‘Home at Last’: Interview in MSHALE MAGAZINE
photo by B Fresh Photography
Liberian-American Spoken-Word Artist is Home at Last
Justin Schell , Contributing Writer
“This is a year of completion for me,” e.g. bailey says in the office of Trú Rúts Endeavors, the multidisciplinary arts organization that he runs with his wife, Shá Cage.
His struggle to fit in America is not unlike that of many African immigrants. He attributes his success as an award-winning multidisciplinary artist and producer to this struggle of finding a home away from home.
bailey, who was born in Saclepea, Liberia, is the son of a white Peace Corps volunteer and a Liberian mother. His father, bailey says, “threw a dart, hit Liberia, and that’s where he got stationed.” His mother gave birth to him near the end of his father’s second term; and his parents lost touch after his father’s return to America.
Even as a child he loved music and theater: two memories stand out in particular from his life in Liberia.
“There was a record store and a movie theater,” he says. “I would spend hours in the record store listening to whatever they were playing.”
The owner of the mud-constructed movie theater, however, wasn’t particularly keen on offering free entertainment to they young movie revelers. “We would either sneak into the movie theater or we would drill holes in the side to watch the movie.” After the owner realized this, he would take blindingly-hot Liberian red peppers, soak them in water, and put the mixture in a spray bottle, and spray into the holes to temporarily prevent onlookers from watching the film without paying. “It would be this constant game of trying to outwit [him], as soon as you saw a shadow coming.”
One day, another Peace Corps volunteer came to his village and, after getting to know him, expressed interest in adopting him. Instead it was his father who ended up adopting the 10-year-old Bailey after she sought out his father through the Peace Corps database.
After landing in Chicago, he was driven to his new home in Crystal Lake, an hour-and-a-half from Chicago. There was a parade the day he arrived, with money thrown from the floats.
“I thought it was a parade for me!” he says with a laugh. “The next day, I wake up, I’m like ‘Ok, when are we going to the parade and when can we get more money?’ That was the start of my life in the US.”
Reality soon set in for bailey as he learned that life in America was not rosy for a new immigrant, “It was a struggle of trying to adapt and trying to fit in. Trying to figure out who I am and not fitting into any place, I always felt like I was running, that I couldn’t stop moving.”
Until he moved to Minneapolis, when he felt,“Ok, I can stop running now.”
bailey’s first connection to Minneapolis came not through the city itself, but through one of its most famous musicians. “I discovered Prince in [Crystal Lake’s] record store. I think it was “Little Red Corvette.” My ears just perked up, trying to find out who this person was, and I proceeded to get everything that he put out.”
After moving to Minneapolis, he started performing solo and with a number of music groups, and worked in the retail division of Prince’s famed Paisley Park complex, gaining crucial experience to navigate the shady mazes of the music industry when he formed Trú Rúts and its record label, Speakeasy Records.
He had a life-changing experience on a trip to the country of his birth after being gone for nearly 20 years. He returned to Liberia in 1999 as part of a four-month trip to Africa, the Middle East and East Asia. The trip, while crucial to his development as an artist as well as a person, was not what he expected.
“I realized that I could go back, but I could never live back home. I’d been away too long to be able to go back home and do what I’m supposed to do.”
An overwhelming and inane sense of homelessness hit him, he says, “going home displaces you. You’re no longer at home in either place. Home is what I had to create.”
Thus homelessness and travel inform all of bailey’s work, which symbolically channels his own experience through the larger histories of the African Diaspora. His album American African, scheduled for release in April, will appropriately feature a host of both American Africans and African Americans, including M.anifest, DJ Stage One, Mankwe Ndosi, IBé, and other international artists, including Germany’s Starsky and Dubai’s Abstract Collision.
“It’s a testament to where African Americans and American Africans are,” he says, encompassing the multitude of African, African American, and American African perspectives. “I want to avoid the idea of a monolithic Africa as much as possible.”
The first single off of American African, “America,” is a wide-ranging vision of the post-9/11 America that many immigrants find themselves in.
“America, I miss you,” bailey intones at its opening. He delivers his words atop a bed of rolling drums and cymbals, electric bass, disorienting electronic sounds, and wailing saxophone. From Katrina to Guantanamo, Hollywood to Baghdad, the poem subtly welds together the long histories of racism and murder that stain America’s past, yet without completely destroying the hope of something better. In the end, the music dies away as bailey softly, powerfully, declares “We’re waiting for your resurrection.”
bailey has an ambitious plan to release three more albums in 2009 that have been at various stages of completion throughout his work with Trú Rúts. Yet completion always breeds the start of something new, whether it be the release of new albums from other artists in the Tfamily such as Quilombolas, TruthMaze, or El Guante. Or the birth of his first child with his wife Shá Cage.
Even though e.g. bailey has settled in one place after a long journey, his creative activity and poetic journeys show no signs of slowing down.
e.g bailey has produced “No Longer at Ease” (play), an adaption from the Chinua Achebe’s novel for the Pangea World Theatre in May 2001; “Village Blues” (film); and “Words Will Heal the Wound”, a spoken word radio series celebrating the diverse poetic traditions in Minnesota.
He received the Sarah Lawrence College International Film Festival (2001) Experimental Film award for Village Blues; the NFCB (National Federation of Community Broadcasters) award for Write On RaDio!; and the Worldstaff Houston International Festival (1999) Experimental Film award for Village Blues.
Visit his website for a full listing of productions, performances and awards: www.myspace.com/egbailey or www.egbailey.com.
‘Twin Towers’ review on 612 to 651
E.G. Bailey: “Twin Towers”
by Justin Schell
On this 8th anniversary of the events of 9/11, e.g. bailey has crafted “Twin Towers” an eloquent statement that both captures the emotions and experiences of 9/11 as well as how to respond and remember them.
The piece opens with singer, guitarist and fellow Trú Rúts artist Chastity Brown. She delivers the first part of bailey’s poem, a collage of observations that sound like fragments of a broken news report, the frame through which many saw the events of 9/11.
No death today
No war
No justice come undone
Reports say peace is on the way.
Yet this news report flips the usual broadcasts of death and destruction associated with 9/11, setting the stage for a poem that looks forward to something greater, something better than images of smoking towers. Brown’s dirge-like intonations of “And I watched the buildings crumble,” however, delivered with a voice that itself sounds ash-choked, leads into the body of the poem and takes the listener back to 2001.
bailey does well to navigate the over-loaded and hyper-emotional associations with 9/11, be it jingoistic drum rolls of war, uncritical celebrations and memorializations a la “Patriot Day,” or reactionary conspiracy theories. Instead, he focuses on the bewildering experience of that day, bodies and towers falling from the Manhattan sky. He wonders “whose truth to trust” as the poem’s narrator goes “stumbling through the fog” (one of more than just ash, smoke, and debris), while children and lovers suddenly find themselves alone.
The other theme of “Twin Towers” is how to remember these events, be it 8 or 80 years afterwards. bailey calls for unity, a familiar theme of course in 9/11 responses, but his has a critical edge. The unity he calls for is not for a nation to wage war in hopes of short-sighted revenge, but rather a call to humanity, his words moving swiftly from the individuals itself who died in the events 9/11 and, presumably, in America’s response to it, but rather a unity to stop these events from ever happening again without perpetuating violence, “no matter the politics of color or creed.” It is a tone of remembrance that cannot be captured by commemorative “never forget” anniversaries or lapel pins, but rather a remembrance that is as much about actively and peacefully shaping the future as it is about the past.
There are two versions of “Twin Towers,” one with the poem recorded by Twin Cities spoken word godfather J. Otis Powell, the other by bailey himself. While the words are the same, the difference is palpable. Powell’s delivery is deeper, more measured, adding a gravity and weight to the words simply through his bass intonation alone. bailey’s version, while no less meaningful or emotional, is slightly faster, and reflects more the mental state of someone actual experiencing the events, be it in person or through a screen, while Powell’s sounds much more reflective and pondering. Both versions, however, are a powerful testament not only to the past, present, and future of 9/11, but also of bailey’s skill of mobilizing poetry for contemplation, remembrance, and subtle, but no less insistent calls for action.
Originally posted on 612 to 651 blog on 11 September 2009.
The Liberian Literary Tradition
“Hi E.G. I was doing a Google search of Liberian comedians and stumbled across your your name and your pieces. Man, you fascinate me. I am a student of literature and it saddens me everytime I search for liberian literature to find virtually nothing or just mediocrity. I am very excited to find that there is a guy with a liberian background doing such work as yours. I really like your self interview with Sha. keep on the good work. Liberia needs and deserves guys like you.”
I recently received this comment on my Wordlife blog/site. Always a good way to start the day, reinforcing your commitment to the passion you are constantly flaming. I struggled with the same thing when I was a student at Notre Dame University. I was an English and Philosophy major, and constantly scoured the mammoth Notre Dame Library for any evidence of Liberia literature. I coursed through countless African literary anthologies. There was a dearth of Nigerian, South African, Senegalese, Kenyan, and numerous others, but never any Liberian writings. We had to suffice with ‘proverbs’ and ‘folk tales’, of which there would be a smattering, and only at the beginning of the anthologies, as though Liberia did not have any contemporary literature. Or they would anthologize Tolson’s Libretto for the Republic of Liberia. I remembered thinking, “Could they really believe, and be saying, that there was no significant literary output in Liberia beyond the folktales that are hundreds of years old.” Granted Liberia as yet to produce a literary giant such as Achebe or Soyinka or Senghor or Césaire, but there must be some, or at least one, literary figure worthy of consideration, especially if you are anthologizing a cross section of African literature, that even if was not comparable to these esteemed figure could at least stand out in his or her own country. I refused to believe that none existed, or that such a thing as a Liberian literary tradition was not possible. It is not an easy search because most production of literature related to Liberia is literature about Liberia, as opposed to creative work, or work by Liberians themselves. Also because the discussion on Liberia tends to center on its relation, and relationship, to America, and/or the settlement of freed slaves in the country. Later the discussion would shift almost solely to the coup, and subsequently, the civil war that ravished the country.
But Liberian poets, novelists, and essayists, do exist. In 2000, J. Kpanneh Doe wrote, “The writing of novels is rather new to the Liberian literary genre. Except for Murder in the Cassava Patch, a Liberian literary classic, there aren’t many others that can be grouped or classified as Liberian literature, or for that matter, constituting a literary tradition.” This is simply not true, and one can only assume it’s a lack of knowledge, perhaps access. One should consider Bai T. Moore, the author of Murder in the Cassava Patch, who also anthologized Liberian poetry, published his own collection, wrote novels and short stories, and contributed to the documentation of Liberian folktales. One should also consider, Wilton Sankawulo, Roland Dempster, Edwin Barclay, and a number of other poets, writers and playwrights. Also, Guanya Pau, the first novel written/published by an African, is by Liberian author, Joseph Walters (pictured above). Their work may not be readily available or easy to find; you may read about them more than you will read their work. That does not take away from their contributions. There are contemporary Liberian writers that are beginning to gain some prominence, such as K. Moses Ngabe, Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, and most recently Helene Cooper for her memoir, The House on Sugar Beach. If this stretch of literary ouput from 1891 to present, spreading across the various disciplines, does not constitute a literary tradition, I don’t know what can. Further, how can the first country to produce the first published African novelist be said not to have a literary tradition?
I sometimes wonder if part of my decision to become an artist, was to contribute to the Liberian literary tradition, and show that such can, and does, exist. It might require something akin to an archeological expedition, or one might have to look to the new generation of Liberian artists scattered across the Diaspora, to bring that tradition to prominence. But it is there, and with the proper resources it could be brought to light. Some might question the validity of any contribution I make to Liberian literature, or literary tradition, due to the fact that I left the country at such a young age, and having grown up in a primarily white middle class background. A telling example of this is an experience I with a University of Minnesota student, who I met by chance at a performance of a visiting, I believe, South African troupe. When she learned I was Liberia, she asked how long I had been in the US. I have become accustomed to these kinds of questions because I do not look or sound like your typical Liberian. And I could have almost guessed what was next. When my answer to her was that I had been in America for over twenty years, she replied, ‘So you’re basically American.’ I told her that I am Liberia, have always been Liberian and will be Liberian until I die. As will my children. You can insert African in here as well. This is not to negate my American heritage, because as I always say, I own that too. Therefore, the East and the West, the African and American, are my domain. They are mine to celebrate and to challenge. I finished the conversation telling her, ‘When you’ve been in America for over 20 year, let me know if you’re still Liberian.’
I cannot even begin to consider myself in the company of African scribes that my taught me, inspired me and secured me, from Achebe to p’Bitek, from Kenyatta to Bessie Head, but I hope that I can at least make some modicum of contribution to the literary works of my people, even if it is just the Mano/Gio people of Liberia. Albeit not all my work is about Liberia, but I am not sure that it needs to be in order to be part of the tradition. We are in a new age, part of a new generation, and many of us are transplanted across the global, and depending the environment in which we live, our themes cannot always be about home. However, our address is still part of the chorus of voices of our people, no matter where they reside, no matter what age and time they occupy, no matter what struggles they face. Responses like one above give me encouragement that I am making even the slightest difference.
Word Beat I Powa 2009
Note: Each year, the Echo Chamber presents their annual ‘Word Beat I Powa’ dub poetry special. The special brings together a great collection of dub poetry with ventures into beat poetry and spoken word. It’s consistently one of my favorite shows of the year, and turns me on to new dub poetry and spoken word. I’ve had the privilege of being a guest on the show in the past, and am blessed to be featured on the show. Below is information on this year’s special.
On April 22, 2009 the Echo Chamber presented the annual “Word Beat I Powa” dub poetry, beat poetry, and spoken word special. Of course, it was dub poetry that set the foundation and included the dub poets Oku Onoura, Mutabaruka, Royal African Soldiers, Jean Binta Breeze, Benjamin Zephaniah, Oliver Smith, and of course, the incomparable Linton Kwesi Johnson. Other slices of dub poetry included the new Dub Gabriel track “Spirit Made Flesh” (featuring Karen Gibson Roc); the extremely chilled “No Ordinary Life” from JEN & Chin Chillaz; and the very cool “Dilly Dally” from the Brooklyn Funk Essentials (featuring Everton Sylvester). But there was more than dub poetry. As always, the “Word Beat I Powa” special included some beat poetry (with readings from Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, & Allen Ginsberg) and some great Jamaican DJs (including U-Roy, Prince Buster, I-Roy, and Dennis Alcapone). One of the highlighted rhymesayers was KFAI’s own e.g. bailey with his fantastic “America” and 2 other poems (including “Griots”). Finally, we included poems and other spoken word gems from Jah Wobble (feat. Ronnie Drew); the new Heavyweight Dub Champions album (feat. Dr. Israel & Elf Transporter); Cool Hipnoise (feat. Last Poets); The Fire This Time (feat. Assata Shakur); Dr. Echo (feat. Solange St.Croix); Symarip (aka Roy Ellis); Dr. Ring-Ding; and the incomparable Ken Nordine. And, to complete the word-beat chaos, DJ Baby Swiss included the “Green Slime” trailer and soundbytes from the original “Space Ghost” cartoon on top of some heavy taiko beats from Kodo.
The Echo Chamber is 3 hours of the best in dub, reggae, downbeat club, and percussion heavy world music. Hosted by Dr. StrangeDub & DJ Baby Swiss. Find all the Echo Chamber playlists at: http://www.kfai.org/node/68. And check the MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/doctorstrangedub
From Chains to Change: Spokesman Recorder MLK Commerative Issue
In the arch of Obama’s journey, unwavering faith
by e.g. bailey
After screams of joy at the news, the first thing I did when the election of President Obama was announced was to call my mother and my brother. They were both in South Dakota, where my brother lay in bed suffering from liver cancer. She had traveled from Atlanta to be by his side.
On this night, I felt a great urge to call my brother. Not to give him hope, because his case was terminal; they projected less than three months to live. On this night, I didn’t want to discuss the gravity of the situation, or medicine, or death. I simply wanted to share with him the overwhelming joy and relief, the poignancy of this moment in the lives of all Americans, but especially in the lives of African Americans, and likewise Africans in America.
In the face of his suffering, I wanted him to feel the pride in knowing the heights that an African had achieved in this country, to know that an African had “reached the mountaintop.” When I told him the news, he released a full-hearted laugh, saying, “Thank God, Brother Eric. This is a great thing. Thank you.”
Four hundred years ago an African would have been in bondage, toiling under slavery, his life and death balanced on the whim of his oppressors. And, less than 50 years ago, the descendants of that African could not vote, could not share the same bathroom, the same drinking fountain, or eat in the same restaurants with their fellow Americans. But here, in this moment, an African had achieved the highest office in this country, perhaps in the world.
And in the arc of that journey was embodied the faith, the determination, the wonder and the achievements of all who had paid the price of the ticket, including our shining princes, Martin and Malcolm.
At the annual Thanksgiving dinner with the Cage family, I was speaking with my young nephew Rashaan after he had recited the dinner grace. I asked him if he was going to be preacher like his father. He replied, without missing a beat, “Yes. And I’m also going to become president.”
I cannot remember the last time a Black child had claimed such a dream for himself or herself and thought it possible, a dream no longer the faith of struggle and imagination, but a dream now feasible and actual. And on January 20, standing in the shadow of not only Lincoln but also Martin, that dream will be commemorated.
published in Minneapolis Spokesman Recorder
22 January 2009
American Afrikan
we are the first invention of god/flung like stars across the universe/our histories etched on the wind/blood and soil commingled
the drum beats at dawn for her sons to rise/we travel beyond the mountains of the moon/spread across continents like masks/invisible villages shaped into questions/awaiting answers from ancestors
birthsongs traced with the blood of tears/dark face of the sun where birthed the light of man/we traverse the dark night of motherless songs/only to suffer in the promise land
mine like gold from berber coasts/memories swallowed by living ghosts/from the halls of montezuma to the shores of tripoli/the halls of independence to the fields of the indies/in ships on the horizon rests/our future burdens and dreams
we adorn ourselves with the bluest skies/tears beaded like sacred rope/to noose our bodies before our spirit dies/tributaries we flow into the American Nile
soldiers of the seventh cataract/we grow skyward like the roots of the baobab/rewrite the books burned to bone and ash/we raise fists like obelisks/arrows shot into the sun
‘America’ featured on Rift Magazine’s Daily MP3
Released on Election Day, ‘America’ is featured on Rift Magazine’s site: Through spoken word E.G. Bailey explores a post 9/11 America and the many issues confronting us, while looking towards hope and change. The haunting jazzy backing track was scored by Abstrakt Collision who reside in Dubai (United Arab Emirates). www.myspace.com/truruts
To listen to ‘America‘ link here. ‘America‘ is from the upcoming album, ‘American Afrikan’.
Posted on www.riftmagazine.com
November 4th, 2008 by Riftyrich
Tru Ruts/Speakeasy Records feature by Rift Magazine
When artists work collectively to achieve a creative goal, it makes it easier for that group to move forward and to apply that leverage to push their art. While spoken word in the Twin Cities has taken a backseat to the burgeoning hip-hop scene, Trú Rúts Endeavors and Speakeasy Records has been working the connection to help create a larger scene.
If you have seen spoken word performance, you know how powerful and soul bearing it can be. It takes poetry reading and storytelling to a higher level. Trú Rúts Endeavors and Speakeasy Records are trying to spread that message through Hip-Hop, World Music and different forms of media. It hasn’t been an easy road, but as they find their way they hope to find the local audience and local media attention they are looking for and make the Twin Cities a place where spoken word artists can thrive.
Rift: What is the Difference between Trú Rúts Endeavors and Speakeasy Records?
Trú Rúts/Speakeasy Records: Trú Rúts Endeavors is structured as an artistic enterprise within which are various entities that cover various disciplines, including music, film, theatre, visual art, etc. Speakeasy Records is the record label under Trú Rúts. We also do artist management, booking, producing, promotions, and a variety of other things. Speakeasy Records is an artist centered independent label that strives to bring innovative, unique and conscious work, and artists, to the forefront. Unlike many labels in the Cities, it is a multi-genre label that includes not only hip hop and spoken word, but also world music and jazz. It will continue to expand into other genres as it grows. However, it is grounded in spoken word and hip hop because that is where its roots were first planted, and it is the community from which it grew. It was one of the first independent, and now one of the strongest, spoken word labels.
Rift: Who started the labels and who is involved?
TR/SR: Trú Rúts was founded by innovative artist and visionary, e.g. bailey. A multi-disciplinary artist working in spoken word, film, theatre, radio and music, he developed Trú Rúts and Speakeasy Records, while working in the groundbreaking spoken word and music collective, Arkology. Upon returning from a four month pilgrimage to his home in Liberia, and other parts of the world, including Dubai, Amsterdam, Cote d’Ivoire, Tanzania, Ghana, and Hong Kong, he re-conceptualized and re-energized the enterprise and the label, releasing the first official release, Words Will Heal the Wound, the first spoken word compilation in Minnesota, in 2001. Currently Trú Rúts is managed by e.g. bailey and his partner and fellow labelmate, Shá Cage aka Lady Sha. The current roster of artists include Truthmaze, El Guante, Quilombolas, See More Perspective, along with e.g. bailey and Shá Cage. However, other projects, which consist of collaborations within the label, include god’s pager, Madiba and Afrika 7. The label has also released albums by Zell Miller III, and Nazirah P. Mickey. In addition to this it continues to release cutting edge compilations including the first compilation to highlight the reggaeton movement in Minnesota, Highstylekyle + Tru Ruts present Lightning + Thunder (Volume One). It also has several UK/US co-releases in the works, including a number of upcoming singles and albums by its roster of artists.
Rift: With the very hot Hip-Hop scene in town, has that help make Spoken Word more popular?
TR/SR: The hip hop scene here has certainly influenced the spoken word scene, and there have been a number of collaborations, along a number of artists that work in and move fluidly between each of the genres. However, the popularity of the spoken word art form in Minnesota is attributed to the very hard and consistent work of artists such as e.g. bailey, Shá Cage, J. Otis Powell!, Truthmaze, Bao Phi, Frank Sentwali and a number of others too numerous to list completely. The dedicated work by these artists, including the commitment of such organizations as the MN Spoken Word Association, S.A.S.E., Edupoetic Enterbrainment, Walker Art Center, The Loft and others, have taken spoken word from “people reading from their journals” to a legitimized art form. In addition, the spoken word community here has been dedicated to not only getting spoken word recognized as an art from but also as an educational tool to inspire literacy and creativity in youth, along with documenting and spreading knowledge about the legacy and tradition of the art form. The community here has also developed the first spoken word grant, the first spoken word conference, and one of the first spoken word radio show and formats. All this has contributed to making the Twin Cities one of the most innovative scenes in the field.
However, the scene has still had a difficult time garnering support from media, and even audiences. The kind of support that has thrust the hip hop scene in the national spotlight. Or the New York, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, San Francisco scenes into the national spotlight. In someways it is due to the popularity and focus on the hip hop scene. In the wake, a number of other disciplines and artists get overshadowed. Therefore there has not been the emergence of an artist such as Saul Williams or Jessica Care Moore, Mark Bamuthi or Talaam Acey, Beau Sia, Ishle Park, 2Tongues, Regie Gibson, Ursula Rucker, Sekou Sundiata, Carl Hancock Rux and numerous others. Without the support, the Minnesota scene will continue to be innovative and cutting edge but largely overlooked.
Due to these kinds of obstacles, a number of spoken word artists in the Cities have ’stepped away’, or have moved primarily, or exclusively, into hip hop, sometimes disavowing spoken word and their connection to it. This often gives the art form a sense of being a stepchild, when in fact it’s the most native of art forms, the most native of sons, without which hip hop would not exist, or exist as we know it today. Part of the work of Speakeasy Records, and it’s commitment to spoken word, is to surmount some of these hurdles, and continue to push spoken word in Minnesota into the national consciousness, while at the same time continuing to evolve into the complete and multi-genre it strives to be.
Rift: Since Minneapolis has a pretty diverse music scene, have you found it easy to fit in our have there been some barriers?
TR/SR: Fitting in has never been our goal, and often when you are part of the advance guard, working at the cutting edge, it can be a difficult and lonely road. So there has been barriers, often those that come with the stereotyping of what you do, whether it’s spoken word or hip hop, world music or jazz, being an independent label or even being from Minnesota. However, you persevere, and you find your niche and your audience, which we are starting to do. If there is anything that defines labels and artists like us, it’s making something out of nothing. Whether it is making a dollar out of fifteen cents, or as Atmosphere puts it, gold out of lemons. The struggle defines and divines you.
Rift: What are your upcoming releases or events?
TR/SR: We are currently working on a number of releases slated for late summer through the winter, including singles by Quilombolas, See More Perspective and Truthmaze. A mixtape by El Guante, called ‘Conscious is Not Enough’ that will debut during the RNC. After years of bring other endeavors to fruition, e.g. bailey will release the EP, ‘American African African American’. Also forthcoming is a remix of Shá Cage’s debut album, Amber People; a US/UK hip hop compilation, which will feature artists from around the globe, including several noted special guest artists; and a Speakeasy Records label compilation. www.truruts.com
Posted on www.riftmagazine.com
October 26th, 2008 by Riftyrich
‘Raw honesty’: Interview on MinnesotaPlaylist.com
Raw honesty
e.g. bailey + Shá Cage interview each other about the work they do.
SHÁ: Alan Berks called and wants us to write something on the function of the performing arts. I’m thinking maybe we interview each other. Talk about some of our ideas on theater, spoken word, and art in general.
E.G.: I’m down. I think that’d be an interesting process. Some of our best ideas come out of conversations. Where do you want to start?
SHÁ: Well… Why do we do what we do?
E.G.: For me, it’s easy. It’s as necessary as breathing. That’s on the personal level. I know that regardless of the obstacle, no matter how bleak the prospects, if I can create or facilitate art, I know I can endure almost anything. It is my daily bread. It is a life, a way to witness and endure. I find it as valuable and necessary as any other field of labor.
SHÁ: A couple of months ago I was invited to give a small lecture to a group of students, all aspiring to become artists. I found it difficult to articulate why I chose this particular path of performing arts or why and how one gets into it. Although I’m sure I’ll hate myself later for saying this, I told them, “It just happens.” The “it” that nudges you on the shoulder one day and demands that you tear off from whatever classical theater track you may have been on because something essential to the dialogue of art and humanity seems to be missing. That’s the purpose it serves for me. This—spoken word plus hip hop theater—is my weapon of choice.
E.G.: I feel like I came late to art. I fell in love with reading, with literature. Not knowing the language when I first came to the U.S. from Liberia, my first responsibility was to learn the language. So, for me, I came to art not for art’s sake but out of necessity. I had to learn how to read. I had to learn the language, learn how this country worked. Once I started learning I fell in love with the art, and eventually it was all I wanted to do.
I didn’t feel strong enough to perform my own work for some time. I disguised myself as an artist. I wrote under assumed names. Let other people perform my work. I didn’t feel I had a voice yet, much less an understanding of performance. I only performed when forced or among very close friends. I eventually stumbled into acting, but it was all play until the end of college when I knew that I didn’t want to be anything but an artist—ideally a writer, but really any field would have been fine with me.
It wasn’t until I came to Minneapolis and started working with the performance group Sirius B under the training of the Hittite Empire that I really began to understand how a person’s art could serve his or her community. That’s when I really started to understand how I could put into practice what I had been studying and reading. I also began to understand why I got a buzz when I read Gordon Parks‘ A Choice of Weapon or what Amiri Baraka was talking about in Raise Race Rays Raze: Creating work that spoke to your community, about your community. What is the community suffering from or missing? Your work needs to address that. It was that work and that training that was instilled in us.
It’s art as necessity rather than art as commerce or art as entertainment. Don’t get me wrong, I think your art can be entertaining without it having to be entertainment. I think socially conscious artist or activist artists, artists that are saying something—or whatever you want to call them—they get pegged with being boring or too serious. You have to mix the message with the medium, but you also have to have fun.
SHÁ: Right. It’s like that Emma Goldman quote, “If I can’t dance, then I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” Most of the time people just want to dance and not do the work. They think change just happens. You have to work for it, but at the same time, you have to enjoy yourself too. Which is the beauty of community-based performing arts. It’s ever-changing and always fresh. There’s an urgency to it that comes directly from what your community is dealing with, working through, and processing (both politically and socially) at the time. It keeps you on your toes and regardless of how serious the subject matter—or how deep you are in it—it also demands that you have a sense of humor.
Most of the ideas I get for plays and experimental performance projects are triggered from everyday happenings and bits of conversations. I might be at a town hall meeting at Sabathani or attending a school performance or standing in a crowd of thousands outside the Xcel Center in St. Paul as Obama gives a speech… The list goes on. There’s always been more of a sense of responsibility rather than satisfaction in the work I create for my community. There’s a campaign on the north side called Don’t Shoot… I Want to Live, which is a response to the staggering amount of shootings and senseless killing of African-American men. I was asked to create a performance art piece around this theme that speaks to the mothers and families who had lost their sons to violence. To know that your art is, in a way, “essential” means a lot.
It’s the check that doesn’t come in the mail. It’s rewarding beyond words.
E.G.: It reminds me of how Sirius B’s Monday Morning Body Count was created. One day I was having a conversation with Rene Ford, Ani Sabare, and a few other folks. And Rene was asking if I had heard from Marcus [Bracey, a.k.a. Messiah], Kurt [Washington, a.k.a. Bro'Sun] or Slim [a.k.a. St. Paul Slim]. I hadn’t. He told me that I needed to be sure that I called them on Mondays to make sure they were okay, to make sure that they had survived the weekend. This was 1996 when Minneapolis set a record with the number of homicides, most of them black men. He said that it was our responsibility as part of a community—whether the general community or the community that had been created through Sirius B—to look out for each other, to take care of each other. That conversation transformed into the idea of Monday Morning Body Count, making sure your community is still safe but also taking a toll, who had passed, acknowledging and recognizing them. What was their story and why? One morning shortly after that, I woke up, grabbed my minicassette recorder and spoke a majority of the stories that would become the performance piece. They all came to me in a flush. This happens to me often, a number of pieces will come fully embodied.
And also because I see performance art as a ground for experimentation. Where, like poetry and music, you have the most freedom to experiment with form and the juxtaposition of forms. As you mentioned there is the classical, or traditional, theater but that doesn’t always allow you, or easily allow you, to break or transform the form. Part of the reason it is classical or traditional is that it is in that prescribed form. Whereas performance art, in many ways, the core rule is freedom, openness, the lack of prescribed form. The form takes shape out of the story you’re compelled to tell.
The intention was not only to tell these stories but to use the work as a communal ritual to actively free the spirits that were trapped in the space between worlds until they were named and released. At the end of the performance each night, we named all the victims. It needed that release. We needed that release. Without it, it would have just been another play, just another form of “entertainment.”
Earlier I was talking about tradition and culture. Sometimes I feel like my engagement with culture is more conscious, or conscientious. Perhaps because I was separated from my culture so early and for so long. What I find fascinating about your work is that it’s so deeply rooted in the South. It seems so effortless. Do you consciously incorporate these elements into your work? Or is it just part of the fiber of the way you write and what you write?
SHÁ: I’d say the answer to that is both. Home for me is in the rural South—Natchez, Mississippi. It’s one of the smallest, poorest cities in the United States, but unique in its ability to retain a large percentage of its Africanisms, norms and practices as an African-American culture. The region represents a distinct fabric of people, relations, and a tangible texture that is so ingrained in my writing, my rhythm and even my way of seeing the world, that more often than not, that flavor is unintentional. Other times it’s very much a choice spearheaded with a particular focus or issue I’ve decided to confront. For years I’ve attempted in my work to produce art that talks about the ugly and the pretty of who we are, and that places value on women, elders, and ourselves. Works that are unafraid to openly and proudly retell those private stories our aunties and grandmamas shared with us. I’m particularly interested in poetry that somehow manages to challenge and criticize, holding a mirror up to our faces, while at the same time, uplifts.
My grandmother was the matriarch of the family. She was mother of fourteen children, and the central character that held the numerous parts of our history together. With her passing, I felt an immediacy to carry that tongue forward
I feel there is a rawness that is unabashedly honest that has emerged in this art form [spoken word plus hip hop theater]. That is what is most intriguing to me because, in many ways, that raw honesty is the essence of what art is intended to do. To not second guess or censor itself. These young kids and seasoned griots that have decided to own this art form take an extraordinary risk in this, and their communities rally around them because, despite popular belief and, even in cities that have the highest per capita amount of theater in the nation and every month a new company is developed, there are still key voices, stories, and histories that are not being told. There are masses of people, often those marginalized, who feel theater is not for them because it simply doesn’t speak to them or about them or what they know as life. But the performing arts can allow for those voices to be ushered in—many times on shoestring budgets, sometimes in church houses, or community centers, performed by a combination of trained and untrained actors. That’s my inspiration.
But how do you know your voice is important to the larger artistic conversation?
E.G.: I know I may not be as well-known as some of my peers in this art form, but I believe my work will stand the test of time. It may only be known to a few, or my immediate community, but I believe it influences those around me, those that engage with it. And also I believe it embodies and advances the art form. These are the things I focus on. There is a proverb that says, “The greatest master is not one with the largest flock but he who creates the most masters.” That is part of my personal artistic philosophy. It’s never been a popularity contest for me. I’ve had numerous opportunities to be in front of hundreds and thousands of people, sometimes I’ve taken those opportunities and other times I’ve opted out, giving other folks the opportunity. Part of my work, and where it may have the most influence, is creating the space for others to find and share their voice.
In the end, that may be my largest contribution to the art form, to the community, and perhaps to the larger artistic conversation. I think my work also strives to spread understanding of the art form, studying and articulating the history of it, teaching it to the next generation, supporting those that have a love for it. All this takes time, time that sometimes I wish I could invest more into my own personal work. But I feel compelled to do both. It makes my life very hectic, and constantly busy, but it’s essential to me because if the art form does not continue, does not flourish, does not evolve then what was the point of practicing it. I never wanted to see it just be a fad. So I’ve often said that my work may be for two to five generations down the line.
I think of Larry Neal and Dudley Randall. Neal helped to create the Black Arts Movement with Baraka, and also co-edited Black Fire. Randall—a quiet, unassuming figure—edited the Black Poets, one of my literary bibles, and was the founder of Broadside Press. Both were artists themselves, creating work not widely known, but the power and influence of their work is immeasurable. There would not be spoken word and hip hop, without the Black Arts Movement. Many poets, and works, would have remained unknown with out their efforts.
And I think lastly, I fell in love with art because it saved my life. It taught me how to read and understand the world, how to articulate how I saw this world, and gave me the tools to tell stories, mine and others. I decided early on in my artistic life, that if I could affect or change even just one person’s life the way all the artists I engaged with changed mine, then I will have accomplished my goal with art. Because I know that I have done this, from what those that have been affected have told me, anything else that I accomplish with my art is just icing on the cake.
SHÁ: Well that’s as good as place as any to stop.
Posted on MinnesotaPlaylist.com
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Vote America
In 2007, I was asked by friend and collaborator, Assaad Lakkis, to write a few pieces for an upcoming album by his jazz band, Abstrakt Collision, based in Dubai. The album, titled Polidix, was to be all instrumental except for the pieces I would write. Assaad and I worked on a Miles Davis project back in the 90s, and also worked together on god’s pager. It was always a fruitful collaboration, so there was no question of saying yes. He sent me several recordings and I got to work. The piece was finished in June 2007 and recorded shortly there after by one of my favorite collaborators, Ben Durrant. The sessions also produced, The Last Poet, which featured Madame Mimi. After finishing the tracks I wasn’t sure what I would do with it. Assaad and I had agreed that he would release it on their album and I would release it on my end through Tru Ruts. I continued to perform the piece over the next year, and as the election drew closer I decided I would release it on Election Day as a single. I also decide to do my part with the getting out the vote, and created the postcard below. The design of the poem was created by Meleck Davis and the Vote image was created by Karin Odell, from a photo by Julian Murray. You can hear the recordings of both America and The Last Poet here.
