Gabriel Teodros grew up in Beacon Hill and has been a beloved musician in Seattle for years. He also has lead numerous writing workshops with youth around the Puget Sound. His latest album, Evidence of Things Not Seen, is available now here.

IO: How does anger feed into your music?

GT: I have a conviction that all feelings are something that happen to you and through you and all emotions are healthy – even anger, if you have an outlet for it. And music is my outlet for it. There are a lot of times where you get mad and you might wanna punch somebody, you know? You might want to do a lot of things – but I get to get that out in a song. Once I’m able to articulate the reason why I’m angry, I don’t feel enraged anymore. It’s the James Baldwin thing – once you can describe the monster that you are facing, it’s easier to overcome and outwit it.

IO: It’s interesting that you say that, because a lot of times I feel that Seattle’s relationship to anger is built to prevent exactly that. To prevent the empowerment that comes from naming that thing and reacting to that. Do you find that there is a reaction from people to you naming what you are angry about and putting it out there? Or do you find that people are happy to have the opportunity to share that.

GT: I think it just depends on where they are at in their journey. If people are seeking the truth they are going to be like “hell yeah – you just helped name something I was trying to figure out.” But if there are people who are trying to ignore some of the things I’m talking about, or don’t want to admit it or admit how they benefit from it, they are gonna get pissed off by my music.

we get hunted in the streets

openly by police

prison is an industry

they don’t want us to speak free

-excerpt: Greeny Jungle

IO: We were talking earlier and you said that when you put your art out there it doesn’t necessarily belong to you anymore. What’s interesting about that is that Evan Flory-Barnes had mentioned a similar thing –

GT: That’s my guy, we’re going to say a lot of the same things probably.

IO: – <laughter> Well he was talking about a visual art display that he had a visceral reaction to and he had felt like maybe the artist hadn’t given space for reaction to such a charged space. Do you find sometimes that you are shocked by where people take your words and what they turn it into for themselves – maybe completely outside of what you intended it to mean?

GT: I don’t know if I’ve ever been shocked. I’ve definitely been surprised a lot of times. For me, I think the thing that surprises me the most is how often my music gets used in academics. I’m a high school dropout who often gets asked to teach in college classrooms. But more than that, my music has been used in so many classes. It’s a weird feeling sometimes. Sometimes it’s really cool, but sometimes it’s like, “am I becoming a part of the institution that I don’t believe in?” But I feel that way about academia and I feel that way about the music industry <laughs>.

IO: That’s got to be a weird dichotomy to be a brown person and a high school dropout but still be propped up in institutions that are often closed off to people who look just like you and come from similar circumstances. That’s got to be weird to be there for the benefit of people who –

GT: Who don’t look like me, who don’t come from the same background. Yeah, it’s hella weird. It’s not always weird, but it definitely can be.

IO: A lot of your music touches on your ancestry and your identity as a mixed race, Ethiopian American man. I was talking with Shin Yu Pai and she was talking about how she carries a lot of anger from her ancestors but a part of her growing was realizing that she doesn’t necessarily have a right to all of that anger anymore because it wasn’t necessarily her struggle. Do you find that you interact with those different struggles – what you own, what you don’t own, but still affects you in different ways?

GT: Definitely. One of the things that I feel does affect me personally and my cousins is that if we don’t heal from the trauma that the older generation went through – because of displacement, because of war – that we’re going to carry that trauma and pass it on to the next generation, even if we don’t know where the trauma comes from. It’s like cycles of abuse. If you don’t change the cycle of abuse into a cycle of healing, you will just pass on the hurt. Even if you can’t name why it’s there. That’s been a big catalyst for a lot of my music, you know? Wanting to heal from that shit.

IO: I was actually thinking about this on the car ride over, about competing legacies that children of African immigrants have. You have this legacy from your parents, but you also have this legacy of slavery that doesn’t directly apply to you, because none of your ancestors were slaves, but at the same time it’s there in your life day in and day out.

GT: It’s complicated as hell.

IO: Do you find here in Seattle that it’s more comfortable for other people to refer to you as “African” because that racism that applies to black people here, applies less to Africans? Do you find that struggle between your black identity and your African identity?

GT: All of the above and more. There are definitely non-black people who find it easier to access my music because they are like, “Oh hey, he’s Ethiopian.” Not just that, light-skinned Ethiopian. There is definitely skin privilege that I’m getting because of White Supremacy. Also, within the Ethiopian community there is this really problematic, fucked-up thing where because of White Supremacy, they feel that because they are not “black” that they don’t have that legacy, that they are better that “black” people. And I’ve been fighting that in my community, even my own family. It’s super complex.

IO: It must be hard to walk that line between being your whole self, and being fetishized – especially as an artist. In listening to your words, your identity is very important to your art.

GT: I feel very strongly about honoring all of your ancestors. I feel like I do more with the Ethiopian side, because I was raised in an Ethiopian household. And it has framed my whole walk on this planet. You’ll also hear me embrace blackness a lot. That’s really important to me. I feel like blackness looks like so many different things. My mom – I think that’s from her. Because the discrimination she faced when she first got here as an immigrant in the 1970s she said, “the only people who’ve got my back here are black people.” In this country I am black. Blackness is so beautiful to me. The fact that you have an entire people where everything was taken from them by force. Their language was taken away. Their music was taken away. And everything that they gave birth to gave birth to American culture – that’s amazing. I am Ethiopian and I am black. Those identities don’t contradict.

youth that don’t speak their language no more

ancestors kidnapped off shores

empires built by work that’s forced

for hundreds of years there’s an African source

for all American culture exports

there’s nothing more beautiful than Black to me

nothing more complex then our history

-excerpt: Pan-African Highway Part 2

IO: Let’s talk about some of your songs. I was listening to “30 Something, Hella Single” –

GT: <laughter> This is the first time that song has ever been mentioned in an interview.

IO: Well what I liked about that was you were talking about a lot of things that people experience, but you were doing it in your own framework. I feel like a lot of times, especially in hip-hop and pop, there is a lot of pressure for men to talk about romantic relationships in a misogynistic way and as victories. And victory as a man means, “I’m going to conquest these women.” What’s hard, is often artists, like Kanye –

GT: I can’t even listen to Kanye. He’s a brilliant producer, but he hates women.

IO: Yes, and it’s hard because he’s saying some things that are really important to the black experience, but also he’s all, “I’m going to win because I’m going to fuck over women better than white dudes ever did.” And it makes me really angry. And I know that there are artists who aren’t doing that. The thing that struck me about your song was that it was real honest –

i want mutuality

a life full of laughter

and a love I can’t talk myself out of

the courage to accept any outcome

to feel silly and still grown up

sober and clear

with a crush that’s an

inspiration

to step my life game up

-excerpt: 30 Something, Hella Single

GT: Yeah, like to the point that I’m blushing about you talking about it right now <laughter>. That’s song’s about me being hella awkward. And I am.

IO: It was nice to hear that – that as a man you can feel awkward, and you can feel frustrated. Do you find that there is a lot of pressure as a man to express a lot of those feelings through anger when instead you may be feeling sad, or scared, or insecure?

GT: I feel like there’s definitely pressure. Societal pressure. Pressure you often get from your friends, your homies, media, churches – all the things that uphold patriarchy. People are feeling like to be masculine is to be dominant. And if you feel soft then you are less of a man. I think that’s bullshit. And that’s a big thing that in my music, and also just in my life, one of my biggest goals is to redefine what masculine means to me, and model that for the next generation. Other young men coming up can be “Oh, I can just be myself and that’s ok. And I’m not less of a man. I’m actually more of a man because of it.” I want men to grow up like, “I can cry. That makes me more of a man because I’m more human now.”

IO: Do you find that as a hip hop artist there is an expectation that you are going to express your anger in a certain way?

GT: By some people, but not all people. Some people think that hip hop is just one certain way. But it never has been. I’ve come to a point in my life as an artist where some people just aren’t going to get it and that’s ok.

IO: What are you the most angry about in Seattle right now.

GT: When you say “Seattle” the first feeling that comes up is sadness, not anger. In a way, I have an attachment to the city that I grew up in and I don’t recognize it anymore. The rapid gentrification makes it feel like it’s not a place that I can afford to live in in the near future. And I’m talking to you right now in the place that I grew up. All my childhood memories are right here and I don’t think I’ll be able to afford the next place.