Even though she’s not reciting a poem, talking to aja monet is a rhythmic experience. She joins the call between stops on “the elsewhere” tour, in support of her latest album offering the color of rain. The poems and the music are medicinal. Providing the balm we need in these surreal times and articulating the frustration, anger, love, and hope that swirls among us feeling beings.
aja monet will be performing at The Chapel in San Francisco on Monday, June 1, and she spoke with KALW’s Tshego Letsoalo about the connection between the poems and the music.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Tshego Letsoalo: Congratulations and thank you for the color of rain. I feel like it's an album that we really need right now, collectively. It's grounding and does the thing to me that I think good writing does, where it names a feeling or articulates feelings, and so makes you feel seen and also connected. Why do you think poetry is the right medium, for this very surreal moment?
aja monet: I think most surreal moments have required poetry. I think all movements have required poetry to some extent, which is the exploration of the interior, and that becomes super important, you know?
TL: Yeah, whatt your process of combining poetry and music, especially the way that you’ve done it. I feel like it really makes the words feel 3D, but how do you work to combine those things to make them be in harmony in that way?
aj: Well, I think the poems start as something that comes to form from either an experience, or an idea, or sounds of words and meaning, and then you share that with other collaborators who see the music in it, and also the musicians that see themselves as poets. And then the song forms through this interpolation of feeling. And then through that it becomes a song.
Everything was inspired by the poems at first, and then we went into the studio and started to create sounds based off of the feelings of what was being shared in the poems, and the songs in the poems.
TL: Can you talk more about working with Meshell Ndegeocello and all the musicians you collaborated with on this album, and how you decided that this was the right group of people to be able to interpret your words and, like you said, interpolate the feelings, into sounds?
aj: Well, I think the first thing to share is that since the last record, when the poems do what they do, and touring with it, I got to experience a lot of moments together with musicians. And when you're touring with musicians, there's an ecosystem and sort of an ethos that you create together based off of the trust and the exploration of sounds and spaces and venues and cities and cultures that you're in conversation with and you're experiencing. And that translates on stage.
And so, for me, being with these musicians, being a band leader, and traveling really shaped the perspective that I had for this record that was different than the last record. And working with Justin Brown, who's also my partner and my love, and having that trust and having that support and that anchor to help you flesh through ideas and to be a soundboard for you was, you know, such a dream.
So when we were traveling and touring together, we had a double bill with Meshell Ndegeocello, and on that tour stop in Berlin, we got to connect with her, and I opened up with a poem on her set. And then we saw each other again, we were kind of running into each other on tour, and it became sort of undeniable to cross paths and have discussion about what we saw we were doing with our art, what we wanted to do with our art, and what was possible.
TL: Your brain as a poet, how does that switch when you get to your brain as a band leader? I'm just curious about what shifts happen within you, if there are any, as, you’re like, here are the poems that I've created and we're creating this way, but then also how you show up and work as a band leader as well.
aj: I think it's both, you know? There's clearly a shift, and then there's clearly stuff that comes natural to you, or you've had to exercise as a poet that enables your perspective and your approach towards being a band leader. So I think when you've grown up either doing workshops, or being a part of poetry collectives, or growing up in a community that understood poetry not just as this solitude, solitary, sole experience, but understood that poems were meant to be shared, and that everyone's coming for the betterment of the poem. Like, who are the people that you recognize are your tribe, in the sense that they see the world through poetry, and so they're able to communicate with you in that language.
And I think with band leading, it's different in the sense that you're dealing with musicians who have learned and have experienced the world as a musician, so they learn things through music theory, and they have an understanding of language based off of the math and science of sound. And so, that's a very different technical skill and having to learn how to communicate the poetry of the poems with people that have learned to perceive the world through the science and math of the sounds and of the frequencies of the instruments, I think that's a different, you know, you have to bridge across difference. You have to bridge language.
And then the stuff that has nothing to do with the art that's really frustrating and overwhelming, which has to do with, like, the logistics, like, booking venues, and paying people,making sure everything at the venue is what everybody needs, and just having to be a leader in a way that sometimes can be very exhausting. That’s part of band leadership, and then the emotional, physical stress of that.
The best part is just when you get to the stage and you get to just express, and all that other stuff kind of goes out the window. But there's so much that goes into that moment, that hour, that hour and a half, that people who see the show experience have no idea what made that hour and a half possible. And then it's done. Then it's done, and you're on to the next one.
TL: It sounds like a lot of pressure, and we in the audience get to live in this fleeting moment where we're receiving the end product of all of this work, that has gone into this singular moment. Thank you for sharing that. The other thing I wanted to ask was about the song “elsewhere.” I read that, it was kind of an homage to Sly Stone as you learned of his passing, so I wanted to know what the news of his passing brought up for you, and how that song ended up coming about because of that.
aj: “elsewhere” was created in memoriam. It was more of wanting to celebrate his life. I'm really close to his daughter, Novena Carmel, and she's such a light and such a brilliant person and friend that I didn't really know how to be there for her immediately, you know. Her finding out that she lost her dad, and just knowing that I'm the emotive friend, you know what I mean? Like, I'm the one that's super emotional, super communicate my feelings, and I'll vomit them out, and she'll be like,” you're doing a little bit much.[laughs]
And so I've just accepted that sense of awareness, like, oh, I'm the poet friend that's just intense, and I didn't want to be that for her. And sometimes it's, like, funny because the thing that you're trying to protect somebody else from about you, they, in that moment, want it from you, or need it, because they know they can rely or depend on you to be that person.
And her father was someone that the world loved, and she had to find her own relationship to that. And I think, in light of everybody else grieving in another kind of way, seeing the intimacy of my friend just trying to process this transition for herself was a new stage of our relationship.
I wanted people to know that while people see me as a very intense, politically conscious human, a huge part of that is because I love so deeply, and I enjoy life so deeply, and Novena sees that part of me. This joy, this love for one another, this celebration of our surrealism, of our magic, of our imagination, of our possibility, that's also a part of us. And I think “elsewhere” embodied that. I wrote the lyrics, Novena came into the studio, she read the lyrics, she started reciting them in a melody, in a form, and that took a shape that we all followed. And then Georgia was in the studio that day. Georgia Ann Muldrow, and it just became what it is now. It's one of my favorite songs because of all the people I love on it, and I think the joy that I feel when I hear it, the joy that I can feel in my voice when I hear the reciting on there, I think that's probably the best part of the song.
TL: Yeah, I love that. This duality of activism and speaking out does come from a deep love of life, because knowing that we deserve better and we can do better. And also the sense of gratitude that can also come from grief about, like, yeah, I lived in the same time as this person, and this person gave me my best friend. I think that's just beautiful expression.
Thank you so much for taking this time.
aj: Thank you so much for being on the call with me and asking these questions. I just really love the record. It's hard to talk about it sometimes, becauseI feel like everything I need to say is on the record. Everything I feel is there. I don't think I leave any ambiguity about where I stand, what I care about, what I love, what moves me, what kind of sounds I'm inspired by. I think it all shows up on the record, and so I hope, and I pray that it can be a tool, a resource, a gift to people at this time, and that people will spend time with it for years to come.
