Students attending the Black Entrepreneurs in Conversation discuss inspirations and aspirations
Transcript:
0:05: Welcome back to Chronversations.
0:07: I’m your host, Cameron Johnson.
0:10: In a school filled with aspiring creatives, there’s always a drive to grow.
0:14: This past Wednesday evening in the Hive, BSU partnered with WCRX in the Career Center for the Black Entrepreneurs and Conversation Panel.
0:22: The panelists were DJ Ca$h Era.
0:24: People will always remember how you made them feel, sometimes more than the work that you did.
0:30: Professional vocalist and actress Chinaa Orr.
0:32: When we have great talent and then minimize ourselves, I feel like people cannot see the greatness that’s in us.
0:39: And voice actress Da’Nelle Grier.
0:41: Never get too big to feel like you know everything already, and know how to use your voice.
0:48: They gave very inspiring advice to the students about being unapologetic for showing your ethnicity and identity through your work.
0:55: And I was able to hear from some students about how they were impacted by the night.
1:00: My name is Sirvincent Davis.
1:02: My pronoun is he, and I’m doing music production.
1:06: Hi, my name is Nai, also known as Nailyn.
1:09: My major is music production with a focus on vocal performance, and my pronouns are she/her.
1:16: My name is Reniya Waller.
1:17: I’m a senior, I am 22 and my pronouns are she/her.
1:22: What entrepreneurial pursuits or professional aspirations do you have, if any?
1:27: And who inspired you to even chase after those fields?
1:30: Really, it is to be on tour, being a full-time musician. Because right now I am a full-time musician and being a full-time musician is really, really hard for the marketing and everything
else, you know what I’m saying?
1:45: But who really inspired me, a dude named Calvin Rogers, that’s my uncle, he really inspired me to just keep going, keep striving.
1:54: And to know him personally from everybody else, that connection, it really strives me to keep going and keep striving in life.
2:03: I’d say my biggest inspiration is my family. I have a lot of family in music and the acting industry, and I’d say my biggest aspiration would be to continuously spread my culture around the world because music is a big part of Black culture.
2:21: And historically, with my family being from Tennessee and Mississippi, music is a huge part of our spirit and I would just love to continue that and hopefully make my family’s dreams come true with some projects in the future.
2:34: Honestly, my biggest inspirations were all the media that I grew up watching.
2:39: I aspire to be an animator, a 2D animator specifically.
2:43: I grew up with Disney renaissance and anime that has highly inspired me to make beautiful and elaborate pieces myself, and my biggest inspiration is to include blackness into that inspiration.
2:57: I want people to see themselves on screen, Black people to see themselves on screen when they watch an anime, when they do see a Disney princess or when they see somebody animated in general.
3:07: So what were you expecting before walking in these doors?
3:10: What were you expecting to take away from tonight?
3:12: And how do you think that helped equip you?
3:16: Hopefully the being inspired, really most of the stuff I heard tonight I’ve already heard from most of my uncles and my big brothers and all that, but it was really good.
3:30: Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I did want to connect with more Black students here because it’s kind of hard to find us in the music production side of things.
3:42: So I’m just glad I learned how to network better, how to connect with people better, and also just how to put myself out there, it’s hard to put yourself in a space where it’s uncomfortable and unfamiliar, but they taught us that you never know what to expect from anyone, you don’t know what anyone does, you don’t know where people are from, so it’s always better to put yourself out there.
4:03: Honestly I didn’t know what to expect when I walked in.
4:06: All I could do was see what I could learn from these people that they invited here.
4:11: I definitely was encouraged to come after I saw DJ Ca$h because I was like “Oh my God,” I didn’t know she went to this school.
4:16: I’ve got so many questions.
4:17: How did you promote yourself?
4:19: How did you get where you are now?
4:21: Like, you’re the most popular DJ, and even though different majors, different paths, it’s all artistic, it’s all entrepreneurship, and I just wanted to see how she made it as a queer Black woman, as another queer Black woman.
4:33: So out of all the speakers, you know, we had some great speakers today as well.
4:36: Who do you feel like was the one that impacted you the most, and what was the key takeaway?
4:41: Chinaa Orr.
4:42: How she was talking about being a full-time musician and going on tour, and taking the opportunities that are kind of risky, it really put an impact on my life because I do that now.
5:00: I sacrifice and I risk a lot of stuff, school, church, and other things.
5:07: I would like to say Chinaa inspired me the most.
5:10: As a singer it’s hard to imagine yourself in a space mostly pioneered by men, but I feel like she found her family, she found her place in the industry, and she proved that Black girls, we can do it too.
5:28: It’s nothing to put yourself out there and enjoy the things that you do and still stand on what you believe in, and not step down when it comes to people outside of your culture not understanding you as much as we understand ourselves.
5:43: So I feel like I learned a lot from her today and I feel very inspired to keep creating.
5:48: I guess I would definitely have to say DJ Ca$h Era, let’s just be honest.
5:53: And it’s literally just the queerness aspect.
5:56: I wanna see more Black women loving Black women in media, specifically animated media, so when I see her thriving up there as a queer DJ, and how she’d be having these spaces basically booked and busy.
6:10: I can only feel encouraged by that, because I know that there’s a space that is hungry for that type of interaction, that’s hungry for that type of media, and I’m willing to give it as well, so that’s it.
6:28: Make sure to stay up to date with campus and metro news at columbiachronicle.com.
6:33: I’m Cameron Johnson.
6:34: Thanks for listening.
6:35: And until next time.
Copy edited by Camila Verzino
