JOSH RIVERS / BUSY BEING BLACK

Josh Rivers / Busy Being Black

Joshua Rivers is a writer, poet, broadcaster and self-described “professional enchantress.” He is the creator and host of the award-winning podcast Busy Being Black, where conversations with artists, thinkers and activists explore Black queer life, art, identity, imagination and the possibilities of living beyond the labels imposed upon us.

https://busybeingblack.com/

Viral Intimacies

Created with support from the European Cultural Foundation during the COVID-19 pandemic, Viral Intimacies explored Blackness, queerness, borders and belonging across Europe. Josh discusses the project in this episode while considering the gap between Europe’s stated ideals of inclusion and the experiences of Black and queer people living within European institutions and borders.

https://www.busybeingblack.com/viral-intimacies

The Black Marvellous

Josh’s work on Black art, imagination and the role of artists in expanding our civic imagination.

https://www.busybeingblack.com/black-marvellous

EUROVISION PERFORMANCES

Milly Scott, “Fernando en Filippo”
Netherlands, 1966

Born Marion Henriëtte Louise Molly in the Netherlands in 1933, Milly Scott is a Dutch singer and actress of Surinamese heritage. In 1966 she became the first Black artist to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest.

Josh and Bradley use Scott’s performance as a starting point for discussing what it costs to be “the first,” who gets to belong within ideas of European identity, and how we read a Black performer appearing on the Eurovision stage in 1966.

Watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TvG-AWdk-g

Jeangu Macrooy, “Birth of a New Age”
Netherlands, 2021

Jeangu Macrooy is a singer-songwriter and actor born in Paramaribo, Suriname, in 1993. He moved to the Netherlands in 2014 and was originally chosen to represent the country at Eurovision 2020 before the contest was cancelled. He returned in 2021 with “Birth of a New Age.”

The song combines English with Sranan Tongo, a language of Suriname, and incorporates elements of Surinamese musical tradition. Its refrain includes “Yu no man broko mi,” an assertion that “you cannot break me.” Macrooy finished 23rd, receiving 11 jury points and no televote points.

His performance becomes an important counterpoint to Milly Scott in our conversation: two Black artists representing the Netherlands, separated by 55 years, and the questions their experiences raise about representation, Blackness and European belonging.

Watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3Da5cr2fTs

Jeangu Macrooy:
https://www.jeangumacrooy.com/

Conchita Wurst, “Rise Like a Phoenix”
Austria, 2014

Conchita Wurst is the stage character created by Austrian singer Tom Neuwirth. After first appearing as Conchita in 2011, Neuwirth represented Austria at Eurovision 2014 and won the contest with “Rise Like a Phoenix.”

Conchita subsequently became an internationally recognized figure associated with LGBTQ visibility and equality.

For Josh, this performance also represents something intensely personal: a moment when he still believed strongly in the promise of a progressive, increasingly inclusive Europe. Looking back from the other side of the political events that followed, he describes Conchita as almost a marker of the end of that period of optimism.

Watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fvLtTRzdHw

Conchita Wurst:
https://conchitawurst.com/

Mahmood & BLANCO, “Brividi”
Italy, 2022

Mahmood, born Alessandro Mahmoud in Milan, is an Italian singer-songwriter who previously represented Italy at Eurovision 2019, finishing second with “Soldi.” BLANCO is the stage name of Riccardo Fabbriconi, an Italian singer-songwriter who emerged as one of the country’s most successful young artists in the early 2020s.

Together they won the 2022 Sanremo Music Festival with “Brividi” and represented host nation Italy at Eurovision in Turin, where they finished sixth.

We originally selected the performance as a way into questions of masculinity, intimacy, race and who gets to embody contemporary Italian identity.

Watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blEy4xHuMbY

Tusse, “Voices”
Sweden, 2021

Tousin “Tusse” Chiza is a Congolese-Swedish singer born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After fleeing conflict, he spent time in a refugee camp in Uganda before receiving asylum in Sweden. He later won Swedish Idol and then Melodifestivalen 2021, earning the right to represent Sweden at Eurovision with “Voices.”

We selected Tusse as a way of thinking about migration, Blackness, national belonging and what it means to represent the country that became your home.

Watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyJRyif6_kk

JOSH’S REFERENCES: FURTHER READING, WATCHING & LISTENING

Marquis Bey, Black Trans Feminism

Josh discusses Marquis Bey’s argument that identities we may value deeply, including Blackness, queerness and gender categories, have nevertheless been shaped under conditions of duress. The idea becomes part of our conversation about what identities we might carry into the future and what it could mean to imagine ourselves beyond inherited categories.

https://www.dukeupress.edu/black-trans-feminism

Roderick A. Ferguson, One-Dimensional Queer

One of Josh’s strongest recommendations in the episode. Ferguson examines the multidimensional origins of queer liberation and what was lost as mainstream gay politics increasingly separated sexuality from struggles involving race, class, gender, capitalism and the state.

Josh describes the book as important to his own political awakening.

https://www.wiley-vch.de/en/areas-interest/humanities-social-sciences/sociology-12so/social-identity-12so5/gender-sexuality-12so53/one-dimensional-queer-978-1-5095-2355-9

Édouard Glissant and the “Right to Opacity”

Josh talks about Martinican writer and philosopher Édouard Glissant’s concept of a “right to opacity”: the possibility of refusing the demand to be completely understood, explained, translated or made permanently visible to others.

Josh connects the idea to his own work with Busy Being Black, including questions about what it means to give guests the ability to withdraw work, remove photographs or otherwise choose not to remain permanently available for public consumption.

https://www.ed.ac.uk/literatures-languages-cultures/delc/research-projects/glissant

Wangechi Mutu

Josh calls Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu “the artist of my life.” Mutu’s collage, sculpture, film and other work frequently combines human, animal, organic and mechanical forms.

Her work enters our conversation as Josh considers what becomes possible when we loosen our allegiance not merely to racial or gender categories, but even to conventional ideas of the human form.

https://www.wangechimutu.com/

Liz Fekete, Europe’s Fault Lines: Racism and the Rise of the Right

Josh discusses Liz Fekete’s work while explaining the thinking behind Viral Intimacies. Fekete examines racism, nationalism and the development of far-right politics across contemporary Europe.

https://www.versobooks.com/products/1780-europe-s-fault-lines

Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, eds., This Bridge Called My Back

The landmark anthology This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color brings together writing by women of color on race, gender, sexuality, culture and political solidarity.

Josh specifically talks about encountering the idea of “theory in the flesh” through the work of Moraga and Anzaldúa and describes its impact on his thinking.

https://www.sunypress.edu/p-6278-this-bridge-called-my-back-fourth.aspx

Dana Gioia, “Poetry as Enchantment”

Toward the end of the episode, our conversation turns to poetry, reading and Josh’s idea of himself as an “enchantress.”

Josh recommends poet and critic Dana Gioia’s essay “Poetry as Enchantment,” which considers poetry as an ancient oral art closely related to music, rhythm, ritual and our capacity to become enchanted by language.

https://danagioia.com/essays/american-poetry/poetry-as-enchantment/

Alice Correia, ed., What Is Black Art?

One of the books Josh has on his desk during our conversation. Edited by art historian Alice Correia, What Is Black Art? collects artists’ statements, interviews, essays and criticism from Black and South Asian artists working in and against British art institutions during the 1980s.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/444972/what-is-black-art/9780141998220

Travis Alabanza

Performance artist, writer and poet Travis Alabanza appears in our conversation as someone whose work and way of moving through the world has helped Josh think about identity, art and the possibility of refusing expectations about who we are supposed to be.

https://travisalabanza.co.uk/

Kevin Quashie

Josh references scholar Kevin Quashie’s idea of our “wild and voluptuous interior lives” while discussing the multidimensionality that exists beneath the identities and roles through which other people encounter us.

https://www.brown.edu/academics/english/people/kevin-quashie

James Baldwin

Baldwin comes into the conversation as Josh considers the necessity of imagining liberation as something that transforms everyone, rather than simply changing conditions for one marginalized group.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/james-baldwin

Bayard Rustin

Josh discusses civil-rights organizer Bayard Rustin and the idea of bringing “people of goodwill” into movements for change, connecting this to the larger question running through our conversation: how do people learn to see one another in greater complexity?

https://www.nps.gov/people/bayard-rustin.htm

Arthur Rimbaud

Josh closes part of our conversation about enchantment by reading from French poet Arthur Rimbaud, bringing us back to Europe, imagination and the ability of poetry to move us somewhere else almost instantaneously.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/arthur-rimbaud