Burlington’s Sound of Music festival is back in full force this week after a pandemic-imposed hiatus, and one of SoM’s headliners, Fantastic Negrito, was kind enough to talk to Local-news.ca about his new album, White Jesus Black Problems, and answer a few questions.
Fantastic Negrito was born Xavier Amin Dphrepaulezz, the eighth of fourteen children in an orthodox Muslim family, in Massachusetts. The family later relocated to Oakland, California. Of his family, Dphrepaulezz says that it was “pretty broken, dysfunctional” and that many of his siblings ended up in the foster care system. The lesson he took from his childhood was that “obstacles become the fuel for survival” — and music was the medicine that helped him deal with life’s difficult challenges.
Dphrepaulezz uses music to tell stories, to communicate with his audience, and views instruments as tools necessary for his storytelling. He is a self-taught musician who plays several instruments (“pretty bad[ly]”), and seeks out inspiration everywhere. He is particularly influenced by fearless artists, and “anything and everything that is powerful and visceral. I love walking on the edge.”
While previous albums have garnered Dphrepaulezz three consecutive Grammy awards for Best Contemporary Blues Album, that seeking of powerful influences is in evidence in White Jesus Black Problems, the album and accompanying film released this month via Storefront Records. This album marks an evolution from his previous three studio albums, and it was not an accident: of his creative process, Dphrepaulezz says that with each new “project or album, I try to forget everything that I’ve done previously and start over…freedom is terrifyingly ecstatic[ally] fragile yet satisfying in the end.” Dphrepaulezz notes that “the good thing about being a middle-aged artist is that I do not have to adhere to genres necessarily” — and while you can still hear the blues in this album, you’ll also find funk, R&B, rock, beautifully woven together into one coherent tale.
And what a tale it is. The album was written based on the true story of Dphrepaulezz’ seventh-generation grandparents, a white indentured servant from Scotland and an enslaved Black man, who fell in love in 1750s Virginia. Dphrepaulezz came across his ancestors’ story while working on the TV show Black Lightning in Atlanta, Georgia. The hotel-room quarantine led him to do a deep dive on his forebears — where he found the name of his great (times seven) grandmother, Elizabeth Gallimore, and the grandfather he calls Grandfather Courage. There was one single document online, outlining the legal proceedings against Elizabeth (Betty) Gallimore, for “unlawful cohabitation with a Negro slave.”
Their courage and determination to be together, when their love was deemed illegal, forbidden, is made all the more poignant by the outcome: the law granted their children the same legal status as their mother, freedom after seven years of indentured servitude. Thus, this illegal union produced a generation of free African-Americans — and they produced the next generation, and the next, until Dphrepaulezz. Truly an inspiring and remarkable story, the resilience, courage, perseverance, and trust and belief in each other of Grandmother Gallimore and Grandfather Courage in turn inspired Dphrepaulezz to write White Jesus Black Problems, passing on that spirit to listeners.
The ultimate message that Dphrepaulezz sees is that “anything and everything can be accomplished. …Despite unthinkable challenges and insurmountable odds, the resilience of the human spirit is unmatched.” Indeed, while the album’s lyrics can be dark, talking about the legal proceedings against his grandmother, about racism, it is after all, a story of the power of love, of humanity, of redemption. As Dphrepaulezz says, “We can. We must. We will.”
Dphrepaulezz has had the pleasure of visiting Edmonton, Regina, Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto, and Calgary, where he opened for the late Chris Cornell, but not yet Burlington, so this Friday, June 17, at 9:50 p.m. on the Access Storage Stage at Spencer Smith Park marks the first time Dphrepaulezz as Fantastic Negrito plays — or has been — here. We at local-news.ca are very excited about the return of the Sound of Music festival, and to hear Fantastic Negrito spreading his message of determination, courage, and resilience to Burlington festival-goers, something we all need to hear after the last few challenging years.
White Jesus Black Problems can be played on Spotify, YouTube Music and Apple Music, and Fantastic Negrito can be found online here:
https://www.facebook.com/fantasticnegrito
https://www.instagram.com/fantasticnegrito/
https://twitter.com/musicnegrito
