Art Doesn't Stop for MS

[00:00:02] - [Tom Kranz]
Welcome to Typtoon Tint, I'm Tom Kranz.

[00:00:06] - [Speaker 1]
The beat with your hands, keep the beat with your hands.

[00:00:09] - [Speaker 0]
Roby Kamalo has been keeping the beat for three decades. First doing school assemblies with a combination of singing and African dance, then as a backup singer for people like Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, Rod Stewart and many others. But a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis interrupted everything in 2014. Today she shares her story of survival and reinvention through her memoir, a podcast and conversations like the one we're having today on Type Toon Tint. And I'm joined by Roby Kamalo from her palatial estate in Portland, Oregon.

[00:00:46] - [Speaker 0: Tom Kranz]
I I convinced, Roby to get up and do this at eight in the morning her time, and she looks all bright eyed and bushy tailed better than me at 08:00 in the morning. I'll tell you that. But here, we're on the... I'm on the East Coast. Everybody knows I'm a Jersey guy, and, we have a a lovely fall day here, in early November twenty twenty six.

[00:01:04] - [Speaker 0]
Roby, how are you? Thanks for coming.

[00:01:06] - [Speaker 2: Robbi Kumalo]
I'm good. What exit? You didn't tell me.

[00:01:08] - [Speaker 0]
What exit? 135 Of The Garden State Parkway.

[00:01:12] - [Speaker 2]
Ah, over there.

[00:01:13] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. Yeah. It's kinda North Jersey. It's... We're actually in the New York City market.

[00:01:18] - [Speaker 0]
I learned after 09:11 that we are in the target area as they call it. Right? Wow. So... And I'm also in the New York TV market, which that's another whole thing.

[00:01:28] - [Speaker 0]
I I spent a long time in the TV news business, which I'm glad I'm not in anymore. But we're not here to talk about me. We're here to talk about you. Roby has... I just finished reading her her autobiography, her memoir.

[00:01:40] - [Speaker 0]
It's called married to a rock star. It's been out for about a year, and she was indeed married to a rock star. He is a a world renowned bassist named, Bagiti Kumalo, and Bagiti is most well known, I suppose, for his role, as bassist on the Paul Simon album, Graceland, Specifically, the song, you can call me Al. There's very distinctive bass lines in there. If you know that song, you can probably think of it in your head.

[00:02:09] - [Speaker 0]
That's that's, Baghiti. He's... That's what he does, and and he was, in fact, a touring musician for most of your relationship together, and that's part of the narrative of the book, but it's not the whole narrative. You know, Roby has, as I continue doing her thumbnail sketch here, she's been a musician, a singer, a pianist. She spent a lot of time doing school assemblies with kids.

[00:02:32] - [Speaker 0]
So she had... You know, they called her miss miss Roby. You know? She sat up there, and the kids sat down with their legs folded, and they sang along. And then she became, a Grammy nominated artist.

[00:02:44] - [Speaker 0]
There's an album out there, from 2022 called All One Tribe. It's an album of songs by, people of color aimed at kind of this worldwide global organization. It was nominated in 2022 at the Grammys for best children's album and Robie has a song on there. We'll hear a little bit about that. And then later on, she became a voice artist.

[00:03:04] - [Speaker 0]
She's sang in commercial jingles which I love that. And she became a voice. I wish I could do a voice. You know, the voice artist today, you don't have to get off your rear end. You sit at home.

[00:03:13] - [Speaker 0]
You got a decent microphone, and you're off doing your thing. So... And then in 2014, she was slammed with a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. And, you know, that's a disease we'll we'll get. And and then the rest of her book is all about reinventing herself, you know, kind of around the disease, but almost incorporating the the disease as a positive if there is such a thing.

[00:03:36] - [Speaker 0]
Do I have all this right or am I completely off the rails here?

[00:03:39] - [Speaker 2]
No, you are completely right because life always leads us down all sorts of interesting corridors and hallways, but we don't know how we get there, but we do it to get ourself there in the spot. And then we get in the spot, and we're like, what is this? This isn't the life I wanted. Or is it?

[00:03:58] - [Speaker 0]
Well, so now you have... So right now, you're you're your book. You have this book, and you're doing this podcast, a podcast called multiple superbness. I have to look down and make sure I get it all together. It's, like, kinda two big long words.

[00:04:15] - [Speaker 0]
And that's a podcast that's about... What's the podcast about? It's about positive living and and just kind of being upbeat or you tell me.

[00:04:23] - [Speaker 2]
Yeah. Since I like to talk and I've been a storyteller all my life, I was thinking as part of how I'm crawling out of this cavern of multiple sclerosis, I pull myself out by remembering, what do you do? What do you love to do? Grab it and hold onto it. And as we were saying, you know, being a voice artist, being a musical artist, being an artist period has evolved.

[00:04:46] - [Speaker 2]
More and more we evolve as creators because we have all sorts of interesting tools nowadays

[00:04:52] - [Speaker 0]
Sure.

[00:04:53] - [Speaker 2]
With the internet. And then we have a bigger community because many of us, especially those of us that have been here long enough to be a baby boomer. We've been here a long time. We have a lot of wonderful friendships and connections in life. We experienced things that only happened at that time in the seventies, it's not coming back again, but we were able to be there and experience that as part of how we were growing in our life.

[00:05:19] - [Speaker 2]
And that was what, thirty, forty, fifty years ago?

[00:05:22] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. No kidding. And at that time, when you were just starting to get launched, there was no Internet. There was no digital. There was no YouTube.

[00:05:29] - [Speaker 0]
There was no m p threes. Right? I wrote a book in the eighties. I had I had to go to the library and look up newspapers on microfilm. Right?

[00:05:37] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. So now you've seen the music industry and your own creativity evolve into that. So now here we are doing Zoom, and you've got YouTube and you've got all this stuff. Has that been for the better do you think? That kind of evolution in the technical part of of what you've done?

[00:05:52] - [Speaker 2]
I think, you know, technical advancement is always startling to people as they get older because you're like, you're holding on to everything that you know and you're getting older and the gray hairs are coming and you're like, yeah, I'm in this, I know my life. And then technology shows up and it's like, wait a minute, I don't know how to grab technology. What am I holding in my hands? Oh, I can't really touch this even though I feel like I'm typing and pointing with my finger, same finger I pick my nose with, I'm gonna type on my phone with and that's gonna change my life. Yeah, if you realize that you should start picking your nose with that finger and take some time to learn that device and see how you can play with it like a toy.

[00:06:33] - [Speaker 2]
Like we used to play with things when we were younger. We never questioned what it was. We just took it and tried to figure out, well, what does this thing do?

[00:06:41] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah, totally. So you spent, much of your life in New York City. Are you a New York girl born and raised, or were you... Did you come from some other place? Or tell me a little bit about that, about your very beginning.

[00:06:52] - [Speaker 2]
I'm a Long Island girl.

[00:06:54] - [Speaker 0]
I grew

[00:06:55] - [Speaker 2]
up on Long Island.

[00:06:56] - [Speaker 0]
Oh, where on Long Island?

[00:06:58] - [Speaker 2]
Medford.

[00:06:59] - [Speaker 0]
Okay. Yeah. It's like another whole country out there.

[00:07:02] - [Speaker 2]
It's in Suffolk County. It's like what exit

[00:07:05] - [Speaker 0]
kind of thing. And and you... So you... But you migrated your your professional and performing life. You ended up in New York City.

[00:07:11] - [Speaker 0]
Correct?

[00:07:11] - [Speaker 2]
I commuted from where I lived into New York City.

[00:07:15] - [Speaker 0]
Oh, really?

[00:07:16] - [Speaker 2]
I was a commuter.

[00:07:18] - [Speaker 0]
You took the Long Island Railroad?

[00:07:20] - [Speaker 2]
Sometimes it's dependent on the job, yep.

[00:07:23] - [Speaker 0]
So you did a bunch of different things. It seems like in the early nineties, you spent a lot of time at some place called the Shadowbox Theater. Tell me about that. And was that, like, kind of your first... Was that your first exposure to performing, or had you always been into music and performing before that?

[00:07:43] - [Speaker 2]
You know, I'd always been into music and performing before that, but it was always something that my family would say like, that's not a job. Stop doing that. Stop playing around and do serious things. You never read a book. Why don't you sit down and be still and be quiet?

[00:07:58] - [Speaker 2]
And I think about it because maybe I had ADHD, but at that time nobody was diagnosing anything like He was just like a child. It was like, you better sit down or I'm gonna smack your hands, you know? And that was the day and age that I grew up in, especially black families, you know, like if you don't do the right thing, write on your hand. Or sometimes if I just even looked like I was going to say something wrong, my mother would, as she would say, she would pop my lips. And she said, put your lips back in your head.

[00:08:29] - [Speaker 2]
And I'd be like, They're not out of my head. And she was like, Don't answer me back. So it was really a wonderful discipline if you were a good listener to that type of discipline. So I was a class of 1982 from Patrick Medford High School and all my classmates were going to college. So I felt like, I should go to college like my friends.

[00:08:54] - [Speaker 2]
And my mother's like, well, that's what I told you. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. So I wound up going to Stony Brook University, which was fourteen minutes from my home.

[00:09:05] - [Speaker 0]
I think this whole concept of doing these concerts at school assemblies, is that kind of the first thing you did? Is that... Was that... That was, like, your first thing? I mean, you actually toured doing that.

[00:09:15] - [Speaker 0]
You did, you had a list of... I mean, it was, like, nonstop. Right?

[00:09:19] - [Speaker 2]
I did. I was aiming for, like, 365 shows a year.

[00:09:25] - [Speaker 0]
Well, how many did you actually do?

[00:09:27] - [Speaker 2]
I was doing about two fifty a year. Wow.

[00:09:30] - [Speaker 0]
All over... Like, Long Island are we talking, or did you leave did you leave the island also to do that?

[00:09:35] - [Speaker 2]
Oh, yeah. I started to market regionally. So I did the Northeast at first and then when I had exhausted myself in the Northeast, so that was New York state, Connecticut, some of New Jersey, I want more, so I started to go to this conference, a booking trade show called Arts Presenters, APAP. It's held in New York City every year in January and agents and artists from all over the world go to New York City for the APAP conference. Wow.

[00:10:09] - [Speaker 2]
All the venues and the producers come to meet the artists with their agents.

[00:10:16] - [Speaker 0]
And so that's where the... Your career as a kind of a school assembly kids artist began. Right?

[00:10:23] - [Speaker 2]
That was one of the definite places. My sister was the music teacher, so she was the one that was able to speak to her principal about booking as a school assembly to come into the school, her school. And I was like, what am I supposed to do?

[00:10:37] - [Speaker 0]
So that was the first gig you had thanks to your sister, Bea, at her school?

[00:10:41] - [Speaker 2]
Thanks to my sister that.

[00:10:42] - [Speaker 0]
Okay. That's some networking right there.

[00:10:45] - [Speaker 2]
You know, she knew all the other teachers in her school district, so once she was able to mention me to her colleagues, I was able to start getting other gigs in her school district. And that's where the momentum instantly picked up because

[00:11:00] - [Speaker 0]
And so just describe briefly what one of... What a typical gig is. You're there at an assembly in, like, a gym, a multipurpose room, an auditorium. Is it just you yourself at you and a drum or you and your keyboard or just you?

[00:11:14] - [Speaker 2]
Well, started out as just me going to my sister's school and I was thinking like, well, I'm going to do a Black History Month show. So I gotta... I guess I gotta tell the tale of the middle passage. I'll have to dance, I'll have to this, I'll have to that. So my sister's like, I don't know what you're gonna do.

[00:11:31] - [Speaker 2]
I'm just giving you an opportunity to figure something out and I'm showing you how to talk to be a vendor. You don't know that you're a vendor. And I was like, what's a vendor? And she's like, exactly. You don't know what you're doing.

[00:11:45] - [Speaker 2]
You have a gift, but if you don't know what to do with the gift, you need help.

[00:11:50] - [Speaker 0]
She'll kind of spurge you to kind of market yourself basically is what we're talking about here, right? Well, yeah. Packaging yourself a little bit and figuring out what's my product.

[00:12:00] - [Speaker 2]
And she's the first born in the family. So she's talking to my mother who is probably telling her, what am I gonna do with your mother?

[00:12:07] - [Speaker 0]
And she's pissed because you're doing this, right?

[00:12:10] - [Speaker 2]
Yeah. So my sister didn't want me to get in trouble with my mom. So she was like, I'm gonna help you.

[00:12:16] - [Speaker 0]
Wow. She That's a good sister.

[00:12:17] - [Speaker 2]
It was a wonderful sister.

[00:12:19] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah, that's cool.

[00:12:20] - [Speaker 2]
I go into her school, she's like not telling me what a Black History Month assembly is, so I create one in my mind. I show up the day that I'm booked and because I had created this thing in my mind, I took these African dance classes because I figured I gotta learn how to do this middle passage dance because that's the story I'm gonna tell, the middle passage, that's it, that's what I'm gonna do. And while I took those African dance classes, I'm not really a dancer. So at first I was thinking like, yeah, and then I realized, I don't know my right foot from my left foot, I, oh, I can't get this, but I was working for Shadowbox Theater as a storyteller. So Shadowbox Theater was a puppet theater.

[00:13:03] - [Speaker 2]
So they did shadowbox puppets, puppetry.

[00:13:06] - [Speaker 0]
Got it, okay.

[00:13:07] - [Speaker 2]
The ancient art form from Thailand. It's there. And they use these puppets and a light. So they'd make a fire and they would put up something and the shadows would cast the story.

[00:13:24] - [Speaker 0]
I wanna fast forward a little bit here now because I have a lot of... I hear all my notes. See this long list of notes? Never gonna get to it all. So you ended up meeting this bass player musician, Baghiti Kamalo.

[00:13:40] - [Speaker 0]
He's from South Africa. Did you go to South Africa or did you meet him here? Where did you guys meet?

[00:13:46] - [Speaker 2]
I worked for his boss. So I did the little shadowbox theater thing. Right? That that was good. And at the same time, my sister is helping me get school assembly jobs.

[00:13:57] - [Speaker 2]
So I'm learning how to do that new job. I'm learning how to be a shadow puppeteer. And one day I'm realizing that I can't remember why I went to get a job that I needed money for my rent. I think my mother was saying, I'm not paying your rent anymore, you gotta pay your whole rent. And I was like, I gotta get another job.

[00:14:17] - [Speaker 2]
So I first started, as you know, from my book, first started out with Spike Lee. That's how I wound up getting from New York, from Long Island into New York because I had to have a job, my mother said, otherwise you can't move out. So I got the job and then I moved out and started working with Spike Lee, which was fantastic. He had just finished She's Gotta Have It. So he really needed people to support him.

[00:14:41] - [Speaker 0]
So like what? Like production kind of work you were doing, backstage stuff, or what exactly did you do for his company?

[00:14:47] - [Speaker 2]
I met him just after he had completed She's Gotta Have It. So then we speak for people that can do postproduction things.

[00:14:53] - [Speaker 0]
Oh, gotcha. Okay.

[00:14:54] - [Speaker 2]
And there's nobody that he knows that's a black filmmaker in New York because there really weren't any.

[00:14:59] - [Speaker 0]
Plus that movie was his launch basically, right? So he was growing, guess, and getting... He needed bodies and stuff.

[00:15:07] - [Speaker 2]
Yeah, kind of like I was trying to figure out how to be a storyteller. Yeah. Do school assemblies. So I had that in common with Spike and he has the same birthday as my brother. So I thought like, oh gosh, he's like my big brother.

[00:15:19] - [Speaker 2]
He was very much like my big brother. They're those Pisces right on the cusp. Wow. And, yeah, they're interesting personalities.

[00:15:27] - [Speaker 0]
So... Okay. So then where did Baghidi come in?

[00:15:31] - [Speaker 2]
So I got fired from working with Spike. And then I'm thinking like, now how am I gonna pay my rent? I came up on somebody who told me that Paul Simon was hiring people. Yeah. A trumpeter friend of mine found out that I had lost the job working for Spike because he played the music on Spike's music or his movies.

[00:15:56] - [Speaker 2]
So he was like, what do you mean you're not at Spike's anymore? And I was like, I don't know. I did something wrong. I got fired. He's like, well, you gotta get a job.

[00:16:03] - [Speaker 2]
You gotta keep working and let me refer you to somebody. He referred me to Night After Night Productions, which was Paul Simon's company. So I wound up walking in there trying to look for a job and they had heard about me from my friend that I had just lost a job and I needed help. And they hired me even before I had walked in the door.

[00:16:23] - [Speaker 0]
Oh, sweet.

[00:16:25] - [Speaker 2]
So they pretty much announced to me like, we're so glad to meet you. Like we didn't know that you knew how to speak all these different languages. We really could use your help here. I was like, I speak as well. Right.

[00:16:36] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah, beautiful, right?

[00:16:38] - [Speaker 2]
And they hired me to answer the phone because they said we get calls from Europe and we're not here in the office. So if you don't mind coming in a little earlier to do our correspondence for us, because we have contracts and things that have to go back and forth. Could you do that work? And I was like, sure. So I went to that job looking for another job.

[00:17:02] - [Speaker 2]
I didn't really wanna be an office worker, but that was the job that I had that was gonna pay my rent. And come to find out, I met a lot of things because Paul had just done Graceland.

[00:17:17] - [Speaker 0]
Ah.

[00:17:17] - [Speaker 2]
He was doing the second world tour. He was about to start the second world tour. So his production company did need people.

[00:17:25] - [Speaker 0]
And so Baghidi was playing with him at that point. Right?

[00:17:28] - [Speaker 2]
Yeah. He wouldn't have made Graceland without Baghidi.

[00:17:30] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. Sure. So you kinda met him and then you got married. And a lot of the book, a lot of your memoir, married to a rock star, does indeed deal with you being married to a rock star, although it then... It it mostly is all about you and and your evolution.

[00:17:48] - [Speaker 0]
But the kind of... The common theme about, you know, your marriage was you were married to a a globally famous musician. Yes. And he was a touring guy. He wasn't sitting around New York all the time.

[00:18:04] - [Speaker 0]
You say in more than one place in your book that it was like he constantly had suitcases packed and ready to go at the front door. So I got the sense that he spent a lot of... And he's your daughter's father, I presume?

[00:18:16] - [Speaker 2]
Yeah. Both of my daughters.

[00:18:17] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. So now you are... You you got... You're married to this guy who's on the road more than he's home. You're now essentially kind of a single mom.

[00:18:26] - [Speaker 0]
You've got your daughters, and you've got your own job. You got this marriage that's... I mean, there's love there, but you don't see them a lot. And then suddenly, you've got this MS thing happening as well. So all...

[00:18:39] - [Speaker 0]
It's like the shit just kind of all kind of congeals all at one time. Do I have this right?

[00:18:44] - [Speaker 2]
Yeah. It was interesting because, you know, it was even weird meeting him because I had dreamt about him years before. Really?

[00:18:53] - [Speaker 0]
Mhmm. Even though you didn't know him?

[00:18:55] - [Speaker 2]
Even though I didn't know him.

[00:18:56] - [Speaker 0]
Wow. He came to you in your dreams,

[00:18:59] - [Speaker 2]
Came to me in my dreams. He was somebody that I used to love to go to sleep so I could dream to see him in the dream. Okay. Because we always would... Wherever we would meet in the dream, I'd always say to him like, there you are.

[00:19:13] - [Speaker 2]
And he'd say, yeah, hi. He wouldn't say, there you are back. He'd always say like, yeah, hi, come on, let's go. And then I'd get whisked away somewhere with him and it would always wind up on a stage somewhere. And then we would be performing and then he'd leave the stage and leave me on the stage by myself.

[00:19:31] - [Speaker 2]
And I'd say like, wait, no, we're doing the show together. So that's the kind of dreams that I had before meeting him.

[00:19:37] - [Speaker 0]
But you actually did perform with him. Correct?

[00:19:41] - [Speaker 2]
Which is why it's really weird that I kind had a

[00:19:44] - [Speaker 0]
Kinda came true. We're gonna zoom forward just a little bit now. So Okay. Then comes a time when you became a background singer, and, you know, I I... I'm jumping around here a little bit, but I wanna get all the good shit in here.

[00:20:01] - [Speaker 0]
You know? You became a background vocalist, and I guess at this point, your MS had kinda progressed to the point where

[00:20:07] - [Speaker 2]
I didn't know I had MS. Right. But

[00:20:10] - [Speaker 0]
you were but you were having... You were getting tired and your legs were hurting you a little bit.

[00:20:15] - [Speaker 2]
I just didn't know that I was in that kind of pain. Right. I was working.

[00:20:20] - [Speaker 0]
But you were working then you got started getting work as a background vocalist. You started working for... I mean, you were background for people like Diana Diana Ross, Rod Stewart, a bunch of people. I mean... And these were studio gigs.

[00:20:33] - [Speaker 0]
Right? This is you doing a background track in a studio. You weren't touring with these guys. Correct?

[00:20:38] - [Speaker 2]
I wasn't touring with them, but if they did New York dates and I did their record, I would do the dates with them.

[00:20:43] - [Speaker 0]
Oh, really? Okay. Yeah.

[00:20:44] - [Speaker 2]
And that was the connection that I made through my husband.

[00:20:48] - [Speaker 0]
Okay.

[00:20:48] - [Speaker 2]
Because he did this amazing tour with Keiko Matsui and Shaka Khan and Philip Bailey, Hugh Masakela, when it all wasn't working, he did that other gig.

[00:21:00] - [Speaker 0]
See, right.

[00:21:01] - [Speaker 2]
Then I went with him one of the days that he was performing and I met Shaka Khan. And when I met Shaka, she was like, well, who are you? And I was like, oh, I'm his girlfriend. She's like, what do you do? And I said, I sing to children.

[00:21:16] - [Speaker 2]
She says, so do I.

[00:21:17] - [Speaker 0]
Oh, wow. So didn't... Did I read that you became godmother to her child?

[00:21:22] - [Speaker 2]
She became godmother to my

[00:21:24] - [Speaker 0]
Okay. I had it backwards. So you... Are you still tight? Are you guys still friends?

[00:21:29] - [Speaker 2]
It's hard to be tight with Chaco because she has a very, very busy life.

[00:21:33] - [Speaker 0]
I bet she does. But was she one... Must have been one of the highlights of your career. I mean, just to meet her and to kinda be friends with her. Right?

[00:21:40] - [Speaker 2]
Yeah. And she said to me, like, I'm gonna help you out because I'm gonna introduce you to my godfather. And he's in New York. I'm not in New York, but he's in New York. Here's his number.

[00:21:50] - [Speaker 2]
Give him a call. Tell him I sent you. Her godfather was Aref Marden. Atlantic Records, Aref Marden.

[00:22:00] - [Speaker 0]
Wow. And so that was a door to doing all these other gigs with all these other artists.

[00:22:05] - [Speaker 2]
Yeah. Because Aretha was like, Rabbi, Shaka. Okay. I need your help. I I need singers.

[00:22:12] - [Speaker 2]
Find for me singers. And I was like, okay, how many singers? I need eight singers. Know what I And I was like, okay, I don't know what you need, but I will find those eight singers. And then he instantly had a relationship with me that he'd call me up to say like, you know, Diana Ross is doing a record and she would like to have African singers.

[00:22:34] - [Speaker 2]
I know you know them, so make that for me.

[00:22:37] - [Speaker 0]
Wow. So who was... Was there one one artist who you you performed with or did this gig with who was like a standout, who was like one of your favorites, or were they all cool in their own way?

[00:22:49] - [Speaker 2]
They all were cool because they took me down another path.

[00:22:53] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. Of course.

[00:22:54] - [Speaker 2]
Journey. You know? Like, Diana Ross was really great. Aretha Franklin was really great. First time I ever had a medium rare lamb chop, I was with Aretha Franklin.

[00:23:04] - [Speaker 0]
That's so funny. So did that then lead to your next career doing commercial jingles and being a voice artist? Is that what came what came after that?

[00:23:14] - [Speaker 2]
Yeah. It... They all happened at the same time. Yeah. One happened and then the other one happened.

[00:23:19] - [Speaker 2]
It was like I had to keep working.

[00:23:21] - [Speaker 0]
What are the some of the products you did jingles for? I must know.

[00:23:24] - [Speaker 2]
Did a lot of car commercials. You wouldn't know because most car commercials, first of all, nobody watches commercials. Second of all, it wasn't like I had a commercial that had like a double mint twins kind

[00:23:37] - [Speaker 0]
of Oh, okay.

[00:23:38] - [Speaker 2]
Like that, a car commercial, you're just looking at the commercial and all you hear the singer sowing is like, Oh.

[00:23:44] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah, I sure

[00:23:45] - [Speaker 2]
sure. Yeah, yeah. So every time somebody would hire me, they'd say, we know you speak African. I was like, okay, right.

[00:23:56] - [Speaker 0]
You speak African? It's pretty funny. What are there? Like one gazillion African dialects. Right?

[00:24:01] - [Speaker 2]
Right. So then they'd hire me and they were like, we don't speak African, but we know that you do. And I was like, all right. And they were like, do you sing it too? I was like, sure I do.

[00:24:09] - [Speaker 2]
And they said, great. We need you to sing on this spot right here. And all the commercials that I did was my singing African.

[00:24:19] - [Speaker 0]
That's so funny. All right. So speaking of singing African, so then at some point, you ended up recording this song, set it free, and we're talking about the song that is on this Grammy nominated album. The album is called all one tribe. It was nominated at the twenty two twenty twenty two Grammys Grammys for best children's album, and you have the song on there.

[00:24:43] - [Speaker 0]
It's... You're credited to you. You're... We hear you playing piano and singing. Here's a little bit of that song.

[00:25:40] - [Speaker 0]
That... How did that come up? Did you know that song was gonna be for that album? Did they kind of, like, commission you to do that, or is that a song you just had in your brain that you recorded one day?

[00:25:49] - [Speaker 2]
That's a song from an album that I had recorded years before because when that phone call came to say, we want you on this record, it was right after George Floyd had been killed. Mhmm. So we were mostly responding as musicians to that.

[00:26:07] - [Speaker 0]
So the idea behind this album was to bring together musicians of color to do children's music as kind of an outreach for what? To just kind of a positive message to to kids?

[00:26:20] - [Speaker 2]
Yeah. And really no children's music had been written by black people. We're singing old children's music from years ago. That isn't even relevant sometimes for children. And some of it is actually racist.

[00:26:33] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. Sure.

[00:26:34] - [Speaker 2]
So we were like, we're not... We gotta change this music industry. So we decided that that's how we were gonna do it. And it also had my daughters and my husband on it. So that's why I picked that song.

[00:26:48] - [Speaker 0]
Oh, cool. So we hear them singing on there?

[00:26:50] - [Speaker 2]
Yes.

[00:26:51] - [Speaker 0]
Does your husband play the bass on there?

[00:26:52] - [Speaker 2]
Absolutely. Yeah.

[00:26:53] - [Speaker 0]
No kidding. Oh, that's awesome. Okay. Well, I'm glad we played some of it then. That's great.

[00:26:57] - [Speaker 0]
At what point did you become homeless for God's sake? And what... Did that happen after all this, or was that earlier?

[00:27:04] - [Speaker 2]
That happened when I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

[00:27:08] - [Speaker 0]
So this is mid two thousands ish, right? Two thousand fourteen, fifteen,

[00:27:13] - [Speaker 2]
twenty fourteen.

[00:27:13] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. So this happened before all this good stuff happened, correct?

[00:27:18] - [Speaker 2]
Yes.

[00:27:19] - [Speaker 0]
And so you ended up in a bunch of shelters in New York or was that in Oregon?

[00:27:24] - [Speaker 2]
In New York because I wasn't in Oregon yet.

[00:27:26] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. Wow.

[00:27:27] - [Speaker 2]
So I wound up in a homeless shelter in The Bronx and I just had no idea what The Bronx was even like. Yeah. Because I really do a lot of schools in The Bronx. I did more of the other boroughs. I didn't do Staten Island and I didn't do The Bronx for schools, but all the other boroughs, I I kinda knew New York City schools and New York City children.

[00:27:50] - [Speaker 2]
But The Bronx, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna be in a homeless shelter in The Bronx?

[00:27:55] - [Speaker 0]
Jeez.

[00:27:56] - [Speaker 2]
What the hell?

[00:27:57] - [Speaker 0]
So how long did that period last?

[00:28:00] - [Speaker 2]
Probably several months.

[00:28:01] - [Speaker 0]
Okay.

[00:28:03] - [Speaker 2]
It was just serendipity that one of the musicians... Remember I told you I didn't know musicians that were on my husband's level? Yeah, yeah. A couple that I did know, I had worked with. Okay.

[00:28:15] - [Speaker 2]
And then I brought them into my group to meet my husband so that he could meet them so we could start to make this band together. So one of those musicians, a piano player, I just called him up to say like, hey, what's new? What's going on? He says, no, I'm asking you what's going on. I haven't seen you since the last powwow.

[00:28:33] - [Speaker 2]
What are you up to? And I was like, I'm living in this shelter.

[00:28:38] - [Speaker 0]
Oh, jeez.

[00:28:39] - [Speaker 2]
He says, let me know the address. Let me know the address and I'll come and get you so you don't stay there. Wow. So he came to pick me up.

[00:28:51] - [Speaker 0]
So you've now been... It's 2026, so you're twelve years into living with MS. So folks, if you wanna know about multiple sclerosis, you can look it up because there's a ton of stuff about it on the Internet. Wikipedia has a long page, but what I know about it essentially is it damages the the coating around nerves, and it and it interferes with the message between your muscles and your brain so that it affects things like any... Anything that has to do with muscles.

[00:29:20] - [Speaker 0]
Walking could affect talking. Could affect anything.

[00:29:24] - [Speaker 2]
Mhmm.

[00:29:25] - [Speaker 0]
Correct. And and with every person who has MS, it's like a completely different disease. Everybody has different different severities, different whatnot. Are you... So where are you right now?

[00:29:35] - [Speaker 0]
Are you able to get around? Do you have a caregiver? Are you mobile? Where... If you don't mind me asking, at what level are you in that in that spectrum right now?

[00:29:44] - [Speaker 2]
Surviving. I have a home care worker. She's

[00:29:47] - [Speaker 0]
a So you have somebody who helps you?

[00:29:49] - [Speaker 2]
I have somebody that helps me and I feel bad for her because sometimes she's like my roadie, you know? It's like, hey, what are we doing today? Well, I have this thing. I'm gonna go and play this instrument.

[00:30:00] - [Speaker 0]
Are you doing the wheelchair thing?

[00:30:02] - [Speaker 2]
I am not doing the wheelchair.

[00:30:04] - [Speaker 0]
Okay. So you're able to walk to some some extent. Okay. And so you're still performing? Are you still doing...

[00:30:10] - [Speaker 0]
You're still singing and stuff?

[00:30:11] - [Speaker 2]
Well, I can't really sing to be paid for it because I'm not at that level of output that I used to need. Because when I would perform, I'm performing for a thousand children.

[00:30:21] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah, sure.

[00:30:22] - [Speaker 2]
Can't not have energy in front of a thousand children.

[00:30:25] - [Speaker 0]
Okay.

[00:30:26] - [Speaker 2]
And just the whole thing with the Grammy, I was like on a record with people that are much younger than me. Sure. Amazing. And they're doing stuff in their career that I did twenty five years ago.

[00:30:36] - [Speaker 0]
Wow.

[00:30:37] - [Speaker 2]
So I just felt like, I don't know if this is my Swan song or what, you know, like I wrote this song back then with my children, my family, and now like I'm almost near death and it's finally released in a way that, you know, people can hear it and I'm closer to dying than anything.

[00:30:55] - [Speaker 0]
Well, okay. Hold... Let's stop you right there. You're not close to dying. Okay.

[00:30:58] - [Speaker 0]
Evidence to the contrary. Here you are. But you do write in the book that multiple sclerosis is a curse and a blessing. Why is it a blessing?

[00:31:11] - [Speaker 2]
Because I couldn't mope and I couldn't feel bad for myself because there were so many other things that I wanted to do. And it was, you know, like such agony inside of myself to think like, oh no, what is this gonna do to me with an illness? How is it disturbing my myelin sheets? Do I protect my myelin? Where's the information on how we protect ourselves?

[00:31:37] - [Speaker 2]
Why doesn't the medical industry give us information on how to protect the myelin sheets?

[00:31:42] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah.

[00:31:42] - [Speaker 2]
Well, what am I going to do with that? Maybe if I maybe if I just can meditate, maybe if I this, maybe if I that, maybe... So I just decided to experiment with things that I thought was healing to my myelin sheaths.

[00:31:57] - [Speaker 0]
So just for the people out there like me who don't know what a myelin sheath, the myelin is like, think of it as the insulation around a wire. Right? The wire is the nerve, and MS attacks the myelin. It basically erodes it, and it causes lesions in all kinds of places, and that's what actually affects all the body parts that get affected.

[00:32:18] - [Speaker 2]
Yes.

[00:32:18] - [Speaker 0]
So right now, would you say your main your main things or your creative things are your podcast and talking about your book? Are you still writing, or is it just a podcast or or what? What are you doing right now?

[00:32:33] - [Speaker 2]
Still writing. Working on a children's book to teach them about chronic illnesses.

[00:32:38] - [Speaker 0]
Oh, cool.

[00:32:39] - [Speaker 2]
Because there's no books about that for children. Yeah. Also, I'm making a movie called Tales from the Wob. Who does the telephone? Who does the telethon for that?

[00:32:52] - [Speaker 2]
Is my movie that is going to be finished in January. Airing Really? It in January. I'm part of a cohort program here in Portland with filmmakers. There's a lot of filmmakers in The new movie that's out, Wildwood, made in Portland.

[00:33:11] - [Speaker 2]
Okay. So I'm, like, meeting the people who make those movies.

[00:33:17] - [Speaker 0]
Oh, cool. So you're doing stuff. You're, like, doing shit and moving around and... Okay. So the multiple sclerosis has not shut you down for sure, and you're not near death.

[00:33:28] - [Speaker 0]
Don't say that again. You've got a lot of life in you still. I just wanted to... I wanted to close with... I think this is the second to last paragraph in your book here, and I I just love this.

[00:33:39] - [Speaker 0]
You say, I have been broken, but I have healed. I have lost, but I have regained. My piano fingers return strong and sure. My dance movements flow again. My energy renews itself like dawn after night.

[00:33:57] - [Speaker 0]
I am not closing my life my life here. I am opening its next movement. And so you sure are. And, you know, I think anybody watching and listening who is dealing with some kind of life changing, doesn't have to be an illness, it could be all... Any kind of setback.

[00:34:18] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. I think that you have given them food for thought and maybe inspiration. That's a good thing.

[00:34:25] - [Speaker 2]
Thank you. And I hope it is a good thing because I've always been, as an artist, someone that walks in and cheers up a room just by showing up. I don't have to do anything. I don't have to say anything. I just walk in with the light of love and God and I'm not holding it like it's only mine.

[00:34:46] - [Speaker 2]
It's something that I'm meant to give away. So when I walk in a room right away, I'm like, hi, what's going on? How can I help you? Let's do this together. Wow, this is awesome.

[00:34:59] - [Speaker 2]
Who are you? You're great. And I make a lot of new friends. So that's how I've been managing Portland because Portland is weird. And I think Portland loves to be known as weird.

[00:35:09] - [Speaker 2]
Yeah. Because we just do things that you can't do anywhere else. And you'll always find a group of people that will accept you for who you are, how you're presenting yourself. Yeah. So for me to be an accomplished artist, nobody cares about that.

[00:35:24] - [Speaker 2]
They just wanna meet me for who I am. And then I get to know them and it's nice to not have to be like, oh, let me shake your hand. This is who I am. This is my resume. This is...

[00:35:34] - [Speaker 2]
That was a very East Coast attitude for me to have. Living here in the middle of a rainforest, I don't have that attitude anymore.

[00:35:42] - [Speaker 0]
It's different. Alright. So for those who wanna know more about Roby, read her her autobiography, Married to a Rockstar. It's available on Amazon. That's where I found it.

[00:35:53] - [Speaker 0]
You also have a website. What's your website?

[00:35:56] - [Speaker 2]
My website is my name, and I'll say it like a game. R o b b I k u m a l o. One more time. That's my name. This is how it has to go.

[00:36:07] - [Speaker 2]
ROBBIKUMALO. ROBBIKUMALO dot com.

[00:36:17] - [Speaker 0]
Alright. So, Roby Kamalo, I appreciate, I appreciate you. I thank you. Your positivity has already rubbed off on me. I hope it lasts more than a couple of hours because we can all use it.

[00:36:28] - [Speaker 0]
But thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for getting up, and I wish you all the best.

[00:36:32] - [Speaker 2]
Thank you so much. Thank you for caring about me long distance because I feel like you're right here and always gonna be in my life as my friend.

[00:36:39] - [Speaker 0]
Oh, my pleasure. Be well.

[00:36:41] - [Speaker 2]
Stay well.

[00:36:47] - [Speaker 1]
Just keep the v. Just keep the v. With your hands, keep the v. With your hands, just keep the v. Just keep the v.

[00:36:58] - [Speaker 1]
Now keep the v.