Thanks to everyone for making my 30th birthday weekend such a special one. To my mom and dad, the rest of my family, and all my friends and all the people I didn't know who came out to our shows in New York, Philly, DC, and Baltimore.
I am privileged to walk the Earth and promise to do my best this year and beyond...
So I started writing an entry called "10 minutes before 30" but Safari crashed and I lost it. So here's the revised version as the clock has already struck 12:00.
Two things blew my mind today, both revolving around the idea of Meditations as an artistic practice and a prominent part of the artistic statement: Brett Cook Dizney's "Meditations" exhibition at Zilkha Art Gallery at Wesleyan University, and Carlos Mena's "Hip Hop Meditiations." I have had the pleasure of spending some deep time with each of them over the past few days and definitely count them as heavy mentors in my own process. They are a few years ahead of me and definitely inspire me to tighten up my game.
It was great to get to see Brett's work assembled and reassembled, especially the pieces like "Blackness" and "Grandma" (those aren't the proper titles, sorry) installed today after seeing them so many times at his old studio in Harlem. They had changed, grown, embellished. Mostly the same objects, but rearranged, each time in a more expressive, meaningful way. Like a mandala or a shrine to an orisha, or elders, or to the Virgin. The physical space was beautiful and Brett really worked it, especially with the colorful clear-mylar paintings of from the Bronx Museum hip hop series.
I got to meet Carlos Mena in person Sunday night after the Fu ArkistRa show at Zebulon, after playing phone tag on two coasts and three continents over the past few months. We are working on some long distance collaborations passing audio tracks over the internet, working on them, and sending them back. This is the first time I'll be doing it. It is really time and energy consuming to have to learn all this recording stuff, but at the same time it is very rewarding and empowering as a musician to have the ability to record a whole bunch of stuff at your fingertips, in your bedroom, or if you're lucky, you're living room. It was great to finally meet Carlos and I was inspired by his vision, the music he's making, and the way he is putting so many people together on this project, from Osunlade to Michael Spiro to Vinia Mojica and a ton of other people on different coasts, different countries.
The process of bringing so many people together to create community through music and artistic collaboration is an important one.
----fin
After seeing soot from Brooklyn traffic pile up on my windowsill, I wondered what it must be doing in my respiratory passages and lungs, and I bought myself an air purifier as my birthday gift to myself. The more I think about it, the more it sounds like something from a sci-fi or George Orwell book. But enough about that.
One other thing...I recommend seeing "What the *@#&$ Do We Know?" Its a movie really unlike anything I've ever seen, and is mostly a dialogue about reality, the nature of matter, and God, with quantum physicists and other Western scientists waaaay deep into their respective fields, basically concluding and acknowledging things like the ultimate unity of all existence, the power of positive thought and prayer, and the existence of a collective consciousness, among other things.
Okay, now I'm really fading. Tomorrow will be a long and beautiful day. Sweet dreams.
Finally, another entry in the blog. It's been a little while. The Antibalas tour in France/Spain/Belgium/Netherlands was great...productive, exciting, healthy, well-organized, well-nourished. The best part of it was getting to perform live with Tony Allen and to deepen our relationship with him and with the roots of Afrobeat.
I came back to the city and moved into a new apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which I been living and/or working in since 1995.
I have been back in the city for a few days now and am in the thick of a number of musical activity mainly:
1. learning and working on new songs with Antibalas
2. recording with TV on the Radio
3. recording with Dragons of Zynth (a Brooklyn based afrotek group)
4. finishing the second Ocote Soul Sounds/Adrian Quesada record
5. recording random folklorico-influenced original songs with guitar and vox
6. taking shekere classes with Madeleine Yayodele Nelson
7. Afrocuban dance classes as Djoniba
8. Long distance musical collaborations with Carlos Mena
9. Long distance musical collaborations with Quantic/Todd Simon
10. Performing with Antibalas and Fu Arkist Ra
In other news...
Biodiesel
The new car is running well, on diesel (and biodiesel, when I can get it). I am checking out different conversion kits (May use a different kit than Greasecar.). I would like to do this conversion myself now that I have a much better idea of how it's done.
Superadobe
I went out to Cal Earth to visit my teachers and study some finishing techniques that I will be using on the temazcal in Mexico when I get a chance to go back. It's been 14 months since I've been back and I miss my peoples...all the kids will be a good six inches taller...
Literature
Trying to hustle a children's book about the 2003 NYC Blackout, a collaboration with Ricardo Cortés, author of It's Just a Plant. If you know any good literary agents specializing in illustrated childrens books, let me know...
That's all the news for now. Several other projects in the works, in formative stages and/or too top secret for the world to know about...
I got back to New York a few days ago after spending a few extra days in Amsterdam with my mother. The weather was beautiful. We rented bikes for three days and rode all over town, checking out museums, parks, and coffeeshops. Mom was suprised at how humane and nonchalant the whole coffeeshop system was.
I got back returned to 70 emails, and finally had a chance to reflect on the music...a friend asked how it was going, and I gave her the long answer:
The music is going well but we are bursting at the seams with new songs and not enough time to sort them out and fully learn them so we have been performing a lot of the same stuff for a while. We added three new songs to our repertoire for a performance in Paris with Tony Allen (the architect of afrobeat drumming and bandleader for Fela) but since they are covers, we don't want to play them that much since 90% of our shows are originals. The music was consistently good, and we are playing some rhythm games and doing some other preparation before shows to focus more and be closer together. We messed around with the stage layout a bunch of times before coming up with something good, but it only works when we setup in a tight half-moon shape with the singer in the middle....
