Humane Rights with Dr. Akilah Cadet

Ep. 14 - CO-LLAB Choir

Dr. Akilah Cadet: I'm Dr. Akilah Cadet and this is Humane Rights, a show that flips the traditional talk show on its head. This isn't about debate. It's about dialogue. Each episode, I invite guests from different walks of life to unpack the messy, beautiful realities of being human. Welcome to Humane Rights, where being human is the ultimate act of resistance.

[CO-LLAB Choir performs "Joy in the Morning"]

[Applause]

Dr. Akilah Cadet: I want to tell you about Humane Rights. Humane Rights is all about getting back to humanity. I don't know if any of you know that the world is fucked. Wait, no, actually, not the world. America is fucked, or everything is fucked or the week was fucked. I don't know, there's just so much that's happening and we don't have the reminders that there are still good things that are around. We are human beings. And in order to make this world a better place, we have to reconnect back to humanity. Now notice I use the word humane and people are like, well, shouldn't it be like human rights? No. Do you know humane means humanity, but it's been so synonymous with how people treat their pets or their dogs or Humane Society. And we are in positions where there is this president. I call him Donald because if you use someone's first name, it means they don't know what the fuck they're doing. There is a study that came out, and that's why Kamala was Kamala and Trump was Trump, because they used first names for women, because they think we're incompetent to do things. But this fucking asshole Donald doesn't know how to do shit. Anyhoo, when you have all of that happening, I wanted to figure out a way where we could literally make the world a better place. So that's why we have Humane Rights.

Now, you're probably wondering how I got here. And, surprise to no one, if you don't know, I wrote this book called White Supremacy is All Around. You can clap for that. Thanks. It's so hard to be a Black author when you have a top five publisher. But I did it, and I'm proud of that. But, I used to have a podcast called Soft Black Woman, and it was on this huge media network called Betches Media. You may follow Betches on social media, and the podcast was great, and they were so excited with their first season, and they really wanted me to expand the vertical so it would parallel with my book, White Supremacy Is All Around the launch of my book. So excited! I just casually had this major surgery so I could eat again and take a little break. And then we're just like, book comes out in February. New podcast. Go go go. But then October 7th happened. And because I believe in the liberation of Palestinians, my podcast was canceled. And the reason why I'm here with Ciel Creative Space, Ciel Media, Bo, Rome and Cecilia who run Ciel Media, I can say I believe in the liberation of Palestinians.

And that's because the only way you can have humanity is to believe in the humanity of every single person. You can't pick and choose humanity. That's not how it works. That's just not how it works. That is actually called racism, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, sexism, and the list goes on and on. And we don't do that here. So, thank you for being here. I really appreciate it. I want you all to know that I am empty. So you are filling the cup.

At this time, I would love to bring up the incredible CO-LLAB Choir and their director, Cava Menzies. Come on up.

So as CO-LLAB comes up, we're all about inclusion here. And when we were putting all this together, Cava was like, yeah, I'm totally happy to do this interview, but we are a group. And so this is the first time I'm interviewing a choir, which is really great. So you're going to see mics moving. You're going to see people coming up and down in chairs. Anyone can chime in at any moment in time and you'll get to experience Humane Rights.

Hey, everyone. Hey. You can come over here, I don't bite. You don't have to. It's fine. We want to see your beautiful faces. So welcome to Humane Rights.

Choir Member: Thank you.

Dr. Akilah Cadet: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. We have Cava. Allison Skyler. Candace. And. We're gonna pass the mic around.

Choir Member: Everybody talk into the mic.

Choir Member: Hey, everybody. My name is Jayda.

Choir Member: Hey everyone, I'm Effie. Bryan Sullivan.

Choir Member: Hi, y'all. I'm Dominee. I'm Sarah Vela. Zoe Boston.

Dr. Akilah Cadet: All right. And on keyboards, we have... Jonathan. Oh go ahead, Jonathan, introduce you.

Choir Member: I am Jonathan.

Dr. Akilah Cadet: There we go. None of this matters, but it matters immensely. We have two Virgos up here, and I love that the first people come up with Virgos, so thank you. What is it like being a Virgo for you?

Choir Member: You know. I take the calling rather seriously. It is important. It is a tremendous weight on my shoulders that I carry with pride. Yes. Oh. Well, I'm going to, may I? Do I have permission to use that? Every day? Okay. Thank you.

Dr. Akilah Cadet: It's very useful. I feel like it's a very useful thing to me. It's very. Yeah. Yeah. I like to say we. You love us or hate us. Either way, you're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome. You're welcome. Um. Our fearless leader. You may know her as Beyonce. We are 363 days apart. Um. Which, if you like her, then you'll like me. If you don't, I don't care, because we're Virgos. But we have a lot in common. I always like to start by asking, what does Humane Rights mean to you?

Cava, would you like to start?

Cava Menzies: When I hear Humane Rights, I think about the human, the word human in that concept. And I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be a human being right now on this planet. And so Humane Rights to me means, just the value of life and the fact that every single person and human on this planet, and truly every living being also really deserves to live freely and live a fulfilled life experience.

Dr. Akilah Cadet: Oh, absolutely. Anyone? Well, we can snap, that's fine. Oh, we are a cafe. Anyone else want to add to what Humane Rights may mean to you?

Choir Member: No pressure. Oh, yeah. No, because I was talking about this earlier upstairs. We were talking about AI. Myself and Terry our other member. And it got us thinking about, like, what does it mean to be perfect? Right. And I'm looking at, like, I love being in Taylor Smalls' world. Like for a second, because I'm not an artist I can't draw for to save my life. I can't do it or create in that way. So looking at like how maybe she experiences the world visually, right? And how it's like a perfect imperfection. It's the way I read it. And so like the computers and the AI is like built on perfection. And so when I'm taking it back to human to Humane Rights, I'm thinking about, well, what it means to be human is to be imperfect. Otherwise we would just be in sync with what's normal and we wouldn't stand out. And so I think of Humane Rights as the inherent properties of being a human. And I think about the word, the etymology hue, the human, the hue and saturation, all that stuff. So, so I think about like our default being and then what comes with that? The inherent properties of being treated properly and being having the right to exist so.

Dr. Akilah Cadet: Existing is cool. I'm so sorry to break this to you. You are an artist. Oh you can't, oh you can't. Oh, so you don't sing. You don't sing at all. Oh oh wow look at that. So I just want to remind people that the beauty about humanity is that we are all creatives. We all find ways to do it. Unfortunately, the way America works is, you know, people think creativity is you have to draw something or something with a computer or be able to design. It's the moment when you were in kindergarten and shit was cool. And then second grade was also fun, and then third grade came around. They were like, you gotta not do that anymore, right? And you can't dream and you can't create because now you got to really get into, I don't know, arithmetic or I don't know whatever it was, but, you know, it's taking that part away. Does anyone else want to add anything to the Humane Rights? Good. No pressure.

Choir Member: When I hear Humane Rights, it just makes me reflect on what our standard is for the value of life. And it evokes the thought of really reassessing that. Yeah like I think we see clearly through all the things happening in the world that, you know, some people's lives are not valued as high as others. And why is that? Like we all, you know, have the same color blood on the inside. And we all have, an innate, immeasurable value. And so that's what I think about when I hear Humane Rights. It's just like coming back home, coming back to what it really means to be human and rising back up to that standard.

Dr. Akilah Cadet: Mm mm. Yes, yes. Thank you for that. So, how did CO-LLAB come together? Because this is a relatively newer thing. So tell us about that.

Cava Menzies: Uh, so we were founded in 2022. It started in my bedroom. I like to meditate in the morning. I like to meditate. I like to pray. I like to just, like, take a minute before the world has access to me, just to see if there's any downloads or just process thoughts. And truly this idea, it was like a download came in my head. It was during the time of Covid. We'd all been isolated for a really long time. I think what was already spinning inside of me was the fact that, number one, we weren't able to come together in music venues. At a certain point, music was essentially banned. We couldn't go to concert venues, we couldn't be in collaboration with each other. So I was really missing that in my spirit. And something came down, to me, to me, it was really a message that was like, create an ensemble where people can gather, create an ensemble for artists. It doesn't, you know, I work at a performing art school. I work at Oakland School for the Arts, where, you know, kids get in there like known as artists when they're coming in. But the community of creatives that we have in the Bay area, particularly in the East Bay and particularly in Oakland, is really, really special. And so I wanted to create something that was a space for all of the amazing creative people that I knew to come together and create music again, especially as we've been so isolated. So that was part of the impetus was like, you need to create an adult ensemble for all of the creative people and really bring them together. And then the other piece of it was around collaboration and a lot of my joy and my career I teach, but we also do a lot of concerts to the work I do. And my favorite part is not just like, hey, look at what we've done and we're performing on our own. The best part of their job has been getting to meet other artists. Like this event is a collaborative event where we're getting to experience each other's work. I love that Taylor's work is going to be the backdrop for what we're doing. It's like the intersection of people, actually is where all the meaning making happens. And so all of this was kind of filtering through in the meditation that was like, create an ensemble, just create a space. You don't have to know all the details of this space. And I remember it was like, and it's called CO-LLAB Choir and the name, you know, sometimes when you have your eyes closed, you see stuff. And so it was literally the name like CO-LLAB. And I thought, that's the weirdest thing I've ever heard. So I kind of, like, bucked up against it and was like, that can't be it. And it just kept coming, just CO-LLAB. So I wrote on a whiteboard. A couple months later, a beautiful man named Alan Dones opened up his home in the Oakland Hills and basically I told him the plan and he was like, go to the next step, gather the people. And so that was also this really beautiful, generous offer where I was watching the idea catch where people really wanted to be in community with each other. People wanted to give of their services freely and give of their resources freely. So already it was like this moment where this feels like aligned steps. And so we put out an all call, and all these beautiful people showed up for that call. And we actually had a big group of people show up, and we've been just rocking with each other ever since. I love being in community with all of these people here. They're each so talented individually. So many unique personalities. Everybody here is a singer or a creator or a songwriter, but we also have muralists and visual artists and teachers and web designers and doulas and hairdressers. It's like it runs the gamut of humanity and we get to do music together. So we've been rocking since 2022 and really just building friendships with each other and building this really strong community. And I think the biggest testament is that it's attracted artists. So we've been able, through the work that we do to really collaborate with so many incredible artists from all over the world, from Palestine to Jordan to South Africa to Ghana to Nigeria to Bay Area. And we're doing a lot of work with LaRussell right now. It just continues to unfold these amazing opportunities like this with all of you. So thank you.

Dr. Akilah Cadet: No, thank you. We got to clap again because you're an educator in this world. And for all the educators, thank you so much for that. It's not a it's not an easy job. Also, I said arithmetic. So now you know I'm 43. That is a whole moment in time. So I, I would love to ask you a little bit about, Suite for Humanity, that you just debuted with the Oakland Symphony. I was like, we were on a call planning this. Call was like, I'm just casually gonna just have a whole I composed symphony. I was like, oh, my God. So I played violin and clarinet, so I'm an orchestral, like groupie. I love orchestral music. But I was also an honor choir.

Clap it up, everybody. She can sing. I yeah, I'm gonna join in. Actually, I will be the 15th Harmony.

Cava Menzies: We welcome you.

Dr. Akilah Cadet: You know what? I feel welcomed. Uh, what do you want to sing right now?

Choir Member: No. I'm kidding. Why don't you. What? What are we doing? One. Two. Three. What?

Dr. Akilah Cadet: What? No. It's on you because you said it loud. What is it now? What are we singing? We got to be ready. What? Everybody sing a note at the same time. Ready, set! Go! Everyone sing a note.

[Singing]

Dr. Akilah Cadet: Great job everyone.

Choir Member: I am a mezzo soprano.

Dr. Akilah Cadet: Okay, so when I sat there. Front row. By the way, because I am a groupie, I was like this. What the fuck? I... I lost my mind. It's 15 minutes that will change your life. And I've been processing it ever since I heard it. And, just tell folks, just why? Yeah, yeah.

Cava Menzies: I had the opportunity of a lifetime this year. The Oakland Symphony Orchestra reached out to me and commissioned me to write a piece for the symphony, which is amazing if you know anything about symphony culture. Yeah, I was really. It was really. It was a childhood dream. I feel like a lot of music kids are always like, I want to write for the symphony or like I want to be a conductor. But I met with the conductor of the Oakland Symphony, Kendrick Armstrong, who's brilliant, and he's a 30 year old, 31 year old man. He's a Black man.

Choir Member: He's a Black man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's just say

Cava Menzies: that he's a 31 year old Black man conducting the Oakland Symphony Orchestra which is a historically, like, predominantly all white ensemble. Orchestras are that way. If you know anything about like, symphony and orchestra culture. Very rarely are we allowed in those spaces and very rarely is there room for us, whether it's in the conductor position or even as a composer. I grew up doing music, and rarely do you see a woman composer, let alone a woman of color, a composer, let alone a Black woman composer. And so he reached out to me and said, we're programming this piece, and I want you to write the piece that precedes it. And it's a huge undertaking. There's 180 players or 90 players on the stage, 90 orchestral players, and about an 80 person choir I had a couple of CO-LLAB Choir members there. Allison was there, Sarah was there, which was amazing. The name of the piece was called Suite for Humanity, and it was a prequel to a piece called Requiem by a composer, Verdi's Requiem. If you know that, which is a mass for the dead. And so my task was to, backwards map it and say, what would what kind of music would be needed that somebody would have to write a mass for the dead. And that's not a stretch based on everything that we're all seeing in the news today and in the world today, we're seeing mass destruction and mass killing of so many people, genocides happening, horrific things that, to be honest, I haven't had the words for. I've been pretty internally devastated and feeling like I language language doesn't cut it like the stuff we're seeing is ineffable, but music does. Music speaks things that language can't. And so I wanted to write a suite for humanity. That was my cry for humanity. Like, what the fuck is going on with humanity? Why are we being so cruel to each other? How can we just take people's lives so senselessly and so really deep sorrow around the state of humanity, and also an homage to humanity, which was, can't we remember who we are? Can't we really remember? The purpose is to love each other. The purpose is to care for each other and take care of each other. And so it's a three movement piece that I wrote. And each movement, movement one is around the state of the world today. And I tried to musically depict that through instrumentation and melody and harmony of just the chaos and the war and the sadness and the pleading and the grief. Movement two was what happens when the dust settles, when we've all had trauma or witnessed horrendous things? How do we actually regroup as human beings and how do we come back to our humanity? And then the third movement, I also took a poem from a poet, which we should all know. I didn't know him prior to this, but there's an incredible poet named Paul Laurence Dunbar, who's a Black poet from the late 1800s. He lived to be incredible poet named Paul Laurence Dunbar, who's a Black poet from the late 1800s. He lived to be 33 years old. He was from Dayton, Ohio, and he's the predecessor to Maya Angelou. Langston Hughes. Uh, Zora Neale Hurston, like, that was their idol. He was actually the very first person to write the text I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which Maya later used. So that was his pen that first wrote that. And he wrote a piece of music called I'm sorry... wrote a poem called Invitation to Love that I set to music for the orchestra. And the whole poem is about, the range of the human experience, the grief we experience, the elated times, the beauty of nature, just everything that it means to be human. And at the end of it all, everything is an invitation back to love. No matter what you go through. Love is the answer. And the final text of the piece it says over and over again, you are welcome. You are welcome. And to me, I had a big choir singing in the symphonies carrying that message. You know, like these fortissimo volumes. And I wanted that to be the message is everybody should be welcome here. So it goes back to the name of your podcast. Humane Rights means that everybody is welcome. We all belong and we all have a rightful place to exist freely and live well and love each other unconditionally. So.

Dr. Akilah Cadet: See how humanity is so important? It is so important. Okay. I would love to talk to you forever, but I want you all to know this very important thing. Because of you, because of you, you, you, all of you, you are helping people understand how important actual music is. As Taylor is saying earlier, there's AI stuff, fucking Timbaland. Timbaland is... Timbaland. If you, whatever camera, you are a piece of shit what you are doing... I love him, but what he's doing is not okay. It is not okay to have AI artists, not for someone at his capacity because everyone has their Timbaland song. Everyone has that. You don't change the game to try to change game. It's the whole thing can go on and on about that. But when you are behind LaRussell and there are people who are five and ten and fifteen, you're providing instrumentation and actual voice to music and people are learning that choir is cool. Choir is important. Music is important. Orchestra is important. Let's. That's why I'm a nerd for orchestra. Because my mom is like, you're playing a violin because white people, you gotta know, you know, and and that's that's why I love the violin. But so, thank you for that. I would love if everyone could just go around and say one word of why CO-LLAB is important to you. So just one word. Don't break the rules. It just say one word. Pass it quick. Let's go this way, and then I'll pass it. One word. You got this. It's not hard. CO-LLAB. One word. What does that CO-LLAB mean to you?

Choir Member: Medicine.

Choir Member: Heart.

Choir Member: Speechless.

Dr. Akilah Cadet: We'll come back.

Choir Member: Nostalgia.

Choir Member: Dedication.

Choir Member: People.

Choir Member: Family.

Choir Member: Togetherness.

Choir Member: Divine.

Dr. Akilah Cadet: Oh. Divine. Okay. Well, in true fashion, I have to wrap up by saying, fuck Cloud Dancer. If you don't know what I'm talking about, Pantone color of the year is white. And the color is so annoying. Anyway, go down a deep dive for that. And I just... Look, we're going through something that people shouldn't have to go through, which is fighting for the rights we already had, the amount of civil rights that have been upended since Donald came into office is not okay. And so something as insignificant and significant as the Pantone color of the year being white is very telling. If y'all thought 2025 was hard. 2026 will be worse. So you got to tap into humanity. And when you do, wear what? Just know to Keep Being Amazing because they do not want you here. But I do. So Keep Being Amazing. All right.

Choir Member: Thank you, Akilah.

Dr. Akilah Cadet: They all have shirts on the podcast. Everyone gets a shirt. They already have them for the Virgos in the room. It's already done. So everyone's happy. And this is Cloud Dancer behind us. What? We're going to change out with Taylor Smalls and, let's see a performance from y'all. Great. Thank you so much. Akilah. Can we give it up for Akilah one more time? Thank you.

Cava Menzies: This is one of my songs called Found Time that I premiered live in-person for the first time with CO-LLAB at Yerba Buena Gardens Festival a couple of years ago. So yeah, I hope you enjoy.

[CO-LLAB Choir performs "Found Time"]

[Applause]

Dr. Akilah Cadet: Big love and gratitude to our guests for showing up with truth, humor, and of course, humanity. If this conversation moved you, you got to like it. You got to share it. You have to talk about it, bring it into your circle, spaces and places because that's how change multiplies. You can catch more episodes wherever you get your podcasts and watch the full series produced by Ciel Media and me on the Ciel Media YouTube channel. Now what is that YouTube channel? What you need to subscribe to so you can get more of this. But until next time, stay curious. Find your joy and Keep Being Amazing.