00:00Tell me why you were attracted to doing the work around HIV status and AIDS.
00:09It began after my first album and at the time after my first record I never had,
00:17I'd never really been so many places before, you know.
00:21I had just, I grew up in Harlem and I lived in New York.
00:25Yes. And so, you know, when I had the opportunity to actually travel,
00:32it was always such an incredible feeling for me.
00:35And it really was, I was invited to go to South Africa and I couldn't believe it.
00:40I couldn't believe someone asked me to come to South Africa.
00:43I couldn't believe people would know me or my music there.
00:46And when I went there, it was for a concert called Staying Alive.
00:51It was really about raising the awareness about HIV AIDS.
00:55And that was actually an education for me.
00:57So not only was I performing in this construct,
01:00but it was the first time that I was able to see, learn, talk to people who,
01:04all different colors, white South Africans, black South Africans,
01:07all over who were experienced in the AIDS pandemic.
01:10Young kids who had lost their parents and were now raising their brothers and sisters.
01:15And it was real, I mean, it was deep, heavy, intense for me.
01:19Of course, I think we all are aware that AIDS exists.
01:23I think pretty much everybody, most everybody is aware of that.
01:27But I think what, just honestly, what has happened is that it's, there has been,
01:33there is so much access now.
01:35People can, you know, have access to the medicine that can keep you healthy.
01:40At a certain point in the eighties, when I was a little girl, you know, people looked sick.
01:45And you couldn't deny it, you know.
01:47And so I think that was something that was very, it was new for everybody.
01:51And it was something very shocking.
01:53And now, you know, 30 years later, we've come to a place where it's almost as if it's not an issue for Americans anymore.
02:01You know, and I think we're all, some of us are all, myself included, sometimes thinking that it is kind of under control here.
02:11And it's not under control here.
02:13I'm so happy you said you were a kid in the eighties because all my producers who work for me are millennials.
02:19And so when I talk about the eighties, it's like, really, way back then?
02:26It's very, I'm not really in touch with the being 40 of it all.
02:30But it does occur to me that that moment in the eighties, which I think you're right, a lot of young people may not realize,
02:37but we are still digging out of a hole of shame and stigma that we created then.
02:43Because in addition to that idea that we could see people who were ill, there was so much shame, so much stigma, so much fear that HIV and AIDS could be passed through casual contact.
02:54We were throwing kids out of school.
02:56And even though it is 30 years later, it still somehow feels like people living with HIV now are having to dig up out of that 30 year hole from the eighties.
03:07You know what, I think you're definitely right.
03:09And that's mostly just because we're naive.
03:11A friend just said to me, I found this really beautiful, that we all have a responsibility to this.
03:18And we have the ability to respond.
03:21So we have the ability to respond by being more caring, by being accepting.
03:27We have the ability to respond by choosing to say, you know what, if this is happening to you or somebody that I don't even know, I want to help you.
03:35We have the ability to choose to, you know, raise our voices up and say, guess what?
03:38I'm going to be the first one in my church to say, I want to start a whole group, you know, so that we can have some education about what's going on here.
03:46And so if there are people in our community that I need and I need and love and I need to know where to go, what to do, I'm going to lead that.
03:53So we definitely have a responsibility.
03:55We can choose the way we respond to this whole issue.
03:57When AIDS was first happening and HIV was first being discovered, doctors wouldn't see them.
04:03People wouldn't talk to them.
04:05You know, how are you supposed to help yourself if a doctor won't even see you?
04:08People would ignore, ignore it completely and act like it wasn't happening.
04:12And together they raise their voice and say, you're not going to ignore me.
04:16You're going to listen to me and this is going to change.
04:19And that's the same thing that we have to do now, knowing that this is attacking our communities.
04:24We have to come together and raise our voices and say, you're not going to attack me.
04:28I'm not a victim of nobody's nothing.
04:30You know, I am strong.
04:32I am powerful and I am independent.
04:35I am free to make the choices I want to make.
04:39Nobody is going to hold me back and nobody is going to stop me.
04:43And that's a choice that we have to promise ourselves that we make even through the hardest circumstances because we can make it through it.
04:50And we know that from our history.
04:52And so there's nothing that's stopping us now.
04:54So thank you so much for your power.
Comments