October 11, 2024
On Friday, Sept. 13, Carbon Sound got the chance to chat with legendary Minnesota artist André Cymone about his late mother, Bernadette Anderson. Bernadette was a tireless advocate for civil rights and youth engagement in the community and crowned nicknames like “Queen Bernie” and “The Mother of the Minneapolis Sound.”
On this day, a block party took place celebrating the renaming of Russell Avenue North between Plymouth Avenue North and 12th Avenue North, a section of the neighborhood where Anderson lived, as Bernadette Anderson Way.
André recounts what made his mother so special to a community, as well as fabled jam sessions in her basement with other Minnesota legends, keeping funk alive, and so much more.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
John Kueppers: André, what brings you into town today?
André Cymone: Funny you should ask! They're honoring my mother, Bernadette Anderson, they're honoring her with a street name, Bernadette Anderson Way on the street that I grew up on. She's had an amazing life, an amazing journey. And so I'm here to celebrate that and to hopefully make a statement with my family and the community to really make this day a really special day in her honor.
For those who might not know, who was Bernadette Anderson to a community?
That's a lot, that's a whole lot. Because she was a pioneer of so many different things. Youth groups, she ran the YWCA, She had a kids teen club named after her to keep kids kind of off the streets, and had several different programs, food programs, she was on a lot of different boards of community, active type boards like PTA, the KMOJ board. She was on several different boards. She spoke and marched and prayed with everybody in the community. Anytime there was situations — strife, contention with different factions of community organizers or police, or you name it, she was right there marching and speaking with her counterparts to make sure that the community was well represented. And then obviously she opened our home to myself, to sort of keep me off the streets and out of trouble as much as I can. If ever there were a perspective of her life that could be made into a film (laughs), hers would be one. And my friends, I had a variety of friends that I brought into the house. One of them was Prince. He came to live with us, probably from about eighth grade to when he got his record deal. And then I had various other friends that were really, really pivotal in the community as far as music was concerned. I just visited one last night down at Bunker's, David Eiland. We got a chance to hang out, and I got a chance to listen to him play, and he's going to join us today at the event. But I mean, Morris Day, you name it. There's a lot of different musicians, Terry and Jimmy came by at some point. Just about everybody came by our house at some point and either played music or ping pong or basketball. Sometimes we'd play basketball right in the street or in the backyard. It was a fun-loving experience when you came to my house. My father would always say — because my father didn't live with us then, he lived about a block away, but he would say, "no matter what time I come over here, it always seems like it's three in the afternoon." It could be like one in the morning, and it seems like it's three in the afternoon, because there's always something going on.
Was it ever your mom being like, "okay, cut the music just for 10 minutes." Or was it always "let's keep it going"?
I mean, there was just so much going on. You have to understand, my mother was kind of enjoying her own life, because she got married at 15, and started having kids. And she had six kids, so she raised six kids. And then once she was "free," she felt like, "you know what? I need to live." So she went back to school and got an education, and was always busy in the community. But she had friends and card clubs and so there was always just stuff going on. There was just a lot going on. She really made our home, I don't want to say a community center, because it wasn't — well, you know, for all intent purposes. She was just beautiful. It was really a special upbringing, special time, great time to grow up, great environment to grow up in.
I have more questions about Bernadette, but before that, I wanted to ask about how today came together too. Members of Flyte Tyme, Sounds of Blackness, Mint Condition, are going to be here today. How did that all come about?
I have a relatively large family, and the spirit of my mother lives in pretty much all of us. Because one of her statements is "get in there, you got to do stuff. If you don't get in the fight, you can't win the fight." And she would always say, "anybody can start a fight, but everybody can't finish it." So my sisters are powerhouses, my nieces are powerhouses, my nephews are powerhouses, my wife is a powerhouse. Everybody really jumped in. My sister in laws, I mean, everybody has pitched in. One of my nieces Tiara, she's been on a different level, really kind of plugging. It's been all hands on deck. LaTrisha Vetaw, Bobby Joe Champion, a lot of people have really come together to make this happen, but it's just been teamwork. It's really kind of how we grew up, the community coming together with family, making this happen. Everybody reached out to whoever they felt like they needed to reach out to, to say, "hey listen, we want to make this happen." And I think it started, if I'm not mistaken — we tend to celebrate my mother's birthday, so we usually come in town and hang out. And I think somewhere along there, somebody said, "hey, we should make this a reality." And so we all got on it, and started doing what we could do to make that happen.
That's incredible. And I'm hearing some old school jam sessions are going to come out. What is an old school jam session first and foremost, and what was her favorite music that's going to be incorporated into this?
Well, an old school jam session is, my mother would come down in the basement when we would be practicing or working on our own music. And she'd say, "what's that?" And she'd say, "you need to play something like this" or "you need to play something like that." And she'd throw out these suggestions, these unsolicited suggestions that nobody asked for (laughs), but yeah, she would throw that out, and before we knew it, we were doing stuff that we wouldn't normally do. My mom, her musical palette was very eclectic. So everything from the blues, so we're going to be jamming on some blues, some of her favorite songs, like "Clean up Woman," "I'll Take You There," Sly & The Family Stone, there's a nice little collection of songs. The band, we didn't get a chance to rehearse or anything like that, and so I'm trusting, because all these musicians are amazing musicians. So I just said, "hey, we're going to treat this like a jam session, like we used to do back in the day." Me and Prince used to do this all the time. So for us, it's a normal thing. It doesn't have to be perfect. It's not meant to be perfect. It's just meant to be entertaining and fun. I stress that, just have fun. Because at the end of the day, music should be fun. And if you're good at what you do, how can you not have fun?
So your mother's suggestions in that basement, solicited or not, do you think that helped contribute to this title as "The Mother of the Minneapolis Sound?" What other qualities of her contributed to that crown?
Well that is definitely one. The other is my mother's eclectic taste in music. Some of her musical favorites were things we weren't even supposed to listen to. She would always say, "y'all get out of here. This is grown folks music." And it's interesting now, because I guess older folks try to emulate or connect to, assimilate younger fashion, music, whatever. My mom and her crew, they were not having that (laughs). We looked at their musical expression as special. We wanted to be more like that. It was like they had this private club of music that we weren't privy or allowed to be in. And now it's completely flipped. But yeah, it was just a lot of stuff, Snatch And The Poontangs, which is probably some group that nobody ever heard of, Rudy Ray Moore, and a lot of very interesting, colorful groups that back then, took pride in being different. One of the things that I think my mother helped us understand, which I think was a very serious part of it, is she would let you know who entertainers were and who artists were, so you could differentiate as a musician, which lane you wanted to go down. Because she said, "oh, that's an artist. So and so and so and so is an artist. See, they can they can paint, and they can color, and they can create music that will do this and do that," and she'll paint this beautiful picture about the music that this particular artist. "Now they're just an entertainer. They just entertain. And somebody else probably creates all their stuff. They just go out and do whatever they're told," or "they're a great musician, but they're not an artist." She would have these conversations, her and my brother. Everybody in my house was a critic of one sort or another (laughs), either a music critic or you name it, but it was a great place, unbelievable place to grow up in.
And that even feels like a little microcosm of the greater Twin Cities area, because there are plenty of critics here. And once you win over this community, then it's like, how can you fail?
Yeah well that was kind of our mentality. If you can actually win over my household, the rest of the world is a piece of cake (laughs). First Avenue became our goal, because it seemed like it took us a minute to get the First Avenue crew and all of that in our win column, if you want to say. Because we played First Avenue quite a few times, and we would travel, we'd play there, and it was a lukewarm thing, and then we'd tour, and we'd come back, but we finally had our moment where we conquered First Avenue. And it was a beautiful thing for all of us, definitely for Prince and myself.
And before conquering First Avenue, I know on top of the musical influences your mother gave you, she gave you opportunities to perform. She would gig you, whether it was the Grand Central days or otherwise, tell me about that.
Well, there's a picture that surfaced recently, of us playing one of my mother's gigs. I think it's at the groundbreaking at the YWCA, I think it's the one down here. My mother would just say, "listen, I need you guys to play this show. You're a band, right? I need you there. You need to be there by this time" and whatever. And she'd give us all the particulars and she'd play, something like — she'd give us a basic outline of what to perform. And she would do that a lot. That was the beauty of the communities, people giving you opportunities. But she was definitely one of the major people to give us opportunities and places to play, and that's why she got the tag “Mother of the Minneapolis Sound,” because she gave other bands opportunities. Like, "why don't you get a couple other bands to come, it's a big event." And so it was just beautiful. She's just a beautiful person all the way around.
And I can see that through anything I've researched about her, and what you're telling me right now. So we had "Mother of the Minneapolis Sound," but we also have "Queen Bernie," where does that name come from? It makes total sense, but where does it come from?
Well because she's done so much in the community, but she used to be the queen of Juneteenth. There's pictures of her riding on the car with the top down, and that whole waving, and she was the queen of the neighborhood. I mean, she was the mother of the neighborhood. So many people have been touched and affected by my mother. There's people that are attorneys now because of my mother, having major job titles, and have gone on to do really great things. One of the things that my mother would do is, if she saw you, she would always read you, and if you had any kind of issue, she'd find out, she'd ask just the right questions. And she didn't make you feel bad, and by the time she finished, you left and you were floating on a cloud because whatever it was, she would exercise, she would bring it out, she'd expose it, you'd talk about it, and she'd tell you, "we're gonna resolve that." And if it was a family issue, she said I'm gonna talk to whoever that is. If it was bullying or teasing or whatever, whatever the issue was, she'd get to the bottom of it, and she'd go confront whatever, whomever that issue was, and so that issue was squashed. And she'd go down there, I can see her, hands on her hips, "come outside. No, no, no, I'm not talking to you." (Laughs) She was not anybody to play around with.
What made her so good at making people feel at home, and how do you make someone feel like family? It sounds like sometimes it's just an open ear.
I have to say my mother's story is an unbelievable story. It's an unbelievable journey, because at an early age, she was separated from her family. My grandparents were diagnosed with tuberculosis, so they were quarantined, and in the family, her six sisters were all separated, sent to different foster homes, and so she was in foster care. God only knows what happened in those environments. But I think it affected her to the point where she never wanted to see kids experience that, and she wanted to do everything she could to make sure that children had an opportunity and had somebody that they knew were fighting for them. And so she became that champion. And I think that carried on into working with the Y, working with kids. She always worked with kids. When I was in sixth grade, she worked at the school. She was always involved in the community, but definitely working with kids, right up until she passed. She retired, and she started working at the Street Academy, and continued. She could have just chilled, but she worked tireless. You always hear that title, "tireless worker," that is who my mother was.
From youngest sibling to youngest sibling, are there any special moments you share with your mother as the baby of the family?
Well, she never let me forget that (laughs). That's one thing. Actually, the interesting thing about being the youngest in my situation was I was allowed freedom. Because she had already been through five other kids, so it wasn't that I was an afterthought, she loved me and cared for me, but she let me kind of — and that was both good and bad because I got into a little bit of trouble here and there. The trouble that I got into was just curiosity. I was allowed to sort of be curious, so I could climb roofs, play in creeks, break dance on freeways (laughs). I think between my mother, my father, and my siblings, they gave me the mental parameters to not do anything too ridiculous, or if I did, make sure I didn't get caught (laughs).
Speaking of the fun of that time in your life, can you take me back to either one of the earliest jam sessions that would happen in your mother's basement, or just one of your favorite jam sessions in that basement?
There was so many. What was one of the fun jam sessions? It might have been when Morris first came down to my mom's basement and we had a chance to jam on some of our favorite songs. Because when we first jammed with Morris, when I first brought him in our band, we jammed on some stuff that he was more familiar with. But when he came over to my mother's house, we jammed on some stuff that I wanted to hear him play, that was I think a little outside of his comfort zone, for me to feel more at ease that he could handle some different kind of material. And he passed with flying colors (laughs). We jammed on some like, really funky — I was, at the time, really into War and Kool & The Gang. And so I just wanted to make sure he could cover a lot of that kind of stuff, some just really hard edge, Sly and the Family Stone funk. He's left handed, and he has a very unique drum style, and it's almost criminal that he's not playing drums for a band. Because Morris is still one of the baddest drummers I have ever played with. And I played with some really good drummers, I mean my cousin, Joe Lewis, Bobby Z, those are some amazing drummers. But I gotta say, Morris is right there with them.
Was there anybody that came down (to the basement) and just couldn't take the heat? Was anyone like, "ah, I can't — you're stretching me too much out of my comfort zone."
They would never wind up in my house. I mean, if you think about our band, my sister's in our band, I brought her in the band, William Doughty was an amazing percussionist, he was in our band, obviously Morris, me, and Prince. So it was a pretty amazing band. So in order for you to even get that far, I had to see you somewhere, and I had to bring you in. And if I saw you, you were already there.
Fast forward to present day, it's been a very funky summer for you. Can you tell me about some singles you've been dropping?
Yes, thank you for asking. I wanted to go back and do a funk album and just pay homage to the funk I grew up listening to that inspired me as a musician, and so I went back and sort of channeled Sly and the Family Stone, channeled the Ohio Players, channeled Parliament, Funkadelic, George Clinton, Bootsy, and I really kind of made an amalgamation of all of those things and put it on record. And I have like, 32 songs or something like that. And so we're gonna continue releasing them. We just cut some snippets, because I created a character for the album called "The Funk Forecaster." So he's sort of the philosopher, tour guide for the music. So he starts the album off and talks about "funky with a chance of cloudy" and talks about a lot of stuff along the way, and it's a character and a voice — it's a fun album. I wanted to make a really funky, fun album, and I wanted to put it out this summer, but we wound up getting really caught in doing what I think is more important, and it's honoring my mother. So it wound up taking a little more time than we thought, so we had to step back on that a little bit, but we did still release two songs. We used a released called "Hot Funk in the Summertime" which will be fine every summer. And then a song called "Funk is Alive" because funk is alive and well. I just want to bring it back, and it's really gotten amazing response. I've gotten calls, shout outs from a lot of different people in the music business. But they reached out, because they realized that this is what they thought speaks to the Minneapolis music vibe. So they're anxious to hear the rest of the record, and I'm anxious to get it out because I'm done. When you finish something, you want it to go out. But you know, the way the music business is right now, we want to just make sure that we are able to really connect to as many platforms as we can, because it's easy for people to assume that they know how to make a record blow up or work, but it's changed. Music Business has changed a lot, and so we want to really make sure that we reach out to all the different people, and really respect this record because I put a lot of work in it. I'm playing everything, I'm singing everything, it's top to bottom. There's a couple of friends that listen to it, they're like, "you're playing everything??" I just played it to my sister yesterday, and she was like, "I didn't know you could sing like that!" My family always says that. They always say "I didn't know you could play the piano. I didn't know you could play this. I didn't know you could sing like that. I didn't know you could write." I guess because I was up in the attic creating and I had what I used to call my little mad laboratory, and I would be up there always creating, concocting different music that they just didn't know. I guess they just thought I was always up there with girls, just most of the time (laughs). Anyway, sorry.
That's really cool that the response has been so positive, and also seems like it's been a little bit of a thank you for keeping this music and this sound alive.
That was another reason why I thought it was important to do this because people's concept of the Minneapolis sound is interesting, and I understand. Again, it comes back to what my mother used to say, entertainers, artists, musicians, producers. I'm an artist, and I'm guilty (laughs), but I don't adhere to the constraints that some artists feel like they should fix themselves to. I can't do it. I love Joni Mitchell. I love Bob Dylan. I love Bob Marley. I love Taylor Swift. I love Kendrick Lamar. I love everything; it runs the gamut. I don't feel like I should be bound to anything. As an artist, I want to paint whatever palette, whatever picture I want to paint. And if somebody doesn't like it, that's okay. But that's who I am as an artist. And so now as an artist, I want to paint a funk picture, and it's going to be as true a picture, and it reflects everything that we were trying to do when we started. And I say we, meaning our group, because we were trying to get out of Minneapolis (laughs). And so we really created a sound to try to get us out of Minneapolis. And it wasn't just Prince, it was — mostly, really just Prince and myself, because we were the ones writing the songs. But I just want to really go back to realizing that.
And this idea of starting from nothing, basically.
Yeah, creating something from nothing has always been a theme of mine. Like a painter, it's a blank canvas, and I paint. And I love painting; it's a metaphor for the music that I create as well.
I just want to say thank you so much for your time and for coming in today. One lasting question I wanted to ask, what will Bernadette Anderson Way stand to serve? What will it symbolize?
A lot of young women, especially Black women, can look at my mother's journey and see, understand where she came from — because it was a very, very rough journey, there was nothing simple about it — and realize that you too, can overcome many, many obstacles and reach a point where people are respecting you, to the point where you have a street named after you, and that's what that says. It says a lot to the community, but all over the world. Because the beautiful thing about her blessings for us, myself, Prince, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, they're all a product of — it all came from that hub, and went out to the world. And my mother, sort of, giving that kiss, hug, whatever you want to call it, made it so that it's a worldwide thing. So it's not just relegated to Minneapolis, it's all over the world. And I get people from as far as Australia, Ethiopia, you name it, London, Paris, everywhere. People contact me and say, "man, it's such an honor that your mom is —" and this is all over the world. And that's a blessing. And my mother would be so proud. So I'm super proud, and I really have to thank everybody that made this happen.
For more photos from the block party on Sept. 13 honoring Bernadette Anderson, click here.