I first saw Counterfeit Madison— the moniker for artist Sharon Udoh— at last year’s Mission Creek Festival, where I was dazzled by her no-holds-barred performance style. Udoh connects with music in way that is fascinating to watch, giving her entire self over to the rhythms and melodies with intense vigor.

Udoh took the stage with a beaming smile, and quickly took a seat at the lone Steinway grand piano that was positioned at center stage. She began the night with an alluring rendition of “Strange Fruit,” a song made famous by Nina Simone as well as Billie Holiday. Udoh’s vocal range is exceedingly similar to Simone’s, with rich, low notes and a powerful belt.

Udoh explained her connection to Simone in its entirety in an interview with Little Village, discussing how the two had similar upbringings and relationships with music. Both women trained in classical piano, both grew up going to a pentecostal-adjacent church, and both took stage names, among several other commonalities. In a break between songs, Udoh told the crowd of the moment when she first discovered Simone’s music.

“When I was 29 years old, working in a bakery in Columbus, Ohio, we would take turns playing music over the speakers,” Udoh said. “I heard this voice that was rich and deep, and I was like ‘oh what’s this?’ I didn’t want to tell anybody I didn’t know who it was, because I was embarrassed. So I was icing cupcakes, and I put down the icing bag, and I shimmied over to the computer. I looked and I saw a video of this woman, this androgynous woman, with a short haircut and dark skin and a broad nose, playing the piano classically and singing, and I was just like, what?!”

The performance featured covers of Simone classics like “Feeling Good,” “I Put a Spell On You,” and “Young, Gifted, & Black,” among others. All of Udoh’s covers of Simone’s music are available on her website, recorded when she first began the project in 2016 of connecting her own experiences with life and music with Simone. Between songs, Udoh spoke to the audience about the history and songs of Simone, and how her legacy is still extremely important in the current cultural moment.

“Nina craved the prime-time television spotlight of people like Aretha and Gladys Night, and she felt like she was being punished for her politics,” Udoh said. “Few people on this earth were able to live as honestly as she lived because they were afraid. Nina prompted people, black people specifically, by asking them to have some self questions: Who am I? Where do I come from? Do I like me? Why do I like me? How would this country be different if we asked ourselves those questions?”

Simone, who passed away in 2003, was exceedingly known for her ardent advocacy of equality for people of all races, particularly during the civil rights movement in the 1960s. This focus is prevalent in much of her music, particularly after the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. This act of white supremacist terrorism caused the death of four young black girls, and injuries to 20 others, prompting Simone’s release of “Mississippi Goddam” in the following year. The song was so contentious that many of the white-run radio stations of the time refused to play it, some even returning Simone’s record to her broken in half.

Performing more somber covers of “Mississippi Goddam” and “Brown Baby,” Udoh brought a focus to the conflicts Simone’s music confronts. Unfortunately, our country is still facing much of the racial issues it was grappling with during Simone’s heyday, with increasing police violence and mass shootings. In a rousing final conversation with the audience, Udoh questioned why the U.S. continues to facilitate the destruction of minorities, connecting today’s issues back to Simone with a quote on the concept of freedom.

“Why is a black body such a perceived danger for a police officer?” Udoh asked the crowd. “Is that why they shoot us when we’re unarmed? Americans, Americans who are we? What’s all this fear? Nina once said: “I’ll tell you what freedom is, no fear!” Land of the free and home of the brave, we like to say. When and how, will we begin to make America land of the free and home of the brave for black and brown folk?”

The post Witching Hour: Counterfeit Madison @ Englert Theatre 11/2/19 appeared first on KRUI Radio.

However, based on my experiences this past semester, I think we should reevaluate.

Regular readers of this column will recall my TA who felt inconvenienced by my request that he call out racist comments in the classroom. That’s just one example of people around me who choose passivity instead of action.

Last month, I sat through an entire lecture about the Harlem Renaissance for an English class and my professor (who has been published and received awards for her work) did not use the words race, racism, black, or African-American the whole time.

Her lecture erased history. Her decision to use call the Harlem Renaissance “a distinctly American movement” represents an unwillingness to factually describing the time period as a movement to demonstrate black excellence. She intentionally avoided using any words that related to race! She’s complicit in a larger problem that plagues our world: historical revisionism. This issue has become apparent in Texas, Japan, South Korea, and so many other places. In this country, this problem usually happens with nonwhite history, like my English professor propagating lies about black history. So much for progressive.

Several other experiences revealed to me the saddening truth about academia.

I recently turned in a final paper for a class in which I researched and explained how our usage of language always already privileges a male viewpoint, and provided ample support from reliable sources, but I still lost points for “absolutism.” I also cited a scholar’s interpretation of a poem, and wrote that I thought it was flawed and misguided. Then I lost points for claiming that a scholar could make such a mistake.

Because of my status as an undergraduate student, my professor seems to indicate that I am barred from criticizing scholarly work and drawing conclusions that disrupt the status quo. If we claim that certain people’s opinions are inviolable or invulnerable to criticism, how exactly are we supposed to evolve and better the world?

Apparently, we’re not.

The fact that academia is still dominated by older white men displays the unwillingness of people to accept other viewpoints that don’t comply with heteronormative expectations. If people were truly invested in the narratives of people of color, non-heterosexual people, and other groups, then the population of scholars would not be so homogeneous.

This graphic displays the lack of diversity in college faculty. Even in schools where nonwhite students hold the majority, the faculty remains mostly white.

These inequalities extend to gender, too. The graph below displays the imbalance between men and women in various faculty ranks nationwide.

Why do I and so many other marginalized people often feel alone in raising these issues in classrooms and academic spaces?

The idleness and passivity of my peers reflects a deeply-rooted privileged mindset that allows people to watch these injustices happen instead of fight back.

Police kill innocent black children and are not punished, much of congress wants to defund programs for women’s health, white men who terrorize the world still evade the label terrorists, and this dumpster fire of a human being is leading in the polls for president.

That’s why I become so angry when the school I attend and the people in authority take every opportunity to shut down my small acts of resistance. People say college is about learning to change the world, and even in the smallest instances, my attempts were denied. My experiences and those of so many other people of color and marginalized populations demonstrate the clear illusion of progress in academia.

Let’s work together to change that.

Refuse to be content with our society.

Voice your opinions and debate your superiors.

Write provocative papers and ask pressing questions.

Be critical of yourself, your peers, your relationships, and communities.

Work to decolonize your mind in every instance.

Let’s transform academia from a stifling atmosphere into a space that fosters revolutionary thought.

The idea of “decolonizing our minds” comes from writings of the author, feminist and social activist bell hooks. She encourages us to critically examine every thought and action, free ourselves from the coercive ideologies, and overcome the impacts of structural oppression. This monthly column will analyze spaces and times where and when we can pause and make strides in this arduous process, and also highlight figures who are helping us to decolonize ourselves.

The post Decolonize Your Mind: Resist Every Day appeared first on KRUI Radio.