AFRAM blog #4

For my final blog post, I want to hold Gloria Anzaldua’s poem To live in the Borderlands means you with Dawes’ bitchmedia article about the Home Alive documentary made by two UW students. In Dawes’ interview with the filmmakers, they discuss Home Alive’s goal of promoting self defense for women as something beyond learning how to physically fight someone, self defense as a productive practice in all areas of life essentially. They discuss self defense as “verbal boundary setting… finding escape route techniques, or really believing in yourself and your intuition.” They go on to say “anything you can do to feel good about yourself and feel strong about yourself is going to make you feel safer.” Essentially, practicing self love and awareness is a form of self defense, strengthening your resolve as an individual. I found this concept emerging somewhat in Anzaldua’s poem about being at a crossroads of identity, of nation, and location. The Crossroads are a turbulent space, where internal strength, as self defense, is essential to survival. “Living in the Borderlands means you fight hard to / resist… the pull of the gun barrel, / the rope crushing the hollow of your throat.” “You are the battleground / where the enemies are kin to each other.” These lines fall right in line with Dawes’ conversation about self defense, and how many forms of violence are internal: within yourself, within your community, similar to how the two filmmakers discussed Mia Zapata’s murder near where she lived, “Telling me not to walk home in a certain neighborhood is ridiculous because I live in tat neighborhood.” This sentence perfectly sums up both the nature and prevalence of violence against women, and the victim-blaming “solutions” that often alienate or invalidate the experiences of the victims.  

As a drummer, my knowledge and retention of lyrics is very limited, so I don’t know of any songs that reflect these themes very well. However, I remembered an artist who I absolutely love who has discussed the validity of modern jazz as protest music (a theme we discussed several weeks ago). Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah is a trumpet player from New Orleans, and he blends so many beautiful musical forms in his new interpretation of jazz. I discovered him from watching his tiny desk concert where he shares some inspiring words and incredibly powerful songs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVJjmyFfuts&t=399s 

This song by Dave Matthews talks about the parallel worlds of privilege and systemic struggle that many of us are blind to. I enjoy how it brings these two worlds into conversation with each other, something that Anzaldua’s poem does in a much different way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gwi4KpI_MgE