(bright music) - It's great to have you take time out from writing books (Stephen laughs) to sit and talk about writing books because at the pace you're going, I mean, I just can't imagine you have time for anything else, and somehow you've managed to squeeze all these other things in too.
- Well, you know what's interesting is I love talking.
- [Stephen] Yeah.
(Stephen laughs) - I began my career as an actor.
- [Stephen] Yeah.
- Like, that's where I started at a place called Virginia Tech.
And I auditioned for plays and didn't get cast.
And I said, okay, well, I gotta figure this out.
And so I began writing plays.
- [Stephen] Yeah.
- To cast myself.
- Right.
(Stephen laughs) - So the writing happened as a result of that.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
44 books, I mean, that is an incredible number.
Prolific is the word that keeps coming to mind.
But there are also the range of things that you're writing about is really broad.
Talk about how you get inspiration for these books, and for each one, what's the thing you're trying to accomplish with it?
- I think ultimately, as Langston Hughes said, I'm trying to distill my human heart into a few words on the page.
- [Stephen] Yeah.
- And sometimes that heart is filled with longing and love, and so a love story or a love poem might come out.
Other times it's my two-year-old who won't stop crying.
And so I play some jazz music, and she stops crying.
And so I say, well, let me write a book about Duck Ellington and Mules Davis, and teach her about jazz.
So it really is about what I'm feeling, what I'm experiencing, what I'm thinking, when I'm dealing with sort of the woes and the wonders of life.
- Yeah.
- And it comes out in various ways.
- Yeah.
Let's talk about the difference between writing poetry and writing stories.
- Sure.
- I think of poetry as, you know, of course, more subject to rhythm, and pacing, and the kind of things that you see in music.
- Sure.
- More often.
And of course stories can do that too.
- Right.
- But it's a very different process.
- Oh, absolutely.
- Yeah.
- I mean, you think about it like this, with prose, you have a lot of words at your disposal.
- Yes.
- You know?
- You can go on as long as you want.
- With poetry- - Yeah.
- You have to capture sort of the heavy things that are happening in just a few words.
And so it requires more conciseness.
And so if you look at a page of poetry versus prose, there's more white space on the poetry page.
- Yeah.
- And I believe that's so that the reader can take that spiritual journey.
It's not just about the words that are there, but it's about the words that aren't there that sort of challenge us and make us pay attention to what's happening in our lives in the world.
- That's an interesting way to think about that.
I've always thought that the best music often is about the notes that aren't there.
- Right.
- Miles in particular, right?
- Exactly.
- You don't have to play every note.
Some of 'em are understood.
I guess poetry is the same.
- I mean, look, you could tell, and I did.
I told a woman that I loved her, you know, over and over, and she didn't really pay attention.
(Stephen laughs) I wasn't very cool.
I didn't get cool till very recently.
- [Stephen] You gotta show her.
- And so I recited a poem to her.
- [Stephen] Yeah.
- I have never been a slave, yet I know I am whipped.
I have never been to Canada, yet I hope to cross your border.
I have never traveled underground, yet the knight knows my journey.
If I were a poet in love, I say that with you I have found that new place where romance is just a beginning and freedom is our end.
And she married me.
- Oh, there you go.
(Stephen laughs) - And so- - There you go, it worked!
- The poetry works.
- Right, it worked!
Let's talk about your new work, your new book.
- The new book.
So my dad says, my dad's my biggest fan.
- Yeah.
- He'll be in the grocery store.
"Have you read my son's new book?"
- That's right, have you seen this?
- Have you seen this?
- You know he made the New York Times.
(Stephen laughs) (Kwame laughs) The latest book is called "How Sweet the Sound."
And it's a picture book that's for ages one to 99.
- [Stephen] Yeah.
- And it's about the history of black music in America.
- [Stephen] Yeah.
- And how music from, you know, when we look at the blues.
- Which is the history of American music.
- Right?
Absolutely.
- There's isn't a way to separate those things, right?
- Absolutely.
When we look at jazz, which is American music, when we look at reggae, at at hip hop.
And so I wanted to sort of document how we, you know, brought the rhythms, and the sounds, and the leaps and the bounds from West Africa.
- [Stephen] Yeah.
- To the present, how we got here, and look at that sort of journey.
And so I wrote that story.
- Who's that story for in your mind?
Who are you writing to in that book?
- You know, I like to think that I am always writing a love letter to black people, and I am always writing sort of a reminder to all of us.
- To everybody else.
- To everybody.
- Yeah.
- To recognize, and acknowledge, and appreciate the humanity of black folks.
- [Stephen] Yeah.
- You know?
And so that's my goal.
- Yeah, yeah.
I also wanna ask you about one of the kind of fun projects that you have.
Acoustic Rooster.
- Acoustic Rooster.
(Stephen laughs) - I love that, and Jazzy Jams.
- Which started here in Michigan.
- Is that right?
- In 2010.
- Yeah.
- I had written 10 books of love poems, and I wasn't making a whole lot of money.
I wasn't able to provide for my family, so I had jobs.
- Yeah.
- And I got a book deal for Acoustic Roosters Barnyard Band from a company in, I wanna say Grand Rapids.
- Okay, yeah.
- Okay?
- Other side of the state, yeah.
- Called Sleeping Bear Press.
- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
- And they published Acoustic Rooster, which is about a rooster that starts a jazz band with Thelonious Monkey, and Ella Finch Gerald, and Duck Ellington.
(Stephen laughs) And so that became my first children's book in 2011, and of course I've gone on to write many more, but that recently got turned into a cartoon.
- [Stephen] It's on television now.
- [Kwame] Animated special on PBS.
- [Stephen] Yeah.
- [Kwame] So that's pretty exciting.
- [Stephen] Yeah.
- [Kwame] Yeah.
♪ Old McDonald had a farm ♪ E-I-E-I-O - But this is the Bebop Barnyard.
We should sing a jazz song about our farm.
- I know A jazzy rooster who can sing all about our band.
- Yay!
- I mean, you know, the transference of a story like that from page to screen is one of the things that's kind of really fascinating to me.
- Yeah, well, it made sense because we're writing about music.
- [Stephen] Right.
- Which is sort of an auditory experience.
And so how do we then, you know, take these words on the page and put them on the stage?
- [Stephen] Yeah.
- And make them come alive and bring the music out.
I like to think that we're entertaining, but we're also informing.
- [Stephen] Yeah.
- The biggest metaphor that I can think about when it comes to jazz is that jazz, as Winton says, is the metaphor for democracy.
And you've got all these different players, the sax.
- Yeah.
- The drummer, the horn.
- Yeah.
- You know?
You got the piano, you got the singer, and they all gotta exist on stage together to create this musical masterpiece.
- Yeah.
- But at any given point, somebody's gonna solo.
- Right.
- Somebody's gotta shine.
- Someone's in the front.
- And the other people stand back and let them do their thing, because at some point they know they're gonna have the respect to do their thing.
And I think that's a beautiful thing.
- That's a great analogy.
- We're trying to teach kids a lot of these things, I think, through the show.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Ya know.