The Show for June 19: A complicated year for Juneteenth, Wild West Fiddle Project and more

Honoring Juneteenth in a year that, for many, feels like a backslide away from justice and equality. An ASU professor explains how to find joy and resilience in a difficult moment. Plus, we’ll hear from a fiddler about Arizona’s hidden soundscape.

Transcript

UNDERWRITER: KJZZ’s original production, The Show, is supported by Banner Health, Arizona’s largest nonprofit healthcare system. Last year, Banner reinvested more than $1.1 billion in community health and charity care. Banner Health, nonprofit for Arizona. bannerhealth.com/nonprofitforaz.

LAUREN GILGER: Hi, I’m Lauren Gilger, co-host of The Show, an original production from KJZZ. Every weekday, we bring you the latest news and culture from across the state. You can find much more at theshow.kjzz.org. Here’s today’s episode.

GILGER: Good morning and welcome to The Show here on KJZZ 91.5 in Phoenix. I’m Lauren Gilger.

BRODIE: And I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, why a medical anthropologist thinks it may be time to change how we think about mental health.

GILGER: And a look back at Arizona’s diverse musical history through fiddle and guitar.

BRODIE: But first, today is Juneteenth, a celebration commemorating when enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, learned they’d been freed, more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. It became a state holiday here in Arizona in 2016 and a federal holiday five years later.

This year’s celebration, though, comes in the context of increased racial tension. There are a few reasons for this, including concerns about congressional representation for African Americans after a Supreme Court ruling and subsequent redistricting efforts; and intensifying political rhetoric in the wake of some jury verdicts.

With all that going on, I spoke with Neal Lester about Juneteenth this year. He’s a professor at ASU where he teaches in the areas of African American literature and culture. He’s also the founding director of Project Humanities. And I asked how he’s thinking about Juneteenth this year, given where we are in the world.

NEAL LESTER: Well, where we are in the world — that’s a big, oceanic kind of description there, Mark. Where we are in the world. I think politically and socially, I think this is an interesting moment to be remembering why Juneteenth exists and what the emancipation of formerly enslaved people actually means in the context of what’s happening right now politically.

So I think in many ways this is more challenging than it has been in the past — particularly if we talk about when Juneteenth was acknowledged as a federal holiday in 2021 — that we seem to be miles away from that moment of acknowledging to this moment where some of the very things that people worked for in terms of equity and equality are being eroded, or have been eroded.

So I think it’s an interesting moment that lends itself to an even deeper celebration, perhaps, but certainly an acknowledgment that where we are now is not necessarily any kind of acknowledgment that freedom exists for one and all.

MARK BRODIE: Well, that seems like an interesting juxtaposition when you’re talking about maybe leaning into the celebration more when folks aren’t necessarily in a celebratory mood.

NEAL LESTER: Mmm. I don’t know that I would necessarily say that. I think in times where things seem really, really dark, that’s where people have had to reach inside, communities have had to reach inside and find joy in those moments that lead to a kind of resilience.

And I say that having just taught a class on Black anger and Black joy, and we looked at all the reasons that people would not necessarily be joyful — the violence, the all of the things — and then recognize that even in those moments of disappointment, disillusionment, disenfranchisement, that people found joy. And joy became a kind of radical act of resistance.

And I think for many, this may be one of the most robust celebrations precisely because things seem to be sort of going in a direction very different than they were in 2021, and more specifically, after the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

MARK BRODIE: Is it harder to celebrate when things aren’t really what you want them to be or feel like they’re moving in the wrong direction?

NEAL LESTER: No. It is not.

MARK BRODIE: How so?

NEAL LESTER: Well, as I just said, those are the times that require that people dig deeper and find something that is more, I dare say, spiritual and something that is more sustaining than to imagine that life is like a day at Disneyland or Disney World. I think any number of us could talk about the ways in which our lives are not necessarily moving in a direction that makes us quote-unquote "happy" or even "joyful."

So I don’t think people stop existing because everything around them seems to be falling apart or crumbling. In fact, that’s a reminder that we cannot be overwhelmed by those things, but rather, how do you resist being overwhelmed by those things?

So, no, I don’t think it’s harder. I think in fact, it becomes more deliberate, more intentional, that people are saying, “OK, let’s get together so that we can remind each other that what we are experiencing will pass, and that there is hope in that.”

MARK BRODIE: I’m curious about what you think about when you look at sort of efforts to roll back, for example, DEI initiatives, and look at curricula, and even the teaching of Black history in schools. Does it make it harder to sort of understand what the past looked like and how that relates to the present and the future?

NEAL LESTER: No. And I say that because schools have not been primarily the place where African Americans have learned their histories. There have been churches, there have been social organizations, there have been fraternities and sororities, there have been community groups that have always been places where one could find what they couldn’t find in the classroom.

MARK BRODIE: So do you find it a useful exercise then — on this or really any other Juneteenth — to, while you’re celebrating, while you are joyful, to think about and maybe talk about how to try to make the things that are not the way you want them to be better? Like, is this the time for that?

NEAL LESTER: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I look at people who are using Juneteenth as an opportunity to get people registered to vote. I get people who are looking at Juneteenth and they’re giving history lessons because not everybody knows what Juneteenth is. It’s a time also to reflect on the fact that half of the states here in the United States don’t even acknowledge Juneteenth as a holiday, and it’s still not a paid holiday.

So even when the holiday became federalized, it didn’t necessarily mean that the world started throwing confetti in celebration of everything. It became commodified, commercialized. So, I think it’s a time to reflect on all of that and not look at it as an either-or.

I think also what has to be said about Juneteenth — since that’s what this is really about as a time for reflection and also challenges — is that I had not forever known about or celebrated Juneteenth in the communities that I grew up in. In fact, in my own naivete, I had assumed that why are we celebrating a holiday that really means, you know, two years after the Emancipation had been proclaimed, that these Black people in Galveston didn’t know they were free.

Well, that’s not really an accurate narrative. The narrative that makes more sense to me is that the Union Army could not go into Galveston, which was the last sort of stake hole who didn’t want to give up on their role as enslavers. They had to be militarily forced to do it, and that some of those freed Black men joined the Union Army and were able to go in and militarily make this happen.

And so, I think when one knows that and one sees, for example, what comes out of these moments that have been most oppressive, these moments that have been most disenfranchising for folks, people have found ways to continue to live. Juneteenth isn’t this segregated holiday. It’s an opportunity for people to look at this country — particularly as lots of things are being mounted for the celebration of the 250th — to sort of revisit Frederick Douglass’ speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Just revisit that.

MARK BRODIE: How would you like Arizonans who are not Black to be thinking about Juneteenth or thinking about sort of some of these issues that we’ve been discussing?

NEAL LESTER: Well, I’m not a pharmacist, so I don’t like to prescribe things. What I would like to do is to have everybody sort of acknowledge what does this day mean in U.S. history, and how do we assess who and what we are as in our shared humanity. That’s the part that I want us to look at.

I want us to look at, first of all, why do we have a Juneteenth, and what is it about the past that is still connected and informing the present?

And those, you don’t have to wait until Juneteenth to do that. I just think Juneteenth is just a moment where people can sort of collectively come together and name a moment, just like Kwanzaa does or just like any other holiday does. You don’t have to, you know, it’s an anniversary of a birthday, you don’t have to wait to celebrate people on that day and then the day after that you’re not thinking anything else about it.

There’s a way in which this could be a reminder that every day should be Juneteenth or every day should be a birthday. I know it can’t be fireworks all the time, but it can at least be awareness, though. And so I guess my hope — rather than a prescription — is that people will use this as a time to reflect, but also a time to decide exactly what actions they’re going to do to address the things that don’t seem to be in line with this ideal of America as it was created by those who didn’t necessarily found the country, because folks were already here.

So there are all kinds of opportunities for reflection, but also for some action. Connect with groups who are doing work that you think aligns with your values, and challenge those things that aren’t.

MARK BRODIE: All right. Neal Lester, thank you so much for the conversation. I really appreciate it.

NEAL LESTER: Thank you very much.

MARK BRODIE: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than a fifth of all adults over the age of 18 had some kind of mental health treatment in 2020. More than 16% took medication. The CDC says in 2023, more than 11% of adults took prescription meds for depression. My next guest would like to change the way we think about and treat mental health. Dr. Khameer Kidia is a writer, physician and medical anthropologist. He’s also been an ASU Future Security Fellow and is the author of the book, "Empire of Madness: Reimagining Western Mental Healthcare for Everyone." I spoke with him earlier and asked about his main thesis in the book.

KHAMEER KIDIA: Well, this is a book really about reimagining the way that we approach mental health in the West where, you know, as a physician, I’ve been trained to prescribe meds, to send patients to therapy. But as an anthropologist working both in the U.S. and in Zimbabwe, the country that I’m from, I’ve seen that for many people living under poverty, violence, racism and homophobia, meds and therapy often aren’t enough.

And so, in this book, I’m calling for a shift in the way we think about mental health towards a more collective and structural issue that needs to be addressed not just in the clinic or the hospital, but also through care that is social and political.

MARK BRODIE: So, what would that kind of social and political care look like, you know, if you are a patient?

KHAMEER KEDIA: So, you know, something that I like to tell folks is that we’re all mental healthcare providers. And so, if you are a patient, what it means to you to take that message home is basically to think of our mental health not as formed in a vacuum, but as something social and relational. Our mental health is something that we form collectively.

And so, what that care looks like is whatever it is in your world that allows you to participate more engaged in that social and political world. That could mean being more neighborly. It could mean picking up the phone and calling your grandmother. But it could also mean going to a protest or voting in your local elections or participating in mutual aid, you know, this idea of helping each other out while we’re working to change the world to make it a better place. But that is a context-dependent thing that really only you can decide in your context.

MARK BRODIE: I wonder if somebody who is maybe going through a mental health crisis is easily able to make those kinds of decisions, though? Like, is this sort of a on a case-by-case, patient-by-patient basis you have to look at this?

KHAMEER KEDIA: I think a lot of it is both very particular to the individual, but also very structural and part of a a kind of global whole. And so, as we’re addressing problems in our lives, each of those problems will be, you know, partially individual and partially structural, both in origin and solution. The onus is not all just on you, but it’s also on all of us around each other.

And so, you know, with that perspective in mind, knowing that my mental health, for example, affects my mother’s, and my mother’s affects mine, is an important thing to take away, you know, that we it’s very hard to move through the world when those you love are in pain. And realizing that makes it part of my responsibility to help somebody who might be struggling with their mental health at a moment where they can’t help themselves but might need some help from me, and vice versa. Does that make sense?

MARK BRODIE: It does. I wonder though if we as humans really know how to help somebody who needs help with their mental health. Are we equipped to be doing that?

KHAMEER KEDIA: You know, I believe we are. I believe we’re social creatures, and that social cohesion is a really important part of how we move through the world. The problem is, in, you know, Western countries and especially in places like the U.S. and the UK, our worlds have become so atomized and individualized that we’ve forgotten this very idea that we are social creatures. And what I’m calling for is a turn back towards that.

MARK BRODIE: So, you write that, you know, as both a physician and a patient, you have prescribed and been prescribed medication for mental health conditions. Do you see some of the the social aspects as a complement to that, or do you see them maybe as a potential replacement for for meds in some cases?

KHAMEER KEDIA: Oh, you know, I think largely I see them as a complement and then perhaps someday as a replacement, but that day is far off. I think we have a long way to go in building a world that is fairer, that is kinder, that is more humane, and more just, before we can think about living without psychiatric medications.

I think that at the moment, especially for people living in the West, psychiatric medications are important way of coping. But what I want to stress is that they’re only one way of coping, and they are actually a small component of what makes up our mental health. So, the psychiatrist and former director of the NIMH, the National Institute of Mental Health, Tom Insel, he has this phrase that is basically like, you know, our mental health comes 90% from our ZIP code, our gender, our race and these social determinants in our life, and only about 10% of our mental health comes from mental healthcare itself.

And so, with that statistic in mind, what we have to be thinking about is, well, what about the other 90% of stuff that is within our control from our like social and political perspective? How do we change those things? Because that 10% that is being helped by, you know, psychiatric drugs and by therapy, that’s all well and good, but there’s so much more that we can be doing.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so the issue of control that you just brought up is an interesting one because I would think that in some cases, people have maybe anxiety or depression over things they really can’t control.

Are there ways to sort of work with that that maybe don’t require medication, or in cases like that, do people really need the meds and and maybe some some therapy as well, and then when those situations change, maybe they can can try to address it that way?

KHAMEER KEDIA: I think it’s a both-and. So, I think the meds and therapy give you the ability to cope in the very immediate term, but we also have to be thinking about the medium- and long-term goals about our patients’ lives. And so, what I want to urge folks to think about mental health as something that requires intervention both at that very immediate level, but also think about engaging even patients and doctors on how we can change that world to make it a better place.

MARK BRODIE: How big of a shift in thinking do you think it would take for more providers in the U.S. and the rest of the West to adopt some of these practices?

KHAMEER KEDIA: I think we’re closer than most people realize. Psychiatrists themselves really do understand mental health as also socially and culturally determined. The problem is that the tools that we’ve been given in medicine are blunt instruments for engaging with those social and political problems.

So, the main barrier is helping medical professionals across the board, not just psychiatrists and not just physicians, basically, you know, the full spectrum of healthcare providers need to realize that if they see that the problems of their patients are coming from their social and political worlds, then it behooves us to treat those problems as such. And that’s I think the last step.

MARK BRODIE: All right. Well, Khameer, thank you so much for the conversation. I really appreciate it.

KHAMEER KEDIA: The pleasure is all mine. Thank you, Mark.

MARK BRODIE: Dr. Khameer Kidia is a writer, physician and medical anthropologist, and author of the book, "Empire of Madness: Reimagining Western Mental Healthcare for Everyone."

GILGER: Good morning. It is The Show here on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Lauren Gilger.

BRODIE: And I’m Mark Brodie. Coming up, for more than 30 years, Blaise Lantana has been on the airwaves as KJZZ’s music director.

BLAISE LANTANA: Again, talking about jazz, I’m talking about things that are so exciting, so exciting. This music is these musicians are so amazing. They are so brilliant.

BRODIE: We’ll hear some career highlights ahead of her upcoming retirement.

LAUREN GILGER: Let’s hear a little fiddle music, Arizona fiddle music, in fact.

Our next guest this morning uncovered our state’s rich musical heritage and found out what it might have sounded like if you went to a country dance in pre-statehood Arizona.

Kate Rose and guitarist Armand Ramirez are the duo that make up the Wild West Fiddle Project. They’re speakers with Arizona Humanities’ AZ Speaks, where they give presentations about how music traditions were connected to landscapes — from Native cultures to the Spanish, who were here for centuries.

They joined me in our studios to talk more about it all and listen to a little fiddle.

KATE ROSE: So, when I was a teenager back in the 1990s, I went to Ireland for two years, to County Clare, and I lived the traditional lifestyle with the fiddling farmers in order to understand the rhythms of the music and the stories and customs that went into the music, and the dances as well.

GILGER: As a high schooler?

KATE ROSE: I graduated from high school when I was 16, and then I was on my own, and I ended up in Ireland.

GILGER: My goodness. What drew you there? Were you already a musician? Did you already play the fiddle?

ROSE: Yeah. So, I started playing in my early teens and as soon as I started, I just knew that that’s what I wanted to do. I grew up in New Hampshire, and there was a lot of contra dance music and Irish music. We still play for contra dances now, too.

GILGER: Explain contra dance for us, because I’m not sure everyone knows what that is. Can you tell us what that means?

ROSE: Sure. So, contra dance originated in New England. It was already a fusion tradition — music from French, Quebec and from Ireland, and all different places coming together and making a new dance form.

And we decided to figure out what was going on in Arizona at the same time, what kind of dances were people doing there? And so we started looking in the old archives and talking with culture bearers, and there wasn’t a lot out there. We really had to dig deep to find what was going on.

Then we found a real wealth of material and dances that we’re bringing to life that has some similarities with contra dance, but also has a really specific Arizona flavor to it.

GILGER: So yeah, let’s talk about that. You’ve called what you do in your performances "Arizona’s hidden soundscape," right? This this kind of history of, it sounds like, unique blends of folk music that arrived in Arizona. What era are we looking at?

ROSE: Right. So, we mostly work with the mid- to late 1800s. We talk about how the landscape influences music, and then how the different Native groups had their music that was connected to the landscape and the creatures and the objects that they made music from.

And then the Spanish were here for centuries and brought their influence from medieval Spain into the music. And then, in the 1800s, we get everyone else coming, all these influences from the Irish and Appalachian people, African Americans, just everyone coming.

So that’s kind of the focus that we have is on that period where everyone’s coming and it’s this huge cultural melting pot of sounds.

GILGER: And the music, all of those traditions ended up kind of in one place, in one song sometimes?

ROSE: Yeah, sometimes.

GILGER: Can you play one for us?

ROSE: Yeah. So, this is by Kenner Kartchner, a frontier fiddler born 100 years before me. He was born in 1876, and he lived in Flagstaff for a while, where we live, and this is his tune called “Johnny Blevin’s Tune.”

GILGER: OK, let’s hear it.

GILGER: I love that.

ROSE: It’s very cheerful music.

GILGER: Definitely, definitely. OK, so is that kind of what it might have sounded like at a town dance maybe in Arizona 100 years ago?

ROSE: Yes! And they were real dancers and party people. In northern Arizona, they would have parties all night, and they’d play, and at midnight someone would cook up a big feast and bring it to the square, and they would eat, and then they’d keep dancing until the sun came up.

GILGER: What?

ROSE: And there was a lot of interaction between the different communities, like the Kenner Kartchner, we just played his tune. He was hired by Mexican ranching communities for their weddings and fiestas, and he played with a Mexican guitarist. So, he already had that blend of Celtic influence tunes and then the accompaniment with a more Mexican sound.

So, we’re trying to recreate that, too, with our backgrounds in Celtic and Hispanic traditions respectively.

GILGER: That’s so Arizona, right?

ROSE: Yeah, exactly.

GILGER: So you did, as you said, like research on this, and it was not easy to dig up. Talk about what you found in the archives, where you had to look.

ROSE: Right. So, we got a fellowship from the Arizona Historical Society to spend a week in Tucson. So, we went to University of Arizona’s special collections, and there’s a bunch of sound recordings by Jim Griffith. So, we listened to those — and they’re not publicly available — that, again, have that really clear Hispanic influence, but also something really distinctively Arizona that represents these mixing of traditions, like a lot of Eastern European influences, such as polkas and mazurkas.

Then we went to the Tohono O’odham Reservation and we met with Gertie Lopez, who is called the queen of waila. Waila is a fusion genre that mixes the Native traditions with these European traditions, and it’s just been going on for centuries. And she generously shared some of her music. We’re going down to play with her again soon.

GILGER: That’s amazing. Talk about the dances back then. You talked about how they’re a bit of a party, it was a little crazy. But, I mean, it sounds like there were some interesting dance traditions, too, that went along with this music.

ROSE: There definitely were, and we have a lot of fun. We talk about them, and we bring them to life again with wild steps. We go to libraries and schools and nursing homes, everywhere we can, bring these alive again, talk about them, get people to do them.

So some of the traditions that we really like, there’s one called the finger polka — where you shake your finger at your partner and then stomp your feet. And shake and stomp. And then we adapt it, we have the B part where everyone high-fives each other, and then the C part where they swing. So, we’re taking an element from a traditional dance.

There’s another one where the ladies take off one shoe and they put them all in the middle, so there’s a big pile of shoes, and the guy picks a shoe and then he has to find, that’s his dance partner.

GILGER: So, I mean, I guess I just want to end with a question about maybe a surprising discovery in all of this research, maybe something you just really love that you always love to share with folks.

ROSE: Yeah, we found an old clipping from the Tombstone newspaper from the late-1800s, and it said that the Irish mix indiscriminately with other populations.

GILGER: I guess you can hear that in the music, too.

ROSE: So, I’m proud of that as an Irish person. You certainly can hear that in the music, and that’s certainly what we’re trying to do with the Wild West Fiddle Project. We’re working with musicians across traditions that have some cultural rootedness in Arizona.

I think it’s really important to recognize that it was always a multicultural melting pot. And back in the 1800s, there weren’t as many people in Arizona, so they couldn’t just stick with their communities. If you wanted to hear a different kind of music, you needed people from different communities coming in, and there was a lot more interdependence.

We want to bring that message to people so that we can reach out beyond our usual communities today, and that’s what we’re doing through the dances and music: We’re bringing people together across different backgrounds.

GILGER: Yeah. All right, we’ll leave it there. That is Kate Rose and Armand Ramirez with the Wild West Fiddle Project, presented by Wild Steps. Kate, Armand, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. Thank you for playing for us.

ARMAND RAMIREZ: Thank you.

ROSE: Thanks.

GILGER: Good morning. It is The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Lauren Gilger.

BRODIE: And I’m Mark Brodie.

LAUREN GILGER: Well, it’s sad, but it’s true. Blaise Lantana, who has been KJZZ’s music director these past 32 years, is leaving the airwaves. She’s been a nightly fixture here since 1994, playing jazz into the wee hours, music by Miles Davis and Keiko Matsui and Sarah Vaughan. She’s kept us company and introduced us to her colleagues and friends, local musicians like Dennis Rowland and Stan Sorenson and Bill Moio. She’s turned us on to Shirley Scott and Sonny Clark and Rob Wasserman.

Most of you know that Blaise is herself an accomplished musician. She’s not leaving local stages. But you won’t find her here on KJZZ after July second. KJZZ contributor Robrt Pela sat down with Blaise to talk about her time here at the station.

ROBRT PELA: So, I — I’ve been a contributor at KJZZ — we can’t call it K-JAZZ anymore, remember?

BLAISE LANTANA: Well, I can.

ROBRT PELA: I’ve been here for more than 30 years. And when I mention this to people, they don’t say, “Oh, really? What’s that like?” or “What do you do?” or “Oh, how nice for you.”

The first thing that everybody has said to me for more than 30 years is, “Do you know Blaise Lantana?”

BLAISE LANTANA: Oh, really?

ROBRT PELA: It’s true. It’s a true story.

BLAISE LANTANA: Oh, it’s nice to be semi-famous.

ROBRT PELA: How, tell me about, how did you end up here?

BLAISE LANTANA: I applied for the job. I was working in public radio in Corpus Christi, Texas. And then I applied here because I knew, I had heard of and about Scott Williams, actually, who is an amazing radio programmer and he was our program director here. And I wanted to work with him and learn more about programming music and how to make radio. And he’s so good at that and he was a great teacher and told me, “You know, Blaise, not all good jazz is good radio.”

That’s what he taught me. And he said, “You know, people just don’t, may not, they may not want to hear a drum solo when they’re driving down the street. It’s not the same as when you’re in the room and you can see the guy and it’s happening, you know?”

So, think I was at KBACH about a year, and Bill Shedd came in and said, “How would you like to work for me? You’ll be doing jazz, this is the time slot, you can program all the music,” and putting me on at 7 in the evening.

So, jazz was on from 7 in the evening to 3 in the morning. And then 7 in the evening till 1 in the morning. And then 8 in the evening till — so it’s been kind of getting crunched over the years until they finally moved it off the FM and onto what we call HD, which some people know about, but most people don’t.

ROBRT PELA: How much of that had to do with your decision to retire from the radio?

BLAISE LANTANA: All stations now are on HD.

ROBRT PELA: Yeah.

BLAISE LANTANA: And yet, nobody talks about it. Nobody says, “What is that?” or “Where is that?” And I meet people, you know, and they’re so kind. Oh my goodness, they are so kind. They are so nice to me. And I go, I have, half the time go out to their car and show them where to find HD in their car.

ROBRT PELA: Oh, because nobody knows how to get it, what it is.

BLAISE LANTANA: And it’s on … most almost every car from 2017 on.

ROBRT PELA: Yeah.

BLAISE LANTANA: And people don’t even know how to find it.

ROBRT PELA: It’s a strange transitional time. So, you’re a musician. How natural a fit was this for you to tell us about music and musicians that you love?

BLAISE LANTANA: It was very natural because that’s pretty much all I talk about, annoyingly so, and so I would do that on the air.

ROBRT PELA: Speaking of musicians that we’ve heard of, you’re not leaving local stages. You’re leaving the radio. I want to reiterate that.

BLAISE LANTANA: Right.

ROBRT PELA: You will continue to perform for us and sing for us.

BLAISE LANTANA: Yes, I’ve been trying to get back out and and do more of that. I’ve been trying to go to some jam sessions and sit in and I’ll probably try and put together some kind of band. But I am looking forward to leaving town for a little while in the summertime, because why not?

Jean Clare Sarmiento
The cake at a retirement party for KJZZ music director Blaise Lantana.

ROBRT PELA: So, tell me about the impact that you’ve had on us as listeners for three decades.

BLAISE LANTANA: I really, you know what’s funny is, I’m kind of shocked when people tell me that, I mean, because just like I’m talking to you, that’s how I talk on the air. Like I’m talking to my friends. “Hey, have you heard this guy? Hey, have you ever gone out and and listened to jazz live? There’s something really exciting about that. Don’t miss out on that. Here’s some places you could go. I got a new saxophone player. I think you’ll like him even better than John Coltrane,” or ... y

You know, so I’m just talking about stuff that I love. And so last night, I was at a concert and a very nice woman came up and said, “Blaise, you’re the reason that I’m here. Because I’ve been listening to you when my daughter was at soccer practice, and I was sitting there in the car listening to your show and listening to the jazz, and I learned about all these people. And now I get to come and see them at the MIM, at the Nash.” And she said, “If it wasn’t for you, I never would have heard of them, and you talk about them like you know them, and you tell me things about them.”

ROBRT PELA: You mentioned the way that you talk on the radio. And I've wanted to ask you this for more than 30 years. And I don't know why I haven't — it's not like we haven't been hanging out for three decades. I could have asked you this. But I'm asking you now.

You’ve always, on air have a smile in your voice. How do you do that? Is that just how you feel and how you talk, and that’s what we’re hearing?

BLAISE LANTANA: I think so. I, again, talking about jazz, I’m talking about things that are so exciting, so exciting, this music is, these musicians are so amazing, they are so brilliant.

Jean Clare Sarmiento
KJZZ music director Blaise Lantana speaks at her retirement party.

ROBRT PELA: What are we going to do without you?

BLAISE LANTANA: You’re going to listen to somebody new who’s, who’s good, I hope. I hope they choose somebody local who lives here. That’s, my idea is please get somebody local who’s going to go out and be a part of the jazz community.

And hopefully somebody who can has the energy and drive. You know, I’m a little bit tired. It’s been a long time. A little bit tired. Somebody who has that enthusiasm that I have had for this and that, you know, they can bring that to the station and bring new things. Yeah.

ROBRT PELA: Thank you, Blaise, for 30-plus years of educating us and keeping us company.

BLAISE LANTANA: Thank you. Thank you.

LAUREN GILGER: That was KJZZ contributor Robrt Pela reminiscing with Blaise Lantana, who retires next month from her role as the station's music director.

GILGER: Good morning. It is The Show on KJZZ 91.5. I’m Lauren Gilger.

BRODIE: And I’m Mark Brodie. And now for the next essay in our Summer SOAPBOX series. No one’s got "get pulled over by the cops" on their road trip bingo card, yet somehow it’s happened to many of us. The key, as Phoenix educator Carrie Deahl learned, is to not let it ruin the rest of the trip.

CARRIE DEAHL: With the Snake River winding next to Highway 89, we drove toward Grand Teton National Park. My partner and I noticed yellow rafts with people standing near them wearing orange life jackets gearing up for their day.

“We should do a river rafting trip!”

“I would love that,” she responded.

Our conversation was rudely interrupted by an all too familiar sound from the city: “Wee-oh, wee-oh, wee-oh.”

“Oh, crap! I think that’s a cop behind us.”

I turned on the blinker and pulled over. Shortly after, an officer appeared at my window.

“Do you know why I pulled you over today?”

Honestly, I had no idea! I had been driving the speed limit.

“No, sir, I do not.”

“You ran a stop sign at the Y-junction back there where you merged onto Highway 191.”

“Oh, did I?”

There was no way I was going to be able to talk my way out of this one. The stop sign was right there!

“I am sorry, officer. I didn’t see that stop sign.”

“I am going to issue you a citation. Please be careful."

He handed me my ticket and walked away.

“Thank you, sir,” I responded.

Did I really just thank the officer for a citation? Why would I do that? 

I rolled up the window, and I lost my temper, blaming my partner for my mistake. I scanned the citation, noticing the name of the town we were in — Hoback Junction.

I didn’t even know Hoback Junction, Wyoming, existed. Of course I got a ticket in a small southwestern Wyoming town on the first day of our vacation!

I shoved the ticket in the glove compartment, rattling off a few choice words to my partner.

This was day one of a 19-day road trip through Wyoming and Montana, and I had imagined a smoother start.

After my tantrum, I merged back onto the highway and headed toward Grand Teton National Park, our first destination. Breathing the fresh air on the South Fork Cascade hiking trail as we careened around Jenny Lake, I regained my composure somewhere around the top of the falls and the vista overlooking the lake.

For the next 19 days, we traveled 3,600 miles through the Tetons, Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks with only one citation. We ended up on that rafting trip we had imagined back in Hoback. We floated down the Flathead River, stopping for a steak lunch the guides prepared for us on the side of the river while an elk crossed it and a bald eagle flew above.

While hiking brought us closer to the land, the Going to the Sun Road in Glacier National Park is the most stunning drive in the lower 48 I have traveled.

This was the country Teddy Roosevelt intended to protect, and for the first time in my life, I understood why.

BRODIE: That was Phoenix educator and writer Carrie Deahl. You can hear their essay and others from this series at kjzz.org.

BRODIE: A Valley-based children’s book author talks about developing characters with disabilities in a book that’s a spin-off of sorts. “The Beat I Drum” tells the story of Connor Bradley, who appeared in earlier books by Dusti Bowling as the best friend of another protagonist, Aven Green. In this book, Connor is starting a new high school, has recently moved into a new apartment in a new part of town, and is dealing with his father, who’s trying to come back into Connor’s life. Also, Connor has Tourette syndrome. Dusti Bowling joined The Show last May to talk about her book and why she decided to focus on Connor and show us his life.

DUSTI BOWLING: So some people will probably be familiar with my two earlier books, “Insignificant Events In The Life of a Cactus” and “Momentous Events in the Life of a Cactus,” which are told from the perspective of Connor’s best friend, Aven Green. So people really like that character, and they liked her best friend, Connor Bradley, who this book is about. And so I had the idea when I was finishing up the second book about Aven, to write a whole story about her best friend, just because people really liked the character and so do I.

BRODIE: Was there something about being able to expand on who he is, and in his case, his struggles that appeal to you?

BOWLING: Yes, he’s a very special character to me. Actually, he was first inspired by my husband and daughters, who all have tic disorders. Now, a lot of people will probably be familiar with Tourette syndrome. Unfortunately, Tourette syndrome has been really badly stereotyped for a very long time in books and especially movies, as always being people shouting bad words. 

So when I had the idea to write Aven’s story, Aven is actually, if you’re not familiar with those books, she’s a girl who was born without arms. And I wanted to write a story about this girl with this pretty significant disability, but not have it be about the disability. I wanted it to be about her, and who she is as a person, and her sense of humor, and her talents and all these things, and not have it be this serious, solemn story, like so many stories I had read that featured characters with disabilities. I wanted it to be something different.

And as I was starting to write about Aven’s character, my daughter, who’s 21 now, she was 11 at the time. She was just starting to have tics, and so she has really severe motor tics where she twists her neck, and she twists her ankles, and her wrists and taps her fingers, and scrunches up her face. And it causes her a lot of physical pain, a lot of muscle pain, and also a lot of emotional pain from people always telling her, “stop doing that. Why are you scrunching up your face? Why are you doing that?” And then the pain that comes with her, having to tell people, you know, I can’t stop. It’s a tic. I have Tourette syndrome. And so many people saying back to her, “Oh no, no, you don’t have that. I know what that is. That’s when people shout bad words and things like that.”

So the stereotyping of Tourette syndrome has gotten so bad that even when people meet someone with real Tourette syndrome, they sometimes don’t even believe them that they have it. And so I decided at that time to put Connor into Aven’s story, simply because I wanted to have a more authentic, accurate representation of what Tourette syndrome is for a lot of kids. But I just fell so much in love with him that I decided he needed his own story.

BRODIE: Well, so when you were writing his story, were you trying to do for him what you did for Aven and not make it sort of about Tourette syndrome, but make it about a child who has it, but also about his life, sort of the ups and downs of, in his case, a kid starting a new school?

BOWLING: Right, so this story is about so many things that aren’t related to his Tourette syndrome. It’s about having to start over at a brand new high school where you know nobody. So I think starting in high school for any kid at a new school where you are starting completely from scratch, with no friends, is terrifying for all children.

So that’s a really relatable problem that Connor is having in the story, and a big part of why he has to start over at a new high school is because he and his mom have moved across the city in order to be closer to his father, who he has a really contentious relationship with. So he doesn’t want to reconnect with his father. His parents got divorced a couple of years ago, which I also think a lot of children can, of course, relate to. And I think all of these problems are really relatable to all children, not just children with Tourette syndrome.

So there’s a lot going on in the book that doesn’t have anything to do with that. Although, there is definitely a storyline about him connecting with this music teacher and learning how to play an instrument. You could probably tell which one it is from the title, in order to as a kind of, almost help a therapy for his tics, because music, playing musical instruments, singing, all, all kinds of musical therapies are really good for kids with tic disorders.

BRODIE: I’m interested in what you said about having aspects of Connor’s life that are relatable, in terms of, you know, his parents split up, he’s starting a new high school and the difficulties of that. I wonder if, in some ways, that is a way to help readers and other kids or adults who are reading this book, to also sort of maybe understand the thing that is less relatable to them, in terms of Tourette syndrome?

BOWLING: Definitely, I think finding that common ground with another person. Look, hey, we’re not different in every way. We actually have all these commonalities. We share all these things, these life experiences. I really think that helps kids and people in general to connect with people and be more understanding and empathetic about the things they don’t have personal experiences with.

BRODIE: Yeah. So in your past books, your home state has played a fairly sizable role in many of them. I’m wondering in what ways Phoenix or Arizona plays a role in this book?

BOWLING: So, yeah, I tried to bring in some things I love about the city. A lot of my books take place like out in the desert, but the cactus books, definitely. And then this one now takes place in the city, and so I try to bring in some of those quirky things that I love.

So there’s a storyline within the book about where a friend of Connor’s family works this restaurant they own, and it’s a pizza place where they have this huge organ it’s called Organ Pipe Pizza. And it’s based on a place, a real restaurant in Chandler that I’ve been to.

And so there’s definitely Phoenix has its own perks and strange things that I don’t think exist really anywhere else. So I’m always trying to touch on those fun things that I love about Arizona, whether it’s out in the desert or in the city.

BRODIE: Well, I thought it was interesting, even just at the very beginning of the book, you reference Connor’s first day at his new school, and his dad comes to pick him up. I hope I’m not giving too much away here. And they sort of have this disagreement about whether or not the dad is going to drive Connor home.

And you reference how hot it is, which is obviously a very sort of Phoenix thing, that school starts when it’s still unbelievably hot outside. And it almost seems like you make the heat outside almost like a metaphor for how they’re feeling about each other, even when they get in the car and sort of have this very uncomfortable ride back to Connor’s apartment?

BOWLING: Absolutely, the heat definitely plays a role in a lot of my stories, because how can you not think about the heat in a Phoenix summer? It’s overwhelming. And anyone who’s ever been here over the summer knows how incredibly hot it gets, especially inside of a car. And so I definitely wanted to, I guess you could say, turn up the heat on that scene where they’re butting heads. And, you know, there has to be always a lot of conflict in the story. And, definitely, Connor and his dad have a ton of conflict in this story. And so that is played out in so many different scenes and ways, until they also have to find a common ground where they can meet at, just like so many other people.

BRODIE: All right. That is Valley-based author Dusti Bowling. Her book is called “The Beat I Drum.” Dusti, nice to talk to you, thank you.

BOWLING: It was so nice to talk to you, too. Thank you, Mark.

GILGER: Thanks for listening to The Show’s podcast. The Show is produced by Sativa Peterson, Nick Sanchez, Amber Victoria Singer, Athena Ankrah, and Ayana Hamilton. The show was created by Jon Hoban and our executive producer is Amy Silverman. You can find more of The Show and sign up for our newsletter at theshow.kjzz.org. You can also find us on Instagram at @kjzztheshow.