BY COOPER
My name is Yonci Jameson. I’m 17 years old, born and raised in North Minneapolis and I’m a senior at Southwest, taking college classes at MCTC. I am a poet/spoken word artist and a musician, as well as a cultural artist, with my African drumming and dance.
SSP: How do you see your art influencing your activism, or vice versa?
Yonci: For me, my first interaction with art was spoken word and poetry, and for me they never really crossed paths, until certain major events happened, with the Mike Brown shooting and people becoming aware of police brutality in America. So I would do spoken word at the protests. I’d do performances about the reality that black people face in America. So it didn’t really start to intersect until that moment, then afterwards I’d realized I was using this literary art, this performance art to convey a message I need people to hear, and that’s what meshed it together. My art influences my activism and that encourages me to be vocal, and to be confrontational, because there’s a lot ways you can be confrontational and art is the creative way to do that.
SSP: Is there one message or concept, stronger than any other, that you want to convey with your art/activism?
Yonci: The concept that black people in general are more complex than just their blackness. We often see art about people of color, specifically black people, in the sense of examining their blackness, and not necessarily seeing the motive and the inspiration and the ideas behind their art, you know, thinking their art is about being black and not about anything else. So, the one message I’d want to get across would be about exploring the levels of blackness and how they’re not just race based, it’s more about character, personality and internal ideas.
SSP: How do you see activism as a form of expression?
Yonci: Well, activism is something that’s accessible to a lot of people, so as a form expression I feel like it’s just you as an individual taking into perspective what’s going on around you and coming together in a community sense and addressing it, saying, “What’s the problem here? How can we fix this for everyone?” It’s community engagement and it’s self-reflection. I feel like that’s expression within activism, that’s what you do.
SSP: Does your music interact with or influence your activism?
Yonci: It does, it does and it has. I play bass clarinet, clarinet and saxophone, and I do African drumming and dancing so a lot of times at protests when I’ve been in an activist community I’ve done drumming, to carry a vibe, or help people come together, you know? Music is obviously a communal thing that draws people together so I’ve been in that position and I want to do more. I’m inspired musically by activists’ movements.
SSP: How do you see yourself in the community of young artists, right now?
Yonci: Honestly, I don’t. I don’t see myself in the community. I don’t think I’m a very traditional artist. I’m not drawing or painting or doing digital art. But honestly, on a broader scale, I feel like the young artists’ community in Minnesota is very white right now. I don’t feel like I need to have a place in that community. I want to have my own community of artists of color, which I think will grow bigger, and we’ll have our own collective and community.
SSP: Do you think your activism, or the way you protest, would change if you didn’t have your art?
Yonci: Absolutely, there would be a lack of motive, to be an activist, because when you’re an activist you’re progressive you’re constantly looking for ways to change things to change the current situation, and so there isn’t a lot you can do that gives you instant gratification when you’re an activist. You can’t march up to the Capitol and be like “Change the laws!” They’re not going to do it immediately. But with art you can write a poem or compose a song and you’re able to have an outlet, to have a product that’s inspired by a certain series of event, to do something with the emotions you feel based on that event. So I just feel like I would be at a loss if I wasn’t an artist, because I would have nothing to do with things that I feel from being an activist.
Here’s a piece by Yonci:
i feel my heartbeats through my fingertips
feel my heartbeats through my wrists and
for me pain will never be self inflicted thats why i laugh when i get hurt and cry when its just me
cry although not often
cry although not ever
1. i’d rather my hands smell like dirt than like nicotine either way it feels good and
2. my bike is my ticket to freedom, a yellow lightning strike with stars that are the locs of my hair
3. avocados will be my ambrosia and iron skin my armor
4. we will learn to appreciate the sky and clouds and the rocks that make up the bottom of flood ponds after rain the terrain that lays before us lie down on our backs and feel the sun
5. light will become your friend. we will remember the dark and that is our home but learn to see the lights before they turn on in the street
6. and you will love and will love love loving everything imminent
7. yellow is for melancholy, for smiles and stares for orgasm and for ache for lips and for lungs to inflate the seeds that float in the air and
i can remember the future
but
i will remember to forget
i will not submit my voice for sake of conversation
no i will use it as i please
