Abiodun Oyewole

28:29He conquers the divided. and people started quoting me. I mean, I have had more flowers given to me during these last few days than I've ever received. I mean, it was unbelievable. And it was primarily, and I wanted just to remind folks, yeah, we're on a boat, but I want to make it clear, but we're gliding over a graveyard of an underground railroad made of bones at the bottom of the sea because a lot of our ancestors decided they were not going to come to the new world and they jumped overboard. And so they just said, I will wait for my next turn. I don't like this one. And I wanted folks to just have that in their memories.

29:13And I successfully did that. And because of that, our impact, the love, the reverence for us has gone up at least a thousand notches. And I had a great chance to experience that. And I'm just grateful that I could do that in this particular moment in time.

29:32Bella Freud:Yeah. Because when you were 15, you changed your name from Charles Davis to Abidjan Ayewole. Yes. And I wondered what happened at 15 and what made you want to explore your... Well, what happened is, you know, when you... I went to an all-boys high school on 59th Street and 10th Avenue. And the moments of freedom that I had were days, if you had a half a day, you didn't tell your parents because they would expect you to be home, you know, the half a day. So a half a day was free time. And if I had a half a day, me and a friend of mine would just, we'd go to one or two places. Either go to the village to see the beatniks and all the freaky people that were hanging out in the village, or we'd come to Harlem.

30:22because I was raised in Queens, New York. And Queens is just a residential neighborhood. It's quiet. There's nothing much exciting happening in Queens. But Harlem was vibrant. Harlem was unapologetically black and powerful. It just had a certain energy. And we would come to Harlem just for the excitement of it all. and there was an African-looking edifice on 119th Street and Lenox Avenue.

31:00And the only thing I knew about Africa was watching Tarzan movies. So I started saying a lot of stuff that Tarzan used to say on TV. I'm standing in front of this there. I'm saying, buwana, buwana, ooga booga, ooga booga. I'm just acting a fool. I'm acting silly. and this light-skinned guy wearing African clothes came out and he was a light-skinned black person. And I'm saying he doesn't look African because all Africans were dark skin and just he didn't have his stereotypical African look to me, but he was fully dressed in African garb. And I remember he had a cigar and he was smoking a cigar and he said, why don't you come inside?

31:41You might see something else that would interest you. I know he heard me clowning the place. Yeah. But he was really cool. So he brought me in. So I went inside, and then it was kind of spooky because there were masks all over the place, and it was just strange. There was really a lot of African art, but I had never been around a bunch of African art, like some statues here, and just had a different kind of vibration. He gave me a black stone to hold in one hand and a white chalky stone to hold in the other. And he told me to shake and separate. So I shook them in my hands, and I had one in each hand.

32:21And they'd say, just hold me your fists. And when I point to your fists, open it up. So it was a process. He'd point to my right hand, and I'd open it up, and he would see what I was holding, and he'd write something down. And he'd point to my other hand and do the same thing. that went on for about maybe five minutes, maybe 10 minutes. And then he says, well, your name is Aviodun Oyewole. I said, no, it isn't. I said, my name is Charles Davis. They call me Chucky. Matter of fact, Lucky Chucky, because I had made a great jump shot that won a game first. So I said, Lucky Chucky, because it was like a lucky shot, but it went in and we won the game.

33:03And I like the fact that my name was Chuck. And so I was happy with my name. I had no problem with that. And now this guy is saying my name is Aviadu. I said, he said, no, that's your slave name. I said, I'm not a slave. He said, we have names that were given to us by the people who colonized. He gave me some history that I had not heard, I didn't know nothing about. And then he said, well, listen, if you decide to use it, He wrote my name down the way it was spelled. Then he wrote it down phonetically so I could say it. And then he wrote down the meaning of it. So Robbie O'Doom, he brings joy into the town, is what my first name means.

33:54It's the name given to a child born during a festive occasion. So if a child is born during a festive occasion, that's a reason for more celebration. Wow. And then my last name, Oyewole, means good fortune follows me. So now I had the name. I got the meaning. I got the phonetics. But it just didn't sound. I was not familiar with the Yoruba religion. Abi O'Doom didn't even sound African. It sounded Irish to me. O'Doom. I wasn't feeling any of that stuff. And he wrote everything on a piece of paper. I remember I folded the paper up and I put it in my wallet. and I had the paper for a long time. And every now and then I would look at it.

34:36But I was hanging out with some of my friends in Harlem and we were in a school listening to some black guy, I forget his name, but he was talking and he said, and all you colored people out there, happy to be called by your slave master's name, Mark and John and Paul and myself. So he was really kind of saying some stuff that was strong. And I was on an island, so I told my friends, I said, I ain't got no slave name. And so they said, man, your name is Chuck. That's what we call a white man. We say, Chuck is coming. We talk about the white man is coming. That's your name. They started making jokes.

35:15I said, my name is Avi O'Don. And if nobody, I said, you don't call me that, I'm not going to answer you. And they said, oh, come on, man. I said, really, if you don't call me Avi O'Don, I am not answering you. So I went on cold turkey with Chuck, and I made up on my fence call me Abiyadun. I remember my mother, I ran to my mother, my natural mother, at the bus stop in Queens, and I told her that I had changed my name from Charles Abiyadun. And she said, boy, you crazy. I gave your grandfather's name a perfectly fine name. What is your problem? I said, he didn't know, and you didn't know. And I know that we have African roots, and I'm adopting.

35:55I'm reclaiming our roots. And she just said, you're losing your mind. And now, if you speak to my mother, she says my name better than I do. Wow. I mean, she's proud of what I've done. Yeah. And she knows the significance of my life, and she even knows why I changed my name. But it was a real trip going through that name situation because I was very popular being Chuck. and I was a known, I was, I've always basically been a person, a people person. Yeah. And I have a lot of friends and when I changed my name, I also began to read more and gain more information about how we got to America, what it was all about.

36:39And I realized that slavery had existed long before the slavery that we went through. But the difference is that during slavery, you weren't required to get rid of your name, your culture, your religion, your customs. This is the only slavery that's recorded on the planet where our identity was totally erased. And that was a real, that is still a problem today. Many of us don't have any connections with Africa because we've been taught to dislike it, to not see it as being important, and to actually hate it, which causes many of us to hate ourselves. And that was all deliberately done. And I'm just glad that at least at the age that I changed, I began to open up my eyes and see the real truth.

37:32And it's made a big difference. and I think that I'm much more sane because of it.

37:41Bella Freud:Because you said your mother made you practice the Lord's Prayer in the basement. My mother, again, she was my first teacher and she was my first vocal coach. She had told the pastor of our church, Reverend C.B. Wilson, Easter Sunday is a big deal in the church. at least in a Black Baptist church. Yeah. They have Easter pageants. They have all kinds of celebration. And my mother had put my name on the list to recite the Lord's Prayer Easter Sunday. I was 10 years old. I had nothing to do with the fact that I was going to do this. This is my mother deciding that I should do the Lord's Prayer. So she put my name on the list.

38:31Reverend Wilson announced to the church, and Sister Davis' son is going to recite the Lord's Prayer. And they said, oh, praise the Lord. Amen. Everybody was so happy. And I was like, okay. And I knew the Lord's Prayer because a part of my raising was I had to say my prayers before I went to bed. That was a routine. You have to get on your knees and say your prayers, and then you go to bed. So I knew the Lord's Prayer backwards and forwards. but what she was going to do, I had no idea. We get to the house in Queens. I was raised in Queens. And she says, I want you to go downstairs in the basement and say the Lord's Prayer so I can hear you upstairs in the kitchen.

39:14I said, my mother's crazy. She decided, that doesn't make sense. You don't yell a prayer. It's a prayer. How can she hear me upstairs in the kitchen if I'm in the basement? That doesn't make any sense. But that's what she told me to do. So I said, well, if she wants to hear me, I got to yell. So I said, oh, and man, she came running downstairs and hit me in my stomach. She said, don't you yell? Oh, you pray. Don't you yell the Lord's Prayer? And I wanted to say, well, how else could I do it? She just, when she hit me in my stomach, she said, you put that air in that stomach and you just open your mouth.

39:55You got a big enough mouth. It'll come out. You have to yell the prayer. Just put the air in that stomach. You hit me in my stomach and you just say it. Just, and you say the words right. Pronounce every word. Because she was a real sickle about that. She didn't even like me talking slang in the house. She always wanted me to be articulate. She was very serious about how I spoke. And I kind of felt that I was separating myself and my friends in the projects because they would slur their words. They say stuff and it sounds slick and fancy. My mother wasn't having it. She wanted me to speak cleanly and clearly.

40:31And it was a trip. But anyway, I did exactly. I said it exactly the way she wanted me to say it. I have to go back over phrases. If I said, our father who art in heaven. No, say it different. I say it different. who are in heaven. I said, okay. So I have to go back. We went to this whole pattern. So when Easter Sunday came, Reverend Wilson took the microphone that's usually his mic at the pulpit when he's talking to the congregation. So he took it down. He put it on the floor for me to recite the Lord's Prayer. My mother jumped up, and she grabbed that mic. I said, he don't need no mic. And the church went crazy.

41:15they said, woo, praise the Lord. And here I am at 10 years old, without a mic, we sat in the Westboro in front of at least, there must have been about maybe a thousand people in that church. But I realized that my mother had set me up to run my mouth.

41:32Bella Freud:That's so fantastic. Amazing that someone, that that story has gone into oral history, that they're still talking about it. It was absolutely, I mean, I learned how to project. I mean, we had a gig at Boston College one time, and the guy that was a sound man, he was racist, and I could feel it when I first saw him. He just, he wasn't too keen on the last parts of being there. And when it came time for me to be sad, I was going to do the poem When the Revolution Comes, which is a popular piece. That's the one where Party and Bullshit came from. Yeah. And we had a room full. Everybody was there.

42:16It was crowded. And as soon as I got on the mic, the mic went dead. And then I look up at the sound booth, and the guy, he shrugs his shoulders like he doesn't know what happened. And I got angry, and I said, this is ridiculous. So I slammed the mic on the floor. And when the revolution comes without the mic, the place went crazy. Oh, wow. I just belted it out.

42:41Bella Freud:Yeah. And I said, I bet that'll learn me. I don't need a mic. I can do it without the mic. And I rocked it. That was one of the most moving performances because I just felt that he was trying to upset the show by turning my mic off. It's okay. Your training came good. He didn't know about my mother. No. And the last poets were formed in May 1968 on Malcolm X's birthday. And an early review described the music as acerbic, exciting, and as politically uncompromising as anything ever recorded, frightening and beautiful. Is that what you were aiming for? Yeah, well, basically, I mean, you know, it was a moment.

43:38I had a chance on this cruise, I had a chance to talk to Ernie Isley, who is a guitar player for the Isley Brothers. And I told him, I said, you know what? Our music always reflects our temperament and what's happening with us. Black people have a way of using our music to communicate how we're feeling about everything. and the Ozzie Brothers had a song out during that time called It's Your Thing, Do What You Want to Do. It's your thing, do what you want to do. I can't tell you who to sock it to. And I remember when they killed King on April 4th, 1968, when Dr. King got assassinated, I lost my mind because my mother revealed Dr.

44:27King. She saw him almost like as the second coming of Price. Daddy Joe, my father, the man who was married to my mother, who was my aunt and all that, but they were my parents. And I called him, his name was Joseph Davis, I called him Daddy Joe. Daddy Joe did not think King was smart. He thought that he was being stupid in the South, talking about love and non-balance. He said, because he was raised in Savannah, he says, He said, them white people down there, they sleep with their guns. The man is going to get killed. He's fucking crazy. You can't talk to somebody that's about using guns all the time and tell them to be nonviolent.

45:08That's not going to happen. And so he didn't have any respect for Dr. King. But because I love my mother so much, I like King too. Yeah. But at the same time, I understood what Dejo was saying. but I did feel hurt because when Ken got killed, a lot of black folks got totally wrecked because he was the person that was trying to help us get at least some equal rights in this country. So I called David and I had met each other a year before the group started because David had, he was the director of an anti-poverty program and I worked as an assistant director. That was one of my first jobs just before I went to college as assistant director of recreation.

45:50In other words, if the kids want to play basketball, I get to basketball, go play basketball. If they want to play volleyball, I get to volleyball. Whatever the activity was, I simply hand-handled the equipment and played with the kids, and I got paid for that. And it was so funny because during that same summer where I was working with David, my father died. He had gone to the hospital for counseling deposits on his knee, and he caught pneumonia while he was in the hospital and died. And I remember I was in the basketball court with the kids that day, and David's kind of awkward. Sometimes he's just out of sync and doesn't know how to say things.

46:34He came onto the court and he said to me, I guess you want to go home because your father just died.

46:42Bella Freud:Gosh. I said, what? Your father died. I guess you want to go home. I couldn't believe he was saying that to me so casually. First of all, Dave Johnson had been dead for calcium to pass on his knee. Yeah. That's not a major operation. What I do is just scrape the calcium off your knee. What are you talking about? Even though he was a mean man, he used to beat me all the time, and I wanted to kill him personally, I couldn't see him being dead. I just couldn't. That just had driven me away. But during that time that I knew David, when I first met him, he was writing poetry and writing some of it in Spanish because he knew Spanish and I speak Spanish.

47:24And I had just started writing a little bit because my high school teacher told me I was a poet. I didn't know I was a poet. My knowledge of poetry came out the fact that we do these vocabulary words every week and have to look them up and put them in a composition. and of course, you know, the composition, you'd be rated on the composition and all that stuff. So Ms. Carpenter was my English teacher and she gave us 10 vocabulary words and she said, you know, put them in the composition. I have to look them up and all that stuff. And I told her, if I put these words in a poem, can I get extra credit?

48:05So she looked at the list and she said, if you put these words in a cohesive poem, you'll get two extra credits. so now I'm being challenged and so I wrote a poem called Emancipation and anyway the poem was she said it was a great poem I won the contest I didn't even attend the judging of the contest none of that stuff because I was not believing in myself being I wanted to be a doctor I had major biology was one I got the highest score in the Regis exam in biology. My Chinese friends killed the chemistry, the physics, and the math. They just took all those awards. And I told my Chinese friend Tom, I said, listen, I'm going to get the biology award.

48:54He said, no, you're not. So we had this competition and I won the biology award. And I felt really good about it because I was I had been watching Ben Casey and Dr. Kildare on television. So I think that Ben Casey was a big influence because I wanted to be a neurosurgeon like Dr. Ben Casey. And so that was like an influence in my life. And that was for my TV show. But my teacher, when she read my poem, she says, I know you're writing, and I know you didn't take this from anybody. You're a natural poet. She says, I don't know what you're going to do with it, but you have that at your disposal. So I did, when they killed Dr.

49:34King, I did write a poem called Wall Street Journal. And I was sharing, I shared it with David, and he had been sharing some stuff with me. And so David said, man, listen, don't do nothing stupid. I'm going to put your name, and I met this other guy named Garland Kane. I brought out names on a list to do some poetry at Mount Morris Park on Malcolm's birthday. And so I felt good at one point, but people don't realize that I was scared to death because I'm not from Harlem. I'm from Queens. Harlem had a different kind of vibe, different energy. And I didn't know if I could go on stage and do a poem that was going to be appealing to the Harlem residents.

50:24So I didn't have no idea what could I, because the poem I had written that my teacher liked, Like, I knew I couldn't do Emancipation because it was like a love poem. I had been dealing with this sister who was older than me, and we were having dishes. So I just, I morphed all the issues I was having with her into this poem, Emancipation. And it was a nice poem. But the fact is, it wasn't any kind of poem that you do for a crowd that's there to celebrate a revolutionary leader like Malcolm X. I mean, godly. And I didn't know what I was going to do. And so I came to Harlem. and that's when the whole having a chance to talk to Ernie Isley on this cruise was so vital because they had a song called It's Your Thing Do What You Want to Do and I went to Harlem to try to find out what I was going to write I was just listening and observing everything and people were talking about how a guy would walk up to another guy and say yo man what's your thing man the guy said oh I'm in the nation of Islam Then a guy might walk up to another guy and say, what's your thing?

51:28The guy said, I'm a Black Panther. So I'm just listening, and everybody is purposing their conversation with, what's your thing? So I'm realizing that your thing became like a revolutionary pronoun. How are you affiliated with the movement? Because there was a movement going on. There was a civil rights movement. And when the civil rights movement was killed by the killing of King, the Black Power movement came into play almost immediately. And so we went from civil rights to Black Power. And so then I put that together, and I went home, and I wrote a poem called What Is Your Thing, Brother? Is it a black thing?

52:03Will it save black women and children? Will it build a black nation? What is your thing? Will it make brothers, love sisters more? I just dealt with all the issues that we were having with each other, and I referred to it as your thing. Is your thing doing that? You know, or you ain't got no thing at all. And I would just, I played with the world thing because that was a part of the theme of the whole piece. And so that became the very first poem I did with The Last Poets. It worked out because I also had, I had this idea that since David wanted us to be a group on stage, we didn't have a name.

52:45But we were to go up on stage as a unit because this whole idea, which David has wonderful, wonderful ideas. He's a great dreamer. But dreams don't live on their own. They have to be activated. Yeah. So I said, well, you know, in order for us to be seen as a group, we'd have to go up on the stage as a group. I said, let's see if we can sing together. Well, I had an idea for a song, but David couldn't hold a note if you handed it to him. Cain was sung. I was the only one that could really sing. But I had seen a chant, I heard a chant being done by some students at Howard University. Howard University had a president that they didn't like.

53:28They had an effigy of him hanging from a tree and they were marching around the tree. I was chanting and singing, Are you ready, niggas? You got to be ready. Are you ready? And I'd never heard the word nigger on TV before. Because when they advertised this demonstration at Howard, they had them doing that chant and it blew me away that they actually played that on television. But Cain had a poem entitled, Niggas are Untogether People. David had a poem entitled, Are You Ready, Black People? And I had my poem, What Is Your Thing, Brother? So it all seemed to fit with the idea of us singing, Are You Ready, Niggas?

54:09And so I just told David and Kane, I said, let's all chant. Are you ready, niggas? You got to be ready. Are you ready, niggas? You got to be ready. And so if we go once they're chanting, that will confirm the fact that we are a group. And then there was this guy named Hakeem on the drums. And he was, the dancers had just finished performing. And he was packing up. And I told him to stay and play behind us. and he played a beat, gave us a beat. And as they say, the rest is history. By the time we got to the middle of the stage, the entire park was singing, Are You Ready, Niggas? It was a moment that I'll remember forever because it put us on the map.

54:55And then David was the one that did the research for the name and that's when he came across Cocosili's poem. But that was the beginning. and it was a special moment.

55:10Bella Freud:Because when your first album came out, you were actually imprisoned for robbing the Ku Klux Klan local offices to get some bail money to release some friends. When the album came out, yeah, I was locked up and I was incarcerated. And that was a real, you know, I kind of felt like I was missing the revolution. It was kind of funny. God. But I was also getting a wind of how impacting it was because guys were coming in prison quoting me. And I couldn't tell anybody that that was me they were quoting. But there was one guy who I befriended. He's from Charlotte, North Carolina, named Jonathan Bird.

55:56And he came over to my bunk because I worked in a prison hospital and we lived in a dormitory. and he come up to my bunk and he said, New York, New York, the Big Apple. That's one of the pieces on the album. That's one of the pieces I wrote. And my name in prison was, I had two names, New York and the other name that they would refer to me as was called The Writer. I was called The Writer because I wrote all the time. And plus I had about 12 wives while I was in prison because there are a lot of guys who couldn't write and they wanted somebody to write letters to their wives to keep their marriages going on.

56:36So they would pay me five pieces of plastic, which is like five hours, to write letters for them to keep the communication between their girlfriends or their wives and not have to hear stories. So I got stories that they couldn't even put on TV about the relationships that they were having with these women prior to them being busted. so I had some juicy stories oh my goodness and I would write in the language that they spoke because I didn't want them to think that this was a ghostwriter I wanted them to think that that came from that person I even misspell words sometimes just to try to make it sound like they did it you know yeah and um but this day when Burry came over to my my bunk and said New York New York, the Big Apple.

57:24I couldn't take it anymore. And because I was talking to him all the time, because he was enchanted by the fact I was always writing, and he said, what are you doing, writing a book? I said, yeah, I'm writing a book. He said, man, this is the third time on this bid, and I've been wanting to write a book about my experiences. But I said, well, what are you talking about? You want to write a book? You're in here. You might as well just go and start writing, man. I mean, I'm not going to serve time. I'm going to get time to serve me. So he said, wow, that's a good idea. That's a good idea. I mean, I like that way of thinking.

57:54So he would write his book during the day. Because we both worked in the prison hospital, and you don't have anything to do sometimes. You're just sitting at the table with the glasses and the alcohol, whatever your patients might need. But you've got time. So I would write. And then we would share what we wrote in the evening during the day. So that was like our TV show. We were entertaining each other, and we were making progress with our writing. And so when he came in my section, he said, I said, boy, that's my shit, man. He says, what do you mean? That's mine. I know the whole poem. Man, them cats are bad.

58:30They from New York? I said, that's where I'm from. He says, New York, are you okay? I said, yes, I'm fine. He says, look, you were in here when I came in here. This album just came out. I said, boy, that album was recorded in 1969. It's just been released now in 1970, but it was done about six months ago. He says, are you all right? I said, yes, I'm fine. So now I know it's difficult. I'm in prison in North Carolina. These guys are from New York. This is a product that came out of New York City. What in the world would make somebody believe that I'm not crazy? I mean, you know, because this doesn't make any sense.

59:21But I figured out the way that we could solve the problem. I told Bo, I said, look, write your wife, because his wife would come to visit him every Sunday. She was really religious about seeing her man. I said, write your wife, tell her to bring the album cover with her to the back hall. That's where the business took place. I said, you can only look at it. Well, look on the front, and you'll see my picture, then come back and tell me who I am. Oh, God, so great. And that was the beginning of nothing but a problem because he came back, tears in his eyes. What are you doing here, man? You're my hero.

1:00:03What are you doing? I said, I committed a crime, but obviously that's why I'm here. I said, I don't need any more publicity. You know and I know who I am. Let it be just between you and I. But you see, you can't stare at somebody in prison. When you're in prison, you have to be careful because there are guys who are trying to make you a girl any chance they get. And so if you're staring at another inmate, everybody's going to notice that. And it's like you're trying to set this guy up for some kind of a, something might happen, you know. And you just cannot stare. We're in the cafeteria. He's staring at me all the time.

1:00:46I said, Bird, you got to stop. I said, man, I can't believe that you're in here. I said, believe it, bird, I'm in here with you. Just keep it to yourself. I was so happy about maybe a month or maybe a month and a half later, he got transferred. I was so, God, I was so glad because he was blowing my cover. I didn't need to have any more publicity. What I had done was bad enough. I got a lot of publicity, and I didn't even realize that I got respect for my corrections officer So because of what I had done, the respect showed up with the fact that I never had to stand in a circle and wait for my name to be called to let me know if I had any mail.

1:01:27If I had any mail, all I had to do was go look under my pillow, and my mail was there. And I even asked for it one time. I said, I don't know why Perry puts my mail under my pillow. I don't brown-nose Perry. I don't even say good morning to him. I just mind my business. He says, New York, who else is in here for robbing the Klan? He said, you crazy, man. He said, they respect you. I said, they respect me because I bought them? They said, yeah. I said, wow, that's deep. I said, I couldn't put it together. But if I had any mail at all, it would be under my pillow. And I got mail all the time. All the time.

1:02:05She wrote me regularly, you know, until I went, oh, that's another story. Anyway, the fact is that prison experience was a worthwhile experience that I will treasure as a part of a necessary growth of my mind, body, and soul.

1:02:24Bella Freud:Because you did a college degree in prison, is that right? I did what? You completed a college degree in prison. Yep, at Shaw University. My custody was changed from maximum to medium. I went, they had two programs for you, work release or study release. And work release is like being a chauffeur for the governor or mowing his lawn or being a waiter doing something menial like a slave. And study release meant that you could go to college and get your education. But, you know, they don't give you no scholarship from prison. So when they asked me what would I do if I had my custody changed to me and what program would I like to be connected with, I said I'd like to finish my education at Shaw University.

1:03:12And I remember the woman on the parole board, she said, well, we don't give money for folks to go to Shaw. And the last time I recall, Shaw charges tuition. And according to the money you have in the back hall, that's not going to pay for tuition. I said I have other sources of money. Because I wasn't going to pour my money in the back hall. That's where we had the money. I mean, you know, you have your, I had money in the back hall for toiletries, you know, toothpaste and candy, you know. But the check, the first royalty check from the first album had come through. And I gave my lawyer permission to give that check.

1:03:50Matter of fact, I was kind of insulted when he wrote me and said, you have a royalty check and I have to get permission from you before I give it to your wife. And I'm thinking, it's automatic you should give it to her because, you know, that's my wife. But he said, and the reason he said that is because he says, a lot of times things change when guys are locked up and their wives are outside. So he just couldn't just automatically give it to her. I had to make that possible. But I had no idea that things were going to really change. And things had changed. But I was just, I thought she was, you know, anyway, that was another thing.

1:04:29but I had money and I knew that I could pay my tuition and the woman just at the parole she says well if you go to Shaw and you can't pay the tuition you'll come right back here and you can be right back in maximum security so that would mean I would lose that privilege it just so happened that I didn't have enough money to get out and pay the tuition and then I there's a man on campus named O.A. Dupree he's no longer with us but he's like everybody's father He's a father figure. And he hooked up and he made it possible for me to get grants and stuff and all that to finish the rest of my education.

1:05:06And I made it through financially. I had no problem. Incredible. But it was an experience. It was a real wild experience because much of the money that I thought, I called BG up and said, I need$5 ,000. I said, I wanted to buy some clothes, you know, because someone would look nice and paid a tuition, I think for something like$1 ,200 or something. And I said, 75, I don't have$5 ,000. I said, what are you talking about? Well, I had to live. I said, oh, my God. I mean, I wanted to kill her. I could not believe she had gotten a check for$21 ,000. And what the hell? I mean, I was messed up. I really was.

1:05:58I mean, I really wanted to just come to New York City and kill her, get on a plane, get back to prison on time. I mean, I had plotted the whole thing. But I was just so upset. Yeah. So upset. She took advantage of the situation. And I was totally, I was messed up behind her. But anyway, things worked out. And I even apologized to her because I was saying, because I was suffering, because I couldn't be with anybody. I was locked up. I wanted you to be locked up too. I said, that's unfair to you. I said, you needed love and comfort, and you found someone to give you that, and I should have not been so selfish to deny you a natural pleasure.

1:06:43And I just want to apologize. And I did. I apologized to her because I think, I mean, I'm sure I'm not the only one who has done that because I asked her what I was given the time when the judge said, I sent you to no less than 12, no more than 20 years. I was 22 years old, and I looked at her, I said, I'll be out when I'm 25. I said, are you going to wait? She says, I'll wait. So I was good to go. At least I felt everything was going to be okay. But she didn't wait. She hooked up with somebody about six months after I was in there. and the problem was that they were also trying to get this person to call my son, had my son call him Daddy and that messed me up too.

1:07:24So I was angry for a minute but I got a little bit old because my son and I are super close and all that stuff is water under the bridge.

1:07:36Bella Freud:Yeah. Gosh. because you said you fell in love with poetry through Langston Hughes and I read that you started writing poetry to impress women. Do you still do that? Oh, yes. Langston Hughes was without question. I think the first poem I read by him was A Dream Deferred because that's the poem that opens up Lorraine Hansberry's Raising in the Sun. And I was introduced by him. my English teacher introduced me to Langston Hughes and I just thought his poetry was so lyrical and so rich and Negro speaks of rivers oh my goodness it's a classic I mean that's still for me one of the best black history poems ever and it's short but he uses the rivers to talk about our history every river that he mentions from the Nile to the Congo to the Mississippi, they're all really just metaphors to speak of the places we've been and the experiences we've had.

1:08:45And he uses the river to describe that. And it's just so special. And his work, you know, he was a real people's poet. He could speak directly to the pulse of the people. And if you're a poet and you're a poet for a particular group of folks, you've got to know that group. You got to be around them. You got to feel them. You got to taste them. You got to smell them. You got to know their rhythm. And that's the fascination about being a poet, to be able to just morph yourself into the spirit of the people that you're trying to write about so that they can understand better. Because the poet really doesn't tell you anything new.

1:09:28The poet tells you what you think you know, but they just make you see it in a way that you've never looked at before.

1:09:34Bella Freud:Yeah. So that's what all poets, T.S. Eliot, Philip Getty, Eli, all poets provoke thought. If you're a poet and you don't provoke thought, you're not a poet. Stop saying you're a poet. You must provoke thought. And the thought doesn't come from a foreign place. It comes from someplace familiar, but it makes you recognize how deep that familiarity can be. That you didn't search, you didn't go as deep as a poet. one of the people that I will always reveal in my life is Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese poet. The prophet, I don't, I mean, if you're a poet, I don't care what ethnicity you are, you've got to have the prophet in your library.

1:10:18Yeah. I mean, and he saved me from going crazy about my children. When he'd say, speak to us about children, he says, your children are not your children. They're the sons and daughters of life, longing for itself. Wow. That is absolutely true. And yet we always try to make our children be where we want them to be. They got their own path. I don't know what their path is going to be. And as a parent, you have to let your children go and find their own way. And hopefully, if you have a relationship with your child, you'll really be close. But you cannot determine what your child is going to do.

1:10:50You do not know their path. He describes the parent as the bow and the children as the arrows. And you shoot them off into space, you don't know where they're going to land. but you just hope to land in a safe place. That's all.

1:11:03Bella Freud:Yeah, yeah. So beautiful. And you've met all sorts of people, Miles Davis, Albert Isler, and Sun Ra. And you told me that you'd supported Nina Simone on tour once. And how did you get on with the great Nina? Nina Simone was crazy. She's good and crazy and a genius. And I love her so much. we had a concert together and she tried to douse me with cognac but see and I blame David for that David Nelson one of the poets he had done a song a poem called Today is a Killer and Nina Simone on her album Emergency Ward she actually that's another one of the uncanny things about Nina she could take a poem and make it a song she just had that gift she was a gifted extremely gifted artist And so she took David's poem and made it into a song.

1:12:01And it's called Today is a Killer. And it's very appropriate for today. I was just clown in the White House. And so I had a jazz group. Before I got back with the last poets, I've always been a music person because singing was the first art that I got into as a kid. I've always sung. And my mother, she would promote that. The Everly Brothers was one of my favorite little groups, and they had the song, Whenever I want you, all I have to do is dream, dream, dream, dream. And so she knew I knew that song. If it came on the radio, she'd turn the radio down, have me sing it louder. If there was a neighbor outside, she'd call them in to have me sing.

1:12:48She was always supportive of everything I did. And so singing was something I really, truly enjoyed. So when I wasn't doing the last sports thing, I would put together some cats, and I had a jazz group, and I'd write songs. And I always had some nice jazz groups. So I had two different groups, and they both were called Griot, different players with the same name. And Griot was a term that means African storyteller.

1:13:16Bella Freud:Oh, yeah. So, and we were kind of popular in this city, and we were going around, had some, had a great guy on piano named Kasala, a guy named Jeff King on sax, Andre Strober on drums, Metathrius Pearson on bass. Baba Fimi, brother I went to Shaw University with. He's no longer with us. And a great flute player, and he could scat. And Tony Robinson on Congress. I had a nice group. So the group was known, and it was a concert at the Beacon Theater, and we were asked to perform, open up for Nea Simone. It was her show, but we were going to be opening up for her. and it was in the New York Times that Grio was opening up for Nina Simone at the Beacon.

1:14:07So David saw that and he congratulated me, called me up. He said, yo, Dune, congratulations, man. He says, you guys are hot. You're going to open up for Nina at the Beacon, man. That's such an honor. I said, yeah. I said, yeah, I'm looking forward to it. And I get a chance to meet my idol because I always idolize Nina. And Nina and Nancy Wilson were two of the singers that I loved the most. So David says to me, look, man, you know, I did a poem that she turned into a song, and I know her off her album so, but I haven't gotten any royalty check. Ask her about my royalties when you see her. I said, sure, no problem.

1:14:45Oh, man, I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I'm backstage at the Beacon. I see Nina. She's coming into the stage. and my heart is beating a thousand times a second because I'm getting ready to meet a person I've revered all my younger life, and now I'm going to be on stage with her, and now I'm getting a chance to meet her face-to-face. So when she came up to me, I said, Miss Simone, my name is Abiyo Dune. I'm a member of The Last Poets. I know you know the group because you work with one of my partners, David Nelson, and he asked me about his royalties from the poem that you did on your album, that you turned into a song.

1:15:34I said, is he married? I said, I don't know. I said, if he's married, tell him, fuck his royalty check. If he's not, we can talk about it. I said, oh, shit. So she let me know, by the way, that she was not exactly a friendly person. And then I started getting angry with David. I said, David must have known about her attitude. He set me up. And then the thing that really made it even worse was that there were two shows. Now, the second show, Robert Van Luret was the guy that was the producer of these shows. And he was the money behind the shows. So he actually told me, he said, listen, we're going to get Nina on first.

1:16:21Your group, which everybody's loving, you're going to close out tonight. So that's a real honor. We're going to close out tonight. But the problem is, it's Nina's show. She's the headliner. And she's in her dressing room drinking cognac. And everybody is tiptoeing around. and the people, the announcer said, Nina will be on stage very shortly, but she ain't moving. And the people started to clap. We want Nina. You can hear them across the street. Yeah. And Van Looq is talking to security guards. Nobody can make her come downstairs. I don't know what they were afraid of. And I started thinking to myself, you know, because this is a show, she can drink conic for as long as she want.

1:17:09Then she can go on stage and play for as long as she want. and at the end of her playing, it might be 12 o 'clock. And I know that after 12 o 'clock, you have to pay the stage hands or everybody else time and a half. And I don't know if Bandit Lopes got money to pay extra money and we might not get a chance to even go on. So I said, no. I said, there's got to be at least 200 or 300 people out there that want to hear my group. I'm going to go and get Nina on that stage because I don't want to miss this opportunity to perform. So I go in the dressing room. I said, Nina, I know you hear these people applauding for you to come on stage.

1:17:44Who is this man? I said, I'm Avi O'Doone. I met you downstairs. You know who I am. I'm Avi O'Doone of the last poet. I'm going to ask the people if they want to hear a goddamn last poet or me and Simone. I said, don't act so stupid. Why are you doing that? I said, people are waiting for you. They've waited for me. They'll wait longer. I said, oh, my God. She was, I said, you know, you're being real stupid. I can't believe this. and that's when I just pissed her off and she took her she was holding a glass of corneic in her hand and she took that glass I could see her coming and I did the matrix and I got out of the way that corneic hit the wall not a speck that one on me and then Bobby Bannleaf had a security guard say you know what can I do make sure he stays away from the stage but see she wasn't going to bring that business what we had backstage She wasn't going to bring that one stage.

1:18:39There's always two shows. I discovered that with a lot of the artists, they may all be fussing and fight backstage, but when people get on that stage, they become professional because they know that you just don't bring that mess that happened backstage or on stage. I was leaning right up against one of the fools. She could easily see me. I was right next to the piano, and I'm looking at her, and she did her thing. She did Nina Simone and she sang and she put like she does when she plays piano. She played the blues and she go into some Bach and Beethoven and Mozart. And she jumped up and get happy and do a little Nina Simone dance.

1:19:16She saw me. She never brought up any of that stuff. And she did her show. And my group had time to go on after that. And when I went on and I said, in honor of our featured artists this evening, I would like to do a poem. And Robert Finney, the brother who had gone to show with me and knew me very well, he gave me a look, said, oh, God damn. And he thought I was going to say something mean because we had just had this mean, but I wasn't going to do that. I did Black Rose, which is one of my love poems. It's a classic love poem that actually was published with Dead Prez and a video was done too.

1:19:55And it's a love poem. And I figured if Nina is that toxic, if she's that belligerent, She needs love. And I wanted to shout. And the people in the audience understood that. Because when I finished that poem, everybody stood up. Like they understood exactly what I was trying to do. And it was a beautiful moment. And we successfully ended that show. It was a fantastic evening. But that was my wonderful experience with Nina Simone.

1:20:28Bella Freud:What a great experience. and say, what a story. That's incredible. Yeah. God. And I had been forewarned by her husband, Andy Stroud, because the day before I had gone there to do the paperwork and he was taking care of her business. So in the lobby before we left the Beacon, I said, well, man, it's nice to meet you and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. He said, oh, no, no, you won't see me tomorrow. I said, tomorrow's the show. This is the concert. He says, I know. And the tickets are sold out. You should have a great time. I heard your group. Your group sounds great. Sounds like you got it together, and you're going to have a wonderful time.

1:21:07I said, well, you got something to do? He said, nope, I have nothing to do. I said, but you can't come and see the show? He says, you don't understand. He says, Nina trusts me. She knows I'll get the check. She knows I'm going to take care of business. But if she and I are in the same place at the same time, there's going to be a fight. She says, you'll find out. You'll meet her. You'll see. And I said, that's crazy. That doesn't make any sense. She said, he signed all the papers for her. He's taken care of all of her business. But yet he's not going to. It just doesn't make any sense. After I met her, I understand.

1:21:47I got it.

1:21:48Bella Freud:Amazing. God. Your proof is in the pudding. Nina had issues. She's a brilliant. But you know, we have quite a number of great artists. who can flip on you. It's caused me to come up with this thing called the theory of laws. And I have this theory that says, appreciate the gift. Do not get caught up with the giver. Right. You might just hurt yourself. Yeah. Because the giver is not always on the one. The gift might be one of the greatest gifts you'll ever receive in life. But the person that delivered that gift, you might not want to have them over for lunch. Yeah. I suppose it's like principles above personalities, isn't it?

1:22:34Bella Freud:You just keep them separated. Right. Yeah. And what were women wearing at the time, and what did you find attractive? I've always revered women because, first of all, I'm a gardener. I love women, period. and when they have talent, it just excites me to see any woman perform, whether it's dancing, especially dancers, because I guess dancing is poetry in motion and I'm really, really fond of dancers. Nancy Wilson's always been like at the top of the line for me. She's just a sophisticated singer that just kind of would sing me to sleep. And if you fancy someone and don't like what they're wearing, does it kill your attraction?

1:23:29What you're wearing does reflect how you're thinking, as far as I'm concerned. And I definitely have a thing about the appearance, because women, the one thing that I've always appreciated about women in general. Women will uphold the culture. Africa is a classic example. You go to Africa right now, you will see more women wearing African garb. A lot of the men are wearing jeans and sneakers and, like I said, they wear suits and ties forever. They believe in that stuff. And you'll find some men that will wear the garb. But the women will wear their African garb in a heartbeat. They'll have their heads, they'll have their gailies on their heads, and they're wearing an African dress or something.

1:24:21Give me enough so that my imagination can soar. Give me a dress that's got a split down the side where I can just see a little bit of your leg so I can imagine what the rest of your leg looks like. If you've got the split coming all up your butt, and I can see your thigh and your leg and everything as you're walking, I mean, that's not attractive to me. I mean, give me something to let my imagination buy it out the best. Because the women who are using poetry to me more than the men do. Because you said, I wanted to be a revolutionary using poetry like ammunition firing at the system.

1:25:02Bella Freud:And now you open your home every Sunday and you have these poets, rappers, singers, philosophers, teachers, students who come to your home. And you said everyday people who have an appreciation for the arts and yearn to be around love and black consciousness. Right. Are you hearing new voices emerging from the gatherings? Oh, yeah. You know, there's some, Kendrick Lamar, for example, is a young voice that I'm appreciative of. And plus, I've already started the second generation of last poets. So Sharif Simmons is our new last poet because he's writing poetry that's uplifting, that's saying what we need to hear.

1:25:54Aja Monet is the first woman that I've actually put into the group because I think it's time for a woman's voice to be heard as the last poet. Then there's some other sisters that I appreciate. Jessica K. Moore, she's another person that will be considered the last poet. She's a young sister who was actually introduced to the world of poetry by us because we had a gig in Detroit. And she came into our dressing room. It was a place called Poor Me, which was P-O-U-R. Oh, yeah. And she just came into the room with me and my world and Barbara Tanae. And she said, I want to open it. I said, Sister, love, we could have been naked in here.

1:26:44What are you doing? Just combusting it. She says, I've seen what men have. They don't shock me. I said, well, what do you want? What's your problem? I want to open for you all. I said, D-Knowledge is opening for us. And so she says, he can't do it like I can. I said, damn, she's kind of bold. So I said, what's your sign? She said, I'm a scorpion. I said, okay. I said, my partner's a scorpion. I said, you talk to him. If he agrees, now I'll go along with it. So I left the room. I left to talk to Umar. And so when D-Knowledge came on stage, He was introducing us, and he was giving us all this lavish introduction.

1:27:25Jessica came on stage, and she said some things. And here she did a poem called Black Girl Juice, which was a monster poem. And at the end of the poem, she says, as a matter of fact, she describes this juice, the essence of her coming out in a juice form that you can get if you have an empty glass. She says she has some black girl juice, if you ask, and she can pour into your glass, whatever and guys run to the stage with their cups and all it's just crazy i mean but she's a great poet and she's got some real good imagery she really knows how to write poetry there's no doubt about it so i told her i said well if you decide to come to new york city here's my address and phone number and i'll hook you up with the poet community because i had been i always work with some young poets i gain a great deal i want to be in touch with the with the the energy with to young people who need to know how we can move forward.

1:28:22And since I'm one of the older people, I think it's my responsibility to try to bring the young people along.

1:28:31Bella Freud:Yeah. And so I've always had a crew of young folks around me. Plus, I played basketball until I was like in my mid-60s. So I'm a big basketball fanatic. Really? And so the kids loved it because I was good. I was still shooting great jump shots. and so I gave her her address and phone number and she said, about two weeks later, somebody said, my door opened it up, it's Jessica with a suitcase. I said, well, you came to New York? She said, yeah. I said, well, where are you staying? She says, here? I said, here. I said, I got sons. What are you talking about? She says, boys don't scare me. Anyway, she stayed in my house for about a month.

1:29:12She finally got her own place and then she decided to go on the Apollo at amateur night, which can be devastating and she's going to do poetry and she says she needed to use Babatunde, our drummer I said, nope, nope, nope I'm not going to have him in that mess I said, you're going to go on that stage by yourself and do your poetry I think that they'll like you I said, I hope they do because if they don't, it's going to be that's something you have to do with but I don't want Baba in that. You know, that's on you. So that young lady went on that stage and turned it out. She won five weeks in a row.

1:29:55So she's a legend in her own time because no one can claim that they've gone on the Apollo stage and won five times in a row doing anything. And she did it doing poetry. And I went to the last show that she had and I understood what was happening. She has a poem that's called The Black Statue of Liberty because the Statue of Liberty was sent over. A lot of folks don't realize the Statue of Liberty was sent to America by the French for the freedom of the Africans from slavery. A lot of people think it was sent over because America had freed itself from England. No. The Statue of Liberty was originally, the face of the Statue of Liberty was the face of a black woman and it was changed because you could not see no 60-foot woman, no 60-foot black woman in the harbor of New York.

1:30:47That was just not going to happen. And I tried to tell these nuns that because I was doing a workshop with someone with some nuns. And this one red-headed Irish nun, she just says, that's hard for me to believe. And I said, I know you think because I'm black, I'm just making up stories, black stories. I said, but since you're going to see the statue of Louie tomorrow, look at the base of her gown and see where the chains have been broken. There's only one group of people who came over here in chains. And I think we could agree to that, right? So she said yes. So I said, because the Irish didn't come over here in chains, neither did the Italians.

1:31:26Even though the Irish and the Italians both were treated badly, they were not in chains. We were in chains. And she came back, she had tears in her eyes. She says, I didn't know. I said, a lot of people don't know. So Jessica has a poem called The Black Statue of Liberty. And in her poem, she says, I want to see the words, go strong black woman when the Goodyear blimp flies by. And because the image is so profound, and we've all seen the Goodyear blimp with its messages, the women jumped up out of their seat and they start clapping. They want to be celebrated. So she gave a great celebratory line to them that they responded to immediately.

1:32:09And that's how she won the Apollo five times because she was singing praises to the women.

1:32:15Bella Freud:Yeah. And they appreciated that. And so she can call the Apollo any day of the week and get her set up to do a show there. Almost whenever they got free time, she can get in here. Right now they're renovating the place. But she's got special privileges because of what she did. But she's another person that would be considered the last poet. Because it's really like a philosophy that I would like to see a whole fellowship throughout the world. And people of different cultures, white, black, Latino, but people who are really ready to place humanity at the top of the chart. Because right now I see the world is divided between those who are human and those who are inhuman.

1:32:59It's usually the morality that takes a country down. When your morals fall flat, that's when the country starts to fade. That's when things fall apart. And that's what's happening in America and it's happening in a few other places. And I'm concerned about the morals of humanity because I like people. I like people. When I go places, people say, dude, you travel so much. What do you get out of traveling? I meet angels everywhere I go. I've never been any place where I have not met an angel. I was in a place called Spa, England. I think it's Spa. It's someplace over here in England. You know what I'm talking about?

1:33:45Bella Freud:Bath Spa. And we were staying in his house. This guy had a fantastic garden, which I was enchanted by. He had all these beautiful plants and flowers growing. And we were going to the house. The woman ran upstairs. She said we had on a mudcloth crown. And the woman ran upstairs. We walked in the house. I said, oh, my God. I hope I didn't scare her. And she comes down with a mudcloth jacket to match my crown. She said, this must be yours. I got this when I was in Mali. But it's a little too big for me. I think it'll fit you. It fit me perfectly. I have it in my house now. And I said, wow. And she says, and I saw on social media that you like chocolate chip cookies.

1:34:26I made some China chip cookies. I hope you like them. I mean, it was nothing but love. Pure love. How can you deny that? I mean, come on. I mean, that's what life's supposed to be about. And that's what being a revolutionary for me is about. Humanity versus inhumanity. And that's where I'm coming from. I say that there are two tribes on the planet. There's a dog tribe and there's a God tribe. and I'm a member of the God tribe and I know quite a few people that got nothing to do with your color, your ethnicity, are members of the dog tribe. I can't use that. The dog is cool, it's nice as a pet, but the dog is not running things, I'm sorry.

1:35:11Bella Freud:Well, thank you so much, Abiyadun, for being on Fashion Neurosis. Well, I appreciate what you're doing, Bella, and I think your grandfather would appreciate it too because it's a unique way of being psychologically on point. Well, it means a lot to me doing how we met. You know that you allowed me to be part of the Last Perth family and that we have this collaboration. You're someone who is so important to me and I really love you. And so to be able to collaborate on fashion neurosis and for you to be here and tell me about your life, it means everything. And thank you so much. Well, I appreciate the opportunity to do what I do best.

1:36:01Yes.