Nothing’s sacred

Before this article goes any further, Kareem Daniels needs to get something on the record: President Barack Obama stole one of his jokes. In 2012, the stand-up comedian live-tweeted jokes during the presidential debates between Mitt Romney and Obama. Days later, Daniels says that Obama made headlines with one of those same jokes at a rally, riffing on Romney’s tendency to forget his political convictions. That bit about “Romnesia”? “Until somebody proves otherwise that they didn’t get it from my Twitter feed, that’s mine,” Daniels says. “And it sucks as a comic because you can’t do the bit again after the president does it.”

Fortunately, Daniels has plenty of other jokes. Intellectual takes on politics and race relations are the backbone of Daniels’ humor. This month, he’s showcasing these interests at The Chitlin’ Circuit—a three-week exhibition of visual art, comedy, music, poetry and films examining the history of black entertainment. The event, hosted by the Brickhouse Gallery from January 10 to January 31, is named after the string of venues where black musicians and entertainers performed during the era of racial segregation in the United States. The multimedia show is a collaboration with artists Milton Bowens and Angela Mayes. Daniels will host comedy sets at the gallery, and also moderate a panel discussion on the state of black entertainment on Saturday, January 24.

Your humor focuses on subjects like race and politics. Is anything too sacred to joke about?

No. There’s nothing too sacred to joke about. Sometimes it takes a joke to shift the conversation on something, but the timing of that joke has to be perfect and the joke itself has to be pretty damn good.

How do you keep your sense of humor in this time of heavy news and Ferguson protests?

This stuff is not new to black people. For us, it’s another day. For white people or other people it’s “Oh my God!” You know, with the Ferguson grand jury, I called it. I said, “Gonna be 12 jurors? It’s going to be nine whites, two blacks and an 'other.’” But the only thing I got wrong was that it ended up being three blacks. I didn’t know that because I’m psychic. I know that because that’s how it works.

Wow. I know many people were shocked by that verdict.

I was reading an article that said black people deal with reality, white people deal with facts. They’re two different things. You think things are supposed to work a certain way and you use your logic to say, “If this happens, then this will follow” but that’s not ever the way it works.

Does an audience’s racial makeup affect your set list?

I pretty much try to be Kareem all the time. I think that’s where you get yourself in trouble, when you try to switch it up and not be true to yourself. I tried to switch it up for a black audience and that was the worst set I’ve ever had. I’m not doing that again.

Ever get audience pushback?

One night after a show I had a lady come up and say, “I don’t see color.” And I was like, “I hope we never meet at a traffic light.”

How did The Chitlin’ Circuit show happen?

It’s me, Milton Bowens and Angela Mayes. Milton is a really accomplished artist. He works with Mayor [Kevin] Johnson and teaches art in the schools, but he’s actually a big enough artist that he could just paint. … Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant are some of the people who are collectors of his work. But he does a lot of—his art is like my comedy.

In what sense?

It’s political. It’s about race. One of the things he uses as a background a lot is slave insurance policies. He uses the documents in his artwork. So that gives you a different feel of what really was.

So the show itself came about through a conversation we had about the Chitlin' Circuit and different artists I thought maybe he should try to do something about. Like, Jimi Hendrix was on the Chitlin' Circuit and he used to perform with Little Richard, but Little Richard kicked him out because he was doing too much.

So we had a conversation about those kinds of things and black economics and how during the Depression, there were still black people that were making money, when the money was kept within the community.

The show’s mission includes the “importance of controlling our historical cultural narratives.” Say more about that?

White people steal everything. Rock ’n’ roll was born out of the Chitlin’ Circuit. Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Johnny Ace, Big Mama Thornton, they all were from the Chitlin’ Circuit. Doing research, I found out that a lot of people who later became famous—like Elvis Presley—Elvis’ whole style came from people he watched on the Chitlin’ Circuit.

It went from R&B Chitlin' Circuit music to rock 'n' roll because Alan Freed named it “rock 'n' roll” and white people kind of took off with it. Now you hardly see any black people in rock 'n' roll. … So, just keeping that cultural narrative what it is.

In the next 10 years, hip-hop might be called something else and it will have been invented by Eminem and Macklemore. And I like Eminem and Macklemore. It's never the artists themselves who appropriate it. It's the people behind them, who are trying to make money off of everybody.