A Story of Culture

In this installment of Where We Belong, we sat down with Payton Johnson — a Black American producer, curator, and scholar, born and raised in Denver, Colorado before moving to New York City, and later, Washington, D.C. Payton shared how Black American culture inspires him, how being part of the global Black diaspora influences and inspires his music, cultural work, and studies, and how Black Americans have created a culture and community unlike no other.

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Jalen:
So, Payton, you are a producer, a curator, and a scholar. Tell us about what inspired you to do all those things, and how they're all connected.

Payton:
First, I was a producer. Music and expression always connected with me. Even back since middle school. Like, Jimi Hendrix, he's the person that got me into music. And art, in general. So that came first.

And then as a scholar, I feel like high school, college, like, I was able to explore that, and just understand how the world works on a deeper level, in order to change it and propel it forward, you know, in a positive, more progressive, liberator fashion.

Most recent is curation. In the last 5 years, a big part of my life has been my music collective, No Label, and a big part of our story has just been finding these little spaces – whether they be performance spaces, fellow curators, or even places to just record our music – we've found that physical space is so critical to our development. So that led me to be like, "Okay, what can I do to, like, contribute to the community and find spaces and build spaces for folks to become connected?"

Jalen:
For sure. I think community is so important, and especially now, post-COVID, in an increasingly digital age, finding space and time for in-person community and connection...it feels like something groundbreaking even though it's what everyone was doing before, but now we're seeing how impactful that can really be.

Payton:
And it's hard, too. We're in New York City. It's hard to find spaces and carve out spaces, especially when you don't have a ton of bread to rent out spaces. I feel like every nook and cranny has a price tag attached to it. So finding those places where we can just...be...especially in the midst of gentrification...is huge.

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Jalen:
You recently started a series of events called Shades of Discourse. Tell us about that and what you aspire to do through those events.

Payton:
The whole goal of it was to really connect Black creatives, scholars, and organizers, because in my own experience, these three groups are so crucial to large social change. But often times we get siloed. I experience that as a producer, where the music industry is a certain way, and as a scholar, professionalization and funding [is a challenge]. And then as an organizer, the nonprofit industrial complex, you can get too wrapped up and caught up in that. These things can reduce our capacity for large scale change.

Jalen:
100% percent. I think community is really cool and it's important to have all these different types of people in community and in conversation with each other. Because everyone has their own experiences and perspectives and skills to contribute, and when people come together and engage with each other, you can teach each other certain things, and everyone can get better as a result.

Payton:
It's so dope to see people get together and share ideas and culture, because we really all  need to work together in order to make real change happen. Especially with the Black experience. We were talking a lot about the idea of Black Americans and Black folks being seen as a "stateless people", constantly being pushed from space to space. And I do think there is this connection between the painful relocation of our people and this beautiful culture that we make.

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Jalen:
I feel like – maybe more than any other people, Black Americans have a really strong sense of togetherness and belonging. What do you think really drives that, and what are your experiences as far as how Black culture is created and evolves?

Payton:
Part of it is like, these forces of oppression that force us into stuff like, you know, segregation. But still even within segregation, you still have to make place and make community and forge these bonds. There's this notion of segregation and the congregation, of people coming together amidst oppression. And I do think culture is a huge part of that, for sure, through music, through art, through fashion. 

That's something I love, even like, about... just about Black culture. It really is a beautiful thing, what oppressed people can do with their culture to flip these signs that are supposed to be signs of shame and turn them into pride. Even the term "Black" and the term "Blackness". Like it emerged through diaspora. The idea that somebody in Georgia was connected to somebody in Senegal, connected to somebody in Jamaica, connected somebody in Brazil, connected to somebody in Ethiopia like that. The term, or the re-signification, is rooted in that idea of diaspora. The idea that there's something that's connecting us whether we're born in America, or the Caribbean, or in Africa.

I feel like Black folks – with our music and our culture – we are so like, forward looking. [Our] culture is, like, meaning-making. Constantly being in the present, and in the future.

Bro...like, if we could take the term n*gga and make that into something beautiful and, like, bridging...that word was so painful and so despicable, how it was used. And for us to flip that, I think we can flip any symbol.

It's painful, but it's beautiful too, because we're still here, and we're still putting our stamp on the now.

 

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To watch the full interview, visit us @dspraofficial on Instagram and TikTok. To learn more about Payton, Shades of Discourse, and No Label, visit @east303buddy, @shadesofdiscourse, and @no.label.ent on Instagram.