The not-so-quiet revolutionary
Tunde Olaniran has achieved what we all dream of - having fun at work. “I don’t want to be bored”. We’re in complete agreement. We spoke about revolutionary roots, connections and awakenings.
In association with the University Musical Society at the University of Michigan
photo: Jordyn Belli
Who are you?
I am a person who is really creative and has a Nigerian name that defines a lot of my life in ways that I didn’t expect. So my full name is Babatunde Bamidele Olaniran. I’ve always gone by Tunde. That’s just what I’ve always been called – I don’t even think of it as a nickname. I live in Flint. Flint, Michigan is an interesting place. It’s the birth place of the labour movement and I was raised by revolutionaries. I didn’t realize it, but I definitely was. Living in poverty, being raised by revolutionaries, has given me an extreme sense of class consciousness. I identify very strongly as a working class person, a working class artist. I think that’s really important to say and for artists to get used to how that sounds for their own life. And I’m a night owl.
A “working class artist”.
I am an artist that doesn’t have the means of mass distributing my art. I don’t own a record label, I don’t own a radio station. I don’t own the companies that pay artists to put music in car commercials. I don’t own a car company that would hire or pay for a song. Like most people, I don’t own the means to production in my industry. That is changing, and there are many incredible musician cooperative models that are shifting the landscape, but none of them are at a global scale that I know of just yet.
For me, that’s been really helpful. In Flint, to this day, if you say that you’re an artist, people say “Oh! You play the trumpet? What do you mean?”. It’s because the arts, unfortunately, haven’t really been nourished in a way where people can conceive of themselves living a sustained life through their art, as opposed to other industries in other cities. You know, if you live in London, you may not be the richest person, but – you could conceive of yourself being a stage actor, or being an actor, for example. Somewhere, in the country or in the city, there’s someone who’s done that.
I was never under any illusions that I was going to be rich and famous doing art. I just knew I really liked it and it was like any other job or any other career or passion – as long as you can pay your bills, there’s nothing to be ashamed of, if that’s what you’re doing. (And you’re not Beyoncé!) I think that can really throw a lot of people. My mum said – “you have to get a degree.” She wanted me to get a doctorate. I got a masters – that was as far as I went. She is a lover of the arts but she also said – “you can’t be caught out here without a safety net. Unfortunately, we don’t get one built into our society at this point. So you have to have something - you have to have something to fall back on.” On the Nigerian side, it’s – you’ve got to be a doctor or something that lets them say: “this means power and wealth and access. Good. You’re succeeding.” I had to form this identity to make sense of the world I was in and also to not beat myself up over whatever I might see as success or failure. But, I feel that with the arts, we have these weird expectations. If you say “I want to be a plumber when I grow up”, no one says “I really hope you follow your dream. Don’t give up on your dream”. It’s not that deep! For whatever reason, with the arts, it’s “good luck…” For me, it’s been a journey to help reframe, for other people as well as for myself, an understanding that being an artist can and should be like any other work, any other career. Potentially.
Is that the “revolutionary” part?
No, but it feeds into it. Flint was the site of the first auto workers sit-down strike. From that point, working class people – working class black communities – grew an extraordinary amount of wealth and social stability. Flint had the first community school model in the country. It had one of the first sex-education programs in the country. When people who aren’t super rich have a little bit more stability – look what happens?! That leads you to think more radically about labour and power. It attracted a bunch of people from all over the world to come to Flint and put up roots. Flint has a university (University of Michigan-Flint) and that’s where I went to school. It exists for a few reasons but one of the reasons was to give working class people access to a world class education. So many things in Flint have been built by working class families to make their lives better and less punishing. I feel that, sadly, it’s been stripped away over the past several decades. My mum, my aunties – when I look back, I think “these people were revolutionaries!” They were the ones leading marches, they were the ones organizing working class people to demand that the state treat them with care and dignity and respect, or demand that resources were allocated a different way.
With the graduate degree as a safety net, was the revolutionary act going off to do what you wanted to do?
Yes and no. I actually got a job that was directly related to my degree. I was making decent money. I could progress in this career. I hated it. I was depressed and didn’t realize it at the time. At the same time, I was kind of doing music a little bit in the city and was thinking “I really like this”. I would play three hour shows and I loved it. I really enjoyed making music. I really enjoyed the feeling of writing a song and performing it. I was increasingly becoming less and less satisfied at my job. I was really stretching my mental capacity – working full time and having a semi-full time music career. I was burnt out. Then I got a really great commercial that paid a lot of money. I thought – this could be my parachute. I could jump and actually survive and not be evicted…! That was 2016. It was practical. I thought – I have another safety net now. I can try this. I’m happy that I have the degree but I could at least convince myself that if this doesn’t work, for whatever reason, I can get a job somewhere, somehow, with this degree.
I think the revolutionary part was the form that the art took, rather than the decision to pursue it.
I remember being in a meeting and my boss saying “Tunde – you didn’t tell us you were in Rolling Stone”. I didn’t tell anyone. No one knew that I was an artist. I realized that I didn’t feel like a whole person there. I didn’t care to share my art. Was I embarrassed? Do I not want to share that I have this other ambition or passion? I was just very shut down at that job. In a lot of ways. I thought – this is weird. I would sit in my car for a few minutes before going into work and stare at this lawn and not want to go in. (We actually shot a video about all of this – “I want to be in that car, staring blankly in the morning!”). That was every morning.
That’s huge. You were able to recognize the discomfort of one situation that pushed you into the comfort of the desired situation.
I think I got to the point where I was saying – this (the art) makes me deeply happy. I’m not going to examine the shit out of it. I just know that this makes me deeply happy. I started in a band and, at a certain point, I wanted to do more than what the band wanted to do. I started doing a few solo things and I had a few bookings and I was trying to add to it with things like light-up drumsticks and cute shit like that. I wanted to dance, so I finally decided to bring dancers into the equation. That was the point when I decided that I want to have fun on stage and it doesn’t matter what else is happening as long as we’re having fun. We’ve had shows where there’s nobody there – we still have fun! As long as I can pay my bills and be happy with what’s made. It’s not for everyone, but as long as it’s enough to sustain a career… Then I started getting messages from people who were affected by the art. I can’t make it specifically for that, but aren’t these the things that are supposed to happen? You’re good at it, you like it, it seems to have some usefulness – at least for some people. All these things are together – I’m not going to over-examine it. Just go with it. That’s where I am. I think, right now, because some things are out of the equation, like touring, live shows, being able to travel and be in different studios – I’m still feeling creative. Which is a good sign. The challenge is how do we do this remotely, virtually and still create? I actually really like not being ‘perceived’. Having an audience is great, especially when everything clicks and you’re having a great time. But it’s actually nice not to have to drag myself off to a photoshoot or a bunch of stuff that I would have had to do. And even for the new single – I don’t have to be in the cover of this or that. I don’t feel pressured to post selfies! That’s a nice feeling and it’s re-enforcing that thing of ‘creating’ feeling really, really good. So – why fight that?
I made a conscious decision to not do any shows this year, because I don’t know if we’ve got best practices figured out across the board. The idea of having an audience makes me feel a little uncomfortable at this point. It might be a bit weird, if, at some point we’re actually in front of an actual audience.
I think, too, that so many things are not going to survive the next two years. Right now, if nothing changes, the vast majority of mid-size music venues are not going to exist. Most of the big live promotion music companies are going to gobble up every other small promoter. They’ve already been aggressively doing that. Now, because of Covid, no one small or mid-size is really surviving. That’s already strange, but I think the relationship, the vulnerability between artists now – we’re in danger. And I think audiences are burned out and at the same time, craving something connective. Now – you see everyone in the audience. Maybe that’s better? The audience shouldn’t be a mass. We’re all people, in the chair, on stage. It’s good to re-examine our relationship and our view or perception of an audience.
We speak to people about the “magic of the pandemic” in terms of the unexpected things have shown up in our lives. What has it brought you?
I feel like “magic” isn’t the right word. I think there are definitely lessons and challenges. People change through everything. Whether you have a good day or a bad day or nothing happens, you’re not the same, at the end of the day. I would say the pandemic has uncovered a lot for me and other people. It’s taught me some lessons about how fragile everything is – even more so than what I thought it was. I’ve had people die from Covid. It really feels like an utter waste and so pointless. There was no reason for this person to die. So, for me, it’s felt like – damn, we’re really disconnected and that’s helping the state and the ruling class kill us. The fact that we don’t know our neighbour, the fact that we don’t know each other and we’re scared of each other. The conversations I have with people in my life and people who are coming into my life – we talk with less bullshit.
I think I’ve finally learned to create comfort for myself in my home. I have furniture and some things but I was in and out and I wasn’t here for long stretches of time. I thought – okay, if I don’t have pleasure in this space, I won’t be able to function. I think everyone has realized that they have to learn new ways of caring for themselves. I’m also unpacking things with people – things that I never examined. We’re talking about race. I’m having conversations with non-black friends that I am very close to. I’ve never had any issues with them, but hearing them have revelations… Or them having their workplace suddenly become horrible in the pandemic, suddenly they’re labour organizers, when before, they were ‘happy capitalists’ – “I’m just happy to get mine.” No girl, they are happy to let you die in the street if it means their profit margin goes up a few percentages. Straight up. I think a lot of people are becoming radicalized in ways where I want them to just keep going.
Have you been surprised by any of your white friends and things that have happened during the pandemic and the George Floyd incident?
No. Thankfully, there have been no white people close to me who have responded in a confused way. It’s interesting – blackness in the UK and the US are so different. Conversations with black British family members, especially Gen Z/millennial are very different. Awakenings are different. Experiences have been different and experiences of oppression have been different. It’s funny how the idea of being ‘exotic’ means you’re not black and that’s prized. Black Americans are rare, statistically, in the world. We have a rare experience, but I’ve noticed that in the UK there is often still a national identity that has a link. Maybe your family is from Ghana or Nigeria and that’s a strong connection that you have outside of being British. But it also mixes, and I’m sure that’s generational, especially if you’re second or third generation. In the US, so much of Black people’s ancestral or ethnic identity has been erased, there’s a more common ‘something’ happening. Conversations with one of my black family members living in the UK – their awakenings took me aback. But at the same time, I get it. Class is very different in the UK, too compared to the US. You could be told to work hard and get off welfare and it could be black people telling you that as well.
I feel that, no matter who it is, there is some awakening, in some capacity.
There’s an undiluted honesty to your lyrics. Is that planned or just who you are?
I think, because I didn’t have training as a musician, my approach to making music was initially half-emulating everything I like and half trying to entertain myself. Hopefully, every person continues to grow and change and evolve. At this point, my approach to songwriting and creating music is – I want to enjoy this when I listen back to it, I really enjoy the format of certain kinds of music (those formats are really fun for me, how can I play in that), I want to create stuff that won’t bore me. I never want to say something that isn’t true. I never want to say something in a song that isn’t actually real or true or a different person to what I am. Because I’m quite a silly, goofy, all over the place person. I’ll be thinking about lots of different things.
I’m always really happy and excited when it connects. I’m really fascinated with forms that work in music. I’ll get really picky and technical in terms of, say - what’s the tension? I guess it’s like anything – writing a play or directing a film. You definitely want to study everything that’s happened before you sat down to do it, at least enough to get a feel for it. And if you’re with a classically trained person who’s writing, it’s interesting, because they go for something that makes sense. But for me, sometimes that is “technically correct” is not always interesting. What’s enough to make people go – “Huh!!” and not “Uh-uh – turn this off!”? I’m not always successful, but I’m trying to play that line of what’s enough to be a little “oh – what’s that?!” but not be totally alien. I don’t want to be bored when I listen to this. I don’t want to be timid, but I want this to be listenable. That’s a hard thing to balance, especially when pop music, contemporary music – it’s all about feeding into an algorithm so that somebody doesn’t skip your song on their Spotify playlist. Your song performs better when it blends into every other song that’s playing. So, you’re battling that because you want to get playlisted. It’s a constant back and forth, a constant discovery and rediscovery.
What is the voice that you found when you were finding your voice?
A strong one. The first music I made as an artist was in a band. I had answered an an and they said they wanted it to be a metal rock thing. I said okay, and then I just started taking over and started writing stuff. I didn’t know I could write music. Then we were playing shows in a city where you’re at a bar and people are just trying to go about their day and you’re having to get their attention and having the stamina to sing for three hours and perform – I realized that my voice was way stronger than I really knew or thought it was, physically. Probably getting into recording my own solo stuff and then writing more intentionally without anyone else’s influence – I found emotional frequencies that exist that your body can generate. I was thinking about the ways you can change reality with the sound and texture of your voice. I didn’t really discover that until I started working with a great vocal producer and we would do forty takes of something and then examine and put things together. I have a strong voice and very flexible voice that I didn’t really know existed.
So, who are you?
I would say I am a person, trying to be creative, trying to be kind, trying to change the world around me and the reality around me to be more pleasurable and comforting for myself and others.
Tunde Olaniran photo: Breeann