Interview with Stance Podcast Host Chrystal Genesis
About Chrystal
Chrystal Genesis is a journalist and arts & culture programmer from London. She runs and hosts award-winning independent arts, culture and current affairs podcast Stance and has presented on BBC Podcast Radio Hour & BBC Front Row. She helped launch and produce HuffPost’s women's health and private lives podcast Am I Making You Uncomfortable and creates courses, workshops and performance programmes for young people at Southbank Centre - Europe's largest Arts Centre - and is the executive producer of the organisations Violet Nights podcast. Stance Podcast was awarded Bronze for Best Current Affairs at The British Podcast Awards 2020 and won Best Arts & Culture Show and Rising Star in the Mixcloud Online Radio Awards 2018 and been included in The Observer and The Times annual Best Podcasts list, and been Podcast of the Week in publications including The FT, Grazia, The Guardian and The Independent. Prior to this, Chrystal worked at the BBC producing multi-platform arts, news and current affairs content for the Today Programme, Woman's Hour, The World at One and PM, all on Radio 4, as well as on shows for BBC London, 6 Music, BBC 1, The World Affairs Unit and BBC World in London and Washington DC.
About Stance
Stance is an independent award-winning arts and culture podcast run by journalist and curator Chrystal Genesis. Guests so far include musicians Four Tet, Jamila Woods, Róisín Murphy, Amber Mark, Caribou, Kaytranada, Jessie Ware and Nao, authors Yaa Gyasi, Sayaka Murata & Valeria Luiselli, lawyer and campaigner Gina Miller, politician Bobi Wine, poets Fatimah Asghar, John Cooper Clarke & Kae Tempest, actor Riz Ahmed, Me Too founder Tarana Burke, playwrights Inua Ellams, Natasha Gordon & Sabrina Mahfouz, writer and activist Janet Mock, choreographers Akram Khan, Deborah Colker and Hofesh Shechter, fashion designer Duro Olowu and visual artists Shirin Neshat, Larry Achiampong, The Singh Twins & Juliana Huxtable.
Topics covered include Is This for Real?, Black in the Time of Corona, Manchesters LGBTQ+ Story, On Beauty, The Class Ceiling in the Arts, Modern Mumbai, Sex, The Female Prison Experience, Revolutionary Mothering, Demystifying Yoga and Donald Glover’s Atlanta. Stance loves to explore and has visited locations including Mumbai in India, Colombo in Sri Lanka, Bergen in Norway, Paris in France and New York, LA & Philadelphia in the US in search of original stories and fresh perspectives.
Stance was awarded Bronze for Best Current Affairs at The British Podcast Awards 2020. Stance won Best Arts & Culture Show and Rising Star in the Mixcloud Online Radio Awards 2018, nominated for Best Arts and Culture and Best Current Affairs as part of the British Podcast Awards 2019, included in The Observer and The Times annual Best Podcasts list, and has been Podcast of the Week in publications including The FT, Grazia, The Guardian and The Independent. Stance Podcast is a Tate Exchange Associate.
The Interview
Natasha: So I was going to start by just asking you about your childhood. Did you have a were you like a creative kid? Was your family creative?
Chrystal: Well, my mom was really creative. She's a musician so Mom was always doing that. Touring as a backing singer for big reggae bands and she would be away for quite a bit as well. Once she went away for six weeks or something and as a child it's quite long, so I remember that. The upside was that I was raised by my grandmother and grandfather who lived about ten minutes away in Brixton. All my family lived there and we are a big extended family. It was a bit crazy, obviously, but very much intergenerational living. There would be space, but it would be really busy as well, people coming in and out, neighbours for a cup of tea, my family sitting round reading tabloid newspapers, chatting about whatever, it was that crazy like that. So I had quite an active and curious childhood. My dad was creative as well. He was a multi instrumentalist and poet and chef! So music and sound has been around for as long as I can remember.
Natasha: Cool. That sounds amazing.
Chrystal: There were problems with that.
Natasha: Sometimes creative families do have problems.
Chrystal: My granddad came here in nineteen fifty two from Jamaica and then married my nan — white English nan — and obviously both their families, much more so the white family than the black family, were awful about it. They didn’t turn up to the wedding. They had so much to deal with back then as a couple, but they stayed together for about fifty years until my granddad died. They had children, seven kids, and then they fostered one as well, and bought their own house. In fact they weren't able to rent privately, so thank God for social housing, because on the market there was a no blacks, no Irish, no dogs policy. They were super powerful and they did stuff differently and that always stuck in my mind.
Natasha: Do you remember did they cook Jamaican food for you?
Chrystal: My granddad, yeah. He used to work on the railway, which is what many Caribbeans did when they came over, and how he met my nan. He ended up moving up professionally. He was in a Jamaican cyclist team so he was a keen cyclist and after his nightshift he’d go for a cycle round Wimbledon Park in the mornings and because I'd obviously stay there a lot he’d then return and drop me off at school. Before drop off he'd come back and cook cornmeal porridge, which is polenta, basically, but more fine than polenta and you cook it with milk, if you want to make it better add condensed milk, nutmeg, vanilla essence. It's delicious. So we'd have that all the time or banana porridge and ackee and salt fish and things like that. My nan would cook more traditional English food, like shepherd's pie or bake rock cakes. So I had big influences from both.
Natasha: Wow, amazing. Sounds cool. And what are you up to now? I know you've got the podcast. You've got a big new job. What are you up to creatively?
Chrystal: I am still running Stance, which is going really well and the latest episode is coming out on the 1st of October, with the episode looking at the fresh and creative cultural landscape of the city. I went to Paris just before the quarantine but after the easing of lockdown so perfect timing! We’ve had great feedback already and the voices featured were so wonderful and varied. I do some arts and media consultancy on the side too and just finished working for Lambeth Council, which was interesting. It’s nice to do it in an area that I'm from, too. I’ve also finished up producing a podcast for Huffington Post on a Women's Health Bodies and Private Lives called Am I Making You Uncomfortable and I also make podcasts for organisations and train in how to make podcasts — so many other things. Too many things!
Natasha: Oh my gosh, you are spinning a lot of plates. Are you still at the South Bank?
Chrystal: I've stopped working at Southbank Centre running the Young People’s Programme as I have a new job in NYC! Working as a producer which is really exciting. I’ve not aid it out loud yet but it is happening. I love NYC and feel it’s a bigger space and I think I’ll enjoy it. It’s a wild time to move but the job wil be great and we shall see what happens!
Natasha: Oh wow, so you're going to be producing podcasts?
Chrystal: Yeah, it's going to be fun because I think I'm going to learn a lot about the podcasting industry. It’s a competitive marketplace, and the company, Neon Hum, they do loads of narrative podcasts and wonderful work. I'll still be doing Stance, just not the business side of it.
Natasha: Yeah, OK, wow, you are spinning a lot of plates, and how has parenthood changed the way you work? Have you always worked like that or was there a period that you took off or how did that all work?
Chrystal: I've always worked quite a lot, not because I'm a workaholic because I'm definitely not. I know how to chill. I love sleeping until noon and all of that. I think a lot of it is just what you see growing up. My mom always worked really hard and always had a bunch of jobs so I think I'm a bit like that as well. I’m lucky as I love all my jobs! I like the variety as well, working on different projects, podcasts or developing ideas. Working on multiple projects feels natural to me because the more you put yourself in those situations, the easier it is. Rejection is part of that as well. As a journalist, you always get rejected. You know, in interviewee you’re pitching to be on your programme in, say, a newsroom for example and they’re like ‘go away, leave me alone!’ [laughs] So I feel like it's a good thing, working in an area you love but it's not the most compatible with parenting in many ways, at least not all the time.
Natasha: So how do you manage that? Because you have your family nearby still, is that right?
Chrystal: So mum lives around the corner and she looks after the kids for me when she can and obviously, she's not been doing much touring. Mum looks after the kids like my nan did for me. And then I’ll see the kids close to dinner time and bedtime, and then of course weekends. Sometimes I will be working on the weekends but will try and have daytimes during the week off.
Natasha: How have kids changed you and how does your life affect them?
Chrystal: My husband does 50 percent if not a little bit more of the child care, so that really helps. I think it's impossible to get it right or feel like you have it right because we've been so conditioned as women, I will sometimes go to bed feeling I’ve only seen my kids for like forty five minutes today. That doesn't make me feel good. But I need to work. I don't come from inherited wealth, but then again, sometimes I feel like that's a bit of an excuse. I like working, but there's all this stuff in my head. I ask the kids sometimes, would you tell Mummy if you think you want to see her more? And they say, yeah, but then my son, who's really measured said, Mum, you're doing it because you want to help us so we can go on holidays, so we can buy stuff and do things to help people. And I'm like, oh my God, that's so cute. So he understands, but maybe my daughter less so, but then if she could have me tied to her she would. She told me yesterday, “I’d like to be joined to you at the shoulders!” But I think she's got the perfect replacement in my mum. But I am a good mum. I think they've changed me dramatically. I used to say they didn't change me, especially when I had my first one. I was like, I'm still the same. But now I realise you can't be the same after having a child, you're holding a baby that's just come out of your body, which is insane anyway. And then there's that huge sense of responsibility and love. Obviously, you might not get the love straight away but it's not about you anymore, really, because you're always thinking about your children ahead of yourself. So I think it's changed me. It's made me more determined, focused, organised and less likely to take bullshit. Definitely good at managing and dealing with tricky personalities as well, because children can be so demanding and all over the place emotionally. I feel like that’s helped in very specific work scenarios sometimes.
Natasha: Yeah. My husband used to say that it was harder negotiating with the children than working at the United Nations.
Chrystal: Exactly. I know! You just don't have a lot of time to think. You have to be really, really on it and for me, it's definitely made things more urgent.
Natasha: Right, totally. I think it's so strange how in a way, we put down working mothers and then, like you said, the skills you gain make you more organised and more able to take bullshit in an intelligent way. So why is that not acknowledged?
Chrystal: I know. It's hard, but I also think a lot of working mums are obsessed with having it all. And it's just not possible. Something's got to give. If you're going to be working a lot, then you won't see your kids as much. And that's the hard truth. But I feel like it's not necessarily about quantity. I think it's quality. But I would say that, wouldn't I?
Natasha: Well, my mom worked and I think it was all about the quality. I don't remember it being her being absent, I remember the quality stuff.
Chrystal: Yeah, we have a lot of fun hanging out. It's split between me, my partner, and my mum. We have lovely chats. We go out for dinner as often as we can, go on walks and things like that. We also do volunteer type stuff so they're really aware socially and ask questions. I feel like I'm teaching them the best. Although, obviously no one knows what the hell they’re doing!
Natasha: Isn't that the truth?! So the other thing I wanted to ask you about, was what your what you think your biggest creative setbacks have been?
Chrystal: I’d say not getting lots of jobs I was applying for in the early days. Applying for jobs is so awful. I hate it and it takes so much time and effort! But then again I’m so glad I didn’t get lots of them as I certainly wouldn’t be doing what I am doing now.
Chrystal: Also, even before that, when I tried to get on these particular courses at college and they said, no. To be fair, I was missing half a GCSE, but for me that was a big thing because I realised that people box you in and make judgments from really early on. Maybe it was fair, actually, but I'm so glad it happened because I ended up doing a different course, which changed my life not only educationally but socially. Now, I was young then. I was 18 and it was all quite difficult for me then as well. My dad died when I was 16 so it was a depressing time. I say that, but I also made lots of good friends. I went out and started to go out and really get into music — my own thing, rather than being spoon fed by my family. I think opportunities, creative opportunities, are really hard to come by, but if you're from a particular background or you don't have exactly what you should have educationally, it is even harder. For me, I feel like my whole life I'm moving this way and that to try and get to things because I can’t always get to things directly. It was especially like that in my youth, but because I was so focused, I just met the right people who believed in me. And those people were from all backgrounds and all different races and genders as well.
Natasha: Yeah, that totally makes sense. It's like that need to be a bit iterative rather than just going in this linear way, but actually trying to kind of trying this way, trying that way and going different directions.
Chrystal: Yeah. I don't know if it's a good enough answer because that was so long ago. Now I feel really lucky. I've been making the podcast for nearly four years and it's just been doing so well. And when I say so well, it's not like it's super popular, but I don't care about that. I've just got quite a dedicated audience who are influential in their fields. All the artists, politicians, musicians or academics that we interview have heard of it. So it's got a nice little global community and I just feel so thankful to be doing it. I feel like since I left the BBC — and took loads of skills there as well, which I'm so thankful for — I feel like everything's been all right. Yeah, something is going to go wrong, obviously! [laughs]
Natasha: You're not just lucky, but you've worked hard for it. Was it scary leaving the BBC?
Chrystal: I feel really lucky because everything that I've been doing, I just kept on doing it and the BBC was a great grounding in so many ways. And it's interesting when it starts to pay off and you realise you actually do know what you're talking about. You've been doing it for so long. Since I left the BBC everything has been fabulous and they’ve invited me back to present so I’m happy.
Natasha: It's nice when you can look back and go, actually, I do know there's no one behind and I needed to look behind me any more. I can just say it.
Chrystal: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Natasha: Cool. That's amazing. And so what's next for you? I mean, I know you're going to New York.
Chrystal: Next is New York. I'm really excited and interested to be in America, in New York, at this time. I think I'm definitely going to listen and take a lot in, specifically I want to listen to African-Americans. I don't want to go there with my privileged British accent and not be aware of what that means and the impact that that might have. So I'm really interested in listening and finding out what it's like, and I'm interested in working really hard and learning a lot and meeting people. And Stance will still continue. I'm still going to make it for as long as I can and want to.
Natasha: Amazing. That's so exciting.Well, Chrystal it was so nice to talk to you. Thank you!
Chrystal: Thank you.
