Hell You Talmbout?

I’ll put it this way: if 6-year-old Sophie Cruz’s speech on immigration had not already brought you to tears by this point in the rally, Monáe, and the five of the Mothers of the Movement who joined her (Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin; Lucy McBath, mother of Jordan Davis; Maria Hamilton, mother of Dontre Hamilton; Gwen Carr, mother of Eric Garner; and Hawa Bah, mother of Mohamed Bah) did.

“To women: continue to embrace the things that make you unique, even if it makes others uncomfortable,” said Monáe in her speech preceding her performance. “You are enough, and whenever you feel in doubt… you must always remember to choose freedom over fear.”

Monáe cautioned the new administration to “get off our areolas” and “get off our vaginas,” reminding them that women birthed this country and “can unbirth a nation if we choose.”

Urging us to fight against the abuse of power, Monáe effectively captured the attention of a crowd of over a million and got them to participate in a call and response, shouting the names of victims of racialized police brutality, transphobia, and sexual violence. If there wass one musical performance from the rally this past weekend that demanded to be talked about, it was this one.

When an artist gives you a vessel to effectively centre another person’s grief or anguish, that tool needs to be recognised.

As I stood on 9th and Independence Avenue, screaming, “Say her name!” at the top of my lungs and listened to Sandra Bland’s name echo through the streets of Washington, I looked around me to appreciate what Monáe had accomplished. In that moment, an endless sea of people - balancing on dividing walls, looking out from surrounding buildings, many even perched in trees - put their voices together to amplify names that will forever need to be heard.

It wasn’t just the massiveness of the call and response that made this performance of “Hell You Talmbout” so special; it was being able to show support directly to the mothers of these victims. With an arm slung around the back of Lucy McBath (mother of Jordan Davis, a 17-year-old boy who was murdered at a gas station by a man who thought his music was too loud), Monáe called on the first of the Mothers of the Movement to “say your baby’s name.” Monáe and McBath yelled Davis’s name in unison, and the crowd resounded, “Say his name!”

The fact that the mothers were present made me feel an urgency to howl out even louder in solidarity and show them that their children’s lives meant something to a lot of people. When an artist gives you a vessel to effectively centre another person’s grief or anguish, that tool needs to be recognised.

Though maybe we should, it is often hard to get past the taboo against expressing strong emotions in public. There are completely different emotional guards that go up once you step out into the world, so you tend not to publically emote in the way we all did - in broad daylight among literally a million other people! As a singer-songwriter standing in that crowd, witnessing something brilliant another artist did with music growing into something much greater was an incredibly powerful experience. Even in its lyrical simplicity, it is a phenomenal empathy builder and took immense creativity from Monáe to draw out the emotional reaction that hit us all. This song is not a piece of art for art’s sake, it is art helping us forward.

It is clear as ever that we have to keep getting out to march, and when we do, we need to know this song.