Asase Ba Podcast - S3E1: The Person Behind the Voice (Michelle's Ghanaian Story)
Transcript
[Asase Ba Theme Music]
Hello and welcome to Asase Ba, a podcast that honours oral tradition and shines light on Ghanaian stories that are often untold or silenced. I'm your host, Michelle, and my pronouns are she and her.
Oh my gosh. Welcome back guys. Season three, officially! It has been a minute. It's been a year since season two dropped and this is a yearly podcast. So it's not like I disappeared for a while but, I'm back for season three and I'm super excited because this season's a little bit different than last season, because it features a mixed bag of episodes.
So we're exploring different topics, even different styles. Today's episode is a solo episode, which I've never done. I'm usually doing interview-style episodes, but I really love that kind of solo vibe.
So there are a couple of solo episodes this season, which I'm super excited about. It's a new year. 2021 a lot still going on: pandemic, quarantine. But I'm really glad to be back. I'm glad to just have this podcast and talk a bit more. A lot of different things have happened and the value of taking a break is I get to just live, I get to have new experiences.
I refresh my mind, I gain a lot of wisdom. I just feel rejuvenated and ready to be back on this podcast and talk about a bunch of different interesting topics. So yes, officially back for season three. So let's run down the things.
So first of all, I would love your support on this podcast and there are two ways to support Asase Ba: The first way is by sharing. Share the links with your friends, your sister or brother, your sibling, your family members. Share it on social media, and when you share on Twitter or Instagram or even TikTok yes, Asase Ba is there now, hashtag #AsaseBaPod.
Share, amplify this podcast, let's get it out there. So that's one way to support. The next way to support is by doing so monetarily. This is an independent podcast, and I am the sole creator, producer editor, doer of all the things.
I love this podcast, but it's also labour and it takes considerable amount of thinking, planning, work, effort, all of that that goes into bringing you Asase Ba. So if you are able to, you can support by donating via email transfer, or by PayPal, and the email for that is asasebapod@gmail.com. And obviously do it if you're only able to.
Thank you so much for your support guys. I appreciate it.
Okay, so I touched on social media a bit so as I said, Asase Ba is on Twitter, on Instagram, on TikTok, as I mentioned, and that's where I share things, I amplify other cultural workers, post new episodes.
And from time to time, I do a little kind of video situation which I did on Instagram. I did a Tuesday Talk video earlier on in the summer, where I talked about different themes that I have gone over in the podcast, and just other stuff as well. They're cool, interesting things. So definitely follow @AsaseBaPod on Twitter, on Instagram and on TikTok. Alrighty, so let us get into this episode.
Oh, before that, let me not forget: transcripts for season one are now available! So check the show notes to access them. One of my missions is to make our stories, experiences as Ghanaians more accessible, because honestly, I'm sick of searching stuff about Ghanaian cultures and then getting books or articles written by white men in the 70s or 60s, you know what I mean?
So I think it's important to not only record our stories, and do so within our oral tradition, but also, it's important to have them be accessible.
Season one transcripts are available. So if you go under each episode, wherever you're listening to the podcast, there is a direct link. I've also shared a link to season one in the show notes of this episode so that you can get a full view of the season, then you click on whichever episode you're interested in. You'll see the transcripts.
I'm just really, really happy about that. And I'm also working on making transcripts for season two. So I'll let you know when that is available. So yes, yay. I was super, super excited about that. So that's something that I was working on, starting from the spring time and everything.
Okay, now, let us get into this episode. So on today's episode, I am talking more about myself, so you can get to know me and my interests and my background, and all of that. I am a little bit nervous because I'm usually a behind-the-scenes type of person.
If I am going in depth about myself personally, it's usually when I'm journaling or with close friends and family, and all of that. So just talking about myself on a public platform, it's interesting. And I understand the irony because that's what I do here at Asase Ba. I talk to other people about their personal experiences and stories.
So I understand the irony there. But I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna be a little bit more vulnerable today and just talk about myself. And I'm doing this because I personally feel that oftentimes, we don't really get to know the cultural workers, documentarians, storytellers, griots doing important work.
And we only ever learn about them after, you know what I mean? And I'm always shouting out cultural workers. If you follow Asase Ba on Twitter or Instagram, I'm always shouting them out, amplifying them and everything. So I just think it's important to know who is behind the work, who is behind the platform.
And it's also just important to anchor ourselves within our work as well, just to show who we are and the fruits of our labour. Put a name to the work, you know what I mean? I just think it's important. And I personally just enjoy knowing and having context of the person behind the work.
When I am visiting a new site, or just absorbing new work, new cultural work, I like to know who's behind it so that I can get a full picture of the work and the production. Let's say, I've been consuming the work of a Ghanaian cultural worker or someone I assume is a Ghanaian cultural worker, and I go and I find out it's some white woman that lives in Pennsylvania.
Just joking. But you know, that's why I just like to know. As I said, I'm doing this as context, so that the listeners know the context behind Asase Ba and the types of topics that I produce and what's important to me. Also, I want to anchor myself within my own work and be visible in my work as well and in the things that I put out.
So I've struggled a bit with being visible on the Internet as I have grown up. I mean, I am a Millennial, grew up partly on the Internet and stuff like that. But we all know how the Internet can be, how people can be on social media. So it's made me a little bit hesitant with putting certain things out there as I get older.
But I recognize that I can control what I put out there. I can put out things that really cement the fact that I am the one producing this type of work. This work is important to me, I'm passionate about it, [and I can put out work] without going into nitty gritty details of things that I'm not comfortable about going into, you know what I mean?
So there is a balance there and a duality but I do recognize it's important to be visible. So yeah, let's get into this then.
So, as y'all know, my name is Michelle, and I'm the host, creator and producer of Asase Ba podcast. I started this podcast in 2019. And I actually have a short episode, a bonus episode where I talk about my inspiration behind the podcast, and why I started it. So you can listen to that little bonus episode if you want to learn more.
I live in Canada, I was born in Canada. I'm Ghanaian Canadian. I lived in Ghana for several years when I was a child. I actually went to primary school in Ghana, a little bit of primary school. So I feel like that really influences the way that I see the world, my Ghanaian identity and even the way that I approach different things within this podcast.
Even though I was very young when I lived in Ghana, I remember a lot of things. I had a lot of experiences there and it really shaped part of my childhood. I lived in Kumasi when I was there, which is where my family's from. My family's from a town near Kumasi and that's where I was growing up.
And it's interesting because I went to Ghana several years ago, and I hadn't been to Ghana in so long since I came to Canada. And everything was so different. The last time I was there prior to going back, let's say six years ago or so, I was a kid. So going back six years ago, it's like wow. These are some of the things that I remember you know, my childhood: this house, that house, this experience.
It was like visiting a part of my past with new eyes, you know what I mean? So, so cool. It was interesting. I wasn't there for too long. I was there for like 10 days or so. So it's like back to back to back kind of activities and stuff so I didn't get a chance to soak everything in.
But while I was there, it was just really cool being there and seeing Ghana through new eyes, you know, as an adult and everything. So it was interesting, definitely.
I'm Canadian, I live in Ontario currently. And I'm a lover of tech, history, culture, learning and creativity. I am a strong, strong advocate, and lover of learning. I love when people teach me things that I don't know, I love learning about new things. And the things that I love learning about include culture—things, concepts that disrupt the status quo.
I love reading about the impact of social media, that kind of stuff. That's something that really interests me. And I do all this learning through reading books. I haven't done that in a bit, but reading books, YouTube videos.
And I really love how a lot of these video essays have increased throughout the last several years and added this sort of visual component to learning and breaking down theory and connecting it with our everyday lived experiences. I love that. I pretty much grew up on the Internet.
I was a teenager of the Internet, heck a child of the Internet. I'm a Millennial. And I learned so much, you know what I mean? I was always learning and on the Internet side of things, I learned through consuming blogs, Tumblr—when Tumblr was a thing back in the day.
And learning a lot of womanist and Black feminist content, learning about that, and learning how it connects and impacts the way that people approach Black women within the social media spaces. That's something that was so instrumental. It kind of awakened my consciousness, through that and through people's blogs, you know what I mean?
And then it carried on to podcasts. I listen to a lot of podcasts by Black women and non-binary people. And some of the central themes are Black womanism, feminism, pop culture, social media, that kind of stuff.
So that really influences the way that I think and my outlook on the world as well. And as I mentioned, YouTube is also a space that has really allowed me to learn a lot of things as well. And watching the videos of Gen Z, especially nowadays, it's so cool.
I love learning from different people, different age groups. We have Gen Z, Millennials, of course, Gen Xers, who I think is the first set of people that I learned from on the Internet.
They were the ones that were writing blog posts, and all of that stuff, they are the OGs. And, of course, Baby Boomers who wrote a lot of really seminal books that really resonate with me till this day.
And of course, in season two of Asase Ba, I interviewed a lot of different elders and older adults. And it was so cool learning from people within that age group as well because I feel like the revolution is going to be intergenerational and we need our different areas of expertise as Gen Z's, Millennials, Gen Xers, Boomers. I don't know if it's good to say Boomers. But oh, the Boomer generation, Baby Boomers…we need all of that to inform and create dialogue and communication that lead to our independent and collective liberation.
And something that I love and I'm passionate about is creativity, expressing myself through different forms of art and different modes of expression. So writing is one of them. I've been writing since I was young, and even though sometimes within writing I deal with perfectionism, when I do end up writing something and I really feel it and I really look back at it, it definitely comes close to encapsulating what I feel within my soul.
I was always writing stories since I was a kid: short stories, fiction, nonfiction, posting it on the Internet sometimes. I was also…what was I doing? You know, journaling. I'm such a huge advocate of journaling and self-reflection overall. So that's something that really interests me. And I was also that kid that was always doing something different, something creative.
Singing! And when I was a kid, you couldn't tell me I couldn't sing. Like, you couldn't get me to shut up. I was singing all the time. You know, I wanted to be a singer. Like doing many singing competitions with my friends. Singing Cheetah Girls, that kind of stuff. Anyway, but spoiler alert: I can’t sing. But back in the day, I felt like I had the voice of Whitney Houston, you couldn’t tell me nothing.
And honestly, though, I feel like I was probably doing something musical in my past life. I was a singer commanding the stage in my past life, honestly, because the way that I can feel and see talent. Maybe I just need to be a producer, or something like that.
This is all just to say that I was expressing myself in various ways and I'm really happy that I was able to do that and I had the room to do that, and the space to do that, and the privilege to do that because it really contributed to who I am today.
As someone who is creative and loves to experiment with different modes of creation and expression, that really influences even how I approach Asase Ba. I believe and I'm passionate about a lot of different things as well, and it's reflected in this podcast. I'm sure I've mentioned it several times, if not on here, on social media, on Instagram on Twitter. I believe in centring and amplifying the voices of marginalized people, including women, queer people, #QueerGhanaianLivesMatter forever and ever and ever.
I've never been a "traditional person" you know what I mean? I always wonder why. I don't just accept things for the way they are. I wonder why. I wonder why is the system is set up like this, what can be changed, and that's where my creativity comes into play as well—brainstorming alternate realities, alternate modes of doing and of being. Because as we know, this current system, this current system of homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, it doesn't work, obviously, and it's causing a lot of pain and violence.
So it needs to change. And I think part of me being a creative person and also really believing in liberation—personal and collective liberation—is what led me to, in part, make this podcast and also just to question things that I see around me and not take things as they are all the time. Because when we remain complicit and silent, then how are we ever going to progress? You know what I mean?
We need to challenge things. So that's something that's very important to me. And I also believe in ancestral wisdom, guidance and having respect for our traditional customs and beliefs. And I know I just said, I'm not a traditionalist and I'm not but in certain ways. In this context, I'm talking about certain customs and beliefs.
And even those, I do think we should question certain things because there is also a thing about romanticizing the past. And when I say the past, I'm talking about pre-colonial modes of being and doing. We can't romanticize that either.
Because culture changes, things change, cultures, not stagnant. And I think, what makes it difficult is that a lot of us, we don't really know, or have access to information about what we were doing pre-colonial times. So it can make it easy to romanticize that.
It's like, “let's go back to the time before colonialism was entrenched in all facets of our lives, maybe things were easier than it is.” But we don't really know all of that, you know what I mean? So when I say that I believe in and have respect for traditional customs and beliefs, I guess I'm talking more in a spiritual sense. But I also know that there is room to question and also be critical of certain things. So that's what I'll say for that.
But yeah, I definitely believe in ancestral wisdom, elders, like consulting and talking with elders that we know and trust, trust being the operative word here, the keyword. Because as Ghanaians, we do come from a culture where elders are held to a certain regard, and it's like “don't question elders, that elders know, etc, etc.”
And some elders are wrong, some elders are perpetrating violence and stuff. So that's why I say the keyword is talking with people, elders, that we know and trust, and know have our best interests, etc. And also seeing and acknowledging that they're not perfect, they make mistakes, they are human. So seeing ourselves in them and them seeing themselves in us, so that there's this productive dialogue going on.
And I definitely believe in the principle of Sankofa in my life. And I definitely embrace learning from the past in order to inform our present and make changes to the future or create a better future. And I try to inject that within my work and the things that I do and all of that stuff.
And I guess some fun things: I've mentioned books before. I love learning, and one of the ways that I learn is through books. So Octavia Butler. I've been reading a lot of Octavia Butler, especially when quarantine began, everybody was suggesting Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents series.
I read it and of course, I loved it because it really stressed community and just some other cool stuff that I love about Octavia Butler and the way that she writes. And it just really got me thinking about intentional communities and what it means.
Because in the past, I used to call anything and everything a community. For example, the “Ghanaian community”, the “Black community.” We say that a lot and I understand what a lot of us mean when we say that, but for me, reading this book just caused me to be very critical about community and what it means to me.
And now I just view it as intentional. Are we a community if I don't know you, we've never met? I view a community as built upon the foundation of communication, love, reciprocity, respect, compassion. With that new definition in mind, I started thinking about the ways that I kind of throw the word “community” around.
So yeah, thank you Octavia Butler for that. And I'm not saying that we can't feel an affinity or some sort of connection with people from our same cultural groups. And we can feel solidarity with people that are in our cultural groups or people that we share an identity with. We can definitely and we can support people.
But let's be very intentional about using the word community, at least I'm trying to be more intentional so that I can form more intentional relationships and communities that are two-sided. What I'm saying is that this just helps me to be more intentional about the kinds of relationships and communities that I build and put my energy into so that I'm not kind of in one-sided or parasocial relationships.
Especially when we talk about the Internet and calling things community when sometimes we don't really know each other, we don't have a foundation. This is just kind of one-sided interactions, you know what I mean? So I think we should be very, very, very intentional about that. So that's something I definitely believe.
I love other Octavia Butler books. I'm currently reading the Wildseed series. Another book that I really love is All About Love by bell hooks. Really good book. And when I was a kid, I'm just thinking randomly of the types of books I read, I was reading the Baby Sitters Club, Sweet Valley books, the Alice books. I was reading a lot of white books, y'all.
That was before I got more access to Black books but yeah, those were my childhood memories of what I was reading, and in terms of TV shows, it’s ever-changing. Currently, I'm just enjoying watching a lot of reality TV shows—love and dating reality shows. They're just fun to watch. And it's just good to sit down and relax and just watch some mess on TV sometimes.
I think this was good. And now another thing I guess I should add: I call myself a digital cultural worker now, or a cultural worker because I believe the type of work that I'm doing is part of the culture and impacts the culture. And I need to stand in that, you know what I mean?
So, digital cultural worker Michelle. Michelle, who had a childhood in Kumasi, Michelle who uses the principle of Sankofa, who believes in ancestral wisdom, who is all about #QueerGhanaianLivesMatter forever and ever.
So that's me in a nutshell. I was nervous before about the thought of talking more about myself and being kind of raw and vulnerable in certain ways. But I like this. As I said before, I definitely think it's important to know the people or the person behind the work. I offer this to you guys, so thank you so much for listening.
Alright again, so thank you so much for listening to this episode. I was a bit nervous in the beginning as I said, but I feel good and I feel happy that I'm sharing a bit about myself. So to keep up to date with Asase Ba, follow on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok @AsaseBaPod. This show drops every two weeks. So I will see you in two weeks' time. Bye!
[Asase Ba Theme Music]
Episode Notes
Asase Ba is BACK with season 3! In this episode, get to know the host and voice behind this podcast: Michelle! Michelle talks about the importance of anchoring ourselves within our work, visibility in the social media era, her childhood in Kumasi, creative expression, intergenerational insights, Sankofa, ancestral wisdom, intentional communities, having Whitney Houston’s voice, reality TV, and much more.
Join in on the conversation! Use the hashtag #AsaseBaPod.
SUPPORT
E-transfer or via PayPal to asasebapod@gmail.com. Thank you so much for your support.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AsaseBaPod
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TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@asasebapod
HOST
This podcast is produced, edited and hosted by Ghanaian Canadian Michelle (pronouns: she/her). She is also the creator of the theme music.
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