JusMoni x WD4D (pictures)

Earlier today I got to sit in on a beautiful recording session with my homies JusMoni & WD4D. I took some cool photos, and even cooler video! I got this camera recently and I'm officially off the instagram... so I'll be posting photos here and on Flickr from time to time.
peace fam
-- gt

Distance (a lost verse from 2007)

distance:

to walk through war zones

to a refugee camp in another land

barefoot through deserts

with a child on your back

distance:

to bear seeds and raise children

who will never fully understand

a language you speak

the distance some travel to not sleep

working 12 hour shifts, 7 days a week

driving taxis

and back home you had a PhD

the distance

between this family and their child

who just wants to MC

instead of getting that degree

knowing if he made it

he could take 20 more people out the war zone

the distance you know

when you go home

and don't recognize nothing but a dirt road

out of some rubble

the distance

between me and my grandmother

is really only like 4 blocks

but we see each other's eyes and both feel lost

and can't talk

you share scars

in a pain that feels unique to ours

but really it's all of us

in this third world war camp

southside represent

where one block

a different tongue can be spoke in every residence

i'm unsettled

and still can't go home now

and more children die everytime the sun goes down

we never make the news here

unless it's to instill fear

piercing pains

that shoot through veins

as often as rain

on top of a tropical people 

estranged

it's the distance...

- a lost verse i wrote for Blue Scholars' track "The Distance" back in '07. it didn't make the Bayani album but i still feel it tho. much love to Geo, Sabzi, Khalil... Rahwa and Semone! still love that song.

Dr. Martha Gonzalez

This woman is one of my heroes, meet Dr. Martha Gonzalez! I got the amazing opportunity to see her defend the dissertation for her PhD this morning. She won a Grammy award earlier this year for Quetzal's Imaginaries, and one of the topics she explored today was how market capitalism has arranged our personal relationship to music, and how this has affected how we relate to each other.  Today she gave language to so much of how I think about music, how it is seen as a commodity but it doesn't need to be. How transformational collective songwriting can be, and how the song is not the most important part of that process. I really need her to write a book soon because I couldn't take notes fast enough! I also need to read more Audre Lorde. Thank you Dr. Martha for the inspiration, for your beautiful work, and for all the ways you and Quetzal remind me and help me believe that another world is possible in this life.

Decolonize the music.

The Nile Project | Aswan

The Nile Project | Aswan

In January of this year 18 musicians from Nile Basin countries Uganda, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sudan and Egypt collaborated for 10 days and produced this concert. A musical exploration of what the people of the Nile River sound like when we work together... and it's beautiful. Also featuring the family Meklit Hadero and Alsarah! I'm looking forward to more amazingness from The Nile Project in the years to come... but for now you can get this live album on CD Baby today.

"Sangre Nueva"

to feel like curtis mayfield and heal with words
i was held in this verse that soothed my hurts
wounded, now my love does walk the earth
for the young ones searching to build their church, inside
away from religious little lies to convert, no
we decolonize, realize our true worth
see school didn't work for all, we unearth
our true stories, freedom fighters and glory
the system tries to ignore the significance of these brilliant
young minds who innovate to survive
who make a way and thrive
society acts like it wants you to die
twomp-six, nirvana, the land of suicide
always was an outsider, now i'm still alive
so always have the courage to use your own mind
cause you do fulfill our dreams unrealized
and my love for you is impossible to recite
it'd be the sweetest note ever spoke upon a mic

my generation, is like a nation, that spans nations
nothing you build can ever contain them
when fighting for liberation
i'm free as my mind can see
think out the box, stay alive young g
i'm free as my mind can see
think out the box
stay alive

These are the original lyrics I wrote for "Sangre Nueva", a collaboration with Bocafloja and Danny Beat that ended up on the Colored People's Time Machine album. You never know where else your words might end up... for example, my sister Moni got a tattoo! (pictured above) And a while back my friend Hari Alluri asked if these lyrics could be included in this piece he was working on for a book. I said "sure!" not knowing how big of a book project it would be. Now I just got my advance copy of Stay Solid! A Radical Handbook For Youth from AK Press and wow! I can't believe something I wrote is published with so many of my favorite people and inspirations: Luam Kidane, Angela "El Dia" Martinez Dy, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Adrienne Maree Brown, Alexis Pauline Gumbs and so many more! This is a huge project. But to my disappointment the lyrics I sent were not what ended up in print. What I wrote, and the way I write, is posted above. For the book it looks like someone just listened to the song and transcribed what they heard... something always gets lost that way. In this case a few lines lost meaning. I'm still excited about the rest of the book tho! For more information check AK Press.

Haile Sellasie Karate and thoughts about music today...

If your following me on Facebook or Twitter maybe you saw this link I posted earlier last week: A brilliant article by Homeboy Sandman about Hip Hop, Media Consolidation and the Prison Industrial Complex. In the article, he breaks down how a mere 232 media executives control the information diet of 277 million people... and how a few of those media executives have made offers to keep privatized prisons in the United States at a 90% occupancy rate. How could media giants make such bold statements? Because rap music is a tool in today's form of slavery that exists in the United States. We already know the voices in the mainstream don't reflect who we are. It reminds me of what Frantz Fanon called double consciousness: a colonized people who at the same time has to view themselves as the colonizer sees them, and as how we truly see ourselves. It also reminds me of Chimamanda Adichie's brilliant TED Talk "The danger of a single story."  See I don't want to censor these artists who get mainstream radio play... but the fact that the only Black men who get a mainstream push in rap music are all telling the same exact story isn't just insulting, it's an attack. My issue is the lack of diversity and complexity, that in reality we do hold, that deserves to be reflected in all the stories people know of us. No one group of people anywhere can be defined by a single story, in fact I don't even think a single family is that simple. Which is why this blog exists: aside from I just needed a website... It's to spread music, videos, news and whatever inspires me to keep going. And this new Pharoahe Monch video (filmed in Mitchell's Plain, South Africa) couldn't of hit me on a day when I needed it more... We Are Renegades. Be more.

Janelle Monáe - Q.U.E.E.N. feat. Erykah Badu

Janelle Monae and Erykah Badu are 2 of my heroes in music today. I've listened to this song a few times everyday since it came out. Janelle's last 16 tho... whoa. "categorize me, i defy every label..."

SKIM - Long Story (Official Music Video)

I did not get the memo when my family SKIM dropped her first music video, but here it is! "Long Story" from her debut album For Every Tear. SKIM is also a part of a few of my favorite songs on the Colored People's Time Machine and the Air 2 A Bird album... and always an inspiration!

live performances, videos and languages...

So I've been digging through the vaults and putting a few live performance pieces up on YouTube. The above video is a performance of "Colored People's Time Machine" on The Seattle Channel's Art Zone, sometime last year. The video is closed captioned and you can read the subtitles in Spanish and English now!

Speaking of subtitles... if anyone wants to volunteer to translate lyrics let me know! We've got "Third World Wide" available in Spanish, French and Italian and have been adding languages to "Mind Power" as well. I'm so excited to have my lyrics accessible to more people and so grateful to everyone that's helped make it happen over the last few months. People power makes dreams come true!

The video below is from a classic show at The Triple Door with my group Air 2 A Bird, recorded in the summer of 2010.  An all acoustic set with grand piano, percussion and 4 vocalists. Enjoy!

Kung Foo Grip - Growing Up In The Future

Awesome on so many levels.