How the government shutdown is impacting NC; focus on crime laws in all 50 states; zydeco-soul musician Marcella Simien

This is due south on WUNC. I'm Jeff Tiberi. The federal government has shuttered for a to-be-determined length of time as the R's and Ds dig in their heels. Ahead, what the significant political spat means for North Carolinians. One of the big things is the Medicaid cuts that were in the one big beautiful bill. They're also fighting for a provision in the Affordable Care Act that basically helps people with low income. Also this hour, we learn about what state legislatures have done across the aggregate on crime in recent years. And we hear about an upcoming concert in Durham. It melds the music of Louisiana Zidico and Memphis Soul. I did visual art, dance, theater, music, and really all of that is really fused into what I do today. Politics and a performance today on D-South. First, the news. From the studios of North Carolina Public Radio in Chapel Hill, this is due south on listener-supported WUNC. I'm Jeff Tiberi. It is day two of the federal government shutdown. Here in North Carolina, it means more than 140,000 people are, for now, without a paycheck. Millions of people in our state could be impacted by the loss of services from health care to food assistance. Here to tell us more is Friend of the Do South program, Danielle Bataglia, Capitol Hill correspondent for the news and observer. Hi, Danielle. Hi, how are you doing? I'm good. Thank you for being here. Let's start with those typically drawing paychecks from the federal government. Give us an overview, a sense of who these roughly 140,000 workers are. So these are any person who lives and works in North Carolina who are federal employees. I mean, they could be anywhere from, you know, we've got people who are military personnel to EPA to, you know, you name it. There's also 200 employees who are state employees, but they are paid through federal funding. And so they have already been. furloughed. Loose numbers here. It's like 50 plus thousand on the, I'll call it the workforce side and the 90-ish thousand on the active duty military side. Are soldiers going, are they going to Fort Bragg today? Are they going to military installations across the state? So everything's still very fluid. But what they say is basically people who are law enforcement, federal law enforcement officers or people who are protecting federal property, those are considered essential workers. They still show up. They still go to work. They do not receive a paycheck. It is, they are considered the essential workers. So kind of think of it in a COVID kind of way. So essential workers, non-essential workers, those essential workers are going to be at work not being paid. And then the non-essential workers. which I think they're still sorting through who those are, they will not have to go to work and not receive a paycheck. Either way, it is a bummer. Got it. Okay. On the health care front from recipients of Medicare to Medicaid, who is going to feel the consequences in North Carolina and when?

So if you are a Medicare Social Security beneficiary, you are not affected by this. At least for your benefits, those will not be touched. There are other trickle down. things that could be affected. What we're seeing is the 1.4 million people who are on SNAP. Right now, there is money to fund the SNAP program. This is the supplemental nutrition assistance program. So low-income people who need help with... you know, they're budgeting for food and getting those nutritious meals. They, uh, what happened in 2018, and I expect to see this again is that they had about 30 days worth of, um, funding. And then that started to trickle away and you started to see those notices go out that your benefits could be cut off. Um, so that's something to watch really carefully, depending on how long the shutdown goes on. And then we've got the, uh, WIC program, which helps. Women, infants, children, also with nutrition and the things that they need to survive. 230,000 people in North Carolina, that is an immediate cutoff. So they have already lost that benefit. That was something the Trump administration said very quickly. That will be cut as soon as we go into a shutdown. So that was something that we're... watching also very and if you can speak to it why the the fork in the road so to speak between Steve Witkoff women infants children and snap the supplemental nutrition assistance program that is actually a very good question and i wish i had a better answer to it i so one thing that is notable in all of this is that each department uh kind of puts out these like this framework of what will happen in a shutdown and how this funding will affect different things from like who is impacted as an employee to like which programs will be affected and what is important and what's not important and some of it has to do with like the federal funds that were left over and which aren't and so there's like all these different elements going into this and so um the weird thing with this particular shutdown for me is that, you know, we talk about shutdowns all the time on the show and how there's a risk of them. And every time I have contingency plans available to me, the state's putting out information about what to expect. And we didn't have that with this. There was not contingency plans. There weren't those, like, emails going out from the state on what they were expecting. And so, like, you kind of were flying blind on this up until the moment that we were shutting down. We were finally starting to see some of those. agency-wide plans of like what would happen. Danielle Bataglia, Capitol Hill correspondent for the News and Observer and Charlotte Observer here with us on due south. Danielle, I guess we'll go a little bit further down the list of priorities. But for those with scheduled flights, is TSA standing by going through our stuff? Is it business as usual at RDU and other airports across the state?

So what I've just told a friend of mine is I think you're going to be okay if you're flying out this weekend, next weekend. I would expect longer lines because TSA employees are supposed to be showing up to work, but, you know, in a limited capacity. So do you expect, you know, to have those delays. But what we saw in 2018 when we had this 35-day shutdown is that TSA workers kind of got tired of showing up to work and dealing with... cranky people and so did air traffic control. And that's really what made the shutdown end was that they started calling out of work and jamming up the skies. And that was what made lawmakers say we can't do this anymore. That's reopen. Significant delays on the airfront six years ago now. That last shutdown that you mentioned, it started in late 2018 and extended into 2019. Do you care to draw any obvious contrasts from that shutdown, which, as you know, lasted more than a month. It was a long shutdown and where we are today, reminder day two of this federal government shutdown. Yeah, it was a 35-day shutdown and started in late December, went into January. It was again, President Trump was in office. It was his first term. We're now in his second term. At that point, they were fighting over the border wall and whether to fund that or not. So it was, again, a funding thing this time. Democrats are fighting to basically put back into place medical coverage for... various aspects, but one of the big things is the Medicaid cuts that were in the one big beautiful bill. They're also fighting for a provision in the Affordable Care Act that gives, basically helps people with low income. And so these are some of the things that they're fighting for really hard to put back into place. And Republicans are saying, you know, we passed a clean bill, which essentially is they're trying to extend. the budget deadline to operate the federal government's funding how it was last year for another about seven weeks to give them more time to negotiate. But Democrats are saying, unless you do these things that we're demanding, we're not going to pass this. And this is an interesting situation because you actually see them, you know, neither one are willing to budge right now. And it's kind of a game of chicken at this point of who wants to blink first and you don't want to look weak. And so, like, I don't know how you, I don't know who's going to do it and at what point that's going to be. Right. Right. And we have all sorts of other variables happening. There's this pressure campaign from the White House. Money is being frozen for some major infrastructure projects in New York City as one point. You mentioned Medicaid a moment ago. Almost one in four North Carolinians is on Medicaid. So this political spat, a very real political spat, is going to have impacts across the United States on people of...

you know, who affiliate with both parties and who are not political, so on and so forth. It's just going to impact a lot, lot of people. You mentioned the stalemate at this point. Reminder to listeners, North Carolina has two U.S. senators, both Republicans, 14 House members, 10 Republicans, four Democrats. What, if anything of note or interest are any of them saying at this point about the shutdown? So the three of our Democrats had a news conference together yesterday. That would be the three women, Representative Valerie Fushi, Alma Adams, and Deborah Ross, sorry, whenever I try to list off more than one at the same time, one of them always gets dropped. What I found interesting was that Representative Don Davis wasn't there, which could potentially be because he's up for re-election and he has a actual. real race to deal with. But they are holding the party line. They are not bulking or budging from what Democrats want. I actually really was interested in what Senator Thom Tillis told me right before the shutdown. He tends to be voice of reason, I think, in the party a little bit, which I feel like I'm going to get so many hate now for saying that. But he told me, you know, if we had put anything into this CR, which is the continuing resolution, DC speak here, if we put anything in this that would have, you know, upset Democrats, I would totally understand where they're coming from and I would be on their side, basically. But. They, like, we had a clean bill. Like, we are trying to negotiate with them, which is a little iffy because they didn't actually try to negotiate with Democrats. But he's saying, we're asking for seven more weeks to negotiate with you and you're not giving us that. So I was actually fascinated by his own comment on that. It is a massive blame game for sure. And I do think another variable that we have not noted here, but it's worth noting, is that this. Similar scenario emerged back in the spring. Democrats appeared reared and ready to shut down the government. They decided not to at the last minute, and they obviously have taken a much different path here. Danielle, we're almost out of time, but I'm going to do a little parlor question here on the way out. Over under 35 days. Okay, that was the length of the last government shutdown. Are we going to be longer, shorter, or are we going to have the same shutdown this time? You don't know, but I'm asking you to, you know, go at the crystal ball. I feel like we won't be less than two weeks, but I do feel like knowing President Trump, he's going to want to beat his last record. So I feel like it will be over 35. That's one way to look at it, extending your own record. Danielle Bataglia is Capitol Hill correspondent at McClatchie. Her byline appears often in the N&O and Charlotte Observer. Danielle, thank you as always. Thank you. Still ahead, a UNC Chapel Hill researcher shares what state legislatures have done in recent sessions across the country to address crime. And later this hour, the melding of Seoul and Zydeco takes a Durham stage this weekend. We'll get a preview of that concert. Standby. This is Duesouth on listener-supported WUNC.

Welcome back. It's due south on WUNC. I'm Jeff Tiberi. Sitting on the governor's desk today is a crime bill sent to him last week by the Republican-led General Assembly. The legislation came about following the murder of Irina Zarutka, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who was fatally stabbed while riding Charlotte's light rail in August. Governor Stein has until midnight tomorrow to sign, veto, or let the bill become law without his signature. Crime bills are nothing new at the General Assembly or at legislative bodies across the country. They are, in fact, quite common. Between 2015 and 2018, there were thousands and thousands of crime and punishment bills introduced in the United States. Now, a little bit more than a sixth of the proposals ultimately saw the finish line and were enacted into law. Carissa Byrne Hessek is a UNC School of Law professor and was central in a recent analysis of a collection of legislation, an analysis that looked at more than 11,000 bills. That analysis is part of the UNC School of Law Prosecutors and Politics Project. Professor Hessek is here to tell us a little bit more. Welcome to Do South. Oh, thank you so much. Let's start with Irina's law. This is a piece of legislation that has several notable provisions with it sitting before the governor. Walk through us just briefly, how you look at this bill in this moment. Yeah, thanks. I'll say that I think the bill that got sent through the General Assembly was clearly designed to try to respond to the terrible stabbing on the Charlotte light rail. So as you probably know, the man who is accused of the stabbing suffers from mental health issues. And at the time of the stabbing, he was on pretrial release for... A misdemeanor charge, nothing violent, but he sort of made a false call to 911. So the bill, I think, is designed, pretty clearly designed to try to respond to the stabbing itself in three specific ways. First, it creates an aggravating sentencing factor for both capital and non-capital crimes if they're committed on public transportation. In layperson's terms, if you commit a crime on public transit, then the sentencing can be elevated. We'll be higher than if you hadn't. Okay. The second thing that it does is it diverts or it rather repurposes some existing funding to make sure that that funding is used to study mental illness in the criminal justice system. And then the third thing it does is it changes the pretrial release system to make it more difficult for certain people to be released and especially to make it more difficult for them to be released without any sort of cash or monetary guarantee.

So the governor, who is, of course, the former attorney general, was a state senator earlier, a lawyer in his own right. This is a bill that is, it's not partisan per se. It's not clearly a left-leaning or right-leaning bill, at least me as the non-counselor in the room would point toward. I mean, it's complicated, and sometimes a governor will sit on a bill, and we think we have a pretty good sense of what they're going to do. I don't know if that's the case here. This is a robust piece of legislation that deals with varying elements of crime. I think that's a fair way to characterize this bill. And I'd say I agree with you. It doesn't seem clearly partisan. I'd also say that even for those people who want to have a less punitive criminal justice system, this and I should add no idea if that's what Governor Stein wants or not. Sure, sure, sure. You're not an advisor. But this bill, even there, I think, represents a bit of a compromise between sort of traditional sort of punitive responses to crime and, you know, less traditional sort of root causes responses here. And there I'm pointing to the funding for mental health issues, which I think is designed to not make the system more harsh, but instead to try to come up with solutions for the future. Okay. Proactive versus reactive? Is that maybe a fair way of talking about it? I think that's a fair way to risk to talk about it. And we might come back to that here in a little while. Okay. So that's the micro in this moment. Irina's Bill. We'll have more for you, the listener, as we get kind of a final word from the governor on that in the next day or two. But let's back up this 50 state legislative analysis that some of the folks at UNC law undertook. They looked at legislation from 2015 to 2018. I actually may be surprisingly. I want to start with the why. Why look at legislation on crime across 50? Like we're so different, all these little incubators. Like, why? That's a great question. So I lead the prosecutors and politics project, which is designed to sort of study the intersection of criminal justice and democracy. And most of the work that we do centers on. prosecutors and largely elected prosecutors like we have here in North Carolina. Most states elect their prosecutors. So we did a study several years ago about prosecutors lobbying in state legislatures. And we looked at... really everything that they lobbied about funding issues, you know, changing rules about when police can be sued, really anything that sort of touched on criminal justice more broadly. And in the course of that study, we saw that there were a lot of bills being introduced to either change what's a crime or... how broadly crimes are defined, and also to change what punishments are. So this project grew out of that. Instead of looking at prosecutor lobbying, we really just wanted to learn more about these bills and how it is that the states have been changing their criminal laws. Okay. So we only have, you know, 13 or 14 minutes here. And we can only do so much. Yeah. But there were, I want to give the actual number. I thought it was fun. 11,476 crime and punishment bills that are a part of this.

There are many takeaways, but I want to start with leniency versus punitive legislation. Start there. And tell us what your takeaway or takeaways are as we think about lenient versus punitive. Yeah. Punitive is very popular. Very, very popular. Way more bills introduced, like three and a half times more bills introduced that were punitive, right, that we're going to expand what's criminal or make punishments harsher as compared to lenient bills. A fun thing that we found, though, was that mixed bills, bills that did both, there weren't very many of them at all, but they passed at a much higher rate. These compromise bills do a lot better than bills that would just make the system harsher or make it more lenient. Is that the art of politics if you care to step out of your lane and offer analysis there? And you don't have to. That's a good question. It's hard to say. I mean, you would think that if this were... If people saw this as a path to success, there might be more of these bills, but there were only like 400 of them as compared, you know, out of like the 11,000. It's a lot. Yeah. Yeah. But I guess maybe maybe what happened is something got introduced and they were able to get more votes by adjusting it. It's hard to say. Okay. Another takeaway from this analysis that you all did, it looks at 2015 to 2018, significantly more legislative effort was devoted to changing the scope of criminal law rather than to adjusting punishments. Yes. Unpack that, please. Yeah, so we spoke with some people about this finding because it's really surprising, especially because we also looked at what crimes were. the subject of legislation, and it was things that are already criminal, like assault, sex offenses, drugs. It's not that these things were legal and we needed to suddenly make them illegal. So we talked to some folks who were really involved in legislation in the states, and they said usually what happens is voters will be upset about something. they'll contact their local lawmaker, and that person will respond by creating a new type of crime, which is really just an aggravated form of a crime that already existed. So that seems to be what it is. It's not changing the punishments so much as it's adjusting definitions to create a harsher crime. And someone suggested they might do this because some states... require a write-up of what a bill would cost. And the write-up, when you're increasing the punishments, it's very clear what it will cost because they know how many people are already in jail for something and they can give you these fiscal predictions, which are then very negative. But if you create a new crime, the fiscal note isn't as negative. Oh, interesting. Yeah.

legislation, huge spectrum here, but as it pertains to crime legislation, let me pause right there. Crime legislation, like, what's your best word for what we're talking? Is it criminal justice? Is it? Yeah, I'd call it crime and punishment legislation. So the stuff that's just changing the punishments, I'd say is the punishment legislation, the stuff that's changing the definition of crimes, I'd call it crime legislation. Is it typically expensive legislation, or is there really a gamut here? A wide gamut. So... Changing what the criminal law is, we don't really know what the cost of that's going to be because just... So many people are involved in whether someone ends up in prison. Just because the state changes the definition of a crime doesn't mean a prosecutor is going to bring those new charges. And even if they do, aggravated charges are usually what prosecutors use for plea bargaining. So the Washington posted a big expose a few years ago about how prosecutors across the country weren't charging hate crimes. And the prosecutors are like, yeah, we don't have to. We just threaten it. And then we get them to plead guilty to the other stuff. Okay. Carissa Byrne Hessek is here with us on Due South, Professor of Law at the UNC School of Law, and we're talking about crime and punishment and a recent analysis of proposed legislation and some of the legislation that was enacted across 50 states. Another takeaway from your analysis reads as follows. There is significant geographic and political diversity in the states that were more punitive. And the states that were less punitive, is this a rural thing? Is this a big population thing? Is this a blue versus a red thing? What do you mean there's significant geographic and political diversity? Yeah. Is it just a smattering, just truly random? It was really difficult for us to find any rhyme or reason to this. I mean, states that have reputations as being really sort of harsh law and order places like Louisiana. In the time period that we studied, they were actually in the process of something called justice reinvestment, which was trying to. take a hard look at their laws and decide what made more sense. At the same time, a state like New York wasn't involved in this process. And they were just introducing punitive stuff left, right and center. And that's really all they passed. But it... I don't want to say this is just Louisiana and New York. There were states that sort of conformed to our expectations and then ones that really didn't. But just to underscore something you just said there, that potentially, potentially pushback though, has something to do with the four-year window you're looking at relative to the hundred years of how Louisiana or New York has governed. It not only has something, you're right. It definitely has something to do with our... with the time period of our study. But it's also that we were measuring the changes in laws. So if Louisiana already had a five-year penalty for, you know, selling heroin and New York had a two-year penalty and increased it to three, New York was going to be shown as punitive in our data set, and Louisiana wasn't. Got it. Because it was about measuring changes rather than sort of what was necessarily happening.

We went micro, we went macro. Let's go, I don't know, whatever the medium word is here. For North Carolina, how does what played out in North Carolina, 2015 to 2018? mirror or break or stand out to your eyes as we think about crime and punishment analysis? Yeah, North Carolina was sort of middle of the pack, which is one of the reasons that we like to do these big national studies with all of the state analysis associated with it is it allows folks in a state to take a look at how their state is doing as compared to other states. Now, I couldn't tell you if that's what North Carolina always is like. I mean, we certainly see them right now with Arena's law. a bill that we would have scored as a punitive bill. Okay. Even though it's adjusting some funding, the only real change to the criminal law here that's happening is they're increasing punishment by adding that aggravating factor about public transportation. Interesting. And I would just note briefly that 2015 to 2018, the legislature was under a Republican supermajority. You go back 20 years, they were under a Democratic control. Well, I'm hesitating to say the party and power can influence this, but it doesn't necessarily influence it in a certain way. That's right. That's right. We had sort of big examples of blue states being really punitive. We did work with some political scientists at UNC that did sort of a sophisticated statistical analysis of our data and found that Republican legislatures were more likely to pass punitive legislation, all else being equal than Democratic legislatures. We would have expected to see a lot more sort of partisan indicators than we did. So it wasn't that blue states, for example, were more likely to pass the lenient legislation. 2015, 2018, just to remind folks here, this is the bridge from the second Obama term to the first half or the first portion of Trump's first term. And with due respect, I mean, you're doing an analysis. It takes a long time to do. But I do wonder this window, 2015 to 2018, if it feels foreign or far away at this point based on the moment we're in here in 2025. Yeah. So I think that that is right, but not because of the... the sort of presidential changes that you pointed out, but instead because of the crime spike that we saw in 2020, I think the time period that we studied was more likely to see reform-oriented legislation than a lot of other periods in time because there'd been a huge, that really had there been a huge crime decline. But the public, I think, was also in a place where bipartisan criminal justice reform was very popular. States were worried about the cost of prisons in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008. real appetite for criminal justice reform. What I will say is since the crime spike in 2020, we've seen a huge dip in crime again over the past four years. Violent crime and property crime are at historic lows. I don't think that that message has necessarily gotten through to the public. But if it does, we could see another era like this as states try to revisit the decisions that they're making. Because one thing we didn't see is we didn't see.

when we were looking at the bills back when we looked at prosecutor lobbying, we didn't see people necessarily talking about how to improve public safety. This is a report about how they changed criminal law. And I bet most people assume that changing criminal law is how you protect public safety. But there's a ton of research suggesting that that's actually just not true. There might be some overlay there in the Venn diagram, but. There's a lot of separation. I just want to run that back. A lot of separation. When we've seen these huge drops in crime, the folks who do this really sophisticated statistical analysis, they found it's not because our punishments got longer. It's not because new stuff got criminalized. It's instead because other things were happening, stuff that doesn't look like criminal justice reform that was bringing down crime rates. Carissa Bern Hessick, professor of UNC law, professor at UNC law, is here with us on due south chatting about the prosecutors and politics project. Three and a half minutes, I think this is plenty of time maybe to answer this next question. What would help reduce crime rates? Oh, that's a great question. And there's a bunch of stuff out there. A researcher at the University of Chicago, John Roman, he did this wonderful blog post, 100 things you could do to reduce crime that don't have really much to do with changing your criminal laws. And it was stuff like, you know, adopting daylight savings time. going forward, just year rounds, because it's lighter out when people are coming home. I'm going to have to find this list of 100. It's fascinating. I'll have to send it to you. But it's like just having that extra hour of daylight, you get less crime because people aren't coming home when it's dark. More people are out on the streets. And if there are more people on the streets, then you just don't have as much sort of crime as a crime of opportunity. Yeah, crowded streets actually suppress crime. Social science kind of stuff. It is social science. That's right. Okay. Oh, that's really interesting. What surprised you in your analysis here? What did you learn? I mean, I'm sure you learned a lot, but give us something. Yeah. I was really surprised to see how often lawmakers created new crimes. Because they knew that... Created new crime. Just go next level there briefly. What do you mean created new crimes? Created new crimes. Like created a crime of... So let's say, for example, the North Carolina legislature, instead of in response to the stabbing in Charlotte, instead of saying let's add an aggravating factor, instead said, let's create a new crime of assault on public transportation, right? Or, you know, stabbing on public transportation. I was really surprised to see state lawmakers doing that. probably because I didn't know about the fiscal notes. Yeah. But also because if something's already illegal, I just don't know why it would seem responsive to make it illegal once again. Yeah. Revenge porn comes to mind. That was one. I was a legislative reporter during the time you did this analysis, 2015 to 2018. I don't remember if it passed then or not. But that was certainly something that was proposed.

I guess, just 30 seconds or so. Yeah. Whether it's that or were there any other new crimes that you saw with some level of prevalence? Brand new stuff. We saw a couple of places trying to deal with drones, right? Drones were kind of new. They were getting really popular. So we did see a little bit of stuff where it was something new had come up and it wasn't necessarily a crime and the legislatures were trying to clarify. Carissa Byrne Hessek is a professor at the UNC School of Law and was involved central to this analysis of more than 11,000 bills that were introduced between 2015 and 2018. It's part of the Prosecutors and Politics Project. Professor Hessek, thank you for the conversation. Thank you. All right. Still ahead. This hour, as we send you toward 1 o'clock, we get a preview of a concert coming up in Durham tomorrow night. It melds soul and Zidico music. We'll hear more in a moment. This is D-South on listener-supported WDUNC. Stand by.

I'm Leonita Inge, and this is Due South on WUNC. That's singer-songwriter Marcella Simeon, performing with the group Marcella and her lovers. And here's Marcella on her solo album. May I hear of this family bloodline. forwards and backwards through time. Simeon plays piano, harmonium, accordion, guitar, drums, to name a few. Bringing different skills, sounds, and musical traditions together is her special sauce. From her creole roots and Zidico upbringing in Louisiana to the soul music in her new home of Memphis, Simeon is always stitching together something new while also staying true to her heritage. Marcella Simeon will be performing this weekend in Durham as part of the duo Magnolias with Chicago-based fiddle player and singer-songwriter Anne Harris. They'll be at Durham Central Park this Friday, October 3rd. But before that, Marcella Simeon joins me from Memphis. Marcella, welcome to do south. Hi, Leonita. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so honored to be here. Wow. You know, please. Ancestry, history are so much a part of your music, and I hear it. I've heard your music refer to as Swamp Soul. Does that feel right to you? Yeah, you know, it's something that is constantly evolving as, you know, if you're an artist, that's what you can hope for, you know, that you're constantly growing and your genre is growing with you as you change and progress throughout your life. So that one has stuck and has stayed and feels like a solid definition of what I do. But it's always changing and building on that, you know. Take me back to your childhood in Louisiana. Your life was infused with music from the beginning. We have to mention your father. It really was, yeah. I'm really lucky to be the daughter of Terence Simeon. He's a two-time Grammy award-winning Zydico artist and Zytoe music, for those of you who don't know, is the indigenous music of the Louisiana Creoles. And it is a mix of all sorts of incredible sounds. And he really was a great inspiration for me throughout my life. And really showed me how to make this happen, you know, to become an artist from a grassroots, you know.

level like to to make it your career to have a sustaining career in music it's it can be challenging you know a lot of people have a tendency to discourage other other you know parents discourage their kids yeah don't do what i did yeah right it was too hard right right and they there was some of that but um They, you know, they wanted to nudge me and to make sure that I got a college degree, which I'm very grateful for. So I did that. I moved to Memphis, Tennessee when I was 18 to attend the Memphis College of Art. And that school is what brought me to Memphis, but the music is really what kept me here and the warmth of the community here. And so it really has been an incredible journey thus far. And yeah, growing up, I mean, I was totally immersed in... music and entertainment and the arts. And I just, my parents really gave me the freedom to explore all art forms. I did visual art, dance, theater, music. And really, all of that is really fused into what I do today. That's why I need to ask you about the sounds of your childhood. You know, when you think back to growing up, like, what did you hear? I know you heard your father play. But, um, What else did you listen to? Because when I think of Memphis, you know, you're so close to that, actually, that great Mississippi Blues Trail. And, you know, makes me think of Clarksdale, Mississippi. Even when I was young, I even lived in Mount Bayou, Mississippi. And you can't get to those places really without going to Memphis first, right? I mean. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. I mean, I grew up in South Louisiana, and so it's a very unique environment down there. And so the Francophone culture, you know, you'd hear French in the household with my grandparents and my father. And I had a really, you know, like a master class in music education just from being around it, you know, like. I'd hear my dad showed me the greats, you know, Ken Ray Fontno, Amadei Ardwan, Boasek Arduin, these people who really founded that style of music, the Creoles, Ida-Co music, Clifton Chenier, Jean-Dela-Foss, so many greats that really founded that genre. But, of course, on top of that, we were listening to world music, Afro-Caribbean beats. I think of those things growing up. I think of, like, Daniel Lanois. I think of... Oh, gosh, my mom turned me on to everything from Grace Jay Jones to the pretenders and everything in between. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And, you know, I really, I feel lucky that I not only got exposed to that music just listening around the house or in the car, but I'd go to these events and festivals and performing art centers when my dad was playing and get to meet people like Fats Domino as a baby. Dr. John, Art Neville. You know, these legends, I didn't realize growing up, you know, I knew they were special and respected people because of how my dad spoke of them. Oh, did I read Taj Mahal once saying happy birthday to you? He did, yeah. My dad is a regular on the legendary rhythm and blues crews. It's a chartered ship that, you know, does blues and roots music. And it was on one of those charters that Taj got up on stage and...

They presented me a birthday cake and say me happy birthday. It was fun. But he's been a longtime mentor of my dad's. You know, my dad's looked up to him for many years, and they've had many, you know, great conversations. And he's just a wealth of knowledge. He's an encyclopedia on history and music history and culture. And it's just an incredible, just wise tree of a human. So when did you first pick up an instrument? And what was it? It was my voice first. And I was singing before I was forming words. My parents tell me all the time. And that was really the first. The first instrument for me was my voice. And then I started taking piano lessons around six, seven years old. But there were like instruments everywhere in the house. So I was always picking things up and, you know, trying stuff on for a little while. But... You know, piano was my first entry in, and then I picked up guitar as like a preteen teenager, and then accordion once I moved to Memphis. It was actually a parting gift. My dad gave me one of his longtime accordions and taught me to... songs on the porch of my, you know, where I moved to my first college apartment. And I'll never forget that. And when I, when they left, you know, when I would get a little homesick, even though Memphis is just eight hours north of, you know, of where I'm from, I would play the accordion and write songs on it. And it made me feel closer to my people and my culture. And it's really been my... this symbol of ancestry and legacy. And I'm just so proud to get to play it and carry it. I'm speaking with Memphis bass, singer, songwriter, performer, Marcella Simeon, who will be performing in Durham this weekend. You know, I did not ask you, what's your favorite instrument? But I know you have your accordion with you. Yeah, I do. I do. I have it with me. And I'd love to do. A tune off the new album, if you'd like to hear. Yes, I would. I'm ready. It's actually on this antique accordion that's almost 100 years old. And when I recorded this particular song that's a dedication to my great-grandmother, Lelia, I intentionally only used... instruments and sounds that she would have heard when she was alive. She was born in 1900 and passed away in 1965. And so when she was young and raising a family, you know, I thought about her in those moments and things that she would have heard. So we just have stomping and clapping this accordion. And...

bugs, sounds, outdoor sounds. And the frotois, of course, which is the other indigenous instrument to this style of music. It's based off of a washboard that people would wash their clothes with, but it was turned into like this vest structure. And recently, I've been really writing with her in mind and really meditating. on her contributions to our family. You know, Lilia was a strong and beautiful Louisiana Creole woman. She gave birth to 15 children. And they lived entirely off the land in Mallet, Louisiana. And... They made their own soap, their own clothes, and they farmed and rode on horseback and really, you know, were spiritual people and family people. And I think about... the wealth of knowledge that she shared with her children on how to survive as biracial people of color and people of color in rural Louisiana during really challenging times. And I think about the groundwork that she laid for all of us so that we can live freely and share our gifts with the world.

Hydrated, satiated, emancipated. Can I tell you about the will that resides in my mind? I invited. I invited all my insecurity. over fatigue. And they told me about this other reality that had nothing to do with me. This is my direct line to the divine. Said, I know it's risky, babe, but you got to let go. Let go. And I know it's risky to be.

Say she Hey. then we pray to save our souls. On escrowing, we are slaves, we are slaves, but someday we'll be free. That's what my... Beautiful. What an honor. You honored her well. And I know your parents, your father, your family, they think so. I'm sure they appreciate. Wow. Thank you very much. And, you know, just tell me just a little bit more about this album. It's titled, To Ben to the Will of a Dream that's being fulfilled. That's quite a title. So tell me a little bit more about what that means. Well, you know, the lyric is in that last song that I played, and it really was... A journey of, you know, I was on, as we all are, you know, throughout our 20s and into my early 30s. I've been on this journey of really understanding myself and really standing in my identity and being and embodying that and feeling confident and self-assured, which is, you know, of course we don't feel that way every day, but the goal is to, is to. show up in the world that way, you know. And I really, I really have been, you know, striving for that and working towards, you know, just being, standing in my power, you know. And that's really been a constant theme throughout this album that I put out last year. And it, you know, I've had. A dream where Lelia, you know, showed up out of nowhere. I was going through a difficult time. This was kind of towards the tail end of 2020, the pandemic that we all went through, you know. Yeah. And those were profoundly challenging times. And they were also a time of awakening and and. a reintroduction to self, you know, because I really was such a, I was playing like, you know, 170 plus shows a year. And really every, every week I was engaging and interfacing with people all the time, you know, and in person. And I didn't realize how much I really, you know, needed that connection with people in person, you know, until it was gone. Obviously, we all felt that. But, yeah, I really was just.

struggling with some things about myself. And it was a lot of, it was layered. But I had this dream where Lilia showed up and kind of just said, let go and let, let life unfold. You know, there was always a lot of... pushing with me. I was always pushing myself or always really like striving for the next thing, which is great. It's wonderful to be ambitious, but it's also really important to sit and enjoy what you have accomplished or what you currently are experiencing in your life, you know. And we hear it in your music, you know. Thank you. I mean, Creole soul blues, folk, it's all in there. It's woven together beautifully, in an ancestral type of way. And I know that the crowd will definitely appreciate that. Marcella Simeon will be performing along with Chicago-based fiddle player and singer-songwriter Anne Harris. The duo is called Magnolias. And they'll be at Durham Central Park this Friday night. October 3rd is part of WNCU's Playlist Concert Series. Marcella, thank you so much for being with me on Due South. Thank you so much, Leonita. I look forward to seeing you all there. Thank you. And also a special thanks to WKNO in Memphis. I'm Leonita Inge. You've been listening to Mike DeWine South on WUNC.

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