Ian Brennan Interview, Part 1
Recording Extraordinary Musicians in Remote Places Part 1 (Tanzania, Rwanda, Malawi)
This link takes you to the podcast, video, and show notes with all the links for the music and more. This transcript is Part 1 of a series with the producer Ian Brennan, a Grammy-winning producer and author who discovers and records musicians from remote regions worldwide with Marilena Delli Umuhoza. Part 1 includes stories and music from the Tanzania Albinism Collective, the descendants of the last slave ship in Mobile, Rwanda’s The Good Ones, Comorian, Malawi’s Zomba Prison Project, and Ian's empathy-based violence-prevention work.
Ian Brennan:
I've been working on some songs and I was like, great, but they're not going to be ready. Okay, fine, that's fine. No problem, but we're going to be here on Friday and we can record. And then when the day came, he played this song, which is such a devastating song about the loss of his wife. And it's again, another one of those songs that you've got these superstar industrialized artists that are planted by corporate forces and blowing up to these star-like proportions almost overnight and maintained there artificially through propaganda and through promotion. And they've never written a song like that. Even with the aid of seven or eight songwriters. I mean, music is about what's in your heart and what's in your soul. And going to those depths in terms of intimacy is something that you can't just do because you want to do it.
It's much more difficult than that. It's something that you really have to do the work. And it's understandable why most people don't because they're not able to be that intimate even in their personal life, let alone publicly.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you’re listening to Conversations with Musicians, with Leah Roseman, which I hope inspires you through the personal stories of a fascinating diversity of musical guests. This episode is Part 1 of my new series with the Grammy-winning producer, author, and musician Ian Brennan who seeks out musicians from remote corners of the world.He has produced over fifty remarkable international records since 2009 across five continents with his wife the Italian-Rwandan filmmaker, photographer and author Marilena Delli Umuhoza. In this episode you’ll hear excerpts and stories from the Tanzanian Albinism Collective, documenting the descendants of the last slave ship in Mobile, his first trip to Rwanda and meeting The Good Ones, the trip to Comoros with Comorian and the Zomba prison project in Malawi. You’ll also hear about Ian’s work inside locked psychiatric institutions and his development of violence-prevention methods that emphasize empathy. As a producer, he has become known capturing performances with minimal equipment, with the goal of bringing the listener directly into where the music is happening with a sound that feels intimate, warm, and immediate. The links for all the music you’ll hear are in the show notes. You can watch the video on my YouTube or listen to the podcast, and I’ve also linked the transcript.It’s a joy to bring these inspiring episodes to you, and I do all the many jobs of research, production and publicity. Have a look at the show notes of this episode on my website, where you’ll find all the links, including different ways to support this podcast, and other episodes you’ll enjoy!
Hey, Ian, thanks so much for joining me here today.
Ian Brennan:
Oh no, thank you. Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
I'll say right off the bat, we were just talking about ... I'd love to do a series with you, so I'm hoping this is part one because there's just so much to cover.
Ian Brennan:
That sounds nice.
Leah Roseman:
So let's dive in. Yeah. So the first thing I did when I was researching you is I read a couple of your books, but I first read "Missing Music: Voices From Where The Dirt Road Ends". And I was intrigued that the forward was written by Evelyn Glennie, and you have done some cool projects with her. So you want to speak to that briefly?
Ian Brennan:
Yeah. I mean, Dame Evelyn Glennie is, I think, one of the more important musical artists in different genres, across different genres that there is today that's still alive. She's really incredible. And particularly the depth of her relationship to sound is her ability to articulate it at least is greater than a lot of other musicians. I think she's given a tremendous amount of thought to it and everyone else benefits from that. And it also shows in her work and her musical work, which is extraordinary.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I've been on stage with her a couple times and yeah, her presence. So for people that don't know, she's been profoundly deaf since I believe the age of 12, and she's a percussionist and really incredible musician.
Ian Brennan:
Yeah. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
And so she wrote in this forward, "music can happen anytime, anywhere by anyone", which is very much your ethos.
Ian Brennan:
Yeah. Yeah. I think she and I are very aligned in that way. Music surrounds us. A lot of it is missed, not appreciated and even blocked out by wearing headphones and listening to something deliberately rather than paying attention to what's actually happening around us.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. And this is something that's come up so often on this series. And actually, somebody I interviewed maybe three or four years ago now is Verna Gillis. I was wondering if you knew about her?
Ian Brennan:
No, I don't think I do. No.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. So she did what you're doing, traveling around, recording people, doing these field recordings of musicians in all kinds of places. And her recordings are now mostly with Smithsonian. So yeah, anyway, that's a whole thing. So I'll link her episode.
Ian Brennan:
Aw, nice.
Leah Roseman:
It's a lot of the same work. So let's maybe start with the Comoros Islands. First, what I did is I went and looked where it was on the map and you talk about how not all passports are equal and maybe you could get into a little bit about that trip.
Ian Brennan:
Yeah. I mean, Comoros and going there was largely motivated by the fact that we'd experienced that most people didn't know it existed. So it wasn't just, what's that like or where is that? It was, what is that? And it's a relatively small nation, three islands, one main island that is about the size of Rome, the metropolitan area of Rome. And we went there with the belief and hope that there would be music and we found extraordinary music there. And after the record came out with the duo, the Comorian duo, which is what they're called, who were both instrument builders, string instrument builders, the response we got was often just what you said, that people would say, "I'm going to listen to this and now I'm going to go look at a map too and see where this is. " And the original motivation too was that the book around that time, I'm not sure which book it was.
I think it was maybe the second music book, Silenced by Sound, but on the book tour, I would ask people, "What's your favorite musician from the United Kingdom?" And of course people can easily name, probably go on for minutes about what their favorite musicians are from England. "What's your favorite musician from America? They can do the same. What's your favorite musician from New York City?" Even getting more specific, they can do the same. But then you start asking about specific countries and usually people can't name anyone. And in the case of Comoros, again, most people would say, "Well, what is that? " And couldn't even identify it. So that was a big part of the motivation, but the record itself, I believe, stands on its own. And that's always our intention is that the music should stand by itself. It should not be put out just for the sake of symbolism because it seems like the right thing to do. In theory, in advance, it should be put out because we believe in it fully after it's actually been recorded.
Leah Roseman:
And so it was many, many flights to get there, right?
Ian Brennan:
Yeah. Yeah. It was difficult to get there. A lot of the countries that are not as connected economically don't have direct flights, so they usually are filtered through another nation. And in the case of Comoros, a lot of times that's Tanzania. In the case of places like Lesotho, it's through South Africa, which it's completely surrounded by. So you do have to get to another country, which can be quite far away, and then get on another flight to get to the actual country you're trying to reach. And so yeah, coming from the USA, it was, I think, six flights, different connecting flights. And it was pretty exhausting, but worth it, definitely worth it to get there. And beautiful, a beautiful place, beautiful skies and beautiful sunsets. And the people were very, overall very friendly. The sense of the place had a very friendly sense where some places do not.
Leah Roseman:
So I was hoping we could share a clip of the first track, "Please Protect My Newborn Child from the Spirits". So it's from this album, which will be linked in the show notes, "We are an island, but we're not alone". Great.(Music: excerpt of track 1 Please Protect My Newborn Child from the Spirits from Comorian's album "We are an Island, but we're not alone".
And you often record outside. You love recording outside, but in this case, I understand there's quite a bit of wind. So you're actually using an abandoned car, which you said there were as many abandoned cars there?
Ian Brennan:
Yeah, there was a real motif visually, at least on the western side of the island. The main island was just abandoned cars on the side of the road in varying states of decay. And so we did take refuge in one to record right on the edge of the ocean, maybe, I don't know, 50 yards away at the most. And at another point, we had to get inside the car we were using and record for Soubi, who's the other musician from the duo. And it was incredibly hot to be inside the car even for the length of a song, but there was just too much noise around. That was within the city itself. But in general, I do prefer recording outdoors whenever possible because there's no reflection and you get a clear sound of what's actually happening that's not colored by the walls or the ceiling or even the floor, a little bit the ground, but not so much.
And when there's trees around and things of that nature, it can create a real warmth too sometimes in the sound.
Leah Roseman:
And that album cover, I believe it must be one of Marilena's photos, it's powerful, like this guy in the car playing music.
Ian Brennan:
Yeah. My wife, Marilena Umuhoza Delli., who does all the photos and videos for the projects, her photos are really incredible, which I think is the mark or trait of many great photographers is that they're very empathic. And so somehow that comes through and you really get a sense of an individual from an image, the best of those images. And I think this image contextually is also so powerful because of where it was taken. We're recording sort of in a very isolated part, not in the city and in a car that's, nothing's left of it, but the core of the car, the shell of the car, all the windows are gone, all the doors are gone. So all that's left is minimal protection, but some protection and some resonation too, I mean, from the metal.
Leah Roseman:
I don't have this on my notes, but I seem to remember you'd gone to Comoros because of this instrument that the last person who played it was like a double reed instrument, but they had died?
Ian Brennan:
Yeah. I mean, it wasn't the reason we went, but it was certainly something that we go in hoping to have some plan. The plan is always something to then adapt from and pivot off of. But part of the initial, "Okay, let's try to start here," was this awareness of this instrument. And when we asked people about it, they said, "No, he died." So there was one person left that was associated with the instrument and he had just passed away. And that was very powerful in terms of what we've run into a lot in the world where the people will say people are not making instruments anymore. They just want to buy them or they don't want to play instruments at all. They just want to be on their phones. So again, in a very short time, a matter of generations, it goes from something that is common, meaning every village might have someone who plays this instrument to one person left across the three islands.
And then when that person died, it's ostensibly gone. But sometimes these things are resurrected, but when they're resurrected, it's often in a slightly different form. And that's not entirely a bad thing either. But yeah, it was a very powerful ... Hearing of someone's passing is a powerful thing anyway, but the timing of it and to know like, wow, this really is something that is imperiled. This is something that isn't here anymore, at least at this moment.
Leah Roseman:
So if we could talk about The Good Ones and Rwanda and your first trip there, and also Marilena's connection.
Ian Brennan:
Yeah. The Good Ones in Rwanda are a duo, a core duo that has at times been a trio, at times been a quartet, but the core duo of Janvier and Adrien have been playing together since they were young, since they were kids. And we went to Rwanda in 2009 with Marilena's mother, who is Rwandan, and it was her first time back since after the genocide. And she had been told that her best friend had died in the 1994 genocide. And so she found out completely randomly, by chance, ran into somebody in Italy where she now lives, who told her, no, she's alive. And so she reconnected with her best friend and we went there for them to reunite and for Marilena to be in the country for the first time and myself as well. And Marilena was making a documentary about that, about her mother's return.
And so we figured we should have music from Rwanda. And so we spent a lot of time. We were lucky to be there for longer than we usually are able to. We were there for two weeks and we went around to every corner of the country. I mean, it's relatively small, but the roads are not that good, especially at that time. And so it can take a long time to get to each corner, but we kind of went to each corner. There's four basic corners and we listened to a lot of music and we met a lot of musicians and we heard a lot of music from the past. And some of the music from the past was kind of compelling, some of the lost '70s music, but most of the music we heard that was current was not particularly striking, meaning it didn't sound so different than what you hear in Canada, what you hear in America, what you hear anywhere.
I mean, it's just kind of that commercial mainstream paint by the numbers stuff. And nothing wrong with that, that's fine. But in fact, our trip started with the ... They had a big concert, and so we thought, oh, this is serendipitous that we're here for this concert, because it was their national holiday of the nation. And so we went figuring, oh, this will be easy, right? We'll go and they're going to have 10 bands and we'll just watch those bands and we'll probably find something. But again, it was really like one person came out and this was in 2009 and one person came out and it was really as if Snoop Doggy Dog was there, but rapping in Kinyarwanda. I mean, the same phrasing and the same posturing. And then a person came out and was really like they were the Beyonce of that era.
I mean, same vocal phrasing and looked very similar, I think very much intentionally so. And so that's what led to the search. And the search ultimately was that the next to last day we were there, we had not really found anything and that we felt was what we were looking for. And then we met The Good Ones and they came and when we met them at night from like a hundred yards away, I looked at them and I just knew you can feel it usually. You can feel like this is somebody who's really genuine, like they're going to be very truthful in their expression and their communication. And that was the sense, and it's not right 100% of the time, but I think it's right a lot of the time, 90% or more of the time. And so they played a song and after like 30 seconds, it was just clear that this was beyond anything I could have imagined.
So I was like, "Let's record." And they're like, "No, no, no. If you want to record, we have to come back tomorrow." And it was like, "Let's do it now. No, we have to come..." Because I was afraid when it happened, we were about to leave and they had come from quite far away and there's always that risk that things can happen, they could get sick, whatever. So I really have learned, do it now whenever possible, but they were right. They came back the next day with Janvier, who was the harmony singer, and it was even better. And so we recorded that first record on the back porch at night, 100% live. Our equipment had broken down, so we had to do it all recorded with three microphones or two microphones into a video camera, and yet it's beautiful because of them, because of their songs and their voices.
And so we've just continued on from there. And in their case, we've continued to work with them and do until this day. And we did an album with them a year ago, and I think it's even better than anything they've ever done in spite of the fact that all five of the albums have been really, really poignant and I think one of a kind.
I think if you're familiar with their sound and you like their sound, if you hear a song, you'll know it's them.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Yeah. I've listened to quite a bit. The most recent one, is that the one with strings?
Ian Brennan:
Yeah, that's the one with strings.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, that was cool. But the one I listened to the most was the fourth album.
Ian Brennan:
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Leah Roseman:
So I was hoping we could play ... Okay, so this album is called "Rwanda...You See Ghosts, I See Sky". And track nine, "My Chubby Baby, Please Sleep( I will protect you from anything)". Such an incredibly beautiful lullaby. And talk about that close harmony that they do is so beautiful. So I'll play a clip of that, but all the Bandcamp links will be there so people can go and actually support the artists.(Music: clip of The Good Ones "Rwanda...You See Ghosts, I See Sky" track 9, "My Chubby Baby, Please Sleep( I will protect you from anything)".
When you brought them to the States on one of these trips, I understand they were doing a TV performance. And can you explain what the audacity of the music engineer?
Ian Brennan:
Oh, well, I mean, this has been an ongoing thing with them and some other artists is the idea of standard tuning, like Western tuning being seen as correct. And so in their case with the guitar, sometimes it can seem like it's out of tune to Western ears because to Western ears, it probably is a little out of tune. And so at a taping, an engineer went without permission, again, something I think they would never dare do to a star, but there's always that disadvantage when you're not a celebrity and just went and took the guitar and plugged it into a tuner and tuned it to exactly where it's supposed to be by American standards and otherwise. And so before the taping, Adrien, he hadn't witnessed that, but when he picked up the guitar, to him, it was out of tune. He was like, "What's going on? " So then he went, spent time retuning the guitar to what he thinks is correct for what he does. But it was just such a, I think, a great example of the confinement of sound into right and wrong and a lack of openness to differing perspectives, which was the whole point of, I think, them being there, is to try to present a viewpoint that is different. People that are from a country that isn't represented, at least in media very much. And if so, usually only in terms of tragedy and not in terms of the diversity of the people that live there, and also the experience of people that are living rurally, which is still almost half of the people in the world. And the modern idea of progress has really left these people behind more than ever in general around the globe, that these are the people that are forgotten.
So you think of Nigeria that Lagos has been very successful commercially in the last five years or so musically. That's great, but that's one city in a massive country, population-wise, which has a huge number of languages, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of languages that are not being represented and that I think have relevance also.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I always link a few episodes in the show notes and an interesting one I think will be my interview with Omo Bello, who's a Nigerian opera singer, and she put out an album of African art songs in many of the indigenous languages, and we featured that in my conversation with her. That sounds
Ian Brennan:
That sounds great. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
But The Good Ones, what is the language that they sing in?
Ian Brennan:
Kinyarwanda, which the country is pretty unified, I mean, which is part of the oddity and tragedy of their history was that a lot of the division between the two groups was imposed by the colonialists, where they pitted people against each other that historically had not been separated at all. And these tribes were historically not really identified until the colonialists identified them and created this tension. And then of course put one in charge of the other, which creates even greater tension, the minority group, meaning less of them in charge of the other group. But the language itself, I mean, it's not a case of the Central African Republic where you have so many different languages and it's hard to unify for this reason. The language is Kinyarwanda. And now before the 1994 genocide, the colonial language was French, but after, because of what happened with Belgium and France's involvement in what led up to the genocide and the genocide itself, it was switched to English, meaning that if people learn a second language, it will be English if you're 31 years or older.
And if you were older than that, then it'll probably be French and Kinyarwanda. But if you are not the beneficiary of education, if you come from an isolated rural area, it will be just Kinyarwanda, so you don't have the benefit of either language. So that's the case with these men is that they don't know English and they ... Adrien knows a little bit of French. He was able to go to school a little bit longer than a lot of other folks from his area because he's so bright and was identified as so, but he wasn't able to continue his studies. So he's not able to speak French much beyond hello and maybe understanding a few things that somebody might be saying a few words here or there. And so that's again, that isolation of people that live rurally sometimes that's lost. If you go to a country and you're in the capital, you're going to be isolated from that.
And then if you go from the capital to a tourist area, you're going to be isolated from that. And even here in Italy where I live, people say, "Everybody in Italy speaks Italian." It's like, they do not. I mean, most people in Italy, trust me, as a monolingual English speaker who struggles with foreign languages, sadly, I can tell you for a fact that the vast majority of people do not speak English in Italy. So since I'm not able to communicate well in Italian, I can say for a fact that so many people don't. Once you stray outside the touristic areas, once you're outside of a hotel or a restaurant, if you're trying to get basic services, then there's going to be a level of isolation.
Leah Roseman:
I love languages and I have studied quite a few. So I had studied Italian because when I first ended up there, I was like on a music tour and I didn't know a word and I felt like an idiot. So I thought if I ever come back, I'm going to learn something. So I did. So I was speaking to our host and I had enough Italian at that point I could communicate and he said, "I'm so glad you understand because I know English, but I absolutely hate speaking it."
Ian Brennan:
Yeah, yeah. That's a common thing I've heard is people will say, "I can speak this language, but I don't like speaking this language," meaning a different language. Or in the case of Rwanda, we have a very, very dear friend who grew up largely in Belgium, and so he speaks fluent French, but he refuses to speak French because of the history and everything. So yeah, I certainly have great regard for people that can speak more than one language. I wish I was one of them and it's due to inability. It's not due to any kind of unwillingness or arrogance. And when I try, people usually prefer to speak English with me than Italian because my English is obviously better and my Italian is very poor.
Leah Roseman:
Well, this would be a good place to talk about the dominance of English in media and how people are resistant to listen to songs in different languages.
Ian Brennan:
Yeah. I mean, it's been interesting to see. I think that with Netflix that in film, people have become more open to watching films from countries they're not familiar with and languages they're not familiar with. And there have been big success stories in that way. And I think that's largely because of the subtitles, because if they sit down and they kind of adjust to that, that rhythm, if they're willing to read while watching, then it's easier in a sense. But with music, it's still a rarity and you do see intermittent success in the history of the US, in fact, in North America. I mean, people talk about progress being made, but there was quite a big interest in music from other places in the 1950s, pre-rock and roll and concurrent with rock and roll. And the early days of the Grammys, I mean, the first song of the year was a song in Italian.
So it's hard to say that there's really been a tremendous amount of progress. And certainly Bad Bunny winning Album of the Year this year at the Grammys, that's great, that's awesome. But there are a large number of Spanish speakers in the US. So we're not necessarily entirely talking about people that it's a second language to. It's often going to be one of two languages that they're fluent in or even a primary language. So once you stray away from these languages that have huge numbers of speakers globally, then I think the times that you can find a song that people listen to internationally in one of those languages are very, very, very rare, even if it's just one country, where maybe it was successful in one country. And so that dominance does continue and it continues in places like with the singers from Lagos who were mostly singing in English or in some version of English, localized version of English.
And also with the K-pop singers, they release songs in Korean, but most of the songs internationally are in part in English, if not mostly or entirely in English as well. And that's a very different thing than somebody really communicating in their own language. And I think one of the beauties of people communicating in their own language is that they usually communicate most strongly in their own language because it's just rooted from day one within them. And so on an emotional level, there's such a close merger between their emotions and thought when communicating in their own language. That's why people that are bilingual, trilingual, when they're angry, a lot of times will revert back to their language. And they might have been speaking in French, but when they get angry, they speak in their mother tongue. And I think with singing, it's the same. And one of the things that I've noticed again and again and again is that if you don't know the language and you're listening to somebody communicate and they communicate something particularly emotionally, and then you ask later, "Well, what was that they said?
What was that thing they said that ... " And people tell you, you'll find out that that was almost always the most important thing that was said. That was the moment that kind of crystallized what they were trying to communicate or was the most revealing or the most emotional. And it shows because suddenly they become a lot more musical. A lot of times with the spoken word stuff where they'll be speaking, speaking, and then suddenly it gets very musical, it's usually at that moment that they're being the most intimate and exposed and honest as well. (Music: clip Good Ones: track 4 Every Job Has Importance " from album "Rwanda...you see ghosts, I see sky" )
Leah Roseman:
And let's face it, most people don't hear the lyrics or don't necessarily understand the lyrics of English songs.
Ian Brennan:
I don't. Yeah. Yeah, that's what always struck me about when people would say that it's difficult or it's an obstacle. It's like, well, tell me the lyrics to the most popular songs that you know or your favorite songs even. And a lot of times people can do the first verse or maybe the chorus, but a lot of it's misapprehended where they don't have it quite right anyway, even in English. And a lot of popular singers, their pronunciations and the way they enunciate is very strange. It's part of what makes them appealing sometimes. So it's hard to know what they're talking about half the time. So yeah, it is interesting. And I don't think that people ... I think they don't understand what's being communicated. And if they did, a lot of the songs they like, they wouldn't. They would have a very different reaction to even in English where a song like Brown Sugar that is so loaded with racist imagery or a song like Born in the USA by Springsteen that is so much about not patriotism, but about the pain of someone who feels betrayed by their country, a veteran.
Right or wrong, I mean, I don't think that most people, when they're singing along, even realize that.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about nonverbal communication. You have some really interesting personal connections with that that come up in your books. And I was really touched to read about your sister and also your work in psychiatric wards. So do you want to dive into these topics?
Ian Brennan:
Oh, sure. My sister, my only sister was 14 months older than me. Her name was Jane. She passed away a year ago, early in 2025. And she had Down syndrome. She had the severest form. There were three forms. So she didn't have the Hollywood television star form. She had the form that was very limiting to her ability to communicate and intellectually. So her vocabulary was estimated to be about 100 to 150 words at its peak. And then receptive vocabulary is always higher than expressive vocabulary, so she could understand a lot more than she could communicate. And then by the time of her passing, she'd been ill for many years. Her expressive vocabulary was reduced to zero where she was entirely nonverbal. And her IQ was estimated to be 50 to 60, so quite low, about half of the average IQ. But emotionally, her intelligence was certainly greater than the average person, not to overstate it, but I think it was genius level in terms of emotional IQ.
And so through her, I learned about the joy of music, the joy of dance, the importance of nonverbal communication, the importance of observation, the importance of valuing every individual and being observant of them. And so I learned whatever I know about communication largely from somebody who, in theory, couldn't communicate, somebody who was devalued by society at that point in time. Because we grew up in the interval where deinstitutionalization had just happened, and yet mainstream education had not begun for people with disabilities. So we were out in the community, and in a lot of cases, we were the first people that a lot of people were seeing where it was a family with somebody with a disability. So that's something that when you're any age, it was hard on my parents as well. But for us as kids, it was particularly hard because you've got people laughing at you and people pointing at you and staring at you and using the R word and all that stuff.
And so it made me grow up pretty defensive and pretty paranoid, but also very concerned about equality and very concerned about the most vulnerable people being protected, meaning that they are allowed to have their place and rightful place in society. And so thanks to her, I learned about communicating and yet this is somebody that society essentially discarded and literally isolated. So her school was down a dead end. There was only one school for the entire area, so they'd have this bus that would go around our suburban area and pick up the kids within the community. And some of the kids at the bus ride each way was going to be more than an hour because one school for this massive area, and then they'd take them down this dead end, like literally couldn't be more hidden away. And at the end of the dead end were two driveways, and one was for the people with developmental disabilities, and the other was for the people with physical disabilities.
And so when I was 18 and I had to support myself, I figured, well, what can I do other than music? Because I'd hoped that I'd be able to support myself with music. In fact, I was panicked that I would ever have to do anything other than play music for a living. And in fact, then the reality hit that I did. And so the only thing that interested me was, well, working with people and working in social service environments and working in mental health environments. So I started doing that for minimum wage. I started as a janitor and then I started changing diapers on the night shift for people in a geriatric facility. And then from there, I started to work in emergency psychiatry and with adolescents. And so it was, I guess, sort of fated or a natural segue, but for me, in many ways, those environments were quite familiar, maybe not as threatening as they would be to some people because I'd been around a variety of conduct and behavior and different abilities to communicate from as long as I can remember, because I was younger than my sister.
Leah Roseman:
So you developed all this violence prevention and you've written books and you're known worldwide as this person who developed it organically, just working with people.
Hi, just a really quick break from the episode. I wanted to let you know about some other episodes I’ve linked directly to this one in the show notes, with Verna Gillis, Olcay Bayir, Gaelynn Lea, Bukhu Ganburged Omo Bello, and Linsey Pollak In the show notes you’ll also find a link to sign up for my newsletter, where you’ll get exclusive information about upcoming guests, a link for my Ko-fi page to support this project directly, where you can buy me one coffee, or every month, and my podcast merchandise store with a design commissioned from artist Steffi Kelly. You can also review this podcast, share it with your friends, and follow on your podcast app, YouTube, and social media. All this helps spread the word! Thanks. Now back to my conversation with.
Ian Brennan:
Well, yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of different approaches and they're probably all valid. I always tell people that from a training, my modest goal is that if somebody walks away with one tool that works one time, then that's pretty good for a training. Nobody has all the answers and there's no magic bullet and there's no one size fits all solution. But my goal has always been to have utility, so to use the time for a training, to talk about things that are fairly easy to understand and easy to remember and maybe easy to apply and that tend to have positive impact. And so I was originally asked to start training because I was identified as being good at doing it and locked in emergency psychiatry environments. And I was good at doing it, but I'm not as good at doing it now as I was then.
I mean, I don't do it now. I mean, I don't work in those environments anymore, but I know that if I went into those environments today, I'd be okay. I'd be better than a lot of people maybe, but I wouldn't be as good as I used to be. It was something that came quite naturally to me, but I didn't know how to teach it. So I was like, "Well, I'll try." But it turned out that I was pretty okay at teaching it as well. And then over the decades of doing this and hearing people's stories and doing it myself, it's been possible to more and more formulate it in ways that I think have that utility that oftentimes academic writings lack, where they're almost deliberately something that's hard to penetrate and almost exclusive as opposed to, "No, let's just talk about what generally is at play when we're dealing with human beings." And that's the emotions and that's the emotions that the anger is disguised to protect because anger is thought generated.
The person's angry, but they're not really angry. They're sad and they're frustrated and they're afraid, but they're afraid of their own fear. So they're trying to make you afraid so you'll express the fear they're afraid to express. So if we approach that individual instead of as a rival, but as somebody that we can work with who has the potential for better behavior, not perfect behavior, and that they're suffering, which they are because they wouldn't be acting this way if they were not, in most cases, then there's a chance that we can maybe coexist with that individual a little bit better. There's no guarantee. Some people aren't going to participate, but most people can behave a little bit better. And that should be the goal, is progress versus perfection because if I'm demanding perfection of somebody who's struggling all the time, somebody who maybe has a lifetime problem with relating to other people, I'm going to only make that situation worse.
Leah Roseman:
Before I speak with you for another interview, I need to read one of these books about this topic. You've written several. Which one do you think I should start with?
Ian Brennan:
I think the new one "Peace by Peace" is probably the best. I mean, I'm probably most biased because it's the new one, but I think it is the best. I mean, the original book was written, I mean, it's been more than a decade ago now, I think in 2011, and it was the core information at the time, but this is distilled even more. So it's really, really trying to distill it as much as possible and make it almost like bullet points.
Leah Roseman:
I'm guessing this will apply to most people dealing with all kinds of situations, right?
Ian Brennan:
I think so. I mean, I think that's always been my perspective is that it might be a more heightened environment in a locked psychiatric facility, but it's the same dynamics that we're dealing with when we're communicating with anybody potentially on this spectrum, on this continuum. If we don't make it something binary, if we don't create a dichotomy that it's us and them, if it's just on this continuum, I think that is the case. And when I talk about the errors that people make, I'm talking about myself and I'm not talking about myself in the past. I'm talking about myself in the present and future because I'll continue to make a lot of those mistakes, hopefully less often and hopefully less intensely. But if we know what those pitfalls are, then it's a little easier to avoid them and it's a little easier to correct when we've kind of made a misstep in that way.
But one of the most gratifying things for me is when people do come up, because most of the people for the trainings are social workers or people that work with the unhoused or people that work in medical environments or psychiatric environments or in education. When they come up and they say, "I'm going to use this with my kids," or when they come up and say, "This really helped me with my child or with my partner," that's really the most gratifying because I can say that I believe that that is in theory so, but to hear people say that it actually has been so for them is great because I think communication is critical to relationships and it's an obstacle for so many of us.
Leah Roseman:
Okay, wonderful. Well, to be reprised, but in one of your, I can't remember which of your music books, but I wrote down a few quotes here and there and you said psychiatric emergency work, when you're doing that, you learned that quote "second chances simply may not exist" in terms of, like you're mentioning, let's record tonight. So you have a certain urgency in these trips and finding musicians.
Ian Brennan:
Yeah. I mean, I've just learned that, I mean, on the one hand, I think there's this idea that the job expands to whatever amount of time you have. And so I'm trying to avoid that overindulgence and do things in a very efficient way, ultimately to hopefully benefit the artists because these are money losing labors of love, but the artists are always paid and to make it as simple and painless as possible, because I think that most of the recording problems I've ever witnessed in traditional recording studios are by making it work and making hard work and painful, more than it need be. So yeah, I've learned ... I'm not by nature an assertive person. I'm certainly not an aggressive person, but I've learned to have to be more assertive and to recognize that I need to prevent regret now, like not be in a situation where I know something is slipping away or going the wrong way and letting that happen, but instead trying to take charge of it, not in an aggressive way, but just like, "No, no, this is the moment.
Let's do this now." We can always do it again if we have that chance, but we may not. So if we can, let's do this. But also a lot of the outdoor recording and the long distance recording really does come down to these little windows where you've driven a long way and you're there and the sun's going down or you're in a place you've got to leave, you're being told you can only be there a certain amount of time like in a prison, that sort of thing. So it really does come down to, well, this is it. We just got to go. We can't worry about setting up an extra microphone right now or getting the perfect sound, let's record it. And a lot of times, very serendipitously, the environment kind of creates a tone for the music itself that is very fitting. It's unique, you haven't manipulated it.
It's not because you put it through an EQ rack or effects a piece of outboard gear. It's just created by the environment itself. Also, the moment oftentimes self-edits that when you go back and listen to an hour or two hours of music, there'll be certain tracks that are just unusable for a variety of reasons. And sometimes that's external noise, wind, whatever it may be. And then there's other things that it just all kind of, you hear it almost like the wind just quiets down maybe for five minutes and that's those exact five minutes they're playing and it all just kind of comes together. And I think there's something very beautiful about that, that it's something that actually happened. It's not something that was manipulated or willed into being. It's just a moment that actually occurred where everything was synergistic. Everything was working in harmony with one another.
Leah Roseman:
You mentioned prisons. You're certainly known for the Zomba Prison Project. I think one of your Grammy nominations was for one of those records. So you seek out elders and women, and I think you pointed out with that prison project that you wanted to find the women because the men were always kind of taking over.
Ian Brennan:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we try as much as possible to always want to hear from women who are underrepresented. In certain cultures, solo female voices are outlawed. They're not even allowed to sing except in groups and also elders. And interesting thing happens with that is that when you ask to hear from the elders, oftentimes it ends up being people younger than me. It's like, "Oh, okay." I guess so. I'm thinking elder in terms of my experience, but it's like, well, in a lot of countries, an elder is going to be somebody who's in their late 40s and their 50s, and there aren't tons of folks that are older than that that are probably going to be singing or able to. At the prison, it was overcrowded dramatically like a lot of prisons, and it's almost entirely male, but they had a little section for the women that's carved out on the one side of the prison.
And there were about 50 women there. We were there more than once, but for the initial record, there were, I think, 56 women in this little area. And so we said, "Hey, we'd like to record with the women." And they said, "Oh, no, no, no. They're not singers." And it's like, "Yeah, yeah, but we'd like to meet with them and record with them." No, no, no, no, no. So every day we'd go over almost every day we were there and at least say hello and be in that environment. And the theme, which is a fairly common sort of misogynistic theme was, "Well, they can dance, but they can't sing or they're not artists," kind of idea. And so we kept going there and then finally the last day, and this was another case where we had more time than normal, that we were there. We had more than a week.
And so we were there multiple days and the final day we went over there and we set up and we were allowed to try to record and they said, "Oh, nobody wants to record." And I'm like, "Well, okay, that's fine, but we're here if somebody wants to. All right." And then finally, one person said, "I've got a song." And she came up to the microphone. And so I was there recording and it was incredible. It was beautiful. Her vocal was so unique, the sound of her voice did not sound like anybody else. So I couldn't refer it to another voice, which is such a pleasant experience because most singers in the industrialized world or the more industrialized world, they just sound like kind of amalgams of other commercial singers from the past or from the present. And so I was like, wow, that's really an original voice.
And then I looked up and when I looked up, there was a line behind her, like a dozen or so women had lined up behind her. And so when she was done, it was just like, again, that thing we only had like 90 minutes was like, let's go. So the next one was like, "Okay, go. " And they did their thing and most of them it was short little songs that they'd made up, acapella and it was great. And the next one came up and the next one came up. And then some of them started getting back in line a second time and we went on and we recorded for the 90 minutes (Music: clip from track 4 "All is loss" album Zomba Prison Project "I will not stop singing")
And so we had recorded with the men, which were mostly part of the men's band, the official band, but the men's band is not on the record. It was individuals from the men's band, which were usually not the singers or songwriters. They were usually like the backup bass player who had written a song, that kind of thing. So the album ended up being those people from the band that were not really the band, and then more than 50% of the record ended up being what was recorded with the women in those final moments. And that, again, was not politically motivated. I'm glad politically what happened, but it was not motivated by that. It was motivated by these are the strongest songs. These are the strongest voices. These are the most powerful performances from all these hours and hours and hours of recording that we've done.
Leah Roseman:
One of the songs I chose ... I Will Never Stop Grieving For You My Wife. And I think I'd written down that you had done some songwriting workshops and that was a result of that.
Ian Brennan:
It was similar. It was a man Benamo, and he wrote an incredible song that was on the first record, and it was the last song recorded with the men, where I brought a little tiny travel guitar, which they actually sound quite good, and gave it to them. And so he'd been playing with the guitar for a day or two, and when we thought we were done, he came in and said, "I think I have a song." And he played this song that sounds like an instant classic, like you've heard it before, but in a good way, not in a bad way. And so this was similar, that when we went back the second time, or the third time when we went back, I said, "Hey, we're here for four or five days." We were there with 60 minutes. So I said, "We're here for four or five days, and so if you could write a song, we'll come and record on the last day we're here." And he's like, "Oh, no, no, no, that's impossible." And I'm like, "Okay, but if you can, that would be great." "No, no, no, can't do that.
So you can't write a song in four or five days. "And I'm like, " Okay, but we'll be here. "And then the next day, talk to him and, " No, no, no, can't do it, can't write a song by Friday. "Okay, no pressure, but a song is a song. It can be 10 seconds long, it can be whatever, doesn't have to be complete, but we will be here on Friday.
Leah Roseman:
.(Music: clip of track 3 “I Will Never Stop Grieving For You, My Wife” from Zomba Prison Project album “I will not stop singing” )
That word intimacy, you're such a beautiful producer. I love listening to all these records, just the sound.
Ian Brennan:
Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
It's hard to say. It's better than you're there. It's something about it. And I'm not technically knowing ... We talked about recording outside. Definitely it's not compressed. There's this openness and this warmth to the sound you achieve.
Ian Brennan:
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for the kind words. Yeah. I mean, that's the goal. The goal has always been that the artist isn't coming to us and they're not on display as something exotic. I don't see these things as exotic at all. I'm looking for the commonality in terms of the emotion, but that we have to go to them, that this is bringing you there. And one of the nicest things I ever heard somebody say, or the one that was kind of really touched me was they wrote and said that they would ride on the subway every day in Brooklyn to work into the city from Brooklyn, and that they'd listen on their headphones to The Good Ones. And it made them feel at peace. It made them feel connected to other people. And so I talk a lot about how headphones are bad, how it kind of keeps you ... What's immediately around you outside. But I also believe in this thing of nothing's 100%, so there's good and bad in everything. So when they're used in a certain way, they can do the opposite. I mean, this is something that was helping this person to feel connected and really connected to these voices where she didn't know what they were saying, what they were singing and from a place she'd never been and maybe never will go, but she understood the feeling.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. The first time I listened to The Good Ones, I was on a bus trip and I listened to a whole album straight through. As well as on that trip, actually I wanted to get into Africatown, Alabama's Ancestor Sounds. It's more of an audio documentary. It's so powerful. So actually, the first track on that, "Run if you can, don't go down that road". I think it's one of my favorite tracks. Can we talk about that trip?
Ian Brennan:
Yeah. We went to Africatown in Alabama, which is in Mobile. And it was a community founded by people that had been enslaved right after the end of slavery. And one of the primary founders was somebody who came in on the last slave ship that was brought in illegally, long after it was legal to bring people into America. They were still being traded within the United States, but they could not be brought in. And so his connection to Africa was very, very recent, where he'd been taken as an adult and brought to this new land and enslaved. And then not too long afterwards, I mean, obviously one day is too long, but without losing his connection to Africa, he was enslaved and then freed. And so they founded this community. And the community largely was destroyed, particularly in the industrial boom. And there's a tremendous amount of industrial racism around the community, a lot of pollution, super high cancer rates.
But one of the main things they did was they put an expressway, built a new bridge and put an expressway that divided this pretty small neighborhood in half, I mean, divided in a way that is completely disconnects them with no pedestrian bridges, where they've got to go across what's basically almost a freeway to get from one end to one side to the other. And that really fractured the community even more. And so we went there wondering what the stories would be and what the music would be and the song you're identifying. Yeah, it's I think, again, blues as a genre, people can play the blues as an idiom, but to hear somebody playing blues music in a way that feels very current and palpable and real and not like it's a replication or regurgitation of something from before is rare. And I think that song is it where it sounds like it could be from the earliest days of wax cylinder recording or from today, and it is from today.(Clip of track 1 “Run if you can, don’t go down that road” from Ancestor Sounds )
Singer:
Ain't going back down that road. No more. Ain't going back down that road. No more. Pain back down that road. Misery back down that road. Ain't going back down that road. No more.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I mean, and the title sounds of our ancestors, or Ancestor Sounds rather, there's such a strong connection to Africa and the music on this album.
Ian Brennan:
Yeah. The drumming tradition in particular has been something that connects people. And one of the main leaders in the community talked a lot about why that's so important to him because drums were outlawed. And so the ability to play drums is not something to be taken for granted. It's something to be actively pursued. And so yeah, there is that connection that is meaningful on a historical level, but also just on a downright legal level, that in terms of taking ownership of your rights and your citizenship.
Leah Roseman:
In your writings, you do talk about you had a pretty rough youth and how music really helped you. And I think you also wrote guitar is the best therapist you've ever known. Are you still playing?
Ian Brennan:
Yeah, I am playing, but I mean, it was a slow untethering from the idea of performance. And that began when I started recording in this laundromat in San Francisco every week, where I learned that you could record anywhere and started recording other bands and really trying to create platforms for other people more than myself. And after that, subsequently, of the records I made, the two best records were the records I made after that, where I recorded them live and 100% live with the vocals and with the band and mostly improvised. And they were way better than the records that I'd belabored when I was younger. I'm not saying they were good, but they were way better. And so today for me, music is something that's pretty much a daily thing. I mean, again, on this continuum of what's music and not music, I think it's definitely daily, but even crossing over into what's obviously musical, there's a lot of writing of songs.
I would say more inventing of songs that goes on, especially since my daughter was born, but I have no real desire to record them. I have no real desire to remember them. I have no real urge or desire to share them necessarily. It's just, I think they have value just in how they were born, just in the moment that they were born. And if I remember a version of it a week later or the next day and sing it again, that's great, but if not, that's fine too.
Leah Roseman:
Maybe your daughter would like you to record some of these.
Ian Brennan:
Yeah, maybe. I mean, we've recorded a few playing around, but there's ones that she remembers and I remember and we continue to sing, but it doesn't have to go beyond that, I don't think. I think that's really the birth of song is, I think, between parent and child, between people that love each other. Familial and romantic is the birth of song right there.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. How has becoming a parent changed you, do you think?
Ian Brennan:
Well, I think for the better, it was not anything I ever set out to do. I mean, meaning I didn't feel like I had to do it and was kind of afraid of doing it and for a large part of my life, didn't want to do it, but it's turned out to be maybe because of the contrast between expectations and reality, it's turned out to be the best thing ever for me. It's been great and I think I've learned more about the world and I think I was pretty kind before, but I think I've become kinder, I hope in many ways.
And I've also become more afraid because there's consequences beyond myself, but our daughter has gone with us on almost every trip we've done since she was born. So she's had a lot of experiences, a lot of musical experiences and a lot of experiences in different places. So certainly as much as I'm afraid of the future and what can happen, we don't try to shield her. I mean, she was in Comoros, she's been in Djibouti, she's been in Pakistan, she's been in very, very, very remote, remote, one of the most remote places we've ever been in Northwest Namibia that's 10 hour drive off road. So she's been up in the Talish mountains and Azerbaijan in the middle of winter on the Iranian border. So she's been in a variety of environments and who knows how that will play out in her life. I think most of it she won't remember consciously, but I think it will help feed her as an individual in whatever she does in her life, hopefully.(Music: clip of Track 8 Comorian "Bandits Are Doing Bad Deeds" from album "We are an island, but we’re not alone")
Leah Roseman:
I just wanted to go back for a minute to those laundromat days. So just from a practical perspective, you got permission from the owners? How did that work?
Ian Brennan:
There was a laundromat that was set up where they had a cafe on one side and a laundromat on the other, which at the time was a pretty revolutionary idea and a very smart one that while people were doing their laundry, they could be doing something else. They could be watching entertainment or having a beverage or eating some food. And so I went to them after a failed tour, a musical tour with a band, and I felt like I just wanted to play somewhere every week
Acoustically for free. I just was compelled to do that. And so I asked them if I could and they said, "Yeah, you can do it for a month." And so I did it for a month and then they said, "Well, this isn't working out so well." Then I said, "Well, let's do another month." And I bring people in. And I think I'd brought some people in the first month, but I said, "I'll bring somebody in different every month." And then I did and it started doing better, more people would come. It was free, but more people would come. And so I started recording every week and then after a certain point, put out a record of the individuals there and then continued doing it for five years. And so there were three collections of records. And for me, it was, A, as I mentioned earlier, that I learned that you could record anywhere.
And that's what led into field recording, because I'd done it unintentionally. It wasn't like, "Oh, I studied to do this or intended to do this. " But I came to learn that in those live cases in front of an audience, really, if anything goes wrong, you don't have a choice. You just have to keep going. But also, I would oftentimes, not always, but I would oftentimes deliberately have people there that I didn't particularly like their music, but I felt like it was important to try to understand why people did,
And listen to them. And it reaffirmed my theory that most people have one really great song in them, and so maybe there's an hour of material and most of it is pretty lackluster, and then there'd be one song that was just amazing. And in terms of recording, that song is often the one that didn't work in the room, but then when you listen on tape, it's magical. And then a lot of things that worked great in a room, the recording doesn't turn out so well. So there's a strange alchemy that tends to happen, again, with 100% live, not no overdubs, unfiltered recording of this nature. But I think I learned a lot about listening more carefully to other people and also trying to listen through all the noise to hear where's the beauty in what somebody's doing.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I mean, this was well before digital downloads and Bandcamp and all this. So how did this work with you putting out albums in terms of the cost and the physicality of it?
Ian Brennan:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is still in the days of ... I mean, it was CDs, so it was in some ways a little easier and there was digital ... I mean, I was recording to ADATs, so to digital tape, so it was
A little easier than ... I mean, analog tape in terms of live recording would have been really difficult, the amount of power you would need and the expense of the tape where you'd spend 100 bucks for every 15 minutes of tape or 30 minutes of tape. So in that way, it was easier. But sure, yeah, putting out the records, it was all physical. So it costs money. It costs money to put those records out. And they weren't money making efforts, but they would lead to performances once a year, big performances in San Francisco with many of the bands that were then done for charity. And those would raise money, not massive amounts of money, but you could make a few thousand dollars for a charity with a bunch of local bands playing, that sort of thing.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Cool. If we could go to the Tanzania Albanism Collective, very, very touching. So this island, how you say it, Ukerewe?
Ian Brennan:
Yeah, Ukerewe Island.
Leah Roseman:
So you did songwriting workshops with these people as well?
Ian Brennan:
Yeah. We went there. There's a great group organization called Standing Voice that aids the people there that have been mistreated and in some cases even been subjected to violence, particularly the women, due to their albinism. And on Ukerewe Island, there is a higher ratio of people with albinism than elsewhere. And there's a number of reasons why that is, nobody knows for sure. But one of the reasons is some people would abandon their children there. Some people went there to take refuge because it is isolated and it is on an island. And so we went there and there were, like in a lot of these cases, there were no known musicians, identified musicians, except for one. And he was brought in from the capital and he came in and great guitar player, better guitar player than me, but not very compelling. There wasn't a lot of ... Didn't seem to be a lot of truth in what he was doing.
It was very performative. And so the other people who had not done this before attempted it, we came to find out we're usually not only not encouraged to do it, but were discouraged from doing it. In other words, they were normally not taken to church with the rest of the family. They were not allowed to sing. They were not allowed to dance. So it was really more extreme than we could have ever imagined. And so we did the workshop with them and what came out of that, the things that they were able to express were quite incredible. And one of the most amazing experiences was one individual that was there, because it was all people out of the community that said, "Yeah, we want to do this. " So some people weren't interested, but there were a core of about almost 20 people that said, "Yeah, we want to participate." And there was one person and one of the guys that's lived on the island forever and knows the community really well and has helped them, this man, Alex, it's quite amazing, he said, "I couldn't believe that this guy wanted to do this because he's so shy.
I mean, I never imagined that he'd want to do it. " So he's telling us first day, couldn't imagine. Well, it turned out that that person was the most expressive. This is commonly the case, that the most quiet or the most shy or the most meek, had the most to express, and also a lot of anger. And so he just each day he just couldn't believe it. He was like, "Oh my God, I can't believe that he had all this inside him." And because he really thought initially, oh, he just wants to watch or he just wants to be there, but he's not going to actually try to sing. He's not going to actually do anything. And so being around that kind of creativity is just so beautiful. I think it's such a antidote to a lot of the destructiveness we see in the world and it's concrete and it's localized, but I think it matters to see people creating something literally from nothing and also beyond what they imagined they could do or other people too, because you don't know.
You don't know who's going to be the person that comes through. And they all did really, for at least one song. And some of them really, really had this ability to bring out of themselves great depths.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Many of these songs have, they're just heartbreakingly sad, the titles and the music. I have to say the last track though, which is called Happiness, I thought it was very beautiful. Maybe we could include a clip of that.
Ian Brennan:
Yeah, it is a beautiful song. Yeah.(Tanzania Albinism Collective, track 23 “Happiness”, album “White African Power”)
Leah Roseman:
And actually, I mean, not everyone will know what albinism is. So it's this thing people are born with for a lack of pigment. So if you, just to specify what albinism is.
Ian Brennan:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the term, the historical term that is now considered not correct is albino, and it's something that I think most cultures might identify Caucasian cultures as somebody who's very blonde and very white, but it occurs in all cultures. And so for people in certain African countries, it became life-threatening where there was a belief that they possessed powers, that their body parts were valuable for witchcraft. So they were being hunted and killed for this reason, but also that they were witches. There was a lot of confusion about the origin of it, where a lot of accusations of somebody having been unfaithful, that you were with another man, that's why there's a white child, that sort of thing. And so there's a lot of abandonment there where the father sometimes will leave, either because they are not supportive of a child that has this disadvantage or difference, or because they really didn't believe that they were the father, or were unwilling to believe that.
And in fact, the Standing Voice organization began because the leader, Harry, the founder Harry, was visiting from England when he was a young man, and he was there with a group of friends from England, and a woman came up with a child with albinism and said, "Please take my child." And he's like ... I mean, he was shocked and he didn't really know what to say or do. I mean, I'm paraphrasing, or this is what I recall the experience, but said, "Take the child." And he didn't understand what was going on. And she said, "No, take this child because he should be with you because he's white." So this is a child that's African, this is a child from Africa, but was being rejected even by his own mother. And so this affected him so profoundly that he's devoted his life to trying to assist the community there because they have great risks from the sun.
So sun exposure impacts them much more dramatically than most individuals and also visually it can have a big impact on their vision as well.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. Yeah. Maybe it'd be interesting. You did mention Namibia, and I was interested to read that you said some of these Himba locals were working in these kind of staged tribal villages for tourists, which is so yucky.
Ian Brennan:
Yeah, it is.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. And you've also written that no place I've ever visited is as thought or advertised. It's always more vibrant. I mean, I'm hoping our next conversation, we can just get into other, just more of these trips and music. For today, where would you like to leave things?
Ian Brennan:
Well, no, thank you. Thank you for your interest and empathy. And I think we talked about a lot of things that hopefully I've been able to articulate well enough some of those experiences and how meaningful I think they are. But I think in the end, it's just this belief that there is music everywhere and one of the colonialistic ideas that I think lives on is this idea that certain places are more musical than others. And I think that that's not true. On the continuum, maybe it's true. Maybe some places are a little bit more musical historically, culturally, but the basic idea behind that a lot of times is that some places are not musical, and that just isn't true for sure. There's music everywhere, and it's different. It may not resemble what we think of as music as closely aligned with it, but it's everywhere.
And some of the most unlikely places, meaning some of the most raucous music might come from cultures that are seen as being no more passive and subdued and vice versa. And so I think that if people are really invested in diversity, then they should try to listen to diverse voices and not the same songs over and over again and the same people over and over again, and not music that's industrial product where it's so belabored because they're trying to make money from the process. But I really do wish that the big stars would spend their money not making music, like just stepping aside and creating platforms for other people to express themselves. And then those people step aside when they've offered up probably what's going to be the greatest song they'll ever write because most people there's one and that's it. They'll never top that.
Leah Roseman:
Well, I agree with so much of what you say except maybe that.
Ian Brennan:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I know. I mean ...
Leah Roseman:
Well, on that note, thanks so much for this today. I really appreciate it.
Ian Brennan:
Yeah. No, thank you.
Leah Roseman:
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Keep in mind, I've also linked directly several episodes you'll find interesting in the show notes of this one. Please do share this with your friends and check out episodes you may have missed at leahroseman.com. If you could buy me a coffee to support this series, that would be wonderful. I'm an independent podcaster and I really do need the help of my listeners. All the links are in the show notes. The podcast theme music was written by Nick Kold. Have a wonderful week.
