicating
Speaker 1: with their assistance with coded language, and they're sometimes escape artists,
Speaker 1: finding ways to get out of sticky situations. They'll have
Speaker 1: you holding your breath waiting to see how they're going
Speaker 1: to survive getting out of the strait jacket that they're in,
Speaker 1: removing the padlocks and the chains that they're bound by,
Speaker 1: and then escaping the coffin that they're.
Speaker 4: Trapped in wouldn't be me. But all these kinds of
Speaker 4: acts were and still are part of the shows put
Speaker 4: on by black magicians. And the earliest Black American magicians
Speaker 4: were working in the nineteenth early twentieth century, so the
Speaker 4: stories that they told and the work that they did
Speaker 4: had different meaning than those of the white magicians at
Speaker 4: that time. Let me ask you something, Eves, when, because
Speaker 4: I know magicians are like you're really into magicians and
Speaker 4: magic and all that good stuff, Like when did that,
Speaker 4: I want to say obsession? When did that occur? Like
Speaker 4: do you remember the moment you first saw a black
Speaker 4: magician and you're like, that's my shit?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think honestly, I have always really been into the supernatural,
Speaker 1: the up hold, the weird, the offbeat, the odd, and
Speaker 1: the strange, so and that list can go on. So
Speaker 1: I feel like it was just a thing that was
Speaker 1: imbued to me from the very beginning. And I am
Speaker 1: just really fascinated by one performers in general, because you
Speaker 1: get up there and you have to entertain audiences, you
Speaker 1: have to keep them captivated over a certain amount of time.
Speaker 2: And it's also something that I think is just.
Speaker 1: Very enjoyable across time and across age and across culture,
Speaker 1: and that's really fascinating to me. So I think there's
Speaker 1: just so much possibility with magic, and I think to
Speaker 1: see black people do it is just another instance of
Speaker 1: seeing a black person do something that.
Speaker 2: We may more often see white people do.
Speaker 1: But also just there's so much power and joy and
Speaker 1: light and darkness at the same time in magic. So
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly. I don't know if that answers
Speaker 1: your question because I don't know exactly when it started, But.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it seems like it's something that's just always been
Speaker 4: an interest to you. I feel like black people make
Speaker 4: magic shows like so much more fun because you know,
Speaker 4: we do not know how to act.
Speaker 2: On the audience.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, Yes, let's talk about that because we love
Speaker 1: falling out of a chair laughing.
Speaker 4: Ye, running away, yes, running away. See, I feel like
Speaker 4: the black magician that stands out in my mind. I
Speaker 4: do not know this man's name, but you know, back
Speaker 4: in the day at Atlantic Station, there's always this black
Speaker 4: man doing tricks with like coins and cards and stuff.
Speaker 4: I would be fascinated because I'm like, bro, really put
Speaker 4: that coin behind her ear?
Speaker 1: Yes, and Katie, speaking of let's talk about your magic
Speaker 1: skills because.
Speaker 2: You have wowed me with a card trick before.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, very much. So. I only know one, and
Speaker 4: you know it was a little resty, but I was giddy,
Speaker 4: y'all for real, you did.
Speaker 1: Okay, So everyone, let's travel back in time. Richard Potter
Speaker 1: was born in Massachusetts in the late seventeen hundreds. He
Speaker 1: was the son of a white man and an enslaved
Speaker 1: woman named Dina or Dinah, and he was the first
Speaker 1: black magician in the United States and maybe even the
Speaker 1: first American born magician period. His goal probably wasn't to
Speaker 1: make history in this way, though. He just wanted to perform,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what he did. He started off as
Speaker 1: an assistant to a Scottish man named John Ranny Fyi.
Speaker 1: Black magicians often began their careers as assistants to white
Speaker 1: ones in the late eighteen hundreds. In early nineteen hundreds, anyway,
Speaker 1: Richard traveled Europe, the Caribbean, and the US, learning the
Speaker 1: art of performance, and eventually he struck out on his
Speaker 1: own in the States, becoming a successful ventriloquist and magician,
Speaker 1: successful enough actually to buy a substantial amount of land,
Speaker 1: start a farm on it, and hire folks to work
Speaker 1: on it. When he and his wife Sally were away.
Speaker 4: People love the show he put on. They cheered as
Speaker 4: he stuck a sword down his throat, laughed when he
Speaker 4: made an egg appear to jump from one hat to
Speaker 4: the next, clapped when he ran hot iron over his
Speaker 4: tongue and bent it with his feet. But he was
Speaker 4: not just some magical, magical negro immune to racism because
Speaker 4: he was an entertainer. There's a story, for instance, that
Speaker 4: in Mobile, Alabama, Richard and Sally were kicked out of
Speaker 4: a motel because white folks didn't want any black folks
Speaker 4: staying there. Whether that specific story is true or not,
Speaker 4: they were successful black people touring the US performing tricks
Speaker 4: for large audiences. There are certainly stories we don't know
Speaker 4: about it.
Speaker 1: And his life story. It's definitely spellbinding pun intended.
Speaker 2: But one of my.
Speaker 1: Favorite parts about his work, Katie Well, at least what
Speaker 1: I can say as someone who's never actually seen his
Speaker 1: work in person, is the way that his shows were marketed.
Speaker 1: If you look at some of the advertisements for his work,
Speaker 1: which you can do online, you'll see a list of
Speaker 1: magical acts and amusements along with the phrase quote an
Speaker 1: evening brush to sweep away care or a medley to please.
Speaker 1: Richard Potters shows were officially a call to escape, a
Speaker 1: place where he could throw his voice as a ventriloquist
Speaker 1: into someone or something else, and where others could find
Speaker 1: joy in that escapism. It was a place that could
Speaker 1: have been a flight of fancy, but for Richard, as
Speaker 1: a pioneer in the field, it was a reality that
Speaker 1: he shaped for himself, a place that was carefree because
Speaker 1: in it he was able to conjure whatever his heart desired.
Speaker 4: And there is something so freeing and powerful about that.
Speaker 4: How black magicians created something out of nothing on and
Speaker 4: off the stage. You know, they fashioned their own worlds
Speaker 4: and their own rules and ensured their survival, even even
Speaker 4: prosperity in the process. I mean, dude bought a whole farm.
Speaker 4: Black magicians were even too powerful if you look through
Speaker 4: the eyes of some people, even threatening because they had
Speaker 4: the ability to full manipulate and charm. And I think
Speaker 4: that goes into some of the stereotypes about black people
Speaker 4: at that time or even even now, you know, like
Speaker 4: they're tricksters and can't be trusted, and you know, like
Speaker 4: the Slide of Hands was like, I really, I don't
Speaker 4: really know what this negro is up to. But the
Speaker 4: magicians had control over a world and a narrative that
Speaker 4: they created, and they had magically gotten people of all
Speaker 4: races to buy into it. I'm thinking at this time too,
Speaker 4: the escapism is something that is interesting because these people are,
Speaker 4: you know, not even several decades out of enslavement, right, Like,
Speaker 4: they definitely have people that they knew personally that were
Speaker 4: affected by slavery. So it's kind of like you think
Speaker 4: of escaping now, it's kind of like, oh, I'm just
Speaker 4: going to escape the drudgery of everyday life. I'm going
Speaker 4: to be entertained for you know, a couple hours. But
Speaker 4: I wonder what it was like back then to play
Speaker 4: with escape in that way.
Speaker 1: Right, And I wonder if people would have even called
Speaker 1: it escapism or if they would have used a different
Speaker 1: word for it, because in that context, yes, escapism would
Speaker 1: be such a different thing. And that's not to minimize
Speaker 1: what we go through today, because it's not like we
Speaker 1: still don't have our personal challenges and that really dramatic
Speaker 1: things can happen in our everyday lives. But of course,
Speaker 1: within that context of chattel slavery, it was something that
Speaker 1: they weren't so far removed from, So yeah, it is
Speaker 1: it's interesting to think about what escapism meant to them,
Speaker 1: what it meant or what it felt like in an
Speaker 1: embodied way to go into a place where you could
Speaker 1: maybe step out of your everyday concerns and maybe tap
Speaker 1: into a different world or a different space of imagination,
Speaker 1: to feel a sense of freedom.
Speaker 4: In a society that you know is hierarchical, segregated, all
Speaker 4: these races come in together for a minute, an hour,
Speaker 4: whatever the case may be. This black magician's in charge,
Speaker 4: like they're creating the rules, they're creating the world that
Speaker 4: everyone has to buy into for that brief moment in time.
Speaker 4: I think it's like super subversive when you think about
Speaker 4: what black magicians were able to do, especially during that
Speaker 4: period of time.
Speaker 1: So we've got a lot more blackety, black magic of
Speaker 1: our sleeves before our next act. We're disappearing.
Speaker 4: And we're back top tier magic eves.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: So the way that black people show up as magicians
Speaker 1: changes over the years, as to be expected. Henry Brown,
Speaker 1: who fled slavery in Virginia by traveling to Philly confined
Speaker 1: in a cramped wooden box, turned his experience into a show.
Speaker 1: He published a narrative about his escape, sold illustrations of
Speaker 1: that escape, and toured with a panorama that depicted scenes
Speaker 1: of enslaved people's lives. When the Fugitive Slave Act of
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty passed, it made the threat of Henry's return
Speaker 1: to slavery ever more present, and he was nearly captured
Speaker 1: that year in Providence, Rhode Island, but he evaded capture
Speaker 1: and he took off to England.
Speaker 4: In England, he used performance to tell the story of
Speaker 4: his escape. He even put together another panorama about the
Speaker 4: Indian Mutiny of eighteen fifty seven and uprising against British rule.
Speaker 4: The message that he communicated over and over in these
Speaker 4: performances was in anti slavery and anti colonial resistance. The
Speaker 4: stories he told as a writer, as an artist, as
Speaker 4: a showman all oflifted the power of subversion and resurrection.
Speaker 1: And after spending years overseas, Henry returned to the States
Speaker 1: post Emancipation Proclamation, post Civil War, and post Thirteenth Amendment
Speaker 1: during the reconstruction years. By this point, he had started
Speaker 1: to use more magic in his shows, but he continued
Speaker 1: to use his platform to entertain and educate spectators. The
Speaker 1: practice of escaping restraints was one that magicians have been
Speaker 1: using to keep audiences on their toes for a while,
Speaker 1: and Brown began to perform an act where he broke
Speaker 1: free from a sack wrapped with a chain in the lock.
Speaker 4: He did this trick called the Spirit Cabinet, where he
Speaker 4: would be tied up and concealed, but would still be
Speaker 4: able to play instruments. He burned cards and then made
Speaker 4: them whole again. One ticket to a show described his
Speaker 4: entertainment as magic's sleight of hand, mesmerism, and electro biology.
Speaker 4: He called himself Professor h Box Brown and called one
Speaker 4: of his magic programs the African Prince's drawing room entertainment.
Speaker 1: But magic didn't seem like it was just a means
Speaker 1: of escape to Brown. Henry Brown's work as a magician
Speaker 1: and as a resistor were intertwined. Even as he upped
Speaker 1: the bar on the stage, magic that he performed relaying
Speaker 1: the story of his enslavement and escape remained an important
Speaker 1: part of his shows. He dreamed up and brought to
Speaker 1: life a path to actual freedom that seemed impossible before
Speaker 1: and on stage, he used magic to make the seemingly
Speaker 1: impossible appear real. He was able to use magic to
Speaker 1: communicate principles that he quite literally lived by, that what
Speaker 1: is imagined can be made manifest, that we have the
Speaker 1: power to make change, and that there is infinite possibility.
Speaker 1: He could use the popular appeal of magic, with its
Speaker 1: fancy illusions and all those elaborate ruses, to convince others
Speaker 1: of what was possible. Escaping slavery was possible, Rising against
Speaker 1: slavery was possible, Ending slavery was possible. So it made
Speaker 1: sense that in the third act of his life, magic
Speaker 1: was his actual livelihood. Magic had kept him alive, and
Speaker 1: by using it to share his story and his ideals,
Speaker 1: perhaps it could save the lives of so many others?
Speaker 4: Did you know that other abolitionists had beef with Henry
Speaker 4: Box Brown?
Speaker 2: Whoy was that?
Speaker 4: Because like slavery was still going on, because you know,
Speaker 4: he had shipped himself, mailed himself out of slavery, but
Speaker 4: slavery was still going on, right, And so he was
Speaker 4: going around doing all these like shows and lectures about
Speaker 4: exactly how he mailed himself to freedom. So they're like,
Speaker 4: other people aren't going to be able to do this,
Speaker 4: like chill out, like you're given all the secret sauce away.
Speaker 4: So it's like, on one hand he was like, you know,
Speaker 4: shining a light on this terrible institution, and I guess
Speaker 4: like thumbing his nose kind of at the people that
Speaker 4: he tricked. But on one hand he was like low ki
Speaker 4: making so that other people could not do the same thing,
Speaker 4: which you know, who knows how many people would try that,
Speaker 4: because so many things can go wrong. You could literally
Speaker 4: just like starve to death or like die from dehydration,
Speaker 4: or be on your head too long, which I believe
Speaker 4: is on his head for a while. Well he was
Speaker 4: upside down for a while, right, So but people were like, dude,
Speaker 4: be quiet for a second.
Speaker 2: He was snitching on himself.
Speaker 1: Basically, it's kind of like a magician telling all of
Speaker 1: their tricks. Yeah, you know, magicians don't want other magicians
Speaker 1: to tell the secrets to their magic either, because then
Speaker 1: that is the magic lies. Also in you not knowing
Speaker 1: how it happens, even if you know that it happened
Speaker 1: some way, even if you know that it wasn't an
Speaker 1: act of God that made this rabbit disappear, you know
Speaker 1: that there's something behind it, but you don't know what
Speaker 1: it was.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he was definitely breaking like the magician code of conduct.
Speaker 4: So over the course of Brown's life, the US and
Speaker 4: black folks in it had gone through a ton right,
Speaker 4: The landscape of black performance changed a lot. By the
Speaker 4: late eighteen hundreds, the popularity of menstrel shows, which often
Speaker 4: featured magic acts, had peaked and waned. Vaudeville, a kind
Speaker 4: of entertainment that included a variety of acts like comedy
Speaker 4: and singing, was on the horizon, and a couple of
Speaker 4: men who end up performing magic for a living were born.
Speaker 4: These fellows were named John Hartford Armstrong and Benjamin Rucker.
Speaker 4: Let's start with Benjamin Rucker, also known as Black Herman
Speaker 4: so Black.
Speaker 1: Herman started out out peddling health tonics, fortune telling, and
Speaker 1: mind reading, but once he started gaining a little bit
Speaker 1: more traction, he began to throw more magic tricks in
Speaker 1: the mix, like creating the illusion that his assistant was levitating.
Speaker 1: His performance drew from Black spiritual traditions like root work
Speaker 1: and one act. For instance, he claimed that his tonic
Speaker 1: could drive the demon out of a possessed person, and
Speaker 1: he would plant people in the audience to drink his
Speaker 1: tonic and then suddenly be cured. He moved to Harlem eventually,
Speaker 1: and he performed for large audiences at Liberty Hall, which
Speaker 1: was the headquarters of the Kingston division of Marcus Garvey's
Speaker 1: Universal Negro Improvement Association. There were plenty of black magicians
Speaker 1: who made up stories about their own lives, carrying this
Speaker 1: mystique around their professions into their actual personal history. Take
Speaker 1: all of the black magicians that capitalized on people's obsession
Speaker 1: with the so called East by pretending themselves to be
Speaker 1: Indian or Hindu because that got them better career opportunities.
Speaker 4: Okay, number one, I know a couple of people who
Speaker 4: could use that health timeic to drive out the demon
Speaker 4: okay on is that online number two. Black Hermon did
Speaker 4: contribute to the mystery of his life, but you know,
Speaker 4: in a different way. On tour in the thirties, he
Speaker 4: performed this elaborate stunt where he would appear to bury
Speaker 4: himself alive. He'd escape through a secret passage and return
Speaker 4: to the grave days later, only to be dug up
Speaker 4: again just in time for his stage performance. So when
Speaker 4: he died, like Pharrell in nineteen thirty four, it was
Speaker 4: kind of like the Boy who Cried Wolf, because people
Speaker 4: thought that he was just playing around and he was
Speaker 4: gonna come back alive again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were people who were like, wanted to go
Speaker 1: see the body, and someone who charged to go see
Speaker 1: his body because there was all of this a hoopla
Speaker 1: around the fact that he had made a big deal
Speaker 1: that I don't die, I can come back from the grave,
Speaker 1: And he didn't come back to life, but he did
Speaker 1: leave behind a legacy that was about preservation and about spectacle.
Speaker 1: He had become this larger than life character whose persona
Speaker 1: and stories preceded him. His myth making around his own
Speaker 1: life and spiritual practices were really indicative of the ways
Speaker 1: that black folks embellished stories and find joy and freedom
Speaker 1: in refusing to reveal too much, keeping things close to
Speaker 1: the body instead.
Speaker 4: Blackerman could not be confined to others perceptions of him
Speaker 4: or his blackness. He laughed in the face of stigmas
Speaker 4: and stereotypes about black people with the spectacles that he
Speaker 4: created around his tonics and escapes and cares. He was
Speaker 4: kind of a double agent, a trickster. The playfulness and
Speaker 4: mischief that he imbued and his performance gave his magic
Speaker 4: a sense of unbridled thrill and pleasure. He denied respectability.
Speaker 4: He toyed with what was taboo, challenged what was sacred
Speaker 4: at a time when black folks were struggling to break
Speaker 4: down barriers.
Speaker 1: More than a snake oil salesman, Black Hermon recognized his
Speaker 1: ability to wrestle with his own conflicts, his doubts, and
Speaker 1: his hopes regarding his history and self perception through his performance.
Speaker 1: Just because there may have been gaps in his knowledge
Speaker 1: of tradition and lineage, did it mean that he had
Speaker 1: to wallow in self hatred sunk in beneath this mountain
Speaker 1: of ignorance and misery. He could come back from the
Speaker 1: dead as many times as he wanted to. His magic
Speaker 1: told black people that they could be whomever they wanted
Speaker 1: to be, even with what was taken from us, that
Speaker 1: we weren't bound to anybody's rules.
Speaker 4: And I think that's the through line for a lot
Speaker 4: of black magicians, especially the ones that you know are
Speaker 4: catering to a black audience and do have that, you know,
Speaker 4: working knowledge of those that came before them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So I know this quote is used to death.
Speaker 1: Child, It's used to death, but it really didn't make
Speaker 1: me think of the Audre Lord quote. If I didn't
Speaker 1: define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other
Speaker 1: people's fantasies for me and eaten alive. I am just
Speaker 1: so fascinated by this kind of It feels like such
Speaker 1: a large, wild and kind of chaotic life and persona
Speaker 1: that he built.
Speaker 2: I don't know why. I just imagined him going around.
Speaker 1: Evil, laughing everywhere like he is, like you know, got
Speaker 1: multiple sides to him and is just always experimenting, always open.
Speaker 1: Just I just imagine him as this person who has
Speaker 1: so much for life and interest and curiosity in questioning
Speaker 1: things and how they worked and how people viewed him
Speaker 1: and how he viewed himself. And how he viewed his history.
Speaker 4: Do you think for him specifically, or even magicians in general,
Speaker 4: you know how like when you tell in a lie
Speaker 4: and then you start to believe the lie, or like
Speaker 4: you get too like if the actor gets too deep
Speaker 4: into character. Do you think that for him, he kind
Speaker 4: of thought like, well, maybe I can come back to life,
Speaker 4: Like do you think that in living that life, they're
Speaker 4: like kind of fooling themselves, like I am actually magic,
Speaker 4: Like I actually can do these things that I'm telling
Speaker 4: the audience that I can do.
Speaker 2: You know what.
Speaker 1: I think it's an interesting question because I wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to say that they do fall for it, because they
Speaker 1: know that it's their profession, and so I don't want
Speaker 1: I wouldn't want to make it seem like they are gullible,
Speaker 1: you know, or naive in any way. But I do
Speaker 1: also think there's something that is is magical in itself
Speaker 1: of convincing yourself that those things can be true, even
Speaker 1: when you're the sole person as the magician who knows
Speaker 1: how the tricks work. You see all the cogs, you
Speaker 1: see the wheels moving, all of the things that are
Speaker 1: going on behind the scenes. So there is something that
Speaker 1: could be endearing about a magician actually falling in love
Speaker 1: with the crafts so much that they start to believe
Speaker 1: that it could actually happen, that it could actually be
Speaker 1: some sort of supernatural magic rather than magic that happens
Speaker 1: in the natural world.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about the Armstrongs. There's John Harper Armstrong, who
Speaker 4: is a magician who's performed at black churches and schools
Speaker 4: on the East Coast in the US in the early
Speaker 4: to mid nineteen hundreds, and he toured with his brother Joseph,
Speaker 4: but Joseph eventually left family business, and so John's first
Speaker 4: and second wives were also involved. So it makes sense
Speaker 4: that John's daughter Ellen Armstrong ended up in the business too.
Speaker 4: But once John died in nineteen thirty nine, she took over,
Speaker 4: making her potentially the only black woman magician touring in
Speaker 4: the US at the time. Chalk Talk was one of
Speaker 4: her main acts, where she would draw cartoons on a
Speaker 4: chalkboard and sketch pad and invite audience members to participate
Speaker 4: in the act.
Speaker 1: The Armstrongs did card tricks, mind reading, and sleight of
Speaker 1: hand tricks, but they also included black history in their shows.
Speaker 1: According to the book Conjured Times, Black Magicians in America.
Speaker 1: John Armstrong included the story of Frederick Douglass's escape from
Speaker 1: slavery in an act, and Ellen Armstrong did a version
Speaker 1: of that same act featuring the boxer Joe Louis. Instead,
Speaker 1: a lot of the middle and working class black people
Speaker 1: who went to their shows wanted to go to them
Speaker 1: over the vaudeville shows because they were so educational.
Speaker 4: The Armstrongs were intentionally uplifting black hissy story in black
Speaker 4: spaces by continuing to include black history in their shows
Speaker 4: and perform in black institutions. And Ellen emphasized that importance
Speaker 4: of memory and passing out knowledge that she got from
Speaker 4: her father, and we love Ellen for that. H Okay,
Speaker 4: magic history lesson over. Should we return to the present? Yeah,
Speaker 4: I think so, But the curtains haven't closed yet. The
Speaker 4: magic continues after the break.
Speaker 1: In our own personal disappearing and reappearing act, We're back
Speaker 1: And Katie, you spoke with someone who is truly about
Speaker 1: the magic life, the Cole Cardoza.
Speaker 4: The coal is a magician.
Speaker 5: I use magic as a space to allow audiences to
Speaker 5: suspend disbelief and reimagine what's possible in the world that
Speaker 5: we live in today. I definitely think that I'm a
Speaker 5: non traditional magician. I mean, part of that is just
Speaker 5: being a black beer woman on stage. That just happens
Speaker 5: by default, so you know, it's not necessarily like an
Speaker 5: intentional divergence from that. But yes, I think just inhabiting
Speaker 5: this body and how people respond to it on stage
Speaker 5: and how they respond to a magician who does not
Speaker 5: look like the norm changes the dynamic of the space
Speaker 5: to begin with. For me, it's important to name the
Speaker 5: stories of black magicians that have come before us that
Speaker 5: have oftentimes left out of the narrative of what it
Speaker 5: means to be magical. Despite the fact that we see
Speaker 5: a lot of cishette white men in the role of
Speaker 5: a magician, what we understand is magic has been crafted
Speaker 5: and influenced by a woman in gender expansive people and
Speaker 5: people of color throughout history, and for me, as a
Speaker 5: black quer woman, is important to name those stories of
Speaker 5: black artists and particularly black women artists that have come
Speaker 5: before in this space. So that's something that I do.
Speaker 5: I talk a lot about the role of Ellen Armstrong
Speaker 5: in her family in magic and incorporate some of the
Speaker 5: tricks that she did on stage in my performance as well.
Speaker 5: Because I think it's important that her story is not forgotten.
Speaker 5: But we, you know, as black magicians, we are responsible
Speaker 5: for a legacy of magic, and we're responsible for the
Speaker 5: stories of our ancestors in this space, and I think
Speaker 5: that there needs to be an accountability built into that.
Speaker 5: You know, magic is not a passive art form and
Speaker 5: by default is a conversation, and I think a conversation
Speaker 5: that's really inherent in the Black community because it's the
Speaker 5: call and response conversation that you're having that I think
Speaker 5: that if you aren't familiar with black culture, like you
Speaker 5: don't see that kind of relationship in magic, which is
Speaker 5: why I think it resonates so much with Black people.
Speaker 5: That in itself is a powerful part about this because
Speaker 5: to be able to do a call and response conversation
Speaker 5: with black people, when that's so inherent in our blood,
Speaker 5: in our bones. It's the way that we advocated for
Speaker 5: our freedom, quite literally demanded our freedom here in the US.
Speaker 5: You have a really much more interesting conversation about magic
Speaker 5: and what it means to suspend disbelief and imagine something
Speaker 5: greater than I think that you do in you know,
Speaker 5: and then outside of that context, outside of the context
Speaker 5: of blackness. You know, from the beginning to the end
Speaker 5: of an effect, you oftentimes have everybody's undivided attention, and
Speaker 5: when you think about other forms of art, that's quite
Speaker 5: rare to capture. I think one of the things that's
Speaker 5: so powerful about black magicians throughout history it's when you know,
Speaker 5: back in the eighteen hundreds early nineteen hundreds is one
Speaker 5: of the few places that black people were allowed to perform,
Speaker 5: where they were especially allowed to perform for white audiences,
Speaker 5: which is a really important part about Henry Box's Brown
Speaker 5: story and the work that he was doing there. Part
Speaker 5: of it is because he wanted to and part of
Speaker 5: it's because he was called into that work right because
Speaker 5: he used magic as a platform for advocating for the
Speaker 5: end of slavery, but also is because it's the only
Speaker 5: place he could. Magic became the way I mean him
Speaker 5: being able to escape during when the Feud Do a
Speaker 5: Slave Act was enacted and go to Europe like magic
Speaker 5: was a way for him to be able to secure
Speaker 5: his own freedom after he fought for it so desperately
Speaker 5: on the Underground River. But think about the world that
Speaker 5: we live in today and how rarely we are granted
Speaker 5: the opportunity to hold space that way.
Speaker 4: What do you think it is about magic that kind
Speaker 4: of goes across that barrier.
Speaker 5: I think hope is what makes us human. And so
Speaker 5: when you introduce a conversation where people get the chance
Speaker 5: to hope and imagine something great, oftentimes they're in not
Speaker 5: I'm not talking about like the you know, the segregation
Speaker 5: that prevents black people from being seen in magic and
Speaker 5: all of that. We all know it's really difficult to
Speaker 5: this day for black people to get the same stages.
Speaker 5: But I'm talking about in that moment, right when we're
Speaker 5: not talking about the structural stuff, but two people, when
Speaker 5: you get to see a magic trick, oftentimes people are
Speaker 5: drawn in to that end and they want to see
Speaker 5: the end of that conversation and they want to see
Speaker 5: the outcome. We walk through life always feeling like we
Speaker 5: have to expect the worst, any kind of like in
Speaker 5: uncertainty or hesitation, right, we bar ourselves up around it,
Speaker 5: especially marginalized people navigating this world. Right, And so to
Speaker 5: be able to allow yourself like, oh, this card, this flimsy,
Speaker 5: little random piece of paper is going to move from
Speaker 5: one place to the next or vanish and reappear I'm
Speaker 5: down and I want to hold I want to see
Speaker 5: that happen.
Speaker 1: Y'all can keep up with Nicole and her tour dates
Speaker 1: at black girl Magician dot com or at black Girl Magician.
Speaker 4: On social Before we go, It's time for roll credits,
Speaker 4: where we give credit to something or someone that's on
Speaker 4: our hearts. This week, I'd like to give credit to houseplants.
Speaker 4: My houseplants are growing very nicely, and my houseplants are
Speaker 4: black house plants, and they know that, and so they
Speaker 4: keep my air nice and clean inside my house. Thank you, houseplants.
Speaker 2: How do they know they're black? How do you know
Speaker 2: that they know they're black?
Speaker 4: Because everything else in my house is black. So they
Speaker 4: just they recognize like black recognized black. Period.
Speaker 1: So this week I would like to give credit to
Speaker 1: all of the people who are preserving and practicing and
Speaker 1: passing along traditions of their own spiritual medicines and indigenous
Speaker 1: traditions of healing. We talked a lot today about some
Speaker 1: of the questionable practices of Black Hermon and the tonics
Speaker 1: that he was giving people, But there are so many
Speaker 1: people who are actually using our knowledge of herbal medicine
Speaker 1: to create tonics that make people better, that make them
Speaker 1: feel better, that make them heal in so many different ways,
Speaker 1: and so I just want to give a shout out
Speaker 1: to all of the people who have that knowledge and
Speaker 1: are sharing it with others. We'll be back next week
Speaker 1: with another episode.
Speaker 2: Bye Zia.
Speaker 1: On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and Fairweather Friends Media.
Speaker 1: This episode was written by Eves Jeffco and Katie Mitchell.
Speaker 1: It was edited and produced by Tari Harrison.
Speaker 2: Follow us on.
Speaker 1: Instagram at on Theme Show. You can also send us
Speaker 1: an email at hello at on Theme dot show. For
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.