Wednesday Block 2

Wednesday Block 2

Talking, communicating, exchanging ideas can be the most healing and productive way to bring about positive change in our community.

The gilliard center has become home to a new series that brings together two artists and residents.

Charles and marcus, a grammy winner, charles singleton of ranky tanky and so good to see you, you look great.

Thank you, and it's always a pleasure to be on the show with you.

And i'm so glad that during this time, for a lot of people, it has offered a lot of self reflection on the world around them and here you're bringing it out to the public in such a beautiful way.

Can you tell us more about raising the volume series?

Well, it all started, marcus and i were basically just talking about our experiences growing up and experiencing racism against black men.

And the gilliard center reached out to us and asked if we wanted to just have a place to come and just talk and tell our stories, and offer just whatever we could as young black men growing up in the community.

And so it was recorded, and while it was sort of being edited, the idea came up about having more guests, and sort of missing it like a little series, which it has evolved to.

So what we have done is we have been contacting and meeting and talking with black community leaders, young and old, and just talking about and the work in the community and how it has translated over to helping others in the community.

Now, it's a forum on music, racism, art, and all of those things blended together that sends a message to everybody, that i think everybody can take away from, whether they have had similar experiencers not.

And are there any experiences that you personally had that you shared for the first time, or things that either you suppresseds for a while, anything that you brought back out into the open that has helped you personally heal?

Yeah.

I mean, like we talked about being stopped by police officers before, i talked about the first time that that happened to me back in the middle 90s.

Where i thought i was pulled over for no reason.

And it was a shared experience.

And in talking with some of the other people that we have had on the first couple of episodes, they shared similar experiences or things that were personable to them.

And that's something that definitely comes out into the open.

For example, in talking with former chief municipal judge, arthur mcfarland, he also talked about this group called the charleston area justice ministry, and how they take all of these situations and things from the community and they work together and find a way to present it to the city council, or the county council and get actual people talking and results of things, which is a good thing, and it starts good conversation, and it usually leads to good results.

Most definitely, and also, when you're talking with someone such as marcus as well, he can put feelings into words in a way that you never knew could be expressed before.

So i would think that message would also be received quite well from your audiences.

Definitely.

Everyone hellos a different story, and sometimes in telling my story, you know, it was met with people that were in shock.

Most people see me onstage all the time with a smile on my face, and a trumpet in my hand or a microphone.

And a grammy in the other.

And i'm telling jokes and entertaining, and what they don't see or remember is that i'm still an ordinary black man, a human being, and when i walk outside that door, sometimes i face those unfortunate acts as well.

Such as being pulled over in the middle of the day and accused of having a faulty taillight or something like that, or license plate light, i think it was, it was out in the middle of the day.

It was really odd.

I know a lot of people can relate to that particular story.

We have heard those stories quite ov, and we need to take a break here, but when we come back, i want to hear a few other names of people that you've spoken with in the community and where people can find these serie.

We're going to do that after welcome back, we have been chatting with grammy winner, charles singleton of ranky tanky, and we have been discussing a series called raising the volume, a project he has been working with, with marcus, and you invited self people up onstage to have these discussions with you.

Among some other ones, let's talk about lavonda brown of the ywca.

And she has been a great our community and what was that discussion like with her?

Well, marcus conducted that particular one, but in watching it, it was basically about all of the programs at the ywca has been involved with.

And we have a very historic ywca and ymca for that matter here in the charleston area.

But their conversation focused a lot about race, and also some of the great programs that they have put in, and some of the things that they are doing in order to raise awareness.

Just like the title of the series is, raising the volume.

Just making people aware of things.

And a lot of people to be heard.

And i think voices need to be heard and people need to be able to communicate and that's why there's also a lot of acting out, people don't know how to put their feelings into words sometimes, and this really provides a wonderful forum for that, charlton, and i know these lessons are also being provided to middle school and high school students, and how is that being made available to them?

And what do you hope they take away when they watch these series?

First of all, you can always access everything from the gilliard center's website.

And these lesson plans are basically ways that you can watch the series and then you can use these lesson plans in order to sort of piggyback off of that, and get to some of the topics that were discussed with the particular episode.

Sterling devries handles all of the education at the gilliard center, and he has done a marvelous job of putting all of these things together so the students can have access to these episodes, the students and teachers of course, they can definitely go and use this as a learning tool.

Absolutely.

Taking the textbook into the real world and real people.

Charlton, this is great.

And finally, real quick with a few seconds left, what do you hope people can take away from these discussion?

I hope that it continues to be a discussion.

So many times we have an unfortunate incident that happens, and you get a lot of people that are talking about it.

And then it sort of goes away and everything seems to just go back to normal, and then it takes another unfortunate incident so if we can just keep talking and talking and be aware of things, i think that will help with everyone.

And keep evolving.

I want to thank you so much, charlton, always a pleasure.

We'll be back after this.