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[0:00] Kevin Ferguson: Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the fabulous 54 Below. Before we get started this evening, just a polite reminder, please take this moment to silence your cell phones and also there is no flash photography, please.

[0:17] Kevin Ferguson: Hello everybody and welcome to the 54 Below Podcast. My name is Kevin Ferguson, an assistant programming director here at the club, and our guest today is an award-winning musical theater composer who is no stranger to 54 Below. Most known for winning the Right Out Loud contest with his musical theater hit Little Miss Perfect. Our guest also wrote music for the Sony Pictures film Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile and is a 2021 Jonathan Larson finalist. He returns to 54 in February with an encore performance of this show, the Black Boy Joyful Noise. Please help me welcome JORIAH KWAMÉ.

[0:55] JORIAH KWAMÉ: Hello, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here digitally.

[1:01] Kevin Ferguson: All right, the crowd goes crazy. They're like, oh shoot, it's JORIAH. This is so exciting. Listen, how you feeling?

[1:10] JORIAH KWAMÉ: I'm feeling really good. I had a wonderful holiday new year. It was rejuvenating. What about you? How was your holiday season?

[1:16] Kevin Ferguson: Oh, festive. Festive and exhausting.

[1:18] JORIAH KWAMÉ: Oh good. But festive to say the least. I was able to stay in New York and just like hang out with my boo and all my friends, and it was really fun. But now we're in a whole new year. Like, isn't that crazy? We're in the future now. 2023. Time is going so fast.

[1:34] JORIAH KWAMÉ: 2023. To think that it's been three years since the beginning of this recent fiasco of COVID and everything is absolutely insane to think about. Time flew, but also it feels like it's been 25 years old.

[1:46] Kevin Ferguson: Okay, and we're not gonna talk about the 25 years today, because I love bringing artists on this podcast and having COVID be one of the points we talk about. Cause just to hear how all the artists got through their own moment. But before we even get there, we gotta tell the people who you are. For the people who aren't already your fans, I mean you're so known, you have so many fans, you've done so many shows, you've written so many beautiful stories. But I'll let you tell the people. Who are you? What do you do?

[2:11] JORIAH KWAMÉ: Yeah, so my name is JORIAH KWAMÉ. I am a musical theater writer and just writer of sorts and performer as well. I love all things story, music, community. That really excites me. I started music really at a young age, at first at church and then found my way to the stage as far as R&B and Neo Soul hip hop, and then found Stephen Sondheim and was like, whoa, musical theater, what is this? And since then it's been a whirlwind of creativity and experimentation and just like learning, playing by ear, literally. And yeah, now I'm working on a bunch of shows in development that are in different stages, and I'm just off the heels of working on Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, the future film with Pasek and Paul. And yeah, things are really starting to kick off in my career, and I'm so blessed and honored to be in the greatest city in the world making musicals. Yeah, that's a little bit about me.

[3:15] Kevin Ferguson: I love that. Okay, so when did it start though? Like, where did it start? Where were you from?

[3:20] JORIAH KWAMÉ: Yeah, so I am from Kalamazoo, Michigan, which is a very small, yeah, I'm a Midwest boy corn fed through and through. And yeah, I'm from a small town called Kalamazoo, Michigan. It's a very homey, kind of liberal artsy town, right there, smack dab in the middle of Michigan, pretty much. And yeah, I grew up kind of in church singing in that way, and I was always taught that music is something that surpasses a sonic experience and can touch people and change people's minds, obviously in the context of church. And so then musical theater ended up being a nice gateway of being able to express but also inspire.

[4:01] JORIAH KWAMÉ: And I kind of started doing my mom is a fifth grade teacher, so she would always be like one of the only Black teachers at the school, so she would always be heading the Black history programs, you know, in February. And so I would normally come and perform, and then this one year when I was in middle school and Smash was out, the TV show Smash, where they're of course we know the iconic TV show, Smash. Okay, great. People don't be knowing, I'd be having to check people. And I was like, okay, what if I do what if this February I do a musical based on Martin Luther King Jr.'s life, and we produced it, and my mom was like, you know how to do that? And I was like, no, but I'm gonna figure it out.

And so my first musical I wrote when I was 13 was called Dream a New Musical, and it was about Martin Luther King Jr. And we produced it locally with a bunch of Black kids who had never done theater before, and I got to see my idea go from like a Google Doc to this stage in my hometown, and my community came and supported, and we sold tickets, and my family helped me put it together, and I immediately was just so moved and inspired by that experience of seeing my show on stage that I just couldn't stop doing it.

[5:11] JORIAH KWAMÉ: And so since then it was a lot of experimentation and producing things on my own. And then in 2019, I won Taylor Lauderman's Right Out Loud competition for my song Little Miss Perfect, which was completely crazy, and then it went viral online, and that kind of happened right at the beginning of the pandemic, and then everything kind of launched honestly from there. And it's been crazy. It's been crazy so fast.

[5:34] Kevin Ferguson: No, that's perfect. No, I mean, it is a matter of just like time feeling like it's happening so fast, and you look back on like how you got here, it's just like so many years went by in between you, you know, writing the MLK show and you winning the Right Out Loud show, but for you, it felt like it moved so fast because it all just kept happening boom, boom, boom. You know, I I'm from Ohio and I also grew up in the Midwest.

[6:03] JORIAH KWAMÉ: Come on.

[6:03] Kevin Ferguson: I grew up doing children's theater. So at a young age, being able to see like magic on stage come alive is so exciting. I would imagine it is even more exciting when you're that kid whose show it is that you saw come to life, you know. That experience I get now when I produce concerts at 54 when I have an idea, and then I'm there the night of the show, and I'm like, oh, I had this idea, and now it's out in real life. I feel like that moment is so exciting, especially for creatives and writers. And I wonder with you writing songs, do you know ahead of time that they're gonna work? Like, how did you feel about the one that won the Right Out Loud song going into the contest?

[6:49] JORIAH KWAMÉ: So, this is that is a great, great question. And I that actually speaks to a point I was gonna make when you were talking about the beauty of you know, giving up the show and seeing it come to fruition and knowing that you created it. There's a transitive property, I would say, of you as a writer, you really do have to let go of your craft. I worked with Craig Carnelia, this amazing composer. I did this Johnny Mercer's songwriting project, and he was one of the master teachers, and he said that like writing a song is creating an object, like you are creating something that belongs to you. And like even though it's not necessarily something that can be physical, it is like something that belongs to you.

It's your intellectual property, and there's something that happens when you have to give it away in a way, and when it becomes something that belongs to other people, and that can be the horrifying part, but that can be the most beautiful part of realizing that you put your soul into something and then you have to give it up.

[7:46] JORIAH KWAMÉ: And to answer your question, a great example of how it's not I had to realize it's not about me was Little Miss Perfect. I wrote this song in 30 minutes in a practice room while I was in college. It was for a charity project I was doing at the time, and I submitted this big folder to Taylor of all what I thought were my best songs, and it was like maybe 12 songs, and Little Miss Perfect was not originally in it. After I had submitted, like a week later, I had quickly wrote the song, and I was like, oh, Taylor actually would maybe sound good on this. Maybe I'll throw it in the folder because I had done like a Google Drive folder so I could upload it, I could update it afterwards. And so I did that, and then time passed, and when she finally I found out that I had been picked, and she was like, you should be very proud of your song, Little Miss Perfect.

I was initially like, what? Like that song, that like poppy, kind of more fluffy, upbeat song out of all this what I thought was like ruling art that I had put in this folder, and so I was like judging the song in that way, and then this transitive property giving it away, and once it went viral, and I got flooded with comments and thousands and thousands of comments from people all over the world saying hearing this song is what made me come out. Hearing this song is what made me not take my own life when I was in a really dark place. And I've had really young people reach out to me saying very some heartbreaking things, but mostly amazingly inspiring things about what this song means to them. And that is when the song to me really meant something more to see what it meant to other people. And I think that's the beautiful part of being a writer.

[9:25] Kevin Ferguson: Yeah, that is. I feel like that is so beautiful to be able to create something that in a way saves people. You know, you're like a hero with your art.

[9:38] JORIAH KWAMÉ: Oh, thank you. And that's so exciting. Now, when you're writing your stories, you are coming from like a creative storytelling place. What would you say is the genre of most of your storytelling? Are you out here trying to give motivational music or are you trying to give a horror movie that has this deep metaphor to it? Like, what do you would you say your brand of sound is?

[10:03] JORIAH KWAMÉ: So, you know, that is right now I am working on so many I'm lucky enough to have about five or six shows like in development going through production right now that are under reps. I'm so excited to be able to share a lot of it, but they're very different. I have one show that is a prequel to a Shakespeare story, is what I can say, and it's being commissioned by Chicago Shakespeare Theater. I'm working on that. I'm actually going to Chicago next week for second workshop. So that one is like completely different, and then I'm working on a couple of movie to stage adaptations. And so there's that, and that's interpreting someone else's work and interpreting another IP. And then I am basically I have a musical based on that song Little Miss Perfect that went viral, and that is kind of been my passion project, and it's been I've actually been able to write to an audience in a fan base that already exists, and so for that, there's this layer of like the demographics of the people who like are a fan of it and trying to make sure that their interests are represented while keeping it as diverse as possible, and so the music has to be poppier and more commercial, and so I would say that less than I have any sort of genre or topical preference or tendencies, I feel as though the storytelling that I'm drawn to has a sense of a sense of like some sort of cerebral quality or a sense of some sort of uplifting out of our normal reality, and either going.

[11:29] JORIAH KWAMÉ: I think I'm inspired a lot by Into the Woods and in these moments where the show stops and we go into these fairy tale characters' heads and we understand more deeply why they made such a simple decision. That I think embedded itself into my mind, and now I'm always trying to find ways to like have that moment with the audience where you zoom into someone's mind or you zoom into someone's heart or you zoom out to a bigger macrocosm metaphor, and I'm always interested in finding ways to not be so literal and use music and storytelling to conjure thought and emotion in a way that feels interesting and fun, and yeah, I like to be inspired by the world and research and learn about different cultures and different music styles, maybe that I haven't written before, and bring that to the pieces as appropriate. So yeah, just a little bit of everything, honestly.

[12:23] Kevin Ferguson: I like that. I mean, you mentioned Neo Soul and Sondheim earlier, so that's just a mixture that I feel like Broadway musical theater needs. You know what I mean? I feel like the brain of somebody who knows Neo Soul and show tunes, I just that it gets me excited of what that would sound like. Now, when you say Neo Soul and Sondheim, you said Into the Woods, but who Neo Soul wise or outside of musical theater music genre, do you feel like you're really inspired by?

[13:00] JORIAH KWAMÉ: Um, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald are very big for me, and then we can move forward a little bit, and there's, excuse me, there's, I'm trying to go linear. Michael Jackson is big for me, Luther Vandross, Whitney Houston, I mean, Erykah Badu, um, artists like Chem, uh, uh, artists like I really love Jill Scott, um, more recently Chloe and Halle are amazing to me. Beyoncé, of course, um, Destiny's Child, the 90s era of pop icons. I'm just really inspired by black culture and finding ways to heighten the things that are so embedded in our culture and that we know how to appreciate, and not just make it commercial, but bring that culture into musical theater. Because I think a big thing of it is there haven't been that many black composers to bring our sound to Broadway in a modern way.

And so I look forward to being able to find ways to work this inspiration into all my pieces, not just pieces that are topical to one thing, but like, you know, other styles of music, they are embedded in the Broadway canon. Like we have those iconic 60s Elvis rocks on which, I mean, let's be honest, Elvis is also doing black music. But the point that I'm making is like, there's not been a lot of opportunities for black artists to pay homage or do references to our niche sounds in musical theater. And so that's something that I'm always finding avenues to do because I think it's so important that we have not only representation as far as people, but also references and the sounds and the lyrics, the sounds and the stories, yes, yes. Yes, I'm excited. And listen, and I'm most excited for the Black Boy Joyful Noise in February.

[14:55] Kevin Ferguson: Okay, you're bringing your show to the 54 in February. Talk more about Black Boy Joyful Noise.

[15:02] JORIAH KWAMÉ: Yeah, so Black Boy Joyful Noise. This will be the encore performance. I did it for the first time August 5th last year. Um, we had a lot of amazing talent. It sold out, it was so fun. So basically the night is, oh, and we're doing it again. I'm looking at me, not plugging my own show. We're doing it again February 27th at 9:30 p.m. at 54 Below. Um, and it's gonna be amazing. It basically is just projects, songs from different projects, standalone songs, pop songs that I've written. There's really no theme. I call it Black Boy Joyful Noise because I'm like, that's exactly what it is. Like, I, it's just my favorite music that I've written right now, the music that I find people enjoy the most.

And um, just trying to like create a cohesive night of like good sonics and like important messages, but also like, you know, subtly plugging some of the projects I have coming. But yeah, it's gonna be fabulous, and we have a really exciting lineup that's building, we don't have it all set yet, but it's gonna be something you don't want to miss. So if you can please come check it out.

[16:05] Kevin Ferguson: No, they gotta come check it out. I mean, you are on a track record that you're just getting bigger and bigger every year. I mean, like you said, from 2020 to now, it's been kind of like night and day for you. I mean, a lot of people's 2020s were like uneventful or dramatic in a negative way. Yours was very eventful and dramatic, kind of in like an exciting way. You wanna speak more on that?

[16:31] JORIAH KWAMÉ: Yeah, it was very that. So for context, so this is the full thing. March 2020, I had moved to New York from Michigan. I had saved money finally, I was like, I'm finally gonna do it. I'm gonna take that bold leap. This is after "Little Miss Perfect" had come out, but it hadn't reached the height of what it was going to be. So I didn't really have anything major finite. I was just, you know, making that bold move. So I moved in March, and as we know, March of 2020 is when everything happened. Thankfully, I was going month to month in Bed-Stuy. So by the 19th, on the 19th day, when a lot of crazy stuff had happened, I was like, I think that my spirit is telling me I need to go home and that I'm gonna regret staying here and being stuck here if this gets somehow gets worse, which seemed so far-fetched at the time.

But then sure enough, I went back home to Michigan for what I thought was gonna be a couple months and everything fell apart. So there I was, um, in Michigan, and it was just really depressing. I had, it had been my life goal. I had finally taken this bold leap, and this was like the worst-case scenario. Like so many people I'm sure felt when they were being brave at that time when the world decided that bravery was stupid, you know what I mean? And so then it was like hopeless in Michigan. I had gotten into this, the Johnny Mercer songwriting project, which is this thing that's supposed to happen. It's a songwriting intensive that's supposed to happen at Northwestern, but they were like, we're still doing it, but we're doing it digitally.

I was like, uh, this is also the height of George Floyd, as you know. So, like being black at that time was a very dark time, like the world's falling apart, black people are getting murdered, it's being recorded and posted online, you're stuck at home, getting like, it was a lot. And so I did the Johnny Mercer project, it was life-changing, and really through that, I met some of the most amazing mentors like Andrew Lippa and Stephen Bray, who wrote "The Color Purple" and has written for Madonna and is just amazing, has become an amazing friend, both of them, and Lindy Robbins, also now an amazing friend. One of the hit pop songs, she wrote "Skyscraper" by Demi Lovato, "Classic" by Jason Derulo, "Cinderella" from Cheetah Girls 2, which is the one that I died.

So, and honestly, her resume, look her up, Lindy Robbins, look up all these people, but Lindy Robbins specifically, because she's written so many songs that you know. Anyway, and Craig Carnelius. So through that, all of a sudden, I was meeting people I've looked up to my whole life. I had meetings, I ended up signing with a publisher and getting a pu, uh, publishing deal. I got an agent, I started working doing stuff for regional theaters, and it just kind of tumbled. And I did a bunch of jobs and I did programs, and I really can't even trace anymore where it all happened. It was just like it all, and it's still, it's still happening. It's just all happening, and I don't, not really able to keep track of like exactly how it happened, but yeah, it was juxtaposition of the world falling apart, everyone being heartbroken, and me too, but at the same time, all your dreams are coming true.

And so it was like, it was a really dysphoric experience, and I think just made me appreciate my life in general more, like, and it made me realize like, you know, life has seasons and you have to live in each season because had I not had all the pain I had earlier in my life and the heartbreak that I've had, I couldn't write these songs, you know?

[19:52] Kevin Ferguson: Right.

[19:53] JORIAH KWAMÉ: And so to be able to celebrate a lot of the trauma and a lot of the things that before were holding me back in this dark time and use that to lift up people. I mean, it's like the best, how could you have a better job?

[20:07] Kevin Ferguson: Yeah, you took that broken heart and you turned it into art, you know.

[20:11] JORIAH KWAMÉ: I was, I was told that.

[20:12] Kevin Ferguson: Well, listen, I can't quote me on that. That was a professor that gave me that.

[20:16] JORIAH KWAMÉ: Oh, you played your own.

[20:21] JORIAH KWAMÉ: And I have never forgot that professor who said that because I think a lot of people unintentionally are taking that breaking, that broken heart and turning it into art, and just hearing, you know, your process and your journey, you had a lot to be motivated from. And instead of sitting in it, you used your given talent, you know, and now it's just, it's just working for you, and it just is a reminder of lean into what you know, lean into what comes natural to you. My thing is when these songs are coming to you, what if you're like out at a grocery store, or if you're like out walking outside on the street? What do you do when you get inspired by a song and you gotta, like, do you hold on to it, or do you gotta like stop and write it down then? Like, what do you do?

[21:02] JORIAH KWAMÉ: It really depends. I think me being like neurodivergent is very helpful as a writer because I'm able to like keep ideas and like build. Like I'll have songs. For example, "Luna" is perfect. I can say I wrote it in 30 minutes, but what I mean when I say that is I sat down at the piano and wrote it down for 30 minutes. I had had like the melody like in my head for a couple years. The of the chorus, like, nah no no. Like I'll just have, ever since I was a kid, I would just like hum stuff, and then I would not even realize I was making it up. My mom would be like, what are you singing? And I'm like, I don't know. I just, it popped in my head. And so I like, I'll do that all the time, and I'll have ideas that are like ruminating, and then I'll, if I'm working on a project, sometimes it'll come up of like, oh, that melody would match this idea.

And so then I'll actually sit down. Normally it's not that I have to like stop while I'm out in the world. A lot of times it's like if I need to write down words or something, I might open a Google Doc or a notes app and write down something, but I say that's rare. More so what it is is I might get a melody or some sort of cadence in my head, and then I'll just take out my voice memo and like hum it, hum it, hum it, and then if I think it's as good like the next day, I might like, you know, try to workshop it a bit. But I'd say it really, it really for me normally is like I sit down to write something and have to kind of get into it. I'm an actor too, so I think I lead a lot with improvisation and like just kind of pretending like I'm the character and seeing like what I would say if I was in that given circumstance.

[21:33] Kevin Ferguson: You just mentioned you're an actor. When you have your actor hat on, what kind of roles do you like to find yourself in? Do you write the roles you want to be in, or is that different? Is it a whole different kind of vibe when you're an actor?

[21:33] JORIAH KWAMÉ: That's a great question. I think, I don't know. I honestly, and this maybe speaks to why I want to be a writer. I have not found really any roles that I feel like you asking that, I'm like, huh, what roles do I? And I'm like, I guess whatever roles people will cast me as, like, uh, by defa my kind of default type of roles are like, I guess Benny in "In the Heights" and like maybe Aaron Burr. But then like a lot of these roles also come with a physical expectation of like these are always like the tall, thin guy, black guys who do these roles. And so I've never really, I guess Usher in "Strange Loop" has arrived and that feels more like something that could represent me, but even that in a lot of ways doesn't feel like me.

Um, even though it's like a great vocal placement. So it's just like, I don't know. That, that, that I think is why I want to write musical theater is because I'm like, I don't know. I think we need more people writing more diverse types of, and yeah, I am writing when I write shows. A lot of times I find myself putting myself into elements of myself, not even just into the male characters, but like elements of myself into roles, and I'm always like, ooh, I'd love to be this part in my own show, which is how I know that I like the show, and maybe I'm doing a good job. Because like if I don't want to be in it, my theory is if I don't want to sing it, if I don't want to be the part, chances are other people might not be able to do that.

[24:07] Kevin Ferguson: Listen, I totally get that. I totally get that. And uh, the whole idea of not fitting into the very narrow box that musical theater and Broadway sometimes expects people to be in is very hard. I am very short. Well, I'm not very short, I'm just shorter than the average ensemble dancer boy. And I remember that was kind of my track when I first came to New York was, uh, you know, dancer. So it was kind of just like a shock, uh, to move to New York and be so talented, you know, feeling so confident in your talent, but then realizing it's about physicality sometimes, or just like a, uh, appearance thing that you can't change sometimes with the harshness that this industry kind of like gives. How have you like handled that though?

The rejection that just naturally comes with being an actor, being an artist, you know, pursuing musical theater careers at all, you know, rejection comes that comes up often. Or do you feel like every door you've knocked on, they've opened? What's going on?

[25:05] JORIAH KWAMÉ: No, I've definitely had my fair share of rejection, and I think something that I do, I don't know. I think over time, I just kind of something that I try to focus more on is when I get something, like, and this is a tip for anyone who's like constantly submitting, we can get lost in submissions, we can get lost in, it's really easy to get lost in like looking at people's the little check marks in their bios, and it's like, oh, I need to get into this program and that program to be like all the people on the Jonathan Larson thing, and maybe that will mean I'll get John, you know, whatever. It's really easy to get in that toxic mindset. What I do is when I get something, and I get or even if I just show someone something and get a compliment from someone I admire, I re-listen or reread whatever I sent.

[25:52] JORIAH KWAMÉ: And freshly while I'm in that mindset of you okay, you got rewarded. This was giv you you got the thing, you got the job, you got the program you're in. Now go back and listen to what you did to get it. Cause it can be easy to remember what you did to not get things, and then you end up editing yourself because you're like, Oh, I didn't get this job when I did this kind of song, so maybe I shouldn't do that kind of no, that's not true. Different people have different opinions. It's better to look at when you get something. What did you do? And so I try to do that, and that really helps me not focus on the rejection. Because if you're lucky, over time you can look at the things that you got and the different levels of them and compare them to the things that you didn't get and go, hmm.

I guess it just means different people have different opinions. Yeah, it's really you're not gonna be for everybody, and you know that's okay. And you know, the no's help, you know, motivate the yeses and make the yeses feel so much easier, you know. So I totally get that, you know. And I feel like you have so many yeses written for Cabaret Stage, full musicals, the silver screen, and then I'm seeing now you even work with the San Francisco gay men's chorus.

[27:05] JORIAH KWAMÉ: Yes, what yes, Andrew Luper brought me on. Like, what is the most fun thing to write for? Is it the musicals? Is it the silver screen? Is it choral arrangements? Like, what's so what's the most fun for you? Because you've done it all. So I'm just trying to figure out what's the most exciting for you now.

[27:25] JORIAH KWAMÉ: I think the most fun will always be the sickening female saying Broadway, big number. I like the wizard and I, the defying gravity, the moment in the woods, the daddy's son. For me, that is what I that is what little me looked up to. Those moments in Smash, it would be don't forget, you know what I mean. Those moments where it's like this is musical theater, and which I think can exist. The cool thing is that that idea can exist in movies now, that can exist in some ways in pop music if you think about like a really good Adele song, you know what I mean, or uh or or listen by Beyonce, which I guess is from a musical, so um, yeah, I that's probably the hype for me is those really iconic staple musical theater moments that like I grew up rewinding to that one second where that singer does that thing in her voice that you can't stop fixating on. Trying to write those songs for me is the fun. And so Little Miss Perfect becoming one of those is really cool.

[28:30] Kevin Ferguson: Yeah, no, I'm I mean, yeah, I would imagine it's very exciting. And now, you know, writing for projects like Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile. Do you get starstruck? You've said a lot of cool names on this podcast.

[28:46] JORIAH KWAMÉ: Yes. Casually though. So it gives like, have you ever been starstruck by anybody? And who was that?

[28:51] JORIAH KWAMÉ: Yes. The biggest star struck I've ever been was actually, I was very surprised. I was at the premiere for Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, which was a crazy day of meeting so many people. And I was upstairs in the after party, and I made some like off the comment. I was like making a joke with someone as they were passing by, and then I heard someone like say, Oh, I saw that, and I look over and it's Queen Latifah. And she's just like being so friendly to me, just like, oh, I saw your little moment, like also trying to have a moment with me. And I literally, it was humiliating, Kev. I literally, my jaw was, and I was like, uh yeah, hi, or something like that. And she just like made like the sweetest little face and was like, have a great night and walked away.

And I stood there like for and it was it was Queen Latifah, like it was insane. She is the celebrity I've met who was the most I was the most star-struck. But I get starstruck by everyone. When I was working with Benj Pasek and Justin Paul on the movie and writing with them, I've had these, I would forget. They're so nice and they've become great friends, but especially at the beginning, I'd have these moments where I'd just be talking to them or something, and then I'd like to remember, they wrote Dear Evan Hansen. They wrote the great wait, that's them. Wait, what? And then you remember in one moment. And we remember one moment, and then a lot of times, like these people are so personable that like it's easy, honestly, to forget that's how you know you're working with good people.

If it is easy to forget all the things that they've done. And I feel really lucky that I pretty much all the experiences I've had with higher profile people, they've been sometimes more personable than less high-profile people.

[30:29] Kevin Ferguson: So that's the cool thing.

[30:31] Kevin Ferguson: Yeah, I mean, it definitely is always cool. I feel like for me, the musical theater celebrities are always the most down to earth out of the other brands of branches of entertainment.

[30:44] JORIAH KWAMÉ: Yes. The musical theater celebrities are always so cool. It's just a different journey, I think, to become a celeb quote unquote celebrity in the musical theater world.

[30:53] Kevin Ferguson: Yeah. Um, and when you meet those people and they're just so regular, not regular, because they're amazing, but just down to earth. Yeah, you know, it can be a little shocking. Now, for you though, yeah, you now have people who could potentially be starstruck by you, you know, younger generations, and they're you said they're pouring into you with such nice words about your songs and how you kind of like a savior sometimes. Um, do you ever go and talk to younger generations or do any workshops or anything like that, or do you aspire to do something like that, or do you feel like we're not there yet?

[31:30] JORIAH KWAMÉ: I have done things here and there, and when I have, it's been so emotional. I don't know, seeing, seeing, even not not even just be not there, because they they haven't been starstruck, I would say. They're it's that's the cool part where I'm at now. Is I feel like it's more so that they're like, thank you for like I'm trying to get my school like to do your show when it comes out, like I'm your fan right now. I know that you don't have that many fans, but I want you to know like I am your really big fan. It's more like that, which is so cool, and then it's it gets emotional because they'll they'll be like, I really wanna there'll be small town people talking about like what they want to do and how seeing that I came from Michigan makes them feel like they want to move to New York and they're like, was it hard?

Was it like do you think that it's worth doing? Like, do you have any regrets? And I just see myself in them. Because I mean, you know, being from uh the Midwest, New York and Brock. It doesn't feel it doesn't feel like something that happened for people. So I totally understand their disbelief of like, because I remember asking people who did it those questions, like, is it can you really do it? Or is it kind of like you have to be picked out of the raffle, you know? And everyone has I remember people saying, you just have to really believe that you can do it and do anything that you can to make it happen, and that feels so like, you know, woo-woo. But that's what I tell them. I'm like, for me, I couldn't tell there is not one thing that happened, there's not one person, there's not one song I wrote.

It was more so I think the energy that over the last 13 years of my life I was putting into the work. So then to work, because I had to work into my work, work, work, work, because I had the time into the work, then when some of the right person saw it, then it was quick. But it takes it takes all the so it's been really cool to just like be that for people and to be able to be like relatable, like to to talk to young black people who are like, there's no one who looks like us doing this. How are you doing it? And I'm like, because there's one, there is more people than we think who look like us that are doing it. That that is a little bit of a misconception. Maybe they're not getting as much maybe they're not getting as much credit.

Yep. But they are there, and it's important to find them and elevate them, you know, and and and and join them. And so, yeah, it's it's really cool. And it that's it's the best part is actually being able to pay it forward to the next little black, queer, neurodivergent kid in Michigan who maybe is gonna do something crazy like try to write music. Something crazy like try to write a musical. But I do think if there are gonna be more, and they are being inspired by you and everyone else doing, you know, you know, and having the same energy. There is a big push in, you know, black stories on Broadway right now, stories of color right now, and I'm just so happy for this wave. I hope it keeps pushing.

I think it is, based off of what I'm seeing and working at 54, I do think there's gonna be a whole new era of Broadway on its way, and JORIAH, I I'm pretty sure you're about to be part of that. I really, I really do. I I'm I'm just just everything you've already accomplished, you know, and that has happened to you, you deserve it, and you know what you're talking about. You know you're you know your stuff. You know how the aunties are saying.

[34:49] JORIAH KWAMÉ: Thank you. But I j I just feel like um do you find yourself to be a mentor to these younger people? Do you have your own mentor? Um, and if not, what would you, you know, if you're not mentoring anyone right now, just a blanket piece of like motivation to to help them out? What would you say?

[35:10] JORIAH KWAMÉ: So I'm I have to answer all the all the questions, I do have mentors. I have quite a few. I'm lucky enough to feel like I do have a lot of mentors who are doing it and doing it big and I'm able to text and call and meet up with if I have any questions. And I would love to be that for anyone. I I don't currently have any mentores, but I guess the biggest thing that I would say is to anyone who's trying to start writing. I guess I can only speak really to who's trying to write and trying to write musicals. You have to write bad songs to write good ones. Which maybe feels like a metaphor for life. You gotta have bad relationships to have that. Well, not necessarily, you don't have to have a bad relationship to have an amazing relationship, but once you've had a bad quote unquote bad relationship, you're able to see what you didn't like about that relationship.

So when you find the next person, it's like, hey, if you're not doing that, right? So we can do that with a song. You can write a bad song, and it's just as valuable as that great song because that great song really came off the stepping stone of all those bad songs and what you learned not to do or what to do. So I encourage people to like you're always gonna listen to your favorite composers and listen to your little song and go, I am not nearly as good as them. That's a good sign. That means that you are not delusional. So like have your moment of acknowledging that you have somewhere to go and let it be just that. And don't judge yourself. Like you're on a journey, you have to walk before you can run, and you know, all those cliches.

It's just true. You have to let yourself get better at it, and writing is hard and takes a lot of different skill and perspective and experience. So don't be too hard on yourself and create write. When you have the idea, write it down, do it. It's worth it.

[36:54] JORIAH KWAMÉ: All right, y'all. Well, February twenty seven, nine thirty. Oh my goodness. Black Boy Joyful Noise with the one and only JORIAH KWAMÉ. I mean, I'm so excited. They gotta come. They're gonna come. I mean, do you wanna do you wanna say anything else about the show other than come?

[37:14] JORIAH KWAMÉ: Come bring your family, bring your friends, be ready to jam out. It's gonna be a expect so expect a collection of things. We're gonna have some live performance. Well, it's gonna be all live singing, but like I'm gonna do some combination of some tracks to give like a full like I'm gonna do a couple hip hop songs and a couple more pop songs that need tracks. So we're gonna have that. I'm gonna have a violinist. We have some amazing talent, some amazing vocal talent, like Alyssa Ray, Danny Quadrino. Um, we have we have so many people. I really don't want to like we have to confirm some more, but we we really do have a lot of amazing vocal talent, a wide variety of songs from musical theater to pop to R&B, but all leading with storytelling at its forefront and inclusivity at its backbone.

[38:01] Kevin Ferguson: Yes, okay, come on, y'all. He knows what he's talking about, JORIAH KWAMÉ. Don't miss this show, JORIAH. Thank you so much for sitting down and kicking with me today. This is so fun. This was amazing. You're so wonderful. Thank you so much for having me. This was the fastest 30 minutes.

[38:15] Kevin Ferguson: Oh, yes. I love to hear that. Come on, friend. Yes. All right, everybody. Well, I am your host, Kevin Ferguson. It was fun chatting with you today, JORIAH, and everyone listening. Thank you so much for taking the time out to listen to the 54 Below Podcast. We will catch you next time. Bye now.

[38:32] JORIAH KWAMÉ: Bye.

[38:36] Kevin Ferguson: You've been listening to the 54 Below Podcast, part of the Broadway Podcast Network. Subscribe and rate us on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.