Dasan Ahanu: Spoken Word Artist, Poet and Educator
Creatives in Conversation: I believe that we can learn so much from each other and I am fascinated by the ways in which artists of all media move through the creative process. Each month I feature a different local artist as we discuss the challenges and joys that come from accessing and living with their creativity.
Photo by Tyrone Combs
Christopher Massenburg, better known as Dasan Ahanu, is a public speaker, organizer, curator, educator, poet, spoken word artist, educator, songwriter, and emcee, and loyal Hip Hop head born and raised in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is co-founder and managing director of Black Poetry Theatre, a Durham based theatre company that creates and produces original poetry and spoken word based productions. As an active participant in poetry slam, Dasan has competed regionally and nationally as a founding member and coach of Durham, NC’s own Bull City Slam Team. As a resident artist with the St, Joseph’s Historic Foundation/Hayti Heritage Center in Durham, NC he has developed poetry and spoken word programming for youth and adults and worked to grow the Triangle’s arts community. In both 2004 and 2015 he was awarded an Indy Arts Award by Indy Week (formerly Independent Weekly) for his work in arts and activism. His work has been featured on National Public Radio (NPR) where he has been noted for his appearances on News and Notes with Ed Gordon and State of Things with Frank Stasio. Dasan has released three full-length books of poetry and received the Nasir Jones Fellowship with the Hip Hop Archive at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research. Currently Dasan is a visiting professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and a consultant working with organizations on art-based strategies.
You're a public speaker, you're an educator, you're a poet, a spoken word artist. When did you first realize the power of words?
I realized the power of words in two ways - first, I grew up a pretty quiet kid and that created space for a lot of people to talk to me. Being quiet and introverted and kind of shy growing up, a lot of my connections and relationships and a lot of the impressions that I made were about the space I created for other people to share with me. I built relationships and built connections and got to learn what it meant to really watch and see how things played out. So that was the first introduction to the power of words, just the stories and things that got shared with me.
In my early twenties I got talked into getting on the mic for the first time and that was my first time giving all of that back to people. The first time I got up and I could give all these thoughts I'd held onto back to a group of people … it was just really invigorating because they laughed, they gasped, they shook their heads, it was just this response. And that sort of set everything off for me. That was like the closing of a loop.
I've never really thought about it in that way. For you the first step to creating was listening. What does living a creative life mean to you?
It's my sanity. It's also been my peace of mind. It's been my balance. I don't want to imagine what it would be like to not live a creative life. I'm very clear that creating is going to be how my life is going to be led and I can do other things but what I can't do is have anything take away my ability to create because I just don't know if I could make it day to day. I just don't know if I could.
“There’s an ongoing interrogation that happens within artists that I think is valuable for the world.”
How do you think that we can get our country in particular, but also the world to value creativity and art more highly?
We've got to start having different conversations about artists. One of the issues is that most of our conversations are about art and not about the artist. I tend to say that everyone loves art, but they don't love artists as much as they think they do. We just don't talk about them enough. And so we removed how we engage with the art away from who created it and that makes us take a lot of liberties that really aren't helpful for the artistic process or for the cultivation of artists and new art.
We're just so attached to the outcome [even though] there's so much beauty in the process and so much beauty in the person who [created] that art. I can feel art and be inspired by it, but it's another thing to see myself in the artist. There's just so much more that can happen if we think about the artist behind the work that we love.
What do you think the world would look like if we centered the artist more than we do now?
It’s important for us to have access to the artist’s vision because it can be inspirational in terms of keeping us thinking ahead and seeing the world outside while also looking internally. There's an ongoing interrogation that happens within artists that I think is valuable for the world.
In this age we're living in what do you think the role of the artist is within their community?
I think that's twofold. One [role for the artist is] as part of a strategy for change, and that can include being involved in city planning or being active at the community center, or thinking about neighborhood development. [It's important to] include artists in the conversation because they're going to have a perspective that's going to enhance whatever anyone's trying to do. So often this is an afterthought; the strategy is developed and then someone says, we need some art. And then you call an artist and say, this is what we're doing, do you have anything that fits? Can you create something? But very rarely is that artist asked to be a part of the thought process.
I think the other [role of the artist in community] is reminding the community [of its] humanity. The artist has an opportunity to tell very necessary stories from within that community.
Dasan Ahanu performing on Season 3 of Lexus Verses and Flow.
What are some creative challenges that you have experienced along your artistic journey and how have you moved past those creative challenges or are you still moving past them?
So I want to call it perfectionism but I think sometimes as artists we use perfectionism to make us feel better. (laughs) But two things: the anxiety over what you create which leads you to just obsess over it and change it, tweak it, but also the anxiety over letting go of it. And I am still working through both of those. In reality, whenever [the new piece of art is] released, it is released and it's new to whomever hasn't seen it. But in my head, I know how long I've been laboring over it, thinking about it, working on it.
I think that's definitely a lifelong process for most artists. Do you have any helpful tips or tools for getting past that anxiety or perfectionism?
I had a conversation with an artist and he said something very interesting to me that stuck. What he said was to stop making things larger than they need to be, and -- along with that -- to be okay with letting things go, letting the pieces go of this larger, grander thing. It seems that the universe will bring me places and outlets for this art when I don't scale it so overwhelmingly.
I think that is hard for an artist because we have to be big thinkers, but we also have to know how to break things down into bite sized pieces in order to get to the bigness. And so I think it's hard to hold both of those things in your head at one time. I want to hear about a couple of creative resources or influences that you have found along the way as you've been creating.
One of them has to be Sekou Sundiata. I got to see his last performance art production before he passed. And it was just mind blowing the way that he just built this experience around his poetry. I've aspired to that ever since and it just keeps me thinking of possibilities. Gil Scott-Heron, Oscar Brown Jr or just, you know, ancestors that I look to because as a writer, traditionally I'm expected to publish and put my work in print but I'm inspired by those folks who figured out how to make those words live on stage and in communication with people in a moment. I got a chance to sit with Toni Morrison and to hear her talk about life and process was really mind blowing as well.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to be more creative?
Trust yourself, and trust your thoughts and instincts. For those of us who are artists, we've gotten used to the loudness of our own minds. And sometimes that is a barrier for folks to really trust what they're thinking.
And my other piece of advice is to expose yourself to other art forms -- and not just high art. There's a beauty in watching master artists create, but you're going to be so overwhelmed and so awed that the process of it is going to be a little bit removed from you. But being able to see grassroots art and community art and seeing art in different disciplines, what happens is you'll gain a breadth of understanding because you can start to kind of see the continuum. You can see how an idea can continue to grow until it can become this thing. So it's just like the concept of trusting yourself; it makes this very narrow pathway of creativity seem a lot broader and a lot more accessible.
This interview has been edited and condensed.