{"id":772,"date":"2023-08-25T11:41:12","date_gmt":"2023-08-25T11:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/?p=772"},"modified":"2023-08-25T11:41:12","modified_gmt":"2023-08-25T11:41:12","slug":"janelle-monae-retrospective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/2023\/08\/25\/janelle-monae-retrospective\/","title":{"rendered":"Janelle Mon\u00e1e Retrospective"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

First Listen
<\/strong>I recently read Janelle Mon\u00e1e\u2019s book The Memory Librarian<\/a><\/em>. It\u2019s a collection of short stories building upon the dystopian society the self described singer\/songwriter, actress, producer, fashion icon, and futurist<\/em> built through their album Dirty Computer<\/em> and its accompanying \u201cemotion picture.\u201d I\u2019ve been a fandroid since 89.3 The Current<\/em> broadcast Tightrope<\/em> into the truck\u2019s stereo on my drive to high school. Every time they come out with a new project I fall in love all over again with Janelle\u2019s vision, artistic chops, and intellect. But the skill The Memory Librarian <\/em>especially showcases is their incredible capacity as a collaborator and creative partner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earworm
<\/strong>The Memory Librarian<\/em> is a team effort, each of the novel\u2019s five stories is co-authored with a different BIPOC and queer speculative fiction writers. Each of the stories stand alone but function as an ensemble to give profound depth to the world of Dirty Computer. The novel perfectly strikes the balancing act of a collaborative anthology: each story has a particular voice and style but their differences seem to grow naturally from the characters they focus on rather than seeming like fan-fiction, spin-off, or franchise. You can\u2019t disentangle Mon\u00e1e\u2019s voice, style, or story from their collaborators and you wouldn\u2019t want to. There is so much vision and depth to the text, and it grows so easily from the songs and videos of Dirty Computer<\/em>, that it’s like these stories were there from the beginning: they just needed these writing partnerships to spring forth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These deep partnerships are everywhere in Janelle Mon\u00e1e\u2019s work, from the loving chorus on Big Boi\u2019s Be Still<\/a>, and the iconic Erykah Badu verse in Q.U.E.E.N.<\/a>, to the shout of KELLINDOOO\u2014<\/em> in Cold War<\/a>, announcing their consistent collaborator\u2019s guitar solo. Janelle\u2019s practiced and flexible voice has a way of blending seamlessly with their collaborators, creating songs that don\u2019t sound exactly like either artist but something completely different and greater than the sum of its parts. My favorite example of this is their collaboration with Of Montreal on the track Make The Bus<\/a>, where you can barely tell when Mon\u00e1e and Barnes trade lines because their voices are so indistinguishable. You can hear their style and voice shift again on the Prince feature Give \u2018Em What They Love<\/a>, and again on the Solange collab Electric Lady<\/a>, where the two are so fully incorporated that all you can really pick out of Solange is her occasional punctuated \u201cwoo ooh\u201ds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just from listening, you can see that Janelle Mon\u00e1e\u2019s collaborations go beyond asking someone to contribute a verse, they involve building an entire song together and in doing so building a comfortable, collaborative space and a loving relationship. One of my favorite moments where you can see this happening is in the promo video<\/a> for Mon\u00e1e and Kimbra\u2019s tragically canceled Golden Electric tour. As the two artists, decked in black and white houndstooth, jam out to a medley of Rock Steady and and Wanna Be Startin\u2019 Somethin\u2019, Janelle tells Kimbra \u201cyou\u2019re the star of the song,\u201d which is just the kind of warm loving energy you want to hear from a collaborator you may just be getting to know. Kimbra is, of course, later immortalized as an \u201cElectro Phi Betas Emeritus,\u201d with other collaborators in the Electric Lady video.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Rewind
<\/strong>There\u2019s a scene in The Memory Librarian<\/em>\u2019s second story, a collaboration with Danny Lore, when Mon\u00e1e\u2019s avatar Jane 57821 aka Alice aka Cindi Mayweather is led to a cool cave filled with moist soil, soil that serves to ground them and restore erased memories. Reading The Memory Librarian<\/em> showed me that Janelle\u2019s collaborations aren\u2019t just a part of their practice, they are the point. When Janelle started Wondaland Records<\/a> it wasn\u2019t to build an empire, but rather to uncover fertile ground for other artists to grow their work. Janelle Mon\u00e1e is a true visionary, and as The Memory Librarian<\/em> shows us, the more their community grows the clearer that vision becomes. I\u2019ll close off with a quote from the Wondaland Arts Society<\/a> wordpress, last updated in 2012 but speaks just as clearly today:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

We have created our own state, our own republic. There is grass here. Grass sprouts from toilet seats, bookshelves, ceilings and floors. Grass makes us feel good. In this state, there are no laws, there is only music. Funk rules the spirit. And punk rules the courtrooms and marketplace. Period.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First ListenI recently read Janelle Mon\u00e1e\u2019s book The Memory Librarian. It\u2019s a collection of short stories building upon the dystopian society the self described singer\/songwriter, actress, producer, fashion icon, and futurist built through their album Dirty Computer and its accompanying \u201cemotion picture.\u201d I\u2019ve been a fandroid since 89.3 The Current broadcast Tightrope into the truck\u2019s… Continue reading Janelle Mon\u00e1e Retrospective<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[14,17,20,26],"class_list":["post-772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-digestable","tag-democracy","tag-fiction","tag-music","tag-queer","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=772"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":773,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772\/revisions\/773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gabriel.town\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}