Paul McAllister
Tell us about your research and writing process. How did you come to this specific topic?

Fauziyatu Moro
Initially, I thought it would feel out of place, given that I’m coming with not out of place because yeah African history is Black History. Yeah. Then when I went to the website, I saw that a lot of it is American history. And I was thinking, What can I contribute? I don’t want to pretend and see that I know, African American history as much as I know African history, that would be a lie. And so I knew there was really no material. But then I was thinking it is a continuum. Blackness is a continuum from the continent towards diasporas. How has this continuum been expressed? How have we seen its manifest, and one of the ways that it has manifested was through music. Now, this didn’t come because I sat down and started thinking about I had previously, during my undergraduate studies, I had previously written an essay in class, that looked at Fela and a highlight musician from Ghana code and Nanam Pedu And I was just drawing parallels between the types of music that they made, because both of them were protests. They were protesting the system. They were protesting the government with their music, but there was so much difference in the way that they went about it. Fela was more overt and radical, but Nanam Pedu was was very subtle using folktales and fables, just to conceal obscure the message he’s trying to put across just to the military junta would not come at him. So yeah, the word connections even within the continent, where you have similarities in resistance. So I was thinking, how did this move beyond the continent I knew I wanted to do Fela I knew I needed to do Bob Marley and Miriam Makeba I knew I knew sorry, I knew Miriam Makeba so well. But then I, her connection with Harry Belafonte was something that I didn’t know so well. So this research plunged me into that. And I discovered that oh, no, there has been a lot. The wind down between these two people. And Nina Simone was not on my list, until the reggae rendition of an album by Jamaican artists women artists dropped. And I was thinking, oh, if these artists have made the effort to make a Reggae rendition of this, then there’s something more to it. So I started going in on Nina Simone as well. I have covered, all of these things about her that I didn’t know before. Previously, I only knew one or two songs, by Nina Simone. I didn’t know the breadth of her activism, I honestly didn’t. Yeah, so this research put me on the path to learning more, not just about the continent that I came from, but also its diaspora. So in the end, I went back and said, these are the people I think I’m going to work with, because I see some connection in here, I see how I can make an argument for black transnationalism, and African connections, black connections all across the globe. And then we started work. Because I was dealing with musicians, I needed the images to tell a story that was more than just the music as well. So one description that actually stood out for me, even though I knew that I was it was Bob Marley’s in the process of writing this essay, I was also listening to their songs all over again. I mean, there was an imbalance here because I listened to Bob Marley more than I listened to anyone else on the list, I knew Bob Marley’s style, I knew what he does. I knew that his movements are not just movements, it’s part of the history. It’s part of a conversation that he’s trying to put out there. And so when I saw that picture of his even though his face is obscured, and you can’t really see it, I thought that it was powerful in itself, it would have been easier to just pick an image of Bob Marley where you would see his face, but in this case, it was a profile. And I wasn’t focusing on the profile, I was focusing on what was happening when the image was taken. And clearly he was in motion. And so you have the picture on the list and not some other picture of of Bob Marley and…

Paul McAllister
For our listeners, that’s that’s the kind of highlight picture the piece the first one you see when Bob Marley is singing, I guess, in concert or at a at a venue and his locks are kind of swinging around. It’s a very dynamic, powerful photo. Yeah, it’s a great choice to open the piece with.

Fauziyatu Moro
Yeah. And one other piece would be Fela’s image and I thank the editoral board because they actually pushed me to consider certain things that I wasn’t paying attention to and one of them had to do with Fela’s instrument in that image, where he had his wind instrument on his lap. And for some reason, I was thinking how could I have missed it? Given this if you take it to pick off the last song, if it’s 12 minutes long each minute is dedicated to just instrumentals where he’s just going up and playing his tunes without actually even singing. So with that one, I had to add this twist about his signature instrument, which is the wind instrument Fela is known for a sax fella is known for anything that pushes breath out of you, so to speak. And I was glad that you my attention to that.

Paul McAllister
Yes, that’s a great phrase.

Fauziyatu Moro
I guess. Well, this is a blend of so many things I’ve said so much. I don’t know if

Paul McAllister
it’s very rich. I really appreciate it. And I’m sure our listeners will as well. Can you talk a little bit more about how these artists kind of interacted with each other, whether it be communicating through music in response to each other or actually collaborating.

Fauziyatu Moro
So you can actually find collaboration, direct collaboration, I mean, between Miriam and Belafonte, that is on record. But with the others, you can tell that I’m very certain the Fela collaborated with other black artists all across the black diaspora because he was in the UK as well before he came to the US. So there would have been some overlaps over there. But I didn’t point this out because then I wanted to focus on how activism influences music instead. So beyond collaborating with other musicians, he was collaborating with activists on the ground. So Sandra, Isidore was really instrumental to Fela’s life. And I point this out, because before Fela became Fela, Fela was a regular what it was a highlight, no, Nigerians would would, would come at me for this, but I think Fela was was was a highlight musician, so to speak, Fela didn’t have Afrobeats until he got back. And then said, I’m going to make Afrobeat. And this is because he had come into contact with all of these other people who actually showed him. Not that he didn’t know, he knew, but probably did not attribute so much weight, to the kind of oppression that black people were going through. And then being pointed in the direction being shown what it was, was enough to just change him. I’m actually very glad he met Sandra.

Paul McAllister
And who was and who was this?

Fauziyatu Moro
Sandra Isidore, it was part of the Black Panther movement, and Fela met her at an NAACP event in Los Angeles. And then they just from from the get go, she became his mentor, and they had this profound collaboration being engaged each other. She sort of tutored him through this radical mindset and approach to music, so to speak. Yeah. When the case of Bob Marley, now again, Bob Marley is a world of his own, either his story in the because, yes, I’m talking about black trans nationalism. But then we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that Africa is a continent, with all its regions, partially because of the way that he’s been balkanized. It’s easy for us to lose touch, as people on the continent ourselves. And so I’m telling you, Bob Marley was a unifying figure on the continent. I grew up listening to my blaring out of windows and whatnot in the community. People listen to him, people get a whole new perspective. Why would Bob Marley have a song titled Zimbabwe, so to speak, that this is the kind of question you ask yourself, when you listen to your favorite artist, why the song Zimbabwe and then you find out that it is an independent song, a song in honor of its sovereignty, so to speak. And it brings up all kinds of questions as well. Why was this so important for him to highlight or showcase Zimbabwe’s independence, then we begin to develop all of these other interests what we know about Zimbabwe, so I thought that he was very, very integral to drawing our attention to other parts of the African continent. And one of the issues I raised in there was that the soul Zimbabwe was written in Ethiopia, and Rastas have a profound connection to Ethiopia. Because to them that is where black liberation would start. It was one of two dates on the continent or countries, if you will, there was no colonized in the sense of the word. So for most people, it symbolizes the idea of freedom from external forces, and Rastas actually saw it as a refuge for them. Also, because Haile Selassie was very deliberate in acknowledging the Rasta movement. For so long, they had be marginalized. And he made an effort to actually move to them, make contact with them, and show his support for them. So he has to have this Caribbean Bob Marley having connections interest in Ethiopia, and that influencing him so much so that he thinks that a black nation attaining independence is something we should know about something that should be, that should be memorialized in a song, songs are powerful. They are transient, they never go out. I don’t know any song that well, it depends on the genre of song. Overall, yeah, we have the things that stay with us, no matter the time, no matter the period. And I think he knew this, when he made that song. He knew that for years to come after Zimbabwe’s independence, we will still be listening to that song, we will still be asking questions. And I get this all the time we play Zimbabwe to a friend and the want to know the backstory to it, why is it called Zimbabwe? And then you begin to take them through all the history and it’s fascinating.

Paul McAllister
It really is. Well, you can do a lot with 1000 words, which is the approximately length of the piece, but through this, this discussion through you talking about it, you can just see the kind of richness of the world and the ideas that these artists are interacting with rastafarianism, decolonization, a lot of African nations were kind of fighting and earning their independence during the heyday of Bob Marley and these other artists. And you can kind of see these connections and a really vibrant way I think your piece captures both through the your choice of images, but also how the way you kind of go about explaining them.