Fredara Hadley: There is no music without culture. And so a lot of what I do in my Intro to Ethno classes at Juilliard even, is helping students to see that they have culture, right? Culture is not something those colored people or those migrants or those queer people or those however you want to think of the other.

No, culture is something that you too have, and to me, that's the first step to realize that you are a way of being in the world that is valid and has just as much right as anybody else's. But you're not the default either. 

Helga: I'm Helga Davis, and welcome to my show of fearless conversations that reveal the extraordinary in all of us.

My guest today is Fredera Hadley, an ethnomusicology professor in the Music History Department at the Juilliard School. Her research pays homage to historically Black colleges and universities’ influence on music. Her works have appeared in the Washington Post, Billboard Magazine, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies, among others.

In our conversation, we talk about the underappreciated musical legacies of historically Black colleges and universities, the communal value of sacred spaces, and the need to reckon with culture when appreciating music. 

Come, come, come. Talk to me.

Fredara Hadley: How are you? Hi, it's so good to see you. I know, so glad this worked out. How have you been? 

Helga: We can't talk until we sit down. 

Fredara Hadley: You're smart. You're like, I'm not going to give this stuff away. Is that good? 

Helga: Okay. I have all my teeth. However many teeth a person can have. I have all of them including all the wisdom ones. So my whole mouth is so crowded with teeth. You have a mouth full of teeth. I have a literal mouth full of teeth. And so I've been wondering what to do because I see that now, they move closer together, and one is on top of the other, and they're all vying for space in this one mouth.

Fredara Hadley: It's a little city of teeth. 

Helga: It's a little city of teeth. And you know what? It actually leads me to a conversation about music and about musicians, because it's all vying for space and for our attention. I'm not one of those, and you know, because of social media, blah, blah, blah. All of that is true, and there's a lot of stuff vying for importance, for recognition, for empathy, for all of these things.

And I'm wondering how that manifests itself in your work? 

Fredara Hadley: Oh, that's a great question, because I'm always thinking about that. We're all overly stimulated, overwhelmed with books that we need to read, TikToks that may be clogging your group chat, tabs that are open in your browser, music that I'm supposed to be hearing.

It's unrelenting how many things just are like, hi, hi, hi, not to mention our personal lives and connections and all of that. And so recently I started to think about what I do is a form of trying to point attention to specific things. What are the through lines? What am I always looking for? Whether I'm teaching, whether I'm writing, whether I'm curating an event.

And I realize I do have really strong views on that. I'm always looking for not so much the singular, but the communal, right? Especially as it pertains to Black people, Black culture, Black music, since that's my specialty. It's important to me to highlight, if we love an artist, whether it's Aretha Franklin or whomever, to show the soil that made an Aretha possible, to not only extract the Black genius and say, here it is.Look at it.

Isn't it shiny and pretty? There's room for that, but it's more interesting to me and it's more true to me to create room to talk about how the communal makes any of that ever possible. That's always where my eye goes. Who are the folk? Not just who is the person. We can talk about that, but who are the folk in this?

Who are the Black folk in this? Because that's a way of lifting up not just community, but Black institutions, Black knowledge and how that knowledge comes to be, how that training happens. My students get it because I harp on it. That soil, that rootedness is so important to always, not just pick out names that we may have never heard, but understand. Why the black masses are always important. 

Helga: But you don't teach in a traditionally black school. 

Fredara Hadley: I don't. Is that a question? 

Helga: Oh. 

Fredara Hadley: If you want to hear it. 

Helga: You scared me. 

Fredara Hadley: No, no, no, no, no. I don't. Yeah. And I really wanted to. 

Helga: So how did you get to Juilliard? You really wanted to teach in a predominantly Black school.

Fredara Hadley: I really wanted to teach in HBCU, and I'm hopeful that one day I still will. I'm the daughter of HBCU graduates. I'm also the daughter of a retired HBCU English professor. My mom taught at Florida A&M for decades, and when I went off and earned a PhD, it was a conversation about where am I going to go, and what am I going to do.

And when I went to graduate school, I was dissuaded by the academic community, from teaching at an HBCU. The goal of getting a PhD was to go to a research institution like a large state university where you would have graduate students and you would do all these things. You're not supposed to go and teach at an HBCU.

And so that was in my mind. And teaching at an HBCU is an honor. Because what could be more important than pouring directly into our next generation of Black scholars, musicians, and thinkers? 

Helga: Assimilation! 

Fredara Hadley: Right! I have a whole other thing about how very often we say Black achievement, we really mean Black success in white spaces.

And we need to be honest about that. That's okay, but let's be honest about that, so put a pin in that. And my mom very much felt like the kind of career you can have is difficult to have in that particular moment at HBCU because the teaching responsibility is so necessary and so great. It does not leave a tremendous amount of time and bandwidth, very often, to do the projects.

The support isn't always there financially, even if the administration wants it to happen. It can be difficult to find a way to make that happen. And so part of the logic was, why don't you make that easier on yourself and go someplace where you will have those resources? And that's all coded language for white institutions.

And so I'll be honest and say that it's not something that I've ever been completely resolved about. Because I come from such a strong HBCU family, I guess part of what I do in my work is this book that I'm writing about the musical impact of Historically Black Colleges as a way to listen. I do this in community of talking with HBCU music faculty.

I presented pieces of it at HBCUs because it's important to me to not sound like, I am speaking from this perch and telling you what the natives are doing. If the access and the privilege does anything, then let me use that to be in community and shine lights on what other people are doing, what other educators are doing.

And so we've done two symposia in conjunction with Historically Black Colleges to learn about music scholarship, music pedagogy at HBCUs, and to help strengthen pipelines for HBCU students into music related graduate fields, whether that's musicology, music theory, ethnomusicology, all of those things. And I ended up at Juilliard because everybody kept telling me, you need to go over here and don't come back home until later. Come later, after you do some things out in the world, and then bring those resources back home. There's all kinds of thoughts about it. 

And so my first teaching job was at Oberlin Conservatory, where I taught for almost seven years before I went to Juilliard. And this is what I will say. I may not have taught at an HBCU yet, but even in those spaces, it's funny, I ended up in spaces where HBCUs are super present.

So many of the graduates of Oberlin and Juilliard taught at HBCUs. So many of the Black graduates in the early 20th century at Juilliard graduated from HBCUs first. Even if you're talking about like a Leontyne Price, she goes to Central State University before she goes to Juilliard or Jessye Norman goes to Howard before she goes to Peabody.

And so those things are often seen as footnotes where I see that as the story. Right, that is the story to me. And so I try to use whatever access, whatever resources to make that the story, even where I am. We just did this huge concert, Juilliard for Black History Month, called Claiming Your Space, a celebration of black music at Juilliard, which was 

Helga: Well, why did it have to be during Black History Month? That's one of those things that irritates the shit out of me. 

Fredara Hadley: We jam it all in and then we do nothing. 

Helga: And so it doesn't, to your point, become integrated in a conversation about excellence in music. 

Fredara Hadley: Yeah, that one, I wasn't in on the meeting where that was decided, but there are two parts to it. The concert happened in February, but we've hired a wonderful film crew that came in and we're releasing that film on May 10th.

And so what I like about that is that gives us the opportunity to expand that conversation. So even though the original performance that we did happened during Black History Month, which is such a busy, crammed, let's do it all time, right? We get to come back to it in a moment that is quieter around Blackness when we get to May, and in a wider way.

We did it in a recital hall. 300 people got to be in that room, but it'll be available free online. And so, I was talking to my piano teacher from FAMU, where I went to undergrad yesterday, who is obviously older, and she was just elated. She's the first one who taught me about Samuel Coleridge Taylor and taught me to play his music.

And she's so witty, and so she still gives me homework anytime I speak to her. She's like, well, do you know such and such pianist? And do you know? And I'm like taking notes while I'm on the phone with her. But I sent her the program because I wouldn't be doing this. at Juilliard if I hadn't first been in your piano studio in Tallahassee, Florida.

And I say that everywhere I go. And so I try to make as much as I do there or elsewhere, put it in places where my community can see it, touch it, critique it, respond to it, find joy in it. And that's what makes me excited and terrified about writing this book. 

Helga: So I think we have to go back a second. And ask the question, what is it that you do and how did you begin doing it?

Fredara Hadley: I feel like all my stories are going to go back to FAMU, which is not strange because my parents met there and so I wouldn't exist if it weren't for that school. But I'm an ethnomusicologist. I'm an ethnomusicology professor at the Juilliard School. I'm also a writer, all around curious person. Just a relentlessly curious person.

I went to FAMU and majored in business because I thought I wanted to own a record label and I had been a musician practically my whole life, but I didn't know anything about business. And I minored in music and took lessons. And then a few years later, after graduating, I get a master's in African American Studies at another HBCU, Clark Atlanta University.

And while I'm there I realized, okay, Black culture is expansive and interesting, but the part I'm really interested in is music, and what can I do with that? And it's one of my FAMU professors, who I'm still talking to about what my thesis is going to be about. He's like, well, it sounds like you should be reading the work of Portia Maultsby.

And I'm like, well, who's that? He said, she's an ethnomusicologist. I'm like, well, what's that? And I look her up, and oh my gosh, she had been writing about Black music since the 1970s. She was a professor at Indiana University. She's now a professor at Maritime. She was also a Black woman from Florida. And long story short, I met her in Atlanta, and she was like, you're coming to Indiana to study ethnomusicology with me.

And if you ever go online and you see this timeline of African American music that has, like, all these genres, a flowchart of Black music, she developed that, the first one in the early 1980s, how to think about Black music. And so, I went to Indiana, and I'm completely her acolyte in that way, really looking for community.

Even as we look at the stars, but really that kind of rootedness and approach to thinking about the continuity of Black music, the webs of Black music, and that led to everything else that's happened since in my career. 

Helga: So you were at Oberlin, and now you're at Juilliard, and was there some terror around that and around, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but there's a thing that happens when an African American person shows up in those spaces to teach. And you have all the paper, and still you go into a space that may be hostile, may be not ready or willing to receive you. 

And I'm curious to know what that brought up and maybe still brings up in you around legitimacy, around belonging, around deserving. 

Fredara Hadley: So at Oberlin, there were challenges that I'll get to in a second. Not those, but for a very specific reason. I didn't face the hostility and the institutional challenges solely because there was a man, Wendell Logan, who endured all of that. Wendell Logan came to Oberlin. He was a composer, a professor, a musician, who got to Oberlin in the early 1970s, and eventually, he fights for years to establish the Jazz Studies Program at Oberlin.

And Wendell Logan also graduated from Florida A& M University. It really does keep coming around. And he created this curriculum in jazz studies that had this course, a two semester course on African American music. And so a two semester course on African American music requires both breadth and depth to get through a year of that.

And he was smart. He made that a required course for his jazz studies students. And so you have generations of Black Oberlin students who studied with him, who took this course. The great mezzo soprano Denyce Graves, Courtney Bryan, all worked with Wendell Logan. And he died in 2010, so I got to Oberlin in 2013.

So his presence there was still very fresh, but I never got to meet him. But everything I learned, about him through research, through talking to colleagues and people who loved him and former students. I'm wholly convinced that he endured, fought against all of that. And then I come along and I'm able to step into teaching the Wendell Logan course and mainly be myself.

I think that the challenges that I faced teaching Black music at Oberlin then weren't so much about the institution, but it was about the era in which I was teaching it. So this was 2013 through 2019. This is the era of the peak of what we think of the Black Lives Matter movement. This is Tamir Rice getting shot in Cleveland, which is within driving distance of Oberlin. This is the era of Eric Garner, Sandra Bland.

And really trying to figure out for me and for my students what matters about teaching this course when Black people are being murdered seemingly weekly all over this country? What do I owe my community, even in this space? And I had large amounts of Black students every semester in my class, as well as White students who, for the first time, were being confronted with these realities.

I'm also teaching this class when Trump gets elected. I haven't thought about this since, really, but that was difficult. That was really hard because in teaching about Black music, if you're going to do it honestly, you can't just teach strange fruit. You have to talk about that and say, oh, let's listen to this sublime and heartbreaking performance of it that Billie Holiday gives.

No, no, no. You have to talk about lynching. You have to talk about the Northern response to lynching. You don't just get to have the song. You have to have all the stuff that comes with it.

And sometimes that was emotionally hard, spiritually hard. Trying to figure out what truth is in that moment and how to give it in a way that the students have something to carry with them and I can still be a person. 

Helga: Do you think we're getting further and further away from the history? So when I think about all the books that have been banned now. When I think about all the things you're not allowed to say with regard to, in particular, African American history, then how do you continue to make this course when someone may come and say, it is my constitutional right not to speak about this aspect of this course? And how do I just deal with the music?

Fredara Hadley: My first response is always, there's no such thing as just dealing with the music. Even if you're taking music history of the Baroque or the Classical, the Romantic era, you still don't just deal with the sounds. That logic runs against everything. I know, as an ethnomusicologist, there is no music without culture.

And so a lot of what I do in my Intro to Ethno classes at Juilliard, even, is helping students to see that they have culture, right? Culture is not something those colored people, or those migrants, or those queer people, or those however you want to think of the other. No, culture is something that you too have, and to me, that's the first step for them to be able to actually recognize and be appreciative of others’ cultures. To realize that you're not the standard. You are a way of being in the world that is valid and has just as much right as anybody else's to take up space, but you're not the default either, right? 

And so I talked to friends who teach in the South, and where these complexities play out in their classes. Classes are now battlefields. And I have friends who've made any number of choices about that. But the fact that you even have to do that additional labor feels violent. And I will admit, I teach in New York City. And so that's what's happening to our union, right? It matters which state that you're in.

And I was in Ohio, which is a politically tricky state, but Oberlin, the town itself, is incredibly blue and the institution is seen as very liberal. But even though there is protection, that does not mean that you are beyond being reached or beyond being targeted. There is no absolute safety. It's just a matter of if it is forced to be more or less a part of your cognition. 

And I say this, too, as a Southerner, and one of the things that irritates me about being in the North is the smugness about the idea that what happens in the South can't happen in the North, or that people in the South, particularly from Florida where I'm from, deserve what is happening to them. As opposed to it being a terroristic political machine that is designed to deprive and to destroy, and that every pushback that Black people have against that is a victory, and that Black people are consistently resisting and carving spaces for themselves. 

So, you know, if they're not going to teach it in schools, you have community programs that are popping up and saying, okay, we've got to find ways to get this into our babies, which is actually how I grew up. Maybe they mentioned Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks in school, but outside of that, it was pretty dry in terms of blackness. And so there was all of this community programming, whether it was in a community center or done by sororities and fraternities or churches or somebody. You going over here and you gotta hear, you gotta learn, you gotta watch this thing. And so this isn't a justification for the book banding that's happening, but forcing us to go back to those recipes that we actually developed in community for how to make sure that this knowledge isn't completely lost.

So that makes me hopeful. because you still have civil rights generation folks around, you still have all those folks who came after that wave and returning to, no, we're not going to go silent on this, even as we resist the political realities. 

Helga: Yeah. I love what you said about music and culture and how they're not mutually exclusive. I live in Harlem, I love Harlem. I'm trying to stay in Harlem, which becomes more and more challenging every day for all the people. 

And I remember when, one morning, I was looking for an apartment at that time. And I was standing on the corner of Adam Clayton Powell Junior Boulevard and 124th or 3rd Street at 6 o'clock in the morning, waiting for a broker to show up, and show me this apartment. Six o'clock in the morning. Okay. But when you want the thing, you go do what you need to do to get it. And so I'm standing there, by myself, because who is out at six o'clock in the morning, when a purple Cadillac pulls up at the light. And I'm looking, and it's the white-

Fredara Hadley: White wall tires? 

Helga: White wall tires. And I could hear this thunder in the car, and the window starts to come down very slowly. Because they're tinted. 

Fredara Hadley: Of course. 

Helga: And it comes down, and there is this man in the car. His suit is purple. His tie is purple. His hat is purple. He has the fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror. The steering wheel is covered in the leopard print. 

Fredara Hadley: Mm hmm. 

Helga: The seats are covered in furry stuff. And there's no one around. I don't want to be scared of my folks. I'm completely by myself. And so the window comes down and I peek inside and I was like, wow, it's real. Like these things really exist. And then he goes to the knob on the stereo in the car and he turns it up and it's Al Green's Let's Stay Together. So I don't know if that's an invitation or, you know, just a reference to that. And then the beautiful thing happens. He leans over and he looks at me and he says, Al motherfuckin Greene, baby! Al motherfuckin Greene! And then the window goes back up and he drives off. And that is culture. 

Fredara Hadley: Yes. 

Helga: That is part of my culture, of the culture. And I was thinking about that the other day as it relates to gentrification. So where are these folks? And if it becomes more and more difficult for me to stay where I was born, where I was raised, grown up, what happens to my contribution to a conversation about music and culture? And I imagine that this is also going to be true for instrumentalists, for people who want the Juilliard education and experience to then be in a symphony or a concert. Wherever it is they want to go. How do they get there? 

Fredara Hadley: Oh, the gentrification piece. I'll take that one first, because 

Helga: You scared of Al motherfucking Green?

Fredara Hadley: Hell no! I wrote, a few years ago, I actually wrote a piece called, In Defense of Loud Black Summers, which was a response to an article someone wrote about living in Washington Heights. And they saw themselves as a noise victim. They had moved to Washington Heights, maybe from Ohio, and they were white, right? They said that, and they were coming from yoga class, and this kid was playing this loud radio, and they wanted to call 911 on this kid, and they end up giving the kid the finger. And I remember, I read it on a Sunday morning, and I was incensed because this is how it happens. This is literally how it happens. And sound and silence are important ways of claiming space and saying, who gets to be here? Who gets to be here as themselves? 

And I was thinking about the young man in Jacksonville who was murdered because a white man thought his music was too loud. And so to me, these are not innocuous kinds of actions. They can lead to a chain of events that can be fatal for Black people. And I wrote about that. And I was also thinking about, I'm not a New York native as we've established. I'm from Florida, but I live in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. I've been there long enough to see how gentrification is played out in lots of different ways. But I paid particular attention to sound and music. And so I live right near one of the larger parks in the neighborhood. And when I first got there, in the spring and summer, every Saturday and Sunday, you would hear competing sound systems coming from that park, from everybody's birthday parties, family reunion, all of that.

And I've noticed, as the neighborhood has gentrified, it still happens, but not to the degree that it once did, right? Or you think about events like Sunday Sermon in Harlem or Soul Summit in Brooklyn. Soul Summit in Brooklyn used to be almost every week, and now if you get one a summer or a couple in Fort Greene Park, it's almost every week. Sunday Sermon is gone. And Sunday Sermon is gone. And that was one of the most beautiful events. Shout out to DJ Stormin’ Norman and everybody who makes that possible. I took my mama and daddy out to Sunday Sermon once. I introduced her to Greg Tate. May his memory forever be blessed. So much community. So much beauty. Black folks getting brown in the sunshine, as Roy Harris would say. So I think about those losses. 

And so I was talking to a DJ friend of mine in Bed Stuy years ago. He was born and raised in the neighborhood. And he said something that I think about regularly. He says, I don't know how much longer I will remain in Bed Stuy. Not just because of affordability, but because the community is no longer something that I recognize. And that broke my heart and gave me chills. And so, I actually had this conversation with Greg Tate, and Greg was lots of things, but cynical, he never, ever, ever was. And he just kind of matter of factly said, the culture goes where Black folks go. So wherever we are, that's where it is. And I understand what he means by that, and I think that he's right. But what I also understand is that doesn't fully mitigate the loss of the place. Right? We will reinvent and we will reconfigure wherever we are, absolutely. We will regenerate, rebuild all those Re's wherever we land.

But there's real loss. I walked down Malcolm X or Marcus Garvey or Lennox in Harlem. It's like, wow, these streets were named specifically to reflect not just Blackness generally, but what people really knew and supported. And so what is lost in that when the folks who live there don't have that attachment? So that is something I think about a lot. 

I have a good number of Juilliard students who live in Harlem. And I feel like, at the very least, part of what I should be doing is help them to understand where they are. At the very least, if you're taking a Black music class with me, let's not leave that in the theoretical, in the abstract, and in the past. Let's talk about where you live. Let's talk about Harlem. Let's talk about how much Harlem has given us And the people of Harlem. Let's connect the dots on that. If we're doing a jazz history class and we're in New York City, let's make all of this very real and very clear and animated and breathe life into so that when you go there today, you're not just passing Black masses on the street. You understand you're stepping into community. Places that people love, not just where they are forced to be, but they have filled these buildings that you're passing with love, blood, sweat, and tears. Like, Toni Morrison's Harlem. Like, that kind of, like, you read jazz and you feel it, right? 

And so, I try to do that. At the very least, you can't say you came my way and then you walked out clueless about where you are. I know that's not gonna solve everything. At least let me do that. 

Helga: We need a field trip. You have to– 

Fredara Hadley: I used to do walking tours. I really did. I have my sightseeing license, which is really hard to get in New York. The test is extremely hard. It was almost harder than writing my dissertation. It really was. Yeah. 

Helga: Oh, wow. 

Fredara Hadley: Yeah. I thought 

Helga: I was making a joke. 

Fredara Hadley: No, I mean, I used to do that. I used to take people on walking tours in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens. We'd go out to the Louis Armstrong House Museum and do it through the lens of Black music because New York City is incredible in the sense that just about every genre of Black music, Black diasporic music, you can go to a place connected to that in this city. You can go down to the African burial ground and talk about hymnody and spirituals, and I was fascinated with that. So I did really used to do tours. 

Helga: We may have to bring that back. 

Fredara Hadley: Come on! I still got my license, so I'm legal. 

Helga: You're listening to Helga. We'll rejoin the conversation in just a moment.

Avery Willis-Hoffman: The Brown Arts Institute at Brown University is a university wide research enterprise and catalyst for the arts at Brown that creates new work and supports, amplifies, and adds new dimensions to the creative practices of Brown's arts departments, faculty, students, and surrounding communities. Visit arts.brown.edu to learn more about our upcoming programming and to sign up for our mailing list. 

Helga: And now, let's rejoin my conversation with Juilliard Ethnomusicology Professor Fridera Hadley.

I want to talk, too, about jazz. I don't understand what's happened to jazz. I can go so many places and never see black people at jazz performances. And it breaks my heart every time. And then what I do see is the imitation of life. It is how fast can I play, how many notes can I play, and it is devoid of the history. And so it then is, well, I can play all of John Coltrane's notes, and then he's like, well, so what? And that you have to be more to make more.

Fredara Hadley: What do you have to say? What do you have to say? And I think the two statements you made are related. Not all of what exists in jazz, but a good bit of what is celebrated in jazz is as you describe. And I think that's never really going to resonate with Black audiences. You see what I'm saying? 

Helga: I hadn't thought of that.

Fredara Hadley: Because what we know about Black musical aesthetics is that my advisor, Portia Monsford, she talks about this idea of aliveness in the music. Whatever you're performing, people, Black audiences, need to believe that you mean it. As you're saying it, it's easy to point out gospel music and genres. The motive part of it is not extra. It's an essential part of it. 

So if you're any kind of musician and it feels simply something that you are resurrecting from the past without imbuing it with your own story. That's not going to work. It's just not. I do think that the way we have made jazz academic is not helpful, and in some cases pulls it away from Black community.

And so there's that side of it. I will also say that when I moved to New York, I never saw people dancing to Charlie Parker until I was in Marcus Garvey Park for something. And this gorgeous black couple, they just come out in front of the stage and they are just getting down to Charlie Parker. And these other couples get out there and join them.

And I was like, oh, oh, that's, that's what this is all about. And shout out to people like Megan Staubel, who passed away a few years ago, who worked hard through her platform, Revive, to try and restore that connection between blackness and jazz and how she presented concerts. We wouldn't have a Robert Glasper in the way that we do.

She was one of his early supporters and really trying to be like, no, jazz is for us. It can be young, it can be black, it doesn't have to be buttoned up all the time. You don't need to understand who was on the recording from 1950. You can have fun and just be in the music, right? And so she had a strong vision for jazz and worked well over 10 years in this city staging shows that restored a good bit of that and supported a whole generation of jazz musicians who are now in their 40s and out here winning Grammys. And so there's sparks of where I'm hopeful, but you're right. 

A lot of times you roll out and it's going to be you at Smoke or at the Village Vanguard. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to a jazz performance and somebody has asked me, your boyfriend's in the band. I'm serious. And when I went to ethnomusicology school, I was like, I'mma leave jazz alone because I had been intimidated by lots of older white men who made me feel like my connection to jazz wasn't valid, like how I came to the music wasn't valid. 

And, one thing, having to teach jazz history for so long and teach in jazz studies programs, it's liberated me to claim my own relationship with the music, and that, that relationship is valid. And so I grew up with a little jazz in the house, but what really opened the door to jazz for me was through hip hop. That's how I came to it. Tribe Called Quest, Gang Starr, we're sampling these records, this was back when you still had liner notes. And I'd be like, well, who is Freddie Hubbard? Or who is Donald Byrd?

And I'd go back and listen to the originals, and then that turned me all the way on. I could just live in this world, right? And that's completely appropriate. And so I have had to learn how to be a jazz historian my way, and amplify what I think is so important and continues to be important about the music. And there's so many brilliant musicians out here, you know. I think about pianists like Sullivan Fortner, who's from New Orleans, and plays with so much soul, interpretation, and freedom in his music. I'll listen to him solo. I'll listen to him with Cecile McLorin Salvant. I'll listen to him in a trio. And when you strip away so much of this noisy discourse about the music, I just bring a friend with me to a show, and they're just like, what? This is a thing that exists?

Helga: Yeah. yeah. I think about my work also with Butch Morris. And having to actually learn a language that is particular to you and is about composition. Every person as a composer. We have to talk about the gospel music, though. 

Fredara Hadley: Let's go. 

Helga: I'm sorry because that is breaking my heart. 

Fredara Hadley: Which things about it? 

Helga: It feels like performance. And just the fact that there is a praise break page on Instagram. Come on now. And that was a sacred thing when the spirit comes through you in that way. I also see it as relating to our transatlantic journey here. Because they took away the drum.  

And so, to hear, or watch, rather, this particular performance of spirituality and of God is offensive to me. First of all, who's in the church with the phone videotaping the praise break to then put it inside this medium that is, at its essence, a consumer product? 

Fredara Hadley: Yeah. That's challenging, precisely for the reasons that you said, like, my own grandmother was an ordained minister. Holiest woman I ever knew in my life. Most fiery woman I ever knew in my life. Most sincere and serious about God that I ever knew in my life. And I loved and love her fiercely, right? If I came away with any legacy from her, it was understanding her deep reverence for God. And that some things are reverent. And I grew up in church. My dad's a deacon. My mom was a church musician. Like, I grew up in that. And I do miss the idea that you're not supposed to run on church grounds, or you're not supposed to talk like that on church grounds.

This idea that some things are different. Some things are separate from the everyday. As I get older, I find strength in that and understanding in that. And I do think in our culture where everything is consumable, everything subject to being filmed, extracted, and shared, very few things are secret or sacred. That that becomes an ethical thing. Because for Black people, and I take your point, yes, a lot of it has become performative precisely because people know these cameras are watching, the phones are watching, and tourists come, that has become a thing. And so I think we forget that for many Black people, going to church on Sunday was a social thing, yes, but also a place where you really did come to get something to help you make it through the next week.

In such a violent, hostile, unforgiving world for Black people, this was your chance to mine the scriptures, mine the music, hear the testimony, hear the sermon, and that praise break was your spiritual and physical reaction to having received it, or perhaps attempting to embody it. And we still need that. So the question for me is, if we're going to do all this, where do we go for that? 

Helga: Where do we go? 

Fredara Hadley: Right. 

Helga: Where do we go? 

Fredara Hadley: I don't know. I think we might just be experiencing a loss. One thing I hold my generation accountable for, there are lots of critiques to be made about the Black Church, number of reasons. But I don't see us coming up with real solutions that do a lot of the care work and offer that kind of space for our generation. I cannot see where we've figured out a replacement for that, and I don't know what happens to us without that. We've always had some type of hush harbor or a place, which goes back to your question about where do we go? 

I've been thinking about my grandmother, who was a minister, Mary Shannon. She was a part of what they would call prayer bands, right? And so I can remember her and her good friend, Miss Watson. They would get together and, at somebody's house usually, and sing and pray for an undetermined amount of time. If someone had a sick relative or someone that passed away, they would go and they would sing and pray in that person's house. They would have tarrying services where they dealt with the pain, the needs of the community, of the individuals, and just sort of placed that before God and just were there. No one had to issue an edict from on high for them to do it. They just sort of did these things. And I think the older I get, I'm just like, what a powerful act of love and care work. What a reverent act of devotion, not just to God, but to each other and to community. And I wonder what our iteration of that is supposed to be.

It doesn't feel like all of that's just supposed to go away. And I think part of the issue is our quest for intellectualism, our constant quest for degrees and credentials and this and that. When intellect is one way of knowing things, It's not the only way of knowing things. It's not even always the most important way.

Helga: Right, but it is the thing that is valued more than anything else. 

Fredara Hadley: It is. It is. It's the thing that you can most easily get rewarded from. I got a whole PhD, right? And so, it's striking to me that in just two generations, my grandmother was an orphan, did not go to high school even, and yet, one of those most profoundly centered people who understood the world. And never left the country, maybe never went outside of Florida and Georgia, but understood people in the world and how to care for people. And so I do worry about us. I really do. 

Helga: Two questions. Is there anything you want to ask me? 

Fredara Hadley: Oh, yes, I was curious. You've done so many different things. I'm curious how you see the through line. What is the thing you're always looking for in projects, in artistic works that may always spark your interest or curiosity?

Helga: I'm always trying to do things I don't know how to do and living with the terror of that, but always trying to do things that force me to listen. Before I do anything, it's first to listen. To understand where I am before. This is why I love my work with Butch so much. And he said, you don't have to come in on my downbeat. You must come in on your downbeat. 

And things that hold all the things I know how to do. So that's where I'm most excited in a project that lets me write, that lets me compose, that lets me act, that lets me speak, interpret, and listen. 

Fredara Hadley: Isn't listening the most loving thing someone can do? Like, that's sacred. Someone really listening to you. Especially in a world where we're all toggling between devices and where am I supposed to be when people like, no, tell me the long version. How are you?

And I love what you said about doing things you don't know how to do. I feel that's where the good stuff is. Wow. And I needed to hear you say that. 

Helga: Don't tell anybody I said that. 

Fredara Hadley: Your secret's safe with me and these microphones.

Helga: What's a thing you do every day that we can all do? 

Fredara Hadley: Meditate. 

Helga: What does that look like for you?

Fredara Hadley: It's often a seated meditation, but it doesn't have to be. What has been really important to me in my meditation practice is not looking for ideal circumstances. Like, oh, everything needs to be quiet and da da da. No! Usually, very often, the exact moment I need to meditate is in the midst of chaos, whether that's on the A train or wherever. And it goes back to what we were just saying about listening. I aim to meditate every day in the morning, even if it's just five minutes, because I think of it as listening to myself and my life and sort of where I am.

You don't need to know anything special in order to meditate. I tell people it's not about pushing thoughts out of your mind and trying to empty your brain. It's about learning to just kind of let them go by and learning that you don't have to follow every rabbit hole. That comes your mind's way and just letting yourself be a human with no responsibilities or commitments for however brief that time is, whether it's 30 seconds or whether it's three hours, that's something I do every day.

Helga: Thank you. 

Fredara Hadley: Thank you. Thank you. This was fun and scary. 

Helga: Why is it scary? 

Fredara Hadley: You ask great questions. You ask great questions. You ask great questions. 

Helga: That was my conversation with Fredera Hadley. I'm Helga Davis. Thank you for listening to Season 6 of Helga. As in past seasons, we continue to create an atmosphere where fierce inquiry is at home.

Through the eyes of our guests, we explore a broad range of perspectives and ideas built on a foundation of curiosity and care. We always remember that these are conversations. Moments where something transformative can awaken in each of us. Together, we plant the seeds. We lay a path for what's possible in our lives and in our world.

Thank you for listening. See you next season. To connect with the show, drop us a line at helga at wnyc dot org. We'll send you a link to our show page with every episode of this and past seasons, and resources for all the artists, authors, and musicians who have come up in conversation. And if you want to support the show, please leave us a comment and rating on any of your favorite podcast platforms.

And now for the coda. 

Fredara Hadley: This is called Black Florida Woman and I wrote it. Florida, that southern peninsula shaped like a gun. The jokes write themselves and I've heard most of them. Someone does something crazy and the response is they must be from Florida. Florida, a state full of retirees, so people often say, Florida, that place where people go to die.

I hear the jeers too, oh we can't wait for the state to sink and disappear. Or why don't the alligators eat the people too? And it stings because Florida is home. I grew up in a neighborhood that was white and then black Caribbean. The Caribbean kids would all ask each other, where are you from? And they'd say, Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad. And then they would ask me, and I would sheepishly say, here. Incredulity and confusion crossed their little brown faces, and they'd ask me, but where are your parents from? And again, timidly, I'd say, here. Then, in that moment, I learned that Florida isn't a place that you're from. It's a place where you are.

But I was from Florida. I am from Florida. My mama is from Tampa. My daddy is from Tallahassee. All four of my grandparents are buried in Florida. My daddy's family lived and died on plantations in Florida. So if anyone is from Florida, it's the indigenous people who cultivated it and it's the black folks who survived it. It's ours. And it's us, it's not theirs. Few things make me angry or defensive, but the apathy and contempt smug Northerners have for my beautiful home state, a place where the blood and sweat made the citrus grow, is one of those things. I don't know the hated place of which they speak. When I think of home, I think of a place where love is overflowing.

A black Florida home that I'm proud to share with Zora Neale Hurston, Augusta Savage, Cannonball Adderley, and with my ancestors and my community. A black Florida home where my childhood backyard was more like a nature preserve, with a canal filled with tadpoles, fish, and alligators, and a yard with bountiful sugar cane and citrus and banana trees.

A black Florida home that first taught me the complex abundance of global blackness, and introduced me to rice and peas, curry chicken, and Jamaican patties. The state song may have been a minstrel tune. Those megalomaniac politicians may be diabolically racist. But Florida is ours and not theirs. And the sun still shines on black Floridians.

Zora Neale Hurston knew this, and I'm grateful to have black Florida water flowing in my soul. Amen. 

Helga: Oh, amen. Should we do our praise break?

Fredara Hadley: Ain't no cell phones up in here. I should've brought my tambourine.

Helga: Season 6 of Helga is a co-production of WNYC Studios and the Brown Arts Institute at Brown University. The show is produced by Alex Ambrose and David Norval, with help from Rachel Arewa, and recorded by Bill Sigmund at Digital Island Studios in New York. Our technical director is Sapir Rosenblatt, and our executive producer is Elizabeth Nonemaker.

Original music by Michel Ndegeocello and Jason Moran. Avery Willis Hoffman is our executive producer at the Brown Arts Institute, along with Producing Director, Jessica Wasilewski. WQXR's Chief Content Officer is Ed Yim.

 

Copyright © 2022 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.