Exploring Cultural Narratives Through Music: A Conversation with Dr. Danielle Brown

How often do we take the time to truly listen and understand our own cultural stories? The remarkable Dr. Danielle Brown, ethnomusicologist and founder of 'My People Tell Stories', brings her passion for teaching and understanding her own culture in an enlightening discussion on the Style and Vibes podcast.

Dr. Brown imparts her wisdom on the role of study of music at the academic level and the importance of having people from within the culture involved. We'll unpick the complexities of academic research, the challenges that come with it, and how technology can be leveraged to reach a wider audience. This conversation is more than just an exploration of music and culture, it's a call to everyone to discover, interpret, and share their cultural narratives in their own unique way. Don't miss out on this captivating conversation with Dr. Brown—empower yourself with the knowledge to narrate your own cultural story!

Links Mentioned in the podcast
My People Tell Stories Book

Parang (Emmy-nominated documentary short)

Havana Tour

Bring home Bob Marley: One Love on Digital now! Celebrate the life and music of an icon who inspired generations through his message of love, peace, and unity.  Buy Bob Marley: One Love on Digital today and get over 50 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage and deleted scenes! Available at participating retailers. Rated PG-13. From Paramount Pictures.

Transcript

Mikelah : 0:38

Welcome to the Style and Vibes podcast with me, makayla. I'll be giving you the inside scoop on music, fashion, culture and more from Caribbean celebrities and taste makers across the globe Pushing our culture with authenticity and, of course, style and Vibes. Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Style and Vibes podcast with yours truly. If you are new here, welcome to the family. If you are returning, welcome back family. Today we have a very special guest, dr Danielle Brown. She is the owner and founder of my People Tell Stories and she is in the study of ethnomusicology, which is very new, something we've never explored on the podcast before, but I think we're going to have an amazing conversation. So, danielle, please don't mess up your resume. Tell the people, then, where you are from and a little bit more about your work and what you do.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 1:41

Well, thank you first of all, makayla, for inviting me to be on the podcast here with you to talk about my People Tell Stories and the work that I do. So, as you mentioned, my name is Danielle Brown and I'm the founder and owner of my People Tell Stories. I am from Brooklyn, new York, so big up Brooklyn and big up East Black Bush, the whole central Brooklyn crew and my parents are from Trinidad and Tobago and I guess I can tell you that I've been a musician pretty much all of my life. To some extent. I started studying piano at a young age, but I've always been a singer, so I consider that my primary voice. And later on I learned quattro for string small guitar that's played in Trinidad and Tobago as well as Venezuela, colombia and other places in the world.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 2:29

And I studied music as an undergraduate Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, before going on to New York University where I earned my masters and PhD in music, with a specialization in ethnomusicology, concentrating on the music of Latin America and the Caribbean. So I guess I'll say, after teaching at Syracuse University for a couple of years, I decided to leave and start my People Tell Stories, where our tagline is if you're not telling your own stories, someone else is telling them for you, and that was really because I felt a disconnect in academia, in my field of ethnomusicology, where the majority of the people being studied are people of the so-called non-Western world, so you're black and brown folk, but we're being studied by primarily, historically, white people and really not being able to tell our own stories. And so that's how I left and started my People Tell Stories.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 3:26

Yeah, so that's a little bit of a nutshell. I'll just say ethnomusicology for those of you who aren't familiar with it, one of the easiest ways to describe it, or one of the ways that I like to describe it, is to study of music in culture or the study of music as culture. Ethnomusicology really comes out of two disciplines, out of anthropology and musicology. So many ways it's a combination of the two, since it's humble beginnings. There are many different branches of ethnomusicology now, but still at its core it's the study of music in culture or music as culture. And I'll say one of the primary modes of investigation for ethnomusicologists is ethnography and really what that is. A lot of times we like to say people are participant observers or participant observation, and so ethnographers or scholars, academics will go to a place and they will study. People study the music as a participant, meaning they're actively engaged in the music and the music making, but at the same time they're also observing the scene, like what's actually going on. So that's really kind of the primary way that ethnomusicologists have studied music.

Mikelah : 4:38

So, coming from your background, you said a lot. You're a musician and then your interest in music. Is that what led you to want to study in your undergrad and masters Like, how did that transition really happen?

Dr. Danielle Brown: 4:52

Yes, I'll say you know, Trinity College, when I was there, had a really strong program in Latin American and Caribbean studies. There was also a professor there in the English department, Mila Regio, and she had started a program in Trinity. We had a lot of Trinidadian artists come to Trinity. I was able to study with The Mighty Chalkdust Dr Hollis Liverpool, who also we had. We also had a lot of Puerto Rican artists.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 5:23

It was just a very strong department and I was able to see how the Caribbean was connected in terms of music Also. Some of that was also fostered in New York City. So, for example, I remember hearing Meringue music at one point and saying is that Spanish, calypso, spanish, so good, like you know what is that? And just kind of hearing these kind of musical similarities and wanting to learn more about the connection between people from the different parts of the Caribbean. And my mentor at Trinity College was an ethnomusicologist and so in many ways I was following in her footsteps and that's how I ended up studying, but really it came out of a desire to learn more about my culture and also the larger Caribbean region and how we're all connected, and particularly connected through the African diaspora. I was really interested in those connections as well.

Mikelah : 6:15

Awesome, and even as you and I were sharing before we got on camera, I was exposed to the idea of ethnomusicology anthropology in undergrad, but it wasn't really a thing, so it was just a class at that time. So what did that exposure at the collegiate level really do in terms of making you want to make that your career in choice versus all the other things that are related to music?

Dr. Danielle Brown: 6:51

You know what. So I'm going to be honest. There are two things. One, like I said, my mentor. I was really inspired a lot by her and have a very academic brain in many ways, or I'm an intellectual, you know I like playing with ideas and theories and thinking through things, so I think a lot of people saw me kind of in that that right. So I think that I was often encouraged in that regard.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 7:18

I was also encouraged as a performer and I was also a composer, and I think I chickened out because I had another option. I had thought heavily about applying to programs in jazz composition and ranging at the graduate level and really I only chose that because I was trying to think of, okay, what program would allow me to be able to do music from the Caribbean, right, and so those programs were available compared to other programs that focus more on western art music or what we call classical music. And so I kind of chickened out and I didn't apply for those programs. But I've always been able to, or at least I've tried to, combine my love of performing with also research and education.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 8:06

I think you know I sound a Libra, so I said I need a little bit of balance. I like to do a little bit of everything, so I like being able to engage with people intellectually. I like being able to think about performance and music theory and the sound and how the sound comes together. You know, I can geek out on that too, and so I think it just was just one of those things. I kind of fell into it primarily because of my mentor at Trinity College as an undergrad.

Mikelah : 8:37

And, in particular, I really love your tagline. For my people tell stories if we're not telling our own stories. It's kind of a narrative that we have been hearing, but I don't necessarily think that we've heard it at the academia space, when it comes to music and culture. Talk to me about the importance of telling our stories at that level and how that really trickles down to education at, like, the elementary, the middle school, the high school level, because we're not necessarily exposed to that until we get a little bit older. I don't know if I asked you a multiple questions. In that I got Okay, all right.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 9:23

No, I think I think you're right, and I think sometimes one of the things that troubles me a lot is that you know people will say, oh, music brings everyone together. You know, music is the universal language and I think one of the things that we have to remember is that you know, things are neutral. Music is is neutral. You know, music can be used to bring people together, but music can also be used to their, their researchers, who look at the use of music in war and the use of music as forms of torture, right, but we don't generally talk about those things. We talk about music kind of this happy, kind of go lucky thing, and so I think people haven't really been talking so much just in terms of, like, the general population, about you know what we're calling now diversity, equity, inclusion in music. But these are some of the things that I was thinking about when I started. My people tell stories and we talk about diversity, equity, inclusion, but there's so many different layers to it, and I think at one point people were talking about let's make sure that we have representation of music from different places, right, and so not just music from, you know, the so called Western world. You know we think of Europe and America, we think our classical music or music from the classical romantic periods and those sorts of things, but also music from the Caribbean, music from Asia, music from other parts of the world. But even when we're looking at that, that's not the whole story Right, and so a lot of what I look at is also how do we teach these musics? Right? And this is where we start looking at why it's important for people to tell their own stories and and not just have someone, because you can have someone learn about music from Trinidad and Tobago, from Jamaica, from St Vincent, from Barbados, from all over the Caribbean, from all over the world, and they're not from there. And we do need people what I say to be ambassadors, not dictators. We do need people to share what they've learned about other people and other cultures.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 11:27

But at the same time, if we're teaching, say I'm just gonna say steel pan as an example if we're still teaching steel pan, do we understand the ways that people from, say, trinidad to the diaspora will teach steel pan? Or are we teaching steel pan, for example, in the way that we might teach a Mozart sonata or something like that? You know, are we teaching in a way that is authentic to the ways that people from those cultures have taught. Right now. Granted, education setting, regardless, it's going to be slightly different in a classroom setting than, say, for example, if you're going and you're learning in the culture itself right, but there are ways of teaching in a classroom that highlight and I don't want to just say highlight that and validate the ways of teaching in other parts of the world or where that music originated. I hope that makes hope. That makes sense.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 12:24

Yeah, because if we don't, if we just valuing the music but we're not valuing how we actually teach the music, how we pass that music on, and we're just going to continue to do that in a way that you know Europeans have done it or Americans have done it or whoever's been the person kind of in control of the culture and control, then we're still devaluing ourselves and our music. So it's not just about being able to hear it on the radio, it's not just about being able to hear it in the schools, but really understanding that the musics are coming from a particular culture where people have certain ways of doing things, people have certain belief systems and being able to honor and validate those systems. So, across the board in every aspect of culture, and music is no different. You know, sometimes we just like, oh, we just hear the music and that's good. But you know, we have to really look at systems of oppression in many different forms.

Mikelah : 13:20

And what would you say in terms of like it's important and relative to how music has changed over the years, and even relative to like pop culture, like we learned so much about in music history? Particularly we learned about, like you said, classical music, the Baroque period, but when do we fast forward to like the 70s, 80s and 90s, academically, sonically, like? I don't know. Are those studies happening in academia at all? Like I feel like we spend so much on the, the classical eras, that we don't necessarily even get the peak of the mountain of like anything current, at least when I was growing up. Is that more now?

Dr. Danielle Brown: 14:12

I think you definitely have more. The focus has been shifting and so it's not just, as you mentioned, you know, ancient times, and really when I say ancient times are talking about you know, ancient Greece and Rome, and then Baroque and classic and ethnic music. Colleges are really kind of have been known to be kind of at the forefront of this. But even in historical musicology, which generally has focused on Western art music, they've in the past, you know, several years, they've been focusing on more popular music as well. So there are people who are focusing on popular music. But I think a lot of that also depends on the school to.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 14:54

There are some schools that are with for lack of a better term are progressive when it comes to the genres that they're they're studying. Some schools are more resistant to those kinds of changes and aren't really looking for those kinds of approaches. But it depends. I mean, you know, if you have a school that's focused on jazz, you know they're going to focus on jazz and hopefully they'll focus on it from the beginnings until you know modern times. But that really depends. But I would say, yes, overall you are. You do have people who are looking at popular music studies, and that's across the board. So there's, there is a wider variety than say when you know when we we may have been in college for sure.

Mikelah : 15:46

What is the relation between ethnomusicology and, say, music journalism or even creating documentaries around music? Is there a relationship there that goes into consideration? That's?

Dr. Danielle Brown: 16:04

a good question. I think there there's definitely some overlap and some of that depends it really depends on on the journalist, but I would say in general ethnomusicologists, there's a deeper understanding of the music and culture, right, and so again, there's a lot of overlap. And even in ethnomusicology now we have, you know, people who are, they do what we call historical ethnomusicology. Again, traditionally ethnomusicology really had that participant observation as part of the methodology, and so ethnomusicologists might study in a culture for years, for decades, whereas a music journalist may only have a short amount of time to study a music in a culture. That the music colleges tend and I'm kind of like hesitating a little bit because it varies from person to person but ethnomusicologists and it's changing slightly now, but at least historically they had definitely a background in music.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 17:08

Nowadays we're seeing ethnomusicologists who may have less of a background in music and more of a background in anthropology, but generally speaking, kind of a deep understanding of the music culture that they're looking at, a music journalist and maybe surface. I don't want to just say that across the board, because you might have a music journalist who may have a background in ethnomusicology, who may have studied a culture for a very long time. So it really depends. Hopefully, what we'll see are more people who are actually from those cultures, actually being music journalists and ethnomusicologists, also studying their own cultures as well. So it was actually a bit taboo at one point in ethnomusicology where there was this thought that people couldn't study their their own cultures objectively, which I always say is a cop out, because, again, all the books on Western art music that are written by, you know, white Europeans or Americans, so, but that was actually something that was said before at a certain period in time.

Mikelah : 18:13

No, I think it's interesting because when we see, you know, a lot of documentaries or even journalism that really happens within the space, it tends to be from a perspective that may or may not be ours, not necessarily that you can't be engrossed in the culture and not be of the culture, but I think that there is a no pun intended, the song and dance between the two that I think adds value the observation piece of understanding the culture and being able to bring it to life in media. So tell me about, you know, telling the stories is one thing, but how does that get presented to wider audiences, the work that you're doing, the work that you have done? And even in the academic space, I find sometimes it's not as accessible to the wider public. How do people tap into, like, the work that is being done beyond the surface of what they see in media?

Dr. Danielle Brown: 19:30

I think that's a good question. I don't know if I can answer it entirely. I think one of the things is that the criticism of academics is that we're just in the ivory tower right and that information just kind of stays within academic circles and it doesn't get out as much. I think there are people who are trying to do that and in a way it does have to be kind of this connection made between people in academic spaces and also people who are doing media, whether that's journalism or documentaries. There has to be a better way of connecting with people outside of academia.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 20:12

The way that I tried to do that when I started my People Tell Stories was with Easter Flatbush, north of Love, a book that I wrote, because I called it an ethnographic memoir.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 20:21

So playing on the notion of ethnography, which is the kind of document that ethnomusicologists will produce.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 20:30

So playing on that the ethnography and the memoir, which is something that's more accessible to general audiences, and kind of combining the two and really making it music-centered so that people who are not academics will be drawn to it but at the same time they'll be able to get the kind of information that one would typically find in a typical academic book.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 20:52

And so that was the way that I tried to do it. I think there needs to be more discussions about how to do these kinds of things, but again, I don't think overall researchers academic researchers have been very good at kind of getting the information to the general public. But I think part of that too is that, just like everybody else, academic researchers are just overstressed, overworked and they're just trying to get through the day to day, and so they produce this, but then they need someone to be able to take it out to the rest of the world, and I think some of that has to do with academic publishing and just other sorts of things too. But the way that I tried to do it was through my book, and then also, especially when I had just launched the book, I was doing a lot of performances centered around the book and the in-book readings. So that was my way of doing it, but I think, yeah, we need to look at more ways of doing that.

Mikelah : 21:51

Given the digital space and social, and how amplified and interested that people are in taking the culture outside of just music and really utilizing music as almost like the backdrop of the entire culture, how do we amplify that? And it builds off of the question that I kind of just asked around academia and bringing it to the public. So what are some ways that we can bridge that gap and make the connection in a better, more cohesive manner, given where we are in terms of technology and opportunities?

Dr. Danielle Brown: 22:38

Cool. I'm not really entirely sure Social. I mean the technology brings a whole other aspect to it and I don't know if I'm ready for it. The technology to me is just going too quickly. So there are ways that we can use the technology. I'm not exactly sure. I don't think as a whole academics have been using the technology in the way that they should. But I think again. I think that's just they're so busy doing other things. That's another element. It's almost like that's a whole other job that they don't have time to do, based on what they're doing in their working world. So the whole process. Maybe I should explain a little bit about this.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 23:23

For most academics or who are teaching at a university, the Holy Grail is getting tenure and there's usually a process. And the process is someone comes in as an assistant professor. Generally, if they're newly graduated or it's their first job, they come in as an assistant professor and then they generally have about six or seven years when they come up for tenure. If they get tenure, then that's great. They can stay at that university and it becomes difficult to fire someone in that position. It was really designed to protect academic freedoms and people's ability to speak and say their thoughts about repercussions. If they don't get tenure, they essentially have a year to find another job.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 24:10

There are not many academic positions, especially in certain fields, and so that would require someone, if they don't get tenure, to have to move to a different state. You can imagine if that they have family, but besides research they're also doing teaching duties, they have service to the university, and so I think a lot of people are just kind of bogged down with general work like everybody else and life, and so getting their work to the outside public will require something else, something that either changes within the way academia is done and public scholarship traditionally I will say it's becoming more acceptable, but traditionally that's not something that's going to help you to get tenure. Usually what helps people to get tenure is their publications and so a kind of more concerned with people just don't have time. I'll say that and it sounds like a cop out and in some ways it may be, but I think people are just kind of overworked, like I said, like other people, if they're not necessarily inclined or they don't have the connections with the communities, then the information is not going to get out.

Mikelah : 25:21

So talk to me about leaving academia, because it sounds like and maybe I'm making a misassumption and you can correct me that you can probably make more impact outside of the academic realm in order to kind of reach more people through. Even my people tell stories and how there's less of a strenuous workload is just different. Is that the case or am I just making assumptions?

Dr. Danielle Brown: 25:57

No Well, I will say this I think it depends. I think there are people who are in academia who can make a mark. I definitely won't say it's less strenuous, because probably I think having your own business is probably one of the most stressful things around, but I will say this, I'll give you this as an example. So in 2020, I wrote an open letter and it's on the my People Tell Stories website under our blog, and it was an open letter on racism and music studies, especially music, ethnomusicology and music education, and that open letter. I really wasn't expecting it to get a lot of attention, but it hit a nerve and, for lack of a better expression, it went viral within the ethnomusicology community, and what a lot of people said to me afterwards was that I was able to say something that other people had wanted to say but they didn't say.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 26:58

And a lot of people would also express that people don't say things because they're worried about their jobs, and particularly people who don't have tenure, they're especially afraid to say something that might prevent them from getting tenure. So, in a way, I'll say I had a certain amount of freedom that perhaps other people didn't have, or, I would say, because everybody has a choice. I mean, even if you're an academic and you're pre-tenure, you still can say something. But people are thinking, okay, what are the consequences of saying that? And so for me I didn't have the consequence of not getting tenure, not to say I didn't probably get blacklisted in certain spaces, but that was not on my mind. So there are some things that people can do, or some things that people feel more comfortable doing if they're outside of the academic space.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 27:56

So I think that's probably the point that I was trying to make.

Mikelah : 28:00

So you have some pretty exciting projects coming up yourself. So I have your book my People Tell Stories, which you wrote a while ago. Was that your first book? Yes, so, east of Flatbush, north of Love an ethnography of home.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 28:15

That was my first book, my baby. It was an experiment in many ways of trying to do exactly what you were talking about Spread academic information to the general public and do it in a way that is accessible to a wider audience. And so that was my first project, and for me it's interesting because it's still relevant today, even though I wrote that in I published it late 2015. My title had been 2016. But that was some years ago, but I still find it very relevant today, especially with all the things that are going on in the world. So that's a very music centered book.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 29:04

It has a running soundtrack, so to speak, of more than 100 songs, and I have those on playlists on Spotify and YouTube, and essentially, music is a way that I open up different sections of the book or a way to talk about specific topics, including, I say, all the isms, you know, racism, imperialism, colonialism, and I touch on topics that I think are difficult for some people to talk about. But I use music and especially, you know I grew up listening to a lot of calypso, soca. You know dance hall, hip-hop, and all of those are represented in the book, but I always say my mom always had a calypso for every occasion, and especially a spiral calypso, and so being able to use those calypsos to talk about history and just the ways that music has been a way for us to talk about social issues, historical issues and those sorts of things, and just remembering that, you know, music is not just about dance and even if it's danceable, a lot of times there's a lesson in the music for us.

Mikelah : 30:15

So what's one of your favorite calypsos that you reference often?

Dr. Danielle Brown: 30:21

Oh gosh, I mean I think I talk about Jean and Dina a lot, but I really, you know, I love Kitchener, and so Kitchener has a lot of songs that I really love. You know some of them. I don't know if I drink a rum, that's a Christmas song. I love that Love in the Cemetery, raina Rama, which is a song that talks about when Carnival was canceled in Trinidad I forget for which outbreak that they had and then when they brought it back, how people were just really excited and happy that Carnival was back. And so, you know, portrait of Trinidad is another one that my mom used to sing a lot, which I really love, because that one just, I think for me it's a song that I think a lot of people can relate to. I love songs that talk about people's love of their homeland, you know, their home country. There's something I think, just very sweet and nostalgic about that, and so that was a song for me that my mom used to sing to let us know like she's proud of where she comes from.

Mikelah : 31:38

All right. So what else are you working on? I know you have a few things that yeah.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 31:44

So my upcoming I have an upcoming book that I'm working on and it's a book on social justice and music, so a little bit different from East of Flatbush, north of Love, in the sense that this is more directed towards people in academia music, academia, music education, but also music performers, just ways for people to think about. Okay, how do we really do social justice and music beyond representation right, how are we teaching it, and those sorts of things. So that's a work in progress. As I mentioned before, I have a bunch of other projects too, but I do wanna mention also that my People Tell Stories will be traveling to Cuba in November.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 32:30

So in February 2020, we launched our first of our travel tours and we did tour of Havana, cuba, and, of course, then the pandemic hit, so we had to halt those travel tours. So we'll be starting up again in November. These are educational tours, they're fully legal. We're going under the general license support for the Cuban people, and so there'll be more information about that coming. So please stay tuned for that. And yeah, so that's the next major project. And then I also have a signature workshop, a Caribbean Music Pedagogy Workshop, which we'll be bringing back again in person for the first time since the pandemic in summer of 2024. So I'm really excited about that. So more information will come about that. So make sure you subscribe to our email list so you can get information about all of those things. But Cuba November 7th through November 14th 2023. So we have limited spaces. So if you're interested, please send us a message, helloatmypeoplestalesstoriescom, or you can just visit the website. We'll have information on the website there.

Mikelah : 33:41

And I'll be sure to include a link. Thank you so much, danya. I really appreciate all of your knowledge and I think it's just a great conversation to have and explore, like music at a different level, so I truly appreciate it. We'll be sure to include links to your website book and the trip in the show notes Any last words.

Dr. Danielle Brown: 34:06

Well, I just want to say thank you so much for having me on the Style and Vibes podcast and looking forward to continuing the conversation.

Mikelah : 34:16

So Absolutely, and until next time late at my peeps. Thanks for listening to the latest episode of the Style and Vibes podcast. If you like what you hear and I know, you do share it with your friends and family If you want more, make sure you visit stylingvibescom and follow us on our social channels, Twitter and Instagram at Stylin' Vibes. Until next time, we're LYA Tummy Peeps.