Donnie |
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Wed. October 16.2002 11:29 AM EDT |
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Donnie: Nothing But a ManSouthern singer offers his take on racism, black sex symbols, and a new national anthem. by C. Bottomley |
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Donnie (VH1.com) |
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When you call your debut album The Colored Section, you’d better have a point to make. Atlanta soul singer Donnie has many. Like Marvin Gaye asking what’s going on or Sly Stone starting a riot, he’s reintroducing subjects like racism and
When we caught up with Donnie, we discovered a man with a lot on his mind. Discussing everything from his childhood in the Hebrew Pentecostal church, to the ongoing tension between the spiritual life and sensual affairs (a question that haunted Donnie’s second cousin, Marvin Gaye), he delivered plenty of food for thought. VH1: Is the Hebrew Pentecostal denomination like Jews for Jesus? Donnie: Jews for Jesus, but with a slap of Holy Roller on top of it. The expression is very West African. There is prophecy, praising, dancing, drums, and speaking in tongues. But we celebrated Yom Kippur, went to church on the Sabbath, and had bar mitzvahs. We didn’t have rabbis. My dad’s a pastor and my mom’s a minister. VH1: The kids at school must have envied you because you’d get all those holidays off. Donnie: They thought it was kind of strange. They’d say at lunch, “Why you not eating your ham?” I’m like, “Well, I don’t eat pork.” “What, you Muslim?” “Nah, I’m Hebrew Pentecostal.” “Hebrew? You a Jew? A black Jew?” It was crazy for them. It was crazy for us! VH1: Are you still a member of the church? Donnie: I left, but I’ll never break away totally. There’s so much of my family in the church. My parents didn’t like me leaving, but they [understood]. No matter what your children do, they’re still your children. VH1: Did church reveal music’s power to you? Donnie: Music is the most important thing in the church. A lot of American Negro churches, whether Baptist, Methodist, Holiness or whatever, use music. A preacher might give a sermon and start going, [sings:] “Mmm” and “hmmm.” The gospel singer Mahalia Jackson was once sitting calmly in the balcony and all of a sudden she started humming. No words! And people went crazy! A steady vibration like that mesmerizes people. It’s orgasmic. It’s music, and it can cut across the void. You could be singing in French and I wouldn’t know what you’re saying, but I’d be like, “Oh! Have me!” [Watch Clip] VH1: Were you influenced by your parents’ record collection? Or were secular records not allowed in the house? Donnie: When I was born, my parents hadn’t become ministers yet. They were still going out dancing. They had records by Natalie Cole, Lou Rawls and Michael Jackson. The Jackson Five’s Destiny album was my first inspiration - period! But I was also influenced by a lot of contemporary gospel. The people in my church could sing and write songs like it was just breathing. I was really inspired by that. VH1: In Atlanta you became involved with India.Arie and the EarthSeed collective, which you name-check on “Do You Know?” How did you discover the place? Donnie: I met the owner one night and a friend urged me to [go over there and sing]. I signed up for their open mic night and soon I was singing on Sunday nights with a jazz band. People kept telling me about a girl named India who plays guitar. And they kept telling her about a guy named Donnie. One day we were walking by each other and we finally met. I joined EarthSeed and it made me want to go further. In 1999, we put out an EP called First Impressions. Then India put out her CD with a major label and got all this exposure. I was kind of envious. I was like, “I want people to hear my message, too!” But I didn’t want to sign with a major label because then I wouldn't have been able to make The Colored Section VH1: What would a major label have wanted you to sound like? Donnie: All the rest of these American Negro males out there gyrating! Singing love songs and gyrating doesn’t bother me, but except for Common and Mos Def, I don’t see any American Negro males on TV that aren’t thugs or a sex symbol. A major label would have told me, “Lose a little bit of weight, Donnie. Cut your hair! We’re gonna get you a personal trainer.” I don’t mind looking better for me, but not so some young girl in the audience can get her rocks off. VH1: Do you think there’s a space for your kind of conscious music? Donnie: There’s room for me now that those two buildings have fallen. I was in New York on 9-11 and when the first plane hit, something told me, “Now it’s time for your album to come out.” I’m a very spiritual person. I listen to the ether. People were fainting on the streets, and something just said to me, “Now it’s time.” VH1: Is there anybody else out there who is aiming for that same musical inclusion - that American Negro fusion - you are? Donnie: There are a lot of people on the same path, like India.Arie, Jill Scott, Lauryn Hill and Floetry. They’re fusing hip-hop, jazz, the church - all of this. But I don’t feel any American Negro male artists are doing it. I am alone in that sense. Except for the hip-hop artists. They’ve always been the ones to carry the word. VH1: Why do the women embrace that synthesis, but the men don’t? Are guys scared of going into that kind of territory? Donnie: I don’t believe male artists are scared. But I believe their record label will say, “We need something a little more D’Angelo-like.” They’ll tell Bilal or Musiq that. They may have had five political songs on their album, but they all get cut [by the time it’s released]. It’s deeper than them being scared. They don’t get to do what they want to do. Especially when you sign on that dotted line. I’m lucky. When I signed on the dotted line, the label was like, “OK, do your magic!” VH1: One of the songs on The Colored Section is “Our New National Anthem.” Why do we need one? Donnie: Our national anthem calls America “The land of the free and the home of the brave,” but when it was written people that looked like me were enslaved. [A runaway slave,] Crispus Attucks is the first man to die in the Revolutionary War, but nobody says anything about it! It’s past time for us to have a new national anthem and a new pledge of allegiance, because we don’t believe in one nation under god. We’re separatists. We believe in separate subcultures within one nation, with one type of people ruling it all. It’s pitiful! [Watch Clip] VH1: Did you experience a lot of racism growing up? Donnie: Mm-hm! I experienced racism coming to New York in 2002, this week! VH1: Is the north a more racist society than the South? Donnie: They are racists in different ways. In the South, we don’t mix because we know not to mix. You hang over here, we hang over here, and there are places like the Yin Yang where all types of people hang with each other. I can go to some places in the South and have a better time than when I come to Manhattan, and they used to hang us in the South! In Manhattan, a black woman can get a cab faster than I can. When I go into a hotel, the people at the front desk treat you differently than your white counterpart. The darker you are in the U.S., the more scared people are of you. They think that light skin means you’re smarter. We’re taught to have thinner lips, smaller noses and lighter skin. We’re told that straight hair is prettier. But my hair defies gravity, and it’s amazing to me! That’s why I sing about my Afro on the song “Cloud Nine.” Being a Negro is an amazing experience! VH1: On “Beautiful Me,” you quote Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” and Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues.” Which one of those singers is more important? Donnie: Neither! What about the people before Sam Cooke? Ira Tucker of the Dixie Hummingbirds was Sam Cooke before Sam Cooke was Sam Cooke. I don’t believe that Sam Cooke or Marvin Gaye are any more important than Ira Tucker or big band singers like Billy Eckstine or Joe Williams. They all played an important part in the story of soul music. [Watch Clip] VH1: Cooke and Gaye had problems reconciling their spirituality with their sexuality. Do you experience that same conflict? Donnie: I believe I do. But I believe that the notion of a divided soul is misunderstood. When you go into a church, and see people feeling the spirit, speaking in tongues and getting healed, you get chill-bumps. You want to feel that orgasmic sensation all the time. Marvin wouldn’t have turned to drugs if he wasn’t searching for that feeling all the time. Sam was the same way. He liked sex, just like Marvin liked sex. But like John the Baptist had to come before Jesus and JFK was before Jimmy Carter, I believe that I’m going to come to an understanding that Sam and Marvin didn’t come to. They died for my sins, basically! [Watch Clip] VH1: What kind of reaction have you gotten from the title The Colored Section? Donnie: [Laughs.] People of all races love it! Some people have actually cried, because folks don’t talk about the colored section any more. Jim Crow is not that far behind us. We pretend it’s so far away, because we don’t want to remember the black bodies hanging from trees. It’s painful. I can’t watch Mississippi Burning or Rosewood, because it brings up so much anger. But until we can get to talk about it, it’s never gonna go away. |
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