Dom L'Amour speaks with good friend Bo Lamarr AKA @bolamardrums about Black History Month!
When the echoes of our ancestors' struggles and triumphs seem faint in the annals of mainstream history, Black History Month comes to amplify those voices. That's precisely what Bo Lamar and I, Dom L'Amour, set out to do in our latest conversation. We weave through the narratives that have shaped not just a people, but a nation, stressing the need to honor the true depth and breadth of African American heritage. Our dialogue ventures into uncharted territories of our collective past, from the overlooked narratives in places like Missouri's Meacham Park to the cultural resonance of figures like Questlove, who inspire us to claim our space in the historical landscape.
As we unpack the complex layers of African American contributions, we critically examine the Western-centric portrayals offered in spaces like Epcot's American history tour, standing in stark contrast to the rich global influences of African and Native American civilizations. We confront head-on the media's skewed representation of Black individuals, drawing from personal experiences to challenge the stereotypes that persist in sports and television. The conversation takes a poignant turn towards the resilience of our forebears and the importance of self-education in African American history, urging our listeners to explore the full tapestry of our stories that extend far beyond what textbooks teach. Join us as we celebrate Black History Month — not just as a period of reflection but as a continual journey of discovery and empowerment.
Opening quote: Quest Love
Opening and Closing Theme song: Produced by Dom L'Amour
Transition Music from Mad Chops Vol1 and 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 good friend Bo Lamarr AKA @bolamardrums about Black History Month!
When the echoes of our ancestors' struggles and triumphs seem faint in the annals of mainstream history, Black History Month comes to amplify those voices. That's precisely what Bo Lamar and I, Dom L'Amour, set out to do in our latest conversation. We weave through the narratives that have shaped not just a people, but a nation, stressing the need to honor the true depth and breadth of African American heritage. Our dialogue ventures into uncharted territories of our collective past, from the overlooked narratives in places like Missouri's Meacham Park to the cultural resonance of figures like Questlove, who inspire us to claim our space in the historical landscape.
As we unpack the complex layers of African American contributions, we critically examine the Western-centric portrayals offered in spaces like Epcot's American history tour, standing in stark contrast to the rich global influences of African and Native American civilizations. We confront head-on the media's skewed representation of Black individuals, drawing from personal experiences to challenge the stereotypes that persist in sports and television. The conversation takes a poignant turn towards the resilience of our forebears and the importance of self-education in African American history, urging our listeners to explore the full tapestry of our stories that extend far beyond what textbooks teach. Join us as we celebrate Black History Month — not just as a period of reflection but as a continual journey of discovery and empowerment.
Opening quote: Quest Love
Opening and Closing Theme song: Produced by Dom L'Amour
Transition Music from Mad Chops Vol1 and 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
because the true choice of the matter is in America. Black people have no choice but to deal with white people. White people have the option you get a chance to just see the visuals and the representation on a television show and then that be your only experience. You can't say that about black people. We don't have that option. ["dom LaMoure"].
Speaker 2:
Ladies and gentlemen and anyone else who is here, my name is Dom LaMoure and you are listening to the Black man talking emotions podcast. On today's episode I speak with Bolamar about Black History Month. Resistance here doesn't mean revolution. It doesn't mean storming the barricades. Resistance means using art for the things that it does best, which is to create human portraits and communicate ideas and forge a climate where people of different races or classes are known to you because they make themselves known. And, in the simplest terms, art humanizes. It opens the circuit of empathy, and once that process happens, it's that much harder to think of people as part of a policy or a statistic. Art reverses the alienation that can creep into society. Questlove is a member of the legendary Roots crew, so many hits to his name and plenty of artists that you know, and love has worked with him, and he's, of course, on Jimmy Fallon every night. I appreciate his honesty, his fearless music, the example he sets for other artists like me, to be myself. If you wanna listen to some Black History today, cue up the 1999 album Things Fall Apart Cheers. I always try to do something for Black History Month. I always try to post something. I try to perform a show. If I can, I try to do something. This year my Big Black History Month focus is gonna be going through the pot and so I've been talking to a lot of different friends, different people, getting different perspectives and understanding of what they view Black History Month. As I was talking about how it's important to me, because growing up in Missouri, growing up in the area you know, kirkwood, meacham Park area, big black historical landmark in my neck of the woods, where I come from, a lot of my family, a lot of African Americans I know throughout the city that's in West County, meacham Park is literally home base to where we all really kind of come from in that area. And growing up in Kirkwood you would think we'd get more of that history. You literally have this historical African American city located right in your backyard but instead we weren't able to really even hear much about the history. Because the history is really dark, you know, and it's gotten to the point where half of the city that was originally Meacham Park is now Target, walmart and Kirkwood. So you kind of just cut that community in half and made it one little small area where they're gentrifying and there's more white people in Meacham Park than I've ever seen in my life and it blows my mind.
Speaker 2:
With that understanding, I wanted to have more. I wanted to believe that my society I lived in was giving me more history during Black History Month, about where I lived and understanding what, in my environment, was like for the African Americans that came before me, my family. I didn't want to feel like I had to get all the information from my mother and my grandmother and my grandparents, but eventually I ended up having to get that information from them because the schools, in my opinion, kind of failed to truly capture the history of our neck of the woods and did all the points. Hey, we're gonna talk about slavery a little bit. We're gonna talk about, maybe, some reconstruction, but we're barely gonna touch that. We're gonna talk about the Silver Rage Act. We're gonna talk about the Harlem Renaissance, martin Luther King versus Malcolm X, rosa Park sat down and boom, we there. We ain't even gonna talk about the fact that African Americans have so much going on. Now we're just gonna cut to the points. This is what we do every February. This is how we do it every February and that's how it goes and that's what you're gonna get.
Speaker 2:
For me, I think it's the most important month for history, because it gives you an opportunity to truly dig deeper into the history, to understand history and see why it's significant to us as a whole and why it's important that we all do this. And even though it could be spread out over the year and this, and that historically it has not been approached correctly at all. So having a mandatory hey, you need to focus on this is a benefit to us, because it gives us an opportunity to truly say well, it's Black History Month, so listen up, this is what the history says, this is what it is. This is important to all of us, and the more you know about the opposite side, the more you become aware of similarities. That helps bridge the gap between the differences of everyone, and if you hear how similar you are to someone else, it starts to eliminate that barrier. You build up yourself. So that's my whole spiel on what I believe. I pose the question to you what does Black History Month mean to you?
Speaker 1:
To start off, I feel like as much as we need it because of the history in our country number one. This country was built to move and operate exactly like it's doing today. It was made that way from the beginning. It's not a broken system. The system is working exactly how it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1:
With that being said, black History Month is important because it gives us, like you said, a moment to be heard, to not only be heard and to teach people of different cultures more about ours, but for us to teach ourselves to. You know, we got kids and adults running around who don't know about Dred Scott and don't know about these amazing people, pioneers for us to live the type of lives that we live now. So it's important to have those moments to outline and highlight those areas that are sectioned off, for us to be able to have a microphone and share light on the history, but also it's important for us to make sure that we not getting Black History Month information just one month out of the year, because if we only learn about the things that our people have done, not only in this country but in the world all around, if we're only doing that one month out of the year. We're screwed. Can I cut you?
Speaker 2:
say what the fuck you want to do. We fucked.
Speaker 1:
We are absolutely fucked.
Speaker 1:
And then when you really get into the history of it, it becomes a little bit different, because you start to understand how much our people have done, as far as Black people, to build this country and for this country to operate and move the way that it does.
Speaker 1:
You start to uncover the lies and the deceptions and all the plans to make things look different than what they seem. You start to go down a pipe hole of the role that the media plays into it. You know, a lot of times things are so ostracized and so set apart that we base false analysis of people and who they are and what they do because of their lack of information. So, yes, black History Month is important to be able to outline all of the greatness and to be able to spread the knowledge. I would love to see all cultures that have an impact of how we operate in this country, for the history to be taught year-round, because it's so much more that we don't know. History is history man. So if it helped us to get here, everybody deserves to have an honest light, to share it, on what those things are.
Speaker 2:
I agree with everything you said. I was just a Disney World and in Epcot you can go on this tour of American history inside of the big ball in Epcot. So it's like one of the last riots we did. We got on there and it really just talked about this evolution of the human, starting from the cavemen, and the first invention that they had that was the big evolution was they figured out a way to communicate with each other so that they can hunt bigger animals and they can survive together instead of being taken out so they could be the top of the food chain, and it started there. And then it started to move to they started to write it on cave walls and then, next thing you know, in Egypt they started to create paper and that was a more efficient way that they can do it.
Speaker 2:
And then you continued to move on to the Romans and the Greeks and then early America and how all of these big moments in revolutionary history of creating text, creating language, creating communication skills with such a big part of white humans are where they are now. And it brought up, you know, the Alexander library being burnt down, but people in India had copies of the books that were there in Africa beforehand. So now all of a sudden they're like well, we still got this history and that's how we're able to advance. And the whole time I'm watching it, you know, I remember they said the Egyptian part and you go through this low area and all the Egyptians were black and I was like, okay, that's a good thing to see, okay, that's a good, that's a good starter.
Speaker 2:
But you never really got this true worldwide vision of the history. It was a very much Western version of how it happens and it was touching all the points. It touched on those Greek and then Roman and then England and it's like very much, they are the only people that did this, not? Hey, there were Native Americans doing this in America already. Or there were people in Africa who, literally in Timbuktu, with the first university, were creating all of these libraries and putting these books together so that people could communicate better. And they even had it to a point in certain tribes where they had heating scenarios, they had water irrigation systems, they had everything put together.
Speaker 1:
You want Western culture to talk about that? Oh no, but they're not gonna talk about that.
Speaker 2:
You know, say it's very much. Let's talk about what we always checkpoint on to, and the media is another example of that. When you brought that up, I totally agree, because there's certain people. This is a great example. I dated a girl and I met her parents, and her parents lived in this very small white people town and they had never really interacted with black people on their own.
Speaker 2:
Like you know, they go to the big city and they see someone there and it's a nap, but really the wire and football and basketball the only places they got to see black people being black people and talking on TV that's the way that it's portrayed to them in bum, fuck, nowhere.
Speaker 2:
And so instead of thinking this is my personal experience with black people they kind of see this episode of the wire and all the crap that's going on there and then assume they go to Baltimore, they're going to run into somebody and it's going to be the wire instead of they're going to go to Baltimore, go to brunch and it's going to be a black family just having brunch eating the same food that they're eating, just like they are being normal people, because that's what the fuck we are. You know, when you think about how the influence from the media has been for that history, do you have any examples or moments where you like damn, the media kind of flipped the script on me and I didn't even realize it? And this is something that I thought but then had to reeducate myself?
Speaker 1:
I don't know. I always knew exactly what the flip of the media effect was. Growing up in St Louis, I mean it was a part of the upbringing. It was the lectures from dad and mom before leaving the house at six and seven years old. Make sure you say yes, sir, and yes, ma'am, and you know, make sure you do this and do that. And then when it came to you know, I learned how to drive at an early age and it was son, don't ride with more than you and one other person in the car because you would get for a dover.
Speaker 1:
It was learning how to deal with the police before you can even. You know, you ain't even know algebra good, you know what I'm saying Like. So it was definitely always something to be aware of, because the true choice of the matter is in America, black people have no choice but to deal with white people. White people have the option. You get a chance to just see the visuals and the representation on a television show and then that be your only experience. You can't say that about black people. We don't have that option.
Speaker 1:
It was always definitely in full effect the interactions between people who, would you know, grab the purse when they see you and or don't want to speak to you because they don't know that I'm just going to say hey, good morning, how you doing. But it was always in play, man, so it was never a moment of having to come to the realization. It was living the realization and then figuring out how to not let it affect you in a negative way and learning how to maneuver through it Speaking about how your parents were in your ear about different things going on.
Speaker 2:
how would you compare your African American history lessons versus school? Did you get more information from home or did you get more from school?
Speaker 1:
More from home. Man. You know, school gives you the bullet points. It gives you the things that they kind of want you to know. It can't be denied, it is a part of our history, but it's only a piece to a huge puzzle. It doesn't really give you the full story. It gives you a controlled version which is now, you know, sadly even being redacted even more. Yeah, schools are trying not to even teach Black History Month at all now, or Black History as a whole.
Speaker 1:
It was definitely at home. It was learning things from my father, my mother sitting and talking with my grandfather, and my grandmother and my dad's father was the first Black Councilman in Wellstain, which is a small city in St Louis, and even just hearing the things and the traumas that he had to go through to be the first Black man running for a Councilman in that small town of St Louis, missouri, it was amazing for them to go through it and prevail. But it's also just crazy that they had to go through it. Yes, I was tremendously blessed, man, that I had the type of parents who took forth the effort to make sure that I. You know, I learned those different things and my mind was being expanded, but definitely not fully dependent just upon the school system.
Speaker 2:
You know, the reason why I think I'm doing this podcast kind of serious on what Black History Month means to different African American friends of mine is really because of what you just said. It's mind blowing to think of the things that the people before us had to go through just to be treated fairly and I'm grabbing that more and more as I study because it's heartbreaking that they were just asking to be treated like people and we have to look at them as heroes. Heroes for standing up To people saying, hey, you're below me and you're not a human. It's really hard to remember that history. It's very easy to sit back and think it happened. I don't need to examine it more and Talk it to all my black friends. You hear Throughout these episodes, different brilliant people tell you that they had to do most of the work themselves at home.
Speaker 2:
So if you're not in the African-American community, that means you got to do more work Period. Because if we all are telling you that the stuff that we got, that you got from school, was not nearly enough, if you hear this and you hear all these episodes talking to these African-Americans who experienced in and lived it, and think you Don't need to do more. You have to look in yourself and say why do I feel this way? Because that's the most important question. None of the stuff that we're asking you to look up, a research or understand is Only our history. It's your history too, and if you are ashamed to research your own history, come on. That's the whole point of black history. You need to get over that and get up to our level. When they say, stay woke. When they say all this woke information, it's not about being woke in this scenario of I better you know. It's about being woke in a sense of I understand what's going on and I'm not an idiot who's listening to?
Speaker 2:
yeah, I'm not misinformed. I am informed that is it period blank. I want to thank you for listening to the black man talking emotions podcast. The opening quote credit goes to quest love and Shout out to Bola Mar for being on the pod. Follow bow at BOL a m a r d r UMS on Instagram. Please subscribe to the podcast, share the podcast and give us a good rating five stars, please and thank you. You can support the show by clicking the link at the bottom of the episode description. Also, tell me your plans for the coming year. We should collab. Follow me at DOM L. Underscore AM OUR on Instagram or at down the more calm I'm down, the more much love.