Transcript

Listener-supported WNYC Studios.

Jad Abumrad:

You ready to do this?

Shima Oliaee:

I'm ready.

Jad Abumrad:

Okay, let's do it.

Shima Oliaee:

Yes. Okay. Great.

Jad Abumrad:

Okay. So I'm going to introduce the thing, and then I'm going to hand off to you. Does that sound all right?

Shima Oliaee:

Oh, you're actually using the, I'm ready?

Jad Abumrad:

Yeah.

Shima Oliaee:

Oh-

Jad Abumrad:

We got to keep it loose, yo.

Shima Oliaee:

Oh my gosh. Okay. I'm breathing. Okay.

Jad Abumrad:

Okay, I'm Jad Abumrad, this is Dolly Parton's America.

Shima Oliaee:

I'm Shima Oliaee.

Jad Abumrad:

Shima is producing the project with me and this is episode six.

Shima Oliaee:

Sixth journey.

Jad Abumrad:

Let's start this one by jumping back for a second. To the beginning, to the thing that first grabbed us about Dolly (singing).

Jad Abumrad:

It's that, when you talk to people about going to a Dolly Parton show, they often describe it as an alternate reality.

Shima Oliaee:

It was the most diverse place I've ever been. You have people wearing cowboy hats and boots, people in drag, church ladies, lesbians, holding hands, little girls.

Jad Abumrad:

It was always this picture of all of these different slices of America jammed together, groups of people that we think shouldn't get along, but there they are standing side by side, polite, singing the same song. And really, this series has been driven in part by the simple question, how does she do that?

Shima Oliaee:

You know, Jad, the question I wonder is, how much is she bringing versus how much is the audience bringing to make this magical space?

Jad Abumrad:

Yeah.

Shima Oliaee:

This question really got lodged in our head when we spoke to this woman who gave us a different take on-

Nadine Hubbs:

Yo. She's getting her headphones on.

Shima Oliaee:

... How to listen to Dolly's music.

Nadine Hubbs:

Cool. Okay, so here's melodica.

Shima Oliaee:

I love it.

Shima Oliaee:

Her name is Nadine Hubbs. In addition to playing guitar and the melodica, both of which she brought into the studio the day we interviewed her, she is a professor at the university of Michigan and she thinks, studies writes a lot about country music.

Nadine Hubbs:

In the early history of country music. In the early days-

Shima Oliaee:

She told us about-

Nadine Hubbs:

It was called hillbilly music-

Shima Oliaee:

The look of country music. If you were a country artist, you might have to go on stage and dress up like a hayseed.

Jad Abumrad:

What's a hayseed?

Nadine Hubbs:

So you would put on some bib overalls. You'd put a straw in your mouth.

Shima Oliaee:

She talked about where the cowboy uniform came from.

Jad Abumrad:

Wait, so the cowboy like cowboy boots, cowboy hat, cowboy thing. The whole cowboy look is of Mexican descent?

Shima Oliaee:

Yeah.

Jad Abumrad:

Wow.

Shima Oliaee:

And it's been in development for 500 years.

Jad Abumrad:

No way.

Shima Oliaee:

We talked about Lil Nas X.

Nadine Hubbs:

... Whereas Blanco Brown's-

Shima Oliaee:

Blanco Brown, whole bunch of things.

Shima Oliaee:

But the real reason we wanted to talk to Nadine-

Jad Abumrad:

All right, can we talk about Jolene?

Nadine Hubbs:

Yes.

Shima Oliaee:

Is to talk about a song you know.

Nadine Hubbs:

Yes.

Shima Oliaee:

Or at least think you know.

Jad Abumrad:

Wait, can I just ask, when did you first personally bump into Dolly?

Nadine Hubbs:

Well, I grew up in what we now know as the rust belt in Ohio around Toledo, Ohio-

Shima Oliaee:

Dad was a blue collar worker.

Nadine Hubbs:

He worked on freight trains.

Shima Oliaee:

Mom stayed at home.

Nadine Hubbs:

... And my mom was a huge fan and I have to tell you, I have a little sister and her name is Jolene.

Jad Abumrad:

After the song?

Nadine Hubbs:

Yeah. I grew up with that song.

Shima Oliaee:

Nadine told us that pretty much every week she and her family would gather together in the living room and watch Hee-Haw or the Porter Wagoner show every week on the TV-(singing)

Shima Oliaee:

There'd be this curvy, smiling, super blonde bombshell of a woman-

Nadine Hubbs:

With huge hair covered in sequins, like a beacon of excess as we used to say out in the country. I didn't know whether to go blind, I was a budding musician-

Shima Oliaee:

And so for Nadine, the thing that actually drew her to Dolly...

Nadine Hubbs:

Was that gorgeous voice. And you know, everyone had to hush when she came on screen or on the radio.

Shima Oliaee:

Fast forward Nadine's at the University of Michigan writing about country music and she finds herself again and again coming back...

Nadine Hubbs:

... To Jolene, I mean this is such a brilliant re-imagining of a genre. It's revelatory.

Jad Abumrad:

It's a badass song too. I got to say of the entire genre of Dolly's work this is one that's going to be sung for hundreds of years.

Shima Oliaee:

I got to say though, like once I read your stuff, I was like, I love this song on a whole nother level.

Shima Oliaee:

Okay, go ahead. Go ahead. Tell us-

Jad Abumrad:

Where do we begin?

Nadine Hubbs:

So what really struck me about Jolene is that I knew a bunch of other woman songs in country music.

Shima Oliaee:

What is an other woman's song?

Nadine Hubbs:

So I would understand the other woman's song in country music as a sub-genre of the cheating song. A genre that we're all familiar with in country.

Shima Oliaee:

So a cheating song, it goes way back (singing).

Shima Oliaee:

It's usually sung by a man who's brokenhearted and is lamenting (singing).

Shima Oliaee:

... The lady lover who's cheated on him (singing).

Shima Oliaee:

There are literally thousands of these songs. If you think about music itself as the multi-verse country music being one universe, there's a galaxy called the Cheating Song. And if you go into that galaxy, there's a solar system filled with songs by women who are singing, not toward their man, but toward the woman who's about to take their man.

Nadine Hubbs:

That is the other woman's song. And when female country artists sing about the other woman or to the other woman, the song gets kind of nasty.

Shima Oliaee:

I wonder why.

Nadine Hubbs:

So when Loretta Lynn does an other woman's song (singing)...

Nadine Hubbs:

You think of You Ain't Woman Enough to Take My Man (singing).

Nadine Hubbs:

Or you think of Fist City, that was a number one hit from Loretta Lynn in 1968-

Jad Abumrad:

Fist City?

Nadine Hubbs:

... And that's back in the days when apparently she did have a cheating husband and one of the lyrics is (singing)...

Nadine Hubbs:

And then you can think of more recent country songs. Like Carrie Underwood's number one hit in 2006 called Before He Cheats and she's calling the other woman (singing)...

Nadine Hubbs:

Tramp. (singing) Trash.

Jad Abumrad:

Dang.

Nadine Hubbs:

So these are the more typical other woman songs.

Shima Oliaee:

Bad-ass.

Nadine Hubbs:

Angry. And having known the song Jolene practically my entire life, it struck me at some point. Wow, look what Dolly is doing to the other woman song.

Shima Oliaee:

Honestly, one of the reasons we're talking to Nadine is that I read one of her papers where she goes through all these different aspects of the song Jolene.

Shima Oliaee:

Let's start at the beginning.

Nadine Hubbs:

Okay.

Shima Oliaee:

With that riff.

Nadine Hubbs:

That guitar riff that Dolly herself plays incredibly in long acrylic nails. Melodically, it keeps tracing this little like circular path as if she's pacing the floor or something.

Jad Abumrad:

It's like recursive loops going over and over.

Nadine Hubbs:

Yes. It's hypnotic.

Shima Oliaee:

Nadine points out that melody, the whole song actually...

Nadine Hubbs:

The song is in minor, but it's not quite regular minor. It is Dorian Mode, which we're getting kind of technical and musical logical here, but-

Shima Oliaee:

Let's do it.

Nadine Hubbs:

Let's do it instead of the normal minor scale, which would be this...

Nadine Hubbs:

With Dorian Mode you have...

Jad Abumrad:

Is it just one note that's different in there?

Shima Oliaee:

It's subtle, but it's the sixth note in the scale as opposed to...

Shima Oliaee:

You get this...

Shima Oliaee:

That little extra raising of the sixth note.

Jad Abumrad:

Yeah. It's funny. It just gives it a whole different vibe.

Shima Oliaee:

Exactly.

Nadine Hubbs:

Dorian Mode sounds more ancient, almost primitive because in Western music, we used Dorian back in the Gregorian Chant phase of history.

Shima Oliaee:

And so with this riff repeating again and again in this mode, suddenly it's like this woman...

Nadine Hubbs:

... Pacing the floor or something. She's not sure what to do...

Shima Oliaee:

And you immediately feel like she's been pacing for a really long time. And then (singing)...

Nadine Hubbs:

And unlike Loretta Lynn or Carrie Underwood or any number of other singers, she addresses the other woman by her name (singing).

Nadine Hubbs:

No word features nearly as much in this song as the name, which she repeats again and again as if she's fixated and she starts her lyric (singing)....

Nadine Hubbs:

... With a plea. She begs her, she pleads with her, please don't take my man. That's really different from (singing)...

Jad Abumrad:

Fist City.

Nadine Hubbs:

Yeah.

Shima Oliaee:

Nadine points out that right after that, right after that plea...

Nadine Hubbs:

In her first verse (singing) she sings rhapsodically about Jolene's hair and skin eyes and smile and voice. About how beautiful and desirable she is. She seems a little bit dazed (singing).

Shima Oliaee:

Skipping forward to the final verse, the song has three verses.

Nadine Hubbs:

She goes to describing her own vulnerability (singing). Says, "My happiness depends on you." (singing)

Nadine Hubbs:

The whole thing about Jolene and one of the things that makes it so haunting is how it's left unresolved. "My happiness depends on you and whatever you decide to do, Jolene," is where she leaves off that, that verse and then we get another chorus and throughout the song the husband is so off to the side and so when she gives this list of everything she admires in Jolene and her beauty and says, "I can easily understand how my man would want you." Am I the only person then who imagines her and Jolene getting together if this guy doesn't work out? Or even one more fourth verse that finds this love triangle dissolved into a three-way? So I wrote about this song in terms of homoerotics.

Shima Oliaee:

What Nadine argues is that Dolly is taking this trope that is typically all about women hating on women. Instead, she snuck in a song that is all about women loving other women. Instead of hating this woman or vilifying her for being able to take her man, she's exalting her for all the reasons that she's able to take her man.

Nadine Hubbs:

Dolly has in this song a really novel, revolutionary approach to the other woman.

Jad Abumrad:

Do you think other people hear the song this way or is this...

Nadine Hubbs:

I don't imagine I'm the... Well, look when Dolly gives us this much to work with, I don't expect that I'm the only person who has felt this song this way.

Jad Abumrad:

You mentioned that you imagine a fourth verse where they get together, they have a three-way. Have you ever thought about writing the verse?

Nadine Hubbs:

Oh, that's a good idea.

Shima Oliaee:

You should do it for us.

Jad Abumrad:

Someone should do that.

Shima Oliaee:

A couple of weeks later, she sent us an email saying, "I have something for you."

Nadine Hubbs:

For this now I need my little guitar and I haven't played a little while, so we may need more than one take, but this comes from out of the first three verses and you know how those go in the third verse is, "You could have your choice of men," blah, blah, blah. So, "I had to have this talk with you. My happiness depends on you and whatever you decide to do, Jolene." Then there's the chorus and then my fourth verse would go... Let me get to sit in a little closer.

Nadine Hubbs:

I'm glad I had that talk with you. Glad we met in person to. That place you took me to was quite a scene. It's true that my man found you first. You awakened such a thirst. Now you're the only one for me, Jolene.

Nadine Hubbs:

Go ahead.

All:

(signing)

Jad Abumrad:

Oh, I love that verse. It's so good.

Nadine Hubbs:

You like the verse?

Jad Abumrad:

It's actually really, really great. I was like, "I could hear Dolly doing that." Oh my God. What if we show this to Dolly?

Nadine Hubbs:

If you guys would send it to her...

Shima Oliaee:

We will. No we should.

Jad Abumrad:

Yeah we totally will. Coming up. We do just that. We play it for Dolly and she tells us the interestingly layered story of how the song came into the world.

Dolly Parton:

Oh, you don't know that I wrote that about you...

Jad Abumrad:

Dolly Parton's America will continue in a moment.

Jad Abumrad:

It's Dolly Parton's America. I'm Jad Abumrad here with Shima Oliaee.

Shima Oliaee:

Hello.

Jad Abumrad:

Before the break. Nadine Hubbs offered us this new take on Jolene that it's really a homoerotic love story dressed up as an other woman cheating song. Maybe Dolly was trying to sneak one in under the sensors, so to speak.

Shima Oliaee:

And certainly in many of Dolly's concerts she will replace the word Jolene with...

Dolly Parton:

Dolly started singing, "Drag queen, drag queen, drag queen, drag queen. I'm begging of you please don't take my man."

Jad Abumrad:

So she leans into it a little bit. Any case. Nadine wrote a fourth verse to Jolene where Dolly and... Oh, I guess the narrator and Jolene consummate their love.

Shima Oliaee:

And she humbly requested...

Nadine Hubbs:

Well, if you guys would send it to her.

Shima Oliaee:

And we thought, "Yeah." We wondered too, what would Dolly think of it. And so-

Jad Abumrad:

Okay.

Shima Oliaee:

... We it flew to Nashville.

Jad Abumrad:

One of our episodes is going to be about Jolene.

Dolly Parton:

Jolene. Are we doing pictures first or are we doing...

Jad Abumrad:

Oh are you going to take a picture?

Dolly Parton:

Are we ready to do-

Jad Abumrad:

Hey dad, can you take a couple of pictures the first few minutes?

Justin Hiltner:

Just keep going-

Jad Abumrad:

Just do it. Do it this sideways too.

Justin Hiltner:

It's not bothering me.

Jad Abumrad:

No, no, just do it like this. Do it like that. That's better.

Dolly Parton:

Not just the sides of our heads.

Jad Abumrad:

Yeah. Okay. My dad was also there, but anyways.

Jad Abumrad:

Can I play the first verse she wrote?

Dolly Parton:

Well yeah!

Jad Abumrad:

So...

Dolly Parton:

Curious to hear it.

Jad Abumrad:

Here it is.

Nadine Hubbs:

I'm glad I had that talk with you. Glad we met in person too, that place you took me to was quite a scene.

Shima Oliaee:

We played her the new verse and she got the biggest smile on her face.

Nadine Hubbs:

Now you're the only one for me, Jolene.

All:

(singing)

Jad Abumrad:

That's essentially it.

Dolly Parton:

Well that's another take on her. That's another take. So she's thinking the two women get together?

Jad Abumrad:

Yeah, and...

Dolly Parton:

Well they had thought about that when we were doing the Jolene movie when we were writing the script.

Shima Oliaee:

This is a movie she made for Netflix about the song Jolene.

Dolly Parton:

Someone came up with that basic idea to say, "Wouldn't it be cool if the two women both of them dumped him, dumped the guy all together and went on with their lives as friends.

Jad Abumrad:

So how should I put this to you? So I mean a lot of people love Jolene.

Jad Abumrad:

Eventually. I fumbled my way into asking Dolly, was there anything like that in her mind as she wrote the song?

Jad Abumrad:

I mean, could you see this song as a homoerotic subversion of the other woman cheating song?

Dolly Parton:

I wasn't thinking... You're overthinking it. I wasn't, I just wrote it. It was just a natural feeling. It was just an emotion. And I was excited about the little lick and I was excited. I thought it was a good song.

Jad Abumrad:

Do you understand why though? Because it's like in the song you're saying, "Jolene, you're so pretty, your hair is beautiful. Your eyes are so beautiful."

Dolly Parton:

Well, that would be, I guess if you were a lesbian, you might think that, but I was not thinking that at all when I wrote it, but that's fine.

Shima Oliaee:

But then as we kept talking, she told us kind of with a wink. "Let me tell you how the song actually came to be."

Dolly Parton:

When I was with the Porter Wagoner Show, we used to stay after the show, sit out on stage until every single autograph was signed from everybody in the audience and sometimes that took two and three hours and so I remember this one little girl came up and she said, "Would you sign my autograph? My name is Jolene."

Dolly Parton:

And I said, "Oh, (singing) that's a beautiful name." I said, "I bet your dad's named Joe and you're named after your dad, right?"

Dolly Parton:

She said, "No, it's just Jolene."

Dolly Parton:

I said, "Well I love that name."

Dolly Parton:

I said, "I may a song about that someday and if you ever hear it, you'll know that I wrote that about you." So I was thinking, and I was going back to the bus, I was just trying to remember the name. I was going to write it down. So I was saying it. So Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, just so I'd remember the name. So all of a sudden, that became, and I was going, "Jolene, Jolene, Jolene."

Dolly Parton:

Then I thought, "Well what am I going to write about Jolene?" You know what? I had to have a real commercial story to get played on the radio. You had to always consider all that.

Shima Oliaee:

So she's trying to figure out how to make the song commercial, how to fit it into the universe of radio that existed at that time. And then she thought about her husband and how he would frequent the bank and she would tease him about how it was most likely because he had a crush on one of the bank tellers.

Dolly Parton:

And so I just kind of drew from that little fun thing, that little jealous thing. It is true that my husband got got a crush on a girl at the bank. But that was not that big of a deal.

Shima Oliaee:

She says the bigger deal was that girl, the bank teller jealousy thing. That was just the commercial wrapping.

Dolly Parton:

That's the true story of how Jolene came to be.

Jad Abumrad:

That's interesting.

Shima Oliaee:

So what to make of this? I don't know. I mean on the one hand there's nothing overtly homoerotic going on here from Dolly's perspective at least. But on the other hand you have these two very separate stories pushing up against each other. Neither idea directly takes on what Nadine is saying, but they do create a kind of negative space between them.

Jad Abumrad:

Yeah. You know what hits me about this? There's a concept in psychology that is one of my favorite ideas, which is it's called the Third, the idea that we like to think of ourselves as separate people who are doing things to other people and having things done to us. But this idea is that two people separate entities come together and they actually form a new thing. The relationship is a new third space that is separate from either of them and its a way of thinking about relationships as their own entities in a way, and maybe Jolene is like the musical version of a third space.

Shima Oliaee:

And you know what? It's not just Jolene (singing).

Justin Hiltner:

When I hear that song, it just makes me think of every single time I've fallen in love with a straight man. How dare you come in here looking like that despite the fact that you are unavailable to me. With you're painted on jeans?

Shima Oliaee:

Do you know that the South is home to more LGBTQ people than any other region in the country?

Justin Hiltner:

Yes, 35%.

Shima Oliaee:

Oh my god!

Justin Hiltner:

35% of queer people in this country are in the Southeast and in Appalachia.

Shima Oliaee:

Okay. Wait, before we get too far, can you tell me your name and your title when you're not being asked questions about the homoerotics of Dolly?

Justin Hiltner:

Yes. My name is Justin Hiltner and I'm a career banjo player, singer songwriter.

Shima Oliaee:

You are the first gay man to ever be nominated for an International Bluegrass Association Award. Is that true?

Justin Hiltner:

I'd clarify it by saying the first openly gay man, but yes, the first openly gay man to ever receive a nomination from the International Bluegrass Music Association, is yours truly.

Shima Oliaee:

Where are you right now?

Justin Hiltner:

I live in a basement apartment in East Nashville.

Shima Oliaee:

So the way we bumped into Justin is that initially when the podcast first came out, he was one of the first people who reached out to us to ask for an interview. He writes for a publication called the Bluegrass Situation, and we told him about how we were thinking about the song Jolene existing in this third space as you were sharing Jad.

Jad Abumrad:

Yep.

Shima Oliaee:

And he was like, "No, no, no, no, no, no. It's not just Jolene. There are so many Dolly songs that are just like that."

Justin Hiltner:

Oh my gosh. Yes. It really speaks to that kind of quality of Dolly's writing. What she's creating is really a choose your own adventure kind of musical experience.

Shima Oliaee:

I love that metaphor of choose your own adventure (singing).

Shima Oliaee:

That is kind of the entryway into all of her music, her thousands of songs.

Justin Hiltner:

Right. And like my entry point...

Justin Hiltner:

I'll do an Earl Scruggs tune.

Justin Hiltner:

... Was Bluegrass.

Shima Oliaee:

Justin grew up in a small rural town in Ohio in a big family of musicians. He and all of his five siblings were homeschooled. His parents believe that every word of the Bible was true and they didn't want a lot of outside influence.

Justin Hiltner:

I started coming out of the closet in 2009, I was 17.

Shima Oliaee:

And he says for him, that entire journey can be sound tracked to Dolly Parton.

Justin Hiltner:

All right, here's Silver Dagger.

Shima Oliaee:

Starting with this song.

Justin Hiltner:

(singing)

Shima Oliaee:

So actually this song, it seems like it has nothing to do with a gay man, but the lyrics describe a mother who is determined to keep her daughter pure every night. She sleeps by her side and keeps the silver dagger in order to prevent her daughter from leaving the home. For Justin...

Justin Hiltner:

It just reminds me of that time.

Shima Oliaee:

He says he was learning that song at exactly the time he was trying to tell his family he was gay.

Justin Hiltner:

It was really fraught. My conservative Christian Evangelical family didn't really take it very well. We're on great terms now, but then it was really hard and I was essentially on house arrest for about a year. I wasn't allowed to leave the house really for anything.

Justin Hiltner:

I wasn't allowed to use the internet without supervision. I wasn't allowed to have a cell phone. I wasn't allowed to get my driver's license.

Shima Oliaee:

So you too, were under a silver dagger for a year?

Justin Hiltner:

Yeah, it got to a point where I couldn't live life. And so-

Shima Oliaee:

A few days before his 18th birthday...

Justin Hiltner:

I literally left town in the middle of the night without saying goodbye. My boyfriend at the time drove up from West Virginia, picked me up, took me back to West Virginia. I stayed with him for about a month and went across the river to Ohio to get my driver's license. And I drove to Nashville and the first time I ever drove on a highway with more than four lanes was pulling into Nashville for the first time.

Shima Oliaee:

And the whole time he says...

Justin Hiltner:

Wildflowers.

Shima Oliaee:

He listened to Dolly's song Wildflowers.

Justin Hiltner:

(singing)

Justin Hiltner:

So I uprooted myself from my home ground and left.

Justin Hiltner:

(singing) Took my dreams and I took to the road. (signing)

Justin Hiltner:

Wild flowers are weeds. They've adapted to grow wherever they can, however they can up through the cracks of the pavement. And that's queerness. It's like, "Look, I'm going to grow wherever I can and if you aren't even just going to give me water from the sky, I'm going to have to go somewhere else."

Dolly Parton:

God made us as we are, who we are is who we are. Whether you're gay, whether you're straight, whether you're black, white, green or alien gray, we are who we are. I would just bow out if I was not allowed to be me, I would just say, "Well, if you can't deal with it, I can't deal with you not dealing with it."

Dolly Parton:

And I hate those Christians that are so judgmental when there are so many... If you're just going to pick out certain words, certain things from the Bible, and they forget about to judge, not lest ye be judged and it's up to him to decide, you know what's right or what's wrong. And he made us all and if we're different, well that's fine. We're still his.

Shima Oliaee:

Yeah. So on this point from Dolly, there's no dolatics, it's very straightforward, she's very embracing of her LGBTQ fans. But her songs do maintain a kind of radical freedom of interpretation of open spaces.

Jad Abumrad:

Yeah and you know my sense of it is that like if you're, I don't know, I mean this is just my hunch. If you're a woman writing songs in a male dominated industry, you've got to write songs that the male execs will like. Because she was talking about radio a little while ago, but at the same time you have to layer those songs with things that are about you.

Shima Oliaee:

Which makes you have to take on two...

Jad Abumrad:

Yeah you have to sort of occupy two spaces at once.

Shima Oliaee:

You have to, she can't just do the one thing-

Jad Abumrad:

Yeah totally.

Shima Oliaee:

... Not in the way men can do. Yeah, and my favorite story on this idea actually came just a moment before deadline-

Jad Abumrad:

This morning actually.

Shima Oliaee:

This morning. It was this morning.

Jad Abumrad:

That's how close we're cutting it on this one.

Shima Oliaee:

Oh my god.

Jad Abumrad:

Tell us about it.

Shima Oliaee:

Totally different contexts than the other stories. I hopped on the phone with this guy named Tokyo Sexwale.

Tokyo Sexwale:

Hello?

Shima Oliaee:

This is Tokyo, right?

Tokyo Sexwale:

Hello there, I can hear you very well. Hello there.

Shima Oliaee:

Oh lovely. That's great.

Tokyo Sexwale:

Where are you calling from?

Shima Oliaee:

I'm calling from New York.

Tokyo Sexwale:

Oh New York.

Shima Oliaee:

Where are you exactly?

Tokyo Sexwale:

I'm in Johannesburg.

Shima Oliaee:

He was a freedom fighter. In South Africa during the apartheid regime.

Tokyo Sexwale:

I was on the ground to join the fuel forces to eliminate apartheid.

Shima Oliaee:

Apartheid was the system of racial segregation in South Africa. Tokyo joins the Armed Resistance Movement. He gets caught, sent to Robben Island, which is a prison, finds himself in the cell directly next to Nelson Mandela who is the leader of the entire resistance movement.

Tokyo Sexwale:

It was pivotal.

Shima Oliaee:

He told me how they were tortured, how they were beaten...

Tokyo Sexwale:

But eventually after many, many years-

Shima Oliaee:

He said that at a certain point the guards allowed Mandela to play music over the loudspeakers for the entire prison. And when I asked whose songs he'd play, he said...

Tokyo Sexwale:

Dolly. Dolly Parton.

Shima Oliaee:

Dolly Parton.

Tokyo Sexwale:

Absolutely. Not only Nelson Mandela, all of us. Dolly, Dolly, Dolly. The word of Dolly, Dolly sings of the heart.

Shima Oliaee:

Do you remember which Dolly songs were played? Do you remember one of-

Tokyo Sexwale:

Do I remember which?

Shima Oliaee:

Yeah do you remember one of the Dolly songs that you heard Nelson Mandela play?

Tokyo Sexwale:

He loves Jolene.

Shima Oliaee:

Oh wow.

Tokyo Sexwale:

He loved Jolene.

Shima Oliaee:

I just think about a night at Robben Island in the dark when Jolene is playing over the loudspeakers, the prisoners hear in their cells on the other side of the wall, the guards are listening too. And both groups of people are having the same experience.

Tokyo Sexwale:

No human being cannot be affected by Jolene..

Shima Oliaee:

According to Tokyo this song is not about love like Nadine would say, it's about fear of someone taking your man of losing everything. The prisoners feel that because they've lost their freedom and the guards feel that because their country's changing and they can sense they're about to lose power. Both are feeling the same fear, but for very different reasons.

Tokyo Sexwale:

We are all human beings. The jailed and the jailer. But we all come from one country, but we all don't want to lose. Whether it's a man or your country, nobody wants to be hurt. Don't hurt me.

Jad Abumrad:

Producer Shima Oliaee.

Jad Abumrad:

Dolly Parton's America was written, produced and edited by me and Shima. Brought to you by OSM Audio. That's OSM audio and WNYC Studios. We had production help from W. Harry Fortuna and Matthew Kielty, the great. Some of the music you're heard played was performed by Nadine Hubbs and Justin Hiltner. Thanks again to the folks at Sony. Lynn Sacco, Wayne Bledsoe, Tasha Lemley, and David Dotson.

Jad Abumrad:

We've partnered with Apple Music to bring you a companion playlist. It's updated every week. You can find that at DollyPartonsAmerica.org and speaking of which, we've gotten a lot of requests for the full version of the Jolene remix that I created for scoring that we used a little bit of in episode two I spoke to the folks at Sony. They have graciously allowed me to play one minute of it for you right about now or in a few seconds. And we've put the entire thing up at DollyPartonsAmerica.org so if you go there, you can find it. And if you also searched Jolene remixed by Jad on YouTube, you can hear it there. Heads up the next Dolly Parton's America episode will come out in two weeks. That's December 3rd that's episode seven and we'll just go out with a minute of the remix. You can find the whole thing at DollyPartonsAmerica.org I'm Jad Abumrad. Thanks for listening

Jad Abumrad:

You can hear the whole thing at DollyPartonsAmerica.org see you in two weeks.

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