T.I. and Gina Belafonte talk Many Rivers
Public Enemy, Santana, Goapele, Chris Rock, and more perform in the name of social justice
The first ever Many Rivers to Cross Festival boasts a tagline: “A Festival of Music, Art, and Justice.” Conceived by singer, songwriter, actor, and social activist Harry Belafonte, and overseen by the social justice organization Sankofa, Many Rivers packs a heavy list of socially and politically engaged performers converging on Chattahoochee Hills for two days (Oct. 1-2) of raising spirits and awareness about the country’s current climate of racial injustice. Public Enemy, T.I., Carlos Santana, Dave Matthews, Goapele, Estelle, Chris Rock, and many more are lined up to throw down in the name of rising above America’s human rights issues. Before the festival kicks off, T.I. and Gina Belafonte took a few minutes to talk about how the their respective roles in the festival and activating a young to engage with democracy.
T.I., you’ve recently released a few videos for songs in which you take a strong political stance. How has the current climate of racial injustice affected you?
TI: It has made me feel compelled to use my platform and my influence to speak out against it. I want to make sure that there is no question about where I stand on the subject. When you think of TIP or T.I., activism or social consciousness aren’t the first things that comes to mind. However, this is near and dear to my heart. I am affected. My children are affected, my uncles … So many people who are in and around my community are affected. Therefore, it affects me.
“We Will Not,” is the first video, and it’s from a larger project that is completely filled with my response to the social injustice and the disparities that plague our community. It’s called Us Or Else. “We Will Not” was just the beginning. There are more controversial, provocative messages that I have that will be following. I’m proud of it.
Is it dangerous for you to adopt a position like this? You’ve been in trouble before ...
TI: Of course it is! But I’m Trouble Man. I’ve made a name for myself for getting into trouble for much, much less worthy purposes. It’s good to be able to put out something that’s actually meaningful, though.
You are one of the featured performers at the Many Rivers Festival.
TI: Yeah, and I’m trying to figure out what songs to perform. That’s another reason why I put this project together, because when the festival comes, I have to have something that fits the platform to be able to perform. So this all works together quite nicely.
You’re going to be on stage with the almighty Public Enemy.
TI: Yeah, and that’s an accolade I’m anxious to check off. That’s definitely on my list of things. They’re so prolific, and to share a stage with them is incredible. Not only them, Carlos Santana, Dave Matthews … There are so many people coming as well. It’s so many different people who mean so many different things, not only to music, but to the culture.
Do you have another role With Many Rivers, aside from performing?
TI: Sure, my role is to sit back and listening to Gina tell me what to do.
Gina Belafonte: Laughs That’s awesome. All of the artists have multiple roles to play. They need to reach and get their fans to participate. They have the opportunity, as TIP said, to listen to a lot of the young people who are doing this work for a better and just society. To see what’s on the ground, and how they connect themselves authentically to the work that’s already being done on the ground. National organizations that will be collecting and showing the ticket buyers and the artists what their work is, what it means, how it works, seeing if it will connect. I don’t say this in any derogatory way, but if it fits their brand. I find that a lot of young artists, if they weren’t already political, as they get older and have children, or if something happens to one of their own family members, they become more politicized. They see the urgency. And that it’s across the board that way which then humanizes all of these issues. It doesn’t matter what you sing about before. It’s what you’re doing moving forward. There’s also an importance especially in art and culture to own your authenticity. If I’m singing about social injustice today, that does not mean that for the rest of my career that’s the only space in the box. Or if I see myself as a rapper and have a good voice and want to do an R&B song, I should be able to flex my artistic muscle and do whatever I am calling on myself to do. At the festival, artists will play a multiplicity of roles that way. It’s important for artists to coordinate their efforts and see where they can support each other in the process of shining a light on all these issues.
Gina, how much of a hands-on role do you play in organizing Many Rivers?
GB: Bigger than my hands are! My father gave a call to action. He did the initial call, and because he is who he is, with his history and legacy, I answered. T.I. is answering his call — before he’ll answer mine laughs. Maybe not so much anymore now that he’s met me! But to be honest, my father is the catalyst. He’s the change we all want to be and see in the world. He reached out, and I am happily facilitating his dream, which is something that occurred to me when I was the producer of a documentary film on his life, Sing Your Song. During the process of that seven-year journey with him, I had such close proximity to him in a way that was not just my dad. I had been working with him for a long time, but I got a very up close look not only at who he is, but what other people perceive him to be. I am so glad that I chose him as a father, and that I can do my best while he is still with us, to facilitate any dream or vision that he has, because he is a genius. He’s a strategist, and he’s artistically and culturally so in-tune with what’s on the ground, even though he’s going to be 90 years-old. Even in his commentary and critique of many of our elected officials that have often put him in hot water, we turn around a month later or so, and say, “He was right.” He’s the facilitator and the mind, the genius behind it all. I always use this metaphor that my father walks through the world with a box of tissues. And he pulls the tissues out as he’s walking and he floats them in the air and all of us behind him are the ones who are catching the tissues and making sure that none of them hit the floor.
TI: I can only hope that my daughter speaks of me the way that she speaks of her father. It’s just wonderful to hear a daughter speak so highly of her father.
And carrying the message, too. You really aren’t just carrying your dad’s message, you actually live this. You have inspired so many people along the way, you, Gina. This is a good bloodline, and this is moving on in a really big way too. Sankofa and the work that Sankofa’s doing, not just around the festival but in films and in social justice initiatives.
GB: Sankofa hits almost every cultural space that it possibly can. We’ve produced and directed plays, we’ve got the film on my father, we have a followup film that we’ve been shooting for four years on three young social justice activist women who are at the forefront of this movement, they will all be at the festival. We have music, we have an album coming soon. It’s a collection of artists who have donated original materials as well as covering some songs people have never heard before.
Are you particularly excited about any of the artists on Many Rivers’ lineup?
GB: Well, I don’t mean to say this because he’s here. But there are a few folks in the lineup that I’ve never seen live, and TIP is one of them. I’m excited to get an up close look at that. Also, I have a 19-year-old daughter, and I’m excited for her to have the opportunity to see how our culture is responding to this moment and this opportunity. Because we are in a moment in the egregious murders and behavior of our law enforcement and elected officials and district attorneys and judges, they’re not taking the human condition into account. I’m excited to see everybody, because I’ve been on the phone with everybody and their manager to get them there! So I’m hoping I get to see as many people as possible. Everyone’s important, every voice is important. Some can articulate the message better than others — like TIP can — and I’m just excited for them to want to be there, and to learn, and to find solutions.
We have everyone from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, to Movement for Black Lives, to Color of Change, and Opportunity Agenda, and more. There’s a great organization out of Boston that was started by Bob Moses and his children. Bob Moses was one of the organizers in SNCC, and he is a legend in the Civil Rights Movement. We have a lot, we have the Advancement Project, we have Unity One, we have big name organizations and also ones you probably have never heard of. We have four main issues at Sankofa, which are juvenile justice and mass incarceration, income disparity, immigration, and then we took on the overall banner of violence, so that we could be first responders to a lot of other issues like eco-violence or domestic violence or other things that we can speak to.
Did you pick Atlanta to host the festival because of its history as the birth place of the Civil Rights Movement?
GB: To be honest, Atlanta picked us. We were originally going to be in Opa-Locka, Florida. Unfortunately, there was a huge amount of government corruption in that city, so we took our sights elsewhere. Our promoter, Leon Sanders, is a local promoter, and so we thought, let’s work with him on the ground. He came to us and wanted to work with us on this national effort. Then another venue here came up, then the scheduling wasn’t right. We wanted to make sure we were in on time before the election; we wanted to focus on voting issues, and activating young people to participate in democracy. Also, my father has a deep history here with Dr. King and Andrew Young, so it was kind of like, “Oh, Atlanta! Let’s do it here!”
It’s the hip-hop capital.
T.I. Right on!
GB: This is a charity and a benefit experience, and the money raised will go to Sankofa.org. We use that money to help programs on the ground such as the Dream Defenders who first came to us out of Florida. They wanted to organize around the issue of Stand Your Ground, because they were appalled by George Zimmerman’s murder of Trayvon Martin. They started to strategize around what they could and couldn’t do and great ways to protest. When they asked for funds to support them, instead of giving them cash, we sent them down to Highlander. We asked them to engage in organizational leadership training. Highlander is where Dr. King and Rosa Parks learned the tenets of nonviolence themselves and worked on honing those skills with other activists of the time. So we were able to benefit them by affording them the opportunity to get skills that they now use in leadership ways. Also to support things like the March to Justice, or even in Ferguson there was a group that emerged called HandsUp United, which is an incredible group, that brought back the Black Panther Books and Breakfast. They also created a tech program — coding — so that young people could have a place to learn a skill. They were young people that emerged out of the need to tear down the systems that they found themselves in. And we were able to support them, we believed in them, and we continue to do that.