Artist, poet, philosopher, financial expert, guru, history buff, designer, actor, radio show host, spoken word performer, activist, musician, educator, business owner, scientist, leader, horticulturist, fashion icon, writer, composer, chef, linguist, spokesperson, guide, health expert, singer, percussionist, physicist, mathematician (et cetera) Sadiq Bey.
Too important to recall or honor that he owes us money. We are just nice, unimportant people. It's perfectly logical to use people like us, who run a platform to support music.
I grew up in LOS ANGELES with R&B and soul music. In my neighborhood the PLATTERS lived on the corner, AL McKAY from Earth, Wind & Fire lived across the street, my aunt was a good friend of HAROLD LAND and CHICO HAMILTON,. and many more of the famous and not so famous. But a lot of great musicians also lived in the hood.
In my early teens me and my buddies used to go to CONCERTS BY THE SEA. We could get in because they served food. We were lucky to see all the greats: ELVIN JONES; PHAROAH SANDERS; LES MACAN; EDDIE HARRIS…and, and, and everybody!! There was a club that RED HOLLOWAY owned, an old post office where the greats also played, but you had to be 21 to get in because of alcohol. Me and my buddies were hanging by the door listening to ART BLAKEY. The music stopped and the door opened. It was ART. He said “you kids want to come in?”. We said “ya!”. Art said “follow me”, and put us next to the bandstand. They started playing and the club owner came to throw us out! ART was playing his ass off and yelled “IT’S COOL!” at the owner. They didn’t kick us out.
At this time a lot of rock music started happening: JIMI HENDRIX; CREAM; VANILLA FUGE; LED ZEPPELIN, CHICAGO -- also MOTOWN and JAMES BROWN. And I started playing in bands. In those days you HAD to play everything IF you wanted to work!!!
I was always interested in playing all styles of music, and L . A . is good for every style because of the film- and television-industry. I worked my way into being a touring studio drummer and percussionist from the mid 70s to the early 8os.
Panic in 1981
Around -78 I got involved with synthesizers, drum machines and samplers. I was already playing in avant-garde groups, but with the synths, drum machines, acoustic drums and percussion I was composing, and I put the group PANIC together with NORTON WISDOM painting live and SNAKEPIT EDDIE EDWARDS on horns and electronics. At this time punk bands, free jazz, rock and soul bands all played on the same stage!! The same thing was happening in NEW YORK ! A REALLY great time for experimental music, and a lot aggression an energy!!!
84 to 85 I was on tour a lot going back and forth to NEW YORK from everywhere! And spent a lot of time in recording studios playing on records. Producers started calling me to do the electronic thing. At this time I was composing a lot and trying to get into film composing or sound effect design. The commercial industry just didn’t get what I was doing!! ORNETTE COLEMAN told me he had the same problem. “Go to Europe!” he told me!
In 1987 I got hired to compose a movie score and came to BERLIN to work on the film for a year. I shipped 38.ooo dollars’ worth of equipment, which took 3 months to get to BERLIN. But then the customs took it, tied me up for another month and wanted 28,ooo D MARK from me. Anyway, it all worked out when I met a judge that played boogie piano. He got my shit!! But after that the film production went bankrupt! They gave me 3 month to check BERLIN out, and after that I was on my own. I went to all the jam session at that time. I hadn’t really played drums for 4 years. BERLIN was clicks at that time. The jazz guys didn’t play with the latin guys, rock guys didn’t play with the blues guys, an there was no funk or groove music happening. I came and played with everybody, and my phone was ringing off the hook. I was working 7 days a week and didn’t even own a drum set. So I said “SHIT! I can make money here”, and I really didn’t want to go back to LOS ANGLESES because L . A. is like a police state. I felt like I could end up in jail for a parking ticket there!
Zam and Saqid in Berlin 1
But I didn’t come to EUROPE to play drums and percussion. I came to compose and do my electronic thing. I got lucky. A theater needed musicians to play an international Butoh festival . I was hired to play sampler and keyboards, but we had guitar, sax, trumpet, bass, percussion and drums in that band. We played every day for a month. It was sold out every night. Most of the musicians were punks and free jazz musicians and didn’t give a fuck, and just wouldn’t show up at times!! So I ended up playing all the instruments. They would just leave them on stage. I showed up early and practiced on all the instruments. When someone didn’t show up I could play it. I was the only one who did all the shows.
I was asked to do a duet with a famous dancer from JAPAN. He asked me to compose something for him. The night we performed, MINAKO SEKI, whom I have been working with for 28 years, was just starting her company. She asked me if I had any music for her. I said that I had tons. She said that she didn’t have any money but that she wanted me to be her composer! “The only thing I can do for you is put your name on a poster as composer!”, she said. I said cool. I was running all around berlin and saw beautiful posters. A friend said to me “Hey look at that poster. Isn’t that your name?” We worked for about 2 years. We produced everything ourselves and got very popular. Our shows were sold out, and we did 6 or 7 production a year. Then one year we finally got 60.ooo DM to produce a big show. MINAKO said “We can pay you now”. I’ve been blessed. I’ve done over 6o multimedia and theater productions with a lot of different artist. I am also am co- founder of TEN-PEN-CHII, a multimedia dance group, with JOAX MANGER and YOMIKO YOSHIKO. 2015 is our 20th year aniversary.
TEN PEN CHii ART LABOUR ''iki'' an Interactive Dance Machine
I’ve been painting for 12 years. I had painted in the early 80s for about 6 months. Then I was always on tour. I was painting for about a year and a half, and a good painter/musician from Boston, DANIEL, came to see me. It all happened very quickly. He brought a gallery owner, he gave me a show. I said “Well, I’ll make a website”. NORTON was on his way to Casablanca Morocco to a gallery. NORTON showed the gallery my website. The gallery owner called and gave me a show. It was really happening for 4 years. Then the world money crashed !! And now the art business is like the music business. If ya ain’t a kid they don’t want to deal with ya !
Zam Johnson painting
I don’t plan to move back to AMERICA. The last time I went through customs they asked me what I was coming to the U S A for – and I am part NATIVE AMERICAN and have a US passport. I love AMERICA but the government is out of control!!!
Zam and Sadiq in Berlin 2
I was asked what music and art IS to me. Well, a lot of my friends say “Oh ZAM, you like everything”, and that’s kind of true. I see the good and bad in everything!!! I have to laugh sometimes, it’s so bad it’s just great in a funny way!! I like things that are progressive and thought out, very open and innovative!! I like creating and inventing things !! I started playing guitar year ago !! Hey, I’m a 67 year old noise punk guitar-player !! IT MAKES ME HAPPY!!! ZIGGY, my wife, says that I am like a kid !! FULL OF SURPRIZES !!
Zam and Sadiq in Berlin 3
Zam Johnson drumsolo
Zam Johnson ''Taboo''
Zam Johnson ''Just Repair Nancy''
Zam Johnson is an American artist, composer and painter. After work with numerous acts in the US, such as Iron Butterfly, Brian Wilson and Barry White, Johnson relocated to Europe in the 80'ies, where he has continued his work with the music and added visual arts to his output. Find out more HERE.
We are celebrating our first birthday here at Musicians’ Corner. This site, where musicians talk and write about music, opened at the turn of the month October-November last year. At that point the site was empty. But now…
So many things have been said about music, as an art form, a soundtrack to our lives, a profession and career, as a reflection of us as people and a reflection of the times, and as an industry and a business, over this period of time. Many of our contributors have also addressed the same things, the changes in the business being one of the topics that many have spoken of, for example.
Today we recap some of what has been said about the current times in music from an infrastructural point of view. Music has gone through so many changes lately in that regard.
KENT BEATTY: -It's a great time to be a musician. Some might disagree with that, in this age of TV Voice/Idol contests and live bands being replaced by machines all the time. Sure, record deals aren't being served up on the hood of a Ferrari often these days. But now there is so much that artists can do independently, if they are willing to put some work into it. Technology is a double-edged sword. More things to keep up with and manage, but most of the time, it is a musician's best friend. Imagine a tour without GPS. YouTube (and many others) allows anyone's music to be heard across the world, for free. And social media is far more effective than posting fliers around town. We take these useful tools for granted, some of which didn't even exist 10 years ago.
BRYAN BELLER: -Being totally open for communication 24/7/365 in this social media day and age has its pluses and minuses. I personally think it's a net positive to be able to have direct access to fans and vice versa - it can strengthen the bond between you and those who follow you, and it enables an artist to be much clearer about who they really are in "public". I've been online and available for public e-mail since 1995, and for many years I made a point to respond to *every* *single* *communication* that came my way. Nowadays that's just not possible anymore, because of the sheer volume of responses from Facebook, Twitter, and e-mail, for which I'm grateful - but I still try. That said, it can be a hindrance to the essential practice of isolation required for creativity. It's pretty hard to grow as a composer and a player when you're just writing e-mails all the time. So I think I'm finding a balance, and everyone needs to find their own.
SADIQ BEY: -Today the industry of music is in total disarray. And working musicians are professionals, so it’s a job. There is something I call truth to ownership, against truth to power. Everybody is owned in music, in sports, in Hollywood. They make magic wands out of holly wood, ya know? And it’s about bucking and bowing to get jobs. If you don’t make your own label you’re screwed.
JEAN-PAUL BOURELLY: -The music business crashed with 9/11. We have been building it back up, to keep the creative minded audience in tune with us and music has still evolved.
LIGE CURRY: -I want to say to young musicians that they need to educate themselves. These days you can google any question. This is no joke. Some business deals are good, some business deals are bad. When you don’t update yourself you will find yourself in hot water. But try to keep a positive attitude. A lot of people can’t handle it. You have to treat the business side in a way so that it doesn’t take you out.
JAN KINCAID: -The business has changed so much over the years. The people who have survived are the people who have changed with it.
We have to look at new ways of doing our work. You are in charge of your own destiny much more now than you were before. It also means that you have to be careful where you spend your money.
We came up in the traditional way, through the live-scene and through people who wanted to invest in us. Now acts are molded to suit a certain age group. But then records cost less to make. For the people who grow up with this, for the 19-year olds now, the new way is what’s natural. We have been young enough to go with the changes. If we were ten years older I think that we would have been struggling.
OZ NOY: - The music business crashed, and the same thing happened in New York too. It hit the city hard. New York is still the jazz center of the world, but the scene has changed. A lot of clubs have closed. And now it’s a pretty set reality. There is still good music, but a lot less of it in a lot less places. The only thing that got bigger is the Broadway shows. That’s great for Broadway but it’s not great for real music in my opinion cause Broadway is not music , its theater.
ANDREW STEEN: - The benefit of the major label-system was purely financial. They had time and effort to put into albums because there was money. The people contributing to a Pledge campaign want a return on their investment even if it's small. The majors wanted things to sell. People didn't represent themselves very well in that. You can release your home made music now and be judged on your own merit.
TM STEVENS: -Everything is machines, and it has really hurt the business, and hurt artists who play and have studied, and that’s what I have done all my entire career. But the answer to this is you don’t follow that and give up. Never give up. This is for the young people. Listen to me. Do not give up. Whatever it is that you believe in, whatever it is that you feel, follow your dreams and your dreams will follow you. – And I particularly believe that we will get our business back.
NIKO STOESSL: -I think that everything’s getting better though and that the music business will restructure itself again eventually, creating new sources of income for musicians who are willing to move forward.
There are as many interviews in the world as there are seconds in your earthly existence, but there was never an interview like this.
Musicians’ Corner proudly presents a unique hangout that in ways instantly is its own new media category.
(MC's supervising editor)
The Harriet Tubman Band Interview
Harriet Tubman Band formed in New York in 1998. Melvin Gibbs (bs), Brandon Ross (gtr) and J.T.Lewis (dr) make up the power trio that offered an additional view on group processing and dynamics, obtained from experience with exploratory units such as Power Tools, Henry Threadgill's Very, Very Circus, I and I, the Over Flow, David Murray, Sting, Bill Laswell and Cassandra Wilson, just to send musical images to the imagination. In short, they are the hitmen of creativity, veterans in the war against mediocrity. Their three releases are I Am A Man,Prototype and the latest, Ascension.
I recently had a chat via Skype with the group in their rehearsal space in Brooklyn, New York.
WARNING: the contents of this video contain strong language and opinions.
sadiq bey
Part 1:
Part 2:
Harriet Tubman Band - "Night Master / Ascension"
Harriet Tubman Band & Cassandra Wilson - Strange fruit at New Morning
The music in the interview is Treasure Hunt For the Prototype, released on Avant Japan Records, 10.10.2000.
I wanted to get a good, solid interview with the Father of Funk, George Clinton, last Monday (28 Aug) at the Astra (Berlin). After a real live explosion that ruined all doubt that the 73 year-old could still deliver the goods (with the bells and whirligigs), I was biting at the bit to raise questions about the recent loss of Gary (Starchild) Shider, the Music Director of the PFunk Allstars, Belita Woods and other funkateers who have transcended earthplane and how important it was for us to remember the names of our witnesses. It was gonna be deep! But, when I finally made it to the dressing room full of family (his grand daughters were singing backup), concept kinda changed and the discussion turned to those who had contributed to the immense catalog of tunes, from the various manifestations of the Funk Mob, including the Brides of Funkenstein, I eneded up with the drop below on the player. Flashlight 2013 is explained by GC himself.
MFA Kera and Mike Russell's Black Heritage Nelson Mandela tribute
Black Heritage afro soul retrospective
MFA Kera is a singer, composer, writer and painter, who spent her childhood years in Madagascar and Senegal. After a move to Paris she began her music career, inspired not in the least by Mahalia Jackson. Working with many greats along the way, such as John Lee Hooker, Memphis Slim, Mickey Baker and Milt Buckner, and after spending a few years in Los Angeles, Kera is now based in Berlin, where she continues to fuse ethnic African music with a myriad of musical elements, while working with her Black Heritage Orchestra.
Kelvin Sholar Group feat Esther Ambrosino: Blue-Indigo
The Kelvin Sholar Interview part 2
Kelvin Sholar Solo Michela "Orange" Kelvin Sholar Group Kalavan Suite
The Kelvin Sholar Interview part 3
Kelvin Sholar Group feat. Wendell Harrison- "Tons"
The Kelvin Sholar Interview part 4
"Orange Yellow" New Detroit Kelvin Sholar
The Kelvin Sholar Interview part 5
Kelvin Sholar is an award-winning and Grammy-nominated pianist, composer, producer and writer, who has collaborated with a long list of greats, bringing cutting edge ideas to boundary-crossing music. He appears on countless recordings, has written music for films, and given masterclasses all over the world. Originally from Detroit Sholar is currently based in Berlin. Find out more HERE
Sadiq Bey is a poet, performance artist, percussionist and composer. Bey is originally from Detroit and is now based in Berlin, where he releases music as >green_man/ and schwartzegeist. Find out more HERE
The music in the interview is ''Continuum'' from the Kelvin Sholar recording Between Worlds.
Normally, I shy away from interviews and do very little self promotion. With the exception of my current internet presence and a few old crazy fans, everybody else thinks I’m the dead guy by the same name. A fellow from the UK. Well, he came to fore much later and we couldn’t be any different.
During the mid-to late 90‘s, I realized that the so-called music “industry” was finished. If you weren’t a hot item by then, you could essentially forget about it. That being said, I never looked at myself as a careerist music maker. Indeed, I swung with the majority of serious musicians, in that I wanted to create, make, produce, record and tour. However, as a poet and performer with a long history in music as a percussionist, I no longer wanted to be the guy that certain types of band leaders, with contracts or serious concert dates, called to increase the “out” or “heavy” or “intellectual” quotient in their output.
There were some successful collaborations, as I saw them, but in the end, I was working FOR them. In fact, a person, who will not be named, put it out that I was a loose canon and shouldn’t be dealt with, in New York. Although, I admit in those days, I was pretty much a mess and difficult, but, many of us had serious problems then. I still succeeded in my contribution to the performances.The last straw was when I was working with a horn player, with a great reputation and a great band at the time, played me so hard at a live date at Lincoln Center (live broadcast), I walked out of the place determined to quit the business altogether. Ummm, that is a very negative particle in this piece and I certainly don’t want to be there anymore. It’s water under the bridge.
I grew up in Detroit, and in those days there was prosperity because of the automobile industry. Everybody had wherewithal, a house, a car. Public education was stellar, unlike it is now. They had the budgets for art, music, sports and normal things like special maths, English, even theatre, which they referred to as Auditorium.
I had an awesome music teacher, Mr. White. He was like an uncle. Viola was my first instrument which I adored but couldn’t figure out. Then I switched to playing the trombone and everybody hated me because it was so loud and I dare say, human! They had loved the viola.
We learnt to play by records. Getting into music was a tribal thing. I met musicians from everywhere, and there were jam sessions in my uncle Barry’s (Harris) living-rooms. Well, not my blood uncle...his sister Mayme was my mother’s best friend and she was the one who turned me on to painting. I will always remember a painting she made for Barry with these flying keyboards and notes with wings and shit. I was awed by her sensibilities. I was into bebop early, I learnt odd meters and pentatonic blues. My mom was a very beautiful widow and she drew attention from many cats who became greats like Paul Chambers and Kenny Burrell, so I heard singers Nat Cole, Sarah Vaughn, Dakota Staton and Billy Eckstein in the house all the time. By the time I was 12 I had gotten into Motown. Stevie Wonder came out with a live recording called Fingertips and made me want bongos for Christmas. It was a set with maracas and clave. It didn’t take me long to hear percussionists in Prez Prado and Cal Tjader recordings. Music was a live thing all of a sudden. I played my first gig when I was 16, in a club where you had to be 21 to get in. So my mom took me. It was a little bit uncomfortable. However, I also wanted to be a painter like my aunt Mayme.
I was a kid who loved books. I was the boy reading books inside the library while the other kids were playing football outside that library. I liked everything about books, even the smell of them. I could read and write when I was 5.
I was into painting and read nearly every book on art in the Duffield Public Library on West Grand Blvd. Names like Claes Oldenberg and Ben Shawn, Jackson Pollock and Kandinsky showed me a different way to look at the world around me. I was fascinated by abstraction despite figurative masters with their photo realism. I realized where Mayme got her vibe.
I began to compose verses after reading Arna Bontemps, who was a friend of my maternal grandfather in Nashville, where my mom was born and raised by her Blackfoot-Cherokee mother, because she tried to stump my reading ability after dinner one evening. She was totally extreme about education. Later, I discovered LeRoi Jones’ (Amiri Baraka) Preface To a Twenty-volume Suicide Note and was off and running.
I continued painting and playing percussion and had my first “gig” at 16 with an organ trio at the Chit Chat Lounge, headed by Don Davis, by the fact that the singer’s daughter was my sweetheart. I even played at an uppity Black Church once during Negro History Week.
Ultimately, my vision of becoming a painter got swallowed up by the social reality of late 60’s Detroit because only the rich kids had success at that, their doctor, lawyer parents’ friends would get them started by buying their work, not to mention it costs a lot to make art.
People thought I was weird because I liked opera already as a kid, but ‘the mind is a parachute’ and if it isn’t open, you’re fucked… My approach to it then wasn’t intellectual.
I was an atheist for a time too, until I got married and had to work jobs.
Detroit was an intensely political town. I was involved in The League of Revolutionary Black Workers, the Black Panther Party and Republic of New Africa, again, it was my mom who familiarized me with Martin and Malcolm. “These are real men,” she would say.
In the end, the mystery was always the thing. I discovered Sufism by 18, especially the poetry of Hafiz and Rumi, the annihilation of the self to be reborn through music and devotion...the dzikr and the 99 beautiful names.
I’m not that guy who learnt music and went off to play gigs. By my faith, I had to devote myself to my family.
The music was always the constant. My circle of brothers adored Coltrane and Dolphy and then Cecil Taylor and Sun Ra, Ornette especially was a favorite. One of my favorite Coltrane pieces was Ascension...but then again, Cosmic Music was breath taking. In those days we listened to everything, Jazz, Ethnic, Classical, even Rock, together, in silence.
Finally, there was Hendrix. It was everything in one guy. To play like that, look like that and be Black! Wow! I was drunk from his Otherness! For me he was the wizard. I collected everything that he did, everything recorded, even bootlegs and saw him live twice.
Coltrane – Hendrix – Marley. They were so powerful. People try to sound like them instead of taking on the baton and running with the essential voodoo.
Because of Hendrix, I was always the clothes guy in every band I was in since Hendrix’ days. Music performance is a ritual, as far as I’m concerned. Magic in real time...altering reality just for those moments.
>green_man/ on Soundcloud
Today the industry of music is in total disarray. And working musicians are professionals, so it’s a job.
There is something I call truth to ownership, against truth to power. Everybody is owned in music, in sports, in Hollywood. They make magic wands out of holly wood, ya know? And it’s about bucking and bowing to get jobs. If you don’t make your own label you’re screwed.
My satisfaction comes out of completing a composition and uploading for free download: internet presence has gotten me plenty of work. I earned my living in New York working on Wall Street as a document specialist in the old hustle days. Of course, to a degree, it depends on how you want to live, and if life is going to be about a bit more than survival I had to hustle to pay the dry cleaning bill.
I am a performance poet, I’m not an entertainer. How can I be an entertainer with what is going on in the world? I have been accused of being a snob, uppity nigga, blah blah blah. My work, however, consistently drives the notion of liberation for my people and, hence, all the oppressed peoples.
American life is based on money, I am producing art, not a music show. I was in New York working with Don Byron and Existential Dread. We had released ‘’Nu Blaxploitation’’ and we had had a college circuit No. 1 hit called Alien. Once, after a performance at Martha’s Vineyard, a producer asked me how long I was going to do poetry. He said that it was not going to last long. He told me that I needed a real career, and that I had what it took. He could get me a screen test in LA, if I wanted. I told him that I didn’t want that and I was doing exactly what i wanted to do. The band was astonishing on stage. I couldn’t get a job in New York after that. I’m a revolutionary. I will never be famous or rich. I have accepted my fate.
After 9/11 it was time to leave. I was on 14th street, in New York when the planes hit. New York was quiet that day. New York is never quiet, but it was that day. There was no transportation available, so we walked in that quiet city. There wasn’t even a helicopter in the sky for hours. For me, it was time to go.
I came to Europe, where there is a deep sense of tradition. America is a kid compared to Europe. I discovered that on my first tour in 1986 with the great pianist, Geri Allen. The city design around Europe blew me away, with its old buildings, not buildings that are torn down every 25 years and replaced by new crap buildings.
Coming to Europe was also a rude awakening. Many Europeans in the industry of music want you to be the Negro of 1963, and surviving here financially meant I either had to get a job or get a wife. I got a job. When you live in Berlin, you’re seen as local no matter how extensive your CV. But, I book a lot of gigs all over Europe and people ask how. It is because most of my downloads are for free. They are free because I want to stay alive as a creator and you have to let people hear you.
If you give, you challenge the system. We live among sales platforms, an infinity of ads and circus attractions. Of course, I agree that musicians should be paid for their music, and paid well, but that’s not how it works now. You are paid for working, for entertaining.
It seems people have their heads stuck up the ass of history. I published two books here in Berlin; Slow the Eye and Albert Ayler Is Blowing the Horn That signals the End, and wrote and produced Slow the Ear album which features brilliant guitarist, Jean Paul Bourelly, and opera star, Andrea Rost, with horn arrangements by Gebhard Ullmann.
Currently I am in the studio with six reels of tape from a band I had featuring James Carter, his brother Kevin, Tani Tabbal and Jaribu Shahid in the late 80’s. I’m in a high end studio retrieving these sounds because, after a month of searching, they were the only ones who owned a Studor machine that could handle 1/4 inch, two-track tape at 15ips. I am also doing a one man-show called ‘’The Dead American’’ and working with 3 Italian guys on a project I call Black Market Liberation Front (guess what that’s all about). Finally, I’m about to release a lot of >green_man/ tunes. It is time. I have been in a cave for eight years. I think that this is my year to release.
The Dead American 1 Radio active! Radio active! Radio active! Not a nightmare, but a daymare. All day. Why be afraid of a nuclear war? It has already happened. We’re all dead. We’ve been dead since ’45. The working dead. We just don’t know it yet. Just like movie zombies. They’re making 3-D printed coffins. Hunting ground holes. They’re building the furnaces daily. We are the new Fuel, the new energy, corpses that still blink that zombie blank blink of absence. Absent by default. Born burned, burnt to blank. There’s nobody there! That there is no revolution, IS the revolution. Capitalism is the revolution, after all. The final refuge. Against Earth consciousness, natural develop-mentality. The monetized retardation of the gardener, the herder, the worker. Primitive tactility, original touch consciousness…burnt to a crisp! Artifice in circular restraint, to convince us that jerking off is better than fucking someone real. Cancer of the digits, just touch the screen bitches! Artifice guarantees your superiority, your immeasurable distance from the warmth of human fluids, the aversion to panic before the Black Unknown. Primitive consciousness: the target of the War Machine in the Disguise of Art(ifice), retard the Gaze and supplant with glance… Exterior burns interior, radio active burn, what fucking identity? The artificial infinity secures the Capitalist Revolution. Touch it! The only power is purchasing power and Socialism matriculates Capitalism’s gaze: mesmerism is Communism! Buy it motherfucker! There can be no Public Ownership, because there is no public. Police enforcement is the absence of the public. Marxism cannot defend trains of thought when the Classes, the masses form into Clubs of Consumption. Feeding on the tit of the magnetic field, the radioactive nipple of useless information and apps. The Future is no longer a promise, but a threat. The black hole of consumption and starvation. Death by artifice…suicide en masse by smart phone, by drone, by camera, by clone. Rub it! Our externalization as targets of Artifice. The war of expropriation, human extraction, copy? A new tradition of delirium and drunkenness from yottabytes constructing the artificial infinity. The Death Industry. 2,119 detonations since 1945. We are burnt to the infinite artificiality, the rushing of counting numbers, the cash machine. Rothschild vs Rockefeller. China has bunkers for all the Chinese. But not for bombs, for weather! Radio active weather, dead waterways, poisoned fields of Monsanto and of course, the disappeared Bee Communities. Dead, dead, dead. More information, less knowledge. More emails and texts, less smiling, hand shaking, eye-to-eye…less feeling. Artifice re-invents feeling with Radioactive screen, replacing mom’s soft words of power. Copy? Radioactive. American. Burnt. American. Dead. American.
Sadiq Bey is a poet, performance artist, percussionist, composer, author and magazine editor, currently based in Berlin. Originally from Detroit he has worked with a multitude of artists in Detroit, New York and Europe. Noted collaborations from his New York-years include ''NuBlaxploitation'' and ''Tuskegee Experiments'', with Don Byron, and from Europe the operas ''Der Kastanien Ball (The Fall Of Lucrezia Borgia)'' in collaboration with Stephan Winter, and ''The Othello Syndrome'' in collaboration with Uri Caine, for the Venice Biennale. Sadiq Bey is currently working with his projects >green_man/ and schwartzegeist.
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