00;00;10;09 - 00;00;31;23
Rob Lee
Welcome to the truth. It is all right. I am your host, Rob Lee. And today I'm in conversation with a retired professor of interdisciplinary humanities and the author of the novel The Second Line and African Spiritual Traditions in the novels of Toni Morrison that please welcome Dr. Koko Zauditu-Selassie Welcome to the podcast.
00;00;32;00 - 00;00;34;16
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me, Rob.
00;00;34;23 - 00;00;47;06
Rob Lee
Thank you for coming on. This is totally a treat. I'm glad we were able to kind of chat a little bit and which which is which is a welcome addition to be able to kind of get to know get to know someone before going into these conversations.
00;00;47;28 - 00;00;49;26
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Likewise. Nice to chat with you.
00;00;49;29 - 00;01;17;08
Rob Lee
Absolutely. So before we get too deep into the conversation, we're going to we're going to talk about a little bit of everything. But I want to start off with, you know, what's your story like? Do give us the abbreviated version because everyone has like in fifth grade, but give me the abbreviated version. And ultimately what drew you into like English humanity, literary criticism, things of that nature.
00;01;18;29 - 00;01;53;29
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Okay. So I'm from Compton and I'm the second of seven children. My father was a gambler and my mother was a mother. So I grew up listening to adult language, blue language. I come from cuts cousin women. I said that in the document three in our mother's gardens, and I always loved the way black people could bend words and how they express themselves differently.
00;01;55;07 - 00;02;19;03
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
There was always a polite way of saying something. There was never a church a way because we didn't really we weren't. We were very secular. I always say I've never I never saw any of my grandmothers in church. That's not who those women were. But so I always like to turn out a phrase and and I love profanity.
00;02;19;23 - 00;03;02;22
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
I loved everything about language. I loved how language could be solved. I loved how language could be hard. I loved how language could be hurtful, how language could be healing. So I just went and began to study the word very early on, even before reading about Malcolm X's falling in love with the dictionary. I used to climb the tree and spend the whole day in my yard in Compton with the dictionary, starting with Aardvark and just going through the dictionary, just familiarizing myself with words and their origins and how they and their travels, the travel of words.
00;03;02;22 - 00;03;42;00
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
So I really like etymology where words originate those sources and I liked on Panama's sticks the study of the science of naming, especially as they're related on a mass sex as it relates to black people and some of the different kind of names that we have that like if you go to Six Flags or Magic Mountain or a Hershey's Park, you're not going to get your name on an keychain or a T-shirt because they don't have Nisha there.
00;03;42;22 - 00;04;15;16
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
And so, yeah, so I was always I was always looking at chronicling black women's naming patterns, speech patterns. And I majored in speech pathology and audiology, undergraduate, and I did linguistics. So I became involved in the work on some scientific ways first, like where it's produced in the brain, the Broca area that causes speech to occur, damage to it, which causes speech to disappear here.
00;04;15;29 - 00;04;46;26
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
So I became aware of languages, power in presence and its power in absence. So that's the short and just love storytelling. Just love to hear my grandmother, who had 11 husbands, seven divorces for annulment. I tell stories about the men who that the men she loved and the men that loved her and the men she left and the men that left her.
00;04;47;21 - 00;04;51;15
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
So so just narrative. So that's the short with.
00;04;52;09 - 00;05;12;23
Rob Lee
Thank you. That's that's that's a great I mean just like words I was I was a kid that we had the in the basement we would have all of these books that we inherited the would be like book books like like literature or anything along those lines. It was more so like manuals, like, here's the encyclopedia, here are the dictionaries.
00;05;12;23 - 00;05;33;19
Rob Lee
And that's what I would go in the basement. This is how I learned like, Oh, this is what this animal is great, and I would just skim through it. That was something that I enjoyed and I believe that encyclopedia Britannica may be slow, my mom's basement, and that was the things I definitely kind of connected with. I'm across this tree and go from aardvark to zoology.
00;05;33;20 - 00;05;34;22
Rob Lee
This is what we're doing today.
00;05;35;16 - 00;06;08;12
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Yeah, it's it's, you know, words matter. And politically, I became a were aware that words matter when I was nine and I went to the pool, were swimming at the Lynwood pool and we lived in Compton and my mother dropped all of us off and we would go for a day of swimming. And when we got there, the white woman said, Oh, I'm sorry, we don't allow Negro boys and girls and our pool.
00;06;09;08 - 00;06;39;00
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
And then I wanted to know what a Negro was because I had never really heard the word. And my grandmother said it was a long word that meant no. It begins with the end and ends with O and means no, you can't have. No, you can't be. No, you can't say no, you can't go. No, just just how it sets you up for a whole level of interdictions, like no addictions, like you cannot not allow you.
00;06;39;23 - 00;07;19;25
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
And so that were you are a negro just those words just you are just for words are you are enslaved. Three words could change your whole reality. How you your body moves in space and time and the power that people had to make those words. Those words that were you or represented you and make them like like bars and prisons and bounds boundaries that you couldn't cross.
00;07;20;08 - 00;07;38;12
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
No, we don't allow Negro boys and girls in our pool. So that was age nine. So like those words, I was I was aware of words in their possibilities and in and in there and words as punishment. Oh.
00;07;40;06 - 00;08;04;11
Rob Lee
I think we these from my vantage point, I guess words can lead to behavioral changes like it. You'll see it in times where it's like someone may say something, something that is just like, okay, I was low rise or whatever and it elicits a response. I'm going to punch you the mouth now. And that I always felt that weird because I'm not inclined to go in that direction.
00;08;04;11 - 00;08;14;16
Rob Lee
But we always kind of like just generally we're not giving words. They're words mean something, words have importance, but we try to trivialize them until someone literally, as you're saying.
00;08;14;28 - 00;08;44;13
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
No words once they're very subtle because words are nuanced and the words are historical and words come from spaces. So it could be in Baltimore and you can go on to mom's organic market. And the the way that the person the intonation of the person asking whether or not you have bags that you bring back to you and it doesn't have to be confrontational.
00;08;44;14 - 00;09;16;10
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Do you have a bag or you don't have a bag and then becomes like a projection street killer? Yeah. And tide conservation is I'm doing my part as a white woman. Well, first of all, so then I have to go to history, and none of my people ever cut down these trees. None of my people ever decimated the forests in their 500 year contact on Turtle Island and and these indigenous lands.
00;09;16;18 - 00;09;39;19
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
So I have to go as far and it's just really bizarre for me that I have to do kind of a microcosmic overview of all history. So don't ask me for a fucking bag unless you ready to get a lesson. Yeah. You don't see a bag? I don't have a bag. Movable. Yeah.
00;09;39;22 - 00;09;41;18
Rob Lee
Like where I'm going to pull it out for you.
00;09;41;22 - 00;09;58;14
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Right, right, right. So, but, but the idea of anything, even something that's seemingly innocuous. Did you bring any back today? It could become do you see a bag here?
00;09;59;23 - 00;10;05;12
Rob Lee
It's like you use your eyes. You have two of them or say or present it in a different.
00;10;05;12 - 00;10;35;12
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Way or whatever. But I always have I always have an alert on, especially when you go in economic spaces where you're crossing class lines. So you're not only crossing racial lines, you're crossing racial and class lines. This this area is 898 a box which is still coming up in his motherfucker for me. So there's that, too. Yeah. When I when I hope you could say that.
00;10;35;21 - 00;10;54;01
Rob Lee
Okay, good. We can we keep it authentic here. Okay. When I go up there, I like to go to Wegmans, right? And when I go up there, I have people who are like you, like Boogie said. I like no, I actually like vegetables. I like to get vegetables or what have you. And when I was like, there they are, they are only in the counties that's not doing that extra.
00;10;54;08 - 00;10;54;20
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Yeah.
00;10;55;03 - 00;11;04;04
Rob Lee
So I definitely see that kind of a class thing. Who's it for? Because I remember when that light rail was down there. So I'm not supposed to come out here, am I?
00;11;04;12 - 00;11;09;01
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Oh, I drove out here. Right. And what are you doing with the car, boy?
00;11;09;02 - 00;11;13;24
Rob Lee
And I make sure I go there and I get like I take up space. I just we just.
00;11;14;06 - 00;11;14;20
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Ignore it.
00;11;15;09 - 00;11;21;29
Rob Lee
And I love it. That's like, yeah. So you got any extra sushi over here? And I say it really aggressively.
00;11;21;29 - 00;11;48;23
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
I know. Just I don't know. It's like these words help make you perform. Make you perform different identities or reach for something in your Batman utility kit, that tool kit that you have around your waist. Oh, we play in the conservation as we are conservation, as you always does game. Let me tell you something about history and the destruction of everything.
00;11;49;06 - 00;12;21;28
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Every forest cut out. I was just reading Touch the Earth, a compilation of essays by indigenous people and one of the one of the stories, one of the recurring narratives are about people who cut trees down for no reason. So there's a tree that sometimes is cut down for a totem, but most times they will look to see if there was something that nature felled through a lightning strike or something else or something else that happened.
00;12;22;10 - 00;12;54;23
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
But they will search that out first before they cut a tree down or that which makes the structures for the the housing units, branches and limbs that the wind has given up, that when as a natural element. So this is really, really respect for the exchange of things. And if you have to take something off or some tobacco, leave a sacred offering on the ground to the energy use that that provided this for you to show your gratitude.
00;12;54;23 - 00;13;54;09
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
So there's practicing of gratitude. This is not chainsaws and bell. We got to clear this by 430 on Friday I need two shifts in and then everybody is chainsaw thing and and and you know wreaking havoc havoc and so along the way I'm very sensitive to what indigenous people feel on on this planet that this does land, that we walk on here and and Maryland, North America with the Eastern band Cherokee, some other groups of people that are here and how we walk on their land as without paying homage to who they were and what this land was before it became Mary's Land, the only Catholic colony among the 13 and the home of Catholicism
00;13;54;09 - 00;14;26;02
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
for what was then called British North America. And so I'm always aware of how they respect the land. And Jack Forbes in his book Can Columbus and Other Can Cannibals. So to repeat the title, Jack Forbes, he's I think he's an Ojibwe, one of the Sioux groups I'm that if I'm not mistaken but is called Columbus and Other Cannibals.
00;14;26;14 - 00;15;13;05
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
And he speaks about the word Chico and with Chico disease which is a kind of planetary schizophrenia, where you destroy the environment and you destroy things. So he gives the analogy in his preface. The rape of a land in the rape of a people are the same act, the rape of an idea, the you know, the exchange. He goes into all of these horrible behaviors that post himself as nation building and forward progress and what the indigenous people see as a total disrespect for the land.
00;15;13;05 - 00;16;04;21
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
So we have to get to a moment of people having it as a news feed item, a climate accord. You know, finally, when they pulled out of all of the Paris talks and all of the other attempts of the other people in the whole world that share the same planet, the disdain for the land. And so for me, I think I write right now, even though I write on spiritual things, I center the dance, I center dance as one of the spiritual sonic gestures that along with the music and the dance as both both of those sonic forces and in a way that black people tap their feet, whether it's Baltimore Club Dancing, which is
00;16;04;21 - 00;16;38;19
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
really going at a high vibrational frequency, is going real, real fast. Yeah. Oh, to touch the ground and to stop the growl. Look at the sacred, the risk realization of the land by dancing on it, by celebrating on in the midst of all of the the chaos that surrounds us to have the ability to dance. And so I'm looking at dance as a way to synchronize the earth and to be a part of it, to touch the earth, to bind with the Earth.
00;16;38;20 - 00;17;04;06
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
And so whether it's hyphy or Kronk, it doesn't matter. And dance in a way, it wouldn't matter. Praise, dance and then in the sanctuary, it wouldn't matter. Black people tapping the earth and, you know, maintaining a certain vibrational set of frequencies, whether they're sonic for for like black people, the sonic is always for movement and performance of movements, you know.
00;17;04;27 - 00;17;41;13
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
So I'm thinking about so that's where I where I'm going now in my creative practices is always centering dance and motion and movement, especially since there are forces out there that entertain the notion of the Nonmoving body, the Nonmoving black body. That's the only one that's not threatening. That's the only one that has the situation under control. And so to circle back to my childhood, I was a dancer with a little dancing girl who danced for money.
00;17;42;17 - 00;18;21;07
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
And I just want to read part of the preface to this book, because although it's a scholarly book, it's I have a preface titled Dancing between two Realms and here's a epigraph from Langston Hughes Make a drumbeat, put it on a record, let it whirl. And while we listen to it, play dance with you til day. And it's from Langston Hughes poem Jukebox Love Song.
00;18;22;11 - 00;18;55;11
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
In one of my earliest recollections of myself, I am dancing. Yes. When I was young, I was that little dancing girl. On various holiday occasions when my friends relatives would visit them, they would send for me saying, Go get their little dance and go. Honoring their requests. I would perform dances such as Mickey's Monkey, accompanied by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles as the Hour 45 R.P.M. Record Circle clockwise around the record player's turntable.
00;18;56;04 - 00;19;20;21
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Over the years I'd dance Marvin Gaye's Hitchhike RGV on the trails Tighten up the Capitals Cool jerk the Allmans Wah Wah Suzy and the Knickerbockers to find time I especially look forward to the important dance as my junior art would show me. Upon her return to Los Angeles for her yearly summer trips to Chicago out on the dance floor.
00;19;21;06 - 00;19;54;05
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Even though most of the dances I did were performed with one dance partner, there was a sense of community because of the collective performance of other dancers sharing the dance place at space, wearing our favorite dance space as mine was hanging my tongue out the side of my mouth while my sister's was biting her bottom lip, we chatted dance selves, communicating a sense of well-being, summoned from the energy and force manifested by the unity of music and movement.
00;19;55;21 - 00;20;35;18
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
And I liked all the chants. The roof, the roof, the roof is all fire. We only know what to let the motherfucker, but I by five or we are saying shit, God damn, get off your ass in jail. We say There's a party over here. It would just be. It is like it was like black pinot, pentecost, black people in one space on want a caught doing something, something out of the purview of whiteness, something out of the control of white space.
00;20;35;28 - 00;20;51;18
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Something we didn't have to mimic in copy that they did. Miley Cyrus has never been asked by Beyoncé to show me a couple of steps. Now I believe in it.
00;20;51;18 - 00;21;12;09
Rob Lee
I love it. I love it. I want to ask you this. So in doing and doing the research, what have you, I always feel like I'm kind of Internet stalking people in my head. Dove And it is I read about that. It's I read that you you've traveled the world from Compton to Cairo is what I read in a place and extensive travel within Africa.
00;21;13;13 - 00;21;26;17
Rob Lee
So that's what has the role. And I think I think I know but rather ask you, how has the role of travel been for you as a creator, as a storyteller, as a person, as a citizen of the world? Because.
00;21;27;08 - 00;21;28;18
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
You know, travel gives.
00;21;28;18 - 00;21;30;11
Rob Lee
A different perspective. So tell me about that.
00;21;30;27 - 00;22;09;28
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
I started traveling early, even if I'd just even say traveling through continent, hitchhiking, going, standing on a freeway, trying to get a ride to Beverly Hills to get a haircut from the Vidal Sassoon Salon in Brentwood over there, where O.J. and L.J. and Nam used to stay on the way, stay at now. But just hitchhiking on the freeway, I met my first husband hitchhiking that my first husband is who I went to travel with for three months, the summer of 1973.
00;22;11;11 - 00;22;41;18
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
And yeah, and so we travel through to Brussels, Belgium, and then we hitchhike to Paris and then from Paris, which is hitchhike down to Pamplona for the running of the bulls, for the festivals. And from then when they let the bulls out in the street and people run and get killed and whatever, back up to France, then to Italy, then through Yugoslavia, just all over the place, traveling.
00;22;42;10 - 00;23;13;20
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
The thing I loved about traveling early on is, was that I could speak in another language that was not the one that shaped all of the way. I thought, because I understood from studying language that language shapes thought. And so to untether, I found that when I traveled, I could untether myself from the restrictions or limitations of what a little black girl from Compton, California, could do, or to know or to be.
00;23;14;03 - 00;23;36;26
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
So I can remember my high school teacher, who was my Latin teacher, ninth grade, and then she was my 10th or 11th, 12th grade French teacher and sister, Mary Hubert Singleton from New Orleans, Louisiana. We had nuns from New Orleans that instructed us for the 12 years, the school we set, we brought them from New Orleans to Compton.
00;23;37;19 - 00;24;12;04
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
And Compton is basically like a space where people that are from Louisiana, primarily New Orleans, live. And so she had been educated at the Sorbonne in Paris and she had told me in the 10th grade, all take a language to speak it, not to pass the test, pass, you know, speaking. It would give you that. So I could I could be in Belgium and they speak both kind of a Germanic, Flemish, kind of Belgian Germanic language.
00;24;12;04 - 00;24;41;01
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
And they also have French as well. And I could be everywhere and I could speak French and everybody could understand me and I could understand everybody. And so it started me in 1973, at 19 to want to travel everywhere and tried to get into the linguists, to change the code, to get into the linguist code of whatever language they were speaking in, whatever country I was in.
00;24;41;01 - 00;25;08;11
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
I lived in Cairo, Egypt, 1995, 1996, and I was speaking Arabic. And I look at it with Shreya. Shreya, you know, I get there the first day and get into my ten word a day program. Go straight, go left, go right, stop. I'm hungry. Not just get into what we call sufficient language in whatever language I don't care is speaking.
00;25;08;11 - 00;25;40;13
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Thomas, check what I was living when I was in Timbuktu, Mali. Whether they speak in Pola about among the Fulani of Senegal and Mali and other places, I don't care what anybody was speaking, I could crack the code for a good 100 words and participate every day in language with the people in their language, to show them the respect that I had and not an imposition on which I don't speak English here.
00;25;41;00 - 00;25;42;05
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
The hell is going on.
00;25;42;15 - 00;25;43;14
Rob Lee
That's a very.
00;25;43;26 - 00;26;32;16
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Americanized. Yeah. I always had access to the language and I love from a artistic perspective, I love this dissembling, this changing, changing words, changing cells, performing a different reality based on the context of these words that I know and things I can say. And then just studying the patterns of intonation for those words so that my pronunciation would just be impeccable on those couple of words that I had that if people didn't know, they'd say, Oh, and they know of, Well, well, I'll have to teach you to do that.
00;26;32;16 - 00;27;12;27
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Nodding back and it it wouldn't matter they but it wouldn't matter the structure of it. If I could know the structure, I could crack the code. But that's what studying linguistics did, gave me structure that I know nobody imports words for things that they need basic to themselves. So those are all indigenous words. Yeah. So the fact that they don't have any words for orphan in any indigenous African language means it's not conceptual that a person could be without people somewhere that could take care of them.
00;27;13;16 - 00;27;43;13
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
So it's really philosophical. You see what's in language, you see how many words you have to have and vocabulary, and you'll see a complexity that it's kind of like English has a lot of words and all the technological words are coined in English. So other people talk about gigabytes and now we talk about, you know, algorithms and different kinds of things.
00;27;43;15 - 00;27;49;05
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
But other people just have the words that they need. Yeah, like.
00;27;50;08 - 00;28;18;04
Rob Lee
And I don't know how much truth is to it, but I remember this, this idea that I think in Japanese there's see the good or it's bad, excellent or it's bad, it's nowhere. It's no middle point. It's no is. All right that's something we have that's a that we use here is either you got it right or you didn't there's no is very binary in that sense in my I think that's why that kind of achievement thing is baked in and culturally it's like, no, I got to do this.
00;28;18;14 - 00;28;28;11
Rob Lee
This is what I have to do. This is what my, my job is. And I have to do this well. I have to excel at this or otherwise I failed. I think I gave a half effort that was good enough. There's no such.
00;28;28;11 - 00;29;03;18
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Thing. No. That that mediocrity and mediation. But it's all you know, it's all that's really interesting. I never thought about it until this moment about the Jesus cult and Jesus being a mediator between God and the Holy Spirit in this and it's in the Trinity. No one goes to the Father except through the son. So that mediator, middle position of being the linguist between the interlocutor is what they would call it in speech.
00;29;04;01 - 00;29;43;11
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Talking for someone, speaking for someone that middle ground. And it's really is really important. Greek mythology always has the rubric of following the golden mean, not being like dateless, blind to high line too low. It's like something in the middle. And whereas, in the African cosmology, the middle is the only place that exists because that's the engine for the other two sides to function.
00;29;43;24 - 00;29;57;03
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
The break. So when you get to hip hop, it's the break. Mm hmm. That's the whole thing. The thing that disrupts it. Then you can bring it back to loop, but instead, break is embedded.
00;29;57;03 - 00;29;57;21
Rob Lee
And that's why.
00;29;57;22 - 00;29;59;00
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
The break beat all of it.
00;29;59;00 - 00;30;09;09
Rob Lee
Yeah. That's why these kind of like conversations that are with people when it comes to like culture, it's like, Oh, you can just pass this along. We kind of know these things. They're embedded, they're they're passed down.
00;30;09;10 - 00;30;46;07
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
And they're of and I would say at this level, if anything, the data capacity storage and storage that that even genetically things take on a DNA that are cultural, that people don't really talk about it a lot about cultural DNA in the same way as they deal with blood DNA, like trying to find a cross and type match for organ transplanting or but there is a cultural DNA as well that resides in giving a certain importance to the beat.
00;30;46;07 - 00;31;13;27
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
It's not important to everybody, apparently, because you don't know if they're dancing to the words or the the couldn't beat a beat must be dancing to the words because it's it's off the beat. And but the beat is that one beat, that Bob Marley song about we feel it in the one drop that one that foot that you know where that foot needs to be.
00;31;14;10 - 00;31;36;09
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
And I could remember going to places where I didn't know the traditional dances of the place, but once the drums told me what was possible and I understood the beats of the drum, I knew where my body had to be placed and where my foot had to be. On when that beat came up with a right foot had to be.
00;31;36;09 - 00;32;23;08
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
And that's an important that's an important characteristic. And it's linguistic in that way. If you want to deal with like a higher science of semantics and how the body can heal itself and align itself with certain frequencies and sonic vibrations to heal itself through body placement. And that's why the dancing is come back to always the dancing because your body could remember what your your mind or your your, your, your, your mental forgot.
00;32;23;13 - 00;32;46;19
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
You know, it's just like when brothers pour libations on the ground for the deceased, for the homies as not here, they're not really saying, I'm performing an African traditional libation ceremony, which honors just a ritual. They don't have to have it on that level to understand why they're doing it. But the performance is everything that they are doing it.
00;32;47;05 - 00;33;18;11
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
And that first opened that open that top first go on the concrete that that they remember that and that they do it so the dance is the performed sonic attestation to a certain sonic agreement. You know, like there's a tool that I got I more right now I don't know if you get like this but you get into a tone and that kind of aligns you on a spiritual chiropractic for the day.
00;33;18;20 - 00;33;26;23
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Some people use a gospel song, you know, disappears in a changes it has. You know, it could have a short shelf life. You know, you.
00;33;26;23 - 00;33;45;10
Rob Lee
Could be I get caught on those those kind of like those ear bugs just like, yeah, I'm going to listen to this. This is what this week is going to be. And it's this is I think when you say chiropractic, I think it regenerative. Yeah. Like, yeah, I'm getting that. Yeah, I'm getting something out of this. This works for me right now.
00;33;45;10 - 00;33;57;21
Rob Lee
Sometimes it might be. I remember this song from a local guy eulogy and it was this song, Snakes. And it's just like that, right? Energy. And I was just like, and taking now all of this shit, that was kind of the vibe, the.
00;33;57;21 - 00;34;24;24
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Whole I don't know what like that. How I knew it was time to retire from carpet. Yeah. I couldn't go into the parking lot without pressing it on Kendrick Lamar spiteful chat. Too many bitches and most of the legacies acted like home like oh anyway.
00;34;25;11 - 00;34;25;20
Rob Lee
So.
00;34;26;11 - 00;34;42;12
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
That was like that good deck to motivate me that that could mold lack of motivate me or at one point I was obsessed with elevators by Outkast that's.
00;34;42;13 - 00;34;42;22
Rob Lee
A good one.
00;34;42;26 - 00;35;12;24
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Yeah. Yeah. Once upon a time that low low. We like me. It was a me. And when me and my nigga rode the Marta through the hood every day we look a bit of Java character, feel, feeling of instrumentals, have my pills plus my paper in court. The 86 Lithonia headed to Decatur right and arrives trying to find out a spot up in that light light up in that spot.
00;35;13;17 - 00;35;51;09
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
And just the aspirational motivation of two dudes, you know, and the hook me and the collective communal things because it's communal me and you yo mama and you'll cousin to ride non strips All Vogues coming up Slamming Cadillac dolls and repetition because that is a nuance black thing the amount of repetition that occurs in a song you know and it could be fading.
00;35;51;09 - 00;36;30;25
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
It doesn't even have to have. We talked about how words matter. Yeah, but it could be Phenix speech where like la la la la la means I love you. Yeah, yeah. Or Earth, Wind and fire singing. Buddy, buddy, buddy, buddy. Really idea, idea. But about the bar bum bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. And it just makes me think of scatting and other alternate linguistic things that black people could get into to deny the privilege of English to master their tongue and control it.
00;36;31;10 - 00;36;40;24
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
So the miasma of Aretha Franklin turning a one syllable word into a six syllable word. Yeah. When she's singing Amazing Grace.
00;36;41;09 - 00;36;41;18
Rob Lee
Yeah.
00;36;42;02 - 00;37;06;04
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Housing has, like, nine syllables after you already had to throw in amazing array. But so we just get we get, we get in something and we hold the groove. We and so that's what our I would I would say that one is a one nation under a groove getting down just for the funk of it. Just one nation.
00;37;06;04 - 00;37;34;07
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
And we're on the move. Nothing could stop us. Now that's on the one beat. That's Parliament-Funkadelic. And that's what the call the funk beat. It's on the one that's the one the disco tried to disrupt because it was so everybody like you could be somewhere and everybody could get on the dance code on the dance floor and generate a certain corporate unity of body movement and sound.
00;37;34;13 - 00;38;07;17
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
And that is almost like this has the ability to create a portal. And it makes me think about the ghost dance. Getting back to the Native American now, the ghost dance was a dance that was done. If you want to Google it real quick, that's how Sitting Bull actually died after all of his whole life. They were concerned that he was doing he part of the ghost dance movement.
00;38;08;03 - 00;38;42;21
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
And this is an all nation dance meaning that does counter-clockwise dance that incorporated all of these different groups of people. They believe that the proper practice of dance, this proper practice of dance would bring us a it would help to in American westward expansion bring peace, prosperity and unity to Native American peoples throughout the region and help them.
00;38;42;21 - 00;39;32;09
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
So Jack Wilson, this northern pollute spiritual leader, his name is, well, Vulcan, his other name, the proper practice of this dance would reunite the living with the dead. And so I began to write about the electric slide as having that same potential as the ghost dance for black people and not looking at it as a line dance, but looking it as a 490 degree turn counterclockwise movement of people just like all of the Haitian dances are counter-clockwise to to worship the the spirits of the the Vodou and the pattern of counterclockwise dancing and the ring shout of African Americans.
00;39;32;09 - 00;39;57;10
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Little Sally Walker rang Gangs of Little Girls Brown Girl in the Rain That We Just Keep Dancing. These four points, starting on the vertical line called The Longer Lives. You begin at midpoint and you trace three steps to the right. Come back to the center point on that line, take three steps to the left, come back to the center point.
00;39;57;21 - 00;40;32;08
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
March three steps to the back. Come back to the center point. Go three steps to the forward to to Coolah where it's red then down pick up the energy from low, stand back up, make a quarter turn to the vulva which is white and death and the sacred dance of birth, puberty, marriage, death. Reinforcing the cosmological understanding of people they used to draw this line on the ground, so make an oath between black people and shake on it.
00;40;32;08 - 00;40;59;28
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
That would be their word. They would draw that. So this decaying of the Congo like, our like the ghost dance is a dance that black people do and they have variations. The Cupid Shuffle, this one that that one the wobble. But you always are trying to go counterclockwise retracing this this kind of cosmic ground to show that you have not abandoned who you are.
00;41;01;01 - 00;41;42;05
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
And then you're being even though you been a stranger in a strange land with the with now the A.I. critical race theory people in in Texas are trying to change all the history books to say involuntary migration and take the word enslavement or slavery out. So to make white kids not feel bad that their people treated others with such a brutality as to kidnap and captive the can make them captives so that the sanitization of language going back to that in involuntary migration.
00;41;42;05 - 00;41;48;21
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
What that sounds like three Negroes on a field trip with backpacks backpacks going across the middle passage.
00;41;48;27 - 00;42;23;20
Rob Lee
My thing is always say what you mean. You know, that's thing. It's like, how are we doing it? And yeah and that's the thing like they'll use servant is like, no, no, no that's not that's not that actually at all. It's it's different things and it's like we do the sanitization. That's the thing that really kind of got my goat, as it were, when I want to say back in 2020, you know, right after George Floyd, it will wrap on as we'll wrap on that record that I feel like this is just like the tip of the iceberg.
00;42;23;20 - 00;42;41;25
Rob Lee
But I do want to go back to that point of the sanitization where in terms of pop culture, in terms of people in news and so on, just how we consume things. There have been a lot of goofy, weird things that have a racial bent to it, to have a sexist. They have a home of all of the things.
00;42;42;06 - 00;42;43;06
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
That all the things that.
00;42;43;24 - 00;43;03;03
Rob Lee
We we want to go, Oh, let's just take this out. No, keep it in there. Sit sitting it. However, if you want to feel, feel something about it, give it that disclaimer. Use more words. Actually give it a disclaimer of We thought this shit was cool. Then my bad, that's better than say, Oh, let's just scrub it right.
00;43;03;06 - 00;43;05;20
Rob Lee
Because when you scrub it, you're not acknowledging it.
00;43;05;24 - 00;43;36;15
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Rather Yeah, it's a thing is a is a thing that all of the men who used to speak out against America are now on postage stamps like Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Paul Robeson. I'm thinking about how Paul Robinson took his passport and he couldn't travel and that they were just having technology of sound recording. And he sent his speech that he was going to deliver in Oslo, Norway, or wherever he was going.
00;43;36;28 - 00;44;22;04
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
He sent it ahead as a voice recorder. Shannon Redman, who was a critic who's at Columbia now, she just came from being at USC and UCLA was. Shannon Redmond has a book called Anthem, but she does work on Paul Robeson is like the dead, the dead men with strong voices are all on postage stamps. But while they were embodied in their bodies, their ability to to speak and to speak, truth to power was was surveilled and policed and monitored and disrupted and so, you know, it really is, you know, two speakers.
00;44;23;04 - 00;44;47;27
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Two speakers, a big thing to no words is a big thing to tell stories is a big thing to tell your own authentic story. It's a big thing. And I love the Watkins title for I think it's his third book, We Speak for Ourselves that you only you you have that you have to be able to control the story and control the narrative so that when you tell the story, this is of what happened.
00;44;48;06 - 00;45;14;02
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
And so that was a one thing really big. After enslavement, a lot of the narratives were written when they could talk about what had happened to them on those in those death camps and and to give voice to their stories. So that's our first real big literature. Are the narratives. I was Frederick Douglass. I was born in in Talbot County, Tuckahoe Talbot County, Maryland.
00;45;14;24 - 00;45;38;10
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
My father, it was Roma, my mother was Harriet Bailey. And he tells his story up and to the point of him being liberated and his 1845 narrative. But the freedom to tell your story is to say that this happened, that you won't forget it because there are so many good lessons. Like you said, you said this, let's have no lives.
00;45;38;13 - 00;45;44;28
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
And we can we can talk about how this is terribly wrong and how this is a microaggression.
00;45;44;28 - 00;45;59;14
Rob Lee
You could you cut short their on the opportunity for discourse. Yes. For an opportunity to say, oh, okay, why was this working? Why is this so sensitive? Because, you know, let's say benefit of the doubt, which they know better, but let's say benefit of the doubt.
00;45;59;14 - 00;46;01;21
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
You had doubt that they benefit. That's me.
00;46;02;08 - 00;46;13;04
Rob Lee
But it's like, oh, well, you didn't know. Okay, cool. Fine. And that's the truth that you're going with. Let's rock with it. Now, here's an opportunity to learn to be informed. Oh, no, no. We just don't wanna feel bad about it.
00;46;13;14 - 00;46;39;00
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Oh, so it's. So it's emotionality. That's is one of the things that the lady of the young was. I can't think of her name, but she does something where if something happens horrible to black women or black people and a white person wants to come in and make it all about them, I feel so bad. And like, if you have to cry, go out.
00;46;39;00 - 00;47;11;00
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
This is not about you right to our eyes at all. You're not the default drive to sucking up the attention in the role of mother. This mother just lost her child. So you go out there and Karen and you handle your your emotionality. And but meanwhile, we're going to get back to comforting this bereaved mother. And so those are microaggressions where you even take the moment and suck the air out of the room and be like a Jennifer Hudson.
00;47;11;00 - 00;47;15;10
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
What about what what about me?
00;47;15;18 - 00;47;34;19
Rob Lee
So so in this in these last few minutes, he and I, we both got our things and we do. We got it. And this is this has been great. And this has been, you know, much different from not in the best way possible, much different from it's just, hey, I got a question. How are you got to answer it.
00;47;34;19 - 00;47;46;06
Rob Lee
So I really do appreciate that. I appreciate, you know, that, that, that you indulging me and being open and having this conversation. But I can't let you go without asking you some rapid fire questions. Okay.
00;47;46;07 - 00;47;47;20
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Well, I'm ready, Betty.
00;47;47;20 - 00;47;48;00
Rob Lee
All right.
00;47;48;00 - 00;47;49;07
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
So Richard and Naomi.
00;47;50;10 - 00;47;53;11
Rob Lee
So, you know, you want to hit me, you want to hit these as quickly.
00;47;53;11 - 00;47;58;01
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Go quick. I'm I do. I do. The five the five were the five words. Sorry on.
00;47;58;01 - 00;48;00;06
Rob Lee
It. Favorite country you visited.
00;48;00;16 - 00;48;03;12
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Molly. Molly, West Africa.
00;48;03;19 - 00;48;20;02
Rob Lee
This is this is going to be a hard one for you. I think maybe it will be. What is the most powerful word in the English language or otherwise? What was the powerful word that comes to mind for you because you're linguistics? First, I had to I had to put this one in as we were talking.
00;48;20;02 - 00;48;23;15
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
I like words like the most powerful word.
00;48;24;00 - 00;48;24;24
Rob Lee
That comes to mind for you.
00;48;25;23 - 00;48;49;14
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
I like I like the word yes. Okay. I like the word and I like it in all the languages. Wow. Yeah, I like I like and and wallop, as you say. Wow. Like, wow, wow. Like w0w was. Yes. Wow, wow, wow. If you think about it, there was no English word that had while before the enslavement of African people.
00;48;49;14 - 00;49;18;20
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Wow is not in any dictionary so that a lot of times language that other people have are our words too. Yeah. So. Wow. And so I like the idea of. Yes, because if you look at Negro is a long word for no, I'm going to go with the yes. The world in which every you tell yourself yes because everybody else is telling, you know, and that you just yes yourself right into your best possibilities and your best life.
00;49;18;27 - 00;49;33;04
Rob Lee
I love it. Let's see. This is the last one I got for you. What is your fondest memory of Baltimore? That's where we're at. We're here. We're in the city. And in that same vein, as you mentioned earlier.
00;49;33;14 - 00;50;05;04
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
I like I like the community. They I like when I had a welfare case and I had my food stamps and I was living on another side of town and the place I was getting my food stamps, they came in the neighborhood, the social worker was going to come to that spot where I didn't live. And the day that she arranged to come over my aunt, my husband, art house, and they said, well, do you know this little boy and an Arab?
00;50;05;11 - 00;50;28;26
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Oh, is everybody know Hollywood has a bear. There's a little boy he brought up down the street. Hollywood it my son was a Hollywood gal. We had come from California. So everybody on the street conversation Hollywood. So if you get a nickname, see, this is what I'm telling you. What? They know you around here, you got credentials. Are you a tourist?
00;50;28;26 - 00;50;58;25
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Are you supposed to be in Baltimore? We're always the Stop Snitchin in Baltimore. It's a it's a real thing. So I like the fact that's my fondest memory of Baltimore, how the community of women held me down. And I didn't miss a full day out because they vouch that they knew me and they knew my son. And I was like, Yeah, this is what happens when black people stick together.
00;50;58;25 - 00;51;05;22
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
They create community one block at a time. Yeah, nobody was shot. See me hungry with a baby.
00;51;06;02 - 00;51;09;00
Rob Lee
I love it. So I think that's where we're stopping.
00;51;09;00 - 00;51;15;18
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Oh, yeah. So welfare fraud involved. Look, since it did, what she had to do.
00;51;15;27 - 00;51;16;16
Rob Lee
Is that you're limited.
00;51;16;18 - 00;51;23;00
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Yes, that's your limitation. I didn't murder. I didn't murdered by. I didn't carry a weapon across the state line. Okay.
00;51;23;00 - 00;51;36;27
Rob Lee
So there you have it, folks. I want to I want to again thank Dr. Koko's Selassie for coming on to the podcast. And yeah, you're welcome. And I'm Rob Lee saying that there's art community words. Words matter. Yes. You've got to look for them.
00;51;37;24 - 00;51;48;03
Koko Zauditu-Selassie
Yeah. And you got to know some you got to say something.
