Song Exploder - Goapele - Stand

Episode Date: July 5, 2017

Goapele is a singer/songwriter from the Bay Area. She released her first album in 2001. Since then, she’s released five more albums and collaborated with Snoop Dogg. In 2017, on her album DreamSeeker, she put out the song "Stand." It was written in the wake of the shooting death of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old black man who was shot and killed while unarmed and handcuffed by a Bay Area Rapid Transit Police Officer. The shooting took place in 2009. Coming up, Goapele tells the story of why it took 8 years for her to finish the song. songexploder.net/goapele

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. Guapalé is a singer-songwriter from the Bay Area. She released her first album in 2001. Since then, she's released five more albums and collaborated with Snoop Dog. In 2017, on her album, Dream Seeker, she put out the song, Stand. It was written in the wake of the shooting death of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old black man who was shot and killed while unarmed and handcuffed, on a subway platform by a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer.

The shooting took place in 2009. Coming up, Guapelais explains why it took eight years for her to finish the song. My name is Guapalé. I first started working on this song in 2009. Oscar Grant had just been murdered by the BART police in Oakland, and Oscar Grant seemed like a younger person I would know. It could have been someone that was like, a nephew or a cousin.

He wasn't an activist. He wasn't involved in anything super crazy on the streets. He was like a regular young guy hanging out with his friends. And so it was very tangible and relatable and an obvious threat of like this could be anybody. I think it was just a wake-up call of how close. close to home, the brutality and profiling is. There were these rallies going on in downtown Oakland, and our studio was in West Oakland, like, really close to that.

For me, growing up in Oakland and Berkeley, it's a place where going to marches can be as common as going to concerts. And a lot of times when you go to a march, there's going to also be, you know, a local hip hop artist and maybe a singer and it's going to be like a community gathering. So I feel like it's always been expected of me to say something in my music. I mean, I feel like I've probably been more commercial and straight ahead than I would have expected myself to be when I was a teenager, first thinking of making this a career. And I wanted to say something, but just felt like I needed to hold tight and get my thoughts together. And so I kind of sat a while with the lyrics.

And just stand up for something. Don't fall back. If we don't stand for something, we'll fall for anything. And when this song first started coming together, I remember a beat that Dan Electric did. Dan Electric is a producer out of the Bay Area. It started out kind of retro, kind of like 80s. It was a four-bar loop just from a preset that we had on a keyboard in the studio.

I started singing that melody that just stand up. over the music. But there was something that I felt like didn't translate all the way when I first started out. Not that I wanted it to sound so serious because the lyrics are so serious. I wanted it to have a balance where you'd feel uplifted but also touched and like motivated to get up and stand up and do something. So it just kind of sat in a group with so many songs that I've started that I'm waiting to finish. And it's not often that I'll start writing a song one year and then so many years later come back to finish it and put it out.

But the climate of what has been going on leading into 2017, where I feel like so many, Many of us are under attack and just so encouraged to be numb and dumb down and depressed. It was like, okay, now's the time to put this out. And maybe I waited for a reason. So I listened to the song. I was like, these lyrics still make sense. But how can we update the production a little bit? At the end of the day, I want my songs to come together and feel.

effortless. It wasn't effortless doing this one, though, you know. I worked with a few different producers to get to the version that I have now. I mean, you don't know how many times I sung this song, honestly, and I was like singing it over with different emotion to see if, you know, that would work. I just kept trying different things, wondering, like, am I tripping? Maybe this song is, you know, something I did, but it's not worth people hearing since it's like not coming together easily. But the lyrics and the story were always there. So I trusted in that, you know, if we could just get the music and my performance to feel right. So Bedrock, a producer that I've worked with for years wanted to take a stab at producing it.

So he was like re-sing it, you know, more laid back. Catch me if you can't understand. It's a new day. Life is real, but we still gotta get paid. Then he started laying some other chords on it. It's time to step into this double-dutch game. That's a juno. When he started playing that, I felt an emotional connection and it kind of has like a nostalgic feel.

And I always like a little vintage keyboard sound combined with something modern. I think it's the part of me that feels rooted in soul music. I just like to have something that feels organic or analogy to balance out or have a just position. to more modern program drums. And then we went to this home studio with Raphael Siddique's nephew, Jaden Wiggins, who played guitar. It's very different.

And I was wondering, like, would it still have energy, though? And I also, I mean, I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this, but I also wanted to have this resonate with young. people. It's embarrassing because I always feel like I shouldn't care. Like if anyone likes my music, that's cool and I never want to feel like I'm trying for a certain audience. But it was definitely a goal to tap into some new energy. So it was interesting

that this was like a couple younger guys that were starting to play on it and it was feeling more mellow, but I was like, are they feeling this? And it didn't sound like a a song to me yet, but it sounded like something new. We sent it off to a keyboard player that plays in my band a lot. Dave Jackson, he added three different layers, organ and a couple different keyboard sounds. Bedrock added a breakdown where you can hear like a crowd of kids yelling and playing. I like that they just sound like they're living.

There's like this life before anyone's taking away our power or our joy. You know, I was a new mother when I was writing the song. And I felt a little bit corny because I felt like I was kind of like rap singing. I'm a mama freedom fighter. I'm a queen. It was a little different for me to sing more fast pace and like a rapper. But I just kind of wanted to say it out who I am. and feel like a badass, but also just feel like an ordinary human.

I mean, just like, as a mom, just as a person in this world, this is what I don't want to see out there. But if I don't speak up, then tell me what it means. Meanwhile, justice keeps on fading away. So I hoped it would be empowering for other people as each person kind of figures out who they are in their own life for their position in the community. I was really adamant that I wanted the choruses

to have a crowd voice. I didn't want it just as a woman's voice. I wanted it to feel like I could sing this at a rally. Not like I perform at a lot of rallies, but early on that's one of the places I started and I wanted it to feel like a movement. So, I mean, we had the engineer in there. We had some people that would consider

themselves singer, some people that wouldn't, that just added to the crowd. If we don't stand for something will fall for any... So when we were mixing the song, it was longer, and it kind of faded out with the music. The vocals were already over. And it just felt anticlimactic to me. The point of it is to feel like there's a crowd in your part of something. And so I wanted it to end a cappella for that to be the last impression. You hear these

voices together, men and women. Just stand up for something. Oh, don't stand for something. We'll fall for anything. And now here's Stand by Gooppoly in its entirety. Yes, I can't take my bedchess playing. Oh, yeah. Put your picture in a frame. Double done. For links to buy this track and to learn more about Gawapelay

and about the shooting of Oscar Grant, visit songexploader.net. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that will be out under my own name, Rishikesh, her way. I started making Song Exploder when I, I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade,

I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast,

like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Weinrobe. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzukas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band.

The album is called In The Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs were out. now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co, or just go to SongExploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. Song Exploder is produced by me, along with Christian Coons. Special thanks this episode to Colin Stark. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary cutting-edge podcasts made possible by the Knight Foundation and by listeners like you. Learn more at Radiotopia.fm. Next time on Song Exploder, Slow Dive.

You can find Song Exploder on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Song Exploder, and you can find all the past and future episodes of the show at songexploder.net or wherever you download podcasts. My name is Rishi K. Shareway. Thanks for listening.