Marc Lamont Hill: Peace everybody. You listening to, The Classroom and The Cell Podcast. This is your brother, Marc Lamont Hill, and with me is,
Mumia Abu-Jamal: Dr. Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Marc Lamont Hill: I love it. I love it. I love it.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: How you do man?
Marc Lamont Hill: I’m good man. It’s Friday, and I’m trying to think about the weekend and what I’m going to do. And I, you know, I was thinking about you again. I was like, “What does somebody like Mumia do for, if there’s such a thing, escape, relaxation, mental well-being? You know what I’m saying? Like, a lot of times we talk about the heavy stuff, but people got to know that you don’t just think about saving the world and solving all the problems and reading Fanon, 24/7, maybe 23 seven, but not 24/7.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: 23 1/2. But well, you know, I used to have, I did this for years. I’d be hard and study during the week and on the weekend was my time for art, and I believe this firmly, that art makes us human, you know. Art is our way of sharing with other human beings, you know, what we see, what we feel, what we hope, you know, what we aspire and what moves us. And so I would like get out my paints and do watercolor.
Facility recorded message: This is a call from Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution, Mahanoy. This call is subject to recording and monitoring.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: Now I did this for my kids, of course, because, you know, they have birthdays and all that, and I would make a card for them and stuff like that, and other family members. And when I was painting, time dropped away. It was like an escape into a whole ‘nother world. And it was, it was a brilliant way of escape, you know, because, before you knew it, the day was gone, and you had created a little piece of art that could touch the heart of someone you love. And, you know, the same thing when I began to learn music and when I did, you know, other forms of art, you know. For me, of course, writing is an art, you know, that’s probably my primary art form, but I had to find other ways of art to express something in a different medium.
Marc Lamont Hill: The art, the visual art, kind of made sense to me, right? And I have been one of the people blessed, as have my children and other people, to receive hand-painted postcards from you. You know where you would write. You wouldn’t just write letters. You would put like-
Facility recorded message: This is a call from Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution, Mahanoy. This call is subject to recording and monitoring.
Marc Lamont Hill: You wouldn’t just make a postcard, you know, send a letter. You would make your own kind of postcard, a greeting card. You sent me stuff for birthdays with these beautiful images of like Black folk who, you know, throughout history, it was incredible to see. The music part is a little bit hard for me to wrap my head around. How did you get into music while incarcerated?
Mumia Abu-Jamal: Well, when I was up at death row on Greene, there was a beautiful older sister from Pittsburgh. This sister, in her younger years, was a member of the Republic of New Africa. And you know, she grew up as a young woman as a concert pianist.
Marc Lamont Hill: Mm.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: She was visiting, and it was her and another sister, and the other sister actually offered her services. And I was like, “I will be your humble student if you can teach me how to read music, because I love music, but I never learned how to read.” She said, “Well, I’ve only taught children, but I guess you could learn as well.”
Marc Lamont Hill: (laughing)
Mumia Abu-Jamal: So, this sister, she came up and she had flashcards, and we did the scales and she —
Marc Lamont Hill: Was she humming the notes or something? Like, how did you hear the note? Like, how do you know what a C was?
Mumia Abu-Jamal: Well, I could hold the note because I didn’t know what the note was. But we would do, you know, (singing) Do Re, Mi, Fa. So, La, Ti, Do, and then go upper or lower. And –
Marc Lamont Hill:Ah, Man! You can’t. Hold on, hold on, you can’t just do that and think I’m just think I’m gonna let that go! You ain’t no holding notes! Man, you hit them notes man, you’ve been holding back on me all these years!
Mumia Abu-Jamal: (laughing)
Marc Lamont Hill: You been holding back!
Mumia Abu-Jamal: Hey, listen, it was like for two hours a week. I was in music school, and this sister would, because it was her cultural background to do like, Negro spirituals. We’d be singing Negro spirituals. You’re my teacher, if you’re my teacher, whatever you say goes. And this sister would, she would come in, and she would have a piece of music, and we would go. We would just go. And it was like one of the joys of my life to be able to, like, just learn something new every day, every week, and share it with my teacher, and struggle to how I could get to a point where I could look at a musical, a piece of music, and know what a note was, and know how many beats per measure and that kind of stuff, because this beautiful sister from Pittsburgh really shared her expertise.
Marc Lamont Hill: Wow, that’s incredible, man. And it’s also a kind of a sign of possibility. That when I think about human–first of all, human beings broadly, right? Who could we be if we took the time to be an amateur again, at something? I think what Edward Said talked about that, you know, that this idea of the amateur again. What would it mean for us to be able to do something, a sport, an art, and act that will allow us to to be new, and to make mistakes and to fall, and to be students again? Especially those of us who spend so much time out in the world, at our jobs or in our households or in whatever sphere we’re in, sort of taking the lead and teaching and being in charge–to go back to not knowing what the hell we doing all over again. You know, there’s something incredible about that. And then there’s also this thing about what it means to be incarcerated and in a place that’s always trying to strip things from you, take layers of humanity away from you, in a place that’s always trying to do harm, to be able to think about how, even in an isolated space, you could draw or sing or write or do some other, you know, artistic activity that would expand your knowledge and also give you a space, like you said, of peace and of escape and of calm. I mean, that’s pretty, pretty dope as an idea.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: Well, let me step out on that idea just a tad, just to show you what’s possible. Now we’re in a non-contact visiting room. We have glass between us and, but there are little like apertures on the side, you’ve been there, you know it, on the side, where you can hear. And the sister came up one day, and she was crestfallen, and she was, you know, in a funky mood. And I said, “What’s wrong?” And she said, “The guard wouldn’t let me bring my music up. He said, ‘You can’t do that because we’re in a prison society that….’ And I started laughing. She said, “What’s so funny?” I said, I’m laughing because I can’t like, she had been teaching me, like notation, and it took me a while to grasp, it really was cuz
Marc Lamont Hill: Oh, it’s hard, I play music, it’s hard.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: It is, but once, I start laughing. She said, “What are you laughing at?” I said, “It’s too late.” She said, “What do you mean it’s too late?” I said, “I got it. I already got it!”
Marc Lamont Hill: (laughing) They can’t take it.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: And she dug it. And we were laughing together, because I had it. I had it, you know. It’s like a victory over the most repressive, right? The repression business, the repression industry, you know, and education is that thing, right? Art makes us human. But guess what else makes us human? Education. A true education that helps someone discover something new about themselves and the world–that too is a connection.
Marc Lamont Hill: And it’s no coincidence then that they’re actively trying to take art out of education, as they have for it for decades now.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: Absolutely, because art is liberating. Think about what Black people did with music. When we were at our funkiest point in the world, right? In bondage, we sang, right? To lift our hearts while we were out in the fields. Right? Or cutting cane or doing whatever, and those songs kept us alive. It is no coincidence that our music is a global art form that keeps people alive all around the world.
Marc Lamont Hill: That’s right, that’s right, and the last thing they want to do is create another generation of artists, and whether it’s, you know, whether it’s painters or sculptors or singers or songwriters or whatever it is, the last thing they want do is make more of them, because those are the most free people in our society. They’re the most liberated people in the world man. So it totally makes sense.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: That’s what liberated people do: they liberate other people.
Marc Lamont Hill: That’s right. (laughing) Yeah.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: They like, “we can’t have that”, you know.
Marc Lamont Hill: Right. God forbid.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: God forbid. “No, that, no,” you know, “Y’all can’t have that. Take it out of school. We don’t, we can’t afford that”.
Marc Lamont Hill: Right.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: You know. And guess what, when they did that, rap was formed because a whole generation didn’t learn music, right?
Marc Lamont Hill: Right.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: Because the churches weren’t really teaching and we weren’t going to churches. So brothers began playing records and breaking it down and then making the, you know, [vocalization] the skipping, a whole new instrument, right?
Marc Lamont Hill: Yeah.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: A whole instrument. You know, Jay Z says in his “Decoded”, “They found their peace. I found my father, like Malcolm X and them on wax.”
Marc Lamont Hill: Mm.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: They would go upstairs, you know, get their mama’s and daddy’s records and listen to them, and they had Malcolm and all that.
Marc Lamont Hill: That’s a beautiful thing, man, and it sounds like, in a way, you found yourself in those music lines. You know, you was figuring out how to make music. You were finding new layers of yourself. Before we go, what’s something you discovered about yourself through art and through music?
Mumia Abu-Jamal: That I’m far more sensitive than I ever thought possible. Because art is
Facility recording: You have one minute left.
Mumia Abu-Jamal:[unintelligible] other humans, but being human with other humans, and it allows us to connect through seal, through bars, through concrete. It allows us to connect heart to heart.
Marc Lamont Hill: Wow, wow. That’s powerful man, and that’s a blessing that I wish all of us could get, and that I pray none of us need to be caged in order to get because that ain’t, that ain’t how I was supposed to be. My brother it’s always good to talk to you. It’s always good to hear your voice.
Mumia Abu-Jamal: Always a pleasure to share it with you, brother, this has been a joy.
Marc Lamont Hill: As always, man, as always. I can’t wait to see what the weekend produces for you. Hopefully it’s just more, more genius, more brilliance, more art and some more of them notes to my brother, like I said, you sang that scale, man, we you threw me all the way off with that one Doc, I didn’t I know you-
Facility recording: Thank you for using Securis. Good bye.`
Mumia Abu-Jamal: I love you.
Marc Lamont Hill: Love you too, Boo. On the MOVE. Yo, everybody. Thank you for listening to The Classroom and The Cell Podcast. This is your brother, Marc Lamont Hill. Again, if you want to hear more of these episodes, just go to the official Marc Lamont Hill YouTube channel. You can check them all out. Hit the “Subscribe” button so you can get notifications when there are new episodes. As well as all kinds of other important content on the channel. And of course, if you’re so inclined, support this channel, support our efforts to expand programming simply by hitting the “Join” button and becoming part of the official Marc Lamont Hill official family. All right, y’all until the next time I see you. Peace.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.