Multi-Grammy winner Lenny Kravitz, age 59, has been making albums since 1989. The “Fly Away” singer is months away from releasing Blue Electric Light, which is scheduled for March 2024. The first single from the latest record, “TK421,” is already out.
Looking at the trajectory of his career, he says, “I'm where I should be, and that I've grown as I should have. … I'm very pleased with my creativity, the pace, the longevity. I like the slow burn. … I've learned so much on my path. And I feel like everything that I've done thus far has been an education for where I'm about to go. So I truly feel that I'm just beginning to walk into my role, into my destiny … as a human being and as an artist.”
A role in Rustin
Kravitz recently performed the song “Road to Freedom” at a Los Angeles-based fundraiser for President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign. He says he went to represent the messages of acceptance and unity behind Rustin, a biopic about the openly gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, who came up with the idea for the March on Washington and was Martin Luther King Jr.’s right-hand man.
“It's amazing how many people do not know about Bayard Rustin … such an important human being, and had so much to do with this event that we all know about, which is the March on Washington, where Martin Luther King rose to great heights with the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. It is time that we know about this person that had so much to do with it.”
He continues, “This is happening throughout time, where things are coming out, people are learning about what really happened and which people got passed by. … I had an uncle — who I’m named after — Leonard Kravitz, who got the Congressional Medal of Honor when Obama was in office, long after he died in the Korean War, because he didn't get what he should have gotten because he was Jewish.”
Kravitz admits, however, that he initially felt bad when he got the call from Rustin producer George Wolfe.
“I was ashamed I knew so little about him, especially growing up in the family that I did, but I don't remember folks talking about him. So that showed me right there [that] this was something very important, something that I needed to be part of, something that I needed to be educated on, and that people needed to be educated on.”
He adds, “It was with great pride and honor to be asked to write this theme song and to be a part of this so that Rustin’s light could shine.”
Biracial pride
The musician was born in 1964 in New York City. His mom was actress Roxie Roker of The Jeffersons fame, and his dad was NBC news producer Sy Kravitz, who identified as Jewish — the two wed just years before the landmark Loving v. Virginia U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which legalized interracial marriage in 1967. Kravitz says he’s proud of that heritage.
“My mother taught me to celebrate all of me and where I come from. … I had the Christian side. I had the Jewish side. I had Hanukkah and Christmas, and Passover and Easter,” Kravtiz says. “We celebrated all of it together, which was really beautiful because when my parents first got married [in] 1963, the families hadn't come together yet. They had their opinions.”
He continues, “When I was born, everybody came together, and then learned to love each other, learn to accept each other, and became such a tight family.”
Outside of home, Kravitz says he had no understanding of prejudice as a young boy — nor was he bothered. His mom taught him to be proud. It was a far cry from the stories he heard from his parents, such as strangers on the streets spitting at their feet. What helped, Kravitz says, was the inclusive community of artists his family gravitated around in 1960s New York.
However, his mother also told him that society would only see him as Black.
“I grew to understand that, through experience, that people weren't going to recognize all of you. They're going to recognize what they saw. … I do identify as a Black man, but people weren't going to take all of your history and celebrate all of it.”
Kravitz recalls a time when he was exiting the subway in New York to see his grandmother, and an African American kid ran up to him and began singing “American Woman.” The track had just come out. However, he asked Kravitz, “Why do you make that white music?”
“I was so upset about … the fact that he didn't know the history. And I said, ‘Hey, wait a minute. Let me talk to you.’ And I explained that Black people invented rock and roll.”
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