Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm Melissa Harris-Perry and you're listening to The Takeaway. It's August and some are grabbing their final vacay days. Other folks are already heading back to school. Out in the Bay Area, in Oakland, California, there are some local communities celebrating Blind Joe Capers month. It is an unofficial designation, but one that remembers the musical legacy of a man who helped create the Oakland sound of the 1980s and '90s, hip-hop and R&B style.
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Others try to hang but they just can't cope,
they must come to realize it's the Oakland Stroke.
Speaker: I know you're going to dig this.
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Melissa Harris-Perry: A musical producer, businessman, husband, and father, Joe Capers was also blind. His life and work are part of a long tradition of Black disabled artists whose work lives at the center of American music.
Leroy Moore Jr.: The blues is all full of blind, disabled musicians. You have Blind Lemon Jefferson. You have Blind Joe Capers.
Melissa Harris-Perry: This is Leroy Moore Jr, a Black disabled writer, activist, and author of Black Disabled Art History 101. He works to preserve and amplify the contributions of artists like Blind Joe Capers
Leroy Moore Jr: For me, senior Josh White was a folk singer. When he was nine years old, he was a guide person for a lot of blues singers down south. There's a whole lot of history of Black disabled singers in not only blues. We go back to the medicine shows. You can go back to the freak shows, unfortunately. I say that the music industry is the bones of Black disabled people.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Mr. Moore Jr. is also the founder of Krip-Hop Nation.
Leroy Moore Jr: Krip-Hop Nation is an international network of hip-hop artists and other musicians with disabilities. It started almost like about 15 years ago and it's international. We do advocacy education. We also, of course, do music. We have chapters all around the world, our really good chapters are in Africa. We're building a school in Tanzania. We've got a studio in Kenya so we're doing some really good work.
Melissa Harris-Perry: As it celebrates the accomplishments of disabled artists, Krip-Hop Nation also intervenes in the complicated conversations at the intersection of music and identity. When I sat down with Mr. Moore, he had plenty to say about the recent dustup surrounding Beyonce's latest album Renaissance.
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Got a lot of bands, got a lot of Ivy on me
I gotta fan myself off, I gotta fan myself off
Melissa Harris-Perry: Now if you haven't heard about it, the Queen took a little heat for the album's track, Heated, and her use of a word that's an offensive slang term, often used as a cruel depiction of those who experience muscle spasms as a result of disability. Earlier this year, Disability Advocates also criticized Lizzo for using the word in her song Grrrls. In response, both artists have changed the lyrics in their songs. I asked Leroy Moore Jr about the controversy.
Leroy Moore Jr: A lot of us Black disabled activists have been trying to get on media to talk about really important issues like police brutality, wrongful incarceration, and racism in the disabled community. Kris-Hop just won an Emmy this year and we get a call from you here and now about Beyonce's song. That tells you a lot what to me, I think is important because I did some research on Google and that term goes back to the late 1970s.
You really ask the question, when is this controversy going to change the music industry for disabled musicians? Is it just going to be a clash of hands and we go home? That's what I said in my poem. I did a poem called The Disabled Language Cop. I asked all of this lyrical stuff what's going to change. Who's going to do the work? Who's going to help Krip-Hop, UCLA, and other people do on-the-ground work?
Melissa Harris-Perry: I love your point. No calls to talk about housing or incarceration, but let's all talk about Beyonce because definitely, the biggest issue facing the Black disabled community is a song lyric.
Leroy Moore Jr: I'll tell you too. Beyonce and Lizzo have a history of working with Black disabled women. Lizzo talks about body image. It's like why are we coming after two women that really have done a little work around Black disabled issues?
Melissa Harris-Perry: As much as it's irritating to get that call, "Let's talk about Beyonce." I know also, one of the reasons that activists respond to the call is because it's still an opening. It's an opportunity to put other issues on the agenda. As we go on, I want to give you that opportunity, if you were creating an agenda for media around intersectional issues and disability, what would be maybe the top two or three or four things that you want to get the media phone call about?
Leroy Moore Jr: The top two is that we have to hold our politicians to the fire. Our disability laws are not fully funded. They're not fully implemented. Because we don't have th locale laws. Number two for myself, because I've been doing it since the 1980s is police brutality against people with disabilities. That really hasn't had a Black disabled radical voice in the media.
Melissa Harris-Perry: As Leroy walked me through this and set a new agenda, I still really wanted to know, for those of us who don't make music, but we love music, how do we balance our personal and political commitments with enjoying the artists we love? I certainly understand myself to be a feminist. I understand myself to be committed to issues of gender equity, but I do love some really raunchy hip-hop. I was raised on hip-hop. A lot of it is very patriarchal and deeply troubling. Talk to me a little bit about being disabled and nonetheless, finding a way to love hip-hop in the context of also acknowledging, recognizing, and experiencing the ableism that's in it.
Leroy Moore Jr: Oh, yes. That's my life. I love hip-hop. You have certain authors like Morgan with When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost. You have that where it talks about women in hip-hop. It's the same thing around disability. Yes, I love my hip-hop. I have the ability to push back and say, "Okay, yes, I like the lyrics, but I need to educate at the same time." Once again, that's what Krip-Hop has been doing, and will continue to do here at UCLA with a new hip-hop initiative.
Melissa Harris-Perry: That's Leroy Moore Jr, co-founder of Krip-Hop Nation.
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