This is an excerpt from conversation between Derrick Ashong (aka DNA), Melia's Papa, and Navina Khanna in February 2010.    

Melia's Papa: You may have been one of the million people who watched the youtube video of Derrick clowning a reporter on the Obama campaign trail.  Derrick, that was something else.  What was going on in your head when that happened? 

DNA: First of all, thank you for inviting me to be part of this conversation and I’m looking forward to hearing what some of your other participants have to say later on. 

So that particular moment, I had just gone to the event in order to support the cause and really to support a friend of mine, Shanell Williams who’s an actor here.  She was working on a project and basically I just wanted to go out there and show my support for my candidate.  But I had planned to go home and watch the debate so I could hear what was being said.  Once the guy started asking those questions, there were people running around with cameras all day so I was like oh, yeah I know the person who want to know about the political situation.  But he started being very aggressive and I remember it crossed my mind, “yo is this guy trying to poke me on camera.” And then I was like, actually he really wants to know.  A lot of times people will ask you questions like “Hey, how you doing.”  All they expect is “I’m good.”  They don’t want to know about your bunions are sore and “I might have had Swine Flu over the weekend.”  Nobody wants to hear it.  That’s what it felt like when he started asking my opinions, but then when it he wanted those details it was actually kind of fun because he was asking about things that I had been thinking a lot about and I thought were important. 

Melia's Papa: How important was that for your development? 

DNA: It’s weird because it definitely had a stratospheric adoption from the public.  People were seeing it all over the place and spreading it around like crazy.  I remember I was in Costa Rica for a talk and I was taking a couple weeks to just work on a project so I was out of the country for maybe two or three weeks and I get back and I was on a subway in New York and a guy is holding a Rolling Stone magazine with Obama on the cover and I’m looking at and I’m thinking “I didn’t know he was on the cover of Rolling Stones. This is dope, this is so hype.”  I’m staring at it, I’m not saying anything and the dude’s like, “You want to take a look at it?”  And I’m  like “no, I’m all good,” but the guy’s like “take a look at it.”  So he hands me the magazine and I’m looking at it and the guy’s like “Are you Derrick Ashong?”  And I’m like “What is going on?  I just left the country, I’m back and people on the subway are knowing my name?”  At the same time though, there’s always more to the story.  So a lot of people thought “Oh my God, they found this random kid and he knew all this stuff that was going on and he happened to be articulate about his ideas.”  Maybe two weeks before that happened I was speaking on a panel for the United Nations Alliance for Civilization in Madrid.  I was on a panel with Queen Nuor of Jordon and Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and the head of Participant Productions who made movies like “Good Night, Good Luck,” “Siriana,” etc, etc.  I was the baby cake on the panel.  I had already lectured in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean.  So on the one hand it was a very interesting way for people to become aware of me and some of my ideas.  On the other hand, a lot of the intellectual underpinnings were established long before that moment and people already knew what I was all about in certain circles before that happened. 

Melia's Papa:  What do you say what people ask you what you do? 

DNA: I always tell them I'm an artist. See, I think there's a skewed perception of what artistry is in this day and age. Right now, anybody who you see on television or has a record deal or a TV show is allegedly an artist, and I don't think that's really the definition of the term. An artist is different from a journalist; a journalist is supposed to take a dispassionate look at the world around, and report what's happening.  Pundits are supposed to take a look at what’s happening in the world around and comment on it. What artists do is they look at the world around and they interpret it, and then they re-present it in a way that when you see it — when you commune with it — you can look at it and see some fundamental element of truth, something that strikes you in your soul where you can say, "Oh my God. That's what I would've said if I could have said it."  It’s a distinction, and an important one.  I start from that position.  Now, my particular training is as a musician and an actor and a writer.   What happens is, in everything that I do, I bring an artist's perspective to it.  I’m not here to report dispassionately.  I definitely have an opinion.  Then again, I’m not here to just tell you my opinion, that’s not my purpose.  My position and my work and my essence is an interpreter and that gives me a unique look and a unique way of communication about the things I see going on in the world. 

Navina: You talked about some of the means that you use like acting and different forms of media and you also talk about socially meaningful media.  What do you mean when you say that? 

DNA:  I think there’s a lot of stuff that’s out there right now.  We’ve got a kind of an information glut in our world.  Everywhere you look you got television, you’ve got stuff coming to you from your laptop, things coming at you from you Blackberry.  Constant, constant, constant information. Social media has been a very powerful tool in better connecting us and enabling us to communicate with each other about our ideas and values, the mundane and the profound.  But at a certain point, you got to be able to sift through all that information. We have to move into "socially meaningful media" — you're not just getting information for information's sake, and you're not part of a network for the network's sake. It's about the quality of what it does in your life, and what it enables you to do. It also helps to shift your own perception of self, your place in the world, and your power in it.  It’s not enough for me to hear the news.  It’s not enough for me to hear the latest status update.  It's more valuable when you put that interpretive lens on it.  Which does not necessarily create value judgment but rather it interprets what’s happening in the world and if we do our job well, it puts meaning into the information that we’re giving.  At the very least it created that framework to let you seek that meaning on your own. 

Navina: How do you use social networks and media in your own work?

DNA:  That’s a wonderful question.  For one, everything we do is living in the world and online.  For example, with the Derrick Ashong Exchange, that’s the new show on Opera Radio, we’ve got the basic information on operaradio.com that you can check it out.  E-book (?) can go get personal insights from my site derrickashong.com, which I have not blogged on in a week or a half or two but I will, I promise.  People can also communicate with us through Twitter.com/ashong and also on facebook.com/derrickashongexperience.  With my music, it’s the same thing.  You can find me on facebook.com/soulfege and soulfege.com, myspace.com/soulfege.  What we do is, if I do a performance, we always find ways to get people to upload content or we’ll share content with them back on the site after or we’ll promote the event we’re about to do.  When we first got started we actually used to stream concerts live for a number of artists and events.  Every time the radio show was on, you can watch it live on youstream.tv/derrickashongexperience. Or you can watch the video feed on facebook or you can go to Oprah radio and you can watch it or listen to it.  We basically enable to people to communicate with us in whatever fashion is best for them. 

I’m always live on twitter when we’re broadcasting.  So people are sending me messages, I’m responding to some, we’re talking about certain issues, people are coming on facebook, there’s a dialogue happening on youstream, some people are listening in, calling in and commenting on Opera Radio.  So literally, our vision is, we’re not going to dictate to you how you have this experience.  That’s why we don’t call it a show.  It’s not a show where, “hey, this is where we’re set, this is how we do, and you can choose to be a part of it or not.”  It’s literally an experience and that experiential nature is determined by what you’re most comfortable with.  Every Saturday it’s 9-12 Pacific and it’s noon to 3 Eastern.  People from around the globe are literally checking in, checking us out and how they shift the conversation with us and with each other depending on how they want to communicate. 

Navina: Well, you’re definitely all over the web.  I first saw you in the trailer for the movie called The Shift.  What is it and what’s your involvement in it? 

DNA: The concept of The Shift is that there’s a movement happening worldwide — the greatest movement ever known in humankind. It is comprised of all the people around the world who are working and striving to make our world a better place. It's about the people who have realized, "It's not about me." This has got to be a world that functions for "we." They are making the requisite investment, sacrifice, putting their energy and time and calibrating and focusing their consciousness of making things happen that are for the greater good.  The interesting thing about it is that it has no leader, it has no face, it is here-to-for had no name. People are doing it independently because they believe, "Yes, we want to have cleaner water, and my community ain't got it. Or, we want to make sure that people can access better food in my Bay Area community. Clean technologies, better air quality, better quality of life, free of dependency on oil in foreign places..."

The shift is an acknowledgment that this is not a bunch of little people running around the planet trying to do good. This is representative of a different way of thinking, a different way of seeing the world, and a different way of being in the world. It is a shift in human consciousness, and it is the next stage in our evolution toward not only a better planet, but our betterment as individuals as well.  Marchelle Marmastine, the film maker, came up with the concept.  She understood that this is happening, this is unified, people doing human rights work, environmental work, people working on issues of poverty and people working on social entrepenuership and advancement of technology and public diplomacy.  All of this is connected because they all have the same goals.  How do we make our world a better place?  So she decided to make a movie that would tell the story of that movement.  By giving it a name and by highlighting some faces of it, it would help to reinforce and fuel that movement.  That is The Shift.  

Melia's Papa: How do you quickly communicate that to an urban audience in the Bay Area? 

DNA:  If I’m talking in the urban Bay Area, in a nutshell I’m like, “Look, there are people around the globe that want to make this a better planet for all of us, and we are a part of that.  Everything that we do here to make our communities better is actually tied to people across the planet.  We’re seeking to do the same.  If we interconnect we can better learn how to facilitate the change that we want to see in our communities.  \ 

Navina: You’re bringing a huge smile to my face from hearing you talk.  Thank you for that.  You’ve said that making the world a better place is actually an opportunity.  Can you talk a little bit more about that? 

DNA: Absolutely.  A lot of times, people think that making the world a better place means they have to suffer and sacrifice their normal life and what I want to do.  I think that’s actually completely wrong.  A lot of people call me an activist but I don’t actually think of myself as an activist.  That’s just not how I think about it because activist implies that you are taking it on as you mission as part of your life’s work that you’re going to change the world.  I think that it shouldn’t be part of your life’s work; it should be part of your living.  It should be part of your every day living.  Because by living for something that is bigger than just you, you actually enhance your life.  You make yourself greater.  You make your opportunities in the world greater.  You make your vision greater and therefore the quality of your life improves. 

Everyone thinks that to do this is a matter of sacrifice and I say, “No, you’re not giving it up.  You have an opportunity to gain something and that’s an opportunity worth seizing.  In The Shift I said, “it’s an opportunity to make your life mean something.”  And some people say “what do you mean make your life mean something.  My life has already got meaning. It doesn’t matter I’m not going to think about that.”  Nonsense.  Everybody on the planet is seeking meaning in their life.  It’s what separates human beings from trees.  And the fact of the matter is, whether people acknowledge it, whether people know how to articulate it, or whether they deny it, every human being wants to have meaning in their life.  That meaning can be found in your work, that meaning can be found in your family, in your children, in your artistry, in your ideas.  It can be found in the way you dress, in the way you speak, in who you hang with, in the things you believe in, in your faith or religion.  It can be found in your culture or your language; everyone is seeking meaning.  When you live for something greater than yourself, you give yourself a huge opportunity to enhance that meaning.   

Melia's Papa: Do you see this opportunity as a responsibility?  I guess what I’m asking is do we as Americans have any particular responsibility in your mind?

DNA: Absolutely.  We’re the biggest economy on the planet; we’re also the biggest polluter on the planet.  Because we utilize significantly more energy and resources in the world, we have a responsibility to look at that.  You can’t just be here sucking up all the resources, saying “I’m in America, it’s the best country, it’s just how it is.”  Because what’s happening is people living in other parts of the world who are suffering and who are struggling, who are trying to just be, will look at you with resentment.  While a lot of us don’t care or don’t want to hear it, that resentment at a certain point comes home.  It’s like Malcolm X said, “the chickens come home to roost.”  They always come home to roost.  And when we look at issues in our planet right now, something like global terrorism, everyone wants to say it’s Islamic fundamentalism.  First of all, it’s a misnomer, because any good Muslim is trying to be a fundamentalist.  Fundamental does not mean that you’re trying to be negative or extreme, it simply means that you want to adhere to the basic core of the faith.  So most religious people, particularly in Islam, and I know not because I’m a Muslim but because I grew up in an Islamic country, I spent eight years in the Middle East as a kid.  Most Muslims would tell you if you asked, “Yes, I’m trying to be a fundamentalist.”  That’s the wrong language.  What we’re fighting is not fundamentalism, it’s extremism.  But that religious extremism is not based upon some fundamental religious discord. 

What’s happening is there’s a political and an economic conflict.  It’s based on power, land, influence, resources and money like anything else.  However, the different parties in the conflict articulate their interests, on both sides, through religious terminology in order to appeal to those that they want to draw into their movement.  So what appears to be a clash of fundamentalism, a clash of religion, is not.  It’s a power struggle.  When you have one entity or perceived combatant, in the western world let’s say, that has got huge traditional military might, then the other party is not going to combat with that same traditional military might.  If Iraq was the USSR, we never would have invaded because we’d be scared that if we went in there, they’d nuke us, we nuke them and it’s all over.  We had much bigger problems with the Soviet Union during the Cold War than we ever had with Saddam Hussein.  Now, put Saddam Hussein aside and let’s get back to the actual “War on Terror,” which Iraq was a misapplied component of it.  We can get into that as a separate conversation someday.  If you look into what’s happening with the actual terrorists, with Al Qaeda and these hardcore Islamic radicals, the basic issue is that they don’t have nuclear weapons, they don’t have standing armies, so they’re not going to fight a cold war.  What they’re going to do is fight a guerrilla war.  The tactics that they use are designed to have a limited military impact but a significant psychological impact because they can only have a limited military impact so they try to expand upon the psychological one and that’s what we call terrorism.  Terrorism was not invented in the Middle East. 

You can look in the history of the United States, and not only the United States but the entire western hemisphere.  When you have certain places like South Carolina, Jamaica, places like Brazil where you have large populations of slaves, Africans who were enslaved in the west and they had smaller populations of white or European plantation owners, how could they defend themselves against all of these black folks who would actually prefer to be free?  Well what you do is, when a pregnant woman does something wrong or tries to run or doesn’t do the work you wanted her to do, you don’t just shut her up or punish her, you drag her to the middle of the square, you dig a hole in the ground for her belly to fit in, you lay her there flat and you whip her within inches of her life so that everyone can see the pain you’ve inflicted on that person, and yet you protect the property that’s in her belly because you’re going to sell that too and you want them to know that they are owned by you.  That’s terrorism, right.  It takes a small physical military impact.  You whoop that one woman, but you scare hundreds of others who were forced to watch you into not wanting to step to you.  It’s psychological warfare and it’s been around forever and it’s being applied to us by criminals just as it always has been.   

Navina: I think a lot of what you’re saying probably resonates with a lot of people on the call because we see a lot of that in so many aspects of our lives.  You talked a lot just now about your experience in the Middle East growing up.  I know you grew up in a few different places.  You grew up in Ghana and Kutar, Saudi and Brooklyn.  Can you talk a little bit about how growing up in those different places impacted your perspective? 

Melia's Papa: Absolutely.  I was born in West Africa so I came to the United States as an immigrant.  I always get confused when people talk about first generation and all that.  I’m no generation.  I’m fresh off the boat.  I landed here when I was a kid and moved to East New York and then Flatbush.  My earliest memories are really from New York City but my cultural upbringing and underpinning has always been very rooted in Ghanaian culture.  So, when I was eight years old, I left the United States, thinking that I understood the world the best I could as a kid and moved to the Middle East and am now struck by an entirely different system and way of looking at things.  From age eight to age sixteen I lived in Saudi Arabia and it completely shifted my perception of life and the world because I was able to be a part of global communities.  Not only was I living in different parts of the world, but I as also in the Middle East going to international schools.  Basically all my friends are multilingual, all my friends have traveled all around the globe.  During the summers our parents were like, we’re going to go to Thailand this summer, and we’re going to go to Singapore, and we’re going to go to Azkaban.  Me and my little sisters were like “How come we can’t go to Jersey?”  We thought New Jersey was our heaven because we had cousins in south Jersey and they had grass and trees and we were in the city and Jersey was all the way across in the park.  So we had this idea that Jersey was heaven and why would you go to Thailand? 

Honestly, our world view grew and expanded so that experience has really colored and given context to my view of the world and has given me the opportunity to realize that sometimes you may believe something to the very fundamental core of your being and someone else can believe something entirely different and you might think they’re nuts but until you take a moment to really step back and try to see the world through their eyes, you can’t fully comprehend the truth of what you perceive or purport to believe. That learning to see the world through the eyes of other people, it is not necessarily a challenge to your own culture perspective or social views; it can actually be an enhancement because it allows you to have a greater understanding of what it is you believe.  You’re not just taking it as rote because it was what you were raised with. 

I think the religious thing is the perfect example.  You know my parents are Christian, my mom is Episcopalian and my dad is Presbyterian, I grew up in an Islamic society.  Most of the people I know believe in their faith through and through, 100%, believe Jesus Christ died for their sins or there is but one God and Muhammad is his prophet and that’s basically it.  And if you don’t understand or you’ve never experienced someone else’s faith and the fundamental beliefs associated with it, you think that what you believe is true because it’s true.  But the reality is, what you believe is true because it was what you were taught.  It’s always most interesting to talk about faith with someone who’s been converted or who grew up in the midst of multiple faiths because someone will tell you straight up and down, “This is what I believe and I believe it because God told me personally,” but in fact empirically, you believe it because it’s what your parents told you, and everyone at your church said it, and everyone you know thinks the same thing, so that’s what you know.  It’s not because what you know is the truth, it’s because it’s all you know.  I think that once you begin to expand your breadth of knowledge you get to have a greater understanding of what you know, what you don’t know, and why you believe in what you do or not. 

Melia's Papa:  You’ve talked about The Shift, and I was wondering if you have any particular favorite metaphor for where we are as a species. 

DNA: I don’t have a favorite metaphor per say, for where we are as a species, but I would say that we are at a crossroads.  I guess that would be the best way to put it.  And we have a choice, of whether or not we are going to leverage our massive accumulation of resources, knowledge and technology to enhance the world that we live in or whether we will use them to destroy it.  I think it’s really the first time in human history where these things really lie fundamentally in our hands.  With the advent of nuclear weaponry we actually had a chance to say “we might destroy the world or not,” but it’s different and more profound now because in addition to the weapons etc, etc, etc, the basic tools of daily living can be used to improve upon our world, to make our environment cleaner, to have more efficient usage of the limited resources that we have, or to destroy it—to pollute everywhere, to throw climate change beyond a reversible point, and basically ensure our own demise.  At that crossroads we have to have an idea of not just stepping along blindly anymore but really, where do we want to go?  And where we want to go has to influence where the path is that we choose to walk.  A lot of people will say, “Well, I want my life to be like this: I want to have all the resources ever and I want to have all the money ever and I want to have good opportunities and this and this and this and I don’t want to pay anything for it.”

Check out Derrick Ashong and many talented performers at Take Back the Mic (May 20): http://oaklandlocal.com/blogs/2010/05/celebrate-community-storytelling-and-join-us-take-back-mic-thursday-night