[ Music ] >> All right, my name is James
McBride and I am talking to you from my living room in
Lambertville, New Jersey. I'm sitting in my -- the
living room contains my piano, a lot of my music paraphernalia. Next to this room
is my writing room, which contains my typewriter
and computer and all that jazz. I move from one room to
the next during the course of my day when I write. I write and then I come
here and play a little bit or play my saxophone a little
bit, then I got back and write. My new book is called, Deacon
King Kong and it's about a -- it's about a community in
Brooklyn that was inspired by the Red Hook Housing
Projects where I was born and where I still work. And it's about a deacon who --
an old deacon from the church who drinks, you know,
joy juice to be happy and he gets really tagged
one day, he just gets blasted and picks up this old
pea shooter and goes out into the plaza and
shoots the worse housing -- the worse drug dealer
in the housing projects. He doesn't kill him, but
he shoots him and the -- this shooting sets off a wave
of activity that allows us to see the church, the
neighborhood, the people, the environment of
Brooklyn, New York in 1969 when this book takes place. So I wrote it because it's a
neighborhood that I really love, it's a community that I
really love and still -- and that was part of my life
and remains in my spirit and I still have a lot
of connectivity to. My parents started a
church in Brooklyn, a small storefront church. Not a storefront
church, but a tiny church and that church still exists. It's in the Red Hook projects
in the south Brooklyn. So, I wanted to create a world
that most people only see from behind the wheel
of a tightly locked car and to let people see how -- to let the wider world see how
people in the projects live. I recently read about Donald
Hall who died, the poet, and he lived in,
I think it was -- it was a little small
town in New Hampshire. And, you know, even though
his community was extremely different from the
one that I grew up in and then I still am part of,
there are no dissimilarities. And I'm trying to -- I try
to show those similarities, so that my community
isn't seen as some kind of a stereotypical place where
people get shot and they -- you know, they want
tennis shoes and listen to hip hop music all the
time and everyone, you know, wants to play basketball and all
this other stereotypical stuff, which is just not the --
it's not the community, it's not the people that I know. So that's really -- that was
how this book was, you know, that's the reasoning
behind Deacon King Kong. And I wanted to make it funny, because my community is a
funny place and, you know, black people know how to laugh. We do that very well,
probably too much. That's not to say other groups
don't know how to laugh. Jewish people are very
funny, Irish people, you know, crack me up. I mean, but I just wanted to show what this
community looks like. And in addition,
this book is not just about African Americans, it
has several major characters who are white, Italian,
Irish, so forth. Because Brooklyn, back
then, was a mixed community. Like it is now, but
in a different way. So that's really the
premise of this book. It should be -- it was
meant to be a joyful ride to see how people
have learned to cope and to live, to be happy. Well, there's no
certainty to life when you're an African
American in this country, because the problem -- the race
problem is not black people. The race problem really emanates
from the fact that, you know, from the moment you're born when you're African American
your politics and your social -- sociology, social
standing is written in the color of your face. So you've learned -- you
have to learn how to cope with that piece of business. And some of us have learned
to do it better than others, but it's the copying
that's where the story is. I mean, the coping is the joy
and the joy is the journey. And when you write books or
poems or anything you want to take the reader or the viewer
or the art appreciator on a kind of journey that allows them
to see that we can do this. I mean, you know,
everybody knows that this country is being
dismantled by, you know, a group of criminals, but yet
we manage and we will manage to overcome it, because
that's who we are. That's part of what
makes America special. Characters are everything,
they feed the whole business. I mean, you see this room here,
this room is full of paintings and junk and paraphernalia
of my life, but it doesn't mean anything if
there's no one here to see it or enjoy it or share it. Life is not -- life is
worthless without -- what's the point
of having something if you can't share
it with somebody. So, when you create characters
you're allowing people who'd you like to meet into your space so that they might give you some
understanding as to who they are and then your job is to share
that with a reader in a way that allows you to see
the humanity and kindness and goodness of that character. I've just always
loved to play music. I don't love to record it and
I hate to rehears and I don't like a lot of the stuff that
music involves, you know, professional music involves,
because a lot of it's just -- you just have to love music. I don't love music
enough to go on the road for six months and, you know. Not that people do
that anymore now, but even as a young man I didn't
love it enough to practice, you know, after school. I didn't love it enough to
practice for 4 or 5 hours a day like some of these cats,
some of these men and women. Writing, on the other
hand, was easy, because you could just sit
there and think, you know, and, you know, bing, you
know, good things happen. Well, you know, it was a way of making a living
when I was younger. You know, I worked at the
Washington Post and I worked at Boston Globe and I covered
Michael Jackson for, you know, for almost, I guess it was --
it must have been 8 or 9 months when he was hot,
when he was big. But the process of writing
and creating characters, some of that comes
from the business of learning how music works, because music requires a
certain technical knowledge that you just have to
be able to understand in order for melody to grow. So, here's a crude
example, I mean. [ Playing Piano ] Right? That's a song
everybody knows. Well. [ Playing Piano ] That comes from your
ability to know that this note [piano note
playing] can be played, you know, this way
[piano note playing] or this way [piano note playing]
or this way [piano note playing] or this way [piano
note playing]. And, so, you're dressing
up this character with these other characters. And that sort of -- that comes from just the technical
knowledge that jazz harmony and jazz are ranging in
the knowledge of jazz that, you know, that I acquired
from my years of playing and, you know, studying at open
conservatory and so forth. So, with writing you
have the same business. You have that, [piano note
playing] and then this, you know, this character
is going to do something. And what he's going to
do determines the flow of your plot, because your plot
is based on the push and pull of good and evil within that
character or set of characters. Now my job is to make sure that this character moves
towards the common -- commonality of the
human experience. And, so, I'm restricted
in the sense that I can't create characters
that simply pull out a pistol and shoot the guy and
then jump out the window and then shoot somebody else
and then they, you know, they have guns to
each other's heads. I mean, I can't --
I can't do that. There's a reason, if there's a
reason or a causality behind it, then the exploration of
that reason is the story. So in Deacon King Kong, for
example, it happens to begin with an act of violence, but
then the book stretches on for, you know, 200 -- 250 pages. What, you know, working
around that one act to show the reason why
-- why this happened. Culturally American
ingenuity is deeply rooted in African American music. And not just jazz. I mean, gospel I've always felt,
because I grew up in the church, gospel I've always felt is a
music that is rarely studied, rarely understood, misused and
co-opted for everyone's purpose, without people really
understanding the technical ingenuity behind it. there's a lady named Bernice
Reagan [assumed spelling] who lives in Washington D.C., who's just an extraordinary
musician, whose done that -- done some fantastic work
with the Smithsonian and readers would
be wise to catch up to Ms. Reagan
before she exits us. I don't know how old
she is, but she's not, you know, she's not 25, but. And one of the things that she
and others of her type have come to understand, based on their
own being raised in the church like I have been, is that the
-- just the technical ingenuity of gospel music is
something that is very -- it's very rarely studied
and very rarely understood. For example, this is
just like when you're in church [piano music
playing] and, you know, the minister's saying, "Yes,
lord, you know, stay well and everyone, we're going to
pray for everyone, you know." This progression it's called
secondary dominance I believe. And it's something that you
just won't hear this in Italy. The movement of -- the move --
the technical movement of the -- the harmonic approach of
music that came out of gospel in the late 40s and early
50s is really the basis for an enormous amount of
fantastically rich music. And most of all pop
music and jazz as well. I mean, it's just -- it all
comes from the same tree. You learn that there
are certain things that you just have
to work around. It's just called living. And you learn to work around
the things that are difficult and to find solutions that work, so that things can
keep functioning, because there is no justice for
so many people in this country. People without money, people
without jobs and so forth. And not all of them
are black people. And some of the people who
deliver injustice are not white, some of them are black. So, you learn -- there are
certain battles to fight and there's certain things
you just leave alone. And that kind of reason, that
kind of, like, standing back and doing just what you can do within your own framework
is part of the culture, I think, of a good church. I'm not talking about
these super duper churches where they pass around five
gallon buckets, you know, you know, ream these poor
people for their last penny, but I'm talking about
a really good church. That you just learn to say,
"This is what we can do. We do what we can do." And, and, you know,
that's really -- that's really how it works. You don't make a committee,
you actually just go ahead and do what you can do and
try to just ignore the persons around you who are doing
whatever they're doing, because in the long run, you
know, it's your ledger that has to be weighed again,
you know, when you make that your final journey. My job is to find
out how people talk. That's what I get paid to do. So I'm always listening to
what people have to say. I tell my students
at NYU, I say, the best expression you can
have when you're talking to somebody is to
say, "Is that right? Is that right?" Because even if you think
you know, you really don't. And often times how you say
things are more important than what you say. So, with characters, look, if
John Brown is going, you know, would speak about, you know,
he wants this room cleared out right now, John
Brown himself, who's picture you see behind
me, if John Brown walked into this room and I was a slave
owner and he said, you know, "I want to take your
slaves right now," he wouldn't even say that. He'd say, "I'm going
to free every negro in this room right now. I'm going to take all these
children of God with me." Unless I had a shotgun in my
pocket, I would say, "Okay, Mr. Brown, yeah, I'm losing
a lot of money when you take, quote/unquote, my people,
but you go right ahead." Because I know John Brown is
the type to pull out his pistol and drop the hammer on it
and tell the hammer to hurry into place as fast as possible. So I wouldn't --
so, how he says it and who he is are a
blend of that character. And Deacon King Kong the
principle characters an old guy from the south who came to
New York and he still talks like he's from the south. So he has that sort of that
rich tapestry of southern -- of southern twang and southern
dialogue that is just so rich and so straight and perfect. So direct. That you'd be doing him or her
a disservice by not allowing that language to show itself. So I tend to rewrite
dialogue all the time, until it really fits
to, you know, to what the character is saying. To who the character is. You know, you have to get to
it, you have to get to it, you have to, you
know, state the melody and let the reader know why
you're there, because we have -- we don't have the
attention span we once had. I mean, I read somewhere
recently that the average 65 year
old person spends 12 years of uninterrupted time in
front of a television set. Now that's just, I mean, you
can go all through this house, you won't find one TV set. I mean, you know, life is short
enough as it is, why am I going to sit there -- you
know what you look like when you're watching
TV, you look like this. I mean, you know,
somebody's just pumping stuff into your head. I mean, I'd rather sit at home
and eat bananas then just, like, you know, look at some -- my
point is that we have to learn to listen and I think
we've forgotten to learn -- we've forgotten how to do
that and it's hurting us, because we don't even
listen to each other. Oh, I have a lot of hope. I'm so proud of what has just
happened with these kids, these young people that
are running around here with the Black Lives
Matter movement. I can't tell you how
proud it's made me feel. It's given me enormous hope. I think we have -- I think
our future is a lot brighter than we -- than we
know right now. It's always darkest
before the dawn. We've suffered tremendously
these past 3 1/2 years, but these recent events with,
you know, with the tragic death of George Floyd and so many
others has inspired these young people who are -- who have burst out of what I thought
was the cynical cloud that covered their entire
-- their entire generation, because, you know,
they have computers and they have the internet and
they can look at stuff and, you know, they think
they know stuff because they Google
it and so forth. But to get up out of your
house and march in the street, to stand up and actually be
counted on in the business of race, it has really inspired
me in terms of watching these -- it's inspired me
to see these kids. Look, I come from a
generation where when I sat -- as a young man when I sat down
and talked about race problems with white people in school or
wherever, it was always, like, 10 black people and
three white people. It should have been
the other way around. So now it looks like it's
the other way around. And that means that
real change, I believe, is possible and it's coming. And it doesn't have
to be in a figurehead. It's not one person
doing it, it's a swelling of moral righteousness that
is -- that has been lit. It's a fire. And that's not easy to put out. Think about it, if you're 18
years old you're not going to forget the time you
were marching, you know, in Washington D.C. and
they tear gassed you. You won't forget it. You ought to -- I mean, Donald
Hall talks about, you know, the late Donald Hall and his
book about essays over 80 talks about when him and his son
went to Washington D.C. to protest the War
in Vietnam in 1969. What a gifted man he was. Poets, man, poets are
like dinosaurs man. They walk alone. You know, he was one of those. And, you know, no, I'm not -- I'm not pessimistic about the
future at all, I'm very -- I'm very excited that I hope
God lets me see what will happen next, because I'm very excited about what these young
people are doing now. They're going way
further than we went. We left them with a pile of dung and they're turning
it into magic dust. You'll see. Well, if I could speak to
them I'd say, you know, "I'm sorry that we didn't do
the job that you're doing now. Don't get hurt. Keep doing it. Just keep doing it until
you can't do it no more, but don't get hurt. And take good notes. You know, with a
pen and a paper." Because there's nothing like
looking back in the cone of memory to tell
you what happened. Anyone can, you know,
make a video tape and that's important
in many instances. But the fabric and the
labyrinth of memory carries so many different vitamins and
minerals and so as you pass through it so much --
you'll grow so much stronger if you have the memory itself to
power you in the coming years, because there are some
difficult days ahead. But, I say to them, "We
are so proud of you. Just don't get hurt and
keep peace in your heart and keep the struggle, you know, struggle onward,
struggle onward. We're watching and
we're inspired." [ Music ]
