Fodder: ‘A Full-On Conversation’ with Val Jeanty and Douglas Kearney

The recent release of Fodder, a literary‑sonic collaboration between Douglas Kearney and Val Jeanty, brings the dynamic poet/performer/librettist and the visionary composer of Afro-Electronica together in a masterful demonstration of their artistic synergy. Recorded live in Portland, Oregon, on August 9, 2019, this album challenges our conceptions of time, form, medium, and sensorial experience as it also troubles distinctions between sound, thought, language, and bodies. As the circumstances of the pandemic persisted, I had the privilege of discussing Fodder with both artists over Zoom, the three of us connecting from our respective homes, with myself in Chicago, Doug in Twin Cities, and Val in Brooklyn. The conversation led us through an inquiry into creative kinship and improvisation that underscored the limitless potentials activated through systems of Black cosmology and the calling into presence of both artistic and ancestral genealogies.

The notion of artistic genealogy holds particular weight here because Fodder itself can be traced back to Jeanty and Kearney’s 2014 undertaking with Poetry Foundation titled Freedom of Shadow: A Tribute to Terry Adkins. This oratorio for solo voice and electronics published on Harriet followed Kearney’s 2013 venture into collaboration with Adkins, the brilliant multidisciplinary artist and professor, who would ascend soon after in February of 2014. These works, along with the Joan Mitchell At Home in Poetry exhibition and Drury Brennan’s ulteriori ombre, a  large-scale calligraphic companion piece to Kearney’s Freedom of Shadow, represent the seeds of what Jeanty and Kearny conjure in this album.

There are artists who, I feel, remind us of the import of presence in the creative process, and in witnessing the depth of knowledge harvested through such acute attention to presence, we as audience members are more deeply privy, and present, to ourselves. Jeanty and Kearny are two such artists. Our conversation here works through questions of what is divinely guided and what is playfully uncovered. What divine fortune that Douglas Kearney and Val Jeanty converged in artistic partnership. What good fortune to bear witness.

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I was inclined to start with the question how this particular pairing came about, but I think I’m really wanting to pose a question around the notion of divination. I’m interested in the possibility of certain occasions being enchanted, perhaps extra-worldly, otherworldly, or ancestrally guided into fruition. So, I pose this question of divination in relation to the question of how this project, Fodder, came about.

Douglas Kearney: Well, this particular project for this version of Fodder came about because Jeff Alessandrelli of Fonograf approached me about wanting to do an audio project, and I immediately asked him, do you want it to be like a studio reading? Do you want it to be a live vocal concert type of thing? What we came to was doing something live, and at that point I was like, well, then I need to get my partner, Val Jeanty.

Whenever I work with Val all I think about is the listening and the conversation that we’re having. When you think about divination, or possession, or just deep listening, that’s what Val’s art does for me. The idea of not knowing what is going to happen, but knowing that whatever is going to happen is what is supposed to happen. I always get that with Val.

Val Jeanty: When Doug hit me up, we have this thing where we say, “pull up,” and it means we have to be creative. And that itself is a call to wake up, too. You know— pull up! We have to be present. We did it in Oregon, and that place itself, like there’s a vibe there. But we always have this connection, we call it a spiritual creative connection. We got this gig out in Ohio and when we did the soundcheck we just went ham. It was just like improv. Because what we do is improv. We were in soundcheck for like an hour. We were just going to different places, and that was like the whole concert.

When we got to Portland, I asked them to have a drum set because I’m using this new thing now, it’s called Sunhouse, and they’re drum pad triggers, so you can actually play it like a real drum. With that I can trigger Doug’s voice, I can trigger anything. The whole record was made with the drum set. I only bring that up because playing the drums and watching Doug move, that right there I think is a spiritual thing. Of course, the words are just like fire. Every word is fire, and the connection! So, it’s not just the words, but what comes with the words. There is a connection. The drum, that’s what activates. So, when we “pull up” we’re activating the drums with the words. At some points I feel like we’re in a spiritual battle and we’re fighting. With Doug it’s not just the words. Doug is moving and the movement is giving me a pattern to work with. That’s a spiritual thing. I’m always watching him because I don’t really know when Doug is going to do what, and if you look at the text, it’s amazing. It’s like, words here, and there, and there, so you’re forced travel.

It’s rhizomatic.

Jeanty: For me, it’s more African. It feels like this is how we should read because it activates us.

When I read Doug’s words and when I’m watching, it is a whole different thing. It gives my mind all these different sounds, and it’s a total spiritual connection with the drums, with the words, and just how we’re able to create these portals, I would say. Because when we are in that war, we’re in it. It’s full, like the room was full. You feel it. It’s thick. There’s a thickness in the air, and those things you can’t duplicate. It’s just creating these portals and the vortex with the sound that allows the deities, the frequencies, the battles.  

As a listener—and it’s even odd calling myself a listener, because I also feel like a spectator when I listen to this record, you know—there’s something about this record that I feel encourages… is it synesthesia? Maybe it’s more than synesthesia. It makes me want to conflate the literary with the sonic, and also the affective experience with the sensorial, and knowing that, like you said, the room is full. I know that it’s not just filled with tangible bodies. The first track, “Do the Deep Blue Boogie,” when Doug drops those “you’ve gotta see” calls, and Val, you follow with these beautiful notes that come in, and it sounds like a single piano key. But it also feels like a clave maybe. Like, I feel like I’ve gotta see! And I’m also imagining what this poem might look like on a Doug Kearney page. I’m also really happy that I’m not seeing it, I’m hearing it. And there is something really beautiful about how you guys seem to split and fracture our sensorial experience.

Kearney: So much of that is about what we’re doing for each other and with each other, Val always brings this perfect balance. And by perfect balance I don’t mean symmetry, but you talk so beautifully through the instruments and this movement where you can create a pattern and a bottom where you’re still, moving diagonally from that at all times. So that means there are times when I can become the percussion. There are times when it feels like I become the percussion and you become the voice. And it’s very fluid.

So, I think that is a part of how it transforms the sensorial experience. Because we are collections of sounds. When I work with Val it’s a collection of sounds because it would be ridiculous for me to say, “I’m in charge of the meaning.” Are you kidding me, Val is making meaning. Val is speaking sentences, and essays, and poems, and song in all of her playing. I don’t go into the situation worrying about the language. Whatever it is that’s going to happen, that is the conversation. I think you called it that, Val, and I think that’s really what it is. It’s a full-on conversation.

It is language, but it’s not text. It’s not just about—oh here’s a poem, here’s music. I can’t imagine being in a situation with Val and even thinking about—"I’m gonna be over the track.” Are you kidding me, no way!

Nah, we push each other because we’re talking to each other and there are so many languages happening at one time. And that spiritual language is what makes all the rest of it really possible. Because, it’s like a bat signal. If there’s an opportunity for us to hit, I just say, Val, you wanna hit? And Val will check her schedule and be like, yeah we can do that. We pretty much talk the day of the event. Sometimes Val will preview some tracks for me, but that’s just a different bottom. Like I hear it, and I go—okay. That just tells me what room we’re going to be in. But it doesn’t tell me what’s going to happen in the room. Because at any second Val’s going to change that because I’ll say something that make her go—Oh…and then I’m just listening. I’m not sitting here thinking—we gotta get to the end of this poem. I’m like, wherever we are is where we need to be.

Jeanty: Yeah, we definitely have a natural flow. But it’s interesting, Honey, you mentioned synesthesia— because that’s a condition that I have. I always thought everyone had it, you know. That’s why I try to give that experience. But I think Doug’s words on the sheet are already doing that. So, for me it’s like, it’s perfect.

It’s also codes. This is more for the Vodou cultures, but if you know how to decode that’s when you can open up those portals. So those words, that’s one key. And then the patterns, that’s another. So, we’re opening doors, moving through. We both have different keys, and then we step in and we fight battles. And then we step through the next door.

Kearney: Yeah, we’re clearing rooms!

Jeanty: We pull up.

Kearney: We pull up on ‘em.

You guys have me thinking about that speech that Rihanna gave, I guess it was about a year ago at the NAACP awards where she basically called on non-Black allies to “pull up.” You know, those who benefit from Black pain or Black suffering, and she didn’t say much more than that. And you both are making me think about your track “I’m here to help” (Intro to “Manesology”). The first time I listened to this album I found myself asking, what does this say about methodologies or processes of Black improvisation. Because I think from a western perspective we’re really comfortable with thinking of improvisation in a way that connotes the immediate. Like, “live in the moment” or “be present,” you know, be there, be ready, be clever. But with the work that you are doing together there seems to be a multiplicity of presences and also a calling upon ancestral power, and the presence or weight of historic trauma, while also imagining, or recollecting Black futurities. Which sort of complicates time, I think, in a really gorgeous way. So, I wonder if you can speak to how time functions here.

Jeanty: We don’t really think about the time, because we just kind of flow. But also because we trust the process. And the improv for us is about stepping outside of time. You know, creating your own portal—there’s that word again. Portal. That’s how we approach this project. So, if there is some sense of time, like let’s say in terms of pattern, I would say it’s how we’re using the words and how I’m placing the sounds. But that’s also just to create certain shapes.

I think we approach time more in terms of shape and less as in “1-and-2-and-3-and-4.”

For me, coming from a Vodou culture, improv is the only thing that’s real. It’s not thought of. If you think about it, it becomes a copy of the thought. So, that’s more like when you’re connected to pure spirit. Because you don’t have time to think. You’re just flowing. You’re just letting it flow through you.

Kearney: What’s funny is every time we’ve hit, Val, I think it’s always been about an hour and a half. And I don’t feel it. So, when you talk about stepping outside of time, that’s what it is for me. I’ve only ever stopped because I feel like the venue needs us to be done.

And the level of that engagement, the level of that conversation… it’s like you were saying, Val, that’s all there is right then. The audience being present doesn’t bind me to time in the sense of taking me out of the space that Val and I are in. I really appreciate what you said about the portals because it’s not even necessarily that we make a space. We find these spaces and go in them. And then the battling, that to me speaks to past, present, and future. That to me speaks about the outside of time. Because when are we not battling the past for our future right now? When are we not battling a possible future that was dictated by a past from before?

So, the fight is always. It’s like that phrase “always already” or “but what had happened will.”

Like, “what had happened will,” I feel like that might be the space that we’re in. The patterns that Val creates they’re not metronomes. It’s something completely different. It’s about how you shape the spaces that we open ourselves into. 

The only time I think about time or timing are the moments when we do a full-on freestyle. And what’s wild about that is those are the least scripted moments for me, but they don’t feel more improvisational. In other words, if I’ve written the poem out, that’s not a sentence… right? As in writing or as in imprisonment, that’s not a sentence because whatever happens while we’re there is going to change all of that. And that’s why I’m there. I’m not there to do poems. I’m there to be in conversation with a spiritual sibling.