Atiyya is a singer-songwriter and a cellist. Johnny (pronounced Jo-nee) spits, deejays and produces. This married couple are the parents of Femi Nisaani, 6, and Jahbril, 4. At some of Atiyya’s and Johnny’s performances, over the years, the whole family was on stage. Sometimes Jahbril was tied to Atiyya’s back, as she sang. Other times, Femi held on to her mother’s leg, staring at the band or her father at the turntables. Then there were gigs, where Atiyya performed a whole set with one baby in the snugli and the other baby underfoot, and she did not miss a beat.
Johnny embodies a Gil Scott-Heron ethos, but he flows like today. Atiyya has a Mary J. Blige feel and the politics of Nina Simone. Despite coming of age during the rise and reign of Hip-Hop, the Chavarrias are inhabited by old souls. The ones who believe that freedom should be attained by any means necessary. The ones who imbue their music with hope for a better future, instead of what I call “gat-ratchet” lyrics that are misogynistic, violent, materialistic and backward.
Their lyrics are far from gat-ratchet. Atiyya’s “Agua,” venerates her direct ancestors and the ones of the Yoruba cosmology:
…Yemaya olodo olodo Yemaya
Grandma told mama to tell it to the ground
And let the rain take care of it
Even without being aware of it
Water can cleanse your soul
Yemaya olodo olodo Yemaya
My grandfather was a Geechee man
Rode a steamboat from Georgia to the Jersey sands
Met a pretty Mississippi pomegranate
Their last seed gave me life
I won’t take that for granted…
Atiyya and Johnni are artists that inspire in their audiences a connection to the struggle that came before them, and how to continue it. They’ve performed at the Bronx Museum, the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Educational and Memorial Center, the Shrine, Silvana, Kennedy Center, Trinity College in Connecticut, and various other venues.
Johnny penned these words, in his piece “Suenos y Illusiones”
…where your clique at?
where the bloods at?
where the crips at?
where the kings at?
where the queens at?
cut that riff raff
this that Krik-Krak
Edwidge Danticat
you need to read that
we need to bring unity back
this that pro brown and pro black
knowledge of self-determination
koo-gee-cha-goo-LEE-yah
our communities is
gonna need that
more than the dream act…
When they perform at the Decolonizing the Bronx concert at the Bronx Beer Hall on November 16, they do so as part of a collective of young, progressives. Taking place around Thanksgiving, the intent of the show is to change the narrative around the holiday, because Johnny states with clarity that “New York is Native American land.”
He and his wife, performing as Delaceiba, will share the stage with the band Boom Bits, a collective of singers, emcees and musicians who are all about raising consciousness. They play jazz and Hip-Hop, and they have a visual artist painting while they make music. Also sharing the bill is Uptown Vinyl Supreme, a deejay collective that plays only vinyl. They’re an eclectic mix of people as young as 18, who eschew digital music, in favor or records. They’re also deeply moved and energized by the history of the Black Panthers.
The collective’s crowd is intentional about the music they choose to play and listen to. The want to reflect what’s happening in Puerto Rico, for example. They create art that is based in Pan Africanism. The want their body of work to be a bridge to the healing work that is so necessary for Black and Brown communities, as well as Indigenous nations in and around New York City.
In addition to being talented performers, Atiyya and Johnny are both educators in Brooklyn, and they wear their professional titles well and with pride. Atiyya is the community school director for BRIDGES, which is almost an acronym for Brooklyn reaching integration despite social and economic separation. The mandate of this government-funded equity initiative is to bridge the gaps between the culturally and socioeconomically diverse families, whose children attend PS 38/the Pacific School. A new Chinese population makes it necessary for the school to have documents translated into Mandarin. There are so-called gentrifiers, along with the population of Blacks and Latinos, who have lived in the neighborhood for decades. So, a spectrum of privilege exists. The parents who do not want to send their children to the free afterschool program started their own afterschool program, and the prices begin at $395 for one day a week, for three months, per child. This means that many children are priced out, and segregated from one another—in a public school at that.
Atiyya says, “My desire is to lead the project with love and to focus on the children. I have always felt strongly about fairness. My values are rooted in a sense of empathy.”
For her and Johnny, their art is not separate from their work as school administrators. Their art and profession flow from the same humanistic sources: Atiyya’s emotion and Johnny’s intellectualism. In speaking about their complicated lives, he mentions Nietzsche, the German philosopher, who stated, “He who has why to live can bear almost any how.”
Atiyya adds, “The work we do with youth is similar to what we do in our art. We want to motivate them.”
Within this ever-changing city, the Chavarrias do not have it easy, despite the love between them, and their talents, education, brilliance, and political acumen. She graduated from Wesleyan; he, from the University of Southern California.
They live so far north in the Bronx that they could spit on Westchester County if they were so inclined. Their children go to school at Central Park East, on Madison Avenue and 106th Street. And, as previously mentioned, both parents work in Brooklyn.
Johnny explains the CPE decision, stating, “We wanted to find equity in education for our kids. We didn’t want a school that judged children, based on test scores.”
Their daughter Femi is a natural-born artist, with a penchant for perfecting the smallest details in her illustrations and assemblages that she creates. Jahbril, the man child, seems to have a memory like a hard drive, and can recall the names of all of the characters that he, his sister, and grandmother, Vera, make up in impromptu storytelling sessions. Is it fair for these children to have to travel on public transportation for around three hours on school days? Their day begins at 6am. They take the train, to the train, to the bus to get to school, and, oftentimes, do not get home until after 7pm
This is the kind of insanity that real estate developers have caused. On the macro level, the city has been ruined by ridiculous glass structures, with “luxury apartments,” that few families can pay thousands upon thousands of dollars in rent each month.
On the micro level, families like the Chavarrias suffer. They are priced out of the neighborhood that Atiyya should, rightfully, be able to inhabit, because she was born in the living room of her mother’s house at 800 Riverside Drive.
Johnny looks at the upside of their situation. He says, “We can connect in the Bronx and Harlem and Brooklyn to build and to speak truth to power.” The couple are committed artist-activists: He was politicized by circumstance. She came to consciousness due to parental influence. They are strong people set on educating young people so they have options, and they are set on continuing their art practice, as well as instilling a strong sense of identity in their children.
He was born in Honduras, and grew up In South Central L.A. He made his way to New York City by way of a roommate he met in Salvador, Brazil, when he studied abroad in his senior year of college.
Johnny’s experience, coming out of high school politicized him. He had been in this country for many years as an undocumented immigrant, but because he wanted to live the American Dream and be the model citizen, he worked very hard to get the best grades. After the Rodney King riots, while he was in elementary school, the University of Southern California enlisted him in a college prep program. As long as he kept his average above par and scored well on the SATs, he would get a free ride to USC—tuition, dorm and books, but when the institution found out that he was undocumented, he could not receive the scholarship. That is when he began to question the mores of this society.
Atiyya’s mother and father are socially conscious, and instilled in her a sense of fairness and equity, and she hopes the art she and Johnny create will inspire what she envisions as a “total reimagining of what it means to have respect for humanity and the earth because we do not have any place else to live.”
The Chavarrias live the artist credo of honoring the parts of themselves that are creative. But they elevate art to another level by using it as a political force, calling for justice everywhere, for everybody.
Decolonizing the Bronx
Friday, November 16
9pm til Late
Bronx Beer Hall
2344 Arthur Avenue
Bronx, NY
thebronxbeerhall.com
Instagram @delaceiba
Mixcloud.com/delaceiba
Karen D. Taylor is the founder and executive director of While We Are Still Here, and director of a feature-length documentary, “In the Face of What We Remember: Oral Histories of 409 and 555 Edgecombe Avenue. She is also an essayist, editor, poet, and sometime vocalist. Visit karendtaylor.me