Divide and Dissolve are Toppling White Supremacy Song by Song
By: Keith Nelson Jr
Tags: Culture, Race, Music, Racism, White Supremacy

Divide and Dissolve are Toppling White Supremacy Song by Song

Photos courtesy of Divide and Dissolve

If intentions are the voice of the ineffable, then the Melbourne-based music duo Divide and Dissolve is sledgehammering White supremacy with wordless defiance and ancestral support.

Multi-instrumentalists Takiaya Reed and Sylvie Nehill shape their droning guitar riffs and drums into experimental doom-filled sonic darts titled with the ideas they want to drill into listeners’ heads. “Cultural Extermination.” “Black Supremacy.” “Assimilation.” Mostly without words, the duo creates music and participates in actions as art — all to encourage the listener or viewer to contemplate how to end racism. One such action made headlines in 2018 when they defaced monuments of colonialism with urine-colored liquid — a move that angered detractors enough into threatening harm at their shows.

But Divide and Dissolve won’t stop.

“Having to navigate certain systemic barriers in our lives and the industry we’re in is an attempt to silence us,” Reed tells Momentum.

As descendants of indigenous people — Tsalagi/Cherokee for Reed and Maori for Nehill—the very impetus for politicizing their music stems from a dream. In it, Reed saw various ancestral groups forming a community. D&D isn’t trying to dismantle White supremacy to warm their hearts by watching it burn. They’re raging against it in order to build a better future from its ashes.

In anticipation of their upcoming third album Gas Lit, which releases on January 29, 2021, the radical duo spoke with Momentum about fighting erasure, their earliest memories with White supremacy, and how building community can topple White supremacy.

Momentum: Have you experienced any White supremacist roadblocks in the music industry?

Takiaya Reed: All the time. It’s pervasive. People don’t want to acknowledge our Indigenous ancestry because I’m too Black to be Indigenous and Sylvie’s too White to be Indigenous. (Laughs.) It goes deep.

You received death threats over your “Resistance” video that showed you pouring urine-colored liquid on colonial monuments. How did that affect you?

Sylvie Nehill: That was one time that mainstream media definitely picked up on us. (Laughs.)

Sylvie Nehill: But it wasn’t to speak nicely about us. I feel, at first, the negative response was quite overwhelming, but it wasn’t surprising because there are people out there who need to be confronted. They’re also all pussies. They were threatening to come to our shows and we didn’t see anybody. I remember the first night after it came out and got picked up, it was pretty scary. But we were okay.

Takiaya Reed: I 100% resonate with Sylvie. It was interesting. We’re very happy to confront these things, but when it comes to the confrontation part we’re like, “Hey, let’s have a conversation.” But no one is trying to have a conversation with us, so we start seeing a pattern of confrontation. It’s very interesting.

The music is not what you’d usually hear in the mainstream. Has it been hard to get radio play or mainstream attention?

Sylvie Nehill: I feel we’re just getting started. We have a really strong community of who we’ve been playing to for a long time. People are really supportive of our band. I don’t feel we’re not a popular band or anything. (Laughs.) But, in terms of mainstream coverage, I think our band is just getting started and we’re about to hit. This album Gas Lit has been getting some good radio airplay, especially in the U.K. We always get picked up by the community radio stations.

As an interracial group, how has race factored into your group?

Takiaya Reed: We talk about race every single time we talk with each other. We’re never not talking about race. My biggest issue I encounter with our band with race is when people treat Sylvie and me differently. Sylvie has been really good about picking up on that. We’ll go to the venue and people don’t think I’m in the band. They won’t talk to me; they’ll talk to Sylvie. That’s probably the most infuriating race issue in our band dynamic. They’ll ask Sylvie about the guitar sound and I’m like, “I play the guitar.” They’ll ask Sylvie about the saxophone and last I checked, I play the saxophone. And they don’t ask me about Sylvie’s drums.

“T hat’s another way we try to dismantle White supremacy. It’s the music, but it’s also being present at the shows, talking to people, and being ourselves.”

What’s your earliest memory of understanding the effects of White supremacy on your life?

Sylvie Nehill: I remember going to my first hāngi, which is a traditional Maori meal you have with your family. I remember being spoken to in our language and not understanding it. I was about eight or nine and I remember thinking, “Shit, I don’t understand what you’re saying and I wish I could understand.” That was part of my heritage too and it wasn’t something passed down in my family. My family looks White; we’re White. So, there’s a lot of internalized White supremacy that my family and I are unpacking, and some of us have yet to unpack.

Takiaya Reed: I was in elementary school, and I was deeply interested in playing music. The music teacher was like, “What instrument would you want to play?” I was like, “I’m not sure, but I’m going to play music. I already play the piano.” The music teacher told me, “Black people can’t play the oboe because their lips are too big, so you shouldn’t play that one.” (Laughs.) I was like, “What?! That’s really weird because my dad can play the oboe.” So I told my dad what happened and he was obviously mortified. I was able to understand that she thought Black people can’t do certain things. Then my parents had an extensive talk with me about racism.

Have you had any people come up to you and tell you how your music has either reinforced their views or helped change them about the world around them?

Sylvie Nehill: That happens all the time. (Laughs.) It especially happens at shows. At shows, we’re able to really effect resonance in people through the volume that we can achieve at a live show. We often have people come up to us, especially when we’re selling our merch after the show. We have really intense conversations with a lot of people at every show. That’s another way we try to dismantle White supremacy. It’s the music, but it’s also being present at the shows, talking to people, and being ourselves.

Takiaya Reed: I feel we [hear] a lot of stories of people having conversations with their families. They thought more about dismantling White supremacy on a systemic level. We’re happy to be a part of that process.