Official video for Greeny Jungle + upcoming shows in NYC, DC, SEA

It's finally here! The video for Greeny Jungle captures a moment with the Black Lives Matter movement in Seattle, on Reclaim MLK Day 2015 where an estimated 10,000 people took to the streets. You can read more on okayafrica... this one is special. I'm also currently in the midst of touring with the Evidence Of Things Not Seen album, and have just had some incredible shows and workshops in Montreal, QC; Toronto, ON; Buffalo, NY and Wooster, OH... alongside some of my favorite artists and minds including Nnedi Okorafor (who's speculative fiction works inspired the theme of Greeny Jungle), Akua Naru, Bocafloja, members of Nomadic Massive, Kalmunity, pHoenix Pagliacci, and more. Sending extra love to everyone who braved the Siberian vortex to make every date so awesome. This week I'm in New York City with a show in Brooklyn on Friday, Washington, DC on Sunday, and coming back to Seattle for a few shows next week. More details on everything below, and I've also been keeping the events page updated as I go. Friday, February 27th - Brooklyn, NY Gabriel Teodros with si dåko’ta & DJ Ian Head 11PM | $10 at the door invite your peoples on facebook here Bunna Cafe 1084 Flushing Ave Brooklyn, NY Sunday, March 1st - Washington, DC Gabriel Teodros with The 1978ers (yU & Slimkat) 9PM | $10 at the door invite your peoples on facebook here Bossa 2463 18th St NW Washington, DC Thursday, March 5th - Seattle, WA Abstract Rude & Myka 9 Gabriel Teodros Silas Blak hosted by Suntonio Bandanaz & DJ Able Fader 9PM | 21+ | $10 adv / $15 dos invite your peoples on facebook here Lo-Fi Performance Gallery 429 Eastlake Ave Seattle, WA Friday, March 6th - Seattle, WA Youth Speaks Seattle Wild Card Slam featuring Gabriel Teodros 6PM | $5 youth / $10 adults invite your peoples on facebook here Rainier Valley Cultural Center 3515 S Alaska St Seattle, WA And finally, if you haven't heard, Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements has a release date of March 15th, and is available now for a discount via AK Press. I'm so honored and excited to have my first published short story in this collection... the book includes short stories from LeVar Burton, Terry Bisson, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Alixa Garcia, Autumn Brown, Bao Phi, David Walker, Dani McClain, Dawolu Jabari Anderson, Gabriel Teodros, Jelani Wilson, Kalamu ya Salaam, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Mia Mingus, Morrigan Phillips, Tara Betts, Tunde Oluniran, Vagabond, adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha, essays by Tananarive Due and Mumia Abu-Jamal, as well as an introduction by Sheree Renee Thomas. There is a tour in the works, and we want to bring it everywhere! The information for booking Octavia's Brood is here. Hope to see you in your town soon!

Light Attracts Light & Everything Else Too

"i'm operating in a system i do not believe in

authoring some stories we could leave for our children

& honestly wish we all approached it different

but everybody's got a high cost of living..."

Gabriel Teodros & SoulChef
"Light Attracts Light & Everything Else Too"
Evidence Of Things Not Seen
A CambioWasHere Joint.
Peace to Alex Riedlinger, Sidony O'Neal & Enjoni for everything. Peace to Hidmo for inspiration.

Also, check this expansive interview I just did with Amira Ali at Africa Speaks 4 Africa. We went in-depth about the new album, the last album, music in Ethiopia and more. It's my favorite interview done for Evidence Of Things Not Seen so far, which is saying something because the press this album has been getting (with no budget + no publicist) has been great!

"Multi-talented and community-engaged, veteran MC Gabriel Teodros releases his strongest album yet."
- City Arts Magazine

"Sunday-morning easy, SoulChef's classic, hearth-warm production fits the "30 Something, Hella Single" wanderer-MC like fresh socks as he steps out looking for love ("I kinda flirt with existence"), meaning, and home."
- Larry Mizell Jr., The Stranger

"Besides depth packed lyrical content, there is something bottomless and heart grippingly soothing about Teodros’ music. It’s like the perfect synthesis of jazz-tinged soul with Hip-Hop, or it’s like when Hip-Hop meets love and love meets Hip-Hop"
- Amira Ali, Africa Speaks 4 Africa

"I was introduced to Gabriel via this collab, and after checking the album out he’s become one of my favorite MCs."
- Mr. Tang, Word Is Bond

Physical copies of the album with a limited-edition book of lyrics available exclusively on bandcamp.

CDs & Book of lyrics available online now

Gabriel Teodros & SoulChef
Evidence Of Things Not Seen

The full-length CD & limited-edition book of lyrics is available now, exclusively at shows and online via bandcamp!

You can also now order a physical copy of Children Of The Dragon on CD through bandcamp as well.

Much love to everyone who has been supported the record thus far. The release party in Seattle was great! If you couldn't make it, there's some pictures from the show here, via Rafael Ochoa.

More goodness on the way soon...

Evidence Of Things Not Seen available now + interview with 28Hundred

Gabriel Teodros & SoulChef - Evidence Of Things Not Seen
available now on iTunes, Amazon, etc. and with a digital book of lyrics exclusively on Bandcamp!

James Baldwin has been a huge inspiration on my writing and life in general these last few years, and he definitely was the biggest inspiration on this album in particular. The title Evidence Of Things Not Seen has several intended meanings, in the same way I believe it did for Baldwin when he authored a book with the same title in 1985. It's about the feeling of not being seen in different ways, and it's about seeing things before they actually happen. It's also about how much faith it takes to be an uncompromising independent musician in this day and age, and is a collaboration between musicians who have never set foot on the same land. See what okayafrica had to say about the record here!

Also this week, a recent video interview I did with 28Hundred in NYC debuted on The Monarch Review. You can check the video above. We talked about music, Children Of The Dragon, concepts of home, displacement, gentrification, my first memories of Brooklyn, and 2pac's influence.

If you are in Seattle, I hope to see you at Columbia City Theater this Thursday, November 6th! It'll be the first place in the world you can grab a physical copy of this limited-edition book of lyrics that comes with the new album.

Appreciate ya'll + see you in a minute tho!
- gt

Gabriel Teodros & SoulChef - Evidence Of Things Not Seen

Gabriel Teodros & SoulChef - Evidence Of Things Not Seen
Releases everywhere on October 28th, available for pre-order now

"a lion with a horn
the hunted with a song
the places you get broken
are the places you get strong"

- from 'Greeny Jungle' off the new album, listen now

There's so much to say I don't even know where to start with this one. This album represents my favorite writing I've ever done on a project thus far, and I've decided to celebrate it's release with a limited-edition book of lyrics you can pick up with the CD at our show in Seattle on November 6th! All purchases of the album from either Bandcamp or iTunes will come with a digital book of lyrics as well. Evidence Of Things Not Seen was entirely produced, mixed & mastered by SoulChef (in Auckland, New Zealand), it features guest spots from Jonathan Emile, Shakiah & Sarah MK, and I completely recorded the album with a mobile studio I sometimes travel with, at various locations around Seattle, WA; Toronto, ON and Montreal, QC. The brilliant artwork you see above was done by Masood Tahir (in London, UK). If you were into the song "Black Love" then this whole album is for you. I'll let the lyrics say the rest.

If you missed it, I did an interview with KEXP recently where I talked about patriarchy, humanity and stuff... you can check that out here. I also got the opportunity to do a little performance & interview on The Seattle Channel's Art Zone (which also airs on KCTS 9 in Seattle)... you can check that out here.

Finally, this show. I'm so excited about the entire line-up!

Thursday November 6, 2014

Gabriel Teodros
with Draze, Xperience & EarDr.Umz
@ Columbia City Theater
(4916 Rainier Ave S - Seattle, WA)

Doors: 8PM | 21+
$8 advance tickets available here (tickets will be $10 on day of show)

If you are on Facebook, feel free to add yourself to the events page and invite all your people!

Hope to see ya'll soon
-- gt

"Black Love" 16mm short film directed by Shimby

Black Love: A short film directed by Shimby & produced by NSOROMMA
"something bout your happiness feels like freedom"

Check the short film for "Black Love" by Gabriel Teodros & SoulChef featuring Sarah MK, which debuted on okayafrica.com earlier today! Shot on a 16mm camera, the film was completely hand edited with no digital enhancements, and experimented on by the filmmaker using, among other things, dyes created from roses, frankincense and sage.

This work is like a prequel to my upcoming full-length album with SoulChef on production, entitled Evidence Of Things Not Seen, to be released October 28, 2014. For everyone asking about lyrics, there will be a limited-edition book that comes with the album.

NSOROMMA co-founders Luam Kidane & Hawa Y. Mire recently did a very relevant interview with The Feminist Wire about Black arts, feminism and the decolonial aesthetic. Definitely check that out and learn more about NSOROMMA.

In honor of the short film being released today, I decided to leak a remix of "Black Love" by one of my favorite producers, OCnotes. If you've ever seen my brother do a DJ set, you know that what he does falls more easily under the category of electronic jazz... taking musical elements you would never expect to hear together and making something brand new. If you can dig that, you might dig this.

See you in a minute
-- gt

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.

"Black Love" by Gabriel Teodros & Sarah MK

#blacklove
ፍቅር ፣ አዲስ ሙዚቃ ከ ገብርኤል ቴዎድሮስ ና ሣራ ኤም ኬ ።

Play this on repeat, often: http://gabrielteodros.bandcamp.com/track/black-love

Lyrics by Gabriel Teodros & Sarah MK. Produced, mixed & mastered by SoulChef. Originally released on SoulChef's "Food For Thought" LP available on iTunes today!

"something bout loving you in our native tongue
opens up possibilities and heals where i'm from
i love the way my name feels in your mouth
i hope i hold yours as delicate and proud
i wonder if the ancestors smile when they see us
something bout your happiness feels like freedom"