Season 2, Episode 15: “Why I Was Spared” ft Mon Rovîa
NARRATION: Working on yourself is working on the world.
That’s an idea I’ve heard in activist circles my whole life, and as a young person, it made my blood boil. I remember being 20 years old and thinking, what are you talking about? Working on the world is working on the world! Working on yourself might be important for the people in your life or for your own journey, but what does it have to do with righting the wrongs of society?
But then, I lived a little more and encountered other truths.
Hurt people, hurt people. Systems entrench. They live inside us. Patterns repeat.
So how do you do it? How do you work on yourself to work on the world? I always have my antennae open for the artists who offer us a way. Who have been through the fire, who show us how they wrestled their shadows and got out the other side.
When I heard the music of Mon Rovia I was instantly glued to my speakers, drawn to the layered songs, and the gentlest poet’s voice singing. He opened my heart right up. Liberian-American, Afro Appalachian folk artist, who had gone from the heartbreak and chaos of civil war, to through music becoming a fountain of empathy and healing for others. I listened my way through an EP cycle that outlined his epic journey, and with each song I got more curious. How did he actually do it? How did he transmute the pain?
My name is Meklit and this is Movement, music and migration remixed.
NARRATION: Liberia is a nation of deep contradictions. The country was established in 1847 by freed Black Americans, who had been formerly enslaved. It was the second Black republic in the world after Haiti. Liberia, as in liberty. Yet the whole process was largely driven by white Americans whose real goal was to get free Black people out of the United States And once they were there, those Black American colonists became just that colonists. They escaped inequity, and created a nation of great inequality. As my guest today puts it, man does, what man learns.
Mon Rovia: I was born into the middle of the first civil war.
Mon Rovia, is a stage name taken from the city where he was born, Monrovia, The capital of Liberia. He was born in the 1990s during a long period of violence two civil wars that together spanned almost fifteen years.
Mon Rovia: You know, I lost my mother and father during this. I have a sister and brother that live there still. Two of my other brothers fought in the war, they were child soldiers. And lots of memory, but we were rescued by a missionary family that was living there and stayed during the war.
NARRATION: In hindsight, it seems like they were randomly chosen, some of the siblings left with the missionaries, and some stayed behind with their grandmother.
Mon Rovia: Like I could have been the one that stayed back, you know? And it just so happened that my, my grandmother said to know, like, take him. No, please take him. He needs to go with you and we were taken back to the States from that time.
NARRATION: I mentioned that Mon Rovia has been releasing a cycle of four EPs. Act 1 in the cycle is called "The Wandering." And that's where Mon Rovia's journey starts.
He was lucky. He got out.
Mon Rovia grew up the Black son of a white missionary family, first in Florida, then in Montana, then in the Appalachian mountains of eastern Tennessee. He went to church, he did American kid things. But for many years he didn't really understand what he'd gotten out of.
Mon Rovia: I wasn't at this point, I'm not even thinking about going back. You know, I'm like, Oh, I never want to that place.
NARRATION: It was Mon Rovia's adoptive dad who decided in the early 2000s, it was time to go back, to at least visit the people and place he had left behind.
Mon Rovia: But we go back during the second civil war. My dad takes me back because he's like, you need to go see your family. Your grandma wants to see you, see your brother, Timothy. My sister is Tikkam Bla. And it's just utter chaos. And my dad thinks that it's not as bad as it was, but it really was bad. We get there, the UN is everywhere.The child soldiers had taken over the capital city of Monrovia.
Meklit: Oh my God.
Mon Rovia: Once we get there, they take over the airport’s burned. So we're stuck in this place. My dad is a very intense person. So he, he decides to leave me with a bunch of people I knew from before, like a bunch of Liberians and friends that I had known when I was a bit younger. And so I, I'm now back as a Liberian again.
NARRATION: Mon Rovia was twelve years old at the time of this trip.
Mon Rovia: You know, it was surreal. Like nothing mattered about America at this point. I'm not seen as anything, but what the people are. You know, the kids are around with AKs and RPGs kind of, controlling the city. Walking around, guns, someone in the corner. You're just trying to mind your own business and live in a very, in chaos run by kids. That can take your life at any time.
Meklit: And how does this change you? Does it change you?
Mon Rovia: I mean, I think the main thing that I, that I took away from this trip is I wanted to know why I was spared or chosen in a way to be taken from this place.
NARRATION: That visit to Liberia lasted just two weeks. Afterwards, Mon Rovia left once again with his American family, while his brother and sister stayed behind. But those two weeks had changed him. Now Mon Rovia could see how wildly their lives had diverged. He couldn't unsee it. And it haunted him.
Mon Rovia: I wanted to just live an American experience and forget all of that.
NARRATION: Mon Rovia didn't have a word for it at the time, but he can say it now: survivor's guilt.
Mon Rovia: But I knew that was wrong though. That's the thing. That's how I know now that's what it was, because the whole time I just felt bad about not trying to connect with my people my heritage.
Meklit: Mm hmm.
Mon Rovia: Not trying to remember all the suffering and also the good that comes from even places like that, too.
NARRATION: Act Two in the cycle of EPs is called Trials. And that is what Mon Rovia's adolescent and young adult years became. He stayed in Tennessee. He started releasing music, but it felt a little aimless. He was running from something he couldn't escape. Endlessly rolling a boulder up a hill, and never quite arriving.
Mon Rovia: I was battling drug addiction and drinking and depression and I was in my wits end, had no money. I was living with my friends at a place in lookout mountain, up in the mountain, right above where I live now, and the whole time I'm, my heart is hard as ever.
Meklit: Mm.
Mon Rovia: Hard as ever. And it took so much work to finally get to a place where I saw what I was, you know?
Meklit: What was that moment? What was that moment where you saw what you were?
Mon Rovia: I was in church and there's one of those moments, my dad was preaching. He pre, he's a, he's a pastor. And I'm not really much of, too much of a, of some of the, hell I, even growing up, I thought for some time that I had a problem with me cause I never really cried or anything. I was always very just like, with things that were, if I watched things that were super intense or, you know, anything like that, I was very stone like in my emotions.
NARRATION: But that day in church, Mon Rovia suddenly began to weep.
Mon Rovia: My dad saw me and, you know, he came out, he literally just came up to me. Near the end of his sermon just came down and saw me and, you know, kind of gave me a hug and it was there where I felt like I released just, so much things I was holding inside at that point.
Meklit: Mm hmm.
Mon Rovia: In those tears. And that's why I think crying is one of the most beautiful things I try to, I tell my friends in jest every year, I was like, when was the last time you cried, bro? Like you know, like actually? And then you think about it, you ask someone that question, they'd really, some people don't know.
Meklit: Mm hmm.
Mon Rovia: Like, Oh, I have no idea. And to me that, I don't know that, it could be concerning.
Meklit: You know what my mother always says?
Mon Rovia: What?
Meklit: Because you said you ask it in jest, but she always says, when people are kidding, they are not kidding.
Mon Rovia: Yeah. I'm very, I'm usually not kidding when I say something. That's so true. I love that.
Meklit: Please continue.
Mon Rovia: Yeah, so I was like, you know what, if I'm going to make music, I just want to try to, you know, honor the time that I got to have the experiences I get to live out here and remember my people and, you know, their suffering and also the hope that could come.
NARRATION: Mon Rovia again, is not his given name, it's an artist name, and this is the moment when he took that name on.
Mon Rovia: And, I don't know, and I was like, you know what, I'm just going to be Mon Rovia. I was like, I don't know any, like, I didn't know any Liberians really making music or anything like that. And I was like, well, yeah. I'll just go ahead and put the name, gave myself the name and try to make like things that are meaningful, things that can last time.
NARRATION: Act Three is called: "The Dying of the Self."
Mon Rovia: I mean, I'm not gonna last time, so what does it matter what I do for myself at all? But if I can carry love some somewhere far and lay it down for someone else to pick up and continue carrying it, then I mean, then I suppose you could live forever.
NARRATION: Even though Mon Rovia had begun the process of accepting himself, where he came from and everything he’d been through, it took a while for that clarity to emerge in his music. When Mon Rovia put out his debut album in 2021, it didn’t sound like the music he’s making today. It was more electronic, more hard driving, more Atlanta than Appalachia.
Mon Rovia: At this time, hip hop was still like the thing. So I'm a black person. I'm like, you know, and I'm and I've always been very insecure growing, it's just from growing up about like how to handle being black and like the things that I liked and loved, right, that weren't necessarily black, if you understand. And so that is really the piece that kept me from diving into any singer songwriter music was because I was like, ah, well, I want like my brothers and sisters still like, like this shit too.
So I can't just make quote unquote white people music. It's not like, I'm just going to have white people at my shows and white people just listening to, I want to be able to cross this barrier that this, this thing. But I can't with folk music or singer songwriter. Cause nobody, my people aren't listening to this. So that's kind of what kept me away. So I kept diving into hip hop, trying to find an avenue to get into that. But I mean, just, I don't, my heart wasn't in it, to be honest. I just don't think my heart was really into that style as much. It took me a while to become comfortable with that. I wasn't.
But then you fast forward and, COVID hits, and people, I don't know if people really calculated it like this, but it is a major, a major event for musical switch,
Meklit: Absolutely.
Mon Rovia: Was that event of COVID.
Meklit: Yep!
Mon Rovia: You have people locked away, alone, dealing with themselves, having to see and hear the world shut down. They realize their existence is so finite at the same time. Therapy became such an important piece of people's lives all of a sudden it's okay for me to have problems and go and deal with these things.
NARRATION: In that moment, artists large and small looked inwards, and different kinds of sounds started to break through.
Mon Rovia: And so I don't think it's a coincidence that noah kahn's music came to the forefront bringing back that lyrical driven those stories from those leaders then that did folk music and it was perfect timing so that's when I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna like, there's like, there's no black people in not many black people in the space. So maybe I can make it comfortable. For someone else to feel like they can listen to this, that they have someone championing them, that kind of looks like them, that is in it.
NARRATION: In December of 2021, deep in that second pandemic winter, Mon Rovia started going on Tik Tok with just a ukelele, and playing his songs. The ukelele was a gift from his family, but somehow it felt like the sound for that time.
Mon Rovia: And I just started playing on it simply, you know, not really knowing much about the instrument, but I realized it was super easy to write meaningful lyrics without having so many other things in my way.
And so every day, every December, every day, every morning I went on set up. I just played, I didn't know who was coming. I didn't know what, who was listening and slowly but surely this community started to grow. And in the mornings people would just be there, have their coffee there, or they'd be at their desk at work. They'd turn it on and it became a place for peace and like a start to their day in a very positive way.
NARRATION: Act Four is called Atonement. It came out on January 10, 2025 and marks the end of this cycle of EPs, the hero's journey as Mon Rovia calls it.
But it also marks an arrival of sorts at this place I have been thinking about and marvelling at since I first heard Mon Rovia's music and his story. That place is empathy, and there is one song in particular on this EP, where he just goes there and not in a simple, triumphant kind of way, but in a hard and complicated kind of way. The song is called Winter Wash 24.
Meklit: I was reading this in this interview with you and I'm going to quote you, okay? It's going to be weird, but I want to hear more about this idea. You said, the song captures the unsettling cognitive dissonance of modern life in the West, witnessing the horrors of war on our screens only to be immediately distracted by a sports highlight or a meme. It's a call to rise above desensitization and isolation, to see ourselves as both helpers and those in need of help.
And I just, like, first of all, I love the song and I would say also, like, as a, I came to the U.S. as a refugee in my youth. I was two years old.
Mon Rovia: Wow, ok.
Meklit: And I feel there's a thing about the idea of refugee, where it's like, the one who received the help of the nation, in a way. There's just something in there about when we, we can go back and forth in the roles between the one who is helped and the one who offers help and that we're all that. I felt like that was just really like a profound opening up of even the idea of refugee. Okay, now I just talked for a long time,
Mon Rovia: No, that's beautiful
Meklit: but I would love to just hear what you thought about that.
Mon Rovia: And that's the thing of a refugee too is, you know, like what you just said. You are being helped, but in turn that help lends you also the ability to help others as well, later on, or in some, you know, at some point. So you eventually become a helper and also the person that, that's rescuing you. And most of the time who they're rescuing ends up rescuing them.
Meklit: That's right.
Mon Rovia: Based on that experience. My dad tells me this all the time. He’s like son, like this is one of the most amazing that's ever happened in my life. Being able when we got you from Liberia, I didn't know how much of I would, I would grow how much I would, how much I would need from having you in my life.
NARRATION: The song takes us through the many challenges and distractions from empathy. The mundane worries of our everyday lives, the overwhelming scale of violence in the world. Mon Rovia sings: One little boy. Can't play outside no more. Fears iron birds. Gunfire. The devil's mirth.
Mon Rovia: It's okay to see some of these really difficult things and to be okay with that tension of living in this world with that. There are some things you cannot fix, but you still should try to do your best to relieve another in that experience.
I'm spinning hands in the air standing there. I'm spinning. Ask the question. Do you care? Or are you going to stay unaware? Now you're almost there. Do you care? Stay aware. And that is the hardest part. Staying aware.
NARRATION: Staying aware. That is the opening for empathy to begin.
Mon Rovia: I believe we can achieve good things if you see you in me. And that's the hope of the song.
NARRATION: The song is called Winter Wash 24. It's out now on all the streaming platforms. The full EP, Atonement, was released January 10th.
For many days after we spoke, bits and pieces of my conversation with Mon Rovia would pop into my head. And it struck me so intensely that Mon Rovia’s music has this one presupposition in it, a starting line that he lays out clear as day, and it is this.
Whoever you are, I know that life has tested you. Not all tests are the same. But I will not rank heartbreak. I will recognize it. I will not look away. I will act to relieve suffering. If we truly see each other’s pain, we can heal together.
That’s the title of his recent tour by the way, The Heal With Others Tour. Just so it’s clear what we’re doing when we go to one of his shows.
Oh Mon Rovia. If we all started from this generous place, we could sit back and watch the world get just a bit kinder.
Movement is produced by Ian Coss and myself, Meklit Hadero. Our co-creator and podcast godmother is Julie Caine. Our broadcast partner is The World. We are supported by the Mellon Foundation and distributed by PRX.
If you enjoyed this story, consider sending it to a friend, or leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts. Believe me, this stuff really does help people find the show. And if you happen to be curious about my albums, or performances, you can learn more at meklitmusic.com. This is our final episode for Season 2 of Movement with Meklit Hadero but we will be back with Season 3 later this year, so stay tuned.