Equality vs equity John Devenish

John Devenish is the fighter we want on our side. A literal lifetime of activism informs every aspect of his life in Toronto - both the day job and the ‘night job’ (radio host at JAZZ.FM). He speaks to us about giving voice to the voiceless, being heard and the art of being subversive.

Who are you?

Aside from being Allyson Devenish’s brother, I’m an artist, a thinker, a writer, an actor, a radio broadcaster. I’m a black male living in North America. I am, in this country, considered by some, to be an African something – an African Canadian, African North American, Afro Caribbean Canadian, an ancestor of slaves. I am a rabble rousing activist. I know who I am but too many people think they know who I am and like to throw titles at me. I don’t let them stick on top of me.

What do you do?

I do a couple of things. I work in Developmental Services with people who have intellectual disabilities. I do what are called functional assessments to get them case managers. I have a politic that is all about the “social determinance of health”, which has to do with the struggles and challenges of living in poverty and having people assume that you are a certain way because of what they think you are. The spiral of the challenges faces when living in the margins of society and in poverty make getting out seemingly impossible. My work is a type of social work that’s specific to people with developmental difficulties.

That’s my full time work, that’s what I do to keep the fridge full, keep the lights on. I fell into it by needing a summer job when I was at university. I started working with a psych nursing team at a large provincial institution, learning a lot of things there, good (and seeing some not-so-good) and bad. I needed work when I lived in central Canada, just outside of Winnipeg, in a very small town. It wasn’t where I had any intention of spending the rest of my life and I moved back East. This kind of work allowed me to work shifts, in group home settings and in day programming settings which gave me the flexibility to do my arts work. It meant that I could then play late in clubs and bands if I wanted to – I could teach, take lessons, act, audition, I could do all those things and still maintain a reasonably good grounding, squeaking out a salary so at least I had a roof over my head.

So how did you become the activist and artist?

I grew up with activist and artistic parents. I grew up around educators. They were advocates for people who didn’t really have a strong voice. My mother was a Kindergarten Specialist and special education teacher, working with kids that had learning disabilities. My father was a child psychologist. When they were at university, they were members of a group that did a lot of work towards advancing the progress and opportunities for black students in North America. That kind of small politic was always surrounding us. So when the apples fell from the tree, they didn’t fall very far.

You never thought of going into music completely?

I did try at some points. You don’t really live too healthily when you try to do that kind of stuff; at least the way I was being, and had been, groomed. I had reasons that I needed for living more healthily and, along with those, came a child. It became important for me to have things like benefits, a steady income and a regular influx of things like…groceries. I was still able to teach and continued to perform. I found ways to do full-time work on a part-time basis. I did a lot of work as a voice actor, which meant I could go and record things and then reap the often far-between but good rewards afterwards. I was able to continue doing things like piano accompaniment, at other’s auditions and get work that way, too. I was able to do things like play at weddings and enjoy watching those giddy fools in their fancy gowns and clothing do their stuff, while I performed and got their money. That was how I survived, that’s how I moved through.

What I’ve been very, very good at doing is reaping the rewards of full time work without actually doing the full time work. If you know my sister very well, you know that she goes out of her way to do as little as possible for as much gain as she can possibly get. (I say that with a torrent of love!) I work in radio. I do a show that comes on nightly but I most often pre-record it in advance. That allows me to do my full time job. “Johnny Illusion”. A lot of radio is pre-recorded. It allows me to survive in a city that is unnecessarily expensive.

Why do you do what you do and who do you do it for?

The work that I do full time - I started doing it because it was easy and fun once I got the hang of it. It was a necessity, it paid fairly well for what was a lot of fun at the time (when I began). It also met a certain thing in me; a need to be subversive in my activism against establishment, to prove that there is always room for those who are in the margins. When I am actively involved in the meat of the work that I do, I really enjoy it. When it’s paperwork and filling out databases, I can’t stand it. I would rather be in my cape and tights, out there, fighting like Batman - maybe less the cape and tights - instead of sitting behind a desk.

I do the same in my arts. The theatre companies that I was involved with all had long histories and legacies of being sort of subversive, political theatre in this country – presenting plays and works involving actors, directors, producers who were instrumental in pushing underground and socially conscious political theatre out in front of the public. In some ways, I was able to merge and marry the politic across the lines. I don’t remember doing that on purpose. I think it’s something I just do and fall into. The piano playing – almost the same thing. I ended up playing in bands that were pretty much the same deal, after deluding myself for years into believing that I could be the next André Watts or a similar black classical music artist. I realised the reason I couldn’t was because there already was one. And I was in the wrong country for that, anyway. It was a country that didn’t understand the idea, almost - audacity - of someone looking like me being in the classical music world as an instrumentalist. We had, when I was growing up, two black conductors in this country – James DePriest (Orchestre Symphonique de Québec) and Paul Freeman (Victoria Symphony Orchestra). It was kind of cool that Canada had these two conductors and one of them (DePriest) was in a wheelchair - adding another exponent to the audacity. However, it wasn’t a country that was immediately welcoming and practically and I couldn’t make any surviving money doing it. So I left that, took my talents and played in bands. I got a keyboard synthesizer and hired myself out and performed. People found out about me and before I knew what was going on, I was busy. Tired and unhealthy but that’s rock and roll. I wrote to Paul Freeman when I had an interest in conducting and he told me what I would need to do and talked about some of his trials and tribulations. There were opportunities that he had had, that were not and would never present themselves to me. I know there were places I was not going to be able to get to. Reality in this country again – if you were not an opera singer, to be black in classical music was just freaking odd to too many.

There’s always an exodus of Canadians. Part of the reason is that you can spit and hit the forty-ninth parallel and you’re in the States. That massive machine is really tough on the arts in this country. The surviving arts in this country are heavily subsidised by government. It’s not a bad thing but the practical reason for subsidising it is to buffer it from the ravages of competing with the massive pool of artistic happenings in America, not necessarily better, but wildly competitive and massive in number. The other difficult thing is that it created a level of highly supported mediocrity, instead of striving for the best. That meant that a lot of people had to leave to come back; Diana Krall, Measha Brueggergosman, Bryan Adams, these people had to go to come back in order to make any kind of name for themselves. They can make wonderful names abroad but to make a name in this country - God help you.

Equally confounding in this country is the massive weight of the greatness of African American culture because it’s right there. It pervades everything; US television and radio styles and attitudes bleed across the border and excite and impress. Any concept of a black community is something you have to stop and think about what the hell you’re talking about. The majority of people in this country of any African heritage are either people who are one generation away from the Caribbean or have been here for generations or from West Africa and enclaves of East Africa as well. Others are the survival of ancestors of slaves who ran to Canada. Add more recent immigrants of the diaspora and there’s a weird mix. When ‘they’ speak of a black community in Canada, it’s not cohesive. It’s only cohesive to those who are not black. There is an assumption that if there is a black community, it’s a singular wave that moves across. All who are black land in this country and are immediately part of a black community – and the black community says this and does that, is putting this on and vote this way… it’s just not true.

George Floyd’s death – how did it impact you? The country?

It impacted me and still continues. I have spent my conscious, adult-thinking life as did my parents and their parents before them, trying to convince people that these yahoos and maniacs were/are in the woodwork. When they came out of the woodwork and people were so surprised that they wanted to be our allies and fight them, they were last people I wanted to talk to. What I was happy about (and this will sound very warped or strange) was this - here you had a person who felt so emboldened, that even when he was being exposed in real time on camera, he did not stop. That was where I was able to take my cue and point my finger right back at the people who were talking about being my ally – and I’d say “So you think you know what we are talking about when you talk about racism? You think you understand what I’m talking about racism? Let me show you something that is so heinously ugly that you can’t handle it. Let’s not think about the three or four other cops that did nothing, let’s think about the clown who had his knee on this person’s neck and who felt absolutely nothing. We’re not dealing with a human being at this point, we’re dealing with animals.” When asked why I get so angry about it, espcially by those who profess to be on my side too, well - all you have to do is look at that disgusting travesty.

I’ve been an angry black man forever. My sister will tell you, I don’t suffer fools. I don’t have time or patience for any of that kind of nonsense. People who look like me do not have societal leverage.

There is a massive difference between equality and equity. Nothing has changed. All that has really changed is that we now have a judicial system where we can at least take the issues to court. We still more often lose but we can take them to court. I keep trying to tell these folks that want to be my ally - if you want to be my ally, you can’t just be around when I’m crying, with the tears running down my cheeks. You have to be around when the snot is coming out of my nose and it’s on your cheek. That’s when you’re my ally. No matter what we try to do, or how many black opera societies we try to create, no matter how many black versions of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and those so much more aligned with the voices of the diaspora, we create, it doesn’t matter what we do, they’re still considered exotic. It doesn’t matter because we don’t have that cultural and social leverage. I’m not taking away from these wonderful things we’ve done, I’m just saying that we have to understand that its actual place is tiny when it comes to the larger scheme. I will always be an angry black man, I won’t necessarily be one that picks stuff up and breaks your front window (although if that’s necessary I might, but not today and there might be something on television…). I’ve been tired for years. Tiredness is almost a badge of blackness. Tired from constantly legitimising our existence. We are tired people.

How have you been during this pandemic?

Developmental services was deemed by the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services as an essential service so I haven’t stopped working. We’ve been in this emergency status since March so things haven’t really changed that much. Radio was also considered a quasi-essential so I never stopped doing.

The Kensington Market Jazz Festival, a beautiful, grass roots jazz festival here, in an area of the city that is an open market area, was purposefully created to counter the large corporate sponsored jazz festivals. It caters only to local and Canadian jazz musicians with a few international stars each time around, and I’ve been MC with the festival since its inception, which was five years ago. The 2020 version was done digitally. It’s exciting to me because of its cool, almost subversive nature. The whole idea is beautifully counter establishment. I forgot another label (this is mine): proto-negro-hippy. I left that out. Even the words are all about countering establishment.

How has the journey of your art engaged your voice?

I did a degree in musicology. My growth in my art came when I realised that there were connections in the arts that included people that look like me. There weren’t these separate arts but beautiful connections, that instruments that were played in establishment organisations were instruments that had been invented by people who looked like me, that certain types of rhythms and harmonic progressions were experienced by Euro humans but have things that were very normal and common to people that looked like me. Once I learned about that sort of stuff, it became part of what marched with me. My art voice is very much what you hear me saying now. There isn’t much of a difference. When I compose or arrange something, I always try to infuse something that makes the listener say, ”Wait, what was that?” I think it’s important that we don’t have any complacency, that we force people to understand that a lot of what they think is refined art has a lot of foul smelling, stinking stuff in its background origins too.

I’m no different in anything I do – I’m no different in relationships, my arts or my full time work, pushing a cart in the grocery store, or riding on the subway – I’m exactly the same person all the time. There’s no sheen or veneer here. You’re getting the rawness of me every time. Ya dig? (I hope so, otherwise I may have to use other favourite Linc Hayes phrases, like ‘sock it to me’ and ‘solid’!)

Big Devilishly and Little Devilishly.