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Episode Transcript

Charlie Melcher:

Hi, I’m Charlie Melcher, founder and director of the Future of StoryTelling. Welcome back to the FoST podcast. On today’s episode we’ll be exploring the relationship between culture and politics, and here to join me is musician, filmmaker, social entrepreneur, and Durham, North Carolina city councilman, Pierce Freelon.

For Pierce, art is activism and activism is art. That belief is embodied in his Emmy award-winning PBS web series, Beat Making Lab, where he traveled around the world with a musical studio that would fit in a backpack, visiting different countries and engaging in cultural exchange through hip hop music. Alongside Pierce’s academic work at UNC Chapel Hill, Beat Making Lab served as an inspiration for the creation of Next Level, a collaboration between UNC and the US Department of State that leveraged American hip hop culture as a means of foreign diplomacy.

The twin narrative of art and politics has continued to define Pierce’s professional trajectory. In 2013 he founded Blackspace, a digital makerspace located in Durham and Chapel Hill that provides free music, film, coding, and storytelling workshops to youth of African descent. Meanwhile, he continued to lecture at UNC and made several runs for political office, which culminated with his appointment to Durham City Council in 2020.

Pierce Freelon serves as an inspiration for all of us who believe that art, storytelling, and civic engagement can lead our world to a brighter future, and it’s my pleasure to welcome him to the Future of StoryTelling podcast.

Pierce Freelon, I’m so excited to have you on the show today. Thank you for being here.

Pierce Freelon:

It’s a pleasure.

Charlie Melcher:

So you’ve talked about this West African philosophy, Sankofa, this idea that you have to look back in order to be able to look forward. Tell us a little bit about your backstory.

Pierce Freelon:

I guess I could start with some ancestors. I’ll name my great-grandfather, Allan Freelon, who was a painter during the Harlem Renaissance. And my dad recalls being taken out into the woods with him to just sit and listen, and just perceive his environment. I remember when I was a kid, my dad used to take me out into the natural environment, just to listen and to be present with my thoughts, emotions, and the world around me, and to absorb, kind of, the beauty of our universe. My dad was also an artist. He was a photographer and an architect.

Charlie Melcher:

When did you realize that you were going to be an artist, or that that was part of who you are?

Pierce Freelon:

I think that art was always around me from a very young age. My mother, I didn’t mention her yet, but Nnenna Freelon, she’s a jazz vocalist. And I remember when my mom started singing and bringing us to gigs, we used to hang out with her backstage. And I did see in my mother and my father a loving, nurturing parent who was also taking care of themselves, who unapologetically and fearlessly stepped into their purpose. So for me, as I was coming of age and thinking about what I wanted to do, I never had to question like, “Oh, get a real job.” Those are some of the questions they had to deal with, I never dealt with. They always said, “Follow your passion.”

Charlie Melcher:

Hearing about your parents and the maturity, or just lov,e and what amazing people they clearly were, makes me understand a little more about your focus on parenting—prioritizing that in your life. I know you’ve even done an album, and I’ve watched a few videos about dad’s day with your daughter. Tell me a little bit about that. I wasn’t thinking I was going to go there, but just hearing you talk about your parents makes me want to hear you talk about your parenting.

Pierce Freelon:

My dad passed away last summer. Well, summer of 2019, two summers ago now. I took a big shift from parenting my kids to almost parenting my dad during that time. I got to spend this real intimate time with my dad towards the end of his life. And it was such a gift to be able to offer him that. And what I’ve found, pretty much every time I went into the studio from like 2018 to 2020, I was writing about being a father. And I think I was subconsciously tapping into missing my dad in his physical form as he transitioned. I was missing having him be the presence that he was for me as a child, but I was also celebrating the gifts that he gave me, and seeing his fatherhood practice in how I rock with my children.

[EXCERPT FROM D.A.D PLAYS]

Pierce Freelon:

That’s where the album D.a.D came from. It was, it was literally Sankofa. I was in the middle, like losing my father and loving my children. And fatherhood was just really an important part of that story.

Charlie Melcher:

I’m going through a similar thing with my dad now.

So, music is a source of healing. Arts is a source of joy and coming back into yourself. But I’m also curious about how you’ve used it to go outward, how you see it as a tool for making a difference more broadly in the world.

Pierce Freelon:

Yeah. Well, Charlie, before we jump off, I just want to acknowledge that I feel some emotion swelling in you and can only imagine what, from the little I know about you as a storyteller, how it may be impacting you to hear my journey.

Here’s the thing about grieving. It’s a reflection of the love that we have for our fathers, that we feel the weight of their loss. It’s a cycle, just like the seasons. And one day we too will be in our winter seasons, and, whew, what a privilege it would be… I imagined as I was caring for my dad, my son watching after me in that way. And it’s really beautiful. It took me a while to really sink my teeth into being gracious about that process. Yeah. I feel you.

Charlie Melcher:

Thank you. Whew. Okay. Well, I think you should just take over this interview. You’re doing a better job!

Tell us a little bit about… I think your sort of first big breakthrough was Beat Making Lab. That was certainly how you came to FoST. You sort of helped lead one of those, but maybe just tell our listeners quickly what that is and the kind of impact it had.

Pierce Freelon:

So I’m a professor… young lecturer, not even professor. I got my master’s, and I’m teaching at my alma mater. This department at this prestigious university that gave me my papers and my legitimacy is woefully lacking when it comes to presenting a music curriculum that reflects the times. And I know from my study that this was also the case when jazz became a disruptor in the academy.

There was a time when Duke Ellington was invited onto campus at Oxford and they were like, “We do classical here. We have a pedagogy here. This doesn’t quite fit the model.” Somebody had to break that whole model up and say, no, jazz belongs here. And hip hop belongs here too.

That was our case, certainly, but it also caught the attention of the State Department, who said, “Wow, here we have hip hop, the global culture.” One of the biggest cultural exports of this country is our culture. And guess what? Hip hop, dance, graffiti, b-boying, MCing can travel some places that diplomats can’t go, and can connect with some audiences that want nothing to do with the United States politically, but are culturally aligned with the Black youth culture of this country.

Charlie Melcher:

So from Beat Making Lab, next thing was doing the Blackspace. Tell our listener what that is.

Pierce Freelon:

Yeah. Blackspace is a digital makerspace. We work with youth between the ages of like 12 and 20, and we teach them things, digital, virtual, technological things, music production, coding, 3D printing. We did one workshop with middle school age girls on cryptocurrency and cybersecurity. Working with kids of African descent, trying to both bridge the digital divide and make sure that Black folks have a space and to give us tools to radically imagine and manifest the futures that we deserve. So, yeah. So it’s a digital makerspace rooted in afrofuturism, which is this idea of a kind of Black futurists creating the world that we want for ourselves.

Charlie Melcher:

This also seems like a perfect transition to talk a little bit about History of White People in America. Give me a little background on that project. It’s, by the way, I just want to say, beautiful and powerful and really, really well done and super enjoyed. We’ll make links to all these things we talk about because we want anyone who’s listening to be able to check them all out.

Pierce Freelon:

Yeah, History of White People in America.

[EXCERPT FROM THE HISTORY OF WHITE PEOPLE IN AMERICA PLAYS]

Pierce Freelon:

Let’s just sit with that for a second.

There is nothing more troubling after watching a few episodes of History of White People in America, than just kind of reflecting on the inherent solidarity between poor Southern white and Black communities. They have so much alignment and we’ll get into it more as the series progresses. We’ve finished three episodes of 16, and I can’t wait to talk about Wilmington, North Carolina, and the ways in which poor Black and white folks came together to build a fusion government. But whiteness just got in the way of it. White supremacy got in the way of it. The natural allies become enemies through the prism of white supremacy. This is that story. History of White People in America tells that story through hip hop.

Charlie Melcher:

I mean, honestly, it was the best thing I’ve watched since going to Hamilton. I mean, that’s kind of how I felt, like this is so beautifully told, so powerfully told, such creative storytelling, and like, the form and the content were so perfect together.

Pierce Freelon:

I’m glad that it resonated. Our goal is to keep episodes around four to five minutes. That’s a storytelling tool, to be told in a way with music where it kind of sticks in your head and is able to be absorbed emotionally through this universal language that we talked about. But then also the module of animated. That’s the other piece, animation. My hope is that it’s a soft entry point to what I hope will become a deep dive or a rabbit hole into deeper conversations about these topics around race. But we got to get started somewhere, and music and animation are two versatile universal mediums for truth telling and storytelling.

Charlie Melcher:

So you’ve worked with these two art forms of music and visual storytelling to create this very emotional history lesson in a form that’s so current, that’s so digestible for today. So talking about the role of artists for social change, and just, historically, artists have always been kind of at the vanguard of change. Tell me a little bit about why you decided to go into politics.

Pierce Freelon:

Well, when you said artists are at the vanguard of social change, I think about that all the time. In the Black freedom struggle, art has always been a tool for us. It’s been emancipatory, it’s been functional, in addition to being kind of beautiful and entertaining. A couple of examples would be like Harriet Tubman, who I considered to be like the quintessential Afrofuturist in being able to name the future that she wanted and then create it.

She used Negro spirituals for emancipatory ends, as coded language to give people instructions on how to escape slavery. Billie Holiday used her music and her platform as a jazz artist through songs like “Strange Fruit” to make a compelling case that accompanied Ida B. Wells important work to end lynching in the South. Ida B. Wells was a journalist. Billie Holiday was a jazz vocalist. They were both activists. They were both organizers. They were both involved in changing, not just the politics, but the lived realities of Black folks living in the South.

And I don’t think you do that without both of them. You need Ida B. Wells. You need Billie Holiday. You need Emmett Till’s mother, and you need Jet Magazine. You need all of these things to end lynching. So moving forward, Marvin Gaye, “What’s Going On?” KRS1, “Stop the Violence.” Like, artists, Aretha Franklin, and “Respect.” You know what I mean? Like, Queen Latifa, “U.N.I.T.Y.” Lauryn Hill. Everyone I love listening to, they don’t just make songs—they shift realities through their music and their labor. And it’s not just... It’s a vibration. They’re putting vibrations out in the universe that are reshaping reality.

So for me, that doesn’t stop with music. There’s other things that I do to manifest the worlds that we deserve. And a lot of that is subsumed in the cultural movement work, rooted in radical Black feminism. For me, that’s my politic and practice and the folks that I learned from and studied under.

I have certain privileges that allow me access to spaces that some of my more radical friends can’t get into. I have a little more access to these spaces, and an obligation to be in those spaces and to show up for our people, because we need infiltrators too. You can’t just stage the rebellion without inside information about the overseer’s work schedule. Do what you need to do to get free. You need somebody on the inside. So, not everyone has access to the inside. So for those of us that do, some of us got to say, “All right, I’ll do it.” Like, come on, let’s go. Like, it’s a service. It’s a sacrifice to infiltrate systems of white supremacy on behalf of your people, to be a voice, so they can have a seat at the table. It’s a labor. It’s one that I’ve found myself uniquely poised to fill in a way that could radically change the game. And that’s what I’m doing.

Charlie Melcher:

And so, that’s the thought behind running for office. I know you’ve run a couple of times for different offices and you’re currently on city council. Is that right?

Pierce Freelon:

Yep.

Charlie Melcher:

It sounds to me like you actually believe that being in office or public service like that is a role similar to what an artist can do, in terms of being able to imagine and realize the future that you want to live in.

Pierce Freelon:

Harken back to the role music has played in various political movements. One that particularly sticks out, I’ll mention it again, is the anti-lynching movement. That was a movement because people were being lynched throughout the South by the thousands. And we needed a political movement to end that state terrorism. In the same way, it really mirrors what we’re seeing today with the murders of Black men and the movement for Black lives.

An outcry is not going to suffice to end the disproportionate attack on Black lives. You need a movement. That movement needs a soundtrack. That movement needs political infiltrators. That movement needs grassroots organizers and movement workers. It needs political appointees and actors and gatekeepers that understand the depth of what the issue is and the source of the solution, which is in the folks closest to the pain.

Yeah. That’s something that’s really missing in politics, local, state, national. And so, that’s something that I hope to… again, planting seeds. Every move we make has ripple effects, and they’re fractal in nature. That’s something I learned from my dad. He used to show me this film, go Google it right now, it’s called the Powers of Ten. It starts with a young couple on a blanket and zooms out and in. And it shows that what is the nature of the universe at its smallest unit, is the same as the universe as its biggest unit. An atom looks a lot like a galaxy. It looks a lot like a solar system. It looks a lot like us in our planet. There’s just this fractal relationship to the universe. So that knowledge of the nature tells me that we can do things in Durham that will have fractal implications on a state, national, international scale. And planting that seed, it may take a while to bear fruit, but you got to start with building a movement and sustaining it. And that’s how change happens.

Charlie Melcher:

That helps me understand your focus also on local, right? A lot of what you’re doing is geared towards Durham and Chapel Hill and North Carolina. And I mean, there’s that old adage that all politics is local, but it’s not just politics here. It’s change and innovation and movement building.

Pierce Freelon:

This is a good segue to some Sankofa stuff. Look back. Now, my parents always told me, “Follow your purpose.” So I never had a problem deciding... My problems in decisions were always in abundance. Do I go to grad school or do I pursue music full-time? There’s really no wrong answer. I’ve always been in… the toughest decisions are between two things that I want, but I’m not quite sure which one is the right one that’s aligned with my path.

So Beat Making Lab. I remember we were in Dominican Republic. We had just done a Beat Making program there. And Maya Angelou passed away. And I had done an interview with her a couple of years prior, I went back and listened to it. It was called “A Pledge To Our Youth.” She said a poem during our interview, “A Pledge To Our Youth,” where she talks about all the things we need to provide for our kids. Clean and well-furnished schools. Safe and non-threatening streets. Employment which makes use of our talents, but does not…

Voice of Maya Angelou:

Employment which makes use of your talents, but does not degrade your dignity. You’re the best we have. You’re all we have. You are what we have become. We pledge to you are whole hearts, from this day forward. I am Maya Angelou and I stand by that pledge.

Pierce Freelon:

Those things became my political platform, by the way. But that’s a story for three years later.

Charlie Melcher:

I love that a poem is the basis for the platform. I love that.

Pierce Freelon:

And so anyway, I did an observation. I looked around myself. Dad out in the woods, sit and be present with your feelings and your grieving, look around. What are you doing? To what extent are you fulfilling the charge Maya left? I’m talking about building college graduates, building abundant communities, building sustainable systems.

Charlie Melcher:

Beautiful.

Is there anything that we should talk about that I didn’t think to ask you, or that’s on your mind to share?

Pierce Freelon:

I have one thought. I feel like we’re also developing a relationship, so I’ll offer you this, Charlie. When we did our call with the... What was it? We did the call with the Take Us To a Better Place book.

Charlie Melcher:

Yep.

Pierce Freelon:

You talked about how... Well, actually, could you explain it? I think you’ll do a better job. About how the fire releases the seed.

Charlie Melcher:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, just that idea that there are certain trees whose pine cones are so dense that the seeds only drop and open when there’s a very intense forest fire. And so even while the fire is raging, the seeds are being planted for the next generation of growth. And I was using that as a metaphor for this terrible period of the pandemic where we’re suffering as a globe with what feels like a terrible plague, is a terrible plague, but that there will be seeds that are planted in this period that will bring about some new kind of beauty, a new kind of beautiful forest after.

Pierce Freelon:

Yes. So I feel like with our fathers, we are brothers on either side of this pandemic. I had my own personal pandemic and forest fire in my dad’s transition prior to COVID—you’re dealing with yours now, which I’m sure is complicated by COVID—and it was also a raging inferno of sorts, and I was the pine cone, not realizing at the time what seeds that process was planting. And when my dad transitioned and that fire of his physical presence went out, so much is there in the wake of that beautiful raging inferno. It’s not destructive, it’s... Well, it is destructive. It’s destroying the physical, but it’s also planting seeds for future growth. Thank god it happens, because if it didn’t, we wouldn’t be here. We wouldn’t have the seeds of life that make our existence here so abundant and diverse. I just want to end maybe, perhaps, with that meditation on the relationship between destruction and creation, between life and death, between burning and birthing.

Charlie Melcher:

Well, I’d like to end it by thanking Phil and Nnenna Freelon for the beautiful work they did in bringing you into the world, and with a little prayer for both of our next generations and what we can... The seeds we will plant in them, and the work that they will do, and just this beautiful cycle.

Thank you, my friend, this has been a real pleasure and honor to sit here and have a heart-to-heart chat with you. So hopefully, just one of many to come.

Pierce Freelon:

I look forward to more.

Charlie Melcher:

My sincerest thanks to Pierce Freelon for joining me on today’s episode. You can learn more about Pierce and find links to all the projects we discussed in our conversation by visiting this episode’s page on the Future of StoryTelling website at fost.org, or by following the link in the episode’s description.

Thank you for listening to the Future of StoryTelling podcast, produced in partnership with our talented friends at Charts & Leisure. If you haven’t already, please be sure to subscribe to our show, give it a review, and share it with a friend. I hope you’ll join us again in a couple of weeks for another deep dive into the world of storytelling. Until then, please stay safe, be strong, and story on.