Samora Pinderhughes

Yeah, I am a musician, composer, filmmaker, multidisciplinary artist.

I work across basically every artistic discipline except maybe movement, which hopefully one day we'll get to, but not right now.

I also founded and run an organization called The Healing Project.

We are an abolitionist organization that works on creating a world based around healing rather than punishment.

So a lot of my artistic work is about deconstructing narratives around criminality, around who has the right to violence, around structural violence and the effects that that has on our society.

And also on building opportunities for people who have been traumatized by the prison industrial complex, where they can find spaces to tell their stories, but also to find material and communal support there.

from each other and to devise the worlds that we want to build that are these alternatives to these systems that we know are deeply violent.

I wanted to perform pieces that would feature my choir.

I have a choir called the Healing Project Choir.

They're all amazing artists in their own right, songwriters, vocalists, my community that I collaborate on this work with.

So I wanted to...

do songs that feature their amazing voices and also pieces hopefully that would speak to the complexity of what it is to be a human being and to find this honest place of being able to engage in some questions, some messiness, some things that I think people are trying to weed out of the human experience but I think are very important.

And to connect that with also speaking to some structural realities that I think we need to confront.

Sure, yeah.

The ones that come to mind most immediately, there's a song that I did called Masculinity, which is, I think, important.

Yeah.

Speaking to these questions about, you know, what are these patriarchal structures that are so deep that we have to really investigate both the loud and the quiet violences, which is a phrase I got from the author Kiese Leiman.

I think the line in that that I would focus on is...

Masculinity.

And I also, there's actually a section I added in that's not a part of the original song that I said that's Are You Gonna Let It Go?

Yeah, pretty much.

The biggest.

That's pretty much what I was going to say.

I mean, I am anti-AI, so I'm probably like one of the few people here that's like not into it.

I think one of the reasons for me is that there's been a history in, you know, not just technological movements, but like in a lot of industries in general where people will sublimate the motives around profit in favor of like,

how they see it benefiting the world.

And it's not to say that they don't necessarily believe in those things as well, but often the primary motive is profit.

And certainly even if the primary motive for the inventor is not profit, many of the ways in which it becomes applied are profit related.

And certainly we're going to see that and we're already seeing that in the space of music.

There are a lot more life and death examples than music, but even music, you know, we're already suffering from a context in which the creators of music already do not benefit from their own work.

Yeah.

And now we are being actively replaced, and there's no safeguards around that.

Yeah, I can't speak to that as an independent artist because I have really no relationship with it.

But this is what I will say.

I think part of it is that there's been a long lead up in the past set of years where audiences have been trained

to basically not really... Curate.

It's deeper than that.

They don't really understand the value of things that don't sound like what AI can make.

And so it's very easy to transition an audience over

into AI-made work because they actually have started to shift the ways that they engage with music.

So if you're using music as a background thing, you're not really going to notice the difference, you know, versus music being an active participatory process in your life that has emotional value in different ways.

And that process has happened over time to where now it's become very easy for musicians to be replaced.

There's also no context in which that set of technologies could have the relationship and the memories that I have with my choir.

The things that we've moved through that inform what's inside of the music, the things that you can't name.

And I think that when you cease to place value on that stuff that is unnameable and in that space, which I think is what art is supposed to be about, which is it does things to you that you can't really understand why it's happening.

Like how it's moving you.

And that's the stuff that I think people don't want to deal with.

Sometimes I kind of feel a little bit crazy in terms of why are we spending so much money to try out all these other things when we could just pay artists, when we could just feed people, when we could just like solve the issues we have in the here and now, you know?

And that's the part that I really don't understand personally.

I don't think it's too expensive.

I just think it's harder to exploit people.

It's harder to make more money on the top end.

But I don't think it's too expensive to bring it to the audience.

I just don't think that maybe people that are owning things in a certain way will make as much money as they deserve.

might make if they were able to build other models where they didn't have to operate in that way.

There's less overhead, certainly.

I think it requires different models, but those models are certainly there and have been there before.

I don't know if I can think of it as a reset, mostly just because the language of that I don't know how to engage with on a practical level.

I think the language I would use, which is language that I carry around with me from this writer, Aishan Crowley, who I love, he uses the term otherwise possibilities.

That's a framework that guides me a lot.

And I certainly think that I think we need a society that is ready and willing to engage

engage in and build otherwise possibilities that are centered around the structural emotional and material health of people in their daily lives so that's that's kind of how i think about it and the reason i really like that framework is that i also think that people do have

The solutions that we are seeking and are actually voicing those and practicing those things, it's just very often that those are not the loudest things or the things that are the most funded.

I mean, oftentimes, actually, they're the things that are attacked the most, you know, and that are threatened the most.

Certainly when I think about alternatives to the carceral system, like those alternatives are already there.

And people say over and over again, they're not there.

But they are there.

The reality is not that we don't know what they are.

It's that we don't want to practice or experiment or engage or fund those spaces where we would no longer need the prison.

You know what I mean?

And we also don't want to confront the parts of ourselves that we would need to confront to deal with what the prison does for us psychologically, how it allows us to actually feel that this set of material realities

allows us to demarcate whether or not we could be the type of person that would do something or not do something when often people have done many things that they just haven't been incarcerated for, you know, that are very bad.

So that's around power.

White collar crime.

You know what I mean?

So for me, that's why I really engage in this idea of otherwise possibilities.

Indigenous practices and structures have a lot to teach us about this.

And I think oftentimes also that

If and when we engage with those practices, it feels like people are not listening or wanting to really learn from those practices.

They kind of just want to provide lip service to them so that we can say we did it.

Again, those ways of operating are already there.

If we were to move towards that space, and I guess that is where the reset comes in, it certainly would be a profound revolutionary altering shift.

It wouldn't be a reforming process.

It would be a revolutionary process.

Yeah, I think whatever framework you can find to be as honest as possible, you should find it.

Ideally, you would be able to find ways to do that in, you know, individual, private, vulnerable environments.

context where you can feel safe to engage in the complexity of what it means to be alive.

And ideally, you can also find communal ways in which you can engage in that practice, because I also think that creative practices is really beautifully done in community.

And that's one context of the modern world where we have, you know, given over to this idea of a solitary genius or a performer on stage, you know,

Yeah, it limits the exchange, it limits the possibility, and it also already reframes the creative practice into an element that is already engaging with the ego, engaging with comparison, all these things when it really is supposed to be a really sacred communal practice.

And so I think if there are ways in which people have the opportunity to be a part of something like that, I think it is incredibly valuable.

I think also just anything that will allow you to be present inside of your emotional landscape.

I think that's really valuable for all of us and something that we all deserve to be able to do.

And I certainly agree with your point that it is incredibly important for young people in particular to have that.

opportunities and spaces where they can engage in those practices and that those spaces can be made available regardless of your class, regardless of whether you can pay for it or not.

We do certainly have a system right now where the ability of people to even engage in an artistic practice itself is priced out.

Yeah.

And that's something we really have to deal with.

But yeah, I would just say, like you said, it really can be a way of living.

You can find creativity inside of anything and everything you do.

But for me personally, the difference, I guess, between entertainment and art is the intention and the vulnerability.

And I would say even just like what you risk, what you put on the line for it.

And so I would also hope and encourage people to give each other courage to like step up to what that feels like and to protect each other in that process.

Because going back to your earlier question too, I mean, just like many other people, many artists are afraid in this moment because the things that they want to say about the moment

they feel like there's a lot of consequences to saying that.

So I think we have to lift each other up, and my hope is that other people will also create the context in which artists are able to stand on their courage and stand inside of what they have to say, stand inside of who we want to protect in this moment when so much is under attack.

It's a great honor to be able to be an artist in this moment.

But I also think that we need a lot of support.

And I also think we have to step up to this moment and be able to really move through and with and against that fear.

You know, so that's, I guess, my hope for it.

Yeah, I had some support.

Yeah.

Very comforting.

Yeah, you know, I also give a lot of thanks to all the people behind the scenes that make it happen.

It's a lot of work, yeah.

And very grateful for not just the excellent job that they do in making it sound and look so beautiful, but also, you know, their kindness and just being really lovely people through the process.

And then in terms of just how it felt, I think...

I was happy to go a couple days in because I was able to see some of the talks and stuff.

And I think that really made me understand, or at least how I felt about it was that it felt like an arena for ideas and often competing ideas and ways of seeing the world and conceptions about what is happening and what's to come.

And so I definitely felt the weight of that and wanted to step up to that and to, I think, hopefully make the case in a certain way for, you know, things that I feel are valuable.

This conception of like humanity reimagined.

I'm like, I don't know that I want to reimagine humanity.

I want to protect people.

I want people to.

have what they need so that they can be okay.

Like, I don't know, it's again, and maybe sometimes it feels simple, but I felt like, okay, like what through the channel of music can we contribute to that space?

And then also just even the idea of, okay, this space is for me to get up and make the claim for something.

there's already something in that that I wanted to try and trouble.

Because even inside of that, although I definitely feel that it's important and I understand it, there's also an idea behind it, I think, that you are an expert, which many people have spent a lot of time engaging in what they are and what they've brought to bear.

I don't know, there's something psychologically and energetically inside of that that I wanted to trouble.

I don't know exactly how to explain it, but hopefully the music can do what I'm talking about.

So that's what I was thinking about a lot.

We appreciate you.

That we might reduce the distance.

Stop turning people into objects so we can justify what we do.

Face the impacts of our actions.

That there might be a haunting in that.

And that we wouldn't turn away.

That we wouldn't turn away.

But what do I know?

I'm just a human with a song to sing With something to say With something to say There's some things that I don't want in me So I try not to think about it There's a lot of ugly things in my heart I just hope to the Lord I don't slip You feel me?

Doesn't seem to be something I get away from.

I guess I'll just say it's a process.

I guess I'll just say it's a process, one day at a time.