"It makes sense that whatever the topic is, it's more compelling if you can provide the audience with a range of perspectives, and you can cross disciplines. And you don't have to control what people take out of it"
About this Quote
Reagon is arguing for a kind of cultural leadership that refuses the tidy satisfactions of a single storyline. Her premise is pragmatic rather than precious: if you want people to lean in, you widen the lens. “Range of perspectives” isn’t a kumbaya plea for niceness; it’s a method for making truth harder to dodge. In Reagon’s world - shaped by movement work, ensemble singing, and coalition politics - one voice can carry a song, but it can’t carry the whole room. Harmony is not agreement. It’s negotiated proximity.
The line about crossing disciplines is a quiet flex. Reagon treats music as a research tool: history, theology, labor, gender, and community memory aren’t “influences,” they’re instruments. By insisting on interdisciplinarity, she’s also pushing back against gatekeepers who want art to stay in the “art lane” and activism to stay legible, sanitized, and separate.
The kicker is the last sentence: “you don’t have to control what people take out of it.” That’s not abdication; it’s confidence in collective meaning-making. She’s rejecting the authorial stranglehold - the idea that the maker must dictate the moral. For a musician whose work lives in call-and-response, in songs carried from mouth to mouth, control is a fantasy anyway. The intent is to build work sturdy enough to be misread, repurposed, and still useful - art as a commons, not a broadcast.
The line about crossing disciplines is a quiet flex. Reagon treats music as a research tool: history, theology, labor, gender, and community memory aren’t “influences,” they’re instruments. By insisting on interdisciplinarity, she’s also pushing back against gatekeepers who want art to stay in the “art lane” and activism to stay legible, sanitized, and separate.
The kicker is the last sentence: “you don’t have to control what people take out of it.” That’s not abdication; it’s confidence in collective meaning-making. She’s rejecting the authorial stranglehold - the idea that the maker must dictate the moral. For a musician whose work lives in call-and-response, in songs carried from mouth to mouth, control is a fantasy anyway. The intent is to build work sturdy enough to be misread, repurposed, and still useful - art as a commons, not a broadcast.
Quote Details
| Topic | Teaching |
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