Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 187: Freedom Singer — with Khari Wendell McClelland
Speakers: Alyha Bardi, Am Johal, Khari Wendell McClelland
[music plays: "Feels Real Good” by Khari McLelland]
Alyha Bardi 0:10
Hello listeners. I'm Alyha with Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. On this episode of Below the Radar. Our host, Am Johal is joined by Khari Wendell McClelland, a diversely talented musician, writer, and community facilitator who speaks about music as a way of community building and healing. We hope you enjoy the episode
Am Johal 0:49
Hello welcome to Below the Radar delighted that you could join us again this week. We're really happy to have Khari Wendell McLelland joining us. Welcome Khari.
Khari McLelland 1:00
Thank you so much, Am. Pleasure to be here.
Am Johal 1:03
Yeah, Khari, maybe we could start with you introducing yourself a little bit.
Khari McLelland 1:07
Sure I live, work, rest and play on the unseeded territories of the Musqueam, the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh people, I also often like to share that I live in sort of the Strathcona and the Downtown Eastside, and that I come from a place that has a long history of organizing that has a long history of people really being engaged and concerned about the welfare of their community, their families, but also, you know, much larger interest, such as the labor movement and the war against people who use drugs and stuff like that. So I feel really pleased and sort of blessed to have the opportunity to live and work and grow and to learn from the community of people, those people who are part of the larger community, but also the very specific blocks in the neighborhood that I live in.
Am Johal 2:03
Khari, you just a few weeks ago, did some amazing music at the community engaged research initiative conference. So you've been doing music for a very long time? And were you singing like, since you were a baby? Or How soon did it start?
Khari McLelland 2:20
I mean, I kind of feel like, you know, all children have this sense of connection to the arts, to musicality, there's a natural curiosity around sound and movement and a visual. And, yeah, I definitely was one of those kids, I think, you know, I remember always being very curious, and my family always supplying me with random instruments. And that really fueled the curiosity that I think was already present. But I will bring back like, I think there's a way in which we live in a time in an era where there's sort of a specialization around people doing things that people used to all do together for 1000s of years. And now it's just like, oh, only 5% of the people deserve to have access to music, for instance, which I understand to be like a healing modality for our communities, and that it's much less important that any individual be allotted in that space, and much more important that the community have access to the tools for their own making their own healing. Yeah.
Am Johal 3:32
When you started doing music professionally, and putting out your own albums, I'm wondering if you can talk about that part of the process. And you know, working out of the school for Contemporary Arts at SFU, there's a lot of students and grad students early in their process of art making, be they in visual arts, or composition or film and these types of things, and how people go out and experiment with work and put things out into the world is always an interesting story. How people arrive at that point.
Khari McLelland 4:03
Yeah, I mean, I think music has a particular flavor to it, because it is so ephemeral, like, you can write a song and then perform it, you can improvise a song in the moment and share it. And it can have real meaningful impact for yourself and for the people that are around you. And I think some of the other mediums don't have that sense of immediacy that, like if you do a painting, it's there. And people can refer to it over and over again, if there's a book or a poem, or, you know, it's something that you can come back to or refer to over and over again, it kind of takes on a life of its own. But when you actually share a song in front of people, it has this different quality. And like, I guess I would say, I really encourage people to find a community of peers who can play with you in that space, because it's the only reason why it's sustainable. Often it's not financially sustainable. It has to really be about I think, a sense of joy that you receive. And it can be very personal and like, a solo practice is totally something that a lot of people have, but I really think for things to thrive, that it needs to be part of a community. And I think Brian Eno talks about scenius versus genius, this idea that the individuals who are allotted and that you see in the space, doing their thing, the reason why you see them is because of the support and the sort of mirror that a really strong community provides for an artist. And so yeah, I mean, from that space of just playing and like having so much enthusiasm. I started doing gigs and once I'd done enough gigs, of course, I think I started thinking about what it meant to record to, you know, share my music in a different kind of way. And by and large, I think I'm pretty pleased with the things that I've recorded and they grow on me with time, I think initially, I tend to be very critical of the things that I record. But I think as I get a little bit older, I'm more forgiving of myself. And it feels nice to not feel so much pressure to be a thing. But to just be at ease with, with where things are at. And to understand even the recording as an iterative process to understand the performance as an iterative process that I'm just trying, every time I'm trying every time I find more or less grace, I try to learn from I try to be with, and my sense over many years is that as long as I'm willing to stay connected with the group, the audience, the community of people that are gathered, whether I say the exact right words or not, people just feel when you really want to connect with them. And when you're present with them, both listening and sharing. And so that's what I often share with people in terms of that, that relationship of being with others, and sharing artists to really just try to connect and be present. And with time and enough practice, we all start to build deeper and more powerful relationship with the tools that we're using.
Am Johal 7:18
Now with your music projects, you've collaborated with others many times, and you also have a lot of research that goes into your projects as well. And I think particularly for the students are going to find that part of the process interesting. I wonder if you can just speak to when you've done collaborative project, what that look like and what you've learned from it in the process of your musical projects?
Khari McLelland 7:42
Yeah, so I think there's like the formal aspect of the collaboration, which of those kind of institutional, organizational collaborations. Then there's also that individual level of collaboration, say, the musicians that I work with or record with or write with, or, and then there's also the miscellaneous community members who, without their input, none of it would have ever happened. And they are often not the people who are in the liner notes, but maybe they should be, but I feel like my liner notes would be really long. You know, it's folks like I remember with a freedom singer project, in particular, Freedom singer, I'll just briefly describe for people, it's a historical work, me trying to find the music that might have connected to my great, great, great grandmother, Kizzey's journey out of enslavement into Canada in the 18, mid 1800s. And the complications around that idea of like Canada as the safe harbor. Just as a quick historical note, there were times when people who were enslaved in Canada were trying to escape to the northern US, because it was safer for them there. That's a complication to that story that isn't often communicated, but it's the sort of thing that happens in freedom singer. So talking about the collaborative journey. So first of all, the reason why I even went on the journey is because Carolyn smart's frost, a Governor General, award winning author and professor handed me a book in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. And I was immediately like, Who is this lady, I felt a little bit dismissive because I think one of the things that can happen is if you share stuff on stage, and sometimes people can feel like they really know your deal, and what's going on with you. And there's a way in which, sometimes when I just get off stage, I'm a little bit protective of myself. And I feel like I gave a lot when I'm on this stage. In this instance, she just said, you know, I heard what you said on stage, I've got this book, I think it might have relevance to you and your journey, and I put it in my bag, and I didn't even think about it. And then I got to the hotel room. I picked it up. And I was like, Well, this is a you had that Governor General sticker on it, you know, the governor general work, and I was like, oh, maybe this is half decent. And then I started reading it. And I was completely riveted. I was like, Oh my gosh. And so Carolyn happened to put her business card or contact in the book. And I immediately called her and was like, well, this book is amazing. Like, I really feel this, that I started asking about the epigraphs those little quotations at the beginning of the chapter. And I was like, What are these things? Are these songs that she was like, No, sometimes just songs, poems. And it just clicked in my head. I was like, Oh, I've got to find the songs that accompanied my ancestors on their journey into freedom. And I need to know the music that helped to sustain them because I really believe that practice of music and community is a lifesaver. And so I set out on this journey and along the way, like Carol I had, you know, ended up working with the CBC ended up working with Project humanity, a theater company based in Toronto. But again, the reason why those collaborations happened were completely random. I told somebody in a cafe who I often with see in the cafe, oh, I just got grant from Canada Council. I don't know exactly how I should use the money. But I've got a strong intuition that I should do something that's kind of journalistic and documentary style and told another person and I think it should have a theater iteration. And both of those people randomly hooked me up with the very people who I would end up collaborating with throughout, one of the things that I really understand is that so much of my grace, and my blessings come from my, my willingness to reach out to community. And in that often I am met with something that is much more powerful and more grand that I could think of on my own. So from those very informal collaborations, which is just telling community about what you care about, all the way to these much more structural collaborations with an org, like the CBC, or a theater company, or with dealing with different aspects of touring and stuff like that. All of it really starts with this relationship development and this willingness to share what you care about with community. With that particular project. People could just see the strength of the idea or the concept, and it resonated with people. I think a lot of people have a strong sense of wanting to connect to the places that they come from, and this as a historical vehicle to understand Canada in a different way. Yeah, I hope that's helpful.
Am Johal 12:33
Yeah, absolutely. You know, Khari, along with your music, you have so many other practices, at least that you weren't including facilitation. I know more recently, you've also been teaching at SFU in the community capacity building program, wondering if you can speak a little bit to how you started out doing facilitation work and some of the projects you're working on now.Because not only do you have a kind of deep local connection in terms of your relationships here, but you're also doing this work in different cities and internationally as well.
Khari McLelland 13:07
Yeah, so I used to live in a house off of Commercial Drive called the towers. One was Anna Hilliard, who was part of an organization called sisterhood and did a lot of stuff around youth political organization organizing and, and then Rupinder Sidhu, Singh Siidhu, aka Rupy, my daughter calls Rup Chacha, which is like my dad's younger brother in Punjabi. So Rup, who was really, really tight with a fantastic friend of ours, named Sara Kendall, also a deep organizer, also now a doctor, who was like, Hey, I'm going to do this youth camp, and you should come with me. And I was like, really a youth camp. I was like, I had not really done any youth focused work before. And I was like, Ah, I don't know. Like, I think I need to stick around. I gotta make some dough, like, try and find some work, blah, blah, blah. And they were like, we'll pay you $400. I was like, Okay, I'll do it. It was like, one of those things where, yeah, I needed dough. And I wasn't sure about this project to go and be with a bunch of teenagers. And it ended up being one of the single most pivotal, transformational moments in my life. When I went there. And I saw another version of community that I really aspired to want to live in and be around more. And it was through that one youth camp. I was like, okay, Sign me up again. I did another couple and then I was like, Hey, how do I get more training in this? I might have some capacity or aptitude for doing this kind of work. I ended up doing a thing called the heart of facilitation. Peggy Taylor Hanif Rizal, in Portland, Peggy Taylor, based in the Whitby Seattle area. And I went to the States for six months, each month for a weekend, and hung out with a bunch of other people doing this training. And, again, it was one of those transformational moments in my life, like really helped to reshape how I understood myself and what was possible with groups and community. And from there, I started doing camps as a lead facilitator, I started doing trainings on basic ideas and concept around facilitation. And then I started to move more and more away from the use space and into adult spaces, and started really digging the idea of doing bringing the kind of facilitation that I really care about into my local community and to figure out how it could be an asset or of use here. And I started doing a lot of public engagement work around substance use around and with folks in the Downtown Eastside. megaphone is one of the organizations that have had a consistent and long standing relationship, both in terms of supporting them through public engagement, speaking series, public talks and that sort of thing, but also in terms of training peer to people with lived experience of substance use precarious housing, that sort of thing, to be able to speak, and hold space as facilitators themselves, instead of always having to bring someone like me. And I really love that that transference of knowledge. It's also happened for me, in Jamaica, in Uganda, working with folks in youth centered programs over there in those places in like supporting their staff to become empowered to no longer need me, which is somewhat heartbreaking. Because Jamaica is real nice, and I like going there. But also the goal was ultimately for me to not be the person who they needed to rely on to support them in the work that they were doing that they could do that work themselves that they had that kind of capacity. So yeah, that's a little bit about the facilitation side. And then with CCB, at SFU, I was asked by Laura Cuthbert Gaaysiigad, who is an amazing organizer, does great work with top Bayless map, incredible instructors, incredible facilitator great presence, they invited me in to be one of the instructors for this new course CCB. And so this is I'm currently instructing the fourth cohort. And I mean, what a dynamic, incredible group of people like, basically, this is community capacity building is the title of the course. It's really seeking to bring in students who often aren't accredited through university. So some people are PhDs and some people haven't finished high school have had very little formal schooling, and then puts them in a space together, and really, I think, successfully re evaluates, who has the capacity and the right to organize in their communities. And also, who has the wisdom to bear in any particular moment, when trying to figure out things to try to problem solve, trying to meet the demands and challenges that communities have. And like, I hope that the pedagogy the way of educating and understanding is shifting in this space, to such a degree that we actually realize that the person who might have the answer the person who might have the most wisdom around any given challenge or topic, could be someone who in the larger society or world is not again, accredited with letters or platitudes, but has a deep wisdom and a deep understanding, a deep capacity for observation, and problem solving, that absolutely our communities need. And so that's sort of the work that's happening there. And definitely my facilitation experience comes in. And I would say throughout all of the sort of work that I've described, whether it's, you know, me facilitating, digital progressive organizers conference, or whether it's at CCB, or whether it's a bunch of youth, I really understand the arts as a central pillar, experiential learning, as central pillars to the way that I understand facilitation, and that includes, like embodied practices, and includes on and play, and the arts are generally.
Am Johal 19:38
It’ll be one thing if you're just a musician Khari, but you're like also facilitating, you're also teaching you got like a serious Triple Threat thing going on there. Pretty good.
Khari McLelland 19:49
I appreciate that.
Am Johal 19:50
And interesting, you mentioned Megaphone Magazine, just this afternoon, we're going to be restarting the community journalism program, which first started back in 2011. It was sort of disrupted by the pandemic period. And here at 312 Main, there's going to be a group of people from a megaphone, coming to do a five week course, as well. They're such a wonderful organization to be working with. Now Khari, I see that you've picked up a hobby of sailing, how did that start?
Khari McLelland 20:19
It's totally a pandemic thing. I kind of jokingly begrudgingly had a conversation with my partner. And she was like, I really think it would be great to move to Bowen. And I'm from Detroit, I'm big city boy. And I was like, the only way I'd ever moved to an island is if I had a boat. And she was like, at the very beginning of the pandemic, she was like, Well, you know, you're not working right now, this is a perfect opportunity for you to go that boat thing. So I actually ended up taking some sailing courses at the Jericho sailing centre, through Mac sailing. And I gotta tell you, I never felt more present or more free or more empowered it’s something about connecting with the forces of wind and the water, the tides, really having to be present, otherwise, your safety and your well being is in danger. And so it really requires you to be really focused and present in at the beginning of the pandemic, I felt really disempowered. I felt really isolated. And even though it wasn't necessarily that I was with in the boat with a lot of people I was by myself, I still felt like I was connected to something larger than myself in a way that felt really, really amazing. And so that started the love affair. And now you know, I'm about to take my Royal Yacht Association Day Skippers course, I'm going to be on the water in a huge keel boat for five days without being on land, to get my skills together. So it's definitely been a journey. And it's kind of funny, too, I really associated sailing with rich white guys, I don't know, I didn't really feel myself in that space. But then when I actually started to just do the thing, I really started to also become very interested in the history of just folks all over the world and their sailing traditions. And like there's a rich, rich, rich, rich, diverse history of people who have sailed in this world and who have connected to the water and have done long, long, long journeys on the water. Previous to all the colonial efforts of Europe and that sort of thing. This stuff is often lauded in this western context is like the sailing history. There's a long long history that is connected to all the peoples on all the continent in connection to being on the water and connecting with the water in a powerful way. So yeah, I'm I'm really, really excited for where this journey will take me boats are really expensive. So that's the thing that I'm trying to like, figure out and contend with. There's lots of coops, which I'm a big fan of, and I'm also a new dad as like November 24 2020. So like very kind of early now pandemic. And that has also reshaped how I think about things. But also, it makes me be really cautious about spending a lot of money on a thing that my family may need later on, for whatever reason. So yeah, I'm still navigating the waters around how I will continue my boat love. But I think it's really been a great, it's been a bomb, B A L B. It's been the bomb for me during the pandemic. And yeah, I'm excited to see where the journey takes me.
Am Johal 23:38
Yeah. Khari, is there anything you'd like to add?
Khari McLelland 23:41
Oh, you mean? Like, is there any more that I want to add? Yeah, I think one of the things that I haven't talked about, and I know there's this way in which there's a history of gendered interaction around family and like professionals talking about their work. Like, I think there's a way that women often are asked about like parenting will affect their work. And men aren't often asked those questions. But I just want to speak directly to folks who are parents out there, and who are trying to navigate what it means to work and be a parent, it's absolutely the single hardest thing that I've ever tried to do is be a parent, this also for anybody who maybe feels like the parenting that they received wasn't always the parenting that they wanted or needed, I think there can be this extra pressure that we put ourselves to heal some of those wounds for ourselves, but also to just like be that thing that we really needed. And so I think if I had another thing to share with folks who are out there, and who are parenting, to be easy with yourself, to be kind to yourself, and to seek resources where you need them. And like that might look like therapy that might look like the community center group to play with could be other parents, it could be the park, I don't know what those resources are. But don't be afraid to reach out to others around the journey, because I think it is absolutely one of the most important roles that our society has. And also one of the roles that is clearly not supported in the way that it should be, whether it's daycare, or whether it's like actually supporting the labor that is often again, labor that women are dealing in the world around raising children. So if I had to, yeah, bring one more thing forward for the show. It would be around really, for people who are parenting, but also for the people around people who are parenting, to really understand the journey that people are going through who are parenting, and to see your support of them and their families as a way of supporting community. And if they're in a household that isn't being resourced or supported, we'll see that too, later on. And so, you know, for a lot of us who are really concerned with community and serving community, one of the simple and straightforward and also laborious ways is to actually support people who have who are raising children to help them in that work and to offer how you might be of service to them and you know, our future.
Am Johal 26:18
Khari, thank you so much for joining us on Below the Radar.
Khari McLelland 26:23
Yeah, thank you.
Am Johal 26:24
Yeah. Wonderful to speak with you.
Khari McLelland 26:25
Yeah, a pleasure. Thank you so much Am.
[music plays: "Feels Real Good” by Khari McLelland]
Alyha Bardi 26:36
Below the Radar is a knowledge democracy podcast created by SFU’s VanCity Office of Community Engagement. Thanks for listening to this episode with Khari Wendell McClelland check out the show notes below for Khari’s website and his other creative endeavors. Make sure to subscribe to Below the Radar on your podcasting app of choice, and follow us on Twitter @SFU_VOCE to stay up to date on our podcast and other events we host thanks again for tuning in.
["Feels Real Good” by Khari McLelland fades]