A conversation with Kyle Ozero of The Breathing Light

“Outside the original pitchfork locale. I'm sure as a band we'll probably be blacklisted speaking out but i'm fine with that. We're tired of the suppression and gate keeping that's been on-going since the 1950s. So many black rock artists have gone nameless because of it. Tina Turner along with other black rock artists have had to leave the United States just to be appreciated. When industry reps tell All-Black rock bands they need white members in order to be successful, not much has changed. @tinaturner you are loved and appreciated. There are many black Rock N'Roll artists inspired by you and following your tradition.” –The Breathing Light

Hi all! Danny from Don’t Panic here. I recently had the chance to talk to Kyle Ozero, singer and guitarist of The Breathing Light, about the band’s recent efforts to start a conversation around the roots of rock n roll music and the whitewashing of it by the media. Although I’ve known Kyle and The Breathing Light for some time, posts made, such as the photo above, from the band’s social media accounts were the catalyst for this conversation. What I originally anticipated to be a broader discussion around the band displaying banners and confronting these media outlets boiled down to Kyle confronting my own ignorance and educating me on what rock n roll truly means. Read on and educate yourselves. As I said to Kyle, nothing will change if we’re unwilling to examine and change ourselves.

Danny Collins: Do you have a name for this campaign or is it pretty informal?

Kyle Ozero: For my banners?

DC: Yeah, like would you even consider it a campaign or is it more like, “we’re just gonna show up and see what happens?”

KO: Well everything I’m doing is a conversation starter. I bring up this issue to see how it can change. That’s the whole intention. I don’t know how long I’ll do it with banners or even what I’ll do next but whatever it is. It’s to get thoughts moving an words flowing.

DC: You’ve taken the banners to several media outlets and radio stations, what’s the overall message you’re aiming to get across?

KO: You know about Rosetta Tharpe? Without looking her up…

DC: No, I’m not familiar.

KO: Okay so picture this. You, yourself run a rock n roll music label but you don’t even know who started what we now know as rock n roll. 2 decades before Chuck Berry, Elvis and Little Richard. That’s embarrassing.

DC: I can picture it all too well.

KO: Not only that, up until ‘09 she laid in an unmarked grave. She died in 1973.

DC: Wow. So she was out there in the 30s/40s pioneering what would become known as rock n roll but hardly gets any recognition for it.

KO: Yes.

DC: And this is why it’s important to have this conversation.

KO: Yea. You along with all these other people invest into your own personal idea of what rock n roll is without having a clue of what it is or where it comes from. It completely contradicts what you all claim it to be.

Jim Morrison’s tombstone, Paris, France

Dee Dee Ramone’s tombstone, Hollywood, CA

DC: What does rock n roll mean to you?

KO: Freedom. I think about where it came from and I think about it as being a release from a society run by madness. The deep south during and after slavery... an the things black ppl had to do to keep it together. But also what it meant to have a good time, having sex "rock in an rolling all night long" going out an playing music. The church and faith being the foundation for emotional stability but also an institution for musicianship. Those are all things that still happen today but that’s what I think about.

DC: And how do you see it represented today?

KO: Idol Motorhead worship...

DC: Fair. Can you elaborate on that a bit?

KO: Nobody cares where any of this comes from. They don’t care about black history or black musical history. They don’t care about me, they don’t care about other black rockers. They don’t care about black ppl in general. Everybody has their own personal image of what they think rock n roll is and they put money behind that idea. Whether it’s labels putting out records from white bands that only been around for a year, to worshipping some white dude like Lemmy in an ocean full of other white dudes like him. Meanwhile I have to tell you who created rock n roll in this very conversation, in the year of our lord 2019. On my way to work I pictured ppls response to me being that scene from SLC Punk where Matthew Lillard’s character argues about who started punk; “who cares who started it, it’s music."

DC: There’s this narrative we’re taught that says Elvis was king and that The Beatles were the greatest rock band in history. We learn everything about them but the people that they appropriated the music from are all but a footnote.

KO: Essentially. Every other summer I took trips to Mississippi with my grandparents. That’s where they were from.

DC: Did you learn about a lot of music from them?

KO: Yea. They loved BB King a whole lot. I went to their church, and I saw how it all started.

DC: That’s cool. Once I looked [Rosetta Tharpe] up I remembered watching videos of her a while back. Pretty wild. So growing up hearing these great rock n roll and blues guitarists, is that how you gravitated toward playing, yourself?

KO: Naw. When I was in high school I was swaying between listening to a lot of punk and deathrock an underground hip hop from the 90s. Senior year came and I was either going to get a guitar or turntables. One evening in my basement I had the radio on Q101. I think it was the Mancow show...whoever it was said that black people don't play guitar. That’s when I set my mind to get a guitar. This was 2004/2005. When I was in elementary school I couldn't play basketball which was what most of the black kids did. I tried to fit in but I couldn’t. So I started hanging around the small group of white boys in my grade. They brought skateboards to school. I tried that for a while and didn’t like it, so I picked up rollerblading instead. Long story short I made it a mission to absorb anything I could about white skater culture, which included music. In my videogame collection I got skater games one of which was Street Sk8er. You could play the soundtrack right from the game disc as a CD. That was my first intro to actively listening to punk.

DC: Nice. I mostly got into punk through playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater. But yeah, for every Mancow, we need like 100 Kyles.

KO: meh.

DC: What kind of response have you been getting from the banners?

KO: Funny shit. Mostly black people. One dude said "we reclaiming rock n roll now." Some older black rock ppl were mad. It varied. The white/poc people either liked it or dismissed it. "Music has no color."

DC: Any response from the media outlets you were confronting?

KO: Not officially but yes. Count down.

DC: You mentioned before that the purpose of the banners was to start a conversation. How do you want to see that conversation continue and where do you want to see it go from there?

KO: I want the conversation to go national and international. I want plaques, statues and historical markers where they should be. I want people to know that when they are talking about rock n roll they frame it in its rightful context, a form of black music that originated from the black church.

DC: That’s important. I got one last question for ya.

KO: Okay.

DC: What can we expect from The Breathing Light in 2019?

KO: 2019 will be an important. Cause, I've just had it. I've lost my patience. I can't play the game anymore.

DC: Y’all are gonna do your own thing?

KO: What do you mean by your own thing?

DC: Keep putting out music on your own, choosing what shows to play and when to play em, not relying on validation from the media.

KO: We don’t have a choice. There are no options for us. Labels won’t talk to us. They follow us to see when shit will pop so they can get first dibs but that’s it. We don’t get to choose what shows we get, ppl ask us to play an either we can or we can’t. As for the media, no one knows we exist or at least they pretend not to. We are blacklisted in certain circles.

DC: Blacklisted for what?

KO: Being radical. Either talking about the racial inequality that go into music coverage and opportunities or how disingenuous a lot of platforms are that are supposed to be for us.

DC: Completely ignoring your critics and blacklisting people that speak out isn’t a good way to operate.

KO: That’s how mainstream media operates.

DC: Alright I think I’m gonna wrap it up here unless you got anything else you wanna add.

KO: Thanks for talking to me. I really appreciate it. I’m getting word that people in the scene think I’m anti-white, but I don’t really know anybody an no one takes the time to actually talk to me.