Coming back home to LANGSTON

The first time I was ever booked for a show it was at the Langston Hughes Cultural Arts Center, and it was for a show that never actually happened. I don’t know the details, but I know when we got to the venue, no one was there to open the door. Now, 27 years later… I get to be one of the people who has a key.

My plan is to open the door.

Often.

I first met Tarik Abdullah and Erika Kidd while freestyling at Westlake Center; at some point in the late spring or early summer of 1999. I was a teenager, some of my friends were still in high school, and Tarik offered me a performance slot on a show he was throwing at Langston Hughes. The name of the show was “Return To The Arts: A Hip-Hop Renaissance” and the lineup was a who’s who of Seattle rap at the time: Ghetto Chilldren (the iconic duo of Vitamin D & B-Self) Jace & Silas Blak (before they were widely known as Silent Lambs Project), Maroon Colony (the supergroup that was Khingz first band), Oracle’s Creed (one of the groups that gave birth to Oldominion), Central Intelligence, Footprints, Asun, Down Since Day One, and V1 UNI.

This was years before Abyssinian Creole would form, and it was the only show I ever had booked before I clicked up with the group 500 Years. I had tons of written material but had only recorded in a studio once, and my performance experience at this point was limited to just freestyling in front of people. I had probably held a microphone in front of a crowd less than 5 times.

I was living on my own for the first time, in an apartment just behind Quick Pack in the Central District. Langston was a short walk from our house. My roommates at the time were the 2 people I shared rhymes with the most in my high school years: CJ, who was from the valley in the CD and was someone I’ve known my whole life; and Vince, who moved with me up to Seattle from Las Vegas, where I lived from early ‘97 to early ‘99. The 3 of us in that apartment, along with our sister Iyesatu and the homie Michael (who also made beats) formed a group called A House By The Sea - along with a few other folks who shared rhymes with us during those years, that were either not in Seattle or were uninterested in performing at the time.

When Tarik asked how I wanted to be billed for the flyer, I said to put my group on - A House By The Sea - and we started putting together our first set.

I remember exactly one song that included Michael playing a beat live from his keyboard and a few of us had rehearsed verses.

I think the plan was to just freestyle the rest of the show?

We walked over to Langston that night to find a few members of the groups Down Since Day One and members of a group I would come to know later as Elevated Elements - all locked out of the building with no explanation.

Our first show as a group never happened.

But this was my introduction to Langston. A building that would become a creative home, as it was this same summer that I started attending The Poetry Experience every first and third Monday.

Founded by Rajnii and his mother Randee Eddins, The Poetry Experience was foundational for a lot of poets, singers and emcees of my generation. You could say it was an open mic but we never actually had a microphone, and people weren’t allowed to show up as spectators more than twice. We set the chairs up in a circle every week, there was a ritualistic opening and closing mantra, and everyone who showed up was expected to share something. It was like a Youth Speaks writing circle before Youth Speaks Seattle was ever formed, but it was intergenerational, and it gave a lot of us something to write for every week. We didn’t have access to recording equipment back then and all ages performance opportunities were limited. The Poetry Experience was a lifeline, and it was where so many of grew as writers, performers, and ultimately grew our community.

I don’t know who or where I would be if there wasn’t someone there to open the door for Langston Hughes on those Mondays.

In the decades that have passed, my entire life has revolved around music, storytelling (across different mediums), and community building. This life path has brought me back to Langston Hughes for more pivotal moments than I can even count. A lot of the work I’ve done as an organizer started at Hidmo on 20th & Jackson. The first time I ever met Rahwa (who founded Hidmo) was at a Langston performance I was doing back in 2005.

The first time I realized how transferrable the skills I had developed with releasing music independently was when Karen Toering gave me a chance to promote and host a film I believed in for the 2008 Langston Hughes African-American Film Festival. That film was THIS IS THE LIFE, Ava DuVernay’s first documentary chronicling the rise of the L.A. underground hip-hop scene from a health food center in South Central. I believe the conversations Ava had at LANGSTON were at least some part of the inspiration behind her founding AFFRM and then ARRAY - an entire distribution network and a revolution in Black film.

A few years later I was helping to produce a show at Langston, and the person who was doing sound and lights decided to teach me how to edit video. The next time I was at Langston’s film festival was as a presenter with my own multi-media live performance incorporating 30 minutes of video that I put together.

And during those early months of the pandemic in 2020, Ijeoma Oluo (my spouse - who also saw me perform at Langston in 2007 years before we ever met!), Ebony Arunga (who has since become LANGSTON’s Executive Director), and myself partnered with LANGSTON on the Seattle Artists Relief Fund, which not only gave us something purposeful to pour our energy into when it felt like the whole world stopped, it became the largest direct funder of artists in the Pacific Northwest during that first year of the pandemic.

I say all that to say… I’ve got a new job that means a whole lot to me.

As of a few weeks ago, I stepped into a new role as Director of Programs and Partnerships at LANGSTON, and I’m so excited to be able to pour back into the space and the community that helped shaped me, the one that gave me my foundation in everything I’ve done since.

And I’m really looking forward to opening more doors.

Check out everything we’ve got going on at LANGSTON here: langstonseattle.org

And I’ll be back here with your regularly scheduled mixes soon.

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