white people, black music & liberation

Tag: collective liberation

  • why is race so hard to talk about? (with matré)

    Description

    in this episode, erich is joined by hip hop artist and cultural worker matré for a candid conversation about why conversations around race can feel so charged, vulnerable, and difficult, even among people committed to justice and growth.

    together, they explore fear, in group dynamics, overlapping identities, and the tension between saying the “right” thing and speaking from love. the conversation touches on race as a collective wound, the vulnerability of being witnessed, and what becomes possible when we choose growth over performance.

    this episode is the first in a short series with matre, and opens space for honest reflection at the growing edge of race, music, spirituality, and liberation.

    to hear more from matre, including reflections on music, vulnerability, and healing, check out his podcast love bravely:
    https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/the-love-bravely-podcast/id1783210134

    Transcript




    welcome to white people black music and liberation.
    i’m erich, and i’m here on the journey with you.
    this is a transmission at the intersection of race, music, and spirituality it’s about moving past the programming and into liberation.

    introducing matré
    before we begin, i want to share a little context about today’s guest.
    one of the people who has served as a spiritual compass for me on this journey is shelly tochluk. i’ve mentioned her work before because it’s been deeply formative and transformative for me. as i was putting these conversations together, i stayed in touch with her periodically, and she suggested that i reach out to matt.
    only after doing that did i realize that matt and i share four or five mutual friends from his time here in the bay area.
    then, when we had our first conversation, we realized something else. our ethnic heritages line up very closely. matt is arab american, half arab and half white, just like i am. that added an interesting layer to our interaction.
    there’s a nuance that emerges in this work when identities blur and overlap, and that showed up for both of us. it felt really good to feel seen by him.
    matt is also a courageous conversationalist. as his podcast, love bravely, suggests, he’s incredibly open and vulnerable, both in content and in style. we clicked immediately. it honestly felt like adding a new friend to my circle.
    we share a lot of overlapping threads. arab american identity. love of music, especially black music. anti racism work. and a shared desire for a spiritual compass that can hold all of it.
    when matt refers in this episode to “our conversation,” he’s talking about that first exchange we had. one of those conversations where you suddenly realize just how much overlap there is in lived experience.
    and in anti racism spaces, conversations about multiple intersecting identities don’t always get much room. so this felt unique.

    a note on the format
    a quick piece of housekeeping.
    matt is also known as matré in the music world. he’s a hip hop artist who’s released a lot of powerful work with the explicit intention of bringing healing and transformation into racial justice spaces. i really encourage you to check out both his music and his podcast.
    this conversation starts a bit abruptly because i edited some things out. we jump straight into the question: why is it so hard to talk about race?
    matt and i talked for a long time, so it made sense to break this into smaller episodes, each focused on a specific question. that’s the current format of these transmissions.
    one thing that stood out in our first conversation was just how much of a wound racism is for everyone, and how hard it is even to name it. that’s what’s being referenced at the end, when matt asks a deceptively simple question: why should we even care about racism?
    so with that, let’s get into it.

    why is it so hard?
    erich:
    it’s so hard to talk about this stuff. even in the first few conversations i’ve had with people who have clearly done a lot of inner work around race, whiteness, and privilege, it’s still incredibly difficult to talk about.
    matré:
    i really appreciate starting there.
    it takes me straight into the heart of the question. why is this such difficult territory?
    there’s so much uncertainty about what to say, what not to say, and how to say it. and i think it’s because this is a place of real wound. it’s vulnerable territory.

    choosing love over performance
    matré:
    i’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to work with love in this space. how do i engage questions around race in a way that actually comes from love?
    i could try to say the things that sound the best. or i could ask a different question: what would actually be helpful, even if it makes me feel more vulnerable, even if i’m afraid of judgment?
    what can i explore here that helps me grow, and helps me serve what’s actually needed in this deep and difficult part of our world?
    that’s the threshold for me. and it applies to many areas of my life, but it shows up very strongly here.


    in any deeply meaningful conversation, especially one connected to our growing edge, i want to be in it in a way where something new can emerge. where growth is possible.
    what’s interesting is how the presence of microphones changes that. the moment you know others might listen later, a whole new layer of vulnerability appears.
    and i’ve noticed fear coming up for me as i’ve moved toward hosting conversations about race. what surprised me is that the fear isn’t really about people who openly identify as racist.it’s more about my in group. people whose values i mostly share, who might call me out if i don’t say something exactly right.
    that fear of being challenged by those closest to us can be sharper than fear of those outside our circles.
    matré:
    yeah. i can really relate to that.

    closing
    that’s where we’ll pause for now.
    there will be a couple more episodes with matré. the next one explores a central tension many of us feel: being white and loving black music, and what a right relationship between those two things might look like.
    so stay tuned.
    wishing you all a great day.
    i’m erich, and this has been white people black music and liberation.
    if this message speaks to you and you want to be part of the journey, head to whitepeopleblackmusic.com, and let’s build a world where liberation is for everyone.

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  • is drawing attention to cultural appropriation causing harm?

    Description

    in this episode, erich responds to a question that arises often in conversations about cultural appropriation: is the narrative itself harmful, or is it naming harm that already exists?

    this conversation is especially oriented toward white and white passing listeners engaging with black, indigenous, and diasporic music and traditions, and who sense that responsibility, reciprocity, and liberation are part of the work.

    through personal reflection, lived experience, and spiritual framing, this transmission explores cultural appropriation as a product of deeper systems that center whiteness and make extraction invisible.

    rather than avoiding discomfort, this episode invites listeners to examine cause and effect, power dynamics, and the role of guilt and shame as signals of imbalance rather than moral failure.

    if you want to be a more deeply involved in this journey, sign up for our email list below:

    Transcript


    welcome to white people black music and liberation.
    i’m erich, and i’m here on the journey with you.
    this is a transmission at the intersection of race, music, and spirituality.
    it’s about moving past the programming and into liberation.

    naming the question
    today i want to go a little deeper into cultural appropriation.
    specifically, into recognizing harm, acknowledging impact, and taking responsibility.
    this conversation began with an email i sent to the orchestra gold newsletter about cultural appropriation. that email echoed themes from a previous episode here on the podcast.
    in response, i received a long message from someone on that email list. in it, they shared that the narrative around cultural appropriation itself was harmful, and that all people should be able to play music without feeling guilt or shame.
    i’ve held similar thoughts at earlier stages of my own journey, and it raised an important question for me:
    is the conversation around cultural appropriation harmful?
    or is it calling attention to harm that already exists?

    cause and effect
    at the core of this question is an assumption that if we simply didn’t talk about cultural appropriation, there wouldn’t be a problem.
    and i have to be honest, to me that feels backwards.
    we live in a system that centers whiteness. a system shaped by supremacy. and that system creates unequal access to resources, opportunities, platforms, safety, and even to being heard.
    those imbalances show up in music too.
    so what happens when someone who’s been given a lot of access because of the color of their skin takes music, imagery, or traditions from another culture, and uses them in ways that are disconnected from their source?
    that isn’t neutral.
    it can cause real harm.
    and it’s also not the same as when someone without institutional access takes something from people who already hold power. there isn’t the same momentum behind it.

    harm and invisibility
    this harm becomes especially pronounced when the music or traditions being taken come from contexts born of struggle, oppression, or survival.
    because of power dynamics and cultural conditioning, many of us fail to see that harm at all.
    for me, it was a shock when that harm was finally reflected back. i had lived for a long time without seeing the impact of my actions.
    i’ve been there.
    i’ve done that.
    shelly tochluk talks about this in the context of native and indigenous practices. she describes how people will take a small piece of a culture they barely know, build a business around it, and unknowingly reproduce a long history of extraction and theft.
    so when people say that the conversation about appropriation is what’s harmful, that feels like a confusion of cause and effect.
    the harm isn’t the discomfort we feel when appropriation is named.
    the harm is the system that makes appropriation easy and invisible in the first place.

    guilt and shame as teachers
    this brings us to guilt and shame, which came up in that response and which i have a lot of experience with.
    when i was unconscious, when i couldn’t see how i was complicit in these systems, i carried a lot of guilt and shame. and i tried to avoid those feelings.
    over time, as i brought more awareness to what was actually happening, i became more willing to learn and more willing to acknowledge harm. and those feelings began to soften.
    this wasn’t just intellectual. it wasn’t just about education.
    it was a spiritual transformation.
    it was a movement from fragmentation into wholeness.
    the fragmentation was not being able to see the harm i was causing, and not being able to acknowledge it. this process didn’t happen overnight. it’s taken years to unfold.
    and once i was able to acknowledge harm, i could begin taking steps to reduce it and to generate something life giving on the other side.

    restoring balance
    i don’t think guilt and shame are random. i think they’re often signals of unconsciousness.
    in my life, they were signs that something was out of balance. that i was out of reciprocity. that i was taking more than i was giving, or causing more harm than i was repairing.
    when i began to see the harm clearly, i could allow guilt and shame to become teachers rather than enemies.

    closing
    so to bring this home, the conversation about cultural appropriation is not the problem. and avoiding the conversation doesn’t serve us.
    we’ve had a long history in this country of avoiding hard conversations.
    what’s actually causing harm is the deeper system that centers whiteness and renders extraction and appropriation invisible.
    that’s enough for today.
    wishing you all many blessings.
    thank you so much for listening.
    take care.
    to a world where liberation is for everyone.

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  • beyond anti-racism, into liberation

    Description

    in this episode, erich reflects on why the language of liberation feels more accurate than anti racism to his lived experience. drawing from personal reflection, spiritual frameworks, and liberatory thinkers, this transmission explores the difference between opposition and wholeness, between reacting to injustice and moving toward collective healing.

    rather than framing the work as something we fight against, this episode invites a reorientation toward what we are moving into. more self knowledge. more ease. more relational honesty. more humanity.

    liberation, as explored here, is not a denial of racism or injustice. it is an invitation to work at a different frequency. one rooted in wholeness rather than fragmentation, and in possibility rather than shame or domination.

    Transcript


    white people black music and liberation
    Welcome to white people black music and liberation.
    I’m erich, and I’m here on the journey with you.
    This is a transmission at the intersection of race, music, and spirituality.
    It’s about moving past the programming and into liberation.

    beyond anti-racism, into liberation
    why liberation
    So why is the word liberation so important to this whole discussion?
    First, one thing I want to name for myself is that in doing these episodes, I’ve come up against a significant amount of fear on my end. And that fear isn’t of folks who are white nationalists or who espouse explicit racist beliefs.
    That fear is actually of the backlash I might receive from people who identify as progressive or liberal.
    And that’s because the way these things are often talked about, the way anti racism is often talked about, simply hasn’t been my lived experience.
    The central reason I want to do this podcast is because in doing my own work around what people call anti racism, meaning unblocking the anti Black and anti brown programming that I inherited from this society, that process has given me a tremendous amount of what I would call liberation.
    When I say liberation, I mean wholeness.
    I mean moving from fragmentation into wholeness.
    I mean more self knowledge, more ease with myself, more ease not just with Black and brown folks, but also with white folks.
    For me, it has been unilaterally an experience of greater and greater degrees of freedom. I can honestly say that from the bottom of my heart.

    the disconnect
    And yet, when I hear people characterize what they call anti racism, it often feels very different from my experience.
    This comes from all sides.
    On one side, I hear anti racism advocated for in ways that sometimes feel like tools to dominate or shame one another. In some ways, it feels like a continuation of the very dynamic we are being called to move beyond.
    On the other side, I hear anti racism completely mischaracterized as something meant to denigrate white people, something to fight against. And I can understand that reaction. I think I’ve been there myself at earlier stages of my journey.
    What I’m pointing to here is the opportunity in front of us to reframe the entire conversation around liberation.
    How do we liberate each other?

    shifting the frequency
    At the root of it, I think that’s what this is really about.
    Abraham Hicks talks about how the energy of the problem and the energy of the solution exist at very different frequencies.
    Albert Einstein said something similar.
    adrienne maree brown, in emergent strategy, talks about how what we practice at the small scale ripples outward, and how moving from reaction to intentional, relational strategy is essential.
    Michael Beckwith often speaks about vibrational alignment, and how overly focusing on the problem can keep us stuck in that same frequency.
    And Buckminster Fuller said, you never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
    For me, it’s not that calling things anti racism is wrong. It’s just that energetically, anti racism is still positioned in opposition to racism.
    Liberation lives on a completely different frequency.

    collective liberation
    So for me, this is about reframing the whole thing.
    It’s about collective liberation.
    It’s about liberation for everyone.
    Liberation for Black and brown folks may look very different from the kinds of liberation that white or white passing folks need.
    I happen to have more lived experience in this world as a white, white passing person. So that’s the particular kind of liberation I’m speaking to here.
    Sometimes I use the word anti racism because it’s what people understand, and that’s okay. I’m not opposed to using that language.
    It’s just that liberation feels like a more accurate representation of my lived experience, and of the deeper direction my soul feels us being called toward right now.
    A direction that moves beyond injustice, beyond racism, beyond the limiting beliefs we’ve all been handed in this society.
    The best word I have for that is liberation.


    So that’s what I have for today.
    Wishing you many blessings.
    Take care.
    I’m erich, and this has been white people black music and liberation.
    If this message speaks to you and you want to be part of the journey, subscribe below.

    let’s build a world where liberation is for everyone.

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