Music Credit:  “NY” composed and performed by Kosta T, from the cd  Soul Sand. Used courtesy of the Free Music Archive.

Bril Barrett’s tapping recorded by Hypothetical Films, 2024.

Jo Reed: From the National Endowment for the Arts, this is Art Works. I’m Josephine Reed.

You are listening to the tap dancing of 2024 National Heritage Fellow, Bril Barrett. Bril is a Chicago-based tap dancer and educator whose career spans over four decades, during which he has performed with renowned companies like Riverdance and shared stages with tap legends. Recognizing the power of tap to heal individuals and communities, Bril felt a need to pass along this art form and its history and cultural significance. So in 2001, Bril Barrett co-founded M.A.D.D. Rhythms. The organization is committed to providing affordable arts education and mentorship to Chicago’s youth, emphasizing the importance of tap as a form of expression, resistance, and community building.   Bril Barrett’s work in Chicago and his contributions to the art of tap dance has been so far-reaching that he was honored with a 2024 National Heritage Award, the highest recognition of artistic excellence in folk and traditional arts in the United States. 

Bril Barrett, welcome to Art Works.Congratulations on being named a 2024 National Heritage Fellow!

Bril Barrett: Thank you so much. I appreciate it a great deal.

Jo Reed: Tell me something. How did you get into tap?

Bril Barrett: Well, let's see. It's a long story. So if you've got a moment… My grandmother was originally from Arkansas. My grandfather was from Shreveport, Louisiana. I don't remember exactly how they met and got married, came here to Chicago, and my grandmother always wanted to do something in the arts, but her life situation did not allow for it. So she, in turn, tried to get her children into the arts once she had a family and start having my aunts and uncles. And they all dipped their toes in the water, but nobody jumped in. And so when my aunts and uncles started having their children, my grandmother was like, oh, I'm going to start working on the grandchildren. So my grandmother in turn, really talked my mom and my aunts and uncles into putting all of us, i.e. me and my cousins, into the arts. So that's kind of how I got exposed to the arts at all. It was a generational wish [laughter] passed down from my grandmother.

Jo Reed: And what was it about tap that so appealed to you?

Bril Barrett: Well, the interesting thing was when I first started, I didn't even start with tap as a standalone thing. I was in a program at a community center in Chicago, and they offered everything. And that community center was called BBF. And at that community center, when you went into the theater program, they wanted to expose us to everything. So there was music class, there was voice lessons, then there was dance, and the dance was ballet, jazz, and tap. And then there was set design and lighting design, everything involved in a theatrical environment was part of this program. So I did a little bit of everything. But as I did tap, it just spoke to me. I immediately had a different kind of connection to tap dance, and my teacher at that time was a gentleman named Carlton Smith. He, I remember the first dance he ever taught us was to Stevie Wonder's Sir Duke. And I had grown up listening to, well, grown up-- I had grown to my young age of five, six and seven, listening to Sir Duke or listening to Stevie Wonder. Because my mom was a Stevie Wonder fan. And so for my first choreography tap-wise to be to a song and an artist that I was familiar with, it immediately made tap feel home for me.

Jo Reed: You came into tap in some ways through the music of  of Stevie Wonder, which is brilliant. I never would have made that connection but when you say it, it makes sense although I always think that tap is connected to jazz—they both are so steeped in improvisation…

Bril Barrett: And that is right. They are absolutely connected, except I didn't get that education or that part of the education process until later. I met a teacher whose name was Mr. Taps, and he was a guy performing in the subway. And he was dancing to jazz music. He was, as a matter of fact, specifically big band music. 

Jo Reed: He is legendary around Chicago--How did you and Mr Taps hook up?

Bril Barrett: I met Mr. Taps in the subway. He was a street performer. And he was doing something I loved, which was tap, which I had grown to love at the Youth and Community Center, and he then was making money from it. So I saw this man tap dancing and people were giving him money and I was like, oh, I want to do that. And I asked him if I could perform with him. I told my mom I wanted to dance with him. She said okay, if he was okay with it. He said okay. So every day I would perform in the subways of Chicago with Mr. Taps after I got out of school, and the cool thing was, he was dancing to jazz, all of the big band era band leaders and stuff, he really was dancing to all of them. So I started to get to know now the connection of tap with jazz. And he did nothing but improvisation to the point that I didn't even know what improvisation was. So I assumed this man had the best memory in the world. I thought he had thousands of routines.  And he said no, I'm doing improvisation. And I'm like, I have no idea what that is. I would go out and I would do pieces of the routines that I had learned at the Sammy Dyer School of Theater and BBF, the Community Center. And I would then sometimes forget what I was doing. And he would say just make it up. And so I would make it up, and the more I made it up, the section just to bridge the sections of what I knew, the make it up started to be longer than the sections of what I knew. He was really exposing me and teaching me how to improvise. Count Basie, Duke Ellington, these were the people he listened to and played all their music, so now I'm tapping to jazz. He also introduced me to footage, the old tap dancers. I really didn't have much history in terms of who came before me until Mr. Taps introduced me to footage—old clips from old movies, which in the tap dance we just call footage. And he would have a footage night Friday night. We would tap in the subway, make money, and then we would go to his house and have pizza and watch old movies. And he loved the Nicholas Brothers, he loved the Four Step Brothers, he loved Fred Astaire. And so I started watching all of these old clips and footage, and that's where it started to make a new kind of sense to me, that this stuff that I'm doing is just a continuation of all this stuff that came before me.

Jo Reed: I guess since you met Mr. Taps, the history and culture of tap has been important to you and continues to be important to you and very central to the work that you do. So let's talk about that a little bit. The history of tap. At its most fundamental, it's an art where the music and the dance are the same. The dancer is the percussionist. It has a long history coming back from Africa.

Bril Barrett: I tell people that one of the things I love about tap, is that tap dance is the only art form where you, as the dancer, are making, especially with improvisation, you're making the music that you're dancing to while you're making it. I know that sounds like a crazy little a loop, if you will, but so that is what I love about tap. It is totally dependent how you dance and how you sound and what music you make is all contingent on how you're feeling, how your day was, what you want to say. It's a total expression of what's going on inside of you. I find that I can be fully free and fully be myself when I'm tap dancing. And so watching that footage started connecting me with the history, which just made me then be hungry for more history. And when I started finding out about not only the origins of tap, which I'll go into in a second, but also the things that people went through in order   tap, it made me just have a bit more respect and a bit more ownership of being a proper representative of the art form. So when I started learning about tap's history and the whole African experience, the way our ancestors brought these rhythms, and brought these syncopations and patterns with them, as they came to this country through the horrific thing that we now know as slavery, the Middle Passage is one of the worst things you could ever hear and read about, but out of that came tap dance, among other things. And so I always liken that to the ability to get something wonderful out of something awful. Tap is that for me. Learning about that history and learning that when my ancestors were brought here and enslaved, they still tried to keep things that were natural and common and just regular for them. They tried to keep those things. And as the institution of slavery required that those things be taken, be left behind, they found new ways to then incorporate those things. So example: the junjun, the djembe, the drums, all the different rhythms that were played there when the drums were taken, because enslaved people were using them to communicate from plantation to plantation. Then the slaves-- or the enslaved people, I like to be right with my terminology, the enslaved people then began using a hambone and using our bodies to replace the drums. We didn't need the drums, we became the drum. And so when you talk about tap dance and its African origins, it literally to me translates to we are the drum. We are the rhythm. So you don't need anything else to make the music that expresses who and what you are.

Jo Reed: Yeah, it's a dance of resistance, I think, and a dance of resilience. Also a dance of fellowship.

Bril Barrett: Absolutely.

Jo Reed: And that is what you convey when you teach tap. You're not teaching the steps, you're teaching tap, you're teaching dance, you're teaching rhythm, but you're also really giving it to students in a context.

Bril Barrett: Absolutely. I feel like steps are just like the alphabet-- tap steps are to tap dance as the alphabet is to the English language, meaning if you only learn letters, and you'd never learn that you can put them into words and then the words into sentences and the sentences into paragraphs and so forth and so on, if you never learn the possibilities of what you can do with those steps, then you're not learning the language of tap. So I look at the West African traditions that are ingrained within the history of tap, and I make sure that my students understand that contextually, tap dance is now a language for you, and you can now use it to express, to resist, you can use it to fight - I call it "taptivism." You can become a taptivist, because I literally use and try to convey to my students that tap dance can be how you fight the ills of this world, how you stand up for what you believe in. You can use tap dance as a vehicle for all of that.

Jo Reed: Bril, you spent time dancing professionally, but then teaching became important to you. How did that come about?

Bril Barrett: It's interesting. My goal, once I fell in love with tap, is I wanted to be a famous tap dancer. That was it. That was the end of my entire journey with tap dance. I remember I used to say every year, if I'm not famous by the time I'm 18, I'm going to quit. If I'm not famous by the time I'm 21, I'm going to quit. And so my whole motivation in life was being a famous tap dancer, and teaching was just a thing I could do to make some money on the side while I waited on performance opportunities. Somewhere along the line, I realized that teaching was starting to take over in terms of the importance in my mind and in my soul. The more I taught, the more it became less about what I could show the world with my tap, and more about what I could instill within the next generation to make them fall in love with tap the way I did. Not only for them to fall in love with it, but for them to then grow and then pass it on, because that's how you keep something alive. You keep teaching it, and you hope that the next generation falls in love with it and then they teach it. And so making sure that all my students know of the ancestors' stories, or the dancestors, as we call them, their stories and what it took for them to be able to do this dance, is how they then turn around and they learn it and they perform it and they exemplify it. And then they teach it, and then they demand that excellence from their students so that generationally, we never lose this beautiful art form called tap dance.

Jo Reed: You’re definitely reaching back to the ancestors, you're bringing something into the present that has been done for at least hundreds of years, but it's important to make sure that it's not calcified. You're giving it to students in a way that they can move forward with it.

Bril Barrett: Absolutely. So when I teach, I try to teach that every student will know that they're upholding a tradition, but I also try to teach the same freedom of expression that endeared me to tap so much, so that you take it and you express what you're feeling. If you're loving hip hop and you're loving reggae or pop or classical or country, whatever music genres you love, you can tap dance to it. Tap dance goes with everything, so I make sure that my students have a strong foundation, but then they're also taught that this foundation is what will allow you to reach new heights that tap dancers like myself may never have thought of, because I don't have your life. Your life is now part of the process of building a great tap dancer. And everybody's life individually dictates what kind of tap dancer they can be if they so choose.

Jo Reed: It's boundless.

Bril Barrett: Yes.

Jo Reed: Tell me about the mission of MADD rhythms. First, what is MADD short for?

Bril Barrett: MADD is short for Making a Difference Dancing. I tell people say it as a sentence, making a difference dancing rhythms. I believe everybody was put on this earth to make a difference. We make our difference dancing rhythms, and we encourage everybody to find a purpose, and a way to utilize something to make a difference in their lives. Also MADD is slang, I'm a child of '90s hip hop. So everything that was true to hip hop in the '80s and '90s in New York culture, everything was mad something, I'm mad cool. I got mad style, I got mad flavor, I got mad rhythms. So the title of the company itself, the organization, is a shout out to the fact that we must always stay rooted in community, we must always utilize tap dance for more than just entertainment. We have to use it to make a difference in our communities. I'm 100 percent there, that's what I'm committed to. But at the same time, it also shows my love of hip hop. I love hip hop, which is why I have no problems tap dancing to hip hop music, or teaching to hip hop music, because hip hop itself is just another amalgamation of jazz and soul and R&B. The mission is to expose our young people to the art form. But we want to make sure that they respect the heritage and history, which is why we teach and keep the history alive, and then also give opportunities for them to then as tap dancers be able to express themselves, and have performance opportunities and whatever opportunities that will allow the art form to then be seen and carried on for the next.

Jo Reed: MADD Rhythms has certainly evolved over the years. How many different programs now are within MADD Rhythms?

Bril Barrett: Thank you. I'd like to say that MADD Rhythms started out as a volunteer program to teach young boys of color the art of tap dance, so maybe they would have a choice at a positive alternative in life, because that's what it did for me. And then my little sister one day said, how come it's got to be all boys? I was like, you're absolutely right. Here's your place. And now my little sister, Starr Dixon, is one of the premier tap dancers in the country. So that original company, then they all became the teachers of what then became the MADD Rhythms Tap Academy, so now I'm not the only teacher. I've now raised a generation of teachers who can carry on this work. I'd like to say we replaced the school-to-prison pipeline with basically the studio-to-stage pipeline. You come into MADD Rhythms as a baby, with our Tap for Tots in the Tap Academy. You do all the levels of learning in our academy, and then you can apply for one of our jobs. We have MADD Rhythms apprenticeship programs, where young people between the ages of 14 to 18 get paid to learn how to tap. So their after school job and their summer job is to come learn how to tap dance. And then if they're still into it after that, they become an apprentice with our professional company, and they start training with the professional company. And if they pass that phase, then they become a professional member of the company. We currently have young people in our professional company that have started out as students at five and six years old at our Tap Academy. I wanted this to be the answer to the school-to-prison pipeline, saying we can start you, a child can come off the streets of Chicago from any neighborhood, come to our studio in Bronzeville, and within this one space be given every tool needed to become a professional tap dancer, respected and revered around the world. 

Jo Reed: And the home of MADD Rhythms is the Harold Washington Cultural Center.

Bril Barrett: Absolutely. The Harold Washington Cultural Center, which is named after this city's first black mayor. We're located on King Drive, named after, of course, the great and honorable Martin Luther King, Jr., and we're in a neighborhood called Bronzeville, which is the neighborhood where after the Great Migration, when black people were allowed to live in Chicago, this was the only neighborhood they were allowed to live in. So, all of these converging historic cultural timelines all converge on this one place, and it's where we're building tap dancers.

Jo Reed: MADD Rhythms is known for many things, but it's also known for it's such a diverse group of dancers, and I wonder how the diversity both enriches the company's performances, but also the educational outreach that you have.

Bril Barrett: I will tell you, the interesting thing is I think MADD Rhythms is a great example of diversity. And it just happened. I started this company out for young black children specifically, but there was never a barrier that said anybody else couldn't come learn. That has to be said when you think about the way things are in our society right now, so many things are one or the other. Mine was either/and - I'm a firm believer of the either/and. I started a podcast called The Either/And Podcast because I'm such a firm believer of the either/and of it all. We can take all of these young people from underserved black and brown communities in the city, but we're not going to stop anyone from coming in who is interested in learning the art form of tap dance. And by that metric, the only thing that matters is your willingness to steep yourself in the culture and the history of this dance. And if you're willing to do that, we'll take you. So anybody can be a part of this thing, they just have to want to. So I love that the diversity of MADD Rhythms is not only ethnically, you can look at us and see how diverse we are, but chronologically, I'm still a member of my own company at almost 50 years of age, and our youngest member is 15. So we've got generations working out together, we've got cross-cultural ethnic backgrounds, different parts of the city, different cities, sometimes different countries - at times we've had people come from other countries to study with us. And then we don't have a typical size, you can't look at a MADD Rhythms member and say that's the look of MADD Rhythms, because we don't care what your body type is. We don't care what your height is, we don't care what any of those things are. As long as you want to do this dance, I'm happy and obligated to give it to you.

Jo Reed: Let me ask you this, because you're also so committed to giving back to the community through tap dance: How do you instill that philosophy in your students and company members?

Bril Barrett: By way of repetition. [laughs]  And also by example. Part of the way that I instill a lot of the things that are now just part of the culture of MADD Rhythms is by leading. I can say, for example, like any community, the tap community is a family. And at times we've had riffs in the family. But I've always been one, well, not always, but I've learned to be someone who can be mature enough to humble myself, to approach someone I may have a riff with and say, let's talk this through for the sake of being better people. Let's try to come up with a solution. And so a lot of that I do out in the open and in front of my company, and we have conversations about it. During the pandemic, we moved our rehearsals to Zoom, and people are always thinking, how did y'all dance on Zoom? We didn't even dance. We just talked to each other, and we talked about being better people and being there for each other and being supportive, and being family. So I love the fact that MADD Rhythms is an organization that can be considered a business, a professional organization, but it's also a family. You'll often hear many of the young members call me everything from Tap Dad to Papa Bear, and I'll call them my Tap Daughter or my Tap Son or my children, because I'm a firm believer that it's something very special and endearing to the family you choose. Most of us don't pick our families, we're just born into it. But I've chosen MADD Rhythms to make it a family, and the people that are part of the family have chosen to be a part of that family. I used to tell them all the time in my training programs, if I make you all wonderful tap dancers but horrible human beings, I've failed. Not only can you work on being a better tap dancer, but you have to consistently and constantly work on being a better person. I show that by example first, but also sometimes when you're the best in the room, then your responsibility is to help others feel good about where they are, not to make them feel bad about not being where you are. 

Jo Reed: How does  M.A.D.D. Rhythms engage with local schools and community organizations.

Bril Barrett: We engage with everybody. And that's the one thing I love that as we've grown over the decades now, because we're 23 years of an organization. I have members of my company who weren't born when the company was started, which is crazy to me, because I never even imagined that. But one of the things that we've always done is we've always no matter what we do professionally, on what's considered a professional scale or a large scale, we always keep some type of ties to our community centers, organizations, whatever, you name it, events. So for an example, we just debuted at Jacob's Pillow earlier this year, which in the dance world period-- it's an institution of greatness. And then this week back in Chicago, we're going this very week to perform at a park called White Park, in a neighborhood called Rogers Park in Chicago, which is a community that doesn't always get a lot of entertainment or exposure to tap dance. We're going there to do a free show. Anybody can just pull up and sit down and watch the show. And I believe that the balance of making sure that we're always accessible to the community, and that we also are fulfilling our obligations as professionals, endears people to connect with us, even if they don't tap dance, there's some people who support us and just come see shows, and even give to our nonprofit, because they see that the work that we do is a continuous build. There's no ceiling for what we're trying to accomplish, with exposing people who aren't normally exposed to tap dance, exposing them to tap dance.

Jo Reed: Bril, let me ask you: what advice would you have for a young dancer who wanted to follow in your footsteps, and use their art to make a positive impact on their community?

Bril Barrett: I would say look to examples of those that have done it before you, because that's the first thing. Sometimes we don't utilize the knowledge of our elders enough. Everybody who's been here has been through some things, and can tell you about it, and some people are just never asked. So when young people come to me and ask questions, I'm more than happy to answer all of them, and in great length, because a lot of the great tap dancers that came before me, when I met them, I asked questions, they answered in great length, in details. And so I passed that on as well. But I would then tell them, you have to be willing to sacrifice your own comfort even at times, in order to commit to this art form, and especially making a difference with this art form, using it as a tool to fight against injustice, using it as a social justice mechanism. You have to be willing to understand that people are not going to always want to hear it. People are not going to always support it. But you have to be committed enough to love it through it all, and to fight with it, utilizing it through it all.

Jo Reed: Bril, you have won many awards. You were a Chicagoan of the Year. Now you're a National Heritage Fellow. What does receiving the National Heritage Fellowship mean for you?

Bril Barrett: I will tell you in a nutshell, I don't do what I do for recognition. I do it to make a difference in my community. But sometimes it takes a toll on you a lot of times emotionally, physically. Eight hours of sleep sounds like the fantasy world to me. So to be recognized, even from the Chicagoan of the Year aspect, and now the NEA as a National Heritage Fellow, that recognition just says all of your sacrifices are not in vain. We see you. And sometimes all we need to help rebalance all of the energy and all of the commitment that we put out, all we need is someone or some organization to say, we see you and we want to help you continue to do what you do. And of course, the recognition itself is wonderful. The cash disbursement that comes along with it is wonderful. But what's really wonderful, I can't wait to go to D.C. and be a part of the ceremony of just people saying we see you. Sometimes you don't know you need that until you get it, and it's the most fulfilling thing in the world. And then it gives you a little bit more fire to go back to your community, pick up where you left off and keep fighting the good fight.

Jo Reed: I think that is a great place to leave it. Bril Barrett, thank you. Congratulations again. Thank you for the work that you do, it really is a pleasure.

Bril Barrett: Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to talk with you. I look forward to our paths crossing either on the wood or off, one time again.

Jo Reed: That was tap dancer and educator Bril Barrett—Come Celebrate with Bril and the rest of the 2024 NEA National Heritage Fellowship honorees through film and in-person conversations.  The event takes place on Sept. 17 at the Kennedy Center and is free and open to the public. Tickets are available beginning today August 20. See arts.gov for details. You’ve been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. Many thanks to Hypothetical Films for the audio of Bril Barrett’s tapping.  I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.

Bril Barrett: The more I taught, the more it became less about what I could show the world with my tap, and more about what I could instill within the next generation to make them fall in love with tap the way I did. Not only for them to fall in love with it, but for them to then grow and then pass it on, because that's how you keep something alive. You keep teaching it, and you hope that the next generation falls in love with it and then they teach it. And so making sure that all my students know of the ancestors' stories, or the dancestors, as we call them, their stories and what it took for them to be able to do this dance, is how they then turn around and they learn it and they perform it and they exemplify it. And then they teach it, and then they demand that excellence from their students and so forth and so on so that generationally, we never lose this beautiful art form called tap dance.

Music Credit:  “NY” composed and performed by Kosta T, from the cd  Soul Sand. Used courtesy of the Free Music Archive.

Jo Reed:  From the National Endowment for the Arts, this is Art Works.  I’m Josephine Reed. Today, we’re revisiting my 2023 interview with Dr. David Fakunle. People who follow the work of the Arts Endowment know that Chair Maria Rosario Jackson is a firm advocate for the arts’ ability to heal, to bridge divides, and to enable both people and communities to thrive. Well, the work of Dr. David Fakunle underscores how this philosophy works on the ground. Dr. Fakunle is a man who wears many hats but he is first and foremost a storyteller who received a PhD from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health where he now a faculty member. He’s also an assistant professor at Morgan State University in the School of Community Health and Policy, and serves as adjunct assistant professor at the University of Florida Center for Arts and Medicine.  David is also the president of the National Association of Black Storytellers and serves as executive director of Womb Work Productions a social change performing arts company in Baltimore with a focus on kids. As I said, many hats—but all of his work explores the healing power of storytelling and its centrality to public health. 

Dr. David Fakunle:  I look to demonstrate the utility of storytelling, and really arts and culture overall, within the health context.  For me that shows up as research, that shows up as practice, that shows up as education, that shows up as advocacy, that shows up as activism.  Those would be, I think, the main five.  And, again, it's about showing that arts and culture are already present in our health.  We are all using some form of creative energy, and it does have a correlation and sometimes causation with our health and wellbeing.  What if we do that with more intentionality?  What if we do that with more emphasis?  What if we do that with more resources?  And that is the overall aim and goals of my work as a “mercenary for change,” which is what I call myself, is to just show that these readily accessible tools, these readily accessible skills, can be cultivated in a way that is beneficial for individuals, families, communities, societies, and it relies above all else on our humanity, something that we already possess.  So it's showing to me the ultimate human-centered design in a lot of ways that I think recent time has kind of shown are very important when it comes to having what we consider a quality life.

Jo Reed:  Art was really central to you when you were growing up, wasn't it?  Your mother is an artist, she's a singer, a beautiful singer. 

Dr. David Fakunle:  I come from a family where arts and culture has always been a foundation for who we are and how we express ourselves, and that's extended to African drumming, certainly storytelling like I mentioned before, theater, dance, we've always needed to express ourselves creatively.  So the idea of all of that being connected to how we felt as individuals, as family, as community, makes a lot of sense now and I think speaks a lot to, again, how much we valued arts and culture as a part of our overall wellbeing.

Jo Reed:  Well one institution that I do want to mention, which you're now an executive director of, is WombWork. 

Dr. David Fakunle:  Yep.

Jo Reed:  And that is a social change performing arts company that focuses a lot on kids, and you went there as a boy.

Dr. David Fakunle:  14 years old, that's when it started.  that was really the institution that laid the groundwork for how arts and culture can be used for health because for 25 plus years WombWork has used performing arts, particularly theater, to tell the story of circumstances, issues in the neighborhood.  So based out of Baltimore, we've talked about the issues in West Baltimore, we've talked about issues in the East Baltimore, we've talked about issues in Baltimore overall, the state of Maryland, the United States of America, the entire world.  And the mantra, the model that you can find on WombWork’s website is to heal and empower communities-- youth, families, and community heal.  You can't spell health without heal, it's right there, but we never put two and two together until the time was right to put two and two together.  So, again, it continues to serve as a living example that creativity can be intentionally applied to health, whether it comes in the form of communication-- and we have talked about some very serious health topics, yeah, very serious health topics, HIV, AIDS, gang violence, inter-partner violence, sexual abuse, child sexual abuse.  Again, stuff that goes there where it's not just about bringing awareness to the public health issue-- and in most cases we didn't need to bring awareness, people know these things exist-- but there's never been a comfortable space where people can explore those health issues.   And, you know, we all have so many memories of us being on stage where the expression of these stories-- many of which were based on truth, right, we were telling our own stories even as teenagers, as young people, telling our stories of the health circumstances that we experienced in real time in Baltimore City-- being able to express that was healing in itself, putting the script together, being on stage rehearsing, all part of the healing process, focusing those stories not just on the health challenge but what we as young people, as a community, could do about it.  That's what was demonstrated even back then, the transformative power of creativity to address individual, familial, community health.  And now that there is, I think, the explicit intentionality-- like we're really calling out the fact that WombWork in particular is a public health organization as much as it's an arts and culture organization-- has made I think a big difference in the support that the organization has gained, and really the opportunities to really dive into what other aspects of health can we start to affect and bring impact to with arts and culture being the foundation?

Jo Reed:  I'm going to come back to health, and health in the community, but I want to go to  storytelling.  And I really would like you to tell us how that came into your life, because it's a very specific avenue   

Dr. David Fakunle:  It goes back to the National Great Blacks and Wax Museum, and it was a celebration for the unveiling of Colin Powell's statue.  So Colin Powell and his wife came to Baltimore for the unveiling.  I actually had the chance to read a poem to Colin Powell and his wife.  There was a celebration for this momentous accomplishment, and during this celebration a lot of the children of the museum, you know, children of staff, children in the neighborhood who frequented the museum, just started to be creative, right?  They would sing, they would dance, they just kind of did whatever talent came to mind.  And I admit, out of envy, I decided that I wanted to put myself front and center, so for whatever reason, I told a story, you know, I have other talents, but for whatever reason in that moment I decided to tell a story, and I told the story of the yellow ribbon, and it was a hit most of all with Mary Carter Smith.  And Mary Carter Smith was a world-renowned griot, a Black storyteller, who had a radio show for 25 years at WEAA.  Again, this is very cosmic, very, very cosmic.  And she knew, like she knew that I got that story from her, like  where else would a little boy know the story of the yellow ribbon if not for her radio show?  So she was impressed by my rendition, she mentioned me on her radio show, which my mother, my sister, and I listened to Saturday mornings, 10 to 11:00 AM.  And she eventually reached out to my family and asked if I could come to WEAA and be on her radio show to read stories.  And eventually those reading stories turned into telling stories, and I still remember my first performance with Mary Carter Smith at the top of the World Trade Center in downtown Baltimore, I was 10 years old.  So being able to do those stories with, again, a world-renowned artist, a world-renowned storyteller, was immense, and the learning that I absorbed from her, not always direct teaching, just being in her presence, being in her house which was its own museum of artifacts and just mementos of her incredible life, I mean, please look up Mary Carter Smith if you haven't, she was an incredible woman.  And it was above all else the love that she showed me, she became a grandmother figure in my life and was the driving force for me really getting into Black storytelling. It’s been such a wild ride, but I'm so grateful for it.

Jo Reed:  Before we go to health--

Dr. David Fakunle:  Yes. 

Jo Reed:  --will you tell me a story?

Dr. David Fakunle:  Absolutely, absolutely.  I will tell the story that usually serves as my introduction to audiences, and I tell this story because it really captures the essence of what I do, it captures the essence of really what this journey is all about.  It's called “The Precious Stone.”

 There was once an elder woman, and every day this elder woman would walk through the forest.  She would take in the sights, the sounds, the taste, the touch, the smell, all the ambiance of the forest.  And she did it every day because for her the forest was refuge, it was sanctuary, it was connection to the divine, it was peace, it was everything for her.  On this particular pilgrimage, the elder woman came across a stone.  Now, you can imagine as an elder woman, she's seen a bunch of stones, we can talk big ones, small ones, round ones, jagged ones, smooth ones, shiny ones, dull ones, on and on and on and on and on.  So the elder woman knew there was something special about this stone.  So what'd she do?  She picked the stone up, she put it in her pouch, and she continued on her pilgrimage through the forest.  As she was continuing that walk, she came across a young man, and the young man was coming in the opposite direction.  It started as a shadow, but then she was able to see the face, she was able to see the eyes, she was able to see everything.  And with her eyes, she could tell that that young man had been dealing with some stuff.  She could see the hunger, she could see the thirst, she could see the tiredness, she could see the pain, she could see that all.  When the young man finally approached the elder woman, he practically got on his knees and begged her, ma'am, do you have anything that I can eat?  Do you have anything that I can drink?  Do you have a place where I can lay my head?  Can you tend to my wounds?  Ma'am, can you help me please?  It wasn't long until that young man's eyes caught gaze of the precious stone, and when they did, that young man was no longer thinking about his hunger, he was no longer thinking about his thirst, he was no longer thinking about his tiredness, his exhaustion, his pain.  There was only one thing on his mind.  And so he asked the elder woman, ma'am, may I have that stone in your pouch?  And without any hesitation, as if she didn't take a single thought at the request, and she never said a word, she took that stone out of her pouch, she handed it to the young man, and she kept walking.  So the young man is holding this stone in his hands.  The elder woman is continuing on her pilgrimage.  The young man is looking at this stone, and he hasn't taken his eyes off of for a second because he's thinking about never being hungry again because of this stone, never being tired again because of this stone, never being thirsty again, no one ever laying another finger on him.  All the things he wanted, he dreamed of, he desired, he saw the stone as an answer to all of that.  But eventually he looked up.  It was as if he was reminded that he was in the forest.  He felt the wind, he heard the birds, he saw the trees, he felt the ground beneath his feet, he smelled the fragrance of the flowers, he even found a berry to taste.  And after a while, the young man turned around, and he caught up with the elder woman who was still walking, still continuing her pilgrimage.  And when he caught up with her, this is what he said, ma'am, I want to give this stone back to you because I want whatever it is inside of you that allowed you to give me this stone so freely. 

So I tell that story, The Precious Stone, because the whole point of this life, this  existence to me, is that we have the capacity, whatever that capacity is, we have the capacity to give of our precious stones, and those are the qualities of our humanity.  That may show up in patience as you have shown me today, patience that shows up in diligence, right, to get this set up, it shows up in persistence, same thing, right?  It shows up in excellence.  It shows up in peace.  It shows up in forbearance.  There's so many manifestations of the ultimate virtue, the ultimate quality of our humanity, love.  And what this story encourages us to do as the elder woman did is whenever you have that opportunity to show love, to give love, to exude love, do it.  That's the precious stone.  That is what every other human being fundamentally wants on this earth.  Yes, we need food, clothing, and shelter-- Maslow's hierarchy of needs, shout out Maslow-- but ultimately we want love because we are humans, we need each other, and the best way that we exude that connection with each other is by loving each other.  And I continue to learn that love shows up in so many different ways, right?  You don't necessarily have to love everybody the same way, you shouldn't love everybody the same way, but you should love them.  And tying it all together, when we create space for people to share their truth, good, bad, ugly, beautiful, indifferent, confusing, you know, clarifying everything in between, there are very few ways better to love a person than to give them space to share their truth.  

Jo Reed:  Well, let's take that turn to health now.  Okay.  You specifically decided to train in social science research and public health research.  That was intentional.

Dr. David Fakunle:  Yeah. 

Jo Reed:  So tell me what made you decide to embrace that as well as your artistry?

Dr. David Fakunle:  Ooh.  Well, I'll say that I didn't choose public health, public health chose me, as cliche as that may be, but it's true.  There was a time after I graduated with my bachelor's where I knew I wanted to get into research.  I had my research interests, which really was a reflection of my life, born and raised in East Baltimore.  You can look up stats on Baltimore, you can look up the story of Baltimore, it has its challenges, no doubt about it, and I lived in a part of Baltimore that had its challenges as well.  And for a young Black person like me it could have been very easy, again, the razor's edge that many of us live on, it could have been very easy for me to fall on another side of that razor's edge where it could have been, unfortunately, as it is for so many people who look like me, it can be substance use disorder or any other type of manifestation of trauma, it can be incarceration, or it can be death, and there have been people who I grew up in my neighborhood for whom that was their fate.  And I looked at my life where I had the opportunities to maximize my educational capabilities, maximize my creative capabilities, maximize my athletic capabilities, just opportunity after opportunity after opportunity, and I saw how it turned out for me, how it turned out for my sister, and I was always struck with the question, why?  Why me?  Why us?  What made the difference?  So for me I carried that fundamental question about my own life to the research world.  There's got to be something about this story that has a generalizability to other circumstances when it came to particularly young Black men, me.  That question could have been answered through so many different fields, I learned, and at that time in my life I didn't need more options, I needed an answer.  So it wasn't until I connected with a faculty member at Johns Hopkins in the Bloomberg School of Public Health where I was told, you know, not you could, you need to, you need to do public health.  And it was specifically, you need to get a PhD in public health, and technically, because I've always got to give credence to the truth, a master's in social work.  I got one of them, the PhD in public health.  And what I quickly found out is that public health was the perfect space for me because it's everything.  Everything Is related to our health and wellbeing.  Buildings, right, buildings are related to our health and wellbeing.  Nature is related to our health and wellbeing.  Arts and culture is related to our health and wellbeing.  Yes, race is related to health and wellbeing.  Gender is related.  Everything is related to health and wellbeing. And it gives you, again, that carte blanche, that permission to explore everything, anything and everything, as long as you can make the connection to health it's fair game, and public health really suited me well from an intellectual standpoint to have that flexibility and almost kind of nebulous space, like I said, it's all over the place.

Jo Reed:  That makes sense—but let’s talk specifically about you intentionally bringing arts and culture to public health.

Dr. David Fakunle:  Now, arts and culture that part, serendipity shows up once again.  My first year of completing my PhD I took a class called Gaps in Opportunities in Public Mental Health.  I was in the mental health department at Hopkins, and this class, unlike all the others, was a practicum so it was about doing something as opposed to learning something, not just learning and just listening but doing.  And my instructor in that class found out I was a storyteller, and what she asked me to do for the practicum was go to a recovery center in West Baltimore that she was connected with, teach the clients storytelling.  I'm going to be honest, I was a little apprehensive, not because I didn't believe in storytelling, but the mindset that I brought to a place like Hopkins-- best probably health school in the world, they'll tell you, oh, they'll tell you-- was in order to survive, I wasn't even thinking about thriving, in order to survive getting this PhD from, again, the best public health school in the world I've got to be 100 percent focused on everything they're telling me that I need to do, right, epidemiology, biostatistics, research.  Research, that's your path, right, that's your journey.  But this instructor was adamant and, again, it's the instructor giving me my grade, so I'm like, okay, I'm going to do what the instructor asked me to do.

And so I went to this recovery center with my mother, a storyteller as well, I went with my aunt who is also a storyteller.  She may not be a professional storyteller in the sense that my mother and I are, but she is a professional-level storyteller, and what makes her presence so profound was she's been in recovery from substance use disorder my entire life.  Again, the cosmic nature of David's story, I grew up in the rooms of Narcotics Anonymous, and I say that proudly because in support of my aunt's recovery, my mother, my sister, and I would go to her NA meetings to support her.  Now, granted, probably shouldn't have been in those meetings with all the cursing that was happening, there were things I probably shouldn't have heard just given my age, but the wisdom that was passed down, whether those women-- and it was women-- whether those women realized it or not, they were giving me so many lessons about life, real life, <laughs> right? Those proverbs, those lessons that you only learn through living, and even at eight, nine, ten years old, I was absorbing them, right? I may not have fully understood them at that time, again, children understand what they understand at that age, but again, the seeds that were planted later on. So, my mother, my aunt, and I, we went to this recovery center, we met with the clinical director, the executive director. We made it clear this is not a research project. This is just to bring storytelling to people who should have the power to tell their story. This is being juxtaposed with what I'm learning at Hopkins, in other classes. I was on a training grant for drug epidemiology, so we were talking drugs all the time, “What's the relationship between this location, or that aspect, and the availability of substances, the use of those substances?” I'm thinking to myself “Is there anybody in this room who's ever used any of these substances? That knows what that experience is like?” Because I know people who <laughs> had those experiences. I'll bring my aunt <laughs> in a minute to tell her story. Even the clients at this particular recovery center, recovery and community, they were never going to be at the table where I was. But I knew from, again, the lessons I learned as a child, and even when I started to learn from them in the immediacy, their wisdom and their knowledge deserves a place at this table. Even more than that, it's necessary.  It's not a charity case. In order for us to best understand these health issues that NIH is giving them funding to train me to learn how to do, <laughs> you need them at the table. They need to be a part of this story. So, I looked at it from that standpoint, to equip people to be better advocates for their health. It became a space where the storytelling was the healing, right? It wasn't about the training, it was just creating space for people to tell their story, and to listen to each other's narratives, to find those opportunities where the lessons and the experiences could serve as a reminder of who everyone really was. Dealing with substance use disorder, being around people who have dealt with substance use disorder, you hear everything but who they are, a lot of times. Even in the rooms in recovery, there'll be a lot of times where the narrative focuses on the actions and behaviors related to the addiction, understandably so. That is part of the story. So, there’s no sugar coating or hiding the fact that you are in this space because of a health challenge that you're dealing with. That doesn't mean that's the entirety of the story. And the reference point, my aunt. My aunt was more than someone who was in recovery for 30 plus years at this point. There's more to her than that, and that was what I wanted people to understand about themselves. Even me, if I had to put the researcher hat on one day, if I had to put on the professor hat one day, I wanted whoever I work with to know that all of you are way more than just your age, your race, your sex, your gender, and the fact that you use substances. There's more to you than that. But in the research, that's how many of you would just show up. That's it. A compilation of statistics. Statistics don't make up humanity, <laughs> I'm sorry. So, for me, creating that space where people could have their humanity reaffirmed, in conjunction with all the other healing that was happening in the space, we weren’t the only piece, it was part of the overall puzzle, a part of the overall process of healing. You got to change how you think, you got to change your behaviors, of course. You got to change how you feel too, because those feelings will find their way into their thoughts, as well as find their way into the behavior. As we went through this iterative process, it started off almost like a kind of formal curriculum, we soon threw that away. It doesn't work in this space. It just had to be a fluid, flexible space where whoever showed up, whether it was a few people or over a dozen people, could feel comfortable telling their stories. What made it impactful was my mother and I were telling our stories. We have folk tales from the traditions that we brought to serve as catalysts for discussion, catalysts for people to tell their stories, characters to relate to, to find those connections between the narrative that we're presenting and their own narrative. But then sometimes we just had to tell our truth, what was going on that day for us. And I hold a special place in my heart for them because they were as much the emotional support that I needed to finish my PhD as anybody.

Jo Reed: Well, you brought that back, their wisdom, their stories, back into the School of Public Health, with-- tell me if I'm wrong, but what I'm thinking-- and with that idea of making intentional storytelling. That is the piece that you brought back to the School of Public Health.

Dr. David Fakunle: Yeah.

Jo Reed: Is that true?

Dr. David Fakunle: Yeah, well, again, serendipity, <laughs> and just having an opportunity to try things. I was just looking to get a good grade <laughs> in the class. That's all I was looking for at that time. But then the experience of actually doing it opened me up to other possibilities. It really was a revelation, and I use that word very intentionally, because the way that I felt, and the impact that we were having in such a short amount of time, we have public health projects all the time that understandably take a lot of development, a lot of foundation building in order for it to have the impact that it’s looking to have. This was happening just like that, and it was happening with low resources, low tech, it's mobile. All these things that we know can be beneficial to public health, especially when it's dire, I'm demonstrating it and I just started here, <laughter> right? I just started at Hopkins, and I found this pathway that just made all the sense in the world.

Jo Reed:  Okay, so you have this great idea…and it is a great idea; but then it needs to grow within an institution…and that can be tricky.

Dr. David Fakunle: What allowed the idea to grow and to be cultivated was the support that I got from faculty. I remember one of the faculty in my Department of Mental Health who I connected with and told the story, right? To me, as much as they may believe in the storytelling, and there certainly was that, they believed in me, and they were willing to give me the benefit of the doubt to say “Okay, let me hear what you're talking about. Let me see what you're talking about.” I quickly realized that's the opening that I needed. If I could bring them into the space, they'd understand. Even for this particular professor, tenured, highly regarded, has all the accolades, they were willing to accept the data of the experience. I didn't have to give them a paper, I didn't have to show them a formula. I said “Come into this space and you'll understand everything I'm trying to tell you,” and they did. So, even that in itself was, again, confirmation that okay, I get the importance of quantitative data, I get the importance of being able to show it in an empirical sense, but sometimes you just need to be there, and that be all the confirmation and validity that you need. So, the momentum grew, the support grew, so when I did graduate from Hopkins in 2018, literally the next week, after I walked across the stage and got my <laughs> PhD, I was teaching a class on storytelling in the Mental Health Department. Because I also recognized that storytelling had a value when it came to the dissemination of public health research. Having to be in workshops, having to be at seminars, having to be at keynotes, a lot of those professors, as brilliant as they are and were with their science, sucked. And I say it, “Sucked,” in telling the story. So, no wonder people were falling asleep, <laughs> or on their phones trying to get out of there, <laughs> myself included, and thinking to myself “All this time, and energy, and brilliance that's ultimately being wasted because no one's listening.” It's not resonating. So, if you incorporate just some of the basic elements of storytelling, which I grew up with, yeah, people would be a lot better. Again, a lot of the faculty and staff in the Mental Health Department supported that idea. They saw that vision and gave me the space to try, and I think all I was looking for was just the opportunity to try. If I failed, I failed, but at least I gave it a try. The story goes, it was successful, <laughter> very successful. So, again, my intuition and the skills that I brought as a storyteller, and honestly, when I say the PhD in storytelling that I brought to Hopkins is really what allowed me to find his marriage, to find this symbiotic relationship of the importance of creativity and obviously the necessity of health, and seeing that that whole was definitely greater than the sum of its parts. Sometimes the only way we can explain this thing called life is to sing, to dance, to paint, to sculpt, to act. But it shares this is what this is like for me, this thing called life, and the ultimate denominator is we all are doing that. We're all navigating this thing called life.  So, it goes both ways. We want health people to use arts and culture, we want arts and culture people to know how much they contribute to health, and being intentional about that. You don't even need six degrees of separation to make that connection to health. It's always there, it's about bringing it out into the open, into the forefront.

Jo Reed:  The Chair of the Arts Endowment, Maria Rosario Jackson advances the concept of artful lives. So I ask you: when you think about the idea of an artful life, what five or six words come to mind?

Dr. David Fakunle: First and foremost, shout out to Maria Rosario Jackson. Wow, I'm so glad she's in charge. <laughter> I had the chance to write a white paper with her through the University of Florida, “Creating Healthy Communities.” So, just to see where our paths have gone now, it's like “Yeah!” So, an artful life? Ooh, the five, six words. The five words that I will use are the five words that I designated as the existential determinants of health. What I mean by that is we understand many of our social determinants of health, race make-- again, race plays a factor, and location plays a factor, socio-economic status plays a factor. All those things play a factor in our health and well-being. What's above that? What are those true determinants that even despite all those social determinants, we can find across humanity, whether in Baltimore, Maryland, whether halfway across the world, it’s consistent? An artful life, for me, is one where our creativity allows us to maximize our acknowledgement of ourselves and each other. It allows us to show appreciation for ourselves and each other. It allows us to respect ourselves and each other. It allows us to have understanding of ourselves and each other. You probably know what the last one is, it allows us to love ourselves and each other. So, to me, those existential determinants of health are elevated and strengthened when we are living an artful and creative life.

Jo Reed:   That was my 2023 interview with Dr David Fakunle—among his many affiliations, he is on faculty at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; he’s also an assistant professor at Morgan State University in the School of Community Health and Policy, and serves as adjunct assistant professor at the University of Florida Center for Arts and Medicine.  David is also the president of the National Association of Black Storytellers and serves as executive director of Womb Works productions as well as the founder and CEO of DiscoverME/RecoverME. Additionally, he is the chair of the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Committee.  I asked if he ever sleeps. He says he naps often.

We recorded this interview at WEAA at Morgan State University the radio home of  Mary Carter Smith for 25 years. Many thanks for their kindness and generosity. You’ve been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating on Apple. I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.

Dr. David Fakunle:  I look to demonstrate the utility of storytelling, and really arts and culture overall, within the health context.  For me that shows up as research, that shows up as practice, that shows up as education, that shows up as advocacy, that shows up as activism.  Those would be, I think, the main five.  And, again, it's about showing that arts and culture are already present in our health.  We are all using some form of creative energy, and it does have a correlation and sometimes causation with our health and wellbeing.  What if we do that with more intentionality?  What if we do that with more emphasis?  What if we do that with more resources?