2013: A personal retrospective + looking into 2014. (Part 3 of 3)

I live my life by a few golden rules. One of them is when deciding whether or not I should do something, if the answer isn't an ecstatic YES! then the answer is No. There are no maybes. Another one comes from my cousin Meklit Hadero's amazing work ethic which rubbed off on me in 2011/2012 when we were working together on CopperWire. Whenever I'm about to procrastinate on something, I hear her in my head saying matter-of-factly "if you can do it now, do it now." Which in 2013 settled into something else... because I've always loved challenges: now when there is something I have an "ecstatic yes" for, and I realize I can do it, I have to do it. It doesn't matter if I've never done it before, if it's never been done before, or if I don't know how. 2013 was a year of experimentation.

The experiments I'm most excited about are musical. Two new solo albums coming your way in 2014. The first is titled Children Of The Dragon and is a collaboration with Washington, DC-based Ethiopian-American producer AirMe. We started working on this project the same day we first met each other, which was in the summer of 2011 just hours after I landed in DC from my first trip to Ethiopia. It was instant chemistry. Maybe it's because of the different types of music we grew up listening to (a mix of Ethiopian music and Hip Hop) and a unified interest in pushing boundaries... but I never worked with someone that understood my musical ideas so instantly. This last summer (2013) I went back to DC to finish what we started in 2011... final recordings, arrangements, that sort of thing. At some point I started singing a bass line and AirMe was able to play exactly what I heard in my head. To me, the album changed at that point, and a lot of these songs now have me in the instrumentation in ways no other project does. Excited for ya'll to hear it... soon!

The second album is one that I'm still working on, and is a very different process. A long-distance collaboration I'm recording both at home and as I travel, with Auckland, New Zealand-based producer SoulChef. I first heard of SoulChef because of his work with an incredible emcee named Uptown Swuite, who I first heard when we wound up on a song together with the homie Random Abiladeze. SoulChef reached out to me to do a track for his latest record Food For Thought, which you get on iTunes now. That song was Black Love featuring Sarah MK, my favorite song I had anything to do with that was released in 2013. Video soon come.

Black Love is an extension of how spending part of my summer in Toronto felt. Those rare moments with loved ones where you feel seen, and cherished, understood, and even beautiful... in a society where we so often feel invisible. It is also an extension of how so many nights in Montreal feel, making music just for the love of it, in the moment, with members of Kalmunity Vibe Collective. Sarah MK is one of the first artists I met through Kalmunity, and this song happened to be recorded in her living room. Looking forward to more of the Montreal sessions coming out in 2014, including collaborations with Jonathan Emile, BluRum13 and another with Sarah MK.

Another experiment from 2012 that carried over into 2013 was this TED Talk I did on Hip Hop & Science Fiction, and all the themes in it. It just went everywhere... including to so many of the people that inspired it, including Afrika Bambaataa. This leads to another personal highlight when I got invited to the Langston Hughes African American Film Festival to present on a night of Afrofuturist short films. I was supposed to just perform... but a few nights before the event I realized I could make an interactive video presentation behind my whole performance where the films would be shown... so I put on my newfound video editing hat, didn't sleep much, and made that happen.

Another Afrofuturist highlight has been continuing to see Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Movements come to life. Over the summer they had a very successful indiegogo campaign to self-publish the book, for which I contributed an exclusive mixtape that some of ya'll might of heard. Writing a story for Octavia's Brood was another experiment that pushed my growing edges in the earlier part of the year. One story leads to another, and I started writing a book. I talked more about this in an interview with Alison Isaac, that you can read here. Octavia's Brood is set to be released in June of 2014.

Two more experiments that made me happy in 2013 have to do with language. If you'll notice, several of my youtube videos have subtitles in different languages now. That's from the power of social media and people tuned it to the music, that were down to help translate lyrics to make it accessible to more people. So thankful. This is an ongoing process, so if anyone reading this wants to help, get at me. In the meantime, I've been working on getting the written form of the Amharic language down. It's something that used to overwhelm me so much... but one day this year I needed to translate a song title, and I realized with the Fidel (Amharic alphabet) on my wall, and an Amharic-English dictionary close by, it was easy to do. It was an obvious lightbulb moment as these tools have been around me forever, and I've been working more on it ever since.

There were a lot of great shows I got to do in 2013. It's hard to remember them all, but I'll name some highlights. All of the time spent in Montreal was like an ongoing live improv session with Kalmunity and Sarah MK, and all of those nights are highlights. Back in Seattle, I got to participate in the birth of another improv night called Lovecitylove, which also has been a consistent highlight every Wednesday in the Town. I went to Oakland (the other Town) and had a great show with sisters Aisha Fukushima, Antique Naked Soul and surprise guest appearance from Jennifer Johns. I found out that Oakland love is like no other. My extended family, and one of my favorite groups anywhere, Quetzal had an amazing year, they won a Grammy! And Martha Gonzalez got her PhD. They also came through a Seattle a few times, and I got to sit-in with them twice. The Macklins caught one of these times on video. I started performing songs from Children Of The Dragon, and it's debut/sneak preview was the perfect location: Sankofa Video, Books & Cafe in Washington, DC; meaning we rapped on the porch of the house that Haile Gerima built. I hope he's not mad at me, but the album title was directly inspired by the mythology in his film Teza. Another highlight was rocking Evergreen State College with Shabazz Palaces and THEESatisfaction (2 of my favorite groups anywhere), as was the following week performing at my brother Ka.lil's beautiful release party for his album Between Saturday Night & Sunday Morning which you can get on bandcamp now. Performing with Debo Band both in Seattle and Vancouver was another highlight that you can see part of here. And those most recent shows with Bocafloja in Seattle were great, so much community support. I'm hoping to take this show on the road and see you all a lot more in 2014!

I spent more time in Seattle in 2013 then I have in the last 5 years, and in addition to everything else I worked regularly in schools. Shoutout to all my regular students at Denny Middle School, McClure Middle School, the Seattle World School and everywhere where I did a workshop. Since I've been at home so much, nothing defines 2013 for me more than this video, released on the 20th birthday of Queen Latifah's Black Reign.

Rest In Peace to Jean-Marc Daga, Jusdeep Singh Sethi, Byrdie, Sathima Bea Benjamin, Kofi Awoonor, Yusef Lateef, Malcolm Shabazz, Hugo Chaves, Nelson Mandela, and everyone we lost this year. Life is precious. Show your people you love them everyday.