- Hey (indistinct), how you doing?

- I'm better than all right, I'm better than all right.

(laughs) (upbeat, jazz music) - Welcome to "Music for Social Justice".

I'm your host, Damien Sneed.

You know while great social justice leaders can have a profound impact on a global scale, fighting for social justice starts locally.

And a city that knows a thing or two about fighting for change is Detroit.

In this episode our artists have deep connections to the motor city.

Lyn Goeringer is a composer and intermedia artist who performs her own works with video, sound and light.

Creating video art for gallery installations, live performances and dance, her work engages with everyday objects toward abstract results.

In this piece, her focus is on the street lights, their role in our communities and how they tie in with her desire to shine a light on the murders of trans women of color whose lives deserve to be honored as much as anyone else.

(tranquil music) - The piece that I'm performing is called, "Pause, Reflect, Redirect" and it grows out of a larger body of work that I started working on in 2020 called "Witnesses" which was a project that I was commissioned for by the Science Gallery Detroit.

They commissioned me to work on a piece where I would make short films of streetlights turning on around the Detroit area where trans women and trans people of color were murdered.

This piece is something I'm really passionate about and it grows out of this interest of mine in street lights because they are interesting objects.

They're everywhere.

They're all throughout the world.

And we see them at night.

They tell us where to go.

Where's safe.

Where's not safe.

They let us see what's happening.

And even as children, oftentimes we're told to come home by the time the street lights come on.

So they have this like really deep social connection.

And I started looking at them specifically because I was interested in working with everyday objects that engaged with infrastructure, particularly around ideas of safety and visibility.

What I'm doing within this is essentially trying to bring you to the place, right?

To bring you to a location so that you can immerse yourself into the locations of someone else's life and to be able to situate there.

(soft music) In listening to it, it begins with just this slow wash of sound with this ambient field recording.

So recordings of the location itself, and then a little bit of the sound of the streetlight washes in.

And when I say the sound of the streetlight, I mean literally letting you listen to what a light bulb sounds like, right?

We're listening to the mechanism itself.

And then it slowly is gonna transition into something that eventually does become something that's a lot more musical.

There is melodic content.

There is a beat that happens, but this watch is very subtle and it slowly builds in and takes over the space.

And then eventually it transitions into just the music and the world that we're immersed in sort of slips and slides away.

This isn't necessarily intended to be a piece that you might dance to, but it's definitely a piece of music that invites you to engage with and think about your world differently.

One of the things that I'm often asked about is, why am I working with this topic?

Why am I looking at the murders of trans people and trans women of color?

And it's really a difficult thing to even approach, right?

So we have these beautiful lives that their deaths go ignored, right?

Like people are murdered every day.

And, you know, we hear about these high profile killings right now particularly of people of color murdered by police.

So we find ourselves in this interesting position where the deaths of trans women and specifically trans women of color are not being heard about.

We aren't getting to know about this.

And it's a really intense thing, right?

Like, so what, so why do I do this?

I do this because these are people whose lives should be celebrated, who should be mourned.

And we shouldn't forget them.

We should know who they are.

And so to that, I would like to say their names.

Ashton O'Hara.

Amber Monroe.

Keanna Mattel.

Shelley Hilliard.

Coko Williams.

And of course those who we have no names for, the anonymous.

(tranquil music) Honestly, when I think about the role of music in the world of social justice and sort of the kinds of awareness it brings and how it functions, is I think the first role of music within this sort world is that of community building, right?

Like music is a way for people to connect with other people with similar viewpoints, right?

It helps us to build community.

It helps us to reinforce our ideas and our ideals.

And so for me, that first ground point is that place of gathering that music provides.

Music is a vehicle for communities to form politically.

And historically, this is a huge part of the role of music in any social movement.

But the other thing that I think that it provides is that it allows us a space of release.

It allows us a space of reflection.

It allows us to engage with celebration, to engage with mourning.

So my own practice of working with music towards social change and social justice is that I'm really interested in bringing, all puns intended, bringing light to the situations that are happening, bringing light to the ideas that we're working with, to bring ourselves to a space of awareness where we're not only just thinking about what can I do, right?

Like where can I show up?

Where can I protest?

Where can I do these things?

But also how does the larger apparatus, how does the infrastructure like build this system that we're living in, right?

So it goes beyond just defunding police and some of the other ideas that are really prominent in our social conscious right now.

But the idea is of like, how are we engaging with this?

How are we engaging with the things that control us?

How do we look at and center ourselves within this world?

And I'm hoping that through this we can start to think about looking away from the apparatus of seeing to actually start to see what's around us.

And what's with us.

(tranquil music) (soft music) (tranquil music) - Bassist, composer and educator Rodney Whitaker is a man true to his Detroit heritage, showing his pride in that amazing city every day.

But his reach extends far beyond Woodward and he has always shattered boundaries and shown respect to others.

Here, he shows his humanity in a tune, inspired by love of family and community.

(tranquil music) - When you hear "First Love, Only Love", the thing that you'll see image wise is photos of family because that's what I wanted to show, for me this is the essence of the piece.

(soft, jazz music) "First Love, Only Love", it's a three, four piece.

In Western music three, four is a waltz.

And I think that when we think of love we immediately think of waltz.

I don't know why that is but that's kind of a Western concept.

The other thing I think about with this piece is kind of a little bit of a saddened melody where the bass is playing the melody.

And the bass is really asking the question about love and the horns are giving the answers to the question, will you spend an eternity with me?

'Cause originally I wrote this for my wife, who's my soulmate.

And that's the idea behind the piece is that two people who are soulmates are having a conversation.

'Cause I think when you write a piece it's a diary of where you are at that time in your life.

And that's what I originally wrote.

But as time moved on it started to gain more meaning, it started to gain the meaning of family and love and hope.

And that's really through what happened and how the music evolved.

(soft music) You know, I grew up in a culture in Detroit which was a totally pretty segregated community.

Yet I reached across the aisle to other communities.

I had friends that lived above eight mile, that's a big thing in Detroit.

And for me it didn't matter.

It was really about a friend was a friend regardless of race.

And I also was interested in allowing folks to see the humanity of black folks.

And the only way I could do that is to be present and to see other folks.

Everyone has a role to share in race relations in how we do our job, how we live our life.

Martin Luther King also said "love is the only thing that can change your enemy "to a friend".

I picked "First Love, Only Love" for this series because I wanted to reflect that aspect of love and humanity.

And so that we could see each other, that we could see ourselves.

I think oftentimes people choose not to see each other.

It's easier not to look at another culture.

You can other people easily and vilify other cultures and other races of people easily but it takes more effort to see folks, but it's worth it.

(tranquil music) (soft, jazz music) (tranquil music) - Thank you for joining us in sharing in the power and beauty of music.

And I hope our program has succeeded in enriching your life.

I'm Damien Sneed, until next time.

(tranquil music) (upbeat jazz music) I'm Damien Sneed.

It's my honor to have the title of host of this special series, "Music for Social Justice".

We'll hear some moving performances from excellent musicians.

Most importantly, we're going to hear from the musicians themselves, as they put into words what social justice means to them and how the power of music transcends all.

- The words to that song is just so uplifting and inspiring and powerful.

- There's something more elemental about what music brings to the table when it comes to an issue like social justice.

- With this music, we're trying to take injustices that still remain, work through them and help to break the walls down.

- There's only one race and that's the human race.

Once we can get to that, then we got something.

(upbeat, jazz music) (soft music)