Tone Glow 108: Matana Roberts
Tone Glow 108: Matana Roberts
An interview with the American saxophonist and composer about incorporating humor into their works, the toxicity of the gender binary, the late Greg Tate, and 'Coin Coin Chapter Five: In the garden…'
Matana Roberts
Matana Roberts (b. 1975) is an American composer, band leader, and saxophonist who has worked in a variety of mediums—visual art, dance, poetry, theater, and music—in order to explore history, community, ancestry, and politics. Their ongoing 12-part Coin Coin series began in 2011 and its newest edition, Coin Coin Chapter Five: In the garden…, is newly released. Through traditional songs, electroacoustic compositions, and various strains of jazz, the album works through a complex narrative that centers around the story of a woman in their ancestral line who died following complications from an illegal abortion. Joshua Minsoo Kim talked with Roberts on September 23rd, 2023 via Zoom to discuss the importance of being rooted in a sense of self, their non-binary identity, their new album, and more.
Joshua Minsoo Kim: I know that you dedicated Coin Coin Chapter Five: In the garden… (2023) to Greg Tate. I wanted to read you this one passage from Flyboy in the Buttermilk (1992) that stuck out to me. It’s from the last essay titled “Love and the Enemy.”
If Black male leadership doesn’t move in the direction of recognizing the pain and trauma beneath the rage, as the work of Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, bell hooks, and other women writers have done, if we don’t exercise our capacity to love and heal each other by digging deep into our mutual woundedness, then what we’re struggling for is merely the end of white supremacy—and not the salvaging of its victims.
I wanted to ask, who are the women in your life who have transformed the way you think about art and life and everything else?
Matana Roberts: Thank you for quoting Greg. It’s interesting, that book is 30 years old and so many of the same themes are still with us. In my life, those people are my grandmothers, my mother, my aunts. I grew up in a very improvisatory environment where I had to psychically understand that there was more going on than they would let me see. Being a Black child in the world, and especially an ovaried child in the world, I had to understand that people were trying to protect me, but also that there were things they couldn’t protect me from. They had to operate in a way where they’re trying to root themselves for when those moments happen. They were trying to stay optimistic and positive and understand that the human experience is not really about these external moments of racism and prejudice.
I saw my father stopped by the police at least once a year, just because he drove a car that they were curious about. I saw my mother have to put up with some really inane things. But I was also around people who were very loud about these things (laughter). It’s something I really appreciate, but honestly I wish I would have learned how to be quiet. I don’t know that world. I only know how to speak up because it was impressed upon me how much privilege I had in that.
I grew up in an environment where I was taught to remember history and to question people who question your ability. I got a lot of that as a kid. Some of it I understand now, because some things have shown up in ways I didn’t understand then. I am neurodivergent and I have some cognitive things people weren’t really paying attention to, at least with Black children. Overall, it’s an amalgamation of stuff. At this point, I feel I exist in a lineage of art-making that spans a really interesting spectrum that includes all different types of people. I wouldn’t know how to narrow it. I would say that my foundation came from my people that I was around.
You mentioned that you were surrounded by people who really spoke up. Can you share any instances when you saw that happen and it showed you the importance of doing so?
My parents took me to my first protests when I was five. We were living in an area where a gentleman was going to open up a restaurant called Sambo’s. If you know who Sambo is, it’s a very racist caricature. I remember being annoyed that I had to go to this thing—I didn’t understand why I had to go with the adults and hold a sign outside this business and picket. And my father was always trying to make sure that I met people. He was a political scientist.
There was a lot of strife in my immediate family life. My parents did not get along and I was happy they got divorced—it was a good thing for them to do. But as they approached me singularly, there were little things that they would do. Once, my father had some conference that he dragged me to, which I’m glad he did because I got to sit in the room with Dick Gregory, Maya Angelou, Betty Shabazz, and the former mayor of Washington DC, Marion Barry, who’s a problematic figure, but in the ’60s he was one of the lead members of SNCC. He was a very important person. My parents always tried to make sure that I got to meet these people who were outspoken. Part of it had to do with the environment that they were connected to, the ways that they saw music as a support for revolutionary ideas. They were around a lot of people like that, so I got to meet some really interesting folks who were really rooted in their own sense of self in a way that I hope to get to. I’m not there quite yet, but I hope to get to that kind of wisdom. I feel like I’m still really learning and trying to figure out how I want to be for people looking up to me, how I want to lead myself for them so that they have something else to consider for themselves.
What would it take for you to feel like you’ve reached that point, where you’re rooted in a sense of self?
That’s a great question. I would have to be at a point where I feel like I’m quite sustained in what it is that I’m doing. I’ve really had to cut a lot of corners to bring a lot of different things in and to have the kind of output that I have at the moment. I’m constantly playing a million different roles. I’m really grateful for it, but it has created a sort of maze-like existence, like, “Okay that’s next, this is next.” I want to feel like I can reap from somewhere because I’ve never had that feeling creatively. I do a lot of different things in the name of art because no single thing is proving itself to be sustainable for me to be able to live in a respectful manner. I’m just imagining it’s going to take more time.
Years ago I was an assistant to the elder pianist Borah Bergman, who died in the early 2010s. I was running errands for him because he was in his 70s, and he said something really interesting to me. He told me, “Remember, you have everything that you need.” You have to think like that in order to survive. At this moment he was in his 70s, living in a studio apartment with a mattress on the floor and a piano in the corner. I realized that my mindset had to change. It’s an energy thing. That’s something I’m trying to settle myself into. I think that was really good advice. I’ve had people in my life who helped me recognize that—we don’t choose our circumstances, and it’s up to us, in some sense, to recognize that this is the hand that we have been dealt.
It’s difficult, though, because you also have to remember that, yes it’s the hand I’ve been dealt, but shit gets real after a certain point when you realize the hand you’ve been dealt is under the weight of a boot that is so oppressive. Sometimes—I’m sure you know—there are those moments where you just ask, “What’s the point?” And then you remember where you come from, and it’s like, well, that’s the point. I stand on the shoulders of so many people who never got a chance to express themselves. We all do, in a sense. But it’s difficult.
I know your father, for example, would play you Sun Ra records when you were very young. You mentioned elders who didn’t get to express themselves. I’m curious about who they are and how you feel like, through your music, you’re providing a channel for them to exist in that fashion. Is that something you regularly think about when making your music?
I had a cousin who once said that it takes many generations to make an artist. I think about that quote a lot. The spectrum I come from is extreme poverty, American style. Sometimes when people talk about poverty in America, they don’t realize what they’re saying, as they try to align themselves with what it means to be impoverished. I come from a spectrum of poverty and also extreme wealth within multiple generations, which is interesting. Some of the reasons that I have some of the information I have on some segments of the Coin Coin project is because that portion of my family was incredibly wealthy at a time when that was unusual for people of color. By the time I showed up, all that was gone, but the stories existed and the impression of understanding how to use resources when you don’t have them also came through generations, on a couple of different sides.
I like my work sitting as an ode to the “common person” who was maybe doing things that they didn’t even realize would have any kind of effect on anyone, just the regular day-to-day of trying to keep a family together. Or there’s ways in which the different stories that I have, not only from my family but from friends’ families, too, are about how people look out for each other. There’s this idea around chosen family that many artists have to walk in fellowship with. I don’t know what I would do without my chosen family. I’m not sure I would even have the courage to talk about some of the things that I talk about in this work. But I like the idea of how art in many different cultures used to, and some cultures still do, have some utilitarian value here, where this artistic thing that’s part of the family life actually serves this other purpose. And it also has this other aesthetic work and can be this double-sided thing. I often think about that in the way I’m making some of this work.
That makes a lot of sense to me. It’s pretty unavoidable when listening to your music how it’s so rooted in history. For example, on “But I Never Heard a Sound So Long,” you’re interpolating a plantation lullaby, “All the Pretty Little Horses.” Do you recall the first time you heard that song?
Yes. My mother told me about that song. At the time, I didn’t understand the role of a wet nurse. On the one hand, it’s a really beautiful thing to think about. Our ovaried bodies are interchangeable in that way where we can provide sustenance to others. That’s beautiful. It’s not beautiful in the realm of slavery and thinking about plantations, where they took these women from their children, or sometimes these were women who had children that didn’t survive childbirth. It’s sinister. I like thinking about that edge between pain and joy. It really runs through the entirety of the project. There’s this double-sided thing around this presentation of this lullaby. It’s a very pretty song, and there’s this idea of “Pretty Little Horses,” but then you have to understand the backdrop—there’s a lot of pain in that backdrop.
With most of these songs, I changed the lyrics a little bit to make it more in line with the story I’m telling. I didn’t want it to be as tragic as it is. I also wanted to use it to lift the woman whose story I’m telling. And I really love group singing. I love making people sing together, it’s so fun—it’s one of my favorite things. It’s this moment where everybody has to release their own pretenses and just focus. On this record, the musicians were singing a round, which is really fun, and really hard. For “But I Never Heard a Sound So Long,” we sang it in a round and that was really hard to do. It was fun to remember that just because it has really pretty lyrics doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy. It’s not easy on the spirit either.
I love this notion of how singing in a group releases pretenses. I grew up in the church and I have a twin brother who did not enjoy singing. The only time I really ever heard him sing was in those settings. Did you have any early experiences singing in a group where you recognized that potential?
One of the first art things I was ever involved with was a Black children’s youth chorus they enrolled me in. I don’t have a lot of memories of it because we were only six or seven, but I do remember learning the words to “Young, Gifted and Black” and singing it with these kids. I think, psychically, that did a lot for me. When I was in junior high school I was in a chorus. I had to go to church. By that time, my grandmother was going to one of those really big megachurches. Those are intense.
I’ve been to those a few times, and I always think, “This is not…”
It’s not what it’s about! I’ll never forget it—this megachurch had its own restaurants, they were all about the money. My grandmother used to drive us there, and on the way she would pass the tithes and offerings that are supposed to go in this envelope, but—and I’m probably going to Hell for this—I would always put that tithe in my shoe (laughter). I was so disgusted, even as a 12 or 13 year old. I knew that this was not what God was talking like. I didn’t know know, but I knew that this was not it. I will say they had an amazing chorus, an adult chorus, so I got to hear a lot of amazing music and group singing because of that.
I love that you put it in your shoe (laughter).
I know! I would put it in my shoe. This is embarrassing. We would get back from church and I would walk to the local McDonald’s to have my Sunday meal with my friends. My grandmother never knew that. She would give me a very hard time because it was like $3 or $4. I would go and get my Happy Meal with my friends and we would talk about how radical it was… there’s nothing radical about taking that money to McDonald’s after putting it in your shoes (laughter). It’s so weird how as a kid, you think, “Oh yeah, I’m gonna get one over on the adults.” No, the adults are actually getting one over on you at this moment. They had this thing where if you donated a certain amount of money, you would get a gold-leaf parking spot.
Are you serious?
I’m completely serious. It was so crazy. I thought it was the most insane thing I’d ever seen. You think you’re taking money away from them, but you’re actually kind of giving back to the same system that’s exploiting people. It was a strict church too—babies weren’t allowed in the service, they had to be in a separate room for Sunday school. It was really intense.
At the same time, I now still seek out certain churches, only because you get to a certain point in your adult life where you just need to hear a good word, whatever it is, and from whatever faith that comes from. Even if you’re an atheist, you just try to find some way to root yourself and understand that the human condition is about suffering. But the human condition is also about how you manage things, and just to hear these different stories and these different ways in which people are trying to move through it—you have to humble yourself to be in these spaces.
I appreciate that memory and it’s why I still return to different types of faith. You’ll never see me at a megachurch. It never happens. There’s also a big Catholic contingent. My Catholic contingent can be really problematic people, but sometimes I go to Catholic services that are in different languages just to watch the ridiculous kind of pomp and circumstance, like the costume.
There’s a performative aspect.
Yeah, it’s a ritual. It’s totally a ritual. As a performer in many different aspects, in my creative life at this time, I just find it really interesting. But I think the role of faith, however you swing and whatever it means to you… as a creative person it is incredibly important because you are making a life out of making things from nothing, out of conjuring things that other people are not necessarily thinking about.
I think the church is probably the only setting that the everyday person can enter into and readily see these sorts of older rituals, and it’s also one of the only places where a young person can go and readily see an intergenerational community.
Yeah. At some of the lowest points in my life, being able to plug back into those things that the people that you grew up around were into… I know that every time I step into a church, my grandmother is very happy that I’m doing that, despite what I did. I just wish that people would be able to see across the spectrum of faith a little bit more and stop demonizing people, based on collective beliefs, or using those collective beliefs to commit acts of violence.
I went to Africa to visit the slave castles along the Ivory Coast. At Elmina Castle, I think, one thing that really stuck out to me was that the dungeon was right below the church. The church was above—many floors above, but still above—the dungeon, where they were keeping these people in despicable conditions. There wasn’t even a window—there was a piece of cement that was kind of broken so a sliver of light could come in. People were chained in these dungeons in pitch black, all while people were up above worshiping their God. It’s a crazy image. Just to think about the plantation culture in the United States, the ways in which slave masters would use teaching the “Good Word” to Black people as a way to show them, “This is where you’ll get your salvation. But until that time, you have to work and toil under the master.” It’s insanity.
I’m struck by your idea about joy amid strife. That’s a sort of running theme across the album. Across the first few tracks, I appreciate how the voices are woven throughout the music such that it’s just another instrument in the tapestry. It adds to this constant sense of there being two sides to this coin. How often are you thinking about bolstering these themes with instrumentation? Could you point to a particular song on the album where that happens?
There’s a running track on the whole record and it is a sound collage I commissioned the wonderful vocalist Gitanjali Jain to do because she speaks many different languages. She is also on Chapter One. I wanted that cross-section. In Louisiana, you’re walking through French, Spanish, English. In terms of talking about American history, there’s so many people that get left out of the story of how America came to be. I still find it really problematic. I’m interested in plugging people into ideas of abstraction. I want them to be asking questions like: What is music? What is sound? What really is that? I want them to have to stoke their own curiosities around these questions. The only way I’ve understood to do that is by text and language and story. I feel like narrative is a very good way to do that, and the narratives I use sound pretty linear but they’re not completely—there’s a mix of present, future, and past. No one’s really caught up on it yet. That’s because the surface seems like we’re going on this journey of understanding this person’s story, but there are other stories weaved in there.
There are certain songs where the singing lends itself towards a more straightforward mode of storytelling, but then there are other songs where the vocals are more buried but still feel communicative and emotive. Do you want to speak more on these different stories that are in this album, from past, present, and future? Or would that be something you’d prefer listeners to discover on their own?
I would like for them to discover it on their own. There’s a story base in there that is a particular story that I was told that really haunted me. This particular one haunted me for a very long time and gave me an understanding and a sense of the struggle from which my own existence came from, as a person with ovaries, and what the expectations might be, like a foretelling. But within that story, I’m also folding in some of my own experiences of trying to navigate different situations. I’m also folding in stories from other women outside of my family, from my chosen family, who I know have gone through different legacies of this struggle around reproductive justice.
I don’t have any children of my own but I’ve come close. I think that’s the graceful way to say that. I have also been in situations where I’ve been grateful to know that I had options if I needed them. The ever-confusing, crazy terrain of personal relationships—I know a lot about that, and most adults do at a certain point. I talked about my parents being divorced and how I was glad that they divorced. Getting older, you also understand how difficult it is to be in certain situations with people, and you understand that people and things shift. You just have to be ready to appreciate the ride you’ve been on and try to not let it destroy you.
There is a part of that story that I don’t talk about, that I think I mentioned towards the end of it. Her husband kind of disappeared. The way I was told the story, it was just because of the pain of what happened to her. That’s something interesting to think about. I identify as non-binary, and I’m not committed to any one gender for myself. One of the themes that runs through this entire project is the toxicity of the gender binary and how it affected people’s choices. There’s some people in the story that we’ll get to talk about, who figured out a way to avoid some of those pitfalls. I shouldn’t call them pitfalls, it’s these forced identities that people tell us—like you must behave in this way, you must do this thing, you must act this way—or else it’s difficult and hard. I’m trying to find a way to talk about that in a way that gives people room.
When did you start identifying as non-binary? I don’t remember you doing so when you first started making music.
No! (laughter). It’s kind of embarrassing when I look back.
Embarrassing in what way?
When I look back at Chapter One, there’s a video of me in the middle of a Montreal street playing saxophone at 5 AM. The video treatment wasn’t my idea, it was another wonderful artist’s idea. But I feel like it’s very gendered. I feel like the focus is on my gender because the story, from the perspective that I’m speaking, is very gendered. The idea of non-binary wasn’t around then. It was but it wasn’t—there wasn’t the word. I came up with this shame that was associated with wanting to be any other way than what your designated biological marker—so they say—was. I had been investigating queerness pretty much all of my life in different sorts of ways, but I didn’t understand what to do with it. You’re just taught that you’re not supposed to be that way. I had become heavily indoctrinated in how things are supposed to be, especially when looking at history and understanding the reason I’m here is because of these heteronormative pairings and things that were happening. But within pockets of those stories are queer stories as well. It’s shifted the way that I look at the project.
It’s been lovely that people have been very accepting of me just saying, “Hey, I am talking about these sort of heteronormative themes, but I am also very much looking at them through a queer lens.” I didn’t realize that I was doing that until I really laid it out and had to start questioning myself, unpacking the ways in which we, as children, are heavily indoctrinated in the gender binary. It’s intense when you think about the TV shows, the movies, the books, the media presentation. Things have shifted quite a bit for children today, but when I think about what I was around, your sexuality gets stolen from you. Especially when you move forward.
I’ve had to dodge a fair amount of lecherousness in my day. The ways in which people automatically assign things to you based on what you look like and take your agency away from you—it’s really complicated. It’s something that I’m really unpacking now, but I’ve never felt completely female, nor male. I’ve always been in the middle, kind of bouncing around. I like being a chameleon. I think that’s just the performative part of life that I enjoy. But I have also been really oppressed by some very heteronormative ways of being, which I’ve participated in. I’m still trying to unpack like, “Why did you do that? What were you thinking?” I’m just trying to understand, and the journey of life is so strange. My life just feels like a lot of whiplash, but it’s good whiplash. Things are just moving, moving, moving, moving—at a pace where sometimes I feel like I can’t catch up.
Thank you for sharing all that. You mentioned how you were exploring queerness in different ways. For a lot of queer people, they recognize things in their childhood that are obviously indicative of their queerness in retrospect. Can you share any of those things?
I felt a natural affinity for speaking up about things that I found incredibly unfair. I feel like there’s a very deep queer tradition in that. Also, just the little childhood things of having crushes on all different types of people, and trying to figure out, what is that about? Trying to understand the possibility of being able to fall in like with someone not based on what their biology is. There’s just some sort of other essence that’s hard to talk about. Watching other friends struggle. I was around people who were also struggling with trying to figure out how to do that.
Growing up as a little Black girl, you’re getting so many mixed messages about how to be and how not to be. I felt a lot of shame for not fitting in the binary. My family was not the type of family that would have made me feel bad about that. Both of my parents are deceased now, and my extended family is pretty vast, but they are not the sort of people who would have been super concerned, either. I feel like I was lucky in that way, in retrospect. But I still felt some weird societal shame for relating to, for example, this more male way of thinking about a subject. Or, I really relate to this more two-spirit way of thinking about a certain subject, or I really relate to this ovaried way of thinking about a subject. I had to understand that all those things were fine, and I tried not to shut one down for the other, thinking, “Oh, that’s not ladylike.”
Being involved with jazz music in the way that I was, I was often one of the few people with ovaries in some of these environments. I had to move around these environments in a way where I was trying to erase my gender. I didn’t want to be seen as a woman to these men. Part of me was like, if I’m seen as a woman to these men, there’s some danger in that, and I won’t be as accepted. So I’d try to find some middle road, which was hella toxic. That was a very toxic period. I would be happy if I ran into a musician on the street, and instead of them saying, “Hey, Matana, what’s up?” they’d said, “Hey man, what’s up?” I understand now, things have changed a lot. But at the time that that was happening, it was like, “Oh, yeah.”
You have to understand the way people have been vilified. Michelle Obama is someone I think of. I have a lot of issues with the Obamas, but the ways in which certain media tried to vilify her as being manly. I recognize those signals from where I came from, i.e. either Black women are manly or Black women are overly sexual. There’s all these crazy messages that you get. I’m hoping that at least kids today are able to see that there are ten million different ways to be. There’s nothing wrong with being overly sexual, there’s nothing wrong with being manly, there’s nothing wrong with any of these things. But the ways in which they were presented to me were like, “Oh, you don’t want to be like that.” I always thought it was very weird that I couldn’t connect attraction to someone based on their biology. I thought that meant something was wrong with me, like “I can’t even think about those people like that. I have to stay focused on this romance that is supposed to be very gendered.” I’m still struggling.
It’s a lifelong process of discovery. You mentioned that your exploration of queerness shifted the way you looked at your music. Can you expand on that?
It’s helped me feel more free. There’s a pride in Black womanhood that I am committed to, in a different kind of way. So far, most of the stories in Coin Coin have come from that perspective, but we’re not anywhere near done with the series. There’s more to come in that. Identifying as non-binary has given me so much room to breathe. It’s allowed me to step away from certain expectations around these things that I’ve still internalized and that I’m trying to to get away from in terms of how to be. It’s created more room for my imagination in a different kind of way that I really appreciate, but I feel like I needed to go through those first layers just to understand how people place “girlhood” or “womanhood,” to understand where my ideas sit with that.
Queerness has allowed you to feel less burdened by expectations of how things should be, and that sense of freeness you feel certainly ripples outwards.
It’s a weird thing. I was talking to a mentor of mine who’s always been visibly, emotionally, spiritually queer and vocal about it. I remember they once told me, “If you don’t feel like telling people, you don’t have to tell people. It’s up to you how you want to do it.” But I remember when I was toying with the idea of being more vocal about it, I thought, “Matana, as if being Black and ovaried is not hard enough sometimes. Why are you doing that?” (laughter). “You want a life of struggle?” No, it’s not a life of struggle. It’s the life of being exactly who I am. That’s all to say, it’s still very much ongoing, and sometimes I do have that depression where I think, “God, I wish I would have been more vocal about this 20 years ago.” I think about what my life would be like, but you can’t really think like that. I’ve had to talk myself off those ledges.
All the freedom you feel now will only compound, I’ve found. There’s still a lot to be excited about.
I feel so privileged just to still be here, considering what we’ve all just lived through and are living through in this moment. I’m still here, and I feel so much gratitude. I’m just trying to step further into making sure that I’m being exactly as I want to be. That’s what’s happening for me in this era.
I’m happy for you. Earlier in the interview, you mentioned that you wish you learned how to be quiet. Do you feel, on this album, that you explored how to do so? I’m thinking in particular of a song like “A Caged Dance.”
I’ve learned that there are many different ways to tell a story on this album. With the Coin Coin records, I sometimes get nervous that people are liking this because they love hearing stories of Black people being traumatized. I’ve had those moments. Because if they own the record, then it means that they’re obviously not part of that legacy of trauma. I’m making people who actually still need to understand the legacy of that trauma feel a bit too smug about themselves. I’ve had moments over the years where I think, “Oh my God, what have I done?” (laughter). With Coin Coin Chapter One, I thought, “People like hearing Black bodies screaming.” That’s not what I’m trying to do. That’s not why that’s there. I know they know that’s not why that’s there, but I’m just saying, in my irrational moments, I think people can point to my record and go, “Oh hey, I’m not racist because I own this record,” or “I’m not sexist because I support this,” not understanding the role of bias, and how we all have biases to deal with.
In telling the story, and in the ensuing stories that are involved, I have a better understanding of the role of humor and the little slivers of joy that exist despite the traumas that are occurring. In the many different drafts that I wrote of this text, I really tried to lean into that. Yes, it’s very sad that she passes away. It set up a hole for my family that was never really recovered. But the way in which she’s talking about herself, so matter of factly—I love that I’m able to do that. It’s a really nice feeling to be able to place the story with confidence and joy, as well as some accountability to the trauma.
I’m interested in this notion of humor. What spurred you on to do that now, and what prevented you from pursuing it in the past?
In the past, I didn’t understand my role of having to protect the story and the people a bit more. In the first chapter, I was just trying to make sure people knew this history. It was such an important story. Her story doesn’t get passed around in the way that it should. Just with age and getting older, I’ve also come to understand the place of humor. I love listening to stand-up. If I’m not listening to music or talks or things, I love really interesting stand-up. For the most part, if you listen to some of the best, it’s a lot of painful stories that they’re placing in a bed of humor. I just find it really fascinating. It’s all about timing, how you place the story and what you say. I’ve gotten more confidence in the ways that I tell the traumatic stories that I’ve experienced since the release of that first record. There’s lots of things that have happened since that period, and I want people to be able to feel like it’s okay to talk about what you experienced and find a way to own it and not let it terrorize you. Those are the things that I’m thinking about a lot more. But that comes from my own lived experience of having to understand that we’re not ever going to master the human experience, but one thing that’s important is perspective.
Are there any specific stand-up comedians that you’re particularly drawn to because of the way they seamlessly weave tragedy and humor into their storytelling?
They have become a little problematic, but I remember watching Hannah Gadsby and thinking that was really interesting. There’s also Paul Mooney. He’s so funny. But then you’d be like, “Oh, but what is he talking about?” He’s talking about these really traumatizing things. I can’t think of many people off the top of my head, I sometimes just plug into random people on a playlist or online and just listen to the stories. I also really enjoy these man-on-the-street interviews that have popped up. Some of them are incredibly lecherous and really problematic, but in terms of giving voice to people who don’t really have a voice, I find that really interesting. I spend a lot of time listening to some of those stories, hearing how people manage. There’s something about that I find really nutritious for myself as an arts person.
There’s a little humor in Chapter Two, I guess. But it doesn’t really come from me, it comes from my grandmother. I didn’t amend any of that. Except you don’t hear my questions, you just hear all her answers. Chapter Three, in the book that that chapter is based on, there’s some really funny, strange things. It’s about this ship captain who was tasked with intercepting illegal slave ships. There were some moments in that book that are kind of funny, where they’re just talking about the weird things that were happening in the time period. Somebody’s sick, so instead of telling them to rest, you’re gonna… bloodlet them? Just this weird turn-of-the-century stuff. Chapter Four is a very painful story. But remembering the joy that she had with her father is interesting to think about, that at the end of the story she is taken in by love. I love humor. My version of humor will continue to exist somewhere in the work.
I’m happy that it’s coming through more now.
I have a little more confidence in understanding. I have a little more lived experience of understanding that you gotta be able to laugh at some of these things that you’ve been through. They will drag you, but you can’t let them drag you. You have to find some sort of way. And I will say, my family on the whole are very funny people. Just in terms of timing. That’s something I think a lot about in music and sound—timing, how you pitch these things.
I think humor is also maybe the most challenging thing to communicate in music successfully. There are so few artists that actively try to be humorous in their music.
For me, I don’t want to make light of the serious themes of the work. In the segment of Chapter Five where I’m telling you about how she’s laying there, wondering if her partner she’s having this moment with sees her, I know exactly what that feels like. And it’s funny! It’s weird, but it’s super funny. You realize, we’re a really messed-up lot of beings. We’re being forced to live in a way where we’re being taken away from areas of connection. You don’t get a manual on how to do these things. You’re just indoctrinated with all this stuff, and then you just have to make a way. There’s some humor in that.
I’ve been paying a lot of attention to some first generation comedians. There’s this one particular guy, he’s British and from Pakistan, and the way that he talks about his family and their understanding of existing within this weird Western context is funny, the way that he places that. I’m not first generation, but I do know the pressure of feeling like I have to go to college, I have to do these things, because so many people suffered for me so that I can do these things. So I’m not really doing this for myself, I’m doing this for other people. Everybody has that one family member who’s saying things they should not be saying (laughter). And you’re just trying to wrap your head around it like, okay, I literally want to strangle this person but I can’t do that because that’s my uncle, or that’s my grand aunt. Like, “This is totally off the mark… but they’re 82.” (laughter). It’s really bizarre being human and being connected to these people. You had no choice, whether you wanted to be connected to them in the first place. It just kind of happened.
I’m going to continue to be angry about certain things, but I’m not going to allow people to take my joy away in thinking about survival and perseverance and what people have to go through in order to move to the next moment. None of us have an understanding of what it all really means. I still regret not getting a chance to ask my mother or my father towards the end of their lives, like, what did they learn? What did they get from this experience? I guess it’s kind of morbid.
That’s a lovely question to ask someone.
I think about it. My father died in his sleep from cancer. I was with my mother towards her end, though I missed the day. You should never trust doctors when they tell you, “Oh, there’s this much time.” Never trust that. I wasn’t at my mother’s bedside when she passed, but I was with her in the days preceding. You just never think to… you’re just trying to savor the moment of being with the person. And there’s so many questions. My parents were fairly young when they passed. My mother was 52. My dad was 62. I just never got a chance to corner them a little bit and understand, “What was the best thing about getting to this point for you? What regrets do you have?” So many questions.
I have only one grandparent still alive. She’s 95. Over the summer, I made a decision to interview her. My Korean isn’t great, so I needed my aunt to translate and she was visiting from California. It’s my favorite interview I’ve ever done. It’s so transformative, just hearing someone you’re related to share all these stories that even my mother and my aunt had never heard. At one point my grandmother told me, “I don’t know if your grandfather ever loved me.” It was specifically because he never said the words “I love you.” Korean men of their generation, of course, are not vocal about those sorts of things. My grandfather told my grandmother, “I don’t need to say these things, because I’m showing you through all the things that I do for you.” He passed away about when I was a child.
I told her, “I’m sure he loved you because he did all these things for you.” He made a promise to my grandmother when they got married that she would never have to work a day in her life. And she never had to until she decided to work again, of her own volition. My grandmother was sharing her thoughts from when her kids got married. Now, my parents are very affectionate. My dad will randomly tell my mom, “Wow, you look so beautiful today.” My grandmother would hear this and be confused and sad, like why isn’t this happening with her? She told me that she knew her husband “saved her life,” but that she didn’t know if he loved her. And then my aunt shared her experiences of hearing her own children be so affectionate and emotive with their spouses, and how that encouraged her and her husband to be more expressive to one another. After our conversation, my grandmother told me it was the first time in her life that she understood that her husband did actually love her. It’s so interesting—older generations learning from younger generations.
That’s fascinating. I think about that a lot with my chosen family, some of whom I just saw recently, and how we actually go out of our way, when we’re together, to tell each other that we love each other. I don’t remember a lot of that growing up. Our cover lady on Chapter Four, my maternal grandmother, was married for about 40 years. By the time I knew them they had split the house in half, so my grandfather was mostly downstairs in the basement doing his grandfather things—they had a pool table down there, leather couch, the whole nine yards—and my grandmother was upstairs, doing her things.
Though I never saw them cuddle, there was an affection that I could feel. With my own parents, generally, the only time I saw any kind of affection was if somebody had done something wrong. Then there might be a moment. But they were also too young. My mother was barely 18 and my father was 20 when they married. They didn’t get a chance to really find themselves. What I have learned about ancestry, and this kind of goes back to humor, is that humor, for instance, is a learned behavior. No one’s born with humor. It’s something that’s passed down through the generations, which kind of freaks me out when I think about somebody cracking jokes on the plantation just to get through the moment. It’s an interesting way to think about love as well. Kudos to your dad, man. That’s really awesome. That’s just awesome to hear. There should be moments where your partner should be able to feel those things from you. But sometimes it’s also just in the things that you do. Being a human is bizarre.
It’s funny, my mom doesn’t put up with any of that. My dad will say, “You look so beautiful tonight,” and my mom will just say, “Shut up, we’re eating dinner.” (laughter).
It’s weird. We’re not taught to take compliments. But that’s beautiful.
I don’t have any more questions for you. Is there anything that you wanted to talk about?
No, I just want people to understand that the crux of the work is about the complications of the human experience. It’s a terrain of understanding and misunderstanding that is part of figuring out how to navigate the world. I just hope, regardless of where people come from, that they can realize we’re all interconnected and try to have some kind of understanding.
I love what you were saying about how it’s so bizarre to be human. That’s what makes it fun, the unpredictability.
It’s not predictable! That’s one of the reasons I love history so much. At this point, sometimes I feel like, what simulation are we living in? We’re on repeat with some of these things. We’re still snarled in these discussions that we should have been able to move on from and into the next level, but we’re boomeranging. It’s because solutions that we had for the initial problems weren’t really solutions, they were just band-aids. My life has been a wild journey. I am so grateful for all the things that it’s continuing to show me and I just hope that people can pull on that through the work.
It’s nice that this circled back to the Greg Tate quote. The book was thirty years ago but it’s still relevant today, as you said.
It’s so relevant. Greg was such a genius. I’m still not over that. Like, I just can’t. He’s someone who I enjoyed watching just deal with life and put into words. He supported so many people, it’s really intense. A lot of people don’t understand how much he was in the trenches, trying to make sure that other artists were okay, and that they had work and support, and just showing up in places to support people. There’s a legitimate hole from his passing, but it’s left those of us who know what he did to continue that legacy. I feel very grateful that I’m getting some way to do that through this music.
I’m glad that you had the chance to know him. He sounds like a great guy. His writings are incredible.
He changed my life, that guy. He is a main character in my art story. He was an incredible person. I’d only known Greg as a musician. I remember the first time I read Flyboy in the Buttermilk, not because he told me about it, but because someone pulled me aside and said, “Oh, have you read this book?” I’ll never forget the first time I read that book and then saw him afterwards. I gave him such a hard time. I was like, “Why didn’t you tell me? I didn’t know about this!” (laughter). He was such a humble person. I remember he kind of shrugged, like, “Yeah, I do lots of different things.” But this was not just doing something different on the side. This was major work. I have a phrase from one of his pieces as a tattoo. You can find a video of him performing at the Bowery Poetry club back in the early ’90s. It starts off with “Buddha blessed and boo-ya blasted, these are the words that she manifested.” I see that every day now. I just had to have it as a reminder. You just don’t know the effect that you have on people. That’s why it’s important to support people in your community however you can. I could go on and on about Greg for days.
I always end my interviews with the same question: Do you mind sharing one thing that you love about yourself?
I love my ability to try, try, and try again. I’m really good at that. I’ve had a lot of moments in my life where I think, maybe it’s time to find something else to do, maybe there’s another way, but the artistic life and the artistic lens continues to show you that there’s so many different ways to deal with the situation, to handle all sorts of different parts of human emotion. I’m a very good improviser at some of these life things. I could give you a much longer list of the things that I don’t like, as most of us can (laughter). But I will say that I really cherish that I have that ability.
Matana Roberts’ new album, Coin Coin Chapter Five: In the garden…, is available now via the Constellation website and Bandcamp. A bundle for all five albums from the series can be purchased here. More information about Matana Roberts can be found at their website.
Thank you for reading the 108th issue of Tone Glow. Let’s become good improvisers at life.
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Thank you for this incredibly inspiring conversation/interview!