The Black Butterfly
The Black Butterfly. It’s a term coined by Morgan State University Associate Professor Lawrence Brown. It describes the shape of segregated black communities across the city of Baltimore but is also indicative of the much larger problem in America. This shape of a butterfly is due to the history of systemic racism that manifests in policies such as Redlining, (which may or may not have actually began in Baltimore during the 30’s). It’s a shape that today, more than ever, is prominent in my mind.
I first came across the term in the summer of 2019 while working on a project called This Is My Baltimore. Our goal was to challenge the stereotypes of Baltimore through firsthand accounts of the people who live here. Of course, this required extensive research into the history of the city and that is where we encountered Prof. Brown’s coinage of the term. It made sense - so much so that we even unofficially adopted that name as a group nickname “The Black Butterfly”. I held on to those sentiments and when it came time to create Asrah with Mydus, this is how I made the song:
The first verse is an intimate, first person view of a young Baltimorean struggling to survive in the proverbial “Black Butterfly”. It starts from the perspective of a caterpillar that eventually blooms into a butterfly and it highlights the obstacles one might face (“A young man in the wilderness from Baltimore / Life put me on the Mirror’s Edge, I learned parkour”) in a quest to not only survive in the world but THRIVE. This is the issue. America is offended whenever we think outside of that system and thrive. They want us to remain “sheep in the lion’s den” and even offer us tools to assist in that destruction. “What can free you can trap again” so what do we do?
Photo by Sasha Indigo
I often find myself sabotaging my own relationships because of a fear of control. I say this in “Raised In It”. Hell, I literally lost a friend writing this blog! (Which was weird because I also lost the entire blog and had to retype all of this from memory…smh) There is something inside my spirit that just makes me rebellious. I stand in truth but I cannot tolerate anything less than equity in human interaction. I dealt with it in high school and was kicked out because of it. This stubbornness, while it frees me, traps me in isolation and loneliness to contemplate my actions. Do I regret having such a spirit? I can never regret what the Creator has given me but I often wonder where it’s taking me.
Photo by Sasha Indigo
This is what I convey in the song of Black Butterfly - that struggle to become what you are meant to be in a world that is trying to make it as hard as possible to even wake up the next day. This is what we are working on to convey visually to you in the next music video, too. I’ll touch on this stuff more because it’s therapeutic for me to type it all out. I hope someone can take something from it. Be back later though.
Peace.
