Photo by Frank Hamilton
I moved to Baltimore seven or eight years ago. The city I’d lived in for many years started to feel stagnant, and I felt myself stagnating with it. Friends began selling me on Baltimore and Brooklyn. I picked the former for a number of reasons.
Baltimore makes an artist’s life easy in ways that New York and San Francisco used to but now don’t. It’s cheap to live here. There is sometimes a sense of lawlessness and an accompanying sense of freedom. The most alluring thing about Baltimore for me was the sense of community. People I knew that already lived here spoke in near-mythological terms of the closeness and fertility of the music and arts scene. I found these things to be true. I was enchanted, and remain so.
During my first few years in Baltimore, when friends who lived elsewhere asked me about it, I said many of the same things I’d heard about it before I moved. That it was magical. That I’d never felt so at home. That the people were beautiful and purposed and supportive.
If you asked me the same thing now, I’d still tell you how much I love this city. I’d also still say that living in Baltimore affords one a sense of freedom, except to add that the sense of freedom exists almost solely for non-black artists and musicians. Whatever benefits there are for non-black artists and musicians to live in and move to Baltimore are directly indebted to the majority black population of Baltimore. Our liberties come at the cost of theirs.
"You look at the social, political climate of Baltimore, it’s hard," says Abdu Ali. He’s 25, already a venerated musician, promoter, and DJ, and grew up here. "I read something like seven out of every 10 black men in Baltimore between the ages of 18 and 27 or something is unemployed. The educational system here is corrupt as fuck. Even in just the architecture and the landscape of Baltimore, we got 16,000 abandoned homes here, there’s a lot of ugly here. And that in itself has a deep psychological effect on people."
It took me several years of witnessing the contrast between my life and those of native black Baltimoreans before I started to make this connection. When I did, it became hard not to see it everywhere, in everything. It became nearly impossible to avoid thinking about it. Baltimore is a very poor city. There are a lot of white poor, but a great deal more black poor who have next to nothing. With nothing comes no hope. Into that void pours anger, sadness, and sometimes violence and drugs. Increasingly I saw my life here as parasitic. I find the rent to be cheap here because I am white in an oppressed black city. The feelings of lawlessness and freedom exist for me because I am white in an oppressed black city.
This is reflected in the attention directed toward Baltimore music. Many of the Baltimore musicians who make a national name for themselves, my group included, are mostly if not entirely comprised of white people. Ali discusses this as a not infrequent source of frustration. "Me and my music peers of color have noticed, for one, it’s always that conversation of why a lot of Baltimore musicians can’t really pop off. By pop off I mean establish a career in music, start touring around the world, sell music, play at festivals, the whole nine. Becoming a blossoming musician in a city where, music-wise, it’s culturally rich. We’re right in a good hot spot. Baltimore musicians of color don’t really make it here," says Ali. He’s right. People reading this are likely to be at least nominally familiar with Dan Deacon, Future Islands, Wye Oak, Beach House and/or Lower Dens, but that you might not also know Al Rogers, Jr., :3LON, or even TT the Artist is indefensible.
As much as we might abhor the conditions that give us the upper hand, Baltimore’s white indie musicians are reflective of a larger, endemic divide. It’s not uncommon here to talk about the city as if there are two wholly separate Baltimores. When I brought this up, Abdu said, "It really is a divide between rich, white Baltimore and everybody else. Baltimore, you get into the geography of the city and you can tell it was designed to segregate. You can tell!" The city passed the first segregation laws in the United States in 1910. Unfortunately the divisions all too often run through the music and art scenes as well. "It’s crazy, and why the segregation is so fascinating is Baltimore is so small [laughs]. You would think that people be running into each other all the time and connecting and vibing with each other all the time but they don’t."
It has at times proven difficult to talk about these things with white peers in Baltimore. I think white individuals, whether we’re musicians or not, often avoid discussions about our role in racism because we’re afraid of admitting our complicity in and collective responsibility for the centuries-long suffering of black people, let alone the horrific extent of that suffering. We may also be afraid of speaking out of turn and beyond our authority, although that may also be a lie we tell ourselves to mask the fact that we’re afraid culturally of being conspicuous. Because of that fear, white people are given to thinking about racism as society’s problem instead of a personal issue, and we don’t confront it, or at least not in the ways that would be most useful. White people need to talk about it amongst ourselves more often and in depth. We need to not just be aware of racism, but work to actively destroy it. Abdu makes a very good point regarding this necessity in Baltimore: "If people don’t get it together, come together and try to create some musical, creative community that is really diverse and multi-cultural, everybody gonna be shit-fucked by gentrification and the shade of capitalism because once money starts coming through here, they won’t give a fuck about punk shows and shit like that."
When white people, any of us, think about making a contribution to the lives of our black neighbors, what are we considering contributing? Often times, if we don’t have a lot of money, or we see our lives as hectic and our time limited, contributing our money and time seems like a burden. Making a short, public, emotional statement takes very little time and no money, and we may also think that it makes a difference. After all, our voices are raised (for many of us this happens always and only collectively) in a public forum, for all the world to see. Surely our outrage will be registered and policies begin to change.
But the road from outrage to political change is longer and more convoluted than that. In fact our public declarations of outrage may have no influence on policy change at all. Does anything happen when we register our indignation in posts to Facebook and to Twitter? One thing happens: our friends see that we have posted. Our communities see it. Our black friends and family, and our black neighbors, see that we are on the right side of this fight.
And maybe that is often why we do it: the prospect of a pat on the back.
In 2015, everybody under the Western sun is clamoring for reassurance. When we do our work, when we present ourselves in public, why is it that we desire approval? Why does our appearance, our work, need approval? Why not just do your job to the best of your ability? Why, psychologically, do we need for somebody to tell us that we’re good enough, that we did well, that we look good, and that we belong?
In this country we’ve been inculcated with a cultural doctrine of fear and insecurity that demands successful performance of a function, and whose reward program is entirely comprised of various forms of back-patting. This little nightmare is omnipresent. Who do you know that isn’t looking for stress relief? What is it that we need relief from? Everything around us is telling us to wonder whether or not we’re good enough. Even if you’re white and straight and not worried about being discriminated against, you’re seeking relief from the society you live in, a free market society that demands that you, the consumer, meet its expectations. I don’t know a single goddamn person that isn’t looking for relief from that foolishness.
At the intersection of the roads to both relief from societal pressures and personal accountability to the wellbeing of African-Americans, amongst others, is an answer in the form of simple ritual: think about others all of the time. Every time your mind begins to turn to your worries, turn it back to others. Who around you, stranger or familiar, is in need of something you can provide? This is the "trick" to end all tricks. It isn’t selfless, nor does it does feel like a burden. It works, and it feels right and good. It leads away from the pretense of public discourse that is social media, toward substantive human interaction, and ultimately to concrete human action.
When I think about this advice, I’ll admit that I’m mostly thinking of white people. I feel unqualified to give this sort of advice to people of color because I can’t experience an entire dimension of their lives, and can’t know what racial discrimination does to a person’s psychology. I try to remind myself that I’m ignorant in this matter. (Ignorance is really only threatening as long as it goes unacknowledged.) The best I can offer to someone whose experiences I can’t understand is to ask them what they need.
When Freddie Gray died, voices from throughout the largely white artistic social scene of which I’m a part were raised against the racist treatment of Baltimore’s black community. I don’t think it’s that it took events of that magnitude to rouse us from our utopian slumber. We’re all human here and for some of us it may have been the first time we publicly condemned violence against black people at the hands of white supremacy. Some of us didn’t yet have the words to express anything but coarse fury and the most basic convictions. It brought people out and it brought them together. Abdu agrees. "Baltimore felt so good that week, too, ironically with all the chaos and shade going on. There was a lot of shit going on with people coming together, and like, that’s how Baltimore should be all the time," he said. At the same time, he thought to himself, "I know I’m a realistic bitch and I try not to be dark with having that perspective all the time, but, this shit is not gonna be forever, soon as the cameras leave watch the fuck it go right back to normal."
This was a common worry and not an unfounded one. When the news vampires rolled out and took their 24-hour cycle with them, the conversation dropped off, too, but didn’t disappear. It’s still happening here, if quietly, and it’s better than it’s been before. As a community, we’re slowly learning what we need to do.
Baltimore needs more integrated spaces. As Abdu pointed out, "We definitely have the people that wanna support creatives here, and we definitely have enough creative people. We just don’t have the spaces. Some people just don’t wanna open their doors to people or whatever, so thanks to the Crown, Windup, EMP Collective, for like holding it down for people because we definitely need spaces to do our thing."
We need to make a point to have integrated shows. "Make an effort to book shows for people you usually don’t book shows with. Try to include people that you usually don’t include." Abdu later adds, "People gotta go through their own shit, but they either forget or just don’t think about it, you know what I’m saying? But a lot of times I feel like as far as race, a lot of white creatives are scared to approach black people, and it might be some subconscious racist trip but it almost might just be some racial insecurity stuff, they don’t wanna feel like they wanna step on people’s shit, which I completely understand."
We need to have more open and honest communication, allow for frustrations to be expressed, recognize each other as humans and respond with compassion. "We gotta be not afraid of...just being criticized and criticizing."
Finally, here it all is, wrapped up nice by Baltimore's prodigal child, Abdu Ali:
"In this day and age, you ain’t got shit to do. What needs to happen is that people need to realize we all in the same fucking boat. After we deal with racism, we gotta deal with capitalism, which is the big…that’s the monster right there! You know what I’m saying. I feel like capitalism developed racism. Divide and conquer, honey. OK?"
I love Baltimore. It’s the rare place where culture springs forth from within. It feels like a small town. I believe it’s a place with the potential to form a kind of authentic, broader community, where societal mores are rejected for humanist ones, where consumer culture dies from lack of interest, and where our long-spurned African-American community members are finally given their fair due.
Jana Hunter sings in the band Lower Dens, who released their latest album, Escape From Evil, earlier this year. You can find her on Twitter @wormandrazor.