Transcript: HER With Amena Brown Episode 113

Amena Brown:

That time I met India Arie. That time I went on a really bad date. That time I was directed by Robert Townsend. That time I got mono on Thanksgiving. That time I went on a really bad Christmas tour. That time I...

Hey, y'all, welcome back to another new episode of HER with Amena Brown. We are at the time of this recording really getting deep into our summer streets. I don't know what summer is like wherever you live, but pretty much in Atlanta, I feel that Memorial Day weekend is the beginning of summer. That that is the time. And I love summer. I'm here for all the summer things, especially for the peaches, tomatoes, and cucumbers. Here for that. Okay? Okay.

What are we talking about today? Today, we are talking about the club. So much to talk about related to the club and specifically we are talking about that time I went to the club for the first time. Even as I think about telling y'all this story, I feel like, because I was a late bloomer, because I was a sheltered church girl, there are a lot of firsts that I had. If I did... I'm not going to do it because that's too much personal business out at once. I like telling y'all my business. I just like to sprinkle it throughout. If I did a whole series of all of my weird and wild firsts, nah, that's like too much business in one set of things. So we just going to focus on this little sprinkle right here.

But if you are a listener to this podcast on a regular basis, then you will feel the vibes of where this is headed. If you're here for the first time, thank you. Thank you for joining me as I tell you about the first time I went to the club. When you think about it, how old were you your first time going to the club? I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure that I was 25 years old. I actually said that to a friend recently, and she was like, "So nothing in college? You did not go to the club in college?"

Y'all, I did not, I did not go to the club in college. Those of you who have joined me here in our HER living room know some of the vibes of my story. I was a church girl growing up. I came from a church going family. So there were a lot of things that as I was growing up, I was taught weren't Christian, and going to the club was one of them, honey. The club was considered to be this den of sin, of lasciviousness, of debauchery that Jesus need to save you from. Jesus really need to save you from the club.

So I want y'all to know that coming from a family that has a lot of roots in Pentecostal Holiness Church, for those of you that are church familiar, but if you're not, the Christian Church in America has these different denominations and facets and different beliefs under there. Which I'm sure is true of a lot of religions, that there are the more orthodox, there are the more conservative, there are the more liberal or lenient as it relates to the rules of the religion. And the part that my parents and grandparents came out of was considered to be very conservative, very religious.

When my mom and my dad were growing up, teenagers were... not teenagers, but just anybody really, you weren't allowed to go to the movies. That was considered to be not Christian. You weren't supposed to be listening to, big air quotes here, "secular music" that was considered to be not Christian. It was considered to be not Christian for women to wear makeup at all. It was considered not Christian for women to wear pants at all, not just in church, but at all. Right?

So that was sort of the environment that my family came from. So I also did not really come from a lot of family members that you know how you'd have certain Black families may have those family members that were in the juke joint. That was not the story for a good portion of my family members that were ahead of me. And then by the time my mom and I started going back to church, when I was a teenager, the church we went to was non-denominational, but it still had a lot of Pentecostal Holiness vibes.

And a part of one of the tenets of belief or what it should look like to be Christian if you grew up Pentecostal Holiness was this idea that the definition of something being holy is that it's different from everything else. That it's separated from everything else. Not just different, but separated from everything else, that that's how a thing is holy. So a lot of people who grew up in this type of Christian tradition, you were growing up in a way that said, "That's how people know you're Christian.", They know you're Christian because you don't do the things they do. You don't cuss. You don't go to the club. You don't drink. You don't smoke. You don't listen to secular music. You don't do those things. And that's how people will know.

You don't drink. You don't smoke. You don't have sex. I'm just going to leave that there. You don't do these things, and that is how people will know that you are Christian. As an aside, I would say now in my relationship to my faith, it's like I want to think about the things that I'm for more than the things that I'm against as the definition of what I believe. And I also want to think about who I am and what I'm really about and not just think about how what I do appears. I think that's also a part of it. Even though I don't think the adults would've articulated that to us when we were teenagers, growing up in youth group. But I do think a part of it was how you appeared, even down to the drinking.

So to give you a little bit of history as to why I did not go to a club until I was 25 years old. Growing up in this type of church, and then when I moved to Atlanta to go to college, I immediately got involved in campus ministry, got involved in a church there in Atlanta. So I really kind of insulated myself again. I feel like my church upbringing sheltered me from a lot when I was in high school. And then I came to college and sort of insulated myself again in sort of church environment.

And it's really interesting because I've now been out of college long enough that, let me see, I've had now four college reunions. So each time we have a reunion, our class was pretty big, so there are some women that I went to college with that I'm almost either meeting for the first time, or we saw each other's faces, we really didn't know each other's names or connect. And there are so many stories that we all had from school that bonded us.

And one of the things that was really interesting about Atlanta in the late '90s is there were a lot of clubs in sort of the midtown town, downtown, Buckhead area. A lot of these areas in the city are very, very different now than they were then. But there were all these clubs, and they knew that Spelman's campus, you could not bring a car on campus your first year. So they knew there were a bunch of us first year students just getting away from home for the first time, a lot of us. And they would send these big old buses, like charter buses, that would come to the front gates of Spelman, and you could get on the bus and it would take you to the club and back. These clubs that were available for 18 and up.

And did I get on the bus ever? I did not. But I knew about the business, because I had other friends that I went to college with that that's how they met their best friends in school was them getting on a bus to go to some club together. But y'all, I wasn't doing that because I was in campus ministry and you can't get up for 7:00 AM prayer if you go to the club that night. You just can't do that. So I didn't go to the club all through college. And then I graduated, and I was done with campus ministry at that point. So I started helping out with our college ministry at church. So I spent pretty much all my time doing that.

And then some shitty things went down at the church. And I've talked about this in some other episodes. In the friendship series I did, I actually brought one of my really good friends from college, Celita, onto this podcast. And we talked a lot about what some of those times were like for us being in church, what were the times where we realized we were going to have to get out of church pretty immediately. And during this time some shitty things went down at the church that caused me to have to make a decision to leave the church where I had been going.

And this was a predominantly Black church. I would say mostly young. I would say what for us felt like the people who were older were people who were in their late 30s or early 40s. But I would say most people, they were probably in their 20s, early 30s. And I left the church at 25. And what a wild thing, because I was spending probably four to five days out of the week at church.

I was there Sunday. I had rehearsals there Tuesday and Thursday. We had bible study on Wednesday. We had a prayer service on Saturday, sometimes, and then some Saturdays we would have volunteer meetings. It was a lot of my spare time. I mean if you think about working a job and then doing all of that, I didn't really have any friends that I didn't go to church with. And even the friends I went to church with, we kind of had to figure out when we were going to spend time together, because we were all at church so much.

So those first few months of just not having church to go to, I was like, "Wow, this is what people do on Sundays. They walk their dogs. They drink coffee. They eat brunch. Wow." It was great. I was like, "Man." Having grown up in church and being very sheltered in it, for better or for worse, I was never a rebellious kid. So I pretty much stayed in the bubble that was built for me. And staying in that bubble, there's a lot of shit talking about people who don't go to church. There's a lot of shit talking about them, and, "Those people, they must not have morals," all the things they're missing out on because they don't go to church.

But boy, when you yourself are so entrenched in church and then you have a time that you get to experience what life is not going to church, it's great. Oh, my... Woo. It's great, y'all. Wow. I was having a time. And I had always had some interest in journalism. I had started just very early doing some writing for a couple of publications in Atlanta. And back then in order to try and be a music journalist, or an arts and entertainment journalist, your entry point was album reviews.

So I started out writing a few album reviews, and then that led to live show reviews. Some of the editors, if they liked your album reviews, then after a while they would say, "Hey, here's a press pass, go to this show and cover it." And that's when I realized that being a music journalist was going to be my favorite thing, like, yo, I knew I was going to love it so much. So it was because of my journalism work that I was doing on the side, because I was working as a receptionist during the day and being a writer the rest of the time.

And it was interesting because that sort of led me down this road of getting a chance to meet these different bands. And I met this band and they just became wonderful new friends of mine. They were brothers to me. And so I saw them at a festival and they invited me to another show they did. So I went out there and saw them. And we just became very cool. This was really during a time... That time between 25 and 27 was this big broadening of my whole life. I was actually hanging out with people who didn't go to church with me. I was just hanging out with people that didn't go to church, a lot of them.

So it was just a whole life that I was getting to experience and meeting different people and going to different social functions. And some of it would get a little uncomfortable. Like I didn't grow up being told that Christians were allowed to drink, for example. The church I grew up in, that was not a thing. We did not have gatherings where people were drinking wine. We didn't even serve wine during communion. That just wasn't a thing that happened. And then in the church I was in when I was in my college age and early 20s, the rule was if you were in a leadership position in the church, whether that was paid staff or volunteer, that you were not allowed to drink publicly. Or if you had other people at your house that went to the church or anything like that, you couldn't drink, in case you would cause anyone to stumble.

And on a level, that can make sense. But on another level it gets a little weird as far as just it being so much or at least it felt at the time, I'll say, it felt at the time that rule was very much concerned with how people appear. It's like now I can look back on it and think, related to when you're in community with people that are sober, being thoughtful about those things, but we weren't really being given those reasons for the rule. The rule was pretty much for you to not appear as if you were drinking. So I didn't even have my first drink until I was 27. That's a whole other time. Maybe I'll come back and do another episode about that.

But anyhow, this is me laying the groundwork for y'all of on the one hand, how sheltered I was. But on the other hand, how much of broadening my horizons period I was in at this point.

So my friends were in this band. I wish I could remember the name y'all, but I can't remember. So my friends were in this band and their manager, I became really good friends with them, and they kept in inviting me to this show that they were having. And all I could hear them saying was, "Yeah, we're about to do this show next week at this club. You should come, Amena. You should come." And I just kept hearing them say, "Show, club." And I was like, "Yikes."

And let me tell you what was in my mind about what I thought the club was like. I just had in my mind the club is a den of sin. It is a place of lasciviousness and debauchery and lust filled actions. Nothing good could come from the club, as far as what I had been taught about it. And for those of you who are Prince fans, Prince had an era where I think it was the same album where he released Diamonds and Pearls, and he had a song called Get Off. And the video to Get Off is what would really be in my mind about what a club must be like. There must be people there with tattoos, who are partially clothed, and it looks like an orgy except people aren't having sex, they're just kind of talking to each other in these sensual ways. I think that's what I thought the club was like.

So my friends are inviting me to there, and I'm just nervous as hell. But they genuinely want me to come there and support them. And I genuinely loved their music and wanted to support them. So by this time, when I left the church that I had been going to in college and into my early 20s, that church was a predominantly Black church. And then I had a period of time where I just didn't go to church at all. And then I went a while and kind of felt like maybe I do want to go back to church. And I knew a church in the area that was a pretty big church. I think that's honestly what drew me to it, because I was looking for someplace where I could be a little bit more anonymous. Where there wouldn't be a lot of expectations on me at first, I could just kind of come there and check the vibes.

And so I went to this church and it was a predominantly white church. Obviously, the music wasn't as great as the music I was used to from the Black churches that I had been in. But the services were an hour long, and I could kind of go in and get that inspiration or challenge from the sermon. I still had a lot of church woundedness from a lot of the things that had gone on at the church I had been a part of for so long. So sometimes I would just go to church and just cry, sit in one of the back rows and cry a while and go home.

And then they had this element in the church called small groups. And for those of you who aren't familiar with this, a church small group is basically if a bible study and a support group were the same thing. That's pretty much what it's like. It's a group of people that either you could be assigned to based on where you live, sometimes they were assigned by location, sometimes they were assigned by what they would call affinity groups. So there could be small groups for married couples. There could be small groups for single women, single men, or men and women regardless of their relationship status.

And at the time I joined a group that was all single women. I was the only Black woman and there were probably maybe six or seven, because the small groups normally didn't get beyond 10 people. So there were probably six or seven white women. We were all in a group together. And I pretty much decided I think this is going to be church for me. I stopped going to the Sunday service, but whenever we had our small group meetings, I did go to those. And it was pretty much like, yeah, you might be doing a bible study or you might be reading a spiritual book together, or you might be talking through maybe what the sermon series was about.

But the other part of the meeting was you actually getting a chance to share about your life with those people. And that's the part that I really, really loved the most. You got to really not only get to know other people but be a support to them. Sometimes they may have had a loss in their family during that time, or they may have gone through a breakup or they may get a promotion or they may be looking for a job and you're being able to be supportive to them, spiritually supportive and emotionally supportive during those times. And also to receive that.

I loved that. That really was the one thing that caused me to return to church in any way. Now here's the other thing. I told y'all that I grew up just at least slight Pentecostal. I told y'all where I was about the drinking things. Well, this group was just not as rigid, I guess, as the religion that I had been raised with. I remember one particular night I was out with a couple of girls that were in small group with me. I think we were going to see a play or something together and they were like, "Oh, Amena meet us at this restaurant. We'll meet up for happy hour, and we'll eat some food before we go over to the show." So I was like, "Okay."

And y'all, I'm not even sure I understood what in the world happy hour was honestly, because it's not like I had really been to bars and things like that. I was that sheltered. I was that steeped in church being my extracurricular activity for so many years. So I really didn't pay attention to the happy hour part. I was just like, "Yeah, after work I'll meet y'all over there, we'll go to the show." So by the time I get to them at the restaurant, these two girls have decided to buy a pitcher of margaritas and they're already halfway through the pitcher.

So they are two sheets to the wind a little bit. They're having a good time, very giggly, everyone's having a lot of fun. And I remember sitting down and feeling like, eh, eh, eh, feeling some alarm is going off inside of me. I had probably never been that close to a pitcher of margaritas. I was just like, "Oh, I don't know what to do about this." And then my mind was kind of freaking out a little bit because I'm like, I actually really have grown to love these girls. We've gotten close to each other, and we're walking through our lives together. And I know them to be kind people. I know them to... If truly the definition of someone being Christian is to actually exhibit the traits of Jesus to try to walk in the way in life that Jesus walked, metaphorically here, they exhibited those traits.

I knew that about them. So I think the binary that I was raised with that was very, Christians don't do these things, and then people who aren't Christians do these things. And then meeting people who were Christian and did the things that I was told and taught that Christians don't do those things. It was sort of a weird, my brain almost was fractured a little bit in the conversation. But even though I was too scared to take a drink, they were like, "Do you want some Amena?" And I was like, "No, no thank you. Just water for me. That's fine." I did decide to share with them my dilemma and I told them about these new friends I had met, this band, that we were just really great friends, and they had wanted me to come and support their shows at this club.

And they had invited me several times and I had just dodged it, always was busy or had something else going. But the truth is I was afraid to go to it because it was in a club. And one of the women turned to me and said, "Okay." She said, "Can you think of anything in your life or in your past that would cause you to have more struggle in your life by you going into this club?" And I was like, "No." And she was like, "Do you believe that God is everywhere? That anywhere you are, God is with you?" And I was like, "Yes, I believe that." And she was like, "So you believe God is with you here with us right now?" And I was like, "I do." She was like, "Do you believe that God could be with you in the club?"

And I was like, "Whoa. Hmm." I was like, "Hmm." And then I was like, ah, she got me, because I'm like, well, if God is with me here, talking to y'all, if I think that God is with me when I go to work, if I think God's with me when I'm on a date, why would God not be with me when I go to the club? And she was like, "If you believe that God will be with you everywhere and nothing about this type of event or space is going to be a struggle for you or bring any struggles for you that are unhealthy for you," then she was like, "then God will be with you." And she was like, "And if you really feel nervous, you could grab a friend and bring a friend. But go support your friends that have invited you to check out their music." And she was like, "You can try it."

And she said, "If you get there and you hate it, then you don't ever have to go back." She was like, "But you might go there and find out that it's not as scary as you think." So I took her advice. I asked a guy friend of mine to come with me to the club. And the club was a club in Atlanta that I'll tell y'all more about now, but it was called MJQ. And y'all, they invited me to a Tuesday night at the club. I didn't know enough about the club to know that Tuesday night is not going to be nobody in the club. That a Tuesday is different from a Friday or a Saturday. Bless my heart, didn't know about that.

So I went, and no, it was not like the set of a Prince video. There was not these huge amounts of debauchery and lasciviousness, it was just my friends, and maybe there were seven other people plus me and my guy friend. And my friends in the band were so excited to see me. We hugged and they were just so glad that I had finally come out to the show. And that was my first time in the club.

Now I did get a chance to discover MJQ. And MJQ is, it's a historical moment to me in Atlanta's nightlife scene. And actually as of this recording, in 2023, MJQ will spend its last year in the space where it has been for probably over 20 years. And at the time that I was first, I guess, experiencing the club, experiencing going to the club for the first time, Atlanta's clubs were more places that you would wear your high heels, you would wear a skin tight, very sexy outfit, and they would hold the club line outside, so that the club could look like people really wanted to get in. And then you'd go in and get your drink and you would dance a little bit, but not a whole lot. You really went there to be seen, because it was the club and it was Atlanta and that's what you do.

But MJQ was not like that. MJQ was a club that you would wear your dirty sneakers to. You would dress real comfortable, because you went to MJQ to dance. I mean they had some of the best DJs in the city that were there. Big shout out to DRES tha BEATnik, who used to be an event host over there, one of the best event MCs you'll ever see. And he MCed an event over there called Fantastic Fridays. And it was him, DJ Lord, DJ Fudge, and DJ Majestik. And I found out about this because I was hanging out with some other friends, I think, one Friday night, I think we were out pretty late, and they were like, "Oh, since we're already out, why don't we go get some food and let's go to MJQ?"

And MJQ, when you walk up to, it looks like a shack. It looks like you walked up to a metal shack and you get your ID checked, pay your money, and then you walk down, underground, and you get down there and there's this long bar, DJ booth, and people were just in there dancing the night away. And you would go in there and the DJs would start spinning, like 11 o'clock, and you wouldn't leave till it was like 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. I had so many nights like that in my 20s and early 30s too. And one of the things that I really loved about it was I could just go there and be me. I remember some nights I didn't even go with my friends, I would just go by myself. I'd wear my tank top and my shorts, my dirty sneakers, and go and just dance and sing and rap the words and everything.

And it was a really beautiful moment for me, because I think, when, at least I'll say for me, growing up in church and especially being very sheltered and growing up in church, there were a lot of things I was told about "the world." And it was supposed to be like in the church are all these good things, all these good people. In the world is where all of this bad shit is happening. And even just the experience of being in MJQ and that, there were all sorts of people there, different walks of life, different jobs, different occupations, and we could all be there just having a good time together. And that that was a wonderful communal experience to get to have. And it was wonderful.

I mean was there beer sloshed all over the floor by the time 3:00 AM came? Sure. That's why you wore your dirty sneakers. You would never wear your fresh sneaks into MJQ. No. No. But I saw DJ Spinderella there over the years. I saw Questlove DJ there. I think I saw Questlove DJ there twice. Oh, it was just... I mean, MJQ is still going to exist, it's just going to exist in a different space in Atlanta now. So we all have to see what that will feel like versus what this original location has felt like.

But, yeah, that was my first time in the club, Tuesday night, empty room. But it led me to MJQ, which is still to this day probably my favorite of all the clubs that I've ever been to in Atlanta. And what do I love about the club? I mean, generally, there might be some clubs that are like Prince's music videos, I'm sure there are. I haven't been to those yet. If I do and I feel like coming back here to tell my business to y'all, I will let y'all know how that is. So I don't know about that. I'm sure there are clubs like that, but the club overall wasn't this terrible place.

It was a place where I had a lot of fun, where I got a chance to just dance and hear some music I love. And go there with somebody that you like and dance and sing and rap the words along. Go there by yourself and look across the room at a stranger, and say words to this song you love. There's just something about that that I totally fell in love with. And so I am glad I was able to get over my hangups about the club. Because if you go to the right one, it depends on what your purpose is, what your reasons are.

Now I know now a lot of clubs are more of like a VIP experience and it's who's buying bottles? And it's all those things. But I've never really cared about that as it relates to going to the club. I never enjoyed going to the club to dress up and be uncomfortable. When I go to a club, when I go to hear a DJ, I'm going because I want to dance and I want to rap real loud, and I want to sing and do all of those things that make the club amazing.

So shout out to the club, yo. I got to give a shout out to that. I arrived late, but I did indeed enjoy my time. And I feel like the club for me really became this extension of how much I love live music. And even though when you're in the club, no one is there with instruments, there's typically not a band, necessarily, performing, but the DJs are creating this live music experience that you can't have anywhere else.

So if you haven't been to the club, you should go. But you should go to one where there's a really dope DJ. Get some reviews before you go. You should go to the type of club where you could actually dance and hear your music that you like and really enjoy yourself. You should go to that. And you should have that experience where you get to look around the room and see all these people singing in that same song and just enjoying life. I feel like that brings me a lot of joy.

So yes, I went to the club for the first time, and I did survive. And lasciviousness and debauchery and lust did not, indeed, overtake me. I'm still here. So you should go to a club. If you don't want to go to a club, you should go to at least one good dance party, where you can hear some music you love, you can dance. And just experience that moment of being free in yourself. I think that's a part of what I can look back on in that time I went to the club for the first time, is it was the beginning of me getting free of not feeling so entrenched with religious expectations, but just being who I am.

And this is my last thought, and I may talk more about this on some other episodes, but I was talking to some other new friends about the idea of growing up in a very religious environment, and then when you get older and some of the things about the way you were raised or the way you were raised to believe become different. And how sometimes things happen in life that sort of shatter those things you believed. And sometimes for some people those things don't return, you may decide you just don't believe at all the way that you were raised to believe or the way your family might believe.

And for me, I find that I'm in what I feel is a mosaic period of my spirituality, where I can say I'm still very much the girl who loves gospel music. I loved gospel music as a teenager. I love the harmonies and the writing and how some of those hymns carried my mother, my grandmother, my great-grandmother through. And that brings extra gravitas to that music to me. And I'm also a girl who really loves to be on the dance floor of a club or a party somewhere and hear the DJ drop that Juvenile that for the '99 and the 2000, and it's possible to be both things.

And it took me some years to learn that, because I wasn't raised to think that way. I was raised to be like, you got to be one or the other. And to bring Beyonce's Renaissance into the chat, it's possible to be that church girl who loves playing her tambourine and loves singing John P Kee songs, and to also really enjoy when the DJ plays Scrub the Ground. And that's me, that's who I'm going to be. Thank y'all so much for listening. See y'all next week.

HER with Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions, as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network, in partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast.