Austin rapper Jonathan ‘Chaka’ Mahone supports Black artists with DAWA, songs fund
7 min read
“For me, tunes is not a device to be well known,” Jonathan “Chaka” Mahone stated in the course of an early January episode of the Monday New music Mashup, Austin360’s streaming show.
“Flowers for the Dwelling,” the new album from Riders Versus the Storm, the partner/spouse hip-hop duo that includes Mahone and Ghislaine “Qi Dada” Jean, is thanks out in February. Although Mahone would like “a wide total of individuals to listen to it, to know about it,” his group’s purpose has always been even bigger than hip-hop.
“I’m building (new music) simply because I want it to help. You know, I want it to develop possibility. I want it to develop new worlds, in a perception,” he claimed.
The recently appointed chair of the Austin Audio Commission would like to aid “people to see new potentials in by themselves and in the entire world that they are surrounded by,” he stated.
As the environment shut down, devastating the Austin new music business last yr, Mahone went to operate. Via his nonprofit DAWA (Diversity and Wellness in Action) he lifted near to $100,000 in unexpected emergency money to guidance men and women of coloration creatives, lecturers and healers who are in disaster. While protests more than the law enforcement killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, erupted in metropolitan areas across the region, Mahone, then vice-chair of the Songs Fee, advocated for the generation of a Black Dwell Songs Fund. In August, with most clubs still closed, he developed one particular of the very best livestream occasions of the yr, Black Everythang Issues, a showcase spotlighting the outstanding artistry of a assorted group of Black artists. With tightly edited overall performance segments and persuasive interludes discovering troubles of race, justice and therapeutic at house and in the environment at large, the event lifted the bar on what a virtual live performance could be.
Looking back again, developing DAWA was his proudest achievement of the calendar year, Mahone explained. He released the corporation on his birthday in September 2019, but in 2020 the firm “really blew up” with other artists and companies rallying behind the lead to with fundraising events and releases. Among other attempts, pop artist Mobley contributed a portion of proceeds from streaming ticket profits of his spectacular visual album, “A Household Unfamiliar,” and Gary Clark Jr. and Los Coastline launched a stirring go over of Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” to reward the fund.
In Swahili the term Dawa implies medicine. Mahone sees stopgap monetary support as a way to assistance people today obtain area to mend. Since of Riders In opposition to the Storm’s strong concentrate on local community creating, Mahone has been informally mobilizing to raise money to guide folks for decades.
“We were being obtaining strike up a large amount with folks that have been like, ‘Someone received evicted. So and so had a psychological breakdown,’” he said. He observed the way problems can snowball. “They’re in the clinic for a couple of weeks. Their car or truck will get impounded. They eliminate their task. We ended up continually attempting to determine out how to help folks at the rear of the scenes.”
Austin is recognised for its artistic class of artists, innovators and entrepreneurs, but with an ever-expanding charge of living, even the greatest and brightest skills can fall on difficult situations. This was correct just before the pandemic and is probably to continue to be real for some time.
“You could be doing at an very superior level and offering a whole lot to your community and nevertheless be having difficulties,” Mahone mentioned. He preferred to offer an avenue “to acquire funding and acquire support” to people today of shade “teachers and musicians, artists, social workers that are, like, giving so much excellent energy to our local community,” he explained.
Mahone and Jean are not far eradicated from the struggle on their own.
“When we initially acquired in this article, to Austin, we were going via ups and downs pretty persistently in our 1st a few to four years,” he reported. While the few was never evicted, there had been instances when they “had to leave” a secure household situation, he said.
“We actually couldn’t find the money for a new location and could not manage the initially thirty day period and, you know, a deposit,” he claimed. Folks opened their homes, their living rooms and spare bedrooms to the few.
“We had a security internet. We had a neighborhood that supported us,” he mentioned. There was “always a person with a daily life raft.” By way of DAWA, he hopes to offer you that beacon of hope to many others who do not have the identical guidance technique.
In late June, Mahone opened up applications for the initial spherical of DAWA micro-grants. He gained more than 200 purposes in 48 hrs. Operating with a staff of volunteers, he dispersed $40,000 in the form of $200 Visa gift playing cards to 200 individuals. Programs for the 2nd spherical of grants are open up now at dawaheals.org.
Mahone’s aim is to make the fund a constant resource of support “so that we will not have to halt when we operate out of income,” he reported.
“You know, since you do the math, 200 people today, $200, that’s $40,000, appropriate,” he said. “It does not go that significantly.”
He would like to boost the total of every grant to $500. The corporation is discovering strategies to provide in regular income streams to bolster the fund and to make the distribution process for the volunteer-operate corporation more quickly and far more efficient.
As he was handing out the initial spherical of DAWA money, Mahone commenced a 2nd drive for funding for Austin’s Black community, this 1 aimed directly at his fellow musicians. As vice-chair of the Austin Audio Commission, a citizen-led group that advises Austin’s Town Council, he named for 50 % of a new resort tax-funded Austin Music Fund to be allotted to Black Austin musicians. He was discouraged by ongoing conversations between business leaders that discounted the struggles of historically marginalized artist communities in the city.
“They were conversing about the difficulties of living in Austin, as a musician or as a creative, as an artist. What about Black individuals? What about generations of Black individuals who have been displaced?” he claimed. “You can literally look at, in 1991, when the moniker was offered, the Reside Tunes Money, (the) Black population was at 12%. Now we are at 7.4%. Pretty much from that time, when you made the decision we’re likely to brand name ourselves and market ourselves as this excellent desired destination city, we are heading to provide men and women in, and those people today — guess what, they’re heading to like it, and then they’re going to stay below — there is a immediate correlation to the minimize in the Black local community and the Black population.”
Right after months of discussions with metropolis team, council members and the mayor, Mahone made the decision it was not “a very good concept to have (the Black Reside Music Fund) underneath a town auspice,” he claimed.
He would like Black artists to use for and receive city funding, but he decided “that we require to have command about our individual destiny, our own fund,” he stated.
In late Oct, the Songs Commission voted unanimously to make a large-level recommendation to the city’s Financial Advancement Department: 50% of income from the Austin Dwell Tunes Fund ought to go to a “BIPOC-concentrated innovative equity fund.” (The expression BIPOC is an acronym for Black, Indigenous and persons of shade.)
Mahone, who was elected the first Black chair of the fee in December, explained he thinks that there are “some great folks in the city’s cloth doing work hard” to redress inequity troubles in Austin.
“I feel the matters that they’re accomplishing now are vital items that, you know, ought to have transpired 10 yrs in the past,” he claimed.
His goals for the fee this year contain pushing to make absolutely sure the group’s suggestion to prioritize traditionally marginalized groups when allocating Austin Live Audio Fund income passes via Metropolis Council. He wants “to see that 50% of the are living tunes cash is going to go to produce, and restore, and protect the cultures that the metropolis has mostly designed alone upon,” he claimed.
He also wants to increase recognition in the local community about the commission’s work “so that people can experience compelled to provide us tips, or provide us challenges, and then we can operate on them,” he stated.
“I want a lot more individuals of color, I just want additional folks in standard to comprehend that, you know, we are a voice to Metropolis Council,” he claimed, including that council members look to the fee for steerage on problems inside Austin’s audio neighborhood.
As for the Black Dwell Music Fund, Mahone is pushing ahead to locate personal financing for the endeavor.
“We need to make our very own economic alternatives. We want to have the income in our hands, and we need to be supplying the dollars to every single other,” he claimed.
His target is to raise $50,000 for the fund by June so he can award $2,500 grants “to 20 tasks that are about developing chance for Black music to prosper in Austin,” he stated.
“We’re not just heading to, you know, wait for the metropolis or everyone else to do it. We are heading to do it ourselves. We are heading to elevate the revenue, and we’re likely to make the condition that we want to see, that is long overdue,” he explained.
