CNN: Tom Morello on solo album, politics and racism

[dana_b]

http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/28/showbiz/music/tom-morello-album/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7

By Denise Quan, CNN
updated 3:06 PM EST, Wed September 28, 2011

CNN: There's a song on this record, "Facing Mount Kenya," that seems quite personal, given your family's history in Kenya.

Morello: My parents met in Kenya. My father is African, is Kenyan. The Kenyan side of my family was involved in the anticolonial movement. My great uncle was Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's first president, who led the movement to oust the British from Kenya. I didn't grow up with my Kenyan family. I grew up in a small, conservative suburb of Chicago. The song "Facing Mount Kenya" explores the pride in that country and the distance from it as well.

CNN: What was it like growing up biracial in a small Illinois town?

Morello: I literally integrated the small town of Libertyville, Illinois. I was the first person of color to reside within its borders, which was confirmed when the real estate agent had to go door-to-door in the apartment building we wanted to rent, asking if it was OK for this interracial family -- my mom is white and I was a 1-year-old half-African kid -- to live in the apartment building.

The sales pitch was, "Well, look, he's not an American Negro. He's a very exotic African," and that was something that the neighbors were like, "Oh, that's very interesting!" -- until I got old enough to date their daughters.

more at link including a video with Tom and Ben Harper