Music, integrity, and violence against women

Tena Clark Transcript

Sabrina Merage Naim
From Evoke Media I'm Sabrina Merage Naim with me is Kassia Binkowski, and this is Breaking Glass - a series of conversations with women around the world who are shattering glass ceilings and challenging social norms. They are audacious, gutsy, and their stories are echoed across borders and generations in a rallying cry that is changing the narrative for women everywhere. Tena Clark is one of the most well respected women in the music industry and widely regarded as a force in helping to move the industry more towards gender equity. But her story begins in rural Mississippi with a conservative family who didn't always support her career aspirations, musical ambitions or lifestyle. Tena knew she had no choice but to follow the music and at times, had to force her way beyond gender barriers and concrete ceilings to achieve the great heights that have now allowed others to follow in her footsteps. We're talking with Tina about passion, ambition, sexuality, familiar pressures, and ending the violence against women.

Kassia Binkowski
Sabrina, as you point out, we touch on so many topics in this journey with Tena, we almost don't know where to begin. But her career and life story intertwine beautifully to form this tapestry that drew us in almost immediately. Tena is so confident in her choices, even when often faced with discouragement from the people who love her most. Today, she's an industry executive, a writer and producer and author and activist, the list goes on and on. We think you'll really enjoy hearing the story about a woman at the top of the industry. Take a listen.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Tena, thank you so much for joining us from Atlanta today. We're very excited to have you.

Tena Clark
Well, I am happy to be here.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So I was racking my brain as to where to start because you've had such a versatile and multifaceted career and life and there's so much that we could touch on but you know, we need to begin at the very beginning, which is you're from originally Mississippi. And you have since kind of blossomed into so many other things from Mississippi, your roots, and you're a drummer, a sound engineer, and more or less, you were discovered by Stevie Wonder. And today, you're the founder and CEO of DMI music, and we'll talk more about that. But as a woman at the top of the industry, it's you know, that scratches the surface of what we want to touch on today. So first, what was it like for you growing up in the rural South? More specifically, what were the gender expectations that were put on you as a young girl?

Tena Clark
I don't even think it was evolved enough to say there were expectations. It was just no conversation, a non starter, and I didn't even know. You know, when I was very young, I just knew that I was really different. And I feel like the expectations were to be exactly like my older sisters. I had three older sisters much older than me. They're all now in their late 70s. And I grew up as basically an only child because they were gone and in college or either getting married or whatever by the time I was six years old. So I guess I guess Yes, I guess okay to be specific, I'm sure that they wanted me just to be exactly like all my sisters - debutantes, major at drum major, married to the perfect guy, join the country club and have 2.3 children. And you know, there was never any questioning or conversation around even if that were not something that I would want. I was free to choose myself for myself.

Kassia Binkowski
When did you start to recognize that you felt different than them? When did you start to recognize that that was not going to be your path?

Tena Clark
When I was four.

Sabrina Merage Naim
What happened when you were four?

Tena Clark
I was always a tomboy, even from you know, probably day one but I was sitting on the floor playing with my Lincoln Logs and building some kind of fort or something. And my sister who was a major walked in. She she was in high school and she walked in with her best friend. And they were both majors and her best friend had on a green sequined leotard and white tassel boots. And I just remember, I was looking down at my Lincoln Logs, and all of a sudden I'll lift up and like, the gates opened in the heavens saying, "Oh, my God, there is a God." I thought, I don't want to be a majorette. I want to marry one!

Kassia Binkowski
What did it look like to navigate that growing up? I mean, realizing from the age of four, balancing those expectations growing up as more or less an only child - what did that look like? What did your coping mechanisms look like? How did you navigate that? How did your parents respond?

Tena Clark
It was bury, bury, bury, keep it deep down inside in a locked box. And just feel that I was like a Martian. But there were no other Martians that I knew. And so therefore, I just, I had to tuck it away, I had to keep tucking it away. And that one day, maybe there would be a miracle, but this is what life was. And there was no alternative. And I would take it as long as I could. And then I would maybe not be able to take it anymore. And so you know, I did the what I was supposed to do. I dated guys all through high school, I dated guys in college. I was always pinned or dropped or going steady. So I just lived the facade, you know.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So I just want to set the stage for a minute. You grew up, yes, in the rural south. But you also had you grew up in incredible financial privilege. Your father was one of the wealthiest men in town. You talk about this image of the country clubs, the beauty pageants, the majorettes. I have such a clear picture in my mind of what that was like. And yet, from such an early age, you knew that something was very different about you, from your three older sisters, maybe from a lot of the other people who surrounded you in your community. There was some familial turmoil, there was infidelity, there was alcoholism, your mother eventually walked out on the family when you were just 10 years old. And you talk about how you were raised in large part by your nanny. All of this kind of shaped who you eventually became. You wanted to be a drummer. Girls were not allowed to play the drums.

Tena Clark
Correct.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Eventually you realize you wanted to date women, right? That is unheard of, not even up for consideration. When was that turning point in your life where where you came from was no longer where you're going?

Tena Clark
There was nothing in me that made me go with the status quo. It was just like this doesn't work, and I will do whatever it takes, I will not be a part of this and stand by and accept it. It's like the Bruce Hornsby song "That's just the way it is. But don't you believe it." I I just could not believe what I was being fed and taught growing up, and what I was seeing around me. So I wanted to play the drums. I never wanted to do anything but play the drums. I lived, ate and breathed the drums. And I was told I couldn't play the drums in the band because girls don't play the drums. Well, that was just like waving a red flag and make that look, if I had been some kind of little docile, afraid, shy girl, I would have never gotten that hammer and slugged at that ceiling. But I was like "I am going to play the drums." You know, I want to be a drummer. Well, I kept begging and begging and begging the band director and he goes "You know, girls just don't play the drums and your parents said you can play anything you want to but the drums." Now, I don't know if they knew I had some tendencies and they just didn't want me to keep going further and further towards more male things. So you know I played pretty much every instrument and kept working my way up to something. I started out, they said I could play the clarinet. I played the clarinet for a while, hated it. And they said, I could play the trumpet, then the saxophone. I hated it. And then finally, the band director, went to my parents and said, "Just let her. Just let her play the drums, you know that she won't be able to carry the drum down the field. Just let her play it and get it out of her system." It's kind of like being gay, oh, she's not gay. Just let her get it out of her system. Right?

Sabrina Merage Naim
And little did he know.

Tena Clark
So I proved him wrong, and everybody else. And, you know, I just, I had such a passion, as long as I can remember for music. And my mom was a songwriter in the Big Band era. So I just had this dying love and passion for music and never wanted to do anything else. So I could not be deterred. And then I was told, "You know just get over this little fantasy thing you have about music and being famous and going to LA or whatever." You know, I grew up on a farm in Mississippi, right? And it was like, get through that, because my dad would say, you can only be a secretary, that was the word he used, then you can be a bank teller, you can be a teacher, or you can be a nurse. Well, obviously, he was like, I was might as well have had my ears closed. That did not compute. And not that there's anything wrong at all with those choices. It's just that's not who I was. So anyway, I proved them all wrong. And as far as my sexuality is concerned, when that changed for me, and once I started playing the drums at 10, and never looked back, I never did anything else. I've never been confused. I've never been confused about music. And that's what I was going to do. And I've never been confused about my sexuality. I have to tell you this story, my best friend in the sorority I was dying to tell her that I had a girlfriend. And I said, I gotta tell you something. I gotta tell you something. It's really important, really important. So there was this closet. And one of the hallways, I said, Let's go in the closet where the gowns are. So we went in there and I said, Okay. And it was like, she was the first person I was going to tell. And I just couldn't get it out. I said, "Guess." And she goes, "Oh, my God, you're pregnant." And I was like, "No!" And she was like, "Okay. Oh, you're in love with a married man. You're dating a married man." I was like, "Oh, my God, no!" And she was like, "Well, that would be the like, the two biggest things I could possibly think of. What is it?" And I said, "I'm gay, Lisa." And she went, "Oh, for God's sakes, you dragged me in this closet to tell me that. So what?" And I was like, "I got a girlfriend." And she goes, "I want to meet her." And that was it. And to this day, we're best friends. She lives in California, too. She and her husband. I can't say that I never had any discriminating situations, but not many. And I don't know, from your point Sabrina, of you saying I came from a privileged background. And maybe that had something to do with it. But the pain I experienced of the coming out times were just more from my family.

Kassia Binkowski
The the pain that you're describing, and this culture of secrecy that you entered, would have crushed so many people. It does crush so many people. Was there somebody along the way who nurtured that confidence in you who nurtured that passion for your hobbies, which were not generally supported? Who nurtured that confidence in your sexuality? Where did that come from?

Tena Clark
I think I had this gift somehow.There's nothing in me that I said could not live my truth. I would have rather died than not live my truth. My mother was my balcony person. And my mother always lifted me up in music because she was a musician. And she cheered me on and loved everything I did and watching and living her life vicariously through me and my success in the music business. As far as my sexuality, mentoring or whatever? No, there wasn't anybody. I just believed and I knew with all my heart that no matter what my mother would love me and never stopped loving me. I knew that Bergey, the black lady who raised me that she would never stop loving me. So I knew that I had total unconditional love in those two areas.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So what you're talking about is unapologetic perseverance. That's something that I'm hearing so much.

Tena Clark
100%.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah, it's something frankly, that is a shared theme with other women that we've spoken to who have had to push through such odds to prove time and time and time again, that their options are limitless, that their opportunities have no bounds. And when you're talking about how the narrative that your father gave you early on, in terms of what your career opportunities were, you know, to his credit, that was the time and the place. And that's what it was, right. And for so many other little girls who had heard that from their father, you would forgive them for saying, "Okay, this is, these are my options. And that's that."

Tena Clark
Because my dad knows what's best.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Right. My dad knows what's best. My dad has clarity on the ways of the world that I could never understand. And he's telling me, these are my options. And these are the options that I have in this that, but that never even for a second computed for you. Right?

Tena Clark
No, but I'm crazy too, because in the end when, you know, things got not great between us. And he and I went at it one time. And I'd never raised my voice to my dad or said the things I really felt and he, I guess, he hadn't either. But that's when he told me that I had never done anything - he didn't say anything, he used another word - he had ever wanted me to do. I had never been what he wanted. I had never done what he wanted. And you know, that really hurt.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yeah, so I think I think that unfortunately, the the people who pave their path, it often comes at the expense of people who are expecting certain things of them. You know, even the people who love who love you the most in the world will be disappointed, will be upset, will even push back against you when you are every step of the way climbing, climbing, climbing, to get to where you know you belong. But that resistance sometimes comes from the places where you think that you're going to have support and love. And I think your story is just highlighting that fact.

Tena Clark
People said, you know, girls can't be with girls. Girls can't play the drums. Girls can't be with girls. Girls can't be producers. Girls can't be all the things, can't own record label, can't do all of those things that I've done. Every time they would tell me I can't do that. I was like "Check that one off the list. Okay, you really want to go with that? Let's go do that."

Sabrina Merage Naim
So take us back. You started playing the drums against your parents' wishes and the wishes of society at the age of 10. And you never looked back. And then eventually, you went on the road and then were discovered by Stevie Wonder. What happened then?

Tena Clark
Well, I was planning a house band in Biloxi, Mississippi. And we had been on the road and now we had this house gig and I was also moonlighting at a studio in Louisiana as a second engineer, which is just, you know, a nice term for "Go fetch the coffee and go sweep the floors, clean the toilet, and then you can sit in here." And obviously with these famous artists and it was a really great studio where a lot of famous artists recorded in so they lived there at this place. It was almost like a communal type thing out in the middle of the woods and so Stevie came to record Secret Life of Plants at the time, and I was second engineering. And he liked me. And he heard that I was in this band. And one night I was playing, and he walked in the door. And I was so nervous, I almost had a heart attack. I'm so nervous that I think that my kick drum foot was doing triplets just not stopped. And when he was done with the record and went back, we got to spend a lot of time together. And he was the sweetest, sweetest human being to me. And then all the other people that were with him, you know, from LA. And that's all I wanted. I wanted to move to LA forever. And even when I was little, and be in the music business. So when he went back, so anyway his band reached out to me and said, "Steve said that if you want to come to LA, he's going to be cutting a new record." This was a few months later. And, "You know, come on out." And I said, "I can't come to LA, I don't have any money." I make $300 a week, which was good then for a band, but I don't have any money to come out there. And they say "Well no, he'll pay for your ticket out there. And he'll pay for one way, and then you stay as long as you want. When you get ready to come back. They'll send you back." So I was like, Okay, I'm ready. Just whenever. Send me a ticket.

Kassia Binkowski
I mean, that's a dream opportunity. Yeah.

Tena Clark
God. So I told them yes. I was just estatic and I told my mom and she was really, really happy. She was nervous for me, but she was really happy. And then my dad heard about it. And he had no idea who Stevie Wonder was, he didn't know anything about music. All he knew and had been told was this black man in Los Angeles was taking me to California. And you can imagine how the rest of that story went. And he thought that I was in love with a black man. And even though I had come out at that time, and that didn't compute, because I think he, he didn't even understand that. And so it was just like, whatever. That's just some kind of crazy thing she's going through right now. And he said, if he if I went to LA with this man, that he would disown me. And I sat there and I looked at him, he said, "I'll disown you, I'll never be your backup, I'll never help you. I'm done with you." And I'm sitting there in slow motion. And I'm going with one hand, my dad's gonna disown me. And I look at the other hand, this is all like, in my head, slow motion. I think. Stevie Wonder is bringing me to LA. And I just looked at him and I said, See ya daddy.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Did it did it ever occur to you at that point to even doubt your decision? That maybe it wouldn't work out with Stevie Wonder or you'd run out of money or you wouldn't have any opportunities or inroads and then your dad would say you're on your own? It never even occurred to you?

Tena Clark
I didn't have any money. And I knew he wasn't going to give me any money. All I had was the money I've been making, because I wouldn't let him give me money. Now. If I'm being very, very honest, I know if push came to shove, my dad would always be there. Because I did have that insurance. And I would like to say, you know, a lot of people don't have any kind of insurance. And I knew if he wasn't there for me, my sister would be there. My other sister would be there. I had insurance to know that I can go out there and freefall and do whatever I can to, you know, better myself, and be all reach my goals. But man if everything went to hell in a handbasket, I know they would be there. So you know, I didn't, I didn't go out there to, I wasn't working for him. I wasn't playing for him. I was out there, he gave me a huge gift to be a mentor. He let me sit in this he picked me up, picked me up in the band every morning at 3am. And he he let me sit there in that studio. And on that piano studio with him. Why he created and cut "Hotter than July". And when people ask me how did that change my life, I can't even I can't even put my head around it. I know that it changed me drastically. It made me know that I didn't want to play the drums anymore as far as a living that I wanted to really concentrate on my writing. And besides I just knew the ceiling call it glass ceiling, it was more like concrete ceiling for girl drummers and always has been. I just knew that I wanted to have a career in music that would last forever. And to me that was writing and then it became writing and producing. I came back to Mississippi and then I moved to Nashville and decided to just jump in and start writing 24 hours a day.

Sabrina Merage Naim
You tried your hand at being a drummer, you realized that you didn't want to continue that as a career. And frankly, you mentioned that you hit that cement ceiling in terms of what opportunities existed for women in drumming. And then you went into kind of the writing, producing and you also had a successful run as with a booking agency.

Tena Clark
Yeah, that was when I was in Mississippi, because when I came back from Stevie, I asked this guy that owned the studio that I worked, I said, "How can I get to Nashville the fastest?" And he said, "You know, every band and every club from Texas to North Carolina," and he said, "there's no honest booking agents." And he said, "You know, everybody loves you in all these bands and stuff. Just get a telephone, start a booking agency. It's all cash, make the money and then take off." And I was like "That's not what I want to do." He said "You need this is as a means to an end. Do it for a year or six months, get some cash in your pocket and take off." I said, "Okay." So I rented a boiler room under a nightclub that was about literally five, let's say probably six feet by six feet. And I put two desks in it facing each other. And I put two phones on one side and one phone this side. And I hired two musicians that were out of work that I knew. And the three of us sat there and started just dialing for dollars, calling and signing up bands, then booking clubs, then we eventually grew and booking concerts and nightclubs, and colleges and whatever. And it literally seemed like overnight, but it wasn't overnight. It was over five years, and I had golden handcuffs on. And I was just in my 20s I was making a boatload of money. I my offices were like a high rise in Jackson, Mississippi, if that's such a thing. And I had a house on the Country Club. And my father was very happy.

Kassia Binkowski
I was going to say, you must have fulfilled all of his expectations for that brief season.

Tena Clark
A BMW. I was living on the golf course. I had a successful business. And I remember one night in the middle of the night, I get a phone call from a band that's broken down somewhere close to Mississippi. And they were freaking out because they were going to be late for the gig. And I called one of my agents - I had nine agents working for me - and I said deal with this. And it just literally, it was like a bat hit me upside the head. And I was like, "What am I doing? I am a writer, I am a musician. I am an artist, what am I doing?" And so there was a doctor who loved my house, he said if I ever wanted to sell my house to call him. The next morning, I woke up, I called him I said, "I'm going to sell my house, I'm moving to Nashville." And so I moved to Nashville. And it was awesome. I knew that I could never I couldn't be in Nashville, it was a good old boy town. And I was a duck out of water there. But I made a lot of good friends and made a lot of contacts. And really learned my craft on how to co-write. I'd never co-written. Everything I'd written I'd written by myself. So then Hal David took me under his wing in Nashville, and he was the head of ASCAP at that time. And he said, "You got to move to LA. And I'll do anything for you."

Kassia Binkowski
It's not lost on me that there are now three different men in your life, who have had a tremendous professional influence on these pivot points. Were there women in the industry that you were looking up to? What did that gender dynamic look like? What was the balance?

Tena Clark
You know, there really, other than my mother, you know, there were no women sadly that I was able to look up to in business. It was still like I was playing in a man's world. And, and I related to these men from a professional level, and, you know, I play golf, so I played golf with them. I hung out with them. I drank with them. They all knew I was gay. We were best friends. You know? The boundaries were cool. I'm still, you know, good ole boys. But I would say at that time - I hope I'm not forgetting someone - but at that time there were really not. There was nobody that could really be my mentor as a woman. And I was very, very, very blessed. And lucky that, you know, but that I had these men in my life that took me under their wings. Stevie, Norbert Putnam, Hal Blaine, Hal David -incredible top of the game successful men that saw something in me as a musician, and as a songwriter. They saw something, and therefore, they were willing to help me, because I think too, they would just look at me and go like, "Damn, she's got some tenacity." Because it's just like you gave you give me a lead, I'm going to follow it. And you give me a chance, and I'm going to take it. And I never second guessed myself.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So after having your hands in a few different areas of the music industry, fast forward to today, where you are the founder and CEO of DMI music. You've been commissioned to write songs for NASA, Hillary Clinton, you've won a Grammy, you've collaborated with artists like Maya Angelou, Aretha Franklin and Natalie Cole, so many others. A question that we like to ask our guests - What were the glass ceilings you never expected to shatter now looking back at a very successful career?

Tena Clark
Well, I never knew that there was a glass ceiling in the music business, like in LA. I thought when I got to LA, all the doors would open. No sexism, there's no this there's no that, especially in the music industry, right. And I found the music industry at that time in the 80s and the 90s to be more sexist than pretty much any industry I had seen. Things were said to me like "You're white. You're from Mississippi. And you're a girl. What are you doing writing r&b music? What makes you think you can write r&b music?" And all it took was for me to have a couple of hits, you know? And then that question wasn't asked of me anymore. But every time I would do an interview, and I would do a lot of interviews, especially in you know, music interviews, the first question that thye would always say, "Well, how did this white girl from Mississippi end up being an r&b songwriter?" And I got so tired of the question. I'm just like, not to sound cliche, but you know, soul doesn't have a color. I didn't sit down one day and say at the piano, oh, I'm going to be an r&b writer. They would expect it with my twang that I would have probably written country music. But it's just what came out of my heart and what came out of my soul.

Kassia Binkowski
Today, you are widely celebrated as one of the most influential female producers in the music space. You're, I mean, you saw gender discrimination up close. What are the barriers that you've witnessed over the course of your career to engaging more women in this space? What does that look like? What can be done? What are you doing?

Tena Clark
When I say that I never knew there was that kind of sexism, when I first came to LA, I was doing film and TV strictly. And I kind of got golden handcuffs again, because I got tied to a TV producer. And every new TV show he did he wanted his whole team with him. And we would just go from one show to another. Money was incredible. I was music director, I wrote a lot of the songs, a lot of the underscore or whatever. And there was never a question about who produced that. It was like Tena, we need you to write it out. Same thing and film. It was never about Tena, can you just write this song? We don't want you to produce it. It would be like, "Hey, we need this song. We need that. Can you do this?" And I would go in and I would write it and producing it. But then when I decided I had golden handcuffs on again, and I thought I came out here to write and produce records. And I'm not doing that. I'm doing film and TV. And I love it, and I especially love film. But, you know, I could probably retire in a few years at the rate I'm going but this is not what's feeding my soul. So then that's when I had my first hit was with Dionne Warwick. And there was no conversation about me producing that. And I just thought, "Oh, that's fine, because I'm just this no name in the record business." And then the next time and then the next time and then the next time and I'm thinking, "What the hell?" Because they would take my production of songs, and copy the producer, the male producer would copy my exact production, but then charge, you know, a ton of money to produce it. So I finally just thought after I'd had some success, I just thought "They want my song, they're gonna take me because I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna not produce it." And it was a lot of pushback. And it took a woman helping me bust up and that ceiling in 1991.

Kassia Binkowski
Was that a common experience of women in the industry of men essentially copying their work?

Tena Clark
Totally. I don't care if it was in Nashville or LA, wherever. You could be sitting there saying exactly as an artist, you could be sitting there telling your producer, I want, you know, the drums to do this. No, I want that background singer singing this. No, I don't like the way that guitar riff or the way that's happening, can he do this baseline over here. But they weren't given a producer credit. Finally, it took this artist on A&M, who really had not broken out yet. Her name was Vesta. And I had used her on a lot of TV stuff, and a lot of commercials. And so she called me and said she was doing this new record, her second record. And she wanted me to produce at least three songs on the record. And I was like, "Oh, that's fantastic. But they're never gonna let me do it." She goes, "Oh, yes, I will." I said, "No, they won't. And you are not in a place right now to force that. You don't need to blow this." She said, "Tena I know that you can produce a hit on me." And she said, "You can give me that hit that I've never had. And you and I'll work that great together." And so she went to the person at the label and said this Tena Clark was going to produce her three songs and they were like, "No." And they said, "We already have a producer." And she was like, "Okay, then I'll have laryngitis for the next five years." She walked out. They thought she was bluffing. About three weeks later, they're blowing her phone up. And they basically said - I'm paraphrasing - what they meant was, "You two little girls go have some fun, do what you're going to do. But then we're going to make a real record. Right?" I mean, that was the sentiment. So man, we were on the chopping block. And we sat on the floor one night, and wrote her a song that became her calling card and her number one hit, and was the longest running ballad on BET, and the longest running ballad ever on BET. And once I had that hit, then guess what? All of a sudden, and I know all of you have experiences and all of you in this audience have probably experienced this in one way or another. All of a sudden, guess who was a producer? I was a producer. But I had always been a producer. When my phone rang, or rings, I don't know if it I get called to write for a film and produce I get called to write for a TV show and produce. I get called to write for a commercial and produce. I never know what it's going to be. But I am hired as a producer, not just "I'm an artist and I'm cutting a record."

Sabrina Merage Naim
Which leads me to this great Forbes quote from your 2012 interview: "If you've seen a movie, watched a television show or flown on Delta Airlines in the past couple of decades, you've probably listened to music written and/or produced by Tena Clark." And I love that because in one sentence it tells you how now your experience is so vast, but if you had to prove yourself in a different way than maybe other people in the industry, who happened not to be women.

Tena Clark
I always felt like I always say I was always a salmon swimming upstream. If I wasn't swimming upstream, I didn't know how to swim.

Sabrina Merage Naim
When did you first have a sense of obligation to really leverage the privilege you amassed? What was the thing that really started to feed your soul?

Tena Clark
When my mom passed away, I had never, at that time written a song for a cause, or an anthem and never been commissioned for anything like that. It's always been film, television, whatever. I was in a taxi, and I get a call, and my assistant calls me and says, "Tena, I need to patch through, it's NASA. And I'm like, I think it's somebody Mississippi named NASA. "NASA who?" "NASA." And I'm like "NASA who?" And she's like, "The rockets, like the rockets!" And I was like, "Oh, yeah, sure. Right, right." Well, I'm thinking it's some crazy friend of mine in LA trying to cheer me up right and playing some kind of joke. I get on the phone, and the guy says, "Hi, Ms. Clark. This is so and so with NASA." And I was like, "Oh I know that voice. I know that voice. Keep talking, keep talking." I mean, it's mortifies me even when I repeat the story. And, he says "Well, I'm calling because we want to commission you to write the theme song for NASA." And I was like, "Oh, ain't that sweet." I said, "Okay, I've just about got it. Just keep talking. Keep talking." And now listen, I could just tell he got very still. And he was like, "Ms. Clark, this is so and so with NASA in Washington, DC, and we..." And well all of a sudden, the blood just started. God, I have just been the biggest idiot that ever walked. But anyway, they commissioned me to write their theme song for NASA and their Centennial flight. And I was just in shock. And so I was like, "Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Absolutely, oh, I I'd be honored. I'm just thrilled." That song changed me because it's one of my favorite songs, if I had to pick one of my one of my children. Because when I got back, I call my sister and said, You're not going to believe this. But NASA called me to write the theme song and she goes, "That doesn't surprise me." And I said, "Why?" And she says, "Mama just wanted, you wanted your music a little bit closer to her."

Sabrina Merage Naim
I'm gonna cry.

Tena Clark
And I just, I just lost it, you know. And the whole thing was amazing. And from that point on, I knew how powerful music was and, and I knew how powerful it was in mediums that we create, but really how powerful it was in real life and, and in other other facets of life, and how it can move and change minds and move movements. And so that's when I started looking more at just, those are the kind of things I want to do. That is my legacy.

Kassia Binkowski
And you've now spent two decades doing that. In 2012 you got a call from Eve Ensler, who's the activist and author behind The Vagina Monologues, to write a song for her campaign at the time, 1 Billion Rising. That has opened a whole realm of opportunities and impact that you've been able to have through music. Tell us about that. Tell us about your engagement with the campaign to end violence against women.

Tena Clark
Well, Pat Mitchell, who's one of my best friends, and Eve are very close. So Pat and Eve are going to be in LA and I think it was at the Soho house, I can't remember. But they were inviting, like 20 women there, a lot of them celebrities. And he was going to tell them about this mission. This dream to end violence against women worldwide. And so she wanted me there and that's the first time I met Eve and then she said I want this song to change the world. I want this song to be a movement song. And I was just...I think because I had witnessed domestic violence in my life and obviously knew somewhat about that but never had an outlet to participate in trying to make a difference. This was huge for me to be asked and I was so grateful and will always be grateful to Eve and Pat. My writing partner, Tim and I we wrote the song, it didn't take me long. He's an incredible piano player that I love to write with. And the rest was just mind blowing. It's still mind blowing every year, when 1000s of videos are uploaded on YouTube, and you see there may be two countries in the entire world that don't participate. But women in every country, every language, that song has been sung, a song has been performed by millions and millions of people.

Sabrina Merage Naim
The 1 Billion Rising campaign was inspired by the fact that one in three women will be beaten or raped in her lifetime. That's 1 billion women being victims of physical violence, which, as you mentioned, is something that you had some experience with in your home life. And I want to acknowledge that that song "Break the Chain" went on to be the most globally performed song in history. That's the most globally performed - I mean, you're saying it right? That that it is performed by people all over the world, every year in almost every country. But to hear, just to say it in that way that it is the most globally performed song in history is mind boggling. But in terms of the impact that that has, is incredible. And I want to understand, when did that individual request spark much more meaningful engagement in the cause for you?

Tena Clark
I think that when I knew that I had to get really, really more engaged, was, I had a niece that was married to a very wealthy doctor. They'd been married for a very long time, lived in the south, we thought she had this fairytale life. And come to find out after 20 something years, that was not the case at all. And here she was trying to escape the situation. And when she did finally leave it was literally like somebody's trying to escape a cult. And she had three daughters. And I was I was in LA, and she found out his infidelity and everything he was doing when she was actually visiting me. And she had the girls with her and it was horrible. And so I've been on a mission. I've been on a mission ever since, to not only help any way I can within domestic violence and sex trafficking and the whole nine yards, but also what I want to expose in a huge way, is just what my niece went through. Because in a lot of cases the doctor, the lawyer, the senator, the President, the OJ Simpsons of the world, the people, the celebrities - "Oh, they could never do anything like that." "Oh, that mayor, he's just the nicest guy. He's a deacon at the church." Because of their standing, the woman is never taken seriously. So not only do they don't have a leg to stand on, because of money, but they also because the man rules the money in those cases most of the time, but also because of their standing in the community. And the judge always sides. And even though in my niece's case to end this story - They live in this huge mansion. And the judge was a female judge in Alabama. And the daughters got up and testified took a huge leap of faith. They were scared to death, but they wanted to do it. And they testified against their father. And do you know what she did? She made them all move back in the house together.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I mean, what you're talking about is exposing what's going on behind closed doors where so often the women feel trapped, don't see a path out. Don't have a savior, you know don't have people to believe them. And are demonized in a way and vilified and in a way that becomes a deterrent. For so many of these women who are experiencing domestic violence or any other kind of violence in their in their home life, or others, I mean, you're talking about sex trafficking - one of our guests on on this show was a sex trafficking survivor and her story, her harrowing story of survival is just unbelievable. And it's so much more widespread than we want to admit. So you are now deeply engaged in V-Day, which is the organization that grew out of 1 Billion Rising and is committed to ending violence against women, which is something that needs to be a light shined on more every day than in days past. And your story of your niece and what your her family went through, and what your family has gone through, is one, you know of many.

Tena Clark
They follow the money to all the friends, acquaintances, everybody, they go with the money, they go with the money the majority of the time.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So we're now wrapping up a very kind of incredible life journey, the success in your career, the unapologetic perseverance in your personal life, in your professional life, in your home life, that has now brought you to a place where you feel happy and comfortable and are, you know, you are happy with the decisions that brought you to where you are, and, and, frankly, you know, we are so honored to hear that you have been able to take that success, and turn it into real active impact on the ground for people who need it. I mean, we've talked about how it is, frankly, a responsibility of those who are privileged enough to make it to a point in their careers or their lives, where they're doing well to then be able to, to figure out where is your niche, you know, where where can you make an impact for those who are not in your position. So thank you for that work, and on behalf of women everywhere who need the voices of others, to stand up for them. So my last question is, what is it that you want to make sure that every girl knows?

Tena Clark
That she is amazing, that she has the right, the God-given right to be exactly who she wants to be. To do what she wants to do with hard work and perseverance. But that she can change the world, that she is beautiful, and that she's somebody and that always the most important thing is to have choices. She always has a choice, but always do the right thing. And you are worthy. You're incredible. Doesn't matter the color of your skin, it doesn't matter your zip code, it doesn't matter. You know who your family was, or isn't our whatever. I think that a lot of times as young women and young girls, we lose our way trying to please our parents. And but then we end up wanting to please a boy or wanting to please a man or wanting to please a woman, whatever it may be. But if you're not secure in yourself and you love yourself, the road is not going to be what you want it to be. So don't give me that about giving up or a settling. I just feel like grab on to what it is that you want to do. And if you don't know right now, that's okay too. But don't waste time. Don't sit there and, you know, be on the pity pot, get up and do it.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Breaking Glass is a production of Evoke Media. Evoke is a nonprofit organization that exists in order to elevate the people and stories that are working to make the world a more unified and equitable place. Learn more at weareevokemedia.com