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Alison Stewart: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. We like to call Get Lit not just a book club, but a book party. Our event with Marlon James and our next guest really fit that description because, for the very first time, we welcome someone who's a DJ to our Get Lit event. TYGAPAW is a Brooklyn-based Jamaican-born DJ and producer, and they have cited Marlon James as one of their biggest artistic inspirations, which is one of the reasons we really wanted to have them join us.

The other exciting detail, it was their birthday. TYGAPAW's debut album Get Free was released in 2020 and their sophomore album is on the Way. At the event, they performed a new live set inspired by Marlon's novels Black Leopard, Red Wolf and A Brief History of Seven Killings. You'll hear a little snippet of it towards the end of the hour, but first, here's my conversation with TYGAPAW.

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Alison Stewart: This was such an amazing magical moment because you did an interview with The Cut in 2021 and you named three creative people who had the biggest impact on your work. You said Whitney Houston, your partner, and Marlon James.

TYGAPAW: [laughs] Yes.

Alison Stewart: How has Marlon's work influenced you?

TYGAPAW: Just one book changed everything is A Brief History of Seven Killings. Born and raised in Jamaica, my mother talked about that time in Jamaica's history because she was in her 20s, I believe. It was a very, very tumultuous time. Just the way how the book contextualized the historical narrative, that really put the pieces together. It was really impactful for me. It influenced quite my first album, Get Free, for me to write that.

Alison Stewart: Now, you came to New York to go to Parsons, right?

TYGAPAW: Yes.

Alison Stewart: What made you come to New York? What made you decide this is where you wanted to be?

TYGAPAW: I had to come to New York.

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

TYGAPAW: I'll give some context because my family's from Kingston, but I grew up in Mandeville and Mandeville is very, very small. Everyone knows everybody. When I was younger, my mother really provided a lot of access to knowledge culturally of things and so I really tapped into MTV-

[laughter]

TYGAPAW: -really hard, and the epicenter of MTV is in New York.

[laughter]

TYGAPAW: It really informed how I saw America and that it seemed like the epicenter of culture for me, so I wanted to soak it in and be here.

Alison Stewart: When did you know music was something that you wanted to pursue professionally?

TYGAPAW: For as long as I can remember. This is where Whitney Houston comes in because when I was maybe five, Greatest Love of All, I could recite it in its entirety.

[laughter]

TYGAPAW: My aunts were very, very impressed. Just like, "Oh, you have a future in music."

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

TYGAPAW: My mother wasn't as supportive and so it was a bit of a time until I could get to the point where I could just do it on my own. I didn't go to school for music, but I went to art school and I was always in proximity to musicians. I was hanging out with all the jazz kids and I made friends. Jesse Boykins is one of my friends that I made. They always were encouraging me to pursue music.

Alison Stewart: Where did TYGAPAW come from?

TYGAPAW: That, I went through a list of names. [chuckles] I think Tiger Dandara was one of them. TYGAPAW, yes, there's a Rastafarian greeting, it's lion paw. I really like tigers, so I [chuckles] took off lion and put tiger-

Alison Stewart: [laughs]

TYGAPAW: -and paw together. I'm just like, "Oh, that feels like a very strong name."

Alison Stewart: You released your debut full-length album Get Free in 2020. You mentioned it. What were you thinking about you wanted your debut album to be? You only get one debut.

TYGAPAW: It pivoted initially. I think I was trying to do something-- It's still conceptual, but really, really conceptualizing a bit of my ancestry and Indigenous tribes of Jamaica, and also just a particular time of history in Jamaica where the English came and the Africans and Indigenous Taíno were banding together to fight. That's a separate project now, but I pivoted into Get Free and that sound because I discovered a bit of history untold and hidden within American culture and that the pioneers of techno were Black and came from Detroit.

Once I did a deep dive into that history, it's like, "Oh, this is a space that I really want to claim and take up," because it's a sound that I was always drawn to, but I never felt that there was space for us to occupy, especially around the narrative being just it's very European, very white, and the whitewashing of techno that happened during the '90s and onward. I just felt a very strong urge to dismantle that a bit.

Then definitely seeing the archives of The New Dance Show. I think it's a public service TV format. A lot like Soul Train actually, but of Black people dancing to techno. It was, to me, of that era in the '80s, I'd never seen anything like it. It also reminded me of ballroom and that I came, very much dove into ballroom, and my friends like our DJs within that community. I think all the pieces started to come together.

Alison Stewart: You're going to perform something for us now. We've been told it's been inspired by Marlon's writing a bit.

TYGAPAW: Yes. I feel that I've been doing a bit of work around-- I was writing a techno opera and a techno opera was conceptualizing Queen Nanny's-like narrative. I'm going to take a little bit of pieces from A Brief History of Seven Killings and putting into a sonic score of that.

Alison Stewart: It's exciting. We've had Broadway belters, saxophonists, singer-songwriters, but you're our first DJ.

TYGAPAW: I won't be DJing per se.

Alison Stewart: Okay. What are you doing? It's a mix? You made a mix?

TYGAPAW: No. I perform live so I have drum machines, synthesizers. That's what you're seeing over here.

Alison Stewart: I apologize.

[laughter]

TYGAPAW: I get that a lot. [crosstalk] That's why I was just like, "Oh, I got to fight the DJ label quite a bit," because my background is--

Alison Stewart: No, explain, please.

TYGAPAW: Yes. My background is like I'm a musician, I'm an artist, but I feel that right now DJs are very cool and everybody wants to be a DJ, but I just became a DJ by creating a space for LGBTQ+ Black and queer and trans and non-binary centering around specifically the Caribbean that we don't really have spaces for us to be with each other safely. I started a party series, an event series called Fake Accent I think in 2016. That's how I started DJing, really diving into that. It just eclipsed [chuckles] and grew and became this huge thing. I became this popular DJ, but I've always done my sound work and art alongside all of it.

Alison Stewart: I like that. Sound, work, and art.

TYGAPAW: Yes.

Alison Stewart: All right. Let's hear your sound, work, and art.

TYGAPAW: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: It's TYGAPAW.

[applause]

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Alison Stewart: That was a special original live set from TYGAPAW inspired by the work of Marlon James. It closed out our Get Lit with All Of It book club event celebrating Black Leopard, Red Wolf. Now, in case you haven't heard, our March Get Lit selection is the novel I Have Some Questions for You by Pulitzer Prize finalist Rebecca Makkai. It tells the story of Bodie, a podcast host invited back to her elite boarding school to teach a class for two weeks.

Once back on campus, Bodie finds herself flooded with memories of her old roommate who was found murdered their senior year. The school's athletic trainer, a young Black man, was convicted of the crime back in the '90s, but the more Bodie starts to think about the case, the more she begins to wonder whether someone else is the real culprit and whether she might have been sitting on key evidence all along.

You can borrow an e-copy of I Have Some Questions for You now thanks to our partners at the New York Public Library. Head to wnyc.org/getlit to find out how and to grab tickets for our March 28th event. Rebecca Makkai will be joining us for a preview conversation on the radio that's happening Wednesday around 1:40 PM so be sure to tune in for that. That is All Of It for today. I'm Alison Stewart. Thanks for listening. I'll meet you back here next time.

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