By Nadine

Ife Lilly by Nadine Gibson

I was given the unique opportunity to meet, work with, and learn from local Seattle artist Ife Lilly.

More or less local to the Seattle area, he along with a twin brother was adopted at a young age, and grew up with the hopes of playing pro basketball. While in college, he uncovered his deep connection with Orisha values and spirituality. This uncovering has led him through various life changing events. It’s crystal clear that he has risen throughout this journey as a mentor, leader, teacher, artist, and lifelong student.

While he works as a teacher with youth in the Seattle area, he also provides a collection of both spiritually and culturally rich opportunities through Orisha dance, song, and drum in the local Seattle area. During one particular class, I was able to experience just how vibrant, connected, and real the Orisha and artist community is in the city. His teaching comes from a place of truly infinite love. His students match his authenticity, humor, and spirit of dance creating opportunity for community and connection. Through his art, Ife is a light for both youth and elders alike.

 

Question:

Alrighty cool, so we talked a little bit in the zoom call about about kind of your first initiation or not even initiation, but first introduction, rather, to the Yoruba culture in general and then also the dancing and music that came along with it. You kind of want to describe that story again starting from college or starting even from your childhood and adoption?

Answer:

Yeah, that’s going way back, but yeah, I mean just a little bit about adoption. I was adopted in Portland, OR. I come from a huge family there. My mother passed, I have a twin brother, we were left on the hospital steps. But I was lucky because somebody got me, you know? I stayed in foster care there for a little bit, then I moved probably, I want to say, like at the age of three I got adopted, and I’ve lived all over this country, in New Orleans, Greensboro, NC, Minneapolis, Shytown, Downstate, Illinois, DC. So yeah, that was that, you know, there was no interest in Orisha and that type of stuff in my family.

 

Q: Did you even know that you were connected?

A: I didn’t. At that point I didn’t know. I mean, I just found my blood relatives like three years ago, So I found out a lot of information then but like come on, I didn’t know any of that type of stuff.

I was like on the typical, almost a stereotypical path, hoping for college ball. Said that type of stuff. And then I got into Orisha in college. Then I studied at Stanford University, I Went to BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), then Canada to study there in a Conservatory. Then you know? I go to Cuba all the time now, not now because of COVID and stuff, but pretty much that’s kind of how that happened, how I developed my study, and when I started with it. I came to Orisha as an escape from racism, to escape from the conditions of oppression in this country. Some of which I was conscious of, but much of them I wasn’t, but it had a great effect on me. So I came to Orisha to study, like usually people do one form like drum, dance or singing and I did 3.

I became a fundamentalist: if you made a mistake with the drum, I’m gonna snap your finger off, that type… Looking for structure, you know? And then I kind of kept that fundamentalist state of mind, and I started to travel to New York, LA, and different places to study. I went to Oakland, where I had an awakening. It was life changing for the better. Because what I experienced in Oakland was our people treating each other poorly. Like you know, we are suffering. You go to these communities like the Orisha community and they were treating each other badly, hustling each other. It was just bad. So I had a choice of becoming more fundamental, or start to question my relationship to God. I basically have what they call spirituality Dark Knight or healing crisis, something like that. For about three weeks I was physically ill, my world was upside down, and from that moment I began to just study the universe directly, study spirit directly. And I learned a lot and I haven’t stopped studying since then.

I experience religion and human beings differently now, because I understand that the suffering that those people were inflicting on each other was because they were suffering and because they were hurt. So in that learning process I learned how to heal, how to access that energy and just be a healing force on this planet.

 

Q: What else?

A: So that’s my process. I’ve taught Orisha dance in Seattle for 30 years. And I have a spiritual community. I’m not a spiritual leader, because that’s a game, everyone has direct access to. But we have a beautiful spiritual community and what I want to do with Orisha, the healing that I want to do happens regularly. Hopefully it’ll be happening more now just because they’ve relaxed some of the COVID restrictions. So there’s that, you know, I go to Cuba all the time and when I can, to study. And my godmother is there (my godmother in the religion), my Godbrother is there, the drum you get sworn to certain drums, we play a ceremony, that’s there.

That’s kind of in a nutshell, that’s kind of my journey.

 

Q: Do you incorporate your culture or connection to spirit in your teaching with youth?

A: Everything, well, to me there’s no division. There’s no place where there is no spirit. One of the main, and I don’t mean religion. I don’t mean like you have to do this and you have to do that, but what I mean is that, one thing that is sorely missing in our culture and education is experiencing students and youths as complete human beings, you feel me? Not just like ok you’re gonna get this done. We are going to meet this benchmark, whatever, compete, and all these things. There’s a huge missing part which is the relationship to the world, the complete human being. Forgiveness.

And what is an alternative to competition? Creativity. It doesn’t matter if it’s somebody who’s classified as a student or youth, I’m gonna engage with them as a human being. Which takes away the limitations of we having to be teachers or students and that puts you on a track to do particular things.

I’m comfortable with nebulous quality, with confusion, with not knowing, and that being, that it’s ok for us to be figuring it out. And that is the process that’s happening. What’s the end? I don’t know. I don’t care. But at this moment that we’re figuring things out, I think that’s part of intelligence. To be smart is a different thing to me. Smart is like remembering facts and all these types of things. But can you engage in the moment? Intelligence is being with other human beings. Specially these days with social media. There’s so many things that are inhumane that are normalized now.

 

Q: That it is normalized. Right?

A: Yeah, it changes us. It’s like youth. I mean y’all. I mean I don’t know about you, but you know you seem like your energy is grounded. I know that you are able to. Manage your exposure to horrific social media. You feel me?That’s you, but many, many youths cannot. They’re addicted and it is hurting them spiritually, mentally and everything.

 

Q: You need to get it out. You need to put it out there.

A: Yeah, I do that as part of spirituality. It’s being able to say you know this person is a human being and we’re not just going to be like we don’t give a damn if they’re watching videos of people getting beat down all day, it’s like no. You can step in there and have a relationship with these human beings and help them. That’s how I feel about education, and how my spirituality infuses education; spirituality infuses everything I do. It’s different than religion. Is starkly different. Religion is the codification of spirituality, to try to put a thumbtack in spirituality so we can be like “this is this, this is this, and this is this”. In reality, spirit is unintelligible. That’s how I experience it, so nobody can really say nothing about it. We can experience and we can have our flavors like Orisha, Buddhism, blah blah blah, but spirit is everything.

Uh, education, what else can we talk about?

 

Q: Do you view yourself as an artist? Or do you resonate with the title or the term artist?

A: Yeah, I’ll call myself an artist just because of labels and terms. So, I don’t identify the labels in terms. I don’t want to dedicate any energy being like “no, you gotta call me that”. I’m an artist and like debating all that type of stuff. I know that I’m a spirit, so you can call me Freddy Lou. I don’t care. You know what I’m saying? That doesn’t mean anything to me, right? What is important is how an artist functions, how I function as an artist. And for me my path is to function as an artist, using my artistry as a vessel for healing and for extemporaneous communion with humanity. Period, it doesn’t matter what I do, it’s for communion with humanity all of the time. When I do shows, when I work as a musician, that is what I work towards, when I do dance class, that’s what I’m working towards, when I talk to somebody, that’s what is, we’re sharing this space. Is extemporaneous, and the title artist doesn’t mean anything to me.

There’s confusion about that title. I think culturally, because artists can be somebody who does stuff outside of whatever the norm is to get attention, that can be an artist. It could be like a youtuber that is talking garbage that could be artists. Somebody who used to be out of tune all damn time and it makes a pop song about something that it’s like “come on are you kidding me?”. That could be artists. It can mean different things to different people, but the title doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s just something that I do and it’s part of what I am. My artistry at scope, right? You know conversation is art, right? You know how ideas are exchanged. That’s it, that’s.

 

Q: Do you feel like this understanding or connection, knowledge of spirit, was always inside of you? Whether you recognize it or not? Or do you feel like it was something that you fostered over time?

A: Some it’s, it’s always there. It was always there and my work was to become aware of it, that is all, and also to become comfortable with it. Because spiritual awareness can twist up the vessel that is aware of these things, for instance, if you work with homeless populations. And you have a deep awareness of how humans are treated so inhumanly and that we have more than enough housing for everybody. That could tear you up. Part of my work was awareness and also how to manage spiritual feeling and knowledge with self care, and self love in a way, so that you can work with whatever and still take care of yourself.

 

Q: If you could tell young Ife something, what would you tell?

A: Ah, that ‘s going to be alright. I had a lot of drama when I was younger, like hell of adversity and drama. I have this kind of recurring thought, to be talking to a young Ife and saying “thanks for holding the fire”. So that’s all I would say “it’s gonna be alright bro. It’s gonna be alright”. That’s it.

 

Q: If you could tell something to young kids, let’s say middle school to high school, what would you tell them? What would you want them to know?

A: I would recommend that they study themselves, that they feel themselves, what they feel in their gut, in their heart. That is reality, that is true. Youths can go in many different environments and, like you know, authorities, adults, whoever is going to tell them a lot of stuff, some of it is gonna be good, some of it is gonna be like “yeah whatever”. So the most important thing I would tell the youth is “listen to your gut, listen to your heart, to your feelings, and don’t stray from that”. There is a whole bunch of stuff that happens in life, but you know yourself, you know your spirit, that’s it.

Yeah and youth that are struggling, that It’s not who they are. I’ll say that is not who you are. That is a misunderstanding. Perhaps they are suffering misfortune, and I’ll tell them about the temporary nature of that, and teach them that there’s another side.

 

Q: This is a reminder to myself to never tunnel vision opportunities or expectations. Because coming into this I was just like “oh, I gotta do this for this program and then go home to do my homework”. But after hearing you talk more about your story, it just took me out of my head a little bit, and just reminded me to stay open.

A: Are you very intellectual? Are you in your head?

 

Q: I don’t know if it’s intellectuality that is the cause for me to be in my head a lot. I think there’s a healthy balance between intellect and abstract I guess, and sometimes the scales you know are shifted and that’s where I’m like. Oh my gosh, I hate systems and I just want to live in the forest. But then it’s another one it’s like. All I wanna do is study, you know?

A: You are talking about your expectations for this and how it actually turned out. Also, what I would say to you is this: every human is as deep as the universe. And you know you might be like everybody and if we get we’re in position to get to like to talk to people a little bit or whatever you’d be like, “oh my God I’m so blessed that I’m on this planet”. That’s the truth. And with that, could we end there.

 

Q: Wow, that was.

listen to the conversation