00;00;00;00 - 00;00;40;18
Erica Machulak
In conversations about social justice and social change these days, we talk a lot about listening. How to be a good listener, how to ask the right questions. What I love about this episode, where I'm chatting with Dr. Dwandalyn Reece, who is curator of music and performing arts at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture, is that we talk about listening through the lens of the history of music and social justice.
00;00;40;20 - 00;01;07;21
Erica Machulak
Dwan shares great insights about what it means to be a good mentor and a good mentee, and I'm delighted to share this conversation with you. You're listening to the Hikma Collective podcast, and I'm Erica Machulak, founder of Hikma. Thank you for joining us.
00;01;07;23 - 00;01;10;77
Erica Machulak
Well, hi. It's really nice to see you. How are you doing?
00;01;11;05 - 00;01;13;15
Dwandalyn Reece
I'm doing well. How are you?
00;01;13;18 - 00;02;06;23
Erica Machulak
I'm good. I'll give you a little bit of the background on our last conversation, just to refresh you on where we left off. So back in October, you very kindly sat down with me in your offices at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. And we talked a lot about your career journey and the book that you're writing and what we're trying to achieve at Hikma in terms of building a learning community that at the time I called a watering hole for the Mavericks, of which I cheekily think you are maybe one. And so I was so excited when you agreed to be on our podcast, because I think your perspective on how ideas flow across contexts is really fascinating, and I just appreciate you being here today.
00;02;06;26 - 00;02;09;88
Dwandalyn Reece
Well, I'm happy to be here. Continue the conversation.
00;02;10;00 - 00;02;23;43
Erica Machulak
Yeah, same. So I know that one of the things on your plate right now is that you have your book coming out, Musical Crossroads Stories Behind the Objects of African American Music. You tell us a little bit more about your book?
00;02;23;88 - 00;03;02;06
Dwandalyn Reece
Sure. The museum has its own publication program. We've put out several books since the opening of the museum. And I was asked, we have this photography series: double exposure. So there's usually photographs on a certain theme, and we do these small books. I was approached about doing something on music and I was very keen to do that, but I was also thinking, What could I do that's a little different? In putting something together. Because to me, the stories are the most important thing.
00;03;02;08 - 00;03;36;22
Dwandalyn Reece
The magic with the objects is really engaging with them, carrying, you know, pulling out the stories behind them, who made them, who use them, How has their meaning changed over time? All kinds of things. And so I wanted it to be a little something more robust. And so I asked if instead of just doing photographs, could we do a book on music about the objects of music, which is my passion as a curator and my passion for my my love of music and how they dig deep into it.
00;03;36;24 - 00;04;04;13
Dwandalyn Reece
So it took about seven years to not totally write, you know, you have your day to day responsibilities and everything else going on. So you find a little time here and a little time there. But it was really an opportunity to kind of talk about what makes me passionate about museum work and what makes me passionate about music.
00;04;04;15 - 00;04;33;21
Dwandalyn Reece
I love music. I'm a singer. You know, that's just one level of it, though, because it's been an entree for me to the rest of the world - about learning about myself, about learning about society, culture, history, politics, you name it. And so that lens, it is the reason for me why music is a universal language, because it it teaches us anything we want to be taught.
00;04;33;24 - 00;05;07;04
Dwandalyn Reece
And that richness that, that that, that just energy from looking at an object and thinking about it in multiple ways really excites me. And I want it to excite other people and also talk about using objects for music research, material culture as we call it, is common in history, Archeology, using objects in museum studies, to use objects to talk about other stories in history.
00;05;07;06 - 00;06;21;07
Dwandalyn Reece
But there really hasn't been a material culture of music per se. The easiest thing when you work with music, you can work with scores, you can work with correspondence or images, but they're usually to illustrate something. They're not the object, the focal, the primary source in and of itself. And so the goal of that was to get people excited about objects, but also to see a new way to think about music, to think about music in an expansive way beyond the performer and audience, music as a culture of community building, music as a culture of protest, of identity formation, of uplift, all kinds of things that when you really think about it, a musical story is more than just a record. It's a semblage. I see these multiple circles just circling around and intersecting all over the place. How music activates in community. So they're they're turned out to be multiple goals, so to speak.
00;06;13;00 - 00;06;30;43
Erica Machulak
It sounds like a really rich and complex project. Can you give us an example of one of the objects that you talked about and the story behind it?
00;06;21;09 - 00;06;25;04
Dwandalyn Reece
Oh, sure.
00;06;25;07 - 00;07;08;28
Dwandalyn Reece
Let me pull something out. There's so many. There's so many. I hate to. I'm trying to pick the right one. Oh, okay. Here's here's one. There is Nina Simone - great singer, 1963 or 64. She recorded a song called Mississippi Goddam. And it was a response after the burning of the 16th Street Baptist Church and her anger and fury about, having to write that song.
00;07;08;28 - 00;07;43;09
Dwandalyn Reece
And at that time, you know, when she performed it on The Tonight Show, it's really the lyrics and the music are quite diametrically opposed. It sounds like this jaunty vaudeville tune, you know. And then she had this searing language, you know, Mississippi Goddam, you know, No more segregation. Take it slow. No, we're not going to do that. So that that pointed language and we have a promo copy of the 45.
00;07;43;09 - 00;08;07;03
Dwandalyn Reece
And so you can talk about the promo copies that oh, yes, this belong to Nina Simone and people would be fascinated with it. When we start to look at the story behind it and what we juxtapose this one with were some glass shards that a woman, Joan Macallan, collected from the 16th Street Baptist Church after the bombing.
00;08;07;05 - 00;08;45;17
Dwandalyn Reece
So we juxtapose those two things to really talk about not only Nina Simone, but her voice as a singer, a female singer, really pointed language in 1963, really totally unheard of, to have such searing comments about the state of the world. But to be performed on a mainstream stage, so to speak. And so how these objects, how that disparate 45 connects to these shards of glass, which are in our segregation exhibit.
00;08;45;20 - 00;09;17;22
Dwandalyn Reece
So they're totally separate but really totally connected. So we get behind the stories about that. So it's, there are multiple stories about Nina, the civil rights movement, music, composition, the Critical Moment, a woman collecting shards, an activist herself. She was a white woman who, with the freedom rides. So you see how the stories can just kind of, there's a chain that just goes further and further out - that that's what excites me.
00;09;17;23 - 00;09;22;30
Dwandalyn Reece
So that that's one particular story that we like to talk about.
00;09;22;85 - 00;09;27;32
Erica Machulak
Would you tell us a little bit more about your story and how you how you got to where you are?
00;09;28;85 - 00;10;20;04
Dwandalyn Reece
Sure. I think there were a couple serendipitous moments about how I forged my career, what I really ended up doing. I had always been interested in music and I'd always been interested in history, American history. I, in college, I took a course there was trying to decide what I was going to do American studies and music, which I wanted to major in, and I ended up doing both. But I took a course with two professors called: Vienna Music Mirror of Society, and in classical music you learn about the composers, the great works, the theory behind it, the musicology and everything like that.
00;10;20;06 - 00;10;52;06
Dwandalyn Reece
But in this course we looked at Beethoven, Haydn, Schubert and Mozart from a social and cultural context, and the communities in the world in which they served. And that was eye opening to me, because I hadn't seen that done with classical music. There seems to be more of a natural affinity to do that with American music. But there was, there's something, there was something exciting about that that just really opened a door for me.
00;10;52;06 - 00;11;22;18
Dwandalyn Reece
And I got really, really jazz, so to speak, about the class and having that kind of lens because it helped me as a singer to learn so much more about what was going on at the time or what was going on personally in their lives, the conditions they had and all of that stuff. It just brought another lens to the music itself and just really enriched my experience with it.
00;11;22;20 - 00;11;56;08
Dwandalyn Reece
And I went straight to graduate school after I graduated, went to the University of Michigan. Still interested in American culture and pursuing music. I, what I learned at the time, I got a little disenchanted with all this great learning. I have a love of learning and all these great discussions and theories and how it stays within the academy, how there are scholars just speaking to one another.
00;11;56;10 - 00;12;37;21
Dwandalyn Reece
And I've always had a kind of a democratic outlook that I think stuff needs to be shared with people. And I remember just kind of feeling that that little twinge inside my first couple of years of graduate school, but as luck would have it Michigan had a museum practice program, and on a lark I applied. You know, I thought museums, they serve general audiences and maybe this would be a creative way to do work and to reach as many people as possible and not on a hierarchy that you have to be a scholar to understand it.
00;12;37;22 - 00;12;59;29
Dwandalyn Reece
How can I take this thinking, this knowledge, this excitement, and and make it accessible to general audiences? And that's where the real change - not that there's not real change in other areas - but that's where you can see some kind of - it's not immediate feedback, slow feedback, and that the more people learn, the more aware they are.
00;13;00;04 - 00;13;26;26
Dwandalyn Reece
So that was where it really came together for me. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do in museums. I just I just kind of went with my passions and what really rang true to me and my career took, you know, music was always, music and theater and the arts, were always the first love, the driving thing.
00;13;26;26 - 00;13;55;21
Dwandalyn Reece
I did an internship here at the Smithsonian.One at the Portrait Gallery and Education Department. And then one at the American History Museum, working with my mentor, John Hassey, who's a curator emeritus now from American History, and had the honor to work with the Duke Ellington collection when it was first acquired and just going through boxes and just. Tt was a magical experience for me.
00;13;55;23 - 00;14;24;06
Dwandalyn Reece
There's something I find really telling in an object. I can stand in the place and just try to imagine the history or the people that have been touched by it and what it was like then and what I'm supposed to think about it. And I also found objects as a way to, because interpreting in the way that I like to interpret them is very inclusive.
00;14;24;08 - 00;14;43;28
Dwandalyn Reece
You know, there's no one privileged story. I think when we talk about the arts sometimes we're always talking about the great auteurs and the great artist and, you know, it's just by happenstance that we know about the people we know about because they're the most written about, you know. There are talented people. Music operates in all sections of society.
00;14;44;00 - 00;15;08;19
Dwandalyn Reece
And, you know, the important thing in our museum is talking about music. It's not a hall of fame. It's really looking at the role of music and the African American experience. And those are two very, very different things. And I'm leaning toward the whole experience. The the full experience that we can have with music and the stories that it tells.
00;15;08;21 - 00;16;10;25
Dwandalyn Reece
So once again, it kind of fit my democratic impulse again. I'm inclusive and representative and telling the stories that don't get to be told and also telling them in creative ways that reach people, that can reach people without them knowing that they're being reached. Little subterfuge, too. Mm hmm. How do you hit people over the head with something or get them to think about something differently? And I think exhibits and music can do that quite a bit.
00;15;43;15 - 00;16;05;71
Erica Machulak
I agree. And I. I'm curious to hear more about one of the threads you pulled there, which is this idea of getting feedback on whether the things that you're doing are working and how they're being received. Could you say a little bit more about the feedback that you get working in a museum and and how you know, whether the things that you're doing are reaching the people you want to reach
00;16;06;03 - 00;16;45;22
Dwandalyn Reece
That is an age old question in the humanities, how do you know what you're doing has an impact? And it's more than just a numbers game. I think the best thing, when I talk about feedback, you know, so much of this job is also interpersonal relationships and dealing with people and their stories and treating them as they're real and and sacred, so to speak. And I'd have to say the the best part is, is is meeting people and working with people and being partners with them.
00;16;49;20 - 00;17;20;05
Dwandalyn Reece
Everybody wants to be heard. They have a story to tell. And how I tell if I'm getting it right is if I have a conversation with someone and, you know, it might be the smallest thing to me, it might be a mention in a digital interactive in one part of the exhibition. But how gratified people feel to be recognized and heard and placed into the larger dialog.
00;17;20;07 - 00;17;51;09
Dwandalyn Reece
I know sometimes by the conversations I hear, you know, when you deal with a museum exhibit, you spend all this time designing it, curating it, writing all the label text. And, you know, the average visitor may not read everything or get everything, but in the time I spend in the tour and the gallery, I listen. I listen to the conversations among people, among family members.
00;17;51;11 - 00;18;18;02
Dwandalyn Reece
I take pride in their excitement. I take pride in someone telling something, you know, do you know the mothership. Let me tell you all about this. There are times where people can zero in and just, what I'm trying to get across. So much of our storytelling, I want people to think about music when they think about regional differences.
00;18;18;02 - 00;18;51;21
Dwandalyn Reece
I want them to think about racism and how that really impacted the large scale of things - community building, religion, spirituality, all of those things are just more, you know they're all part of what music is about. What that one song with that one piece, whatever you might be listening to. And so that's very intentional in the storytelling. And you know, when someone gets even just a thread of that, I'm gratified.
00;18;51;23 - 00;19;07;70
Dwandalyn Reece
I'm wholly gratified because I wrote something or said something that resonated with them. And that's all I need to feel like I'm making a difference.
00;19;08;80 - 00;19;10;50
Erica Machulak
And do you feel heard?
00;19;13;03 - 00;19;52;20
Dwandalyn Reece
Quite honestly, I think I struggle to be heard. I am more gratified at this point in my career that I am and more comfortable about pushing dominant narratives, because I think that I've learned, particularly in this job, that there are other voices similar to mine, and there is not space to acknowledge them because there are certain narratives that have to be pushed forward to to achieve a certain goal.
00;19;52;20 - 00;20;23;14
Dwandalyn Reece
I'll give you an example. One of the, when we talk about African-American music or black music, a lot of it is just talked in terms of resistance, the resistance narrative of protest and social protest. That's very important, but it's not in and all of what everyone thinks and does with their musical careers or lives. And so, you know, in some, in one section, it's a take off of a song.
00;20;23;17 - 00;20;53;27
Dwandalyn Reece
Oh, I'm messing it up right now. What it means to be free. Something like that was written by Billy Taylor. But I think about freedom in a much more expansive way, that is not about the civil rights movement or the abolition of slavery. The truest freedom, you know, any one of us might want is to be ourselves in any way possible and not be judged or pigeonholed into having to be some way.
00;20;54;00 - 00;21;26;05
Dwandalyn Reece
Now, you know why there's certain imperatives - Because there's a long history of systemic racism, systemic oppression of people of color, homophobia, all of those kinds of things. But in the in the final end, I think we want to be ourselves. Snd being ourselves, it's our choice who we want to be. And I don't think our our likes or our loves of our music, or who we like.
00;21;26;05 - 00;21;51;23
Dwandalyn Reece
And I struggle with this as a child. It shouldn't be dictated to us. And so I'm all about that freedom of expression and that it it's all worthwhile. And so part of that, the book ended up actually serving multiple missions for me and getting my voice out. And in addition to talking about the objects themselves.
00;21;51;90 - 00;21;55;85
Erica Machulak
Mm hmm. And do you have a favorite song?
00;21;57;11 - 00;22;07;02
Dwandalyn Reece
Oh, bad question. Bad question. I have lots of favorite songs.
00;22;07;05 - 00;22;19;61
Dwandalyn Reece
That's a really hard question, because then you're asking me, or I might feel like you're asking me, you know, what's your favorite genre? And I'm not going to say that either.
00;22;20;05 - 00;22;24;02
Erica Machulak
Why is it such a hard question? What's the, tell us about the challenge.
00;22;32;19 - 00;22;37;16
Dwandalyn Reece
One song speaking for everything that you are. And it's not the challenge with me. It's more the projection.
00;22;37;18 - 00;23;10;04
Dwandalyn Reece
There's this book I read last year, Nina Edshein, the base of sound. I've got it on my bookshelf. But this is something I struggled with as a child because I. I didn't have a voice that sounded black. And I was criticized and made fun about that or about my musical choices. And that's more about someone else than it is about me.
00;23;10;04 - 00;23;43;23
Dwandalyn Reece
But it still has an impact. And so I kind of get a little, not uptight, but, you know, trying to pick one thing. And assuming somebody is going to let that one song speak for everything that I love. And I don't know if there is one song that could, there's certain songs I like a turn of phrase or a harmonic progression, a sound of a of a voice, you know, certain voices.
00;23;43;23 - 00;24;16;07
Dwandalyn Reece
I think right now I'm excited about watching the Roberta Flack documentary, Killing Me Softly is one of my favorite songs, but also how her voice is so distinct and draws me in. There are a lot of I have a strong affinity for vocalists. Female vocalists. Mm hmm. Ella Fitzgerald. Joan Baez. Janis Ian and Ethel Waters off course, my dissertation topic.
00;24;16;09 - 00;24;30;33
Dwandalyn Reece
So but lots of the Eva Cassidy, Deanne Warwick. I like singer songwriter types but and they're different songs are different things.
00;24;30;40 - 00;24;40;13
Erica Machulak
Totally. So who are the audiences for your book? Who do you feel that you're speaking to?
00;24;40;15 - 00;25;16;24
Dwandalyn Reece
I'm speaking to, I'm speaking to the general reader who loves music, who loves African-American culture. I'm also speaking to the serious researcher or the lay researcher who.. collectors, you know. Anyway, we all save something for some reason or another. Why are we saving it? And what does it tell us? You know, it's an exercise in that I'm speaking to musicologists and ethnomusicologist about their own scholarship.
00;25;16;27 - 00;25;43;08
Dwandalyn Reece
What new avenues does working with material culture open? What questions could we ask? How can we open the floodgates of having different voices inform the research we've already done? I believe that the material culture really lends itself well to that. So it's kind of convincing that community too, because there hasn't been a lot of work in that area.
00;25;43;11 - 00;26;15;18
Dwandalyn Reece
So for me, it's like anything I write, I want it to be for multiple audiences. I want them to see them, to get passionate about it, to see how it might relate to their own life, their own collections, whether it's music or not, to think about their own things that they treasure and why they treasure them. Educators I also think about, particularly K-through-12 education, and using music to teach other topics.
00;26;15;20 - 00;26;29;66
Dwandalyn Reece
I think this is an excellent way to reach children and high schoolers, junior high schoolers. So I have a broad audience I'm hoping will take pleasure in the story.
00;26;30;20 - 00;26;35;15
Erica Machulak
And how do you strike a balance writing for all of those different audiences at once?
00;26;36;20 - 00;27;15;10
Dwandalyn Reece
It's challenge. But t's a challenge I like, and I see myself doing that with everything I've done working in the public sector, so to speak, is how to distill some of these sometimes erudite theoretical ideas, but to an essence that it's in plain language. And I think there's an art to that. It's not always easy. I think the book is structured - I do all the main essays, and that's kind of the the half the theoretical framing a little bit. And then there are a lot of stories and profiles.
00;27;15;10 - 00;27;49;08
Dwandalyn Reece
And I had a team of my colleagues who helped with writing a lot of those. But it is a balance and language use and choice. All of that is is it is a balance in everything we do, particularly for the museum, because we're reaching so many audiences and you have to speak to so many people at one time through one text or one blog or when one label.
00;27;49;11 - 00;28;24;27
Erica Machulak
Mm hmm. In Canada, they they have this term that's really common. Most federal grants have a module or a section that applicants have to fill out. It's called the Knowledge Mobilization section. And so knowledge mobilization is emerging as this term to refer to the work that scholars do to make their research accessible and useful. And I wonder for you, are there examples of scholars doing that that you can point to that you thought were really effective.
00;28;24;27 - 00;28;50;24
Dwandalyn Reece
For me, and when I talk to people, if you're going to do public facing work, I want you to do it for the right reasons, because you want to engage with the public, not because you want to publicize yourself. I believe and I get I have a lot of students who come and talk to me that I can quite honestly say that what I did was intentional.
00;28;50;24 - 00;29;26;16
Dwandalyn Reece
I wanted to work with public audiences. It wasn't a fallback. It wasn't alt-academic. I, I thrive on engaging with public audiences, and it deserves no less than that. Do you want to be in this field? It's not an alternative to do the same thing you might do as a university professor. You really have to have an orientation and intention to do with, working in community.
00;29;26;16 - 00;29;53;17
Dwandalyn Reece
I mean, as scholars, you work by yourselves, you teach your classes, you write your grants. You're kind of an independent producer. In the public sector, you have obligations to other people besides yourself. Not only your colleagues or to your funders, but to the people you actually work there and what you're doing has real life consequences to them. It can change lives and it does change lives.
00;29;53;20 - 00;30;18;04
Dwandalyn Reece
And if you don't value that and see that as the impetus for doing your kind of work, I think you're better placed elsewhere. It's not about publicity. It's not about making a name for yourself. It's about an intention of seeing your scholarship out there, not for the glorification of you as a scholar, but for the good of the community.
00;30;18;06 - 00;30;24;29
Erica Machulak
And do you think that every scholar within the Academy should be doing public facing work?
00;30;26;20 - 00;31;05;22
Dwandalyn Reece
I do. I think universities are parts of their community. I think the efficacy and the resources they pour into professors that, as community service they should not only serve their students, but also outside their community. And that's where you're going to see, you know, you just get a small fraction when you're working within the classroom. And, in fact, it's quite prudent, you know, knowing graduate education, as we know today and the number of tenure track jobs.
00;31;05;24 - 00;31;27;29
Dwandalyn Reece
It's a way to prepare students to apply their work in other ways. And it's a way to make their work useful. It's a no brainer to me. But it's it's it's a difficult road to hoe because it really needs to come from the top down. You know, tenure track, tenure dossiers and all of that kind of stuff.
00;31;28;00 - 00;31;53;22
Dwandalyn Reece
They don't reward public facing work on the same level as they do writing a monograph or writing a journal article or teaching a class. And so there's there's a strong, steep learning curve not only to professors and, you know, their academic societies I'm a part of and talking about public facing work but to really elevated it not see it as lesser than.
00;31;53;25 - 00;31;56;75
Dwandalyn Reece
And that's my other soapbox. I have lots of soapboxes.
00;31;59;05 - 00;32;16;06
Erica Machulak
We're here to talk about any and all soapboxes that you would like to talk about. One of the challenges that we see come up, because at Hikma, a lot of what we do on the consulting side is working with scholars who would like to do that public facing work and are trying to, they're seeking funding for it.
00;32;16;06 - 00;32;43;19
Erica Machulak
They're seeking strategies for it. They want someone in the room to help them facilitate dialogs with their community partners in a way that helps them get on the same page. And one of the things that really comes through in the different folks that we work with is that not everybody has the same instincts. Not everybody has the same intuitive skills to build those relationships and and do that work.
00;32;43;22 - 00;32;59;12
Erica Machulak
Do you have any ideas for how to balance that, how to how to make it possible for scholars who don't have the instincts or the experience and partnership development to to do that work responsibly?
00;32;59;15 - 00;33;31;27
Dwandalyn Reece
Well, a lot of this training, I mean, I think it's instincts, intuitiveness, you know, you're you're more inclined for certain professions. There are a couple of things that I think about. One is, you know, programs do not give experiences where you can get that kind of instinct. I think the best thing I did, what was great about my museum practice program, it was all learning by doing.
00;33;32;00 - 00;34;05;23
Dwandalyn Reece
It wasn't. Yeah, we had reading, we had classes, but we were doing all the way through the program. And I can't tell you enough how actually being out there and listening and observing and trying to understand how things work and where people come from, how valuable to me that has been as a knowledge base and developing my own skills and perfecting my own skills.
00;34;05;26 - 00;34;35;15
Dwandalyn Reece
And you have to have that level of you, also have to have a level of self-awareness about your placement, particularly working with communities in relation to them, and be very clear about who you are and what you're bringing and what blinders you may be bringing or attitudes, but also to look at where they are and what they're bringing and and where the commonality stands.
00;34;35;17 - 00;35;07;17
Dwandalyn Reece
There's a lot of emotional intelligence to this work to do it right and to not come on as as someone who's taking over or speaking for someone else or appropriating someone else's culture and I think a lot of that is in the preparation. You know, if I had my druthers, there would be programs, graduate programs that built some of these kind of skills, that you could probably use in the academy or outside the academy.
00;35;07;19 - 00;35;56;00
Dwandalyn Reece
But I think a successful person, whatever route you choose, needs to have that level of self-awareness, and self flexibility to see where you're positioned in the greater scheme of things. But there's there's nothing better but listening and understanding and understanding your vantage point versus someone else's and not coming off as an expert know it all. One of the things I think is true about music and I like is that I may be a curator or I may have a Ph.D., I may have all these things, but there's someone out there who knows more than I do.
00;35;56;03 - 00;36;19;25
Dwandalyn Reece
And quite a lot of people who know more than I do. And I am always willing to learn. I'm open to that all the time, and I don't present myself as knowing everything. I know what I know. I can put together things. I can interpret things. Mm hmm. That I will learn from every person that I encounter.
00;36;19;28 - 00;36;34;60
Erica Machulak
You mentioned a number of times the importance of being a good listener, which I find especially interesting coming from someone who listens to music in so many dimensions. What are the qualities of a good listener?
00;36;41;70 - 00;36;53;12
Dwandalyn Reece
Not talking so much. I in it sounds, tongue in cheek, but you don't have to be the expert in the room.
00;36;53;15 - 00;37;26;16
Dwandalyn Reece
I don't like to hear myself talk ad nauseam. I. I draw people, I try to draw people out and hear what they're saying. You also listening. You listen for what you don't hear. Mm hmm. And what you don't hear or see. A listener also asks good probing questions or leading questions. A listener knows where to stop or maybe redirect.
00;37;26;18 - 00;37;52;13
Dwandalyn Reece
Someone may not want to talk about something, but you also listen for the things that keep coming up. And perhaps there's something you want to listen there. And you listen to really, I don't know. This thought just crossed my mind last week. I was just writing something. But you listen beyond what you can hear.
00;37;52;15 - 00;38;23;09
Dwandalyn Reece
I've been playing around with that. Because listening beyond what you can hear is actually going beyond what is actually being uttered at that moment. And to me, that's like delving deep with an object. It's going. It's learning beyond that one encounter. It is going back and doing your reading. It's going back and doing your research or talking to other people in the community.
00;38;23;11 - 00;38;54;40
Dwandalyn Reece
There's there's more to it than just that one exchange. And that's how, sometimes we can run the risk of being arrogant enough our own self-importance of what we're doing. But if you haven't done your homework and you don't go do your homework when someone has directed you to, then you're really, you're really not all in. And you're not on board with really having a fair and equal exchange with somebody. So I feel that very strongly.
00;38;49;12 - 00;39;12;75
Erica Machulak
Mm hmm. So what I'm hearing you tell me if this is fair, is that a piece of it is being able to step back, ask the right questions, let conversation go where it needs to go. And a piece of it is committing upfront to the follow through.
00;39;13;70 - 00;39;19;20
Dwandalyn Reece
Absolutely. And it's not, none of this is transactional.
00;39;19;22 - 00;40;06;17
Dwandalyn Reece
These are, you know they may turn out to be transactional, but these are relationship building exercises, encounters. When working with people, we're dealing with their stories. When collecting their objects, I never see it as a transaction. I never want to see it as a transaction. You know, sometimes I may never talk to that person again, but it is a lived experience that I carry with me in the next exchange or in my mental notebook about what it meant to work with this person, to work alongside this person, to tell this story, and to go over this important history or to this common interest.
00;40;06;19 - 00;40;13;17
Erica Machulak
Well, thank you so much Dwan, it's been a privilege to have you. And I really appreciate your time.
00;40;15;00 - 00;40;18;17
Dwandalyn Reece
Well, thanks for letting me do this. This was fun.
00;40;22;00 - 00;40;48;07
Erica Machulak
We hope you've enjoyed this episode of the Hikma Collective Podcast. I'm your host, Erica Machulak, founder of Hikma. The production this episode was led by Sophia van Hees, in collaboration with Simangele Mabena, Eufemia Baldassarre, Ai Mizuta, Nicole Markland and Dashara Green. Matthew Tomkinson composed the original music you hear now in his capacity as the 2022 Hikma artist in residence.
00;40;48;09 - 00;41;18;08
Erica Machulak
This podcast has been made possible with generous support from Innovate BC, Tech Nation, the Information and Communications Technology Council, the Canada Digital Adoption Program and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. You can find show notes, links and transcripts at www.hikma.studio/podcast. Hikma is situated on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the ən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ speaking Musqueam people.
00;41;18;10 - 00;41;41;25
Erica Machulak
We are grateful to be here and to share this space with you. Our speakers, team members and listeners are based all over the world and wherever you're listening, we encourage you to learn more about whose lands you're on.
