Humane Properly: Nonprofit Uses Comedy to Celebrate Milestone Anniversary

There’s no greater sign of local nonprofit DAWA’s progressive elevation than the celebration of its five-year anniversary, Laughter Is Medicine.

The event features comedy legend Tommy Davidson, a source of positivity on a night whose sole purpose is to bring levity to a healing Austin. “Any outreach resource that's out there for people? I'm going to back it up,” Davidson says.

Jonathan “Chaka” Mahone, the KRS One of Austin's hip-hop scene and one half of dynamic hip-hop duo Riders Against the Storm, has dedicated much of his life and career to the betterment of musicians in the city. His involvement on several boards, his conversations with the Austin City Council, all a means to ensure the continued survival and success of the people who make Austin the hub of entertainment and hospitality that it is. After a year of finding ways to help out those in need – including reaching out to friends and acquaintances to fundraise – Mahone realized he was only putting the proverbial Band-Aid on the problem. With a clearer focus and more planning, Mahone conceived of DAWA and launched the nonprofit in 2019.

“One of the focuses of DAWA is centering [the] culture and allowing it to create opportunities and build our community,” Mahone says. “Not just have a show where the person comes in and we have a good time and that's it. Our goal is to raise $100,000 at the event. That money will go directly out to the community in November, distributed to who we call the community frontliners or the givers: creatives, the teachers, social workers, health care providers, service industry workers.

“Musicians are very durable, very resilient,” he continues. “There's nothing shameful about needing support. For the most part, artists are going to figure it out, but it still shouldn't be as hard as it is, doesn't need to be. There's just something about our culture where we don't value the work that these folks do. Part of [DAWA’s] drive is to start to shift that ethos and start to say, ‘These are the most important people in this city.’ Especially musicians. Musicians built this city. Musicians are what this city claims to be about, and I think in some ways that is true, but in a lot of ways, especially if you're a musician of color, it's not true. It hasn't been true.”

Armed with his long-held vision of a more equitable Austin for the artists and service folk who carry the city on its shoulders, Mahone began his plans for DAWA’s fifth anniversary, plans that for a moment included the Paramount Theatre. Plan B was more like a second Plan A: the Long Center, where the event found a home. “I want it to be an annual comedy event,” Mahone reveals. “Maybe we do it a whole weekend and we call it ‘Laughter Is Medicine.’ I love comedy, so having a comedy headliner or headliners to celebrate DAWA is part of the vision we have moving forward.”

His affection for comedy informs his deep connection with the night’s headliner, Tommy Davidson. From the comedian’s digital (or analog) presence in the homes of millions of Black and Brown families in the late Eighties and throughout the Nineties to Mahone’s own past working in a comedy troupe with his better half, it was a no-brainer to reach out.

Davidson – of In Living Color and Black Dynamite fame – is contemplative, yet he speaks with exceptional clarity about his own calling. “I'm Tommy Davidson, Barbara Davidson's youngest son,” he says. “My agenda has turned exactly into hers. I never thought that would ever happen, but I'm on the same mission she was. I'm her greatest accomplishment, but I didn't know it. I get to take her message out into the world.”

It was his mother who would encourage him to embrace the reactions of those who saw him and would “laugh before they even thought about it” because of the child’s precociousness. Thus the anniversary theme of healing through laughter is a philosophy that sits in perfect alignment with Davidson. “It's the medicine that's always available to you,” he says. “All you got to do is get you a prescription. You can get your prescription from I Love Lucy, Flip Wilson, In Living Color, Ren & Stimpy, watching Lion King. That laugh is a trigger for happiness.”

For many, Davidson is a source of cultural comfort, and on Friday, he’ll bless an audience no doubt full of those who grew up on his echelon of relatable comedy. “One of my essentials in life – something that came with my experience and is just part of my purpose – is that I have love,” he says. “I have to love because I didn't have it. That's what balances me out. I'm here for the human condition. I know that there's a lot of components to that. There's the good and there's the bad; our lives exist somewhere in the middle.”

For Mahone, the hope is to build on the work he, his partner in art Qi Dada, and those working with them have done to create a better future for Austinites. “Dawa is medicine; that's what it means in Swahili,” Mahone says. “I want people to really get that medicine and feel stronger and feel more like things are possible. I want them to hear just how many people have been involved and then leave knowing, ‘I can be involved. I can help this grow.’ We just want you to come out and experience this energy. It's a healing energy.

“A historic moment like this is a big moment for the city,” Mahone concludes. “We feel that this is a moment of change, and moving forward, we're claiming, ‘BIPOC musicians, creatives, teachers, are going to be a part of this. We're not going anywhere, and we're going to create more space and more opportunity for our message to be heard, for our experience to be heard, and for it to be a part of what happens in the city moving forward.’”

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DAWA’s fifth anniversary celebration takes place on Friday, Sept. 6 at the Long Center. Find more information here.