Music. Weddings. Race.

We’re a band of musicians with varying musical gifts, musical styles, and musical preferences.  We have different favorite foods and drinks of choice.  We have varying religious and spiritual beliefs, practices, and theologies.   We have different professional lives; most are full-time musicians/performers/producers, some are music educators, one works for an airline, and one is a police officer.   And when we come together each weekend we gel musically and personally on a level that is greater than the sum of our parts.  It’s kind of crazy.  On the rare week where we have a Saturday off between the last wedding and the next, we greet each other like family members who haven’t seen each other since last Christmas.  We’re all just giddy.  I’m speaking for everyone when I say how grateful we are to have not only each other, but also amazing clients who love what we do, an incredible wedding and event community that we get to work with, and just the overall ability and freedom to play music and entertain for a living.  And while we have the same mission as performers and entertainers, as a minority-majority band, our various skin tones play a big part in not only the journey that led us to now, but also cause different experiences from week to week at events.
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Content alert, these are just a few examples of passive or active forms of the effect of racism from just 2019 with the band.  

Part 1: Reminder: “Alright Danny, can you walk me to my car?”

Earth, Wind, & Fire, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, James Brown, Beyonce, Usher, Prince, Lizzo, Drake … that’s a lot of bangers there!  Music by black artists that came from the origins of black music art forms of jazz, gospel, soul, funk, and hip hop.  That makes up a lot of what has us grooving and people dancing.  Even The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and so many rock genres that progressed after that are all downstream derivatives of styles developed by black musicians ranging from delta blues from the likes of Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters to rock and roll originators like Little Richard and Chuck Berry.
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We perform for clients and guests who most often look like me.  We’re at private country clubs and oil-company executive ballrooms with ornate door handles and rich histories where the photos of past presidents most often look like me.  And while I’m sure some of those people were amazing executives and managers, the reason there aren't any females or persons of color pictured isn’t because they weren’t the right person for the job.  It's because they weren’t eligible for those positions, much less, they didn’t even have the chance to occupy any of the middle-management positions that led up to high-level executives.  I am more likely to look at those pictures and notice how much the styles have changed and how funny the horned rimmed glasses look than to see the result of biased ways of advancement.
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It’s February and we’ve just finished a private party in a high-end neighborhood of Houston: one in which we were slated to play till 10, but hired for an extra hour.  It was a magical night.  We had been pouring sweat and energy into setting up all day and once the dancing got going, I just kept thinking, “this couldn’t be going any better!”  Our whole team is there breaking down and one of the band members says laughing “Alright Danny, can you walk me to my car?”  It’s said with laughs because to actually break down the full reality of why I would have to walk them to their car is depressing.  

“Sweet, let me just grab my guitar.”  I don’t even have to ask why.  We head to their car parked a couple blocks away.  I’ll head to mine alone after stopping at theirs.  If I walk them to their car, there’s little to no chance they get confronted by a neighborhood patrol or resident. Stopped and questioned because someone is either profiling that they see someone of color or just generally "they look out of place."  And it’s the full history of the why they might look out of place that’s important.  The demographics of the neighborhood doesn’t represent them.  
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It’s not like if you invited me to a party and I showed up in dress pants and a button up only for me to realize most people were there in black tie attire.  “Come with me to the bar, I look totally out of place.”  The reality is that there’s a lack of diversity in a high-end neighborhood as a result of going from 20 people on a slave ship in 1619 to 4 million enslaved people with no wealth or property to speak of in 1860, followed by years of wealth-stripping, redlining, Black Code, Jim Crow, a GI bill largely only available to white Americans, white flight, voter suppression, and probably a bunch of other stuff I don’t really know about.  (I could make this less in your face, “it’s the result of a history of oppression and zero opportunity for advancement").  It’s a reminder that on a night in February as a white man, I don’t have think twice about going to my car with music equipment which is parked a few blocks away because my thought is the opposite, 
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“It’s safe.  This is a nice neighborhood that's heavily patrolled.”
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We are kings and queens while on stage and are in complete control of the energy and party in the room, but some of us have the convenience of not having to think about race once we hit the final chord.

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Part 2: Accusation: “Can you see if one of your guys has my jacket?”

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We’ve just wrapped at a gorgeous venue in San Antonio.  The party was lit.  We had horn players playing along while standing on chairs on the second floor balcony.  Band members jumping off the stage.  Everyone was exhausted and sweaty and we were still full of energy and adrenaline from the party.  We hit the final chord of the last song as I thank the couple and instruct the guests to go outside for the grand exit over the sustained last chord.  What a night!  The guests leave and a groomsman is back in the ballroom a minute later while we’re tearing down.  Asking Danny, 
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“Did you see a jacket?  I put it down right here” as he motions to an area in front and off the stage. 
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“Sorry man” as I’m disconnecting mics.  
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“I left it RIGHT HERE.”  
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“I don’t know what to tell you,” I say just figuring he’ll eventually find what he’s looking for.
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Then he asks me, “can you see if ONE OF YOUR GUYS has my jacket” as he motions to two black members of the band.  He is asking ME if I can see if THEY have it.  Just sit with that.  We just worked our tails off to give these people the night of their lives (and this guy was going nuts all night).  He thinks his jacket was set down, they snatched it, and he wants me to investigate?  And here’s the kicker.  Embarrassingly, I don’t spot what is happening.  We’ve all stripped off our jackets and have them on our equipment because we’re hot so I’m thinking he’s doing due diligence to see if something got mixed up.   Not spotting the weighty accusation, I am kind of poking fun at him, 
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“Dude, you think someone wants your smelly jacket?  No one has your jacket.”  
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The dude COMES ON STAGE AND STARTS CHECKING THE JACKETS!   After he realizes theirs aren’t his, he tries to cover for himself by half-heartedly looking at mine.  Again, I'm oblivious to what is going on.  Another groomsman comes back in the room and says, “yo, let’s go, we got your jacket.”  Realizing what he did, he then just starts complimenting everyone in the band and tries to go around and shake everyone’s hand.  Everyone in the band is giving him short responses just wanting him to go away.  No attitude or confrontation.  Just band members giving a quick response to him telling them they were great with a quick, “thanks man.”  "Appreciate it.”  And he’s going on about having us play at his wedding.  Blah blah blah.  His friends are still waiting for him as he’s indirectly trying to cover for himself.  
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The take away is it only clicked with me when someone said something about how he was profiling.  I was furious … at him and at me for not spotting it.  Why wouldn't my brain have gone there as a first thought?  Because based on my experience and not having to be aware of my race, he’s just another groomsman who had too much to drink and is trying to find a jacket.
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Part 3: Understanding: “What’s wrong with that?”

(Yes, that was that racist, but no that wasn’t)
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Quincy Jones has recorded over 2,900 songs, 1,000 original compositions, won 27 Grammy’s, 51 film scores, greatest selling album and single of all time … the list goes on and on.  He on the Mount Rushmore of contemporary producers and composers and he’s still rocking at 87.  And yet, a little more than 50 years ago when he was first touring, they had to tour with a white driver so they had someone who could go into restaurants and get the food for the band.   When playing in Vegas, black musicians (even headliners) had to eat in the kitchen, and sleep in black hotels across town.  In his first film score, they asked him, “how could he write for a white movie star?"  That’s just  so utterly and completely insane to us now but this was commonplace within this lifetime. 
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Personal view here, one thing that I am sometimes critical of is looking at a specific instance, and the role race played in to it, as the evidence for the evidence of the effects racism.  Not because I think that’s wrong, but because many situations are nuanced, and have extenuating circumstances in whatever played out such that the debate over the details takes attention away from the legacy and effects of centuries of racial discrimination.  That being said, one thing I have learned is that I have to be open to growing and learning something if I don’t immediately see the role that race played in it.
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There are things that I obviously would spot as racist and intervene with (this is maybe the most horrific thing I was aware of that happened at a wedding for us in 2019).  For example, last year when a white groom who wants to DJ the last 30 minutes of a reception gets on the mic to rap along with songs and doesn’t sensor himself MULTIPLE times in saying the n-word along with a song … and a white group of guests is singing with him.  This happened MANY times in the course of his set.  At best, this is someone utterly clueless and ignorant to history of the word and the effect of doing that at a historic country club with a mostly white audience.  And at worst … Yes, that’s a horrendous problem.  (Full disclosure, I was out in the parking lot pulling the truck and trailer up to the loading dock while all this was happening and found out about it from our sound engineer a few days later, otherwise it would have stopped instantly.  Our sound engineer was at the back of the room and had come down with a case of food poisoning during the event and was doubled over in a chair so he couldn’t do anything.  I think everyone was all shocked that it was happening and thinking, “Surely he’ll realize this is wrong or someone is going to stop this.”  Basically it was just one of those slow-motion nightmare situations that unfolded.)
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“What’s the problem?"
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When a venue has a storage closet where they set up a table, or a little spot in the kitchen where the band is to go on a break and for our vendor meal, my brain goes to, “this place isn’t well laid out.”  For some members of the band, this is just a reminder of the commonplace practices of the 60s of black talent being kept away from the guests.   Just a reminder.  We eat in tons of back kitchens and are laughing and goofing off and not even talking about this, but it’s the fact that my brain isn’t reminded of this in those situations.  The best thing for me to do is not be the arbiter of what role race played and what role it didn’t but to do as best as I can to understand what someone is feeling or thinking.
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Part 4: Me “Why are YOU talking about this?”
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This is a totally fair question.  Why would I be the one talking about this?  I’ve felt paralyzed in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.  It’s horrific and heartbreaking and torments my thoughts.  I also know that my pain and trauma, while real, has a limit to its severity due to my life experiences as a result of the color of my skin.  My pain is limited to the result of a 8 minutes on a street in Minnesota where a fellow Houstonian was murdered while people looked on begging for it to stop … and of which we only know about because someone was filming.  I don’t relate to him through skin color via the pain of experiences where I’ve been in the same powerless situation, or stories of when my parents were, or their parents, or their relatives who were in far more powerless situations (some for their lifetime).  
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There were two things I took from the sheer volume of women coming forward during the Me Too movement … women had kept their stories locked up and where tormented by experiences for years but had not said anything.
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First, I saw the amount of burden it is to bring up traumatic experiences.  Trauma is trauma: in the moment and trauma relived.  Second, even just one bad experience forever changes and robs you of the safety and innocence of seemingly innocuous situations.  Third, when being made aware of or discriminated against because of skin color or gender becomes so commonplace, a seemingly everyday occurrence, I’ve noticed there’s sometimes hesitancy about the burden of how talking about it would then inform your identity.  The balance of having every social media post would begin with, “It happened AGAIN today.  So I was walking down the street …”  There’s a reticence to becoming a “THAT person who talks about those problems." 
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All that to say, I hope in talking about these differing experiences that they offer a door into empathy and world views that are not of your own.  Keep in mind, these are just a few examples (and sadly there’s others), THAT I KNOW OF, of just one year of different lenses and treatment we experience, within the joyous celebratory industry of weddings and events, as a result of the color of each person’s skin.  I wouldn’t be aware of them if I didn’t have the chance to play with the most talented and hard working diverse group of musicians out there.  
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So what can you do?  Here’s what I should do.  On my bucket list next to “Visit the Grand Canyon” add “Spend a couple days at the National Museum of African American History and Culture” in Washington D. C.  Go to the Houston Museum of African American Culture.  Read about Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative.  Listen to the 1619 podcast from the New York Times.  Critically examine the gaps that exist in the education and telling of history, amongst what was happening and not reported, in other marginalized groups as compared to what is most often talked about.  Don’t fear knowledge and embrace the uncomfortable places (in some weird way, I believe it can lead to a greater sense of self and patriotism in the ability to be able to play some small part in righting some of these wrongs).  Choose the anti-racist path, and re-choose it if I falter.  Support black-owned businesses.  If hiring always look at diverse-range of candidates.  There’s probably 8 thousand other things I should learn about and strive toward that I don’t even know about.  To quote Kendrick Lamar, “I know what I know and I know it well not to ever forget, until I realized I didn’t know $*#!.”  We have a mountain of work to do as Americans and people.   Let’s do this!
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Black lives matter.  Thanks for reading.

~Danny Ray