Dom L'Amour speaks with Artist Bovell AKA Kaylan Royston (@kaylan.bovellroyston) about Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Black History month
As Dom L'Amour, I found myself weaving through the intricate tapestries of mixed-race identity and Black History with my insightful guest, Bovell, otherwise known as Kaylan Royston. We embark on a journey that celebrates the legendary Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the undeniable influence of African American women in crafting the cultural phenomenon of rock and roll. Our dialogue dances around the themes of self-discovery and collective empowerment, recognizing Black History Month as more than a period of recognition—it's a gateway to self-forgiveness and embracing the joy that thrives within the Black experience. By casting a spotlight on the power of positive representation and the arts, we beckon our listeners to join us in fostering empathy and unraveling the shared threads of our histories.
The very fabric of this episode is stitched with the narratives of educational impact and the navigation through America's racially woven social landscape. Bovell and I share a candid conversation, pulling threads from our own lives—how family, the significance of early education in Black history, and the contrasting racial climates of cities like Atlanta and Boston shape our sense of self and acceptance. We confront the educational disparities that persistently color our communities and the pressing need to preserve the rich tapestry of African American history. As we traverse the nuances of identity and inequality, this episode stands as a poignant reflection on the power of knowledge and the necessity of authentic racial identification within the educational sphere. Join us for an honest exchange that not only questions but seeks to mend the patchwork of our collective understanding.
Opening quote: Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Opening and Closing Theme song: Produced by Dom L'Amour
Transition Music from Mad Chops Vol. 1 and Mad Chops Vol. 2 by Mad Keys
and
from Piano Soul Vol.1(Loop Pack) by The Modern Producers Team
Cover art by Studio Mania: Custom Art @studiomania99
Please subscribe to the podcast, and give us a good rating. 5 stars please and thank you. Follow me on @doml_amour on Instagram. Or at
Dom L'Amour speaks with Artist Bovell AKA Kaylan Royston (@kaylan.bovellroyston) about Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Black History month
As Dom L'Amour, I found myself weaving through the intricate tapestries of mixed-race identity and Black History with my insightful guest, Bovell, otherwise known as Kaylan Royston. We embark on a journey that celebrates the legendary Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the undeniable influence of African American women in crafting the cultural phenomenon of rock and roll. Our dialogue dances around the themes of self-discovery and collective empowerment, recognizing Black History Month as more than a period of recognition—it's a gateway to self-forgiveness and embracing the joy that thrives within the Black experience. By casting a spotlight on the power of positive representation and the arts, we beckon our listeners to join us in fostering empathy and unraveling the shared threads of our histories.
The very fabric of this episode is stitched with the narratives of educational impact and the navigation through America's racially woven social landscape. Bovell and I share a candid conversation, pulling threads from our own lives—how family, the significance of early education in Black history, and the contrasting racial climates of cities like Atlanta and Boston shape our sense of self and acceptance. We confront the educational disparities that persistently color our communities and the pressing need to preserve the rich tapestry of African American history. As we traverse the nuances of identity and inequality, this episode stands as a poignant reflection on the power of knowledge and the necessity of authentic racial identification within the educational sphere. Join us for an honest exchange that not only questions but seeks to mend the patchwork of our collective understanding.
Opening quote: Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Opening and Closing Theme song: Produced by Dom L'Amour
Transition Music from Mad Chops Vol. 1 and Mad Chops Vol. 2 by Mad Keys
and
from Piano Soul Vol.1(Loop Pack) by The Modern Producers Team
Cover art by Studio Mania: Custom Art @studiomania99
Please subscribe to the podcast, and give us a good rating. 5 stars please and thank you. Follow me on @doml_amour on Instagram. Or at
I think that conflict for me, being a mixed person. During Black History Month I'm just like do I? What do I get to say? What do I not get to say? Like, how, how do I get to feel? And now I'm, I'm at a point in my life where I just want to feel love and I want to make and help other people feel love and if they haven't felt it, I want to help them find it.
Speaker 2:
Ladies and gentlemen, and anyone else who is here, my name is Dom Lamor and you are listening to the Black man Talking Emotions podcast. On today's episode, I speak with Bovel, aka Kailin Royston, about Black History Month. Music's always been the same to me. It's not about the gimmicks, it's about the soul. I don't care if they call me a rocker, a blues woman or gospel singer. What matters is that I'm making the music I love.
Speaker 2:
These quotes are by the legend's sister, rosetta Thorpe. She began recording music using an electric guitar in the 40s In the tune that's all has been cited as the influence on Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley. Johnny Cash said during his rock and roll Hall of Fame speech that his favorite singer was Rosetta. She was a pioneer, she was a rock star and she's another example of how important African American women are to our culture as a whole. Named Rolling Stones sixth greatest guitarist of all time, she performed on Toro Muddy Waters in 1964. Eric Clapton and Keith Richards were in the audience. The greats understood her greatness. She influenced everyone, from Little Richard to Jerry Lee Lewis, and I feel like she deserves all the praise. If you are looking to dive into some history, cue up the album the Deca Singles, volume One by sister Rosetta Thorpe. So Point Blank. What does Black History Month mean to you?
Speaker 1:
Point Blank period, black History Month and this might sound like what, but it's like. You know, I think Black History Month, personally, is tied so deeply to forgiving myself and forgiving others for their being ill-informed. With good intention, like I think I come across more people who have that good intention of wanting to be supportive of me as, like a Black artist, supportive of me as their Black friend, supportive of me, as you know, their Black partner. And people don't always know the right things to say or they don't always know the right things to do, and that's no one's fault other than, like this society and this behavior that we're cultivating as a community, because there are also a lot of things within the community of color that don't exactly uplift or uphold everyone within those communities to an elevated standard where we're protecting each other as well as protecting ourselves.
Speaker 1:
And I think it's so easy to be angry. Yeah, it's so easy to be angry all the time. And you know I live in Boston right now. I've lived in Boston for four years, being someone from Atlanta and Boston, being like the polar opposite, like I'm surrounded by, you know reasons to reflect and you know feel sad or to feel angry, not so much about the city, but it's just like. That is what happens when you move out of a predominantly black city to a predominantly white city. It's so easy to just like, be hateful and be vengeful, but I want to be better about being grateful. It's, like, you know, especially like black people are like, why is it that every movie that is meant to bring attention to the discrepancies within race or the inequities within race and ethnicity, and even like gender and sexuality, why does it always have to be about trauma? Why can't we just have a cute little movie where it's like oh, here's my. You know what's like a feel good white person movie I'm trying to think about. There's too many. They even name, but it's like why can't I have, you know, like a black version of 10 things I hate about you? But it's commenting on the importance of bringing your perspective as a person of color into your relationship with other people, into your relationship with other people of color, into your relationship with people who are not of color.
Speaker 1:
You know, especially as a mixed person, I think black history amount for a lot of my life felt like conflicting because there were just no conversations being held around. You have this experience that is different but still pretty formulaic to being a black person in this country. You know, being a quote unquote light skinned person, I absolutely get different treatment. I'm spoken to differently. I'm treated differently, especially in terms of, like, a working environment. People view me differently than they would.
Speaker 1:
A dark skinned woman period. You know, dark skinned women get so much crap and like there's not really much retribution for them. But then it turns into this vengeful, hateful conversation of like oh well, you know, like that means light skinned people are part of the problem, rather than bringing everyone together and making it a collective conversation. It's disheartening and hard to see people reinforce acts of imperialism and colonialism into our own communities because it's what we know. You know that's inspirational trauma. I think that conflict for me, being a mixed person during black history. I'm just like do I? What do I get to say? What do I not get to say? Like, how, how do I get to feel? And now I'm, I'm at a point in my life where I just want to feel love and I want to make and help other people feel love and if they haven't felt it, I want to help them find it. And that's probably the reason why I'm writing the music that I write. I think art should be a confrontation.
Speaker 1:
It's great to use art as a form of escapism, but shit, I want to write music that people listen to and they're like oh oh you know, holding a mirror to a person's face and being like look at this, look, look at how you're taking this in from your lived experience, because so often people are never asked about their lived experience. That's why you have so many people, especially within the black community, that are living with depression, they're living with anxiety, they're living with addiction, they're living with all of these ailments that are prohibiting us from living the life that I think every person on this earth deserves. One of my favorite quotes, toni Morrison. She said freedom is getting to choose what you have to do, getting to choose your responsibilities, because there are a lot of people who don't ever get the right or the choice. They don't, they're not allotted the opportunity, and opportunity is such a huge part of that conversation. Within Black History Month, that falls back into forgiveness 100%, because you have to think of especially as a culture within the United States, because that's the only lived experience that I've really had, like I can't really speak for other parts of the world.
Speaker 1:
Within a performing arts perspective or just an arts perspective, there are a lot of conversations that need to be had in terms of allotting opportunities to performers of color, to black performers, to black writers, to black musicians to everything. I mean, we are still having this conversation about who invented rock, where we know it was Chuck Berry and not Elvis, but there are so many people who still don't know that. They don't know where people like Elvis got a lot of those licks that he played in some of his most famous songs, like Jail House Rock. There are so many people who don't realize that blues is the root of pop music. If we didn't have slave spirituals after the transatlantic slave trade, where people were brought here to help build up this country on stolen land which is another part of the conversation and we have people who are trying to reinforce, reignite their sense of community, I can't even imagine what would be the hardest and most difficult parts of their life through music, and that is why we have so much of the popular music that we have today.
Speaker 1:
All of that comes from folk music, which is black originated. Rock is black originated. Pop is black originated. Jazz is black originated, like. All of that starts there, but no one wants to have that conversation. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, reintroduce these opportunities in a way that everyone can be a part of the conversation, and I think the only way that we can get there is to forgive each other and forgive ourselves, because if you aren't at peace with yourself, there's no other place for a conversation to go.
Speaker 2:
What you're saying is so true forgiven and being able to actually speak, being like I understand this is bad, but this is the truth. So here's the truth. I'm going to preach and teach what really happened and hopefully you forgive us for what we're doing, but we're doing our work to actually teach you what really happened. Black History Month can truly be that bridge for that moment, for that forgiven for that time.
Speaker 2:
There's so much of the rock and roll conversation you just said. I just was reading this book, black AF History, and they talk about how, in their opinion, rosetta Thorpe was the architect.
Speaker 1:
The first was.
Speaker 2:
She was technically a gospel singer, so people don't look at her as the person who started it. But then going to the black movie where it's happening I'm like I'm thinking of Eddie Murphy is my favorite. So I think immediately coming to America or Boomerang those are like the two movies I think where racism in them in the sense that they're mostly black cast, but when you watch them they're just stories. They're fun stories. Dr Doolittle is another one. Eddie was really big on just making stories with black people in them.
Speaker 2:
And so you watch Dr Doolittle and he's this doctor and he's intelligent, he has a great job, he has a great house, his family is looking to go in the right directions College, also be a doctor, veterinarian and look out for people. But it's not. Hey, this black guy talks to animals. That's not what it's about, right? So you see those moments where there are ways to teach or create history without it being the primary conversation, and then also touching on you being mixed color, I'm in a position where I put myself in this position and I married a white woman.
Speaker 2:
So my child will be you, my child will be the person who will have this being will be a white person, half of it will be a black person, but most people will just look at him and say they're black, you know? And how do they go from that and learn and grow and also accept that? Because I know a lot of mixed people where it's very hard for them to kind of accept that idea. So either they go completely left or they go completely right on what they are and how they perceive themselves or how they want to be judged by others. Yes, black History Month must be crazy, confusing, and I can only imagine you being in school and you being in class, where these kids on one side, the white kids, are like oh man, I'm so sorry for all this stuff, but then the black kids being like are you even black enough to talk about this kind of thing?
Speaker 1:
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:
It's kind of bizarre. So I'm fascinated to know a little bit about that. How was school and Black History Month for you? Do you feel like you really got taught the good stuff from your teachers? Did you have great teachers that actually provided information, and did you struggle with it? Because, like I said, even I I'm not mixed, but I struggled with, except in the fact that we had a Black History Month. I was like this is weird, why do we need this? This is stupid. But then I got older and I started to realize that was a really bad way to look at it, because it's like there's no other way.
Speaker 2:
We would have this if we didn't have this month, if we didn't have that month where people were specifically told this is what you have to teach. I believe they will find ways to put little nuggets here and there, but I feel like we would get less of that information in class, in history class, in social studies. We wouldn't get it as much as we do now. We are guaranteed a month that you're going to hear about this history that you're supposed to hear about, but then again, in ways, that month is still very much okay. What are the bullet points we have to hit. How do you feel like your black history experience in class actually turned out? Was it good or bad?
Speaker 1:
I got really lucky with my education growing up because my mom is a single parent. She made it a point to get me in a place academically where I could be informed and I could be articulate and I could understand why I am where I am and why I am who I am. And my grandmother she was at Selma, you know. So like I've grown up hearing about her lived experiences and seeing how she walks about life and asking my mom like why does she? You know we see these relationships to our family and how that relates to the people that we interact with. In school my mom would have these conversations with me about. You know, you are different and people are going to look at you differently and talk to you differently, and they had this conversation with me at school as well, which is why I say I was lucky.
Speaker 1:
I went to school, starting in Mableton in elementary school, and I went to a predominantly black elementary school which at the time it was interesting because it's like there was no Zendaya, Like there was no like this fetishization of light-skinned people in the sense that it's gotten to now. That's always been there, but I feel like it has kind of like skyrocketed tenfold in the last like decade or so, because people seeing celebrities and idolizing these people and making that the standard for beauty, which is just like really gross and disgusting and terrible. Because I'd be like seven years old and having these like white-ass parents coming up to me being like, oh my god, what are you? And I'm like I'm Katelyn, what do you mean? They're like oh, your babies are going to be so beautiful. I'm like why would you say that to me?
Speaker 1:
I'm like a child, you know, and in school, because it was a predominantly black elementary school that I was going to, I learned a lot about black history. Black history month was like the littlest month elementary school. That was the time to be in school because we would go on trip. They were showing us pictures of Emmett Till when I was like nine years old, so like I was seeing everything and coming to understand everything from so young. I talked to some of my other black friends, or even some of my other friends of color, and like they don't know who Emmett Till is. You know, A lot of them didn't know who Rosa Parks was till middle school, which is crazy to me Like how do you?
Speaker 1:
you know? Like they don't know about a lot of these pioneering moments in black history that have led us to where we're at, especially considering there are things within certain schools that are being taken out? You know legislation that's being put in place to withhold information from kids. It's like we're scared to inform people and tell them. You know what the fuck is going on. You know what I'm saying? Like we're scared to let people know what is going on and what's been going on, because if people know what's been going on, then they'll want to do something about it, which is a bad thing.
Speaker 2:
you know, for some reason, when I talked to people that gone to school in the south, or especially here in Atlanta, they had a much better black history month than people up in the north in Missouri, where I'm from.
Speaker 2:
Other places in the country don't get that same education and just my wife and I, we went to see Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott's grave, yeah, and it really just opened my eyes to how much history Atlanta really has for African-Americans. You literally can go to their grave, walk down the street to the church that he preached at, then walk down the street to the house he was born in, like that's incredible preserved history. You don't have an advantage in any other city. Really, this city is 10 steps ahead of most.
Speaker 1:
Oh yeah, that's part of the reason why I think moving from Atlanta to Boston was so hard, because I was just like I love being with people who support me, to feel empowered by being myself. I've gone my whole life, you know, being asked the questions of like, what are you? Or like, oh, like you're so exotic looking. Or like, oh, you must have this, is this, you're going to have so and so, but like, I've gotten those questions my whole life. I think it's definitely interesting that Atlanta, throughout those experience I've had, it also isn't just like Atlanta. Like growing up in Georgia, it's been infinitely more accepting than my experiences, for the most part, have been in Boston. Unfortunately, and it's not even that, I think that Boston is like a bad city because there's so many people I know, so many dear friends that I adore and I love and I look up to you, that are from Boston and I think it's just hard because they really do have so few people of color in Metro Boston. And then it's like if you go to like Dorchester, that's like that's where all and like the majority of, like black people that at least live within like the Metro Boston area are in, they're like all in Dorchester, all of these disenfranchised groups of people that aren't getting the level of access to education or even just like public transit like it's like hard. I mean even going to like this huge school in the heart of Boston. I didn't get to decide my race on my identity marker for school. They labeled me as other slash unknown and that was not my choice. Berkeley College of Music made that choice. They actually have no idea. They actually correction they said other slash unknown, hispanic, which I am part like Latina. But how would you, how would you know that if you haven't even had a conversation with me?
Speaker 1:
And I ended up emailing a bunch of people because I was pissed. I was like it's not okay and I've had to deal with that since I was six years old. You know coloring in identity markers being like what am I? And my teachers coming up to me being like girl, you better check black. Like you have nothing else to check on them black. But then I'm like my black friends tell me that I'm not black enough and then my white friends tell me that I'm not white. So then what does that make you like you're still black. Check that. I'm like okay, but it felt like I was cheating myself and like also cheating the black community to even check black majority of the time. And it's like now I get here and I don't even have the choice like so I, even with a bunch of people, ended up talking to like I think it was like the president of, like the health and wellness committees or department for the state of Massachusetts who, like is the person that decides what's on these identity markers.
Speaker 1:
And I was like Georgia has had a mixed race slash biracial identity marker for a little over 10 years now. Like I went through that as a child and it's still going to be trials and tribulations of being this light-skinned person that people see and it takes them like a couple seconds to process what it is that they're looking at. Yeah, least Georgia was like giving people the option to be like okay, yeah, like I was like I'm in Massachusetts, which is like allegedly a progressive state, and then I can't identify as like mixed race on this identity marker or like what's that about? And they straight up said we don't identify mixed race as a viable option on our identity markers. I was like well, could you? And she's like no, that's never been the case. I don't that there will be changes to make that happen, because it's like not something that's you know really checked that often in the first place I was like, well, how would you know that?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, why? Why wouldn't you make it Literally? It's one of the things that she is.
Speaker 1:
Right, right, right, right right. It's like so what you're telling me is you don't identify mixed individuals within the state of Massachusetts. She's like I did not say that. I was like I didn't. I was like you're the one that just said that. I'm repeating what you just told me.
Speaker 1:
You said mixed identities are not a viable option on identity markers in the state of Massachusetts. That's a problem to me. So it's like you know we'd have this conversation of education like that tells you about you know how certain parts of this country you know months like Black History Month. In terms of those types of situations, I can't imagine like growing up and having nearly the same education on something like Black History Month living in Massachusetts in comparison to Georgia, absolutely not. It feels kind of like, I think, a lot of the time out of touch here because I think for the most part, they don't really know what to do, but then there also aren't a lot of people that are allowing the changes to happen, like me, reaching out should have been an opportunity for changes to happen and they didn't happen.
Speaker 2:
So I want to thank you for listening to the Black man Talking Emotions podcast. The opening quote. Credit goes to sister Rosetta Thorpe and Bo Thel. Thank you for being on the pod. Follow Kailin at K A Y L A N dot. B O V E L L R O Y S T O N on Instagram. You can hear music on all streaming platforms and support and stream her music. Please subscribe to the podcast share podcast and give us a good rating Five stars, please, and thank you. You can support the show by clicking the link in the bottom of the episode description. Also, tell me your plans for the coming year. We should collab. Follow me at D O M L underscore a M O U R on Instagram or at Dom Lamorcom. I'm Dom Lamor, much love.