If you can’t get to Carnival, don’t fret, because Robert Riley is bringing Carnival to you. Hollywood Massive, Riley’s Carnival production company, produced its first event in Hollywood, California, in June, and he’s got plans to bring the party to wherever you are.
You may know Riley best as an actor. The 30-something, self-professed artist and storyteller appeared in the last Broadway production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with the legendary James Earl Jones, Phylicia Rashad and Empire‘s Terrence Howard. And he’s currently starring in the VH1 drama series Hit the Floor.
Riley talked to BE Modern Man exclusively about his latest venture, his inspiration and his purpose.
BE Modern Man: Tell us about Hollywood Massive
Riley: Hollywood, CA just had its fourth annual Carnival out here and I got wind of it. So instead of just being a participant, I decided that I could do a little better. Our goal with Hollywood Massive is to bring Carnival to everybody, because Carnival is an all-inclusive thing. It doesn’t matter what color you are, whether you’re a man, woman, boy, girl, short, tall, fat, skinny, black, white, gay, straight—it doesn’t really matter. So I wanted to bring my brand of Carnival, the way I understand it, here. I wanted to expose folks to a different way of partying, one that included everyone and wasn’t about bottle popping and stunting on folks and making other people feel bad. We’re going to produce Carnival every June out in LA but it’s also aimed at other cities—Brooklyn, New York; Miami; Boston; Atlanta, etc.
Hollywood Massive is also a production company, and we’re in the midst of launching a documentary series about Carnival and our participation in those Carnivals all around the world.
Trinidadian-inspired Carnivals happen all over. They’re different from Carnival in Brazil in that the average pedestrian can participate—you buy a costume, you’re in the band. So you’ve got the Labor Day Carnival in Brooklyn, Boston’s got one, Miami’s got one October 11, Caribana in Tor
onto is August third, there’s Carifest in Calgary (Canada), Rotterdam (the Netherlands) just had its Carnival, Notting Hill’s Carnival in England is the end of this month—yeah, they’re everywhere. And our documentary series aims to show you that. People from all over the world travel hundreds and thousands of miles to put on a pretty costume and have a great time with people they know and don’t know.How did you come up with the idea for a Carnival production company?
My mother is from Trinidad and my father was from Barbados—the two biggest Caribbean nations that participate in Carnival. So if there’s one thing I know, it’s Carnival!
Where does your artistic inspiration come from?
My inspiration comes from my mother, from who she is as a woman. My mother raised me by herself and made a lot of sacrifices in order for me to be able to do what I do and stay off the street—play football, be a Boy Scout and all those things. She’s always been very accepting of whatever I’ve done and she’s never turned a friend away from my house. I was born here but I was raised in a culture that was different from Brooklyn, New York. So I automatically had to accept another culture as soon as I went to school. That made it easier for me to love culture. I was dancing to Salsa & Merengue before I ever knew one word of Spanish! [Hollywood Massive] is just another vehicle with which to make my mother proud and prove to her that all of her sacrifices weren’t in vain.
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What makes you stand out from the crowd?
I’ve always marched to the beat of my own drum. I pride myself on being different. Not just for the sake of being different but looking at what the norm is and what everybody else is doing, and analyzing whether or not that’s for me. A lot of people do what’s popular without thinking about it and end up perpetuating or supporting something they shouldn’t. I’ve always taken a step back to see if something’s the right fit for me.
What would you tell young, future BE Modern Men who hope to cultivate a successful career?
Believe in yourself. Pay attention to your strengths but work on your weaknesses. Be skeptical but learn to listen. A lot of people listen with the intent to answer as opposed to understand. If you just take that extra couple of seconds to process what someone is saying to you, you might just learn something.
Tell us about one of the most challenging things you’ve had to do, personally or professionally.
The most challenging thing I’ve had to do is figure out what it means to be a man without a father to help me out. And I’m still figuring it out today.
Do you think men of color are championed enough in the mainstream?
No, not at all. We look down at ourselves, which doesn’t make any sense. We don’t highlight the things that actually matter.
One example I love to use—you know there were a lot of shenanigans going on
in the NBA when that tornado hit Oklahoma City. Kevin Durant and his foundation donated a million dollars to the city of Oklahoma and no one ever said anything about it. Instead we were talking about this one who punched his fiancée in the face, and this one with another domestic violence situation, and this one who was making it rain the club—a bunch of shit that doesn’t matter that paints us in a negative light. I don’t really care if there are outside forces that make that the case, we have a responsibility to look at ourselves a certain way. It’s hard to fight through the noise but it still has to be done.What impact do you want to have on the community?
I was presented with a plaque in 2001-2002 that said I was an artist. I was an undergrad and had written a play called Untold Truths about the minority experience at predominantly white institutions of education. The subtitle was ‘Why we always sit together.’ If you enter a cafeteria [at a predominantly white college/university], you’re going to see a bunch of people who identify with each other in some way sitting together. And, typically, those people are brown.
So at the end of that production, I received this plaque—which hangs over my bathroom mirror to this day—that talks about the artist’s role in society. It says the role of an artist is to 1) put the ills of society on stage, 2) be a force for change in the community, and 3) spark dialogue where communication is blocked. So aside from making people smile and giving them a distraction, my aim is to fulfill the role of an artist. If you don’t leave the world better than when you came into it, you kind of didn’t do anything. I want to make an impact on the world one festival, one dance, one smile at a time. And show us that we have a lot more in common than we think we do.
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What does it mean to you to be a BE Modern Man?
Being a BE Modern Man means that people are paying attention to some of the good work that I’m doing, that they appreciate it, and they want me to keep doing it. It gives me a reason to keep moving forward. When you’re trying to do good and you’re not really out there being like everybody else, a lot of times you don’t get highlighted. You’re not going to end up on the front of a tabloid for mentoring kids. I thank the young men and women that I mentor, everybody that hires me for a job, anybody who does anything for me—thank you for letting me do what I do and giving me a reason to do it.
What does it mean to you to be crowned a Carnival King?
I give all of that respect to the islands of Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados! Because if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be able to do this at all. Being a Carnival King means that all my country folks can be proud—especially my mother and all my family members here. So I’m going to go upstairs and dust off my feathers and forever defend my title as a Carnival King!
Come celebrate Caribbean culture with Black Enterprise and Queen of Soca Alison Hinds during the Black Enterprise Golf & Tennis Challenge, September 3-6, 2015 at the PGA National Resort & Spa in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Use code BEMM to get $150 off all conference packages!*