On this episode we talke to filmmaker Kayla Naomi Watkins on how she illuminate Black history in her work for PBS and how she celebrates twerking, Black bodies, and Trini culture in her new short Bumpa.

Listen to “The White Meat Podcast” on Spreaker.

Here’s the transcript:

David Dylan Thomas: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the White Meat podcast. I’m your host David Dylan Thomas, writer and director of White Meat, a movie with the following premise: underneath Washington Square Park in Philadelphia are buried the bodies of hundreds of enslaved people. This is true. What if one night they all come back from the dead as zombies, but they only eat white people?

I feel like my intro this week, I’m gonna be doing like I’m Marc Maron or something and telling you all of my upcoming gigs at different comedy clubs, but it’s good news. It means we’ve got a lot of places we’re showing White Meat Appetizer, which is the short film that we’ve made that we’re hoping is gonna launch the career of White Meat the feature.

We’re doing a special San Francisco screening at The Little Roxie in San Francisco on July 21st. So if you’re around for that one, it’s a little special. You need to email us at info@whitemeatmovie, let us know you’re interested, and we’ll send you the link and the password for the event ’cause it’s a smaller private screening. But there are still spots available.

And then on August 4th, we’re gonna be doing a screening with VHS Club, which is this really cool recurring event in Philly where they show stuff on VHS. And they’re gonna pair my movie with a screening of Sugar Hill, which to my knowledge is the only other zombie movie where the zombies are formerly enslaved people. It’s a really fun blaxploitation classic looking forward to that.

We got into the Chain New York City Film Festival, which is gonna be in New York City August 6th through 16th. I will let you know when we know exactly when we’re screening.

And then we’re going back to Los Angeles for Film Invasion LA August 20th through the 23rd.

And then we’re we got into this thing called Geek Fest Film Fest, which basically takes your movie to different Comic Cons. So we’re gonna be at the Long Beach Comic Con on September 5th, and the Los Angeles Comic Con on October 30th. So we got a whole bunch of upcoming screenings that we’re really excited about and hope to see you there. If you go to whitemeatmovie.com we’ll have them all listed up so you can click on the links for each one. So that’s stuff we’ve got coming up. Really excited.

For this week’s guest, we’re talking to Kayla Naomi Watkins. I met her through the IPMF, which is the, one of the one of our grantees or grantees, grantors.

Grantors. They gave us some money and it was awesome. Really cool group out here in Philly, and one of the cool things they do is they put you into a cohort with all the other people who got that grant that year, so you get to meet other filmmakers. I met Kayla and I got to watch her amazing documentary Bumpa, which is about twerking and whining and I’ll let her tell you all about it.

But she also does work for In the Margins, which is and she works for WHYY public media station, and they do all these really cool documentaries about hidden history. So we talk really equally, I think, about both of those things. And we have a really great time. So without any further ado, here is Kayla Naomi Watkins

[musical interlude]

David Dylan Thomas: Welcome to the White Meat Podcast. I’m your host, David Dylan Thomas, and today we have a very special guest. Kayla, why don’t you introduce yourself and tell the good folks here what it is you get up to?

Kayla Naomi Watkins: I am Kayla Naomi Watkins. I’m a filmmaker, producer. I love to edit, color correct.

I have been freelancing and adjuncting when I first got to Philly. I’m based in Philly but I’ve now moved on to working at a public media station, HYY. I basically produce short form videos about history, food history. I do it in collaboration with PBS Origins, and I work with a team, with another producer, an animator, and a writer, and we put together these shows for YouTube audiences.

We’ve been able to get millions of views in ac- across the channels that we work with like PBS Food, PBS Origins. I actually just dropped an episode this June about Ona Judge. She’s the one woman who defied George Washington all her life. She was enslaved by him, and she ran away and kept her freedom despite his basically cha- chasing her until the end of his life.

I like to choose stories that are in the margins. That’s the name of one of our shows. I like to talk to subject matter experts in different cities to try to find stories that we don’t really get talked about we don’t really get taught in school that I think are very relevant today despite having taken place a couple centuries ago.

I have a great team. I have this senior producer, Sarah Moses, and an animator, B. Walling, who we work on the main projects together. And we’ve just added a PBS fellow to help us edit a few episodes In the Margins so I can focus on producing, researching and finding pitches that will draw audiences.

David Dylan Thomas: So I wanna talk about this most recent episode about Ona Judge, ’cause I just watched it last night. It was amazing.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Thank you.

David Dylan Thomas: I wanna thank you for doing it. And it’s particularly relevant for “White Meat,” for a number of reasons. I don’t know if you know this, but the feature, “White Meat,” that we’ve already written has a significant scene that takes place at the president’s house, so years ago I actually scouted it with my son and one of the things I noted about it was the Ona Judge displays, plural. And I had a scene where people were being chased through the president’s house by zombies, and at one point they’re cornered, and behind them is the Ona Judge display.

It’s kind of like a historical Easter egg. But that story has fascinated me since I first heard of it. When did you first hear about Ona Judge?

Kayla Naomi Watkins: I heard about Ona Judge a couple years ago. I have this woman that I’ve been working with. I met her through Scribe Video Center’s Precious Places Program. Her name is Dr. Diane Turner. I met her along with Karen Warrington, and they’re two women that have had a lot to do with historical preservation in Philadelphia, just letting people know what has happened in Philly historically. Dr. Turner, I think she has a wide range, but she’s especially helped us with the Revolutionary era.

And I was looking for pitches that centered really women like me, like Black women, young Black women. I was looking for Indigenous stories, and so I needed to talk to people in Philly that have already been researching that. Dr. Turner, who’s part of the Afro, the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, and it hosts a lot of archives of Black people’s achievements, their documentations, going back to the 17, maybe even 1600s documentations of how we lived and the things that we’ve done, the things we’ve written, and how we’ve spoken up for ourselves.

And Ona Judge, they have the interview… There’s a newspaper article that her interview after she had escaped, and it was 10 y- I think it was over 10 years after one of the people that died helping her. She didn’t wanna give up anyone’s names. And so she waited until most of the people that helped her had already passed on, and then she revealed how she escaped the first president who had employed the use of the federal government, state government and his own money to try to bring her back into enslavement after she left in her early 20s.

She– I found out about her thanks to Dr. Diane Turner’s scholarship and she also supported the creation of the novel “Never Caught.” Erica Dunbar wrote this novel, and she actually visited the Blockson Collection and Dr. Diane Turner and Aslaku Bernahu they’re both incredible archivists that helped us put together a lot of the historical context for this story.

David Dylan Thomas: No that’s fascinating. And the… I, I had heard about, probably on Tumblr if I’m being honest the bare bones of the story of there is someone who escaped from George Washington and hunted her for the rest of his life. And by the way, like watching the video last night, I was reminded of just how dramatic a story this is.

I was like coming up with a pitch in my head for the tagline. It’s you’re on the run from the President of the United States.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: That was basically it. Yeah. It’s like how high stakes… I have to find a way to make history a high stakes, high urgency situation, even though it already happened, and how much, more urgent is it that the actual president is chasing you down, and there aren’t rules that we have today about how you can be treated just because you were a Black woman. So you’re in danger of anyone that sides with white supremacy, anyone that sides with the… At this time, slavery was an argument. It was something that was on the debate table. And there were definitely supporters, especially in Pennsylvania, the Quakers especially and there were Black free people who had either freed themselves or even they had immigrated here, and they had established a society of people that were still concerned with the what was going on with the enslaved population.

So I wanted… I, and mind you, this pitch wasn’t immediately accepted. I had been lobbying for this for a while. The first time we had this season, we only had four episodes, so only four ideas were gonna get through, and we were kinda leaning toward ideas that had more availability of archival and people that could be, that had representations of them. Despite, our first episode was of a woman who didn’t have any images of her, but the woman that she lived with in the 1830s, Rebecca Perot and Rebecca Jackson. Rebecca Perot had an image of her, but Rebecca Jackson didn’t.

Ona Judge does not really have images of her. There are depictions of her by artists. And so I have to make the argument that I’m gonna be able to represent this person, and that’s done with, especially with the help of our animator. He’s, he does illustration, animation through After Effects and Blender. Tom Hudson, Crew Hudson. He basically…

We’re, I write out a paragraph describing the scene that I’m looking for. I give him a ki- maybe I’ll give him like 15 animations that I want.

And then, and by animations, I mean scenes. So he’s still gonna break it down into different shots to make it more narrative. I try to get as much as I can out of the…We have about a month to put these things together in between episodes ’cause the show is being made while the episodes are coming out.

David Dylan Thomas: No, that’s remarkable too. And I think the show does a really good job of mixing kind of the typical archival, Ken Burns style, here’s a photograph or here’s a letter or whatever, with these really robust animations that really bring the scene alive.

The but the Philadelphia connection was part of the story I did not know when I first heard it, and I certainly didn’t know until I visited the president’s house that it was from that house, like right here in Philly. And that, that blew my mind.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Right here. You can go see the foundation. You can go see the foundation of that house.

David Dylan Thomas: So that, that is the that was my introduction to that story. And one of the things I’m really glad you included is the government’s attempt to destroy that history, literally rip it off the walls, which I’ve…

So again, I don’t know if you’ve seen “Appetizer” yet, but there is a reference to all of that. So while we were making it, I visited I happened to be nearby the president’s house one day, and I recorded a video for our Insta that was basically about how the administration is starting to take this all away.

I kinda wanna bring this up. And that was months before they actually came, and then they actually came for it. And when they did or when it was announced that was definitely gonna happen, I called my editor, and we had a plan more of a joke almost, to say, “Let’s include in the credits the names of the people who were imprisoned at George Washington’s house.”

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Incredible!

David Dylan Thomas: “Let’s include the names of the presidents who owned people.” And it was oh, maybe for a laugh, but also not for a laugh,

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: And then when we found out for sure this was happening, I called up my editor and I’m like, “We gotta do the thing.”

And she’s “Yeah, we gotta do the thing.” So it’s in there now.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: I’m grateful y’all put that in there.

David Dylan Thomas: No, and it’s… it was great though. It was also s- really validating to see in the video, In the Margins video that history being held there too. It’s like basically if they try to take the history away from real life, we’re gonna preserve it in any way we can, if it’s in the credits of a movie, if it’s in a YouTube video.

It’s like, how many different ways can we preserve this history.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: You get me.

David Dylan Thomas: They’re trying to get away, take away, yeah.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: You get me. I feel really blessed getting this show because they ha- I’ve gotten… I just pitch what is in my heart and I knew the Ona Judge story was gonna come to importance in the year two, in the 250th celebration, because people are gonna be talking about George Washington, and of course people are gonna wanna know, okay, what are some things that, that we haven’t already heard? We heard all the basic stories of him, and this is one that it brings a lot of controversy. They, the NPS, the National Park Service they were ordered to remove these panels, and when I went there, there was a citizen pushback.

There is a group called the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition, who we featured in the video. They’ve been fighting about this at least since 2003, I think. To honor the people that were imprisoned there. I love that you put it in your credits because I just never learned about this in school.

I, you would hear almost like they talk about slavery as this mark that you can, “Yeah, it happened, but ignore all that and focus on the liberty part of it.” And I think that’s just, that’s why we’re in the mess that we’re in now. I can’t… basically with my job, I do have to be mindful about, like, how I speak about things, but I can point out the very fact that I watched before my eyes, and mind you, I would walk past the president’s house regularly. I watched before my eyes those panels just disappear. They haven’t put everything back. And so Black Philadelphians had to be the ones to fight now, and back then Black Philadelphians had to be the ones to fight because they had their freedom, but you have to think about it. If freedom is a legal debate how safe is your freedom?

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: If they can pass a law that gives you gradual abolition after a certain amount of time, and they make six-month stipulations about when you can own a slave, then that means that your freedom is conditional. And I love that there are people today that recognize how urgent that is, and my job is to translate that to wider audiences.

And from what I can see in the comments, it really does resonate with people. And even the people that are against, that are on the other side that disagree they feel compelled to reply. They feel compelled to argue, and that means a lot to me.

David Dylan Thomas: That, that is something that I would be nervous about, right?

Like at some point, “Appetizer” is gonna be up on YouTube, maybe a year from now when we’re done with the festival circuit, and part of me just wants to turn comments off, right?

Kayla Naomi Watkins: No, don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t, because we’ve gotten If you look, like I, because it’s the videos we’re making, I always go to the comments and I look probably every, like I haven’t read every one on the Ona Judge video, but you, every single time you are gonna see someone that doesn’t understand.

They weren’t taught history, they weren’t taught Black history, and so they feel like people are digging up the dirty laundry.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: And they have a reactionary response to that, and what gives me hope is that there are always people in the comments that address that reactionary person.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: And they meet them with facts, and I see it as a teaching, a possibility for teaching. Even if it’s not that person. Maybe I’ve planted a seed. Maybe someone that saw that reactionary person that may have had that reaction also see the, sees the facts, and maybe something about them changes. Or the people that don’t have as much hope, I hope that they see it as, “No, there’s other people out there that are fighting for the truth. They’re fighting to get the whole truth told without sacrificing the autonomy of Black people who existed then.”

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. And it’s interesting too ’cause one of the things the video does really well and I promise we have a whole other short to talk about y’all that’s gonna be awesome.

But, this is also such a rich topic. One of the things the video does a great job of is expose the strategy of people in power manipulating the law to get what they want, right? So there’s these strategies around how to get around the sort of six months you’re allowed to keep a human enslaved in town, which again, even as I say the words I’m like “Yeah, sure. We’re gonna say it’s okay for six months to keep a human being imprisoned.”

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: Like, what?

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Like just renting a person.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. And then and so the ways he would sneak them out of town at the six-month mark and then bring them back in so he could keep them, like just all the, and this, and just the fact that he was the president and could influence the law to make. And it makes you realize that the way we see power abused  today is a very old game, right?

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Yes. It’s a old game. It’s a old hand. There’s documentation. You can look at it. We keep the records of these laws as they change through the years.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. And yeah so I, I cannot recommend that enough.

And I wanna move on though because, and I kinda wanna ask you this too, because you talk about, the way you talk about the animated sequences, it’s almost like you’re writing a screenplay. It’s almost like you’re doing… But what I know you from filmmaking-wise is documentary. Tell folks about the recent documentary you made and what it’s about.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: So my documentary, this is a personal aside from my full-time work. I, the same year that I got into HYY, I got a grant from Scribe Video, oh, I got a fiscal sponsorship with Scribe Video Center and Independent, oh, People’s Media Fund is their new name. People’s Media Fund.

David Dylan Thomas: Oh, okay, cool. Yeah.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Yeah. I got a grant from People’s Media Fund. I basically made a documentary about how Black women and femmes interact with twerking and whining as a source of healing, fun, therapy, and community engagement. And I also analyze the controversies about those two dances that are both ancient and African.

I track… I basically met with five dancers who are professionals. They use these dances in their work. They’re hired to be in music videos and in classes, and one is actually a psychotherapist who uses Afro-Caribbean dance in her therapeutic practice to help people deal with their traumas. These dancers, they explore some of the memories that twerking and whining brings up with them and they also reflect on the historical record of where these dances come from and why they’re demonized by basically Eurocentric culture.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: I what was the question?

David Dylan Thomas: Oh, so just tell us about the documentary, but also tell us what is it called?

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Oh, “Bumpa.” This is a film, “Bumpa,” it’s a Black femme dance extravaganza. It’s full of improvised sequences that were shot on location in Philly and in New York with five professional dancers exploring their feelings about twerking and whining.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah, and it’s and how long is it?

Kayla Naomi Watkins: 31 minutes.

David Dylan Thomas: 31 minutes. Yeah. It’s, and it flies by, folks. The see, I’ve seen it twice now. I absolutely love it, and one of the things that really strikes me about it is the relationship to the body, that we get to the Black body, to the full-figured body, right?

There’s definitely things to talk about there. Tell me about exploring those themes.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: I initially came up with this idea, I was actually taking Rhea Tajiri’s documentary class in Temple, and she basically asked us to write documentaries about something going on in our lives, and I wanted to do something lighthearted because I was stressed.

I my body was really pent up, and the way that I would release stress was going out with my friends and dancing. And I wondered “Why can’t I just make a documentary about that?” So I did. I… Can you remind me of the question again?

David Dylan Thomas: Sure. The things that you explore in the documentary that I find really fascinating are the Black body, the Black female body and its representation.

I was, tell me what it was like exploring those themes.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: I have so many Black femme friends, women friends that struggle with how they’re perceived. We talk so much about how we could just be walking in a space and someone perceives us as scary or dangerous or angry, and all we’re doing is processing this traumatic life that we inherited as Black Americans or we’re in a work mode or, we’re just in a neutral mode and we’re just perceived in a terrible light.

I remember the feeling of when I was in college going to parties, and back then when we were going through different Temple parties, they, I don’t know if they still are, but they were definitely very segregated. And you might get with a group of friends and dance in a corner in a party, and people would be staring at you like you were weird, versus I come from, first, a Baltimorean perspective and a Trinidadian perspective.

Like Baltimore, both Baltimore and Trinidadian cultures are very proud of bodies, proud of body movement. They’re not afraid to dance no matter your gender. And I feel like I was coming into a whiter, more rigid, whi- almost pretty much white American culture that was almost embarrassed in the ways that the body moves.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: And then we also see like a resurgence of a skinny-focused culture. I had already been molded in that in the early 2000s, and we were just getting a little break where people were embracing curves, but it was still curves of a certain kind.

David Dylan Thomas: Right.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: And I always knew, and you can look at a lot of studies about how people view, have viewed Black people’s bodies.

We were just talking about enslavement, our bodies were capital, and the way that we’re almost automatically devalued depending on how we move, and it’s automatically considered either criminal or just not valuable. And I wanted something to directly challenge that. I also come from experiencing the body from a formerly Christian perspective where from the age of puberty, as a young woman, especially a young Black woman, you are scrutinized about the choices that you make with your body about the things that you wear. I’m from this, the Seventh Day Adventist background, which is very conservative in dress. And it goes even further in the Black community because once those curves come in, you’re almost considered guilty by association because people are looking at you.

My sexual harassment started when I was 12. That was the first time I even understood I was being sexually harassed. And so I’ve always been hyper conscious of my body. And then other Black women I know feel the same ways. And as culture is shifting and changing about what is an acceptable body, we’re moving right back into a skinny era.

And so I needed to find dancers that reflected my body type and the body type of people that I know. And also real dancer bodies. Not maybe a Eurocentric version of a dancer, but more of a Afro-centric version of what a beautiful dancer would look like. And so that’s how I wanted to address body and image.

One of the women that I talked to, she’d already been… Her name’s Queen Nzinga. She’d already been in a documentary I think it’s called Thick Skin, it’s on HBO about fatphobia and how it impacts people in their health. And I think it’s something that we kinda struggle with in the Black community to talk about it.

There’s always a focus on our food and how our food is not good enough and it’s really that we’re living lifestyles where you cannot center the body, where anything where you do center yourself or your health or the way that you move, it’s seen as frivolous and stupid and silly, when it really it’s like you only have this one body, a lot of Black women, there are a significant amount of Black women that go through trauma in the body, including sexual trauma. And so you feel a bit of shame, and we talk about this in the film, about showing off your body because the implication is that if you do show off, then you’re inviting violence instead of understanding that really the most natural state of humanity is to show this form.

This is the only thing you have when you’re walking on this planet. Why would I not be proud of how this thing moves? There’s also a, especially since COVID, people are so afraid to dance. They’re so afraid to touch. I’m not saying we gotta touch everybody. We gotta touch people with full enthusiastic consent, but it’s like people are so afraid to let loose.

And so I found that I’ve been working on this… I had the concept of this film before COVID- … but I felt like this twerking, whining film was even more relevant because we’re losing so many third spaces. We’re losing so many opportunities to dance. Everything is so much more expensive, and so for me, it feels all the more important to gather.

And then finally I don’t know how we expect to do to make actions that make our lives better if we can’t even move, if we can’t even gather, if we can’t even on a base level dance in a dance floor together with random people. I don’t see how we can make shake as a community because our origins were, like, rent parties, and we would gather in the juke joints to raise money for good things, and we don’t even do that anymore. In the Caribbean culture, soca came from the steel drums were from oil drums that the warmongers in Britain had left, that they were turned into music, and they would use these soca parties to gather and plan and organize, but also dance and show love and experience pleasure. And we’ve kinda lost that in a way as a community

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. And there’s, so there’s a lot there. I, one thing I wanna ping back to real quick is, where you from in Baltimore?

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Oh, I’m from West Baltimore. Yep.

David Dylan Thomas: Yo. Okay, so-

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Sandtown …

David Dylan Thomas: So I grew up, so I was born in Columbia, Maryland, then we moved to Lochearn, which is Baltimore County.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Okay.

David Dylan Thomas: But then I lived in Charles Village for a while ’cause I was going to college there.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: That’s awesome.

David Dylan Thomas: But yo, Baltimore, definitely. Definitely.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Born and raised. I went from the city to the county. So I went, I had to s- I definitely had to deal with the city life. I had to, we went through the drug epidemics that went there. And then I kinda went to the county and went to artsy school, so I had the, both worlds.

David Dylan Thomas: I am finding so many Baltimore-Philly transplants. I don’t know if Rashid Zakat, but he’s on-

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Yeah, I do.

David Dylan Thomas: He’s another one.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: I just filmed with him a couple weeks ago.

David Dylan Thomas: Oh, that’s awesome.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Yeah. Yeah. He’s super, super lit.

David Dylan Thomas: Oh, yeah. I love Rashid so much. But yeah, we out there. But that’s interesting.

So tell me more about this like Baltimore-Trinidad connection. Tell, first back me, tell me about your personal connection to Trinidad.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Definitely. Bumpa is actually a pivot film ’cause I was originally gonna do a thesis about how at the time my mother, she actually immigra- my mother immigrated with her maternal line, like my great-grandmother, my grandmother, my aunties and my cousin Dee.

They all immigrated to America and to Baltimore in 1988.

David Dylan Thomas: Okay.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: And since then they had not gone back.

David Dylan Thomas: Really?

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Because the cost, they, sorry. They had moved into a neighborhood that like they could afford the row home, but it was also in the heart of West Baltimore in Sandtown during this like in- terrible drug epidemic in the ’80s and into the ’90s, and obviously into the 2000s.

It was a tough neighborhood to grow up in for them and for me, and they just didn’t, were not able to get the resources to get all of us to go back to Trinidad, and we actually went for the first time in 2023.

So we got to see the Trini family for the first time, but that whole time I had been raised on both Baltimorean and Trini culture.

My dad’s from East Baltimore. I was going to school in West. And even with the sheltered Christian background, I still was able to get out and dance and find people. And then with the Trini culture, I think my mom had pulled back a little bit from expressing her Trini self because American culture at that time was and it still is, but it was extremely xenophobic against West Indian people, Caribbean people. And she worked to lose her accent. She would basically express herself, like she would cook. She would cook these amazing meals, and I was like, “Dang, this is incredible. What, Mom, what’s this culture? This is banging.” And I just wondered why we didn’t engage with it as much, and I think it brushed up against the Christianity of it all. I think things like Carnival were more seen as carnal. But she wasn’t able to keep me from discovering it.

I had a cousin visit from Trinidad. She showed me a soca video on her phone, and I was just hooked. I was like, “Oh, I know. I want my own soca.” And I knew I can be both. I’m Baltimorean and I’m Trinidadian, and I found like with Baltimore dance culture, lots of footwork, doing the SpongeBob, lots of DJ, club music, high energy, high octane.

And then for Trinidadian music, it’s not exactly club music, but it is. It’s Caribbean club music in a way. It’s very happy very sexy lyrics and the movement. Baltimore has a twerk style, I would say.

And Trinidad has whining, and so I’m like, I’m practicing both of these types of movement, my feet and my hips.

And it was a great form of exercise on the weekends to go out and practice these dances, and they made me feel great. They were cast as unholy in a way. But I was like, “Nah, this is part of my culture. I feel like God will understand,” so that’s how I, really. And then I have a bunch of Trinidadian family members, and I have a bunch of Baltimorean family members, so they kinda impressed that history on me.

Baltimore and Trinidad, they’re both very proud cultures and especially proud of their Blackness. And so they taught me from a very young age about Black history. And so all of those things together kinda come through in all of my work. Even “Bumpa,” the one about twerking and whining, I’m definitely bringing in what is the African history aspect of these dances that you might not expect.

David Dylan Thomas: And that’s something I’m really finding myself drawn to more and more. So my kind of Black discovery, if you will, was delayed ’cause my mother, too, was a wonderful person, but she did downplay, in a lot of ways, our Blackness.

And I think that was just as much as anything else for my own safety and for my own advancement. Like she very much wanted me to get the best education possible. And she didn’t want, misguided or not, she didn’t want any of my Blackness to stand in the way of that. And I think the downside obviously was that I didn’t really get more in touch with that until much later in life.

So learning how many things come from Africa, like learning that the porch, right? Just something as simple as the porch comes from fucking Africa, and you’re like, “Holy shit.” Like I look around, is any of this shit American?

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Is it?

David Dylan Thomas: Right? But that’s been a glorious discovery, too, and I kinda wanna talk about that, that, that joy aspect ’cause one of the things I remember most, besides learning, which I love to learn, so thank you for that- too, in “Bumpa.” One of the things I remember most about “Bumpa,” especially the second time I saw it, ’cause the first time I saw it was like an early cut that you sent to friends. But then when I saw it again, it was as part of a larger screening event. And we were, like, in a church, and I was hanging out. I was kinda standing in the back, and I remember feeling like seeing it at home, I’m, like, sitting in front of my computer, whatever, this is cool. But watching it with an audience, I was like “I wanna dance.” And I kinda am. I’m kinda dancing here.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: And a couple other folks were, too. A couple of other folks were, like, actually just straight up dancing.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: I love that.

David Dylan Thomas: Right in the middle of the movie, and I’m like, “Yes.” But the joy of it is one of the things. You talk about the steel drums, and yeah, I learned that the steel drum came from these fucking oil barrels these- col- colonizers were fucking left behind. And it’s that very Black thing of taking something that was meant to oppress and saying, “No, we’re gonna turn this into an instrument of resistance and joy.” And joy and resistance always fucking go together. So I wanna talk to you about that the joy that is expressed in your movie, along with some very, difficult things. Was that something that just emerged naturally? Did you have to look for it? Tell me about the relationship between joy and your short.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Joy is at the center of the short. I had at the time, and for a lot of my career, I love to do historical pieces. But it can take something out of you to see the records of how Black people have been treated throughout the years.

So I wanted to explicitly make a space for us to be joyful in this film. I wanted to curate a small party basically and film it. And I told the dancers that was the energy I was going for. I had put the, I put the cast- casting call for this film on Instagram, so I was like, whoever shows up on that day, I’m filming them, okay? And I made sure I want you guys to eat well, I want you to improv, one, ’cause I can’t afford a choreographer.

David Dylan Thomas: Sure, sure.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Two, but two, I want you to improv because that’s what we do on the dance floor. We just make some shit up. We just make some stuff up on the spot, and we go with it, and we just feel it through our body.

I also deal with some anxiety, and so this idea just forced me to flow with my body and invite other people to flow with my body, and that’s why I made an explicit choice on the last day of shooting to actually appear in my own film.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: One, because we didn’t have enough extras. And two, because I was like, “You know what? What if I just put myself in the camera?” I used to feel like that was super cringey. Like, why am I posting myself? But now I’m like, no one is gonna find out about me if I don’t start putting myself out there. And how can I ask these women to come and twerk in front of a camera for me, and I’m not even gonna do the same thing?

And and it ended up being super fun because I had an incredible cast and crew. I had a DP, Simone Holland. Simone has shot on so many artsy fashion, just beautiful lighting, and even VFX types of shoots, and so she has a bit of a directing chops on her own so that when I jumped into the scene, she’s able to give us, I, of course, am directing the scene, but I’m also dancing and performing. So she steps in a little bit. And then I have a co-producer for the two dance the final dance scenes in the studios, Jerrell Jerome. He’s keeping us on time. And I had a lot of the crew back up out of the way so that we could focus on ourselves.

I just let them know, also made room for consent. That’s why there was room for joy. I’m like, “If we ever get to a point where you’re uncomfortable with the camera move or the way you’re moving, please let me know. We will stop production. We will move people out of the way.” And they understood that.

Now, these are professional dancers that I think Jerrell she, Jerrell Harris, she’s been on Ice Spice and Tierra Whack shoots. Nyla, she has been on multiple music videos, multiple stages. Queen Nzinga is a burlesque dancer. And Mara Rivera she works with people in their most intimate traumatic moments, and so they were very open to expressing themselves.

And so I found joy as an excuse to just let my body lead in a way that I feel like when you’re at work or you’re in more proper corporate positions or situations, you’re not really allowed to do that. There’s a specific script for how you’re supposed to move. It’s a part of why I love documentary because there’s these moments of jubilation that you don’t always plan for, but you have to produce to make the space for that to happen, and that meant giving them enough time to improv so that we could start over. Don’t rush people.

David Dylan Thomas: Right.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: That meant giving them some decent food, that meant giving them time to digest the food and having the water ready. That meant I basically spent a lot of my production budget and I needed to go back for some post-production funding ’cause I let the DP… We were shooting at Lightbulb Rentals.

I’m like, “Hey, if you need to rent another filter or you need to rent another thing to make yourself more comfortable, just do it.” And luckily I had a little, I had enough funding to, like make that happen. And that was the first time that I was like, since I’m getting a lot of money, I don’t think I have enough money to do a film in Trinidad. But I do have enough money to do a film in Philadelphia, and I want it to be fun and I want it to be local Philly talent. And also I found a New York psychotherapist off of a TED Talk, mind you. I contacted her because I found her on a TED Talk. I knew that they would bring it because they do- they’re professionals, too.

It wasn’t just people I found. There were also some dancers that weren’t the main dancers, but they were additional performer dancers that had just commented on Instagram.

And so they all brought their various talents of either coming from hip hop, Afro-Caribbean dance. Vera was, like, one of my favorite gets for the project ’cause I’m like, “I need to have some Trini blood in there. I need that Trini representation so she can whine she waist proper.” And so I got that. She had her, on her Carnival costume, and I felt because I, at that point, I have not been able to afford to go to Carnival in Trinidad, and I haven’t been able to play mas and wear the full outfit for the parade, it just felt like I was almost setting a manifestation spell on film. Since I can’t go to Trinidad, since COVID kind of messed up my plans to do that original thesis, I’m gonna make this other thing no matter what happens. And so it’s, it was, like, a statement of joy, defiance. And yeah, that joy is just all, all throughout the film.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah. No, that’s fantastic. So what’s what’s happening with the short now?

Kayla Naomi Watkins: We’ve sub- I’ve submitted to 13 festivals. We got our first acceptance, also our first rejection, but I’m waiting to hear from a few more, including our first acceptance was at More Than a Film Fest. It was the first year this festival has been held.

There’s this person on Instagram, Oh Yeah Cool that’s their organization, and they put it together. I also… It was a full circle moment because I’d worked in the Temple Equipment office, and one of the young women that I met, Kara Leaf I met her way back, I think, in 2014 or something like that.

She actually ran this festival, and she remembered me, and she had seen Bumpa on Instagram. She’s “Hey, can you send us a link? I wanna see if we can put this in the festival.” So I got in there, and that was our first festival of the year that happened in May. Right before my vacation, which was awesome timing we submitted to Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival, so crossing my fingers about that.

So New York festivals a lot of like Black-centric festivals. I don’t wanna say all of them, but I’m just hoping that we get into some film festivals, including one that may be able to put Bumpa on an app so that people can purchase and watch. So if that happens I’ll let you know.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Yeah, just honestly we’re in a holding pattern right now. I do need to record some videos about the process and let people know about some BTS. But we’re really just waiting for, to hear back from film festivals, see if that route works. And if it doesn’t, I’m gonna find some other way to put Bumpa up.

I want Bumpa now to be a catalyst for what I make in the future.

I want to, one, keep exploring elements of my history that people can sometimes be ashamed of. Especially my original idea before I did Bumpa was this homegoing film with me and my mom, and I want to see if I can do something like that.

Take her home, maybe even try to get her to do Carnival even though she’s very modest.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: I think that would be my next pro- like personal project, yeah.

David Dylan Thomas: Awesome. How can folks keep in touch with you, keep updates about Bumpa, keep updates about In the Margins, all that good stuff?

Kayla Naomi Watkins: So for my personal work, that would be Bumpa. I am @knwfilms on Instagram. I also have a website, knwfilms.com. For my public-facing work with WHYY, you can find In the Margins in a playlist on PBS Origins. You can find our food history show, including a n- a delicious episode about soul food on Delishtery at PBS Food.

You can also see some incredible interviews with Tonya Mosley on the Fresh Air YouTube. We also have a sports show called Sports in America with David Greene. That’s on anywhere you get your podcasts. Let me think. Is there anything else? I have a upcoming color correction class at Scribe Video Center so we can meet in person. You just have to go to Scribe Video Center and I think you can join even as a non-member and get some color correction classes. But yeah, KNW Films, Kayla Naomi Watkins, producer extraordinaire

David Dylan Thomas: I have one more question for you. What is your cat’s name?

Kayla Naomi Watkins: I have two cats.

I adopted them a f- I guess a y- five months ago. They’re about a year now. The cats’ names are Luda, Luna, and Spectra. No, Lumen. I’m sorry, I’m mixing them up. My boy cat’s name is Lumen, and my girl cat’s name is Spectra.

David Dylan Thomas: That’s awesome. Those are both light references, right?

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Yes.

David Dylan Thomas: Yeah.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Did want that and we have my boyfriend’s dog. His, her name is Nova.

David Dylan Thomas: Awesome. I saw one of the cats in the background, and I think I’ve been hearing them, if I’m not mistaken, the whole-

Kayla Naomi Watkins: They’re running around. I hope it’s not messing up your sound.

David Dylan Thomas: Oh, no, it’s great. It’s, it adds dimension. It adds character. I love it.

Kayla, thank you so much for being on the show.

Kayla Naomi Watkins: Thank you so much for inviting me, and let me know the next time White Meat is showing in Philly.

David Dylan Thomas: I absolutely will. And for the White Meat Podcast, this is David Dylan Thomas, and we will see you next time.