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Innocence and A Punjabi Experience: A Conversation With Baldeep Pooni

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There is a quiet confidence you can feel in people with conviction. Baldeep Pooni has conviction wrapped in a sense of deep consideration. What is happening right now? How is his presence affecting those around him? He speaks with purpose and explains himself carefully. I have met a lot of people in the city but how many people have I met who do that? Not many.

He has written a book titled innocence with his convictions, considerations and thoughts put down in prose that speaks like an older wise man trapped inside a young man’s body. Also, he recently released a short film exploring his grandfather’s life as a Punjabi farmer titled i never went to school. If you get a chance to explore either or both, you get a sense of what it is like to grow up in Chesterfield/Richmond born to immigrant parents — given a chance to create these works at all.

Deep was nice enough to come by the studio and here is our conversation.

baldeep pooni article
by Kimberly Frost

Baldeep Pooni: My name is Deep and I just published my first book, innocence. It’s a collection of short stories and narratives on the concept of ‘innocence’. The last few years, my work has been centered on spreading yoga and mindfulness and meditation. And so this book is an introspection into a different part of myself, a creative part of myself, and the concept of innocence is something that I expand upon and reinterpret as a subjective and objective experience.

R. Anthony Harris: What brought you to the idea to create this book?

BP: Really, I had no intention of creating something for a purpose, it wasn’t an idea to create a book. In April 2020, when I had this time and space during the holy month of Ramadan, which I decided to fast that month, in that time and space I had a lot of different emotions that came to me because it was also a period of rest. As I was resting, all of these emotions needed to be expressed and needed to be understood. And so I just started writing, in a very cathartic way, on paper, which also became some drawings as well — which you will see in the book innocence.

And with my meditation practice and with some of the vows that I’ve made in the past, when I create or express I normally would just destroy it, because it’s a transient experience — but I decided to share with a few people and they gave me some feedback, to share it with the world. After some reflection, I realized that was something that I also wanted to do. The idea of creating this book was more so a collection of what I had already expressed for myself, and then sharing it with people. Of course, that is a different process, and a bit more logical, but the inherent idea and the experience of it was more from the emotional spiritual experience that I had during those 30-plus days.

RAH: Being someone that is connected to your own spirituality, and I would assume balance in your life, how did the period of COVID affect you? Was that a sign of imbalance in the world?

BP: What is very important to me in life is accepting and understanding death as a concept and as a practice. When I began to notice that COVID was becoming a reality, which was early February, when I was noticing reports and everything from China, I could tell there was a change coming.

Also, as someone who has studied history as a profession and as a fascination, I knew what sort of pattern we were about to go into. COVID is a pandemic that is still going on — massive widespread death, hysteria — and typically, that leaves a lot of people in a state of imbalance, where people are pondering perhaps the deeper meanings of life.

For me, I didn’t really need an external stimulus. This was something that was internally a battle that would go on top of years of depression, and that depression, not in the western lens, but in a different perspective on depression, of just seeing reality in a ‘slower state’ and having the ability to speed up how I process time and the way I spent my time.

It was interesting because I had actually voiced something out to myself around December 2019. I was going to have a month of silence, which was supposed to be in June of 2020, but what I got from the natural world was the whole time period to do exactly that, be silent.

Honestly, it was very fascinating, because I was able to see the vibe that I would have for myself internally be kind of projected onto the world. And so, you know, one way or another it was actually like seeing an image or a visual that was painted inside for so long, be shown outside to people. And it led to a lot of different things. It sparked this collective experience of suffering, and the polarities of the experiences of suffering, but it also led to this heightened awareness of self that led to all these collective protest movements like the passing of George Floyd, and the protests in India for farmers rights, which is still been going on.

I really don’t think that would have been possible if it wasn’t for… in one way or another, if you see it as meditative or not, it’s essential to be able to sit with an experience. And I feel like that’s exactly what COVID [brought], through either losing somebody or just noticing all the restrictions and changes that we as humans have to go through. So for me, it was kind of an introspection that somehow was external.

RAH: I ask that question because for you to put out not only a book that is meditative, but a film about your grandfather this year — it seems like those seeds were planted last year, a time when everyone had to reflect on their own life and their own mortality. A lot of people made life-changing decisions last year, when they realized that whatever they were doing in their lives had maybe not as much purpose, or as much care, as they would like. I connected the two, the pandemic and your projects, in my mind.

Where did the want to do a film about your grandfather come from?

BP: I will say in terms of creating, I’m just kind of more with the spontaneity, and there are some things that are like foresight. Emotionally I feel something, and I want to create it. So for me, I really go off of emotional intuition. And if I feel like something is necessary or worth doing, then I start taking the time to explore what that feeling elicits in me.

The movie that I recently produced with two local film directors from Richmond, Virginia, is titled i never went to school. And honestly, if I were to sit here and describe a logical process of how it went, it wouldn’t be accurate, nor would it give justice to the aspect of how it happened. In the creation process, I had this idea initially to have a space where I would have my grandfather share something about his life, and perhaps I would be in some of the mix of that. It was just an idea. The reason for that idea was because I’m not someone that wants to take possession of “innocence” as a concept, nor as the book itself.

It’s been experienced and created through me, but as a concept “innocence” is a subjective and objective experience of one’s essence, and so what better way to witness that and explore that than to have someone explore their “innocence” in real time. My grandfather, who doesn’t speak English, has never done anything creative before. But in the aspect of his work he’s creative, he is a farmer. The creativity that is inherent in farming is that you take a seed and somehow miraculously, this seed, which you can relate to an idea, becomes something else, which literally becomes sustenance which you eat.

My book, innocence was so influenced by my grandmother’s passing, which happened over 17 to 18 years ago. For me, because I connect with death so heavily, I know my grandfather only has a certain number of years left. And because he only has a certain number of years left, I knew that I wanted to celebrate my grandfather’s life and who he is as a person, right now, before he passed. And so it was beautiful to witness how that turned out to actually become a short film, because it is inspired, in some ways, by the book, but it’s its own inherent creation. And I think that’s the beautiful part of this; how quickly and how organically the whole process came together.

RAH: And did your grandfather watch the movie? What was that experience like for you?

BP: (laughs) It was pretty surreal. So I premiered at the Byrd Theatre. So there was there was a lot of processing in terms of how to set that up, and what that process would look like. It was really fun, it was very engaging and to have a space that is set up exclusively for this purpose. And then for the entire community of people that decided to come out, as well as a heavy Punjabi community.

(Pause) For someone to be from the Punjabi community and watch a film essentially entirely in Punjabi, for that experience, to be something that they were able to experience directly through a person that they knew, in some aspects, was very interesting. And it was beautiful for me, because I was able to watch everyone really be ‘mindfucked’ a little bit about what the whole thing was about, but at the same time, really being open to the idea of something that was familiar as well.

baldeep pooni article
by Kimberly Frost

RAH: We had we had discussed this before and for people reading this, what is the distinction between Punjabi and Indian? To make a blanket statement to someone that is of a certain ethnicity, it is offensive in ways and/or is it an opportunity to educate?

BP: I always welcome moments of ignorance as not something that is inherently negative, but as an opportunity to grow and understand each other because that’s how knowledge is spread, right? It’s opportunity for conversation and dialogue.

So, when somebody refers to something as “Indian” or “India,” you’re talking about a nationalistic concept that became a country in 1947. That’s what “India” or “Indian” typically designates now. “India” for the word itself, as well as the concept itself, is very much influenced by British occupation. The people that took control of India were mostly British-educated, and most of them were Hindu in terms of their religion and spirituality and perspectives.

Now, “Punjab” (pause) “Pun” means “five” and “jab” means “river.” So Punjab is a region that is located in the northern part of the subcontinent. In order to make India — and also make Pakistan, because those two countries were made at the same time, because of British occupation — half of Punjab was divided up. So the lower portion went to India, and then the upper portion went to Pakistan. Essentially, East Punjab is in India and West Punjab is in Pakistan.

Now bringing the conversation back around to the Punjab that I’m referring to, there’s a heavy population there that refers to themselves as Sikh. Sikh is a specific religion, spirituality, and set of experiences that are different than the majority, the majority is 90% Hindu.

And so the laws, for example in the US, if you’re Indigenous, or if you’re African American, this country has been more designed for Caucasian white Americans. In the same ways in India, there is systemic oppression on many levels that are from that Hindu domination. The state of Punjab is mostly farmers, so it is the land that is heavily based on farming. And there’s now development of other cities in Punjab, but natively speaking, it is just a land of farmers.

The experience of Punjabi people in India itself, as well as the experience of Punjabi people in general, even getting the opportunity to come to the US, is very different than other Indians — [those] that will claim themselves as Indians. Now, there has been systemic genocides committed by the Indian government from the 1980s onward, and some would say even earlier than that, on the Punjabi people. But because of the ties between India and the US, they did not recognize it as a genocide, even though people were forced to flee as refugees, just not designated as refugees. They found creative ways to get here and create themselves, which for me, as a first generation American, is very important, because my father struggled to get to this country. I’m not really going to get into depth about that, because I do have something in the future that I’m going to create surrounding that. But you know, connecting this with my book, as well as with the movie, i never went to school. It’s essentially connected to that experience.

I grew up in the south side of Richmond. We didn’t have a lot of money growing up. We grew up where we grew up, and that was kind of the vibe and experience. When I would go to school — and I went to schools that were a little bit more integrated with the deeper aspects of the suburbs, borderline in Chesterfield County — I would encounter Indians that had completely different experiences than I did. And they weren’t Punjabi. They were from different parts of India that typically have some sort of commerce or something that they developed in India, and they just simply carried it over or they were very educated. I’m the first person to ever go to school in my family ever, yet alone to produce a book.

I don’t find it offensive if somebody calls me “Indian” if they don’t know it, but I definitely find it offensive if somebody, for example, an Indian, wants to refer to me as “Indian.” It’s not something that I don’t allow myself to be referred to, but I am open to somebody calling me “Indian” and then expanding upon what that means, and reinterpreting the word as well. But I think it’s important to have that clarification, because I remember when you had said it — it wasn’t something that you said intentionally, it just triggered something inside of me, which was, “No, I’m a type of Indian that you haven’t seen before.”

And the other thing, India as a country, in many ways in terms of their culture, and Bollywood and other things in terms of art, they have appropriated Punjabi culture heavily. And they’ve always tried to portray Punjabi people as dumb and ignorant, even though they bite off of our culture — and some can say that’s adjacent in the US to Black Culture or Indigenous Culture to Latino Culture. That’s the backstory on it and as you can see, there’s so much layers and depth on is that you kind of have to compartmentalize all of that, when you feel triggered by that word.

RAH: I felt that was obviously very important to you, so I wanted to address that and allow you to expand on that conversation.

So as someone that’s on the outside looking in on the projects that you are taking on and the things that you’re contemplating, it feels like you are exploring your past, understanding how you feel in the present, and then having to all that done before being able to go forward. And so a good final question would be — where do you go from here? And what do you see in the near future and and down the line?

baldeep pooni
by Kimberly Frost

BP: Honestly, I don’t know. What I do know right now is that I’m going to be spending a lot of time just resting and recovering. Because that experience of innocence, and i never went to school came from like a deep state of rest.

I think more than ever, this is an important time to just chill, relax, enjoy the vibe of what I’ve been able to create. Just enjoying life for a little bit more and then spontaneously, whatever emotion or state nature that I’m in, that will kind of create itself. I don’t really have an idea of how I would want this to go, but I’m sure that one of the things that I’d like to do is throw up ideas into the air or emotions and then once I start feeling them out or processing them, then it’s very easy for me to bring it into manifestation. But if I am true, logical and grounded with what moves I am about to make next or things that I want to do, it’ll take away from this experience.

In other words, more invested in the journey and the experience rather than the tangible experience of what’s next.

RAH: Thank you so much for taking the time Deep.

BP: Thank you for the space and time to share this.

For more information, or to purchase innocence by Baldeep Pooni, please click HERE

Photos by Kimberly Frost

A Vehicle For Difficult Conversations

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In response to the killing of George Floyd and the ensuing protests, artist Arthur Brill launched the Ashland Peace Project — which is not just a work of art, but a series of conversations intended to meet people where they’re at.

Last summer, the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis spurred protests over police brutality and racial inequality in every corner of the country. Even the little town of Ashland, VA, with just less than 8,000 residents, was affected. 

As people nationwide grappled with the question, “What can I do?,” Ashland artist Arthur Brill found his answer in what he knows best: art. 

Almost a year later, on March 27, Arthur Brill officially unveiled the Ashland Peace Project sculpture at South Taylor Street Park in Ashland – a 40-inch tall wooden peace sign painted in two skin-tone and covered with messages from residents. Mounted atop its base, the sculpture stands about seven feet from the ground to its highest point. It is one part of Brill’s project; he has also committed to host 35 one-hour long workshops with guest panelists to discuss challenging issues about peace and unity in America through June 2021. 

“I think that’s what this peace project can do; it creates the vehicle for people to have what can be difficult conversations,” said Scott Garka, president of CultureWorks, an organization that promotes arts and culture in the Richmond and Tri-Cities region. “But I think great things can come out of it in terms of enriching the community in a new way, and helping us find a path forward.”

As Black Lives Matter demonstrations reached the small town in May 2020, Brill got curious. He decided to ask some questions online: Why are the people of Ashland taking part in the protests? Is it to support the national movement or to protest against the local police department? The following week, Brill was invited to another protest in front of town hall in support of George Floyd. This time, the artist wanted to take the conversations he had online into the real world. He decided to set up a table where he could invite people to join discussions about issues with the Ashland police.

“So as a focal point for that, I wanted to have something – a piece of art,” he said. That’s when the peace sign came into action.

The hand sign itself seems to have been made specifically for this project – but it wasn’t. The 40 inches tall sculpture had been sitting in Brill’s studio, Behind the Curtain, since 2014, after it had been gifted from a friend. Yet, almost overnight, Brill turned it into a symbol of hope and unity for the town and beyond. 

Only 24 hours before the protest, Brill decided to paint the hand into two different skin colors. The artist stayed up all night painting. The next morning, he started writing messages on it. A couple of hours later, the sign was at Ashland town hall and residents started adding their own messages to the piece; without knowing it, the Ashland Peace Project was born. 

Since then, Brill has brought the hand to several rallies and protests, including some to change the names of Hanover County’s Lee-Davis High School and Stonewall Jackson Middle School – which were both successfully changed in October 2020. 

The peace sign is covered in messages: “May all the beings in the world be happy and free.” “Make it real, no more empty promises!” “Pray for the future of our children!” On the back of the hand, a long list of names of Black people killed by the police is painted, under the heading, “Say their names.” 

“When I start reading the messages that are actually on the sculpture or when I start writing names from that list on there … something kind of transcendental happens, and I really feel the weight of the entire thing,” Brill said. “In the end, like I said, all I can do is what I can do – and this is what I can do. There’s a lot of cards on the table, and if it helps a little bit rather than hurts… then, that’s a good thing.”

Brill knew that for his project to have a meaningful impact on the community, he needed the support of the town. 

In July 2020, Ashland’s town council voted to fund a new arts and culture incentive program to support local art businesses. Brill and two other winning artists were awarded $4,000 for the Ashland Peace Project. The program was built to be a three-way win, explained Joshua Farrar, Ashland town manager. Its goal is to support local artists, as well as meeting the town’s strategic goals, and being beneficial to the community. 

This is how the Ashland Peace Project went from a symbolic statue to a series of 35 one-hour-long workshops hosted by Brill and panelists.

“It was really easy for me to justify that that would be a win for the community, regardless of how the conversations went,” Farrar said. “Having that conversation is a value in and of itself. So that’s where I saw the value, was making sure that Ashland wasn’t just being the sleepy little bucolic town – that we were having those hard conversations.”

The sculpture originally started with just the hand. But the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6 prompted Brill to expand the statue to allow more space to write on. After the insurrection, Brill added a column as a base for the sign to emulate one of the columns in front of the Capitol. 

The sculpture has an original crack that seems to split the piece in two. Again, Brill decided to use the original features of the sculpture to highlight his message and painted the crack in a bright red. After adding the base to the statue, the artist decided to continue that crack all the way down through the column to represent the foundational issues of this country. The crack becomes smaller as it goes up and finally disappears as the fingers pointing upward in a peace sign begin. 

“His sculpture started with the hand. But people wanted to keep adding to it, they wanted more places to write, so he had to find a way to make it bigger. And that’s powerful to me,” Garka said. “The theme of unity is tremendous. It takes a lot of work to make unity happen. But if … more and more people in the town are getting behind that idea – as evidently they are because they want to put their words on there – then that gives me some hope that we can, one day, find that.” 

For the next couple of months, Brill will keep hosting workshops and will keep bringing the sculpture to local events to continue to fill the sign with messages. This weekend, you can find the statue in Carytown for Chalk Up The Town. The event runs from Friday, May 14 to Sunday, May 16; the Ashland Peace Project statue will visit on Saturday the 15th.

In the future, Brill said, he hopes to take his sculpture across the state, and then later to the many other Ashlands in America. 

While there are already many signs on the statue, one particularly grabbed Brill’s attention. At one of the rallies to change the names of the schools, a young girl came up to the artist and asked him to write something on there. 

“What would you want me to write?” he said he asked her. “And she said, ‘Don’t be mean to Black people.’”

All photos via Ashland Peace Project

The Great Gatsby

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Activist, rapper, mustache-haver — Goad Gatsby is a lot of things. At the end of the day, he just wants to make the world a better, more chill place — and maybe inspire others while he’s at it.

When Kristopher Goad’s friends wanted to get him signed up for Facebook in the mid-2000s, none of them knew his full name. He was known only by his last name within the group, so they signed him up using the name Goad Gatsby.

“And then everybody just decided that my name was Goad Gatsby at that point,” said Goad.

Since then, he has become well-known within Richmond not only as a hip-hop performer with a highly recognizable “disco mustache,” but also as a longtime adversary of the Virginia Flaggers and their public displays of the Confederate battle flag on Arthur Ashe Boulevard. More recently, he’s also gotten some attention as a documenter of the protests in Richmond this summer and the police’s response.

In 2015, Goad was featured in a documentary series by The Atlantic called Battle Flag, about people’s opinions of the modern use of the Confederate flag.

At that point, Goad had been blasting hip hop music next to the Flaggers while they stood in front of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts on weekends for about a year, and was the subject of a considerable amount of vitriol from the group.

“They thought I was a carpetbagger until they found out that I really was just a scalawag,” said Goad.

The Flaggers began to lose momentum in 2015, when they stopped announcing their appearance schedule publicly after two members were arrested on kidnapping charges. Carlos Lesters and Megan Everett of Florida kidnapped Everett’s two-year-old daughter in 2014 in order to prevent the child’s father from vaccinating her or enrolling her in public school.

These days, the Flaggers make it out to Arthur Ashe every once in a while, much less often than their onetime near-weekly basis. But there’s a whole new right-wing movement in Richmond now. Based on his knowledge of who the Flaggers were and who is affilliated with the Trump Train vehicular caravan that rolled through the city in October, Goad doesn’t believe there’s much overlap between the two groups.

Beginning when protests began in the streets of Richmond in late May over the killing of George Floyd and the ongoing issue of police violence, Goad was on the front lines. He did his best to document the response from the police and the city government, as he saw it, on social media. This brought him a whole new wave of attention, for better and for worse.

Goad was arrested several times during the summer, including once in September when he was charged with obstructing the free passage of others. At the time of the arrest, the police alleged the incident he was being charged for happened two weeks earlier during a demonstration in front of the Richmond jail, in which 11 people were arrested. Goad says he wasn’t even there at the jail on that day.

When he was arrested, he was taken to the Third Precinct Police Station, where they took his phone while he was attempting to get in contact with his lawyer. Goad never saw a warrant for his arrest; instead, a city attorney informed his lawyer that the warrant was sealed. He never got his phone back.

Since then, he has kept a lower profile, and the protests have declined. However, he is still keeping tabs on right-wing activity in the city. When he considers the ongoing unrest that occurred across Richmond throughout the summer, it’s his impression that the city created a self-perpetuating cycle of violence by retaliating against protesters instead of addressing the problems that inspired the protests. This, in turn, created more problems and further fueled the unrest.

Photo via Goad Gatsby/Twitter

One issue he sees as important to the way everything played out is the fact that police were brought in from precincts across the city, as well as other localities, as reinforcements during protests. Many of those that operated in this capacity had prior reputations for aggressive behavior.

“People were telling me about some of these officers’ past interactions, and it seemed like they were getting some of the worst officers to deal with protesters,” Goad said. “Instead of getting police that are experts in de-escalation, they were getting experts in doing no-knock raids in the projects.”

Goad believes the police have a particular inclination to go after journalists and people who film protests. That’s because the more specific information gets out, the harder it is for police and city officials to justify their actions.

“If somebody is saying ‘The police are bad because they’re doing something I don’t like,’ that’s something they can just brush off. But if somebody’s being like ‘The police fired less-lethal rounds at people before there was any type of confrontation, here is some footage to go along with that,’ then the police go ‘Oh no, this isn’t good. They’re building a case against us in the court of public opinion,’” said Goad. “I wish I could build a case against Richmond police in City Hall, or the court of law, but unfortunately I don’t have that ability.”

For now, he’s sticking with the internet, where he continues to fight misinformation and lack of knowledge. He believes that making people aware of what’s really going on is the best way to convince them to take action.

“A lot of people are either willing to help but don’t know what to do, or they’ve never seen the type of information that would make them act,” said Goad.

Top Photo via Goad Gatsby/Twitter

The Year Is 2020 And Shagwuf Is Still Singing

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After their March record release show was pre-empted by COVID, Charlottesville’s Shagwuf were left hanging. New EP Trendy Weapon, and the longform video they made to go with it, demonstrate their continued strength.

2020 has been a rough year for everyone, and Virginia’s own Shagwuf are no exception. COVID pulled the rug out from under everyone, but it got to them early, as the record release show for their highly anticipated third album, Dog Days Of Disco, had been scheduled for March 12 — the very day that the quarantine hit.

Shagwuf bassist Sally Rose described the chaotic hours before the show was scheduled to take place. “Emails and texts were flying back and forth with the promoter,” she said. “A lot of people were urging us to go on with the show. We had about two years worth of writing, savings, touring and heart poured into that album. We wanted to honor it, we wanted to celebrate, we wanted to play what felt like the last hoorah.”

“We had just received the vinyl copies we pressed for this album,” guitarist Pete Stallings chimes in. “I was sooo excited to let people hear it.”

In such early days, no one really knew what the risk of holding a live music event would be. “There was so much uncertainty in those early days of March,” said Rose. “Everybody was trying to grasp the severity of the crisis. It was grim and very real in larger cities, but still felt far away from our little hometown.”

Ultimately, the band knew they had to pull the plug. “In the big picture, we knew the virus was way bigger than us. So we called it off just hours before the show.” Rose feels good about the decision in hindsight. “Looking back at it now, there’s no doubt we made the right call. It should’ve been an easier decision, we just didn’t know the gravity of it all.”

Once their album release show had been called off, along with all live performances for the foreseeable future, Shagwuf had to figure out what to do with themselves. Luckily, they still had their music. And by the time summer rolled around, they had enough material for an entirely new project.

Stallings sets the scene for the psychic environment in which the new material was composed. “The songs were written at the end of May, beginning of June. There were protests in every major city. COVID was kicking America’s ass. Our supposed leader was making everything worse,” he said. “But I didn’t want an angry record. I wanted a musical hug.”

The result is a four-song EP entitled Trendy Weapon, a great addition to Shagwuf’s deep catalog of energetic, inspiring grunge-blues-rock. In addition to three songs featuring Stallings and Rose incorporating the vocal interplay that Shagwuf fans know and love, it features the first Shagwuf song composed and featuring lead vocals by drummer Pablo Daniel Oliveri. “Arma De Moda” — its name translates into English as “trendy weapon,” making it a title track of sorts — manages to maintain Shagwuf’s tough, noisy crescendos while exemplifying a Latin-flavored feel that incorporates Oliveri’s musical heritage into the Shagwuf sound and, by doing so, expands that sound into previously-unexplored territory.

“It’s hard to believe this is actually the first song he has ever written and sang lead on in ShagwĂźf,” Rose said. “It’s so big sounding. I think all of us were blown away with how it turned out. It’s a challenging song with a lot of moving parts. It came out with a fever of Argentinian passion and pure, unassailable rock’n’roll. It was just what we wanted.”

Rather than spotlight any one song on their new EP with a video, Shagwuf chose to go a slightly different route, working with longtime visual collaborator Rich Tarbell to come up with a four-song film entitled “The Year Was 2020” — named after a lyric that shows up on multiple Trendy Weapon tracks. RVA Mag is lucky enough to present that video to you here for the first time below. But first, let’s talk about it.

Tarbell’s idea for the video was to focus on Crocodile Girl, a character played by Charlottesville performance artist Opal Lechmanski. Not wanting the shoot to become a super-spreader event, Tarbell took a variety of precautions over the course of its creation. “The challenge was producing a video while keeping everyone COVID-safe,” Tarbell said, “so most of it is just me on a single camera – no crew, mostly outdoors, and everyone as masked up and socially distant as possible.”

The resulting video is a travelogue down the streets of Charlottesville and Staunton that successfully encapsulates all the difficulties and harships this year has presented to us all, while also encouraging resistance, resilience, and a positive outlook. It begins with “Roaring 20s,” which immediately grabs a listener’s attention as Rose, sitting on a porch couch as Stallings strums next to her, sings, “She sold all of the records she’d collected just to get ahead of the rent. The year was 2020 and the sound was all your money being spent.”

Throughout “Roaring 20s,” Crocodile Girl attempts to interest passerby and people sitting on their porches in records from her collection, eventually setting up a lemonade stand on a corner with a crate of records (crate courtesy of long-gone Richmond record store Peaches — how many of us have kept our collections in Peaches crates over the years?).

As the music transitions to the song “Red,” a kid on a skateboard rolls up and starts flipping through Crocodile Girl’s records (she’s got some pretty good stuff — Husker Du, David Bowie, Tom Waits, The Isley Brothers) before settling on the first Pretenders album (an absolute classic, don’t even get me started). Of course, since he’s wearing a skirt, he doesn’t have his wallet with him, so he ultimately barters his skateboard and teaches Crocodile Girl to skate. It’s a heartwarming moment, even as it showcases the realities of COVID in 2020 in a variety of ways (skateboard kid, played by Lance Brenner, is wearing a mask, and at one point, Crocodile Girl watches footage of police violence at a protest on her phone).

Those realities segue nicely into Pablo’s star turn on “Arma De Moda.” This video mostly focuses on Shagwuf’s drummer as he walks the Charlottesville streets, standing beside colorful murals and, at one point, holding up a sign that reads “El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido” (those of you who’ve spent time protesting this year shouldn’t need me to tell you this means “The people united will never be defeated”). Interspersed throughout are shots of Crocodile Girl, now home by herself, watching more footage of violence at protests on her television, and having the sort of emotional reaction to the clips we can all probably see a bit of ourselves in. We also see some great footage of Shagwuf performing and Sally Rose dancing energetically to the music — a much-needed reminder of happier times.

The video and the EP both end with “Flood Song,” a beautifully elegaic song about the flood that hit Staunton this year, washing away not only a whole bunch of downtown businesses, including recording studios and restaurants, but also taking out Shagwuf’s van and multiple amps of theirs. The video switches between shots of Crocodile Girl walking down the main streets of Staunton, past the iconic Wright’s Dairy-Rite and other restaurants, and actual footage of Shagwuf’s van being destroyed by flood waters. The beauty this trio is able to wring out of a song about devastation on a personal level acts as a metaphor for the spirit we’ll all need to make it out the other side of this devastating era with our souls intact. Draw a bit of strength from Shagwuf’s “The Year Is 2020,” and stop by Bandcamp to get your own copy of Trendy Weapon with which to make it through the last few lame-duck weeks of the toughest year in living memory.

All photos by Rich Tarbell

AARNxBRWN: The Prodigal Son

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Recording artist and producer AARNxBRWN dropped a new video and has a new album on the way. His musical journey over the summer coincided with a quest to find himself and justice for his people through protests and activism.

Before this summer, rapper/producer Aaron Brown, known to the music world as AARNxBRWN, didn’t consider himself an activist. But when protests started around the murder of George Floyd and people began taking to the streets to demand justice, Brown joined in. He wound up with a megaphone in his hand and a new way of thinking about his music.

Photo by LOSINGMYEGO

Since releasing his debut album, GHost, in 2019, Brown has built a reputation for his melodic production and expressive sound, as well as his dynamic lyricism. But his participation in the protests, where he marched alongside thousands of Richmonders for several weeks, made him want to record something as a means of expression. He produced the beat for his single, “Value,” and wrote the first verse after the first week or two, and returned to finish the track around a month in. 

“I finally felt like I had enough information and enough experience and enough of a story to finish,” Brown said. 

LOSINGMYEGO, a self-described “one woman multidisciplinary creative studio” and Brown’s friend, shot footage of the protests night after night using her phone and a Moment lens, unbeknownst to Brown. When he finished “Value,” she asked to make a video for the song. 

“When I finished the song she was like, ‘I need it, give me the song,” Brown said. “She put together this crazy video with all these shots I didn’t even know she had.” 

The end result is a powerful representation of the summer’s struggles. The black and white shots cut quickly from scene to scene, lingering in striking moments of visual symbolism — a fist raised in air filled with tear gas, a burning flag, masked protesters perched on the sides of the monument at Marcus-David Peters Circle. Between biting, emotional verses, Brown reminds his listeners, “know your worth / know your value.”

For Brown, knowing your worth means knowing who you are and what you deserve. He isn’t content to settle only for what bureaucracy and systems of injustice deem feasible. 

“A lot of the older folks and people were like, this is how you do it I guess, one small step at a time, and we just need to keep trucking along,” Brown said. “I think my mentality was like, I’m really tired of just piecing together equalities for us.”

Brown knows he’s new to the work of activism. His experiences in the protests and working with justice causes now have changed the way he thinks about his music, but for him, it still comes down to his talent for putting what he experiences into words and beats. It’s just that now, his subject matter is slightly different. 

“This is the first time in my life where I stepped out into the thick of something that was national, international attention,” Brown said. “A lot of my music is influenced, because I’ve been in new spaces and I’ve learned so much about my own culture and my own standing in America … It’s made my music more impactful, I think. It’s truer to me.”

Photo by LOSINGMYEGO

Taking risks has become a central theme of Brown’s upcoming album, Save Me I’m Drowning, which drops November 6. He talks about a kind of inspired urgency — a willingness to jump in the water and ignore others’ fears. 

“Now it’s like there’s a fire under my ass,” Brown said. “There’s a single off of the album … the whole concept is almost like a prodigal son story, the idea of going away and ‘jumping into water’… Taking that risk, whatever it is — whether it’s a social risk or a life risk or whatever that thing is — and people being scared of you taking that risk.”

In order to learn, the prodigal son had to leave, Brown explained. Even if it meant making mistakes, he could only gain and grow by venturing out before returning home. 

“He had to go away to get enough wisdom to understand that everything he needed was home,” Brown said. “At some point of time he had to take that jump.”

Photo by LOSINGMYEGO

For Brown, the future is all about risking dangerous waters to emerge as the person he needs to be — a prodigal son seeking justice for all. 

You can pre-order Brown’s upcoming album, Save Me I’m Drowning, at Bandcamp, where you can also hear a two-track preview of the album.

Top Photo by LOSINGMYEGO

The Crisis of Eviction and Gentrification: An Interview With Allan-Charles Chipman

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For Richmond City Council candidate Allan-Charles Chipman, preserving local communitites by keeping longtime Richmonders in their homes is at the heart of the issues facing the city in 2020.

Allan-Charles Chipman is a candidate running for city council in the 6th district of Richmond against longtime incumbent Ellen Robertson, who has represented the 6th district for 16 years. The 33-year-old Chipman has a background as a community organizer and Christian faith leader, and is currently working for Initiatives of Change. If he is elected this November, it will be his first time serving in a political position. RVA Mag sat down with Chipman (over Zoom, of course) to find out some more about him, his campaign, and his opinions on the issues facing Richmond today. 

RVA: How has your faith shaped your political views and your life in general?

ACC: My parents were pastors and community organizers. They were part of an organization that helped transition people out of homelessness. My parents started a school within their church that was dedicated to helping kids in the neighborhood get up to a third-grade reading level, and then send them off to public school. 

I was about six years old when I was in these rooms, and I just saw how my faith calls me to help my community. Even today I work as a community advocate, really helping to expand past the societal biases that impact how people show up in their communities — like racism, dehumanization. Really, how my faith informs me is that we are not to leave behind our neighbors when they face injustice. Just as we want them fighting for us, we want to make sure we are fighting for justice, the humanity and dignity that each person’s life holds. We want to have the skillset to be able to expand the work of justice.

RVA: So you’re running primarily on an anti-gentrification platform. Can you tell us about that?

ACC: The city is really starting to recognize how unstable and unsustainable the level of growth in housing values has been. You can’t be both the arsonist and the firefighter. You can’t incentivize the type of development that has caused this burden to households. The point of entry — the price at which you can purchase a house — has risen 52 percent in the past couple of years. It’s not enough that we just talk about affordable housing, because we can’t have affordable housing being built on the displacement of long-term black neighborhoods. We can’t have this new doctrine of discovery, where people who have been indigenous to this place for a while are being displaced by this new vision of what things should be. 

I’ve met people on the campaign trail who are afraid they’re gentrifiers. If people want to come into our neighborhood, that’s not a problem. I believe we can have development without displacement. But it has to be intentional. There are innovative ways that we can do that. I want to make sure we’re focused on not just making sure the next person moves in, we have to make sure we have community stabilization funds. If you look at Atlanta, Georgia, they’ve actually created something called ‘community stabilization funds’ that actually help long-term residents stay in. 

We also have to realize that it’s not just seniors who are struggling. I was talking to a young woman who said she’s not sure how long she can stay in her house because of how fast housing values are escalating. We also have to make sure we’re not clearing out our low-income public housing. The RRHA’s plan is to demolish all six of the Big Six [public housing courts in the city] in 2021. 

RVA: Are they actually trying to get rid of the Big Six, or just phase them out?

ACC: If you read the plan, it’s quite blatant that they’re trying to demolish them and move to a project-based voucher. They would send residents out into the private market with a voucher that doesn’t protect against discrimination. We have to be clear that we can have plans to redevelop and give people a better opportunity to live in an environment that better reflects their dignity, but we have to make sure we have a plan for where people are going. We have 300 people on a waitlist just to get housing. It’s a very concerning time in the city, and we’re already number two in the nation for the highest number of evictions. 

RVA: Do you think gentrification and evictions are Richmond’s biggest problems right now?

ACC: Absolutely. We cannot build the affordable ‘RVA’ on the backs of Black Richmond. It’s not enough we have to be a city of the future, we have to be a city where people can exist in the future. If we know that what’s attracting some businesses to the city is our affordability, we can’t continue this gentrification. 

This is also about being able to build generational wealth. If people lose that home, they lose the ability to pass it on to a nephew, or a family member, who might be able to use it. I was talking to an entrepreneur who said the only way he was able to start a business is because his uncle let him use his home as collateral. But if that home is no longer in the family, they no longer have access to that. We’re talking about an attack on generational wealth, an attack on housing stability. We have to have a relief fund for those who are pushed out. We don’t want people to feel guilty for coming to our city, we don’t want to make people feel that their presence means the eventual absence of others who have been here. We need to have homestead exemptions, and community stabilization funds. 

RVA: How does VCU figure into the gentrification of Richmond?

ACC: There have been a lot of concerns among VCU students especially, wanting to know what the expansion of VCU has meant to the city of Richmond. We have to make sure that VCU is paying their fair share of taxes. PILOT (Payment In Lieu of Taxes) is a way our city can arrange a form of payment based on how much of their land is occupied, and it’s a way they can bring more money into the city funds. 

RVA: How do you feel about the Richmond police department, especially after the protests this summer?

ACC: One of the most dangerous institutions in the world is one that doesn’t have to answer to anyone. We have seen that the police department doesn’t have to answer to anyone. Just a couple months ago the mayor made Jody Blackwell, who killed an unarmed black Air Force veteran, the police chief. We saw the police driving over protesters with no consequences. When people know that there is no accountability — this is what happens when leaders don’t stand up against the police. 

We need an independent community oversight board, independent of police, to be able to police the police. We support the Marcus Alert, fully funded and led by community care units. We want to know that ethnic and racial makeup of the people who police stop, to make sure we know about racial profiling and can stop it. We also know that in Richmond City Justice Center, there is an outbreak of COVID-19. We stand with RVA26, which has been showing the horrors going on in the jail. We have to reallocate responsibilities to our community organizations, who have been having the impact that we’d like to see. I have no problem with reallocating resources to them. If police can do what they want — bend the rules, call anything that questions them an “unlawful assembly” and be able to tear gas — and we do not have leadership that challenges them, the leadership are complicit in the expansion of the corruption of the police. 

RVA: What are your thoughts on the issues that face LGBTQ Virginians, especially those who are Black?

ACC: I think it’s important that we are applying a racial equity lens in everything, to make sure that the issues that face our Black LGBTQ siblings are coming to light. I’m glad that the Virginia Values Act was passed, and one of the ideas I want to bring is something called the Equity Assessment Index, which is a rubric that applies to policies that come out of City Council or City Hall, to make sure that our policies are not having a negative impact on historically marginalized communities. 

There is a great level of housing discrimination that happens against LGBTQ people, and our Black and brown brothers and sisters. We have to make sure we are supporting our orgs, such as Side By Side, that deal with how many of our youth who are sent out into the streets, are disowned by their families. I want to use vacant city housing stock to bring them up and really give them a future. I want to tell them that they have a champion in me, that I’m listening. That’s why I want to start ‘Everyday Solidarity Task Forces’ that meet monthly for people to talk about what’s happening in their communities. As we try to implement the Virginia Values Act, I want to hear about places where it’s not being implemented. I want to make sure that the act is a reality in their healthcare, in their workplace. 

RVA: I know that the one thing on everyone’s mind right now is the coronavirus. Is there something the city should be doing to better fight the virus?

ACC: There needs to be an eviction moratorium. We don’t have a vaccine, so the best thing we can do is shelter at home, wear a mask, and socially distance. But if you don’t have a home to shelter in, that becomes very hard to do. We need to make sure people are staying in their homes. We’re in more of a gig economy. A person may lose one job and then not qualify for a total loss of income, so they’re still drowning. We need to make sure we’re also helping people who aren’t working a 9-to-5 job.

We also need hazard pay for our public workers, and we need to make sure that they have the sick leave that they need. We have to provide safe, socially-distanced ways to help restaurants stay open — maybe having a zone for street dining. But we have to be careful, because we don’t want to go back to the more restrictive phase that crippled the economy. I think we’ve been doing well with the availability of testing. But we need to make sure we are not displacing our residents from their communities. We need to use city housing stock to make sure we’re housing as many residents as possible, really ramping up the city’s stock for emergency shelters and other ways to house people during this time. We have to do as much as we can to keep people housed, keep them safe. 

All photos via Allan-Charles Chipman/Facebook. This interview was edited for length and clarity.