[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: I'm Melissa Harris-Perry here with you on The Takeaway, where we're spending the week getting playful. Yesterday, we got in the ropes with some double Dutch, and today we're getting playful with our voices. Meet musician Brandon Ethridge.

Hunter Walker: What happened to you?

Onion Elizabeth: I got Maced.

Brandon Ethridge: Hey, everybody. My name is Brandon. For about a year now, I've been making what I call minimusicals.

Speaker: When I say "experts," it sounds like I'm saying I don't really trust the experts because I don't. I know it sounds like these people are singing, but actually, they're just speaking. When you speak, every word has a pitch. Also, every person speaks in rhythm.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Just listen to how Brandon plays with our rhythms.

Brandon Ethridge: People keep asking me if I change the voices in my videos to make it sound like they're singing. I don't. All I do is play piano. If I stop playing piano, then it sounds normal speaking. If I start again, then it sounds like singing. The way I do this is I just play the notes that the person is speaking, but I don't play the exact notes because that would sound absolutely terrible. Instead, I play notes that fit the chords.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, you might have heard this viral meme.

Elizabeth: I got maced in there.

Hunter: You got maced? What happened when you were trying to go inside the Capitol?

Onion Elizabeth: Yes, I made like a foot inside and they pushed me out and they maced me.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Or maybe you've seen his videos featuring over-the-top rantings of so-called Karens.

Speaker: I did not sign up for this. I'm a Christian woman of God and you are not going to put your disgusting rules on me that are false and not true. I will not have it. You understand that?

Melissa Harris-Perry: I sat down with musician, composer, musical director, and social media creator Brandon Ethridge Ethridge to talk about these minimusicals.

Brandon Ethridge: First, I find a video that's either really funny, or really shocking, or really interesting in some way and listen to the voice and see if there's a lot of good stuff in there. When people speak, they speak on pitch. They don't even think about it. Think about it is what I just said, by accident.

People are singing all the time when they speak and I just figured out what those notes are. I'm analyzing note by note, syllable by syllable, and then that gives me the melody to play on the piano. I play piano to people speaking and then suddenly it sounds like they're singing. It's just this transformation, and I'm not using autotune. People have seen the autotune videos, where the voices sound like robots and are very rhythmic. Instead, I just leave it totally natural, totally organic, and just play music to it and it sounds like they're singing.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What if I just were to say something? I'm thinking, for example, if you're hearing music everywhere and that's part of your minimusical making, what if we just started talking about a squeaking air conditioner, for example? Would you start--

Brandon Ethridge: Squeaking air conditioner. You just said squeaking air conditioner. Basically, that's pretty close. I don't have a perfect pitch, it's always better for me to sit at the piano and figure it out.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Hey, y'all. Brandon actually did just that and he came up with this, "What if we just started talking about a squeaking air conditioner?" I love that. Now, tell me how this all got started? I got maced with your first minimusical?

Brandon Ethridge: A Facebook friend showed this video. It was already viral. She posted it up.

Elizabeth: I got maced-

Hunter: You got maced?

Elizabeth: -in there.

Brandon Ethridge: It's a young woman who, as she tried to enter the Capitol, was pepper-sprayed. She's being interviewed shortly thereafter. She was in distress, got maced in her eyes and she's complaining about it. My Facebook friend said, "Hey, somebody make music to this." I'm like, "Why not? I'll give it a try." I gave it a try and it was really, really funny. I was about to post it and I thought, "No, I can't do this. I can't make fun of this. This is not a funny situation."

Then went to bed. Didn't think about it much. Got up the next morning, looked at it again and it's like, "Damn, this is funny. I'm posting it," and so I did.

Elizabeth: We're still in the Capitol. It's a revolution.

Brandon Ethridge: Got like 3 million views or something. It's crazy. I'm like, "I'll do another one." I just kept turning out the minimusicals one after another on different themes. I tried to get away from politics because we don't want politics ruling our lives all the time.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It is a good point that in doing these, you're making not only music, but you're also making commentary. You're navigating all the challenges that comedians, that pundits, that folks trying to get us to stop and take a look at our world are always navigating. Does that part feel harder than the music-making part for you?

Brandon Ethridge: If all you do is just take someone who's being very serious or very angry and then play light bounce music to it, it immediately becomes this parody and every listener can feel something from that music. From that version of the story, let's say.

The music does it for me. It's not the same as being a joke or writing a commentary. The music is so powerful. All you have to do is just go against the grain of the words being said and it immediately gives it a different vibe.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Let's listen to a drunk Karen.

[music]

Speaker: She's a representative of the aircraft. They don't want you flying on their plane today, that I need you to get off.

Speaker: You need me to get up? You may need me to get up, but you know what? I feel my need to do as a person just like Jesus motherfucking Christ.

Speaker: You need to calm down.

Speaker: No, no, I'm going to do what I'm going to do. I'm going to say when I need do. If you're going to do whatever you feel you need do to me--

Melissa Harris-Perry: You've got this inebriated woman refusing to get off a plane. Oh, man, the Karens are so good. How did you start with the Karens?

Brandon Ethridge: Higher-pitched voices, when people get angry, their voices go up much higher. That makes it sound much more like singing already and then it just works better with the genre of making music to it. Someone's just tired and talking like this, then there's not much melody in the voice and there's no spirit to it. My videos tend to be people who are a little bit, in some way, excited or angry.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I wonder if we could cultivate that capacity to hear the agitation of others with that melody in the background. If it might, I don't know, give us a little bit more of a sense of humor or maybe a softer ear or eye to encounter one another. Maybe bring down our own blood pressure a bit in circumstances where folks are getting agitated. I wonder if this is an actual tool we can use in that moment?

Brandon Ethridge: If we can make that work, that would be wonderful. I know that the people who watch my videos have said exactly that. It is helping them really process this thing that was making them angry and they're able to see it lighter now and not be so bothered by it. That's wonderful. If I can do that public service right there with a video, that's amazing and I'm very proud of that, actually.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Let's listen to one more. I want to listen to apparently kid.

[music]

Speaker: What did you think about the ride?

Speaker: It was great. Apparently, I've never been on live television before, but apparently, sometimes I don't watch the news because I'm a kid. Apparently, every time, apparently, grandpa just gives me the remote after he watched the Powerball.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I love this. [chuckles]

Brandon Ethridge: He's got such good mic technique. Actually, when he starts running out of breath to say the Powerball and almost has nothing left to get that last syllable out, he holds the microphone closer. It's amazing. [chuckles]

Melissa Harris-Perry: I've got an eight-year-old. In the last year, her word was technically. She would use it just all the time. At one point she said, "Technically, I'm in love with," and then named the boy in her class that she was technically in love with. It was just killing us, so I love apparently kid. [chuckles] We're doing stories all this week about the importance of play. The ways that play can open up our minds and maybe even open up our democracy a little bit. Do you find joy in playing music and in creating your minimusicals?

Brandon Ethridge: Oh, my goodness. Sometimes I just laugh tears while I'm doing it. It's one of the most joyful pastimes I've found, is creating this music. I will literally be at home crying with laughter. That's joy.

[laughter]

Melissa Harris-Perry: Is the process playful? It sounds as though it is. If it's joyful, then I'm assuming that there's a play. I always think of play as the thing that you're willing to get a little dirty, a little muddy, a little sweaty while you're doing it because it is so much fun.

Brandon Ethridge: That is correct. The beginning stages of any minimusical is a lot of analysis and thinking and trying out from different angles. Any of these songs could be played in practically any tempo or any style, first of all. Although, some people, when they speak, have such a strong rhythm. You can't go against it, but there are lots of different factors that you can try out lots of different variables. Yes, that is a grueling process sometimes, but sometimes, but as soon as you hit it and you know what it is, that's when the joy comes in.

Yes. With about 90% of them the ones I've tried, I've managed to get there and I've thrown 10% of them away just knowing this is never going to be anything. It's just not funny. It's not fun to watch. It's not meaningful. It's not beautiful. Can't get it every time.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Right. Part of playing is falling down. It's not play if it's a perfected performance.

Brandon Ethridge: Oh Yes. If you win and succeed every single time, then the winning and succeeding is just not even fun anymore. Not that I know what that's like, but I just imagine. Yes. [laughs]

Melissa Harris-Perry: I was like if you say so.

[laughter]

All right. I want to play two back-to-back one that is yours and one that is someone else's, but they're both riffing off of the same, moment. I want to play them and then maybe talk about how an ear comes to something so different. This one is called I demand a vaccination.

[music]

Speaker: I execute judgment on you. COVID-19 I execute judgment on you. Satan you destroyer you killer, you get out, you wicked power, you get off this nation. I demand judgment on you. I demand a vaccination to come immediately. Yes.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now let's listen to the heavy metal version.

[music]

Speaker: I execute judgment on you COVID-19, I execute judgment on you Satan I demand judgment on you. I demand I demand a vaccination to come immediately.

Melissa Harris-Perry: How do you end up with such different ending points from the same starting point?

Brandon Ethridge: Yes. It's goodness. [laughs]. What he is doing is creating these amazing heavy metal arrangements to go underneath the voice. The voice is the driver of the rhythm, but not necessarily pitch. I focus more on the pitch thing. Besides pianos really don't do what electric guitars do.

I love metal. It's just, I'm not much of a guitarist. I'm good at piano. Piano's more tinkly and bouncy usually [laughs], or it can be beautiful and meaningful too, but it's not going to be that heavy. I've done a couple of heavy metal ones on the piano. It's not as powerful as a guitar. Let me tell you.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Since you're here, talk to me a little bit about how you got started in music and how you think of yourself as a musician.

Brandon Ethridge: That was a very strange journey. When I was a kid, I did play piano, but I also played soccer and ran track, and did boy scouts. They were all about equally important or unimportant to me. Somehow miraculously, in my senior year of high school, this piano professor from Wichita State University, that's in Wichita, Kansas, where I grew up, occurred me play at a recital.

Just on the spot said, he wants me to come with him to Arizona State University, where he's going to begin teaching and he'll get me a tuition scholarship. I said, "I'm not going to study music." He says, "You've got to it's like full tuition." It's like, "Okay." Then I literally went there without ever music having been my passion really. Then when I started practicing and working hard at it, I made huge strides.

I became obsessed with it, wanted to become a big classical concert pianist. Then I later discovered that's like saying at age 18 or 19, you want to go to the Olympics as a figure skater doesn't quite work that way. Then that went through many different stages where I started doing theater music, then musical theater, then rock bands. Now I've covered a whole lot of bases with my music. I even briefly had a rock band where I played guitar and sang and played bass and all that stuff popped punk. That didn't earn me any money. I went back to piano. You got to pay the bills.

Melissa Harris-Perry: In certain ways. I love that I think we can get to this space where we assume that those who do adore and love their jobs are in no way motivated by the need to pay bills and eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I love the idea that sometimes we're dragged into it from something like a scholarship and stay with it in part because it pays the bills, but can still find the play in it.

Brandon Ethridge: Goodness. Yes. It became my absolute obsession and just the thing that I love most.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I so appreciate you taking the time while you're on the road while you're a little jet lag to nonetheless give us a little bit of minimusical love.

Brandon Ethridge: Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate you having me on the program. It's been a real joy talking to you.

Melissa Harris-Perry: That was Brandon Ethridge, who makes many musicals that you'll find on his TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, and one last composition from Brandon. We're calling this one, The Takeaway minimusical. All right. Y'all that's The Takeaway for today.

Thanks so much for being with us. If you missed anything, you definitely want to listen back. Head on over to wherever you can find audio, subscribe to our podcast, hit that like button, and share. Of course, call us with your stories, your ideas, your reactions. Call us at 877-8-MY-TAKE. That's 877-869-8253 or jump on the Twitter machine and tweet us @thetakeaway. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and this is The Takeaway. Meet me right back here tomorrow.

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