Welcome to the Truth in His Heart. I am your host, Rob Lee, and thank you for coming back for my conversations bridging arts, culture, and community. And speaking of which, you know, welcoming back, I wanna ask you guys for a favor. Make sure that you join, subscribe, connect with us on Instagram. That's truth in this art on Instagram.
Rob Lee:You'll see clips from these episodes, so the video portion, and you'll get some of the latest updates about the podcast as we move along, marching towards 800 episodes. So, yeah, that's a kind of a big milestone. So without much further ado, we'll get into the intro for today's conversation. So today, I am super excited to welcome my next guest, a 3rd generation Oakland artist who utilizes photography, installation, and experimental media, and his work examines issues of race, class, and intergenerational dynamics, inviting moments where collective storytelling could be a sight for remembering. Please welcome Adrian Burrell.
Rob Lee:Welcome to the podcast.
Adrian Burrell:Thanks for having me, and thanks for having me.
Rob Lee:Thank you for coming on. Thank you for making the time. So you're you're I'm gonna start I'm gonna use probably the term international, Adrian Morel. Because you're from an undisclosed location right now.
Adrian Burrell:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A little bit. You can say that.
Adrian Burrell:Yep. Yep.
Rob Lee:So, you know, before we get into sort of the the deeper questions and what have you, I wanna give you the space to to introduce yourself. And and I say that because, you know, often we get, like, these artist statements. We get these different details that are somehow just not, like, in there. People go right for the art, not who the person is, and it's always something that's left out, and upon conversation, you end up hearing, like, oh, that's a really interesting detail. So I'm gonna give you the space to introduce yourself in your own words, if you will.
Adrian Burrell:I'm a artist, man. I'm a artist. I'm a storyteller. I've been, shaped by a lot of different things in my life, mainly family. You know?
Adrian Burrell:My grandmother, she had 16 kids. 12 of those kids had 58. 58 had a 112, and a 112 had a 158. That's on my mama's side. And on my daddy's side, he had 10 brothers and sisters.
Adrian Burrell:So we all grew up in Oakland. My grandmother on my mom's side, she knew all of those people. She only passed away in 2020. So there was a lot of personalities around me. There was a lot of narratives, a lot of story, a lot of love, and a lot of trauma.
Adrian Burrell:And so all of that has come together to kinda create my worldview in a way in the reasons why I wanna tell stories.
Rob Lee:Wow. At 1, you guys could start a league, you know, different I mean, I I would imagine you got, you know, the different cousins and so on. It's like, we don't pick up basketball. I I get to pick all of I get to pick all of these different folks, so what have you. And, you know, having, like, a huge family and different personalities, that's I mean, I know it's ripe for stories.
Rob Lee:So in that and since you're a storyteller, I got to ask, you know, before we, you know, get really deep into it, What's the story like growing up, you know, childhood that stands out? That is is really impactful for you. And why does it resonate? Why does it pop for you?
Adrian Burrell:Well, for me, really a story that's impactful for me and really resonates and 1 that I'm still grasping at is the story of our just growing up in Oakland. Being a kid who lived on this line of play in death. You know, when us, me and my cousins, my we had this certain proximity being kids from the ghetto in East Oakland to where we can go outside any day, and there'll just be there'd be a shootout. You know what I'm saying? Or there might be something with the police, or there might be just some wild thing.
Adrian Burrell:It might be a car explosion. You never know what's gonna happen. Like, weird shit just happen all the time. I remember 1 time we was, me and my brother, we was walking down the street, and these Samoans pulled up on us, and they was like, hey, man. Y'all want this truck?
Adrian Burrell:And we 13 years old. We like, hell yeah. We want the truck. So we get inside the truck and it's a screwdriver stuck in the ignition. And so we ride it's a stick shift as well.
Adrian Burrell:Yep. My brother is like he think he can drive anything. Right? So we going up and down east Oakland from the deep to the shallow, deep to the shallow, up and down East Oakland in 1st gear, in a Toyota pickup truck from, like, the eighties. Right?
Adrian Burrell:It's, like, a 1980 something Toyota pickup truck with like a tow rig and whatnot in the back of it. And so we're going up this hill and this lady's honking at us. Right. We thinking she can call the police. Cause you know, she probably like, who are these kids driving this truck?
Adrian Burrell:Yeah. And, she honking, honking, honking, and, she said is, she pulls up on the side of us, and she's like, y'all on fire. Y'all on fire. Right? So I believe I was sitting in the middle.
Adrian Burrell:And so I'm telling my brother, I'm like, man, we're going downhill at this point. It's a stick shift. He don't know how to stop it, and we're starting to smoke smoke inside the car. So we like, somebody stop the car. Stop the car.
Adrian Burrell:Stop it. So my brother finally stopped it. He jumped out. My cousin jumped out. I get out.
Adrian Burrell:We running down the street, and they see, you know, the car blow up behind us. And so we running. We hitting fences. I'm hiding in some lady dog house when the police come in. We end up getting up out of there, and talk back to our auntie house and not leaving the house for the whole day after that.
Adrian Burrell:My auntie come like, man, what's what's
Rob Lee:wrong with y'all? We're like, nothing.
Adrian Burrell:Nothing. We ain't saying nothing. But, my brother was, he was murdered in 2015. And so 1 of the stories that really stands out to me is just, like, getting at what it means to be a child in the midst of things like that. What it means to live in this line on told us line between playing death and just telling a story, making this film that allows me to see him animated again.
Adrian Burrell:Wow.
Rob Lee:Wow. I mean, that's real real life and sort of that, you know, sort of distance is you describing there of like sort of play and then the reality having to, I guess, in some ways kind of grow up fast, I suppose, because, you know, in Baltimore, Black City, we have all of these things of 39. So, you know, certain errors 1 grows up in, you're like, oh, right. Beware of those needles out there. Don't be outside when the drug dealers might be shooting at each other.
Rob Lee:That was just normal stuff for, you know, limited of projects or what have you. You know, Lafayette projects built in 10:30 built in 10:30 5, 7th floor. You almost have to, like, know all of your lines. Right? Right.
Rob Lee:And I remember when you hear, like, popping off, like, instinctually, we knew, like, oh, they shoot me. You should get down on the floor. Right. And that's the thing that's sort of baked in from that experience at a young age. Like, we moved out of the projects when I was 10, moved in when I was 5.
Rob Lee:So it was just like, yeah, this is what that is, and it shapes or at least give some color to I know what my experiences and I carry it I suppose where almost wherever I go and, you know, I don't sound like it or have you. I don't sound like the Baltimore accent, but the sort of mentality and sort of the experiences that I've had here, I don't think are dissimilar from what a lot of people in my age group, and even to a degree what you're describing in your experience also. Which you were describing sounded like an action movie for a point, and you said it was an explosion behind us. I was like, yo. Wow.
Rob Lee:That is it. And the last last thing I'll say before I move into this this next question, that that story sort of the the part where you're you really articulated in a way that I was just, like, I'm seeing everything. I'm, like, seeing you, you know, not as many locks, but seeing, like, a younger version of you, like, I gotta get in this dog. I get out of here. I'm running.
Adrian Burrell:Yeah.
Rob Lee:I I remember, it was a birthday I had. And so stupid. You know, I was telling you a little bit about my my love of wrestling and going to WrestleMania, before we got started. And my birthday is always around, like, Royal Rumble. Right?
Rob Lee:So, you know, me and a couple of my buddies, we wanted to get some popcorn. I don't know why. Maybe before we're a popcorn or soda because, you know, it's stupid. Right? And birthdays in in January, so it snow, it's ice, all of this stuff everywhere.
Rob Lee:I was like, yeah, we should already have this. That's literally my thinking. Right? So we go up there. We get to stop.
Rob Lee:We're headed back. 1 of my friends with us we're all young. I think I was just turning maybe 15. Living in a project. Can't take you know, not living in the projects anymore.
Rob Lee:Living it, like, near the county. Can't take the, the project kid and put him near the county. So So I'm with my friends, we're we're walking, we're doing something really stupid, and I think we're just, like, doing running a dozen or something. And 1 of my friends has a pocket knife or a box cutter or something. I think it was a box cutter.
Rob Lee:Traffic is coming from behind us going south. He just throws the box cutter into traffic, smashes someone's window. They swerve and almost get into an accident. Turns out it was a guy in there with his pregnant wife and 1 of his kids in the back car, in the back of the car. He lets them out on the corner, and then he follows us.
Rob Lee:Like, we're teenagers, black taters. He's a white dude. I'm like, yo, we gotta find an alley. We gotta find, like, the back road. We gotta get away from all of this, and we were able to avert everything.
Rob Lee:We took, like, the backside streets and all of this stuff. I was hoping my dad was at the top of the block when we get back, took taking forever to get there because we were taking all of these circuitous routes. He's, like, where y'all coming from? Y'all should have been back here, like, an hour ago. I was like, ah, yeah.
Rob Lee:You know, it's a long line for the soda in the store, all of the, you know, the nonsense and, you know, just kinda knowing, like, it's not gonna be a conversation we're gonna have with this guy. Like, this could be a bad situation. You know what I mean? And it was incredibly stupid and just sort of the people you're around. I didn't throw anything, but I'm like, I'm with them.
Adrian Burrell:Right. And I think it's like, at the end of the day, you were you were a child. And at the end of the day, in my situation, I was a child. And it's it's it's interesting how sometimes society looks at these children as adults before they should be. And just to get back at that thing about play and death, it was just like my childhood was fun.
Adrian Burrell:There was a lot of things that happened that were traumatic, but I didn't know it at the time because I was having fun.
Rob Lee:Right.
Adrian Burrell:And I think that there's something to that, and it to tell a story that can have the the levity of something like The Goonies, but the stakes of something like, you know, a menace to society or a Boyz n the Hood is, like, that's a magic trick.
Rob Lee:Yeah. So you've you've you've mentioned Oakland and, you know, as a part of sort of, you know, it's it's within the DNA family, Oakland is within the DNA, so could you speak on sort of when the the practice component began? Like, you know, I've been doing these interviews or recording in some way, shape, or form. Probably that story I was sharing with you a moment ago probably started around then of having a tape recorder and just recording stupid conversations, and eventually that craft develops and grows, but essentially we're sitting there telling stories, like, this should be captured. We should talk about this.
Rob Lee:I want to listen to this again later. When did that FrogNet practice begin sort of the more nascent stage of it?
Adrian Burrell:I remember in middle school, I was in a photography program, and they gave us these disposable cameras. And I just went around my neighborhood. I went with my cousins, and I would just take all these photos. And that's when I got into before that, I was into to poetry. Like, I would, like, write poems and stuff like that.
Adrian Burrell:And then I started to think about how I can make visual metaphors, how I can make visual poetry. What does that look like to do that with a photo? And I went into film, and then I went back to poetry, then I went into music. And then I was like, okay. Like, which 1 of these things do I choose?
Adrian Burrell:Because people used to say, like, oh, you have to specialize in something. And then I came to the point where I got into the San Francisco Francisco Art Institute, and I'm like, man, I'm not specializing in nothing. Like, I'm a storyteller, and whatever story I wanna tell you know what I'm saying? Like, the the medium is gonna be chosen in the mid in the midst of telling that story. So, yeah, that's just what it's what it's been.
Rob Lee:How about that? And and I think, you know, we have folks that, you know, might not quite get the vision or if I'm being petty about it, have a small mind. You know, have, you know, the capacity for big ideas and almost wanna put a governor on what 1 does. It's like, well, I'll do this, this, and this. It's like, but you can do all of that.
Rob Lee:Well, yeah, I can because kinda that's what I'm doing. And, you know, I think it makes you well rounded when you have multiple things that you can kinda dip in, and it's like, well, this might work well as a poem. This might work well well as prose. This might work well as video, and if people can't see that, how they intersect, that's on them. Your job is, and from what I'm seeing, your job is to just just do it.
Rob Lee:Just make it happen.
Adrian Burrell:Yeah. And I think it's like, I come from a long line of people who turn shit to sugar. Yeah. And it's like when I would go into a kitchen, and I'm like, I'm hungry. Yeah.
Adrian Burrell:And my I'm like, mama ain't nothing here to eat. She said, we better find something. You know? So I might look, and I see some rice, and I might look I see AAA can of tomato sauce. And I'm like, okay.
Adrian Burrell:If I throw this together, this gonna taste like spaghetti, kinda. You feel me? If I just cook this rice and throw some tomato sauce in it, or, like, just figuring out how to put things together, how to make something out of nothing is it was started as a survival tactic, but it's now, like, something something that I can apply to my art practice where I can hear a sound or I can see a a snippet of a archival clip, or I can whatever. I can I can make these metaphors? I can put these things together from their desperate
Rob Lee:parts. So why is it important? Because we talking to a family and and kinda revisiting some of the stories from growing up, why is it important, and even in doing this, right, this is a document in in many ways in in an archive. Why is it important in archiving sort of those moments in times, those stories, and kinda revisiting them? Why is it important to you?
Adrian Burrell:I think it's important the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and where we come from and have an agency and control over those stories because if we don't, somebody else will. And I think also in a sense of the way I collaborate with my family, because that's that's what I like to do. I like to work with my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, my brother, my sisters.
Rob Lee:Yeah.
Adrian Burrell:And it creates this this ritual space. And within that ritual space, there's a opportunity. And that opportunity, we can deepen the connection. We can create a new language, create a new relationship to each other, or we can get rid of an energy. And to maintain the health of a collective, you need that process.
Adrian Burrell:You need that process of creating a space where you can release something, you can gather something, or you can deepen something. And when we don't have that, you see the collective a collective illness begin to kinda, like, fester and grow. And 1 of the things that I've enjoyed most about creating is getting a chance to make new language and new relation with people that I love and care about the most and with my community as well.
Rob Lee:And it and it's good, I think. Thank you. It's it's good, I think, to be able to revisit some of those things with our our stories and maybe come to a sort of mutual understanding. I don't know if you've encountered this within your work, but I'm sure with, you know, having, like, like, family, right, that you might remember a certain situation 1 way, and they remember it completely different. You know, like, yes, I'm revisiting us.
Rob Lee:Can we can we talk about that? Because I wanna put this I wanna make sure I got the facts straight. Has has that happened in sort of the work that you're doing?
Adrian Burrell:Yeah. I think it happens in a sense of how do I say, just for an example, me and my sister are collaborating on something. She might have a totally different experience of a situation than I have. At the end of the day, we might both feel like either we're not being heard or we're not being listened to. But then the new language and the new relationship that we have to come up with, we have to both be vulnerable, and we both have to accept like, hey.
Adrian Burrell:I love you. You love me. We had a misunderstanding, but we both wanna move forward. Yeah. And this is what it looks like to move forward.
Adrian Burrell:And I think growing up, we may not have had that type of framework or that type of example of how to move a disagreement or a conflict forward to something new. But in the process of repetition, it's gotten to the point now where we've just deepened the space and potential vulnerability and the potential of love. Yeah. And I think yeah. That's what I say about that.
Rob Lee:That's it's it's good because, you know, I don't I haven't I've collaborated with my brother. I have a brother. I I have 2 others I have 3 siblings. I have a brother I grew up with, the 2 half siblings are older than me, and I grew up with my younger brother and, you know, he's been on, you know, he had his own podcast on here. I was like, yo, here's the network, let's do it, blah, zee, blah, and every time we'd have some sort of conversation about, man, remember this growing up?
Rob Lee:And I'm thinking about it from 1 very specific perspective, my my own, because that's the only 1 I really have or should be in control of, right? And he has his and being able to get some sort of insight in context on, like, oh, this is what you were encountering at that time. I had no idea. So now I might look at things differently and have a different understanding and a supposed different, I guess, relationship or language around that.
Adrian Burrell:Yeah.
Rob Lee:So I read that often your work is engaging on issues of social justice, cultural heritage, labor, colonial systems. How do you say, like, you know, how do you see art as a medium for having these conversations? Like, and I think we're kind of around it, but how is, like, art generally, like, you know, a medium for having these conversations and asking those sorts of questions around these these topics?
Adrian Burrell:Yeah. I think about that makes me think about, like, knowledge creation. So a lot of the work, that I've been doing, I've been looking at Clyde Woods. I've been looking at the research of, doctor Badore Alegre, doctor Tiffany Barber, all these different people who are thinking about catastrophe and repetition in cyclical time.
Rob Lee:Yeah.
Adrian Burrell:And so for me, storytelling is the ability to conjure a blues moment. Making is the ability to conjure a blues moment. It's the ability to, in the current context of catastrophe, wherever point in that cycle, we might find ourselves being able to steal ourselves away via culture, via, community, sometimes via refusal and via violence, and say, this is how we're choosing to live. Yeah. All this catastrophe is happening, but this is how we're choosing to live.
Adrian Burrell:So for instance, at after slavery, we got Reconstruction. Right?
Rob Lee:Yeah.
Adrian Burrell:And during Reconstruction, we got the Ku Klux Klan. And with the Ku Klux Klan, we got the blues. You know what I'm saying? And the blues not only being a form of music, but being a modality, like mutual aid groups being, like, groups that were coming together and arming themselves and saying, like, we're gonna defend ourselves by any means necessary. Like, all these different things were were happening in the midst of this catastrophe, and I think storytelling and art making makes is a is a is a byproduct or sometimes the root of those movements.
Rob Lee:That's that's that's a really good point.
Adrian Burrell:And,
Rob Lee:it does. It does, actually, because those are I think those are inflection points, like, and and 1 I wanna I wanna touch on, I I interviewed doctor Barber. So that was really cool that you mentioned her. And, and and I think those are these and there are these inflection points that when we have these things that are for for certain communities and for, you know, large swaths of community that that's the focus. I'm always looking for I'm looking for the hook.
Rob Lee:I'm looking for the thing that you're not expecting and it's like, alright, what's happening in the background? What work is happening? What opportunities are there? Like, you know, this this podcast started 2020. Right?
Rob Lee:So not not nothing big happened in 2020. Only small. Nothing big. Nothing happened to anyone. And there were a lot of different things that happened from a racial standpoint, you know, with George Floyd from, you know, sort of that perspective and then, you know, obviously, lead COVID.
Rob Lee:And, you know, my thinking is not necessarily skeptical, but I've seen enough things. I was like, what's happening? What's actually gonna happen? This is news, and this is important. But what's the other thing that's gonna happen?
Rob Lee:And I think it takes us a few years to kinda see some of these things changing. Like, how we look at sort of, under underrepresented and unrepresented communities. You know what I mean? Like, how can we have them make this work because we see that there is attention and traffic around sort of social justice intersecting with art. How can we monetize that?
Rob Lee:Because there's somebody sitting in the background, it's like how can we make this beneficial for us? It's like people are thinking about these things when a catastrophe is happening, when, you know, sort of it's like, what's the rebound? What's the next step? I remember I remember it was a joke from a comedian alike, and he he was talking about, I think there was a crisis and, like, a storm in Haiti. And there's a lot of people that that that passed, and it was just like, you know someone that's behind the scene from a big company.
Rob Lee:It's like, alright, how can we turn this into a resort? Because that's sort of the thing you should be really looking at. Like, this bad thing has happened, and we should do all of the aid and everything to support and help those folks. That's where people's attention should be, and likely is, but there's a group of people behind the scenes of how can we turn this into a moneymaker for us? And so I kinda look at things in that perspective a lot of times and sort of, like, what is the response to this thing that we're all kind of or large groups of us are counter encountering?
Adrian Burrell:Yeah. Yeah. I think that, how do I say, empire has been empiring.
Rob Lee:Yeah. And
Adrian Burrell:the the ways in which we, black, brown, you know what I'm saying? People who aren't as resourced as other people around the around the world, Endure empire has looked very similar across time and space. Yeah. And I think there's a, you know, there's a lot of scholars that are doing work to help us further reveal the fragility of Empire. And I say that to say that, you know, when when we're going through a catastrophe and there are somebody there's somebody who's who has a different interest in mind, me and Black Liberation, who sees a way to, how do I say it, capitalize off of my or and or our pain and suffering.
Adrian Burrell:And then there's me. I'm like, man, how we finna get free? You know what I'm saying? Like, how we finna how we finna get out of the off this, like, rat racing out of this doomsday clock situation. Yeah.
Adrian Burrell:And so, yeah, man. Empire being empire.
Rob Lee:And I and I think, Doug, in in doing this, like, you know, as I was, you know, sharing with you, before we got started about, you know, that sort of work of the point of sort of this, this fundraiser I was describing, the point of it is to bring attention around it, that this is happening right in front of us. All of these cool things, this revitalization, we're calling it something else, this religious gentrification, and, you know, it's aligned in what it really, you know, stuck out to me about and really aligned with what I do here. You know, this podcast started when, you know, Trump said Baltimore is just a city filled with rats, and I was just like, and, yes, stuff like that, and I was like, it's not about the city though. It's about the people in the city. People look like me and you.
Rob Lee:And then I feel like that conversation can be spread out and blown out even further. You know, if if these people that are in these spots could get, you know, sort of black folks out, black and brown folks out because they don't matter or their stories don't matter. I was like, what can I do through what I know, kinda archiving and, you know, capturing these stories in that sort of moment in time? That's what I, you know, I look at it try to I try to look at what I do as, like, not social work, but it's sort of it's it's archival but it's like community work. Work.
Rob Lee:It has that sort of focus attached to it. Not for sure. At least that's that's that's the intent. That's the intent because, as you you touched on earlier, you know, if we're not doing it, who who will? You know, whether it be for our community, whether it be for our families, And I gotta ask, and 1, you know, the I wanna move into this sort of next thing.
Rob Lee:I wanna, 1, congratulate you. I I see what is it? 2024 Iranian Arts Fellowship? So Yes. About that a little bit.
Rob Lee:What was that feeling like? I mean, like, I'm I barely won it. What what is that feeling like for you? What what is the award, like, in the fellowship mean for your journey as an artist, as a storyteller, as a creator?
Adrian Burrell:I would say that it's always a plus when you know what I'm saying? You're a working artist and you get resources to continue. Because it is a very entrepreneurial, you know, situation where you don't know where your next you know what I'm saying? Dollar coming from sometime or where your next sale is coming from some some time or commission, and you just really out here. You're entrepreneur.
Adrian Burrell:You're a business person at the same time that you're a storyteller and an artist.
Rob Lee:Yeah.
Adrian Burrell:And getting a grant like the reigning grant allows me to have a little bit of elbow room and also allows me to put a little bit more resources into some of the projects that I'm working on and into my community. So, you know, if I wanna hire my cousin or I wanna hire, you know, a family member or whatever, I'm a okay. Bam. I can afford to be, like, let me pay you well for this thing. So it's been great.
Adrian Burrell:It's been an amazing opportunity.
Rob Lee:That's that's dope. And I and I like that. Like, it's it's sort of the same thing. You know? Whenever there's anything that flows my way, I'm like, alright.
Rob Lee:I don't really need this, but I need this to build that sort of capacity.
Adrian Burrell:Yeah. Exactly.
Rob Lee:You know, I'm a volume guy. Right? There was 1 year in this sort of arc where I did 300 plus interviews in a year, and so I was like, yo, how did you do that? I was like, because I'm a little crazy, I'm a little off. I like a lot of creative people a little little off Right.
Rob Lee:You know, in that sort of spot and, but in it, as sort of that stuff isn't as around, you know, you're unable to, you know, maybe hire the person that you would want or pay them at the rate you would want or it's a lot of it you're doing yourself. It's like, well, let me edit this piece myself or let me, you know, edit, let me, do the graphics for this or let me run the social media or what have you. But once you have that sort of that that fellowship and that sort of acknowledgement because as you said, it is an entrepreneurial that you gotta have that in your head, and once you're able to have that, you know, like the way you put it at elbow room, you're able to grow and branch out and kind of see it to that sort of next stage ride that wave as I like to call
Adrian Burrell:it. Right.
Rob Lee:So speaking of specific works, I got to go to, you know, 1 that I may have been watching, you know, re watching before we got started. Let's talk a little bit about the Saint Step in Congo time. Let's talk about it. Tell us tell us what it is, please.
Adrian Burrell:Yeah. It's, it's a part of a larger body of work called Sugar Cane and Lightning, which is like a mixed tape of black life and American history from a familial perspective. So looking at the times in which my family has dealt with catastrophe from the 1700 to the spiritual world till the present until now and creating, visual metaphors and meditations on those catastrophes while also thinking about how the blues moment comes about within them. And it is, it's, the v the version that you saw saw the version that you saw is, the Venus Blues edition, which takes me us from, Oakland to Louisiana to Senegal and back.
Rob Lee:So let's talk a bit about sort of the process because, obviously, it's it's it's ongoing as, you know, it's there, what have you, and, you know, 1, you know, is is I'm thinking about it, like, sort of fresh. I'm, like, enraptured, and I like, you know, you you were talking about how, like, the setup for, like, Vimeo, so you gotta have, like, the 3rd. I was like, I kinda like this. I was like, I'm trying to trying to pull in everything. That's why I was like, I wanna rewatch
Adrian Burrell:or watch
Rob Lee:the times. But talk a bit about sort of the creative process for, you know, for working on this. Like, you know, what does that workflow looks like? What is sort of the modes of collaboration, any techniques that come to mind, and sort of this this this work? So so talk about sound.
Rob Lee:You were touching on that a moment ago. You said they come back to sound.
Adrian Burrell:Yeah. So, like, 1 of the things, like, with that project, you know, I'll get I go from my family left Louisiana in 2 waves, 1 in 1927 and 1 in 1945 to to come to Oakland. And when you think about home, you think about at least for me, I think about home. I'm like, okay. Home is Oakland.
Adrian Burrell:Then I travel the world. I've been over 30 different countries, and I'm like, well, you know, Oakland will always be home, but I feel different things in different places. And I go to Louisiana. I'm like, okay. Well, this is where we've been at since the 1700.
Adrian Burrell:Like, what does that mean? Then you go to Senegal. And based on my research, I know I got lineage that goes back there. And I'm like, what does that mean to is is home the continent? And I came to the realization that the closest to the continent or the closest to to home that I'll ever get is the sound of my grandmother's voice.
Adrian Burrell:And when I was in Louisiana and I was in the middle of a sugarcane field and I'm looking at this church that my family helped build in the 1800, and it's still standing. And some of the names of the people who I know are my relatives, who I've seen in those national archives, I'm standing on their graves. Like, I'm sitting on their graves. Like, I'm standing with the dead. I'm standing with my peoples.
Adrian Burrell:And I, I walk over to the to the ground, and I put my hands in the soil, and it was humid. It was hot. And boom. A lightning bolt go through the sky, and I say, damn. Sugarcane and lightning.
Adrian Burrell:That's gonna be the name of the book. Like so that's that's the book that I have out right now, Sugarcane and lightning. And in that same moment, I started to think about the ways in which my grandmother's voice and the sound of it kinda like her timing and her speech patterns have survived something before slavery, something before the middle passage. Like, there's something attached to that sound that came before that that still was alive in me, and that's the closest to Africa that I'll get. That's the closest to home that I'll get is the sound of her voice.
Rob Lee:Wow. Wow. Again, like I said, you know, you you are you're definitely a storyteller. The the way you just described that, I'm sitting there. I was like, alright.
Rob Lee:Again, I see it. I see Kurt, you. I don't see Kid, you from earlier. I see Kurt you having this experience and, you know, finding finding that that that place, finding that that sort of semblance of home and it's it's a question that I've I've asked people, you know, generally in the the rapid fire portion, which we'll be getting to in a few moments. But it's generally, like and I think some people don't don't get what I mean by it.
Rob Lee:But I think the way that you described it, you you would get it in that. How do you bring home with you? And that's sort of the thing, like, you know, as I was joking about, you know, I have joke about a lot where I bring a certain sensibility wherever I go. It's definitely a Baltimore sensibility that I bring with me and I sort of bring that, that is connected to me. That's a part of me.
Rob Lee:That's where my family is at, but, you know, I would imagine as I go to and do that archival work. You're making me feel like I'm lazy making me feel like I need to be checking these archives, but going there maybe to North Carolina and seeing sort of that part of the history of my family and getting a sense of, like, alright. Who are we really connected to? Who are
Adrian Burrell:the other people that are
Rob Lee:in my family? And and diving into it. That's, you know, like, I know a lot of folks that have done it. I've done it. My partner's done it.
Rob Lee:And several of the people I've done that I know have done it. You need the whole admixture test. You're trying to find your history because you wanna get a sense of who are we and it goes back to, you know, sort of the the archival component, who's keeping the records, where is that that stuff at, and more often than not, you get it from the your your your relatives, your your ancestors, your your your forefathers, your your parents, your grandparents, and so on. That's where we would get all of it from, and it's like, yo, you gotta go to Mecklenburg County. That's where your people are from or what have you, and and kinda get that context and kinda understand that a bit better.
Rob Lee:And I would imagine, you know, I almost want a dose of what you were describing. I'm not if I see some lightning down there as I'm doing this, I'm like, yo, this is wild. It's gonna be like tobacco and, like, lightning or something. It's not gonna be sugarcane, you know, because that's you know, North Carolina got tobacco, I think. No.
Rob Lee:But that's, you know, that's just really, really cool and really powerful. So so thank you for sharing that.
Adrian Burrell:Sure.
Rob Lee:Alright. So I got, like, 1 sort of, like, last real question because, you know, you've almost speed rounded most of my questions. I feel like I shoulda, like, come in with 10 or 11 questions versus, like, the 7 that I've had in this podcast.
Adrian Burrell:I'm usually a person with a few words. I don't really I usually don't talk a lot, and I I try to use as few words as possible to describe things. People kinda tell me I should work on that, but I like to I just if I got it, I'm okay. Bam. That's won't be stretching it out.
Rob Lee:No. I I look. I I appreciate it. You know? It's like, there's a few things that makes my job easier.
Rob Lee:1, when someone is just, like, very verbose, and I'm, like, you've answered 4 questions in your 1 response, I'm, like, great. Or when they're, like, this is kind of the answer. So you're gonna do well when it comes to rapid fire. But before we get there, what's what's next? You know, like, what's next, as far as what you have on the horizon that you can speak on?
Rob Lee:I know that the the second the the Senegal premiere is gonna be happening later in the year. But what's next for you? Like, what are you looking forward to in the next year or so?
Adrian Burrell:Yeah. I'm gonna be showing some work, showing some work at the Museum of Black Civilization in Senegal in November. I should be showing some work in Berlin, in, AfroLushan in a few weeks. I'm going to where else am I going? Oh, I'm gonna go to supposed to go to Arbaizel, Miami.
Adrian Burrell:Gonna go to Fogg in, in, in San Francisco, in the Bay. And, yeah, also just looking forward to resting. Looking forward to digging deeper, getting some reading done, getting some writing done, kinda playing with a few new ideas that I have and collaborating with people. Love it. Also, my, like I said, Sugar Cane and Lightning, that's out through my matters right now.
Adrian Burrell:There's only a few copies left, because it was a limited run. But, yeah, that's out right now too.
Rob Lee:Dig it. And we're definitely gonna double down because we do have 1 to Seamus plugs at the end. But before we get there, we gotta get through rapid fire. And as you've probably noticed, I've been typing throughout this as part I
Adrian Burrell:didn't notice.
Rob Lee:Oh, yeah. I'm I'm I'm relatively smooth with it. So I got some rapid fire questions for you. And because, you know, because as you said a moment ago, that you're very good with it, very good with the short answers. You're
Adrian Burrell:I try to be.
Rob Lee:Alright. Okay. So I got 4 of them for you. Okay. And as I tell everyone, don't overthink these, you know, it kinda is what it is, opinions and all that stuff, but it takes a a peek behind the curtain of who the person is.
Rob Lee:Alright. So you mentioned later in the podcast that you've traveled a a lot. What is your favorite place you've traveled?
Adrian Burrell:Probably Brazil, Japan, Nigeria.
Rob Lee:K. See see, now as a person that's been studying Japanese for coming up on 300 days, look, we we might have to talk off mic about, you know, that experience because
Adrian Burrell:Okay.
Rob Lee:You know, the Hongo, you know, like
Adrian Burrell:Right.
Rob Lee:We're trying to get it in. We're trying to get it in. I'm curious about sort of the habits of of artists. How many hours of sleep do you get on average?
Adrian Burrell:On a good day, I'll go to sleep at around 8 or 9, and I'll wake up at 5 AM. On a bad day, I'll go to sleep at around maybe midnight or 1, and I'll get up at 7.
Rob Lee:Okay. You you you're you're doing pretty good, actually. You know, like that's, like, what, 6 to, like, 9 hours somewhere in that that group? Yeah. Probably.
Adrian Burrell:I ain't a math person, but,
Rob Lee:you're you're you're doing well.
Adrian Burrell:Yeah. I feel rested, you know, most of the time. Even when I don't get a lot of sleep, I still feel rested. I'm just 1 of those people who can run off a little sleep.
Rob Lee:Yeah. Yeah. If I'm if I'm under 6, useless. I mean, I drink a lot of coffee, but, yeah, if I'm under 6, useless. And there there are some times where I was like, yo, like back in the day, a couple years ago, I was like doing 18 podcasts in a week here or there and, like, you know, a lot of interviews and not getting the proper amount of sleep and just trying to fit it in.
Rob Lee:Now it's like, I wanna trim this number down because I need that, like, 78. I need to get that
Adrian Burrell:in. Right.
Rob Lee:Need to feel rested. The mind needs it.
Adrian Burrell:The trick is you gotta get a lot of sunlight before, in my opinion. Get a lot of sunlight before you get ready to dial down so you get that vitamin d and Sure. Get some magnesium and, you know what I'm saying, them lo fi situations, you'd be out.
Rob Lee:Definitely definitely been the, using the magnesium, getting a little bit more sun, magnesium in the lo fi sort of like the, binaural beats. Oh.
Adrian Burrell:Right.
Rob Lee:Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I slept in the studio last night, though, so I was, living like a hot boy, staying up a little late watching, baseball.
Adrian Burrell:Yeah. You thugging.
Rob Lee:Oh, yeah. It's just it's it's awful. Getting prepared for Japan. So, you know, we we talked about Oakland a lot throughout, but a lot early on, you were setting the stage. So I gotta ask again, sort of the habit piece.
Rob Lee:What is a for you, what is a quintessential, like, Oakland meal? You know, like, you know, what are you doing leading up to the meal? Like, what is, like, paint set the stage for a storyteller. I wanna know what it is. Like, yeah, I'm pulling up.
Rob Lee:I'm in Oakland. Adrian, I need to know where's the food?
Adrian Burrell:Okay. Okay. Okay. It depend it depend on who it depend on who I'm with. You know what I'm saying?
Adrian Burrell:And I eat a lot. I got a big appetite. I eat for, like, 3, 4 people. So it wouldn't be abnormal for me to go to 2 of my favorite restaurants back to back to get what I really wanna have going on. And so Okay.
Adrian Burrell:Calucci Cafe, that's the Ethiopian spot that I will go to. In terms of, Thai food, which is another 1 of my favorites, I would go to Champa Garden
Rob Lee:Yeah.
Adrian Burrell:In East Auckland. And then in terms of, like, I got hella aunties, and and a few of them can cook real good. So it's really a good day if my 1 of my aunties, my auntie Bellew, if she cooks something, then you know what I'm saying? I'm at her house. That's that's that's where I'm gonna be at.
Adrian Burrell:If she cooks something and she let me have some, I'm a be at her house.
Rob Lee:So so what do you have in at at at each 1 of these sort of stops? Because, look, I mean, I'm following you. That's that's that's the thing I need to know. What are we getting?
Adrian Burrell:Alright. So at Colucci Cafe, I'm a get the vegetarian the veggie combo. And if I'm feeling, like, real you know what I'm saying? Like, a real boy that day, I'm a get the, the meat and the lamb tips, the, the the bag tips, the juicy ones, not the dry ones with the rosemary. Then at the, Thai spot, and I'm gonna get the, the not the gluten free, the teff, the teff bread, not the sourdough joint.
Adrian Burrell:Then at the Thai spot, I'm a get some passe you with the shrimp. I'm a get a spring roll with shrimp. I'm a get a, what's that? A chicken lop.
Rob Lee:Yeah.
Adrian Burrell:Mango sticky rice. And I'm gonna make sure I get the, the hot chili oil on the side. All the Thai Spice don't got the hot chili oil because it's more so a Chinese thing.
Rob Lee:Yeah.
Adrian Burrell:But some of them got it. And when they do, that go real good on the passer you. Right? So then my, you know what I'm saying? She do she do her thing.
Adrian Burrell:So she gonna have a little baked spaghetti. We gonna do that. And separate I'm a just name all the stuff I like. She she's baked spaghetti, high water cornbread. A lot of people don't know what that is.
Adrian Burrell:I like collard greens, but my family do kinda mix the turnip and mustards together. They they do that situation. She make the fire peach cobbler, sweet potato salad, beef ribs. Sometime, I like a little, like, beef barbecue ribs. What else they be doing, man?
Adrian Burrell:It it it's it's a it's a lot, man. It's a lot. I'm a I'm a say that, though.
Rob Lee:Look, man. So we so we eating good then? We eat good.
Adrian Burrell:If I don't do nothing else if I don't do nothing else, I'm gonna eat.
Rob Lee:I love it, and I I am a big fan of hot water. I love cornbread overall. Hot water cornbread, hell yeah. My partner, she makes
Adrian Burrell:think hot water cornbread is though? What do you think hot water cornbread is? Because it might not be what I think hot water cornbread is.
Rob Lee:I mean, it's almost like, like, almost like corn cakes. It almost sounds like sort of that vibe. Like, her people are from, like, Louisiana originally.
Adrian Burrell:What it look like though?
Rob Lee:They look like they kinda like circulars. Like, maybe she does it a little different than the way that that your folks are doing it.
Adrian Burrell:They circular? Yeah. Okay. Cool. We talking about the same thing.
Adrian Burrell:Because some people be talking about hush puppies.
Rob Lee:You know
Adrian Burrell:what I'm saying?
Rob Lee:No. No. No. Those are something different. Those are hush puppies.
Rob Lee:Those are like captain d's. That's that's that's Oh, 0,
Adrian Burrell:just so we're on the same page, I ain't talking about no hush puppies.
Rob Lee:No. No. No. No. No.
Rob Lee:We'll we'll have that with, like, the Hoppin' John and the wild, like, collard greens or what have you.
Adrian Burrell:And Okay. Okay.
Rob Lee:That's yeah. It's
Adrian Burrell:Gotta dip that you gotta dip that thing in the ear.
Rob Lee:It can't be too sweet. That's the thing about it. It can't be too sweet. Like, if I'm have because it's it's different tiers of cornbread. We can get to a deep cornbread conversation right now.
Rob Lee:Right. Right. Right. Tears of cornbread. Like, I'm a person like, I love cornbread.
Rob Lee:And, I remember watching an episode of, I think, some cooking show and it was I don't know if it was Filipino or something, but they had their version of cornbread and it was just like the bottom of the tray had, like, creamed corn and roasted corn in the bottom of it as a base. And then it was like mad sweet, but almost had like a corn pudding with cornbread on top. I was like, I'm with that. I'm with that.
Adrian Burrell:You did.
Rob Lee:Didn't turn out the way I would've liked when I tried the recipe, but, you know, I appreciate the attempt. You know? It's like, maybe there was something I messed in there missed in there. Right. But then when it comes to something that, you know, like, sort of when we have, like, hot water cornbread is definitely with it's kind of that New Year situation.
Rob Lee:Yeah. Usually it goes along with the, you know, the Hoppin' John, the neck bones, the whole thing.
Adrian Burrell:Yeah. Yeah.
Rob Lee:And it's never overly sweet, but it's it slaps. And I think I think there's, I forget what fat is in it. I forget what fat you've been.
Adrian Burrell:It's not.
Rob Lee:It's no notes. Alright. So here's here's the last 1. Here's the last 1. What are you currently reading?
Rob Lee:Like, you're a well read dude. Like, I'm hearing it. I'm, like, alright. I gotta research this. Dude said this.
Rob Lee:Now I need to act like I'm smart. And, you know, just but what are you currently reading? Like, what's on your to read list?
Adrian Burrell:I've been trying to dig into Sylvia Wynter Okay. And just her idea of this of of human. Like, who gets to be human and who doesn't get to be human and why. And so I've been thinking about that a lot, and it's a big text. And, yeah, I just been thinking about that.
Adrian Burrell:I just been every once in a while, I just pick up that book. I just started, like, underlining stuff, and then I'll put it down. I'll think about it for a day. You know? So I I ain't really speed reading through it.
Adrian Burrell:I'm just slowly going through that book, and I've been kinda in my own head a lot. I feel like I've lived a lot of different lifetimes in a short amount of time, and therefore, I've been taking a lot of time to just write and reflect and do voice memos and think.
Rob Lee:Yeah. That's, no. It's it's good. Like, you know, I think I've I've dove back into some of the big audiobook. I always have some some some audio on my ear.
Rob Lee:I'm not a speed reader, but I can definitely divert attention into a couple of different places, and especially when I'm prepping for, like, interviews and stuff. I will have, like, 1 of the books that I get a lot of energy from, a lot of, like, source material from. I'm like, alright. It's not like me taking exact quotes and questions and so on from that, but getting inspired from it. And like, okay, that's the question I wanna ask someone.
Rob Lee:Hopefully, I can book an interview that this fits within this quest question this this sort of type of question. And, you know, I'll spend time just kind of going through sort of the thinking around arts, not specifically, hey, how does this person make this visual? How does this person edit this or paint that? That's cool and I want the the the guest to share how they go about it. But I wanna dive further into the thinking, like, what's underneath the sort of that that was the first layer.
Rob Lee:It was the base layer. That's what I'm trying to get to. So I'm looking for for stuff that makes me think and helps stimulate that thought. Mhmm. Yeah.
Rob Lee:I shot them. So that's kinda it for the podcast. You got off the hot seat, so shout out to you. And, there's 2 things I wanna do as we we wrap up here. 1, I wanna thank you for for being an international man of mystery, but thank you for coming on and making the time to be on this podcast today.
Rob Lee:And, and 2, I wanna invite and encourage you to share with the listeners where they can follow you, website, social media, any of those those things you wanna share, and then show the the sort of final moments here?
Adrian Burrell:Yeah. My, Instagram is adrianlbarrell, and my website is down right now. Well, it's not down. It's a landing page, basically. But if you wanted to get in contact with me, you can DM me, or you can go to adrianneburel.art, and you can email me from there.
Adrian Burrell:Yeah.
Rob Lee:And there you have it, folks. I wanna again thank Adrian Burrell for coming on to the podcast and sharing a bit of his journey with us today. And I'm Rob Lee saying that there's art, culture, and community in and around your neck of the woods. You've just got to look for it.
