December 21, 2016 The Skanner Page 11
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13th
cont’d from pg 7
ishment for a crime.”
The movie’s basic thesis
is that, aft er the Civil
War, racists seized on
that loophole to keep the
black masses in chains.
The fi lm features in-
terviews with an array
of luminaries, including
Angela Davis, Senator
Cory Booker, Dr. Henry
Louis Gates and attor-
ney Michelle Alexander,
author of “The New Jim
Crow: Mass Incarcera-
tion in the Age of Color-
blindness.”
Inter alia, “13th” blames
Legend
cont’d from pg 7
one we’d love to collabo-
rate with. My producing
partner [Mike Jackson]
suggested we connect
with him very early on,
aft er we saw a screener
of “Whiplash.”
We fi nally got a chance
to sit down and discuss
something creative when
he was in the process of
preparing to shoot “La La
Land.” The script was fi n-
ished, and they were al-
ready in talks with Ryan
and Emma to star in it.
Damien wanted to see
if we were interested in
getting involved. He was
originally thinking in
terms of executive pro-
ducing and in terms of
the music for the charac-
ter, Keith, and his band,
The Messengers. But
eventually, he asked me
if I wanted to play Keith.
I said, “Yeah, let’s do it!”
I hadn’t done anything
like it before. I hadn’t had
a major speaking role in
a fi lm before. But I guess
he felt that I could pull it
off , because the charac-
ter had some similarities
to my own background
as a musician. Damien
thought I could relate
to the character, and I
felt the same way. So, it
made sense for me to do
it, since I was already
a fan of his work. And
then, when I found out
that Ryan and Emma had
come aboard, it seemed
like a no-brainer for us
to get involved.
KW: Early in your ca-
reer, were you a musical
purist like Sebastian,
who had a reverence for
the classics?
JL: No, I never looked at
myself as a purist in the
sense of simply wanting
to recreate old music that
I’d grown up listening to.
I never struggled with
that conundrum. But I
think every artist is in-
fl uenced by certain tradi-
D.W. Griffi th’s “The Birth
of a Nation” (1915) for res-
urrecting the Ku Klux
Klan by demonizing
Black males. It goes on
to point out that more
than 300 Klansmen were
elected delegates to the
“
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icans, observing that
“Virtually no one who is
White understands the
challenge of being Black
in America.” And former
Green Czar Van Jones,
who served in the Obama
administration, asks a
‘Virtually no one who is
white understands the chal-
lenge of being black in Amer-
ica’ —Newt Gingrich
1924 Democratic Nation-
al Convention.
Though an arch-con-
servative, Newt Gingrich
adopts a sympathetic
posture regarding the
plight of African Amer-
tions and the artists they
grew up listening to. For
Taylor Swift , it was coun-
try music. For me, it was
gospel and soul. Other
artists grew up listening
to folk, classic rock or
whatever else it was for
them. But no matter what
your early infl uences
are, you have to decide
how much you’re just
recreating the feelings
those artists gave you,
recreating their styles,
or doing something fresh
and new that’s infl u-
enced by them. I think we
all deal with that. There’s
always the push and pull
in our careers of how
much we go traditional
and how much we try
to change it up and do
something new.
KW: Aft er watching
the fi lm, I was surprised
to see that you have so
few acting credits, be-
cause you did a phenom-
enal job.
JL: Thank you! I’d spent
my whole career focused
on music. Acting wasn’t
something I was really
pursuing, even though
we were doing fi lm and
TV behind the camera as
producers, because mu-
sic takes up so much of
my creative energy. But
I couldn’t pass up the op-
portunity to work with
such great people.
KW: Editor/Legist Pa-
tricia Turnier says: Like
many people, I think that
you are a great artist
and I consider you like
the young Stevie Won-
der. I saw you in Mon-
treal when you opened
for Alicia Keys on one
of her tours. Given that
your new fi lm is about
jazz, please name a few
of your favorite jazz mu-
sicians.
JL: Honestly, I don’t
consider myself much of
a jazz afi cionado. When I
was growing up, my dad
used to play a lot of vo-
calists like Billie Holiday,
Ella [Fitzgerald], Sarah
very thought-provoking
question, namely: “Why
is the Black community
so weak in defending it-
self?”
Part of the answer is re-
vealed in the profi t-max-
Vaughan, Nancy Wilson
and Nat King Cole. So, I
grew up loving some of
the great standards sing-
ers and jazz vocalists.
Also Nina Simone, who
cut across a few diff erent
genres. Those are a few
of my bigger infl uences,
but i wouldn’t say I was
much of a jazz expert.
KW: I’d like to congrat-
ulate you on your new
album, “Darkness and
Light,” which I’ve been
imizing agenda of the
Corrections Corporation
of America, a company
which has successfully
lobbied to expand and
privatize the prison in-
dustry. The upshot is that
today there are millions
of Blacks behind bars, a
sad refl ection of the reali-
ty that a defendant is way
better off in the courts
being rich and guilty
than poor and innocent.
The incendiary ex-
pose’ closes with Jones
asserting that the Black
Lives Matter movement
“is not a stoppable phe-
nomenon” because it’s
fundamentally
about
reshaping the country’s
understanding of human
listening to. It’s terrifi c!
JL: Thank you. I’m re-
ally proud of it. It’s fun-
ny being in “La La Land”
mode today, since I’ve
been in Darkness and
Light mode for the past
month, and I’ll be back
into it for the next year
or so. It’s exciting to sup-
port this really beautiful
fi lm and to have a new al-
bum out at the same time.
Read the rest of this interview
at TheSkanner.com
dignity.
It’ll certainly be in-
teresting to see how
things shake out, given
the ascension of Donald
Trump, who has taken
the position that “All lives
matter” while declaring
himself the law-and-or-
der president-elect.
Excellent
Unrated
Running time: 100 min-
utes
Distributor: Netfl ix
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12-28-16
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