DJ Terence Toy— More anthem music needed
As uprisings sparked by the murder of George Floyd spread like wildfire across all 50 states and around the world, something felt amiss for Los Angeles-based DJ Terence Toy — specifically, he felt a musical void.
Toy has been DJing for more than 40 years with more than three of those decades steeped in jazz and house music and travelling around the globe from Mexico to Montreal. He earned resident DJ status at Therapy
[Montreal] and Club Yellow [Tokyo]. But locally, he spun the tables in residency at Toy Box in Santa Monica, Does
Your Mama Know on the Sunset Strip, Release in San
Francisco and Paradise 24 in Hollywood, inducing “house headz” [Toy’s term for house music fans] to dance. Toy also garnered a show on Los Angeles radio station KKBT in the early to mid 1990s.
After Floyd’s tragic death, Toy saw his contemporaries of color posting “regular” mixes on their platforms. These cats are at Toy’s “level and higher.” They were saying nothing about what happened when a police officer murdered George Floyd, suffocating him by kneeling on his neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
Toy responded by curating a selection of anthem music for his online radio show, By Any Jazz Necessary titled,
Think: George Floyd. He shared it widely and urgently from his Soundcloud.
What follows is the DJ’s take on events and his top three tracks from the show that speak to this moment. Settle in for some learning.
Toy looked on social media, checking everybody’s injection of music when the protests were at their peak.
“I have black friends of mine saying nothing — in essence not even using the tool of a DJ to do something other than, ‘Look at me, check out this track I’m working on,’” Toy said.
He got fed up and wrote a Facebook post on June 1, thinking a few people would see it.
“Maybe people would like it or say something about my speaking [out] about myself and other comrades, other DJs around the world not saying nothing about what happened,” Toy said. “So what if [George Floyd] was passing a fake $20, so what if he was a criminal, he didn’t deserve to be killed. [There] was just no acknowledgement, musically.”
In his post, Toy asked: “So nobody is going to say anything, musically about what happened?”
While the number of “likes” on his post kept rising, he realized he hadn’t yet done anything to speak his peace.
“I thought what can I do?” Toy said. “I’m 59 years old, I ain’t gettin’ out there and protesting; that’s a young man’s job. I have a son I have to be here for.”
He decided to do a By Any Jazz Necessary episode, which streams online at KSTARS. He realized he needed songs that grab the attention of black people, white people and young people. After he did the dedication, Toy received responses from people about music that they created or talking about what they thought he should have put on the episode. Toy said it’s the most controversial episode he’s done.
“This white friend of mine, female, lawyer — she sent me a message. To sum it up, ‘I can’t believe you did an episode for George Floyd. He’s a criminal.’
“It’s just songs that are in my body, [and] mind ... I did my best,” he said. “I had to pick one [song] that would open the show and hold people’s attention. That couldn’t be the first one that I wrote down, Strange Fruit, because that would scare everybody.”
Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit (1939) is about lynching. Toy knew he’d be taking a chance. He opened with a jazz piano version of Prince’s Controversy to get people thinking immediately that this wasn’t going to be a normal episode.
“I didn’t want to use Prince’s version because I wanted people to hear that; ‘Contro-ver-sy…’ [mimicking the song notes on the background piano], and be thinking, ‘Oh dope …’ then they start remembering the words, ‘Am I black or white? Am I straight or gay?’”
From there he added Marvin Gaye’s What’s Goin’ On?, and kept going, setting listeners up mentally. Then he hit them with Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln “moanin’ and groanin’” on Triptych: Prayer/Protest/Peace.
Toy’s masterfully dubbed speech from President Barack Obama at the 2010
Congressional Hispanic Caucus [“There is no Latino America or black America or white America or Asian America. There is only the United States of America.] will hit your heart with vocals, deep house and Martin Luther King Jr. and Obama in unison, declaring, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
“Everybody, including me, has to do their part. I did this to represent change and so people could hear it and go, ‘Oh yeah, I remember that song.’
“I remember when I first heard James Brown’s, I’m Black and I’m Proud. My mom was taking me and my sister to the mall to get some
clothes. I was black, I was a kid and was like, ‘Yeah, say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud.’
“Time flies when we’re learning,” Toy said as he closed Think: George Floyd.
Editor’s Note: Future Anthems
With this look at anthem music, it’s frequently true; these chants are oftentimes older songs — a touchstone to the past, relatable to in the present. It’s for that reason they are anthemic. People are exposed to them further, which brings deeper historical understanding. This was Toy’s intent with Think: George Floyd. He succeeds in highlighting where we have been and offers a deeper awareness.
Carrying that message to this moment, we look at a handful of new releases as present protest anthems that will be subsequently considered in a future — now being determined.
Lockdown —Anderson Paak featuring Jay Rock
PIG FEET —Terrace Martin featuring Denzel Curry, Daylyt, Kamasi Washington, and G Perico
Light —Michael Kiwanuka
Sweeter (Live) —Leon Bridges featuring Terrace Martin, Robert Glasper
Details: https://soundcloud.com/terencetoy/ thinkgeorge-floyd and www.kstarrs.com/ jazztyme-happy-hour-show