Fighting for Your Sound: A Particular and Universal Quest
Stories of people discovering their sound—their voice—are incredibly powerful, although they’re not celebrated nearly as often as they should be.
Some months ago, I wrote a post about the Jazz Leadership Project’s practice “Your Sound,” establishing your unique expression, style, talent—your signature voice. The post, “Your Sound: A Form of Freedom and Expression,” explored how crafting your sound reveals value and contribution—from an individual and a societal perspective. In fact, it showed how that recognition lifts up undervalued individuals and groups of people.
It’s hard enough to do the work to identify your sound, hone it, and manifest its fullness, only then to struggle against those who either refuse to recognize its richness or seek to suppress it entirely. In the disfunction of society, we often only allow a voice from an individual that we are comfortable with.
How hard does one fight to let our sound be heard?
What responsibility do we hold, individually and collectively, to not only celebrate all voices, but find ways to give rise to the multitude of sounds we each possess?
This week, I came across a couple of stories that illuminated such struggles.
Halle’s Fight
In this past Sunday’s New York Times, actress Halle Berry spoke about her fight to star in and direct Bruised, a film about a former M.M.A. champion struggling to make a comeback and care for her six-year-old son. Berry pursued the role tenaciously, even though she had to wait six months for Blake Lively to decide that she didn’t want the role. She says:
I understand what it is to fight and not be heard. I understand the trauma of life that makes one want to fight, need to fight, have to fight.
She fought just as hard to direct the film, feeling that she could bring every ounce of pain, hardship, and loss she had suffered as a Black woman to create something other women of color would resonate with. She wants people to know that her physical beauty has not shielded her from suffering.
This was personal for Berry because she knew she could translate the fear, resentment, and anger of her character onto the screen. Her research had revealed that woman fight for different reasons—to regain their sense of self and to get their voices back. Berry wanted the power to “… put my voice in the world in some way, and my sensibilities as a Black woman out there.”
Black Westerners
When we extend this recognition of sound (or lack thereof) to a cultural group, namely Black Americans, it takes on far-reaching ramifications. The upcoming Netflix film, The Harder They Fall, is directed by Jeymes Samuel, who co-wrote the screenplay with Boaz Yakin. It’s a Western landscape that has been all but forgotten—the one that Black Westerners were part of and contributed to.
With an all-star cast including Idris Elba, Regina King, Delroy Lindo, Deon Cole, and Damon Wayans Jr., the characters are inspired by real-life Black Westerners like Nat Love, Rufus Buck, and Stagecoach Mary. Samuel was enthused when he found out about these historical figures because he’d never heard about them before. But that is not surprising. A plethora of Black American scouts and mountain men, Buffalo Soldiers, businesswomen, explorers, traders, politicians, cowboys and cowgirls have been devalued and erased from the pages of history. Samuel brings back a few of the long forgotten with flourish and style.
For no other reason than the fact that they tell a different story with new, strong Black American voices, I intend to see both of these films. I want to relish in the brave new sounds that have found their way to the fore.
Since I heard author and spiritual teacher Thomas Hubl ask this question in one of his talks, it has stayed with me: Can we make space for others even if it scares us?
Stepping Up: Wrestling With America's Past, Reimagining Its Future, Healing Together will provide the opportunity to find your voice as it relates to America’s racial reckoning. Join us.
