DJ Matt Werner interviewed University of Edinburgh composer Maciej Zurawski about the world premiere of his orchestra piece Love and War on May 25, 2009.

In this interview, Werner and Dr. Zurawski discuss music theory, Zurawski’s battle with ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, the role of illness in art, hill walking in the Scottish Highlands, film music, and his compositions, including Love and War, My Home is in the Mountains, What Life Could Be, and The Journey Towards the Open Sea.

Maciej Zurawski’s newest work will be premiering at the Music of Climate Change concert taking place in the city centre of London on Saturday November 28th at 7.30 p.m. Please visit this site for more details: http://earlymusicexperiment.weebly.com/ideas.html

And please visit Maciej Zurawski’s website for more of his music: http://www.theseaofmusic.com/

(Right click and select “Save Link As” to download the large, 88 MB mp3 audio file)

Click on the player to listen to the 40-minute interview and feature on Maciej Zurawski.

Click on image to download Matt Porter's EP. (3 tracks, 49 MB)

DJ Matt Werner is proud to present Matt Porter’s first EP: “A Mic in the Cathedral.” Recorded live by DJ Matt Werner at 3 churches and cathedrals in Edinburgh and Dundee, Scotland, and remastered in San Francisco, California. This small collection showcases the talent of Scottish organist Matt Porter.

Tracks include Matt Porter playing excerpts from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata in D Minor, BWV 565; Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in E Flat Major, BWV 552; and Dieterich Buxtehude’s Prelude in C Major.

The EP can be downloaded by clicking the image above, or the tracks can be listened to individually here:

Toccata in D Minor- BWV 565

Prelude and Fugue in E Flat Major- BWV 552

Buxtehude Prelude in C Major

Please see below for videos of Matt Porter playing the organ.

Please visit http://djmattwerner.blogspot.com for photos from the making of “A Mic in the Cathedral”

Click on image to download the Dr. King mixes. (7 tracks, 55 MB)

DJ Matt Werner Presents: The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Mix Tape. Now available for download! (7 tracks, 55 MB)

Features mixes and DJ routines honoring Dr. King’s greatest speeches and sermons mixed by DJ Matt Werner to music by Ronald Jenkees, Eminem, Diddy, 50 Cent, Cham, T.I. and Rihanna, among other artists. For liner notes on DJ Matt Werner’s mixes, please visit: http://mattswriting.com/music/

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. tribute mixes:

1. Rocky Song Remixed to Martin Luther King, Jr.

2. I Have a Dream mixed to Lose Yourself

3. MLK Technology

4. Dr. King Midnight Remix 1

5. Dr. King Midnight Remix 2

6. If I Had Sneezed Remix

7. “Live Your Life” MLK Remix

Click on image for complete Obama mixes (7 tracks, 80MB)

DJ Matt Werner Presents: The Barack Obama Mixes. Now available for download! (7 tracks, 80 MB)

Features mixes and DJ routines of Barack Obama’s speeches mashed up with music by Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Timbaland, Justin Timberlake, Young Jeezy, Rick Ross, David Sides, Keak da Sneak, and many more!

Click on the image to download the mixtape

DJ Matt Werner’s Mixtape Vol. 1 is now available for download. (19 tracks, 114 MB)

Track listing:

1. Rocky Song Remixes to Dr. King. Features Rocky Song Remix by Ronald Jenkees with Dr. King’s “Mountaintop” speech.

2. I Have a Dream & Lose Yourself. Features Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Detroit I Have a Dream Speech mixes with Lose Yourself by Eminem.

3. MLK Technology. Dr. King mixed with Ayo Technology by Justin Timberlake, 50 Cent, and Timbaland.

4. Dr. King Midnight Mix 1. Dr. King’s “It is Midnight” sermon mixed with the Beastie Boys and Last Night by Keyshia Cole and Diddy.

5. Dr. King Midnight Mix II. Dr. King’s “It is Midnight” sermon mixed with the Beastie Boys and Love Me by 50 Cent, Obie Trice, and Eminem off the 8 Mile Soundtrack

6. If I Had Sneezed. One of Dr. King’s great speeches mixed to My Ghetto Story by Cham.

7. Obama in Iowa Kanye West Remix. Barack Obama’s Iowa Caucus victory speech mixed to David Sides’ Kanye West Medley, which features tracks from Kanye West’s Graduation album.

8. Obama “Hope Monger” Remix. Barack Obama’s speech honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at King’s former church, Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia on January 20, 2008. Mixed to Go DJ by Lil Wayne.

9. Obama to Timberlake/Timbaland Remix

10. Obama Hustlin’ Remix

11. Al Gore and Lil Wayne Mashup

12. Nigerian Girl (Fela Kuti Mix)

13. Nigerian Girl (Diddy Mix)

14. Namaste

15. Sonnet 19

16. T.S. Eliot Remix

17. Meditations on Ahimsa

18. Sartre Poem

19. Salinger Rap

DJ Matt Werner’s interview and feature with post-punk laptop rapper MC Lars was recorded live at The Cathouse in Glasgow on April 15, 2009, and first aired on Fresh Air: The Alternative on May 5, 2009.

In the interview, MC Lars and DJ Matt Werner discuss the songs Guitar Hero Hero, Download This Song, Hot Topic is Not Punk Rock, Hipster Girl, Twenty-Three, Hey There Ophelia, Signing Emo (feat. the Matches), and White Kids Aren’t Hyphy (DJ Khaled Remix).

Topics also discussed include MC Lars’s latest album This Gigantic Robot Kills, Jean Baudrillard’s notion of “hyperreality,” the rich traditions of punk and hip hop in the Northern California music scene, the suicide of MC Lars’s former Stanford roommate, which inspired the song Twenty-Three, and how MC Lars navigates the racial politics of being a white MC. This show features the voice-over talents of Ben Felsing, and also a surprise, but brief, visit from Queen Elizabeth II.

For more on MC Lars, please visit http://www.mclars.com/

You can download this podcast from iTunes by clicking here, or by visiting http://mattswriting.com

(Right click and select “Save Link As” to download the large, 129 MB mp3 audio file)

Click on the player to listen to the hour-long interview and feature on MC Lars.

DJ Matt Werner’s interview with the hip hop artist and CEO of the Blacksmith Label Talib Kweli was recorded on March 3, 2009, and originally aired on Fresh Air: The Alternative on March 10, 2009.

In the interview, Talib Kweli answers rumors about a future Black Star reunion with Mos Def, and he talks about balancing his role as both an MC and the CEO of the Blacksmith Label, his upcoming second Reflection Eternal album with DJ Hi-Tek, Jean Grae, Strong Arm Steady, his Party Robot album, how he defines himself as an artist, Nina Simone’s Four Women, President Barack Obama, the evolution of hip hop, Auto-Tune, and many other exciting topics. The show also features an introduction by Joe Sciarrillo.

A PDF of the transcript of this interview can be downloaded here.

For more on Talib Kweli, please visit http://www.talibkweli.com/and http://www.yearoftheblacksmith.com/

You can download this podcast from iTunes by clicking here, or:

(Right click and select “Save Link As” to download the large, 142 MB mp3 audio file)

To listen to the interview only, you can download the smaller mp3s in 2 parts: Part 1 (24 MB)  and Part 2 (29 MB).

Click on the player to listen to the hour-long phone interview and feature on Talib Kweli.

A PDF of this interview transcript can be downloaded here.

DJ MATT WERNER: This is DJ Matt Werner on Fresh Air: The Alternative. We’re coming at you from Edinburgh, Scotland, and we have Talib Kweli with us on a phone interview. And so Talib, you’ve been very active this last year, and I’ve read most of the interviews you’ve conducted this last year online: on everything from your song about Lauren Hill, J Dilla, MCEO, and other projects, so I don’t want to repeat questions that’ve already been asked in these other interviews. But my listeners here in Scotland have had two main questions for you. One is on…

TALIB KWELI: Black Star?

DJ MATT WERNER: Yeah, Black Star.

TALIB KWELI: [laughs]

DJ MATT WERNER: They’re wondering about a reunion album, or they’re wondering if any more collaborations are coming up between you and Mos Def.

TALIB KWELI: Well, Mos Def has the album coming out on Downtown Records. I don’t know when, but it should be out shortly. We have a great song on it called History. I don’t know when the next Black Star album will happen, but we’ve certainly stayed active, stayed prolific on each other’s records, since the Black Star album’s come out.

DJ MATT WERNER: And segueing off that, your fans here in Scotland were wondering, When is the second Reflection Eternal album coming out?

TALIB KWELI: That’ll be out this summer. There’s a single-well not a single-me and Hi-Tek did a song with Bootsie Collins just for fun that we put up, we blasted out on our Twitter pages, and we put up on my website http://yearoftheblacksmith.com for download.

Just to let the fans know that we will be coming soon. Right now I’m soliciting, I’m reading video treatments as we speak for the next Reflection Eternal single, and that’s a project that’s almost finished.

DJ MATT WERNER: And how about Liberation 2? You’ve been dropin’ some really dope mixtapes in the last couple of years, and fans were wondering about, will there be a Liberation 2 coming out?

TALIB KWELI: Liberation 2-I’ve been working on it with Madlib. Madlib is real elusive, so it’s hard to work with him sometimes. But I mean, you know, it doesn’t matter how hard it is work with Madlib, his tracks are that dope that it’s always worth it in the end.

DJ MATT WERNER: And now because I’m a literature Master’s student here at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, I’ve been very interested in your lyrics, ever since I first listened to your track Fortified Live back in ‘97. And I’m curious as to what your writing process is and how you come up with your similes.

TALIB KWELI: Fortified Live, I mean, it’s changed since then. When I wrote that song, I had a book of rhymes, and I had a bunch of rhymes that I wanted set to beats. And it’s particularly in that song, you know, I try to stay relevant. A lot of rappers were talking about their South American drug connections and stuff like that, like a lot of street rap was on that when I first came out, and that’s why I make references to Assata Shakur and to Cuba, because I wanted to show that the revolutionary aspect could be a lot more “gangster” than the street aspect of it.

Now I just try to stay relevant to what people are thinking about, what people are talking about and try to write to the track. The production, the music to me is king and should be respected as such. And the lyrics, as much as people like yourself appreciate great lyricism-in entertainment and music that’s done onstage and in nightclubs where they got speakers and drinks are flowin’, it’s hard for people to concentrate on lyrics, so you have to figure out what you’re doin’ to bring them into what you’re sayin’, and that’s makin’ sure that it matches the music.

DJ MATT WERNER: I’m curious as to how you define yourself as an artist. On your track Beautiful Struggle, you say, “They call me the political rapper,” but you try to distance yourself from that title. But at the same time, you’ve come out and publicly supported Barack Obama, and you’ve dropped tracks like The Proud, and more recently, Take it Back, where you rap about Iraq, suicide bombers, and you also critique politicians. So I’m curious, How do you define yourself as an artist? Like as a political rapper, conscious rapper? Where do you see yourself fit in?

TALIB KWELI: Well, you know, I mean as an artist, you grow and change, and you shift and you bend. And as an artist who makes music, I would really like to define myself as just a musician. When I made the song The Proud, you know, I was specifically sayin’ in The Proud that I don’t really deal with the politics and that I don’t…You know, you wouldn’t really find me criticizing politicians in that era of my career. You know, I’ve talked about social situations. In the song Take it Back, I’m talking about human life way more than I’m talkin’ about politics.

Now as far as my support of President Obama, he’s the first politician that I’ve come out and support, and I felt like he deserved my support. And it was a big deal for me to come out and support him because I’ve been very careful throughout my career to not only not support politicians but to not talk about, not be critical of politics. When you listen to my record, you might hear me mention the name Giuliani, but Giuliani is a social/cultural figure in the city I’m from. I wasn’t talkin’ about his skills as a mayor. In the realm of politics, you could argue that Giuliani cleaned up New York City. But in the realm of reality, which is bigger than politics, that’s not necessarily a true argument. Because, yeah, he made New York City more ‘Disneyified.’ But the amount of people that he arrested, and he wrongly arrested in that time period, the amount of freedoms that were stripped away from people in that city in order for that to happen, for it to look like the city is better, is really a lot that needs to be thought about and considered as well.

DJ MATT WERNER: One track I’m playing on my half-hour feature of yours is my favorite track of yours, which is your tribute to Nina Simone’s Four Women. It’s the Expansion Outro off your first Reflection Eternal album. And I’m curious as to how you came to write it because it’s a bit different than many of your other tracks.

TALIB KWELI: Yeah, I mean Nina Simone is probably one of my, if not my favorite artist. And that song Four Women, is just a perfect piece of song writing. And my introduction to it was a live concert of Nina Simone performing at Berkeley. So the first few years I listened to that song, I didn’t realize that is was like a 3 or 4 minute simple song. Because the version that I heard, she was really explaining how she wrote the song, explaining where these characters came from. And I thought that’s just how the song went. So when I wrote my song, I really went into depth with the characters because I thought that that’s where Nina Simone went. As I grew older and became more knowledgeable about music, I found out that you know what, I was basing my version off of a long extended live version. But you know I think that it made my version something different. I don’t know if I would’ve been able to recreate that song without knowing the history of those characters, for a hip hop song, you know.

DJ MATT WERNER: And I’m curious as to how you balance your role as MC and CEO. You have some dynamic artists under you like Jean Grae and you got the crew Strong Arm Steady. And you’re also part of Idle Warship and I hear there’s this Party Robot album coming out. I’m curious as to how you balance this work life while being creative and also having to run a business and oversee other artists.

TALIB KWELI: Well, I mean it’s tough. I wouldn’t lie and say that it’s easy-it’s very tough. And I owe these artists a lot. These artists are artists that…Strong Arm Steady, Jean Grae-these artists are artists that have inspired me to do and become the artist that I am, and these are people I look towards for my inspiration. So if their music ain’t popin’ out there, and their situation ain’t great, then my situation ain’t great, that’s the way I look at it. But I always maintain that I come out of a musical community or a musical family….So as tough as it is to try to oversee all of this and keep pushin’ all of this stuff, even when people, sometimes they don’t get it, it would be even harder to do it by myself.

DJ MATT WERNER: And part of you marketing is very creative. You got this great website called http://yearoftheblacksmith.com, where you have some videos of Blacksmith TV, where they follow you around with your different tours and different shows, and it’s really quite funny. I was recently watching Episode 4, where it has you on a bike and it’s raining, and you’re saying, “I was trying to be environmentally conscious, and now I’m just wet.” I thought it shows the lighter side, the behind-the-scenes of the hip hop game.

TALIB KWELI: Yeah, I mean, that’s the key about that show. Definitely.

DJ MATT WERNER: And I’m curious if it’s going to be made into anything on TV. I know you’ve been on MTV a bit, but when’s your next role on TV coming up?

TALIB KWELI: I don’t know. TV is a beast, you know? Part of the reason of doing Blacksmith TV is to develop content that I can control. So hopefully I do get picked up for some sort of situation. I just did a voice over for a web-based show called Blockheads, which is like an animated hip hop thing. And it’s me… Lauren London, and a bunch of people. That was really fun. But hopefully I can do more TV and more stuff like that, you know, I’m into that stuff.

DJ MATT WERNER: Yeah, and part of this cross-over marketing, you talk about in Internet Connection, your first track from your new collaboration with Hi-Tek. And in this, you touch upon how technology and Web 2.0 has sorta changed hip hop. And I was curious if you could elaborate more on how the hip hop game has changed since the late 1990s when you were starting up, and today, when you have YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter.

TALIB KWELI: Yeah, I mean all those sites are really just digitally building a community. Whereas before, you had to get up and get on a train or get on your bike, or take the bus to the park and meet up with other people and actually go to a show. Now, you can stream whatever. Now you can iChat, or talk on Twitter or whatever. And it makes you more self-absorbed. Because you have to spend more time talking about yourself than you ever did in your whole career, but at the same time, it enables you to connect on a global level, if you figure out how to master it. If you figure out how to freak it and use it to your advantage. If you’re just on the social networks being social, then you’re not really using it to your full advantage.

DJ MATT WERNER: In Internet Connection, when you’re referencing avatars, which I assume was a reference to Second Life, it reminded me of Jean Baudrillard who has this notion of “hyperreality,” where people live their lives mediated by different elements of the media, without actually being there in person. And I thought it was fascinating because you’re known as one of the most provocative live emcees and performers, and I was wondering what your thoughts are on that.

TALIB KWELI: As soon as they made Second Life, I was one of the first performers on Second Life taking advantage of it. I haven’t really been on it since then, since the start-up of it. But it’s a scary concept, you know? All this stuff is scary. Twitter is scary to me. I’m on Twitter all the time, and it’s scary to me. But I realize if I’m not on it, it’s just another lane that somebody else’s taking advantage of that I’m not taking advantage of. But man, yeah-[Jean Baudrillard's notion of "hyperreality"]-
that’s something that’s completely and totally foreseeable for our future. They haven’t figured it out yet, but they’re tryin’ damn hard with these websites and these robots and things they’re making, they’re trying damn hard to get us there.

DJ MATT WERNER: I have another question that goes back to the notion of being the MCEO. I read on an internet forum about Blacksmith’s relationship with Warner Brothers. And I was curious as to how you’re reacting to the news [I read in online forums] that Warner Brothers isn’t going to be distributing the future Blacksmith titles. I was wondering if you could elaborate on that.

TALIB KWELI: Well, actually, that’s not complete true, and I had a problem with Warner [Brothers] over that because I felt that they should’ve did a better job at cleaning that up. But my album with Reflection Eternal with DJ Hi-Tek is furnished by Blacksmith Music, and it’s still coming out through Warner Brothers, and it’s on track and it’s on schedule, and we ready to put it out.

I also deal with Warner Brothers as a solo artist. Keep in mind, I only put out one album with them as a solo artist. That deal was a three album deal. And that was a successful album. The deal as far as Reflection Eternal and Blacksmith is not going anywhere. It is what it is. Now as far as Jean Grae, Jean Grae was upstreamed by Warner Brothers, but right now, what we’re we’re just tryin’ to do is figure out which situation through Warner, which arm of Warner, whether it’s the one that I’m on, or the Asylum situation ‘coz of Todd Moscowitz is now the head of Urban at Warner Brothers and if it’s coming out through there. We’re just tryin’ to figure out what makes sense for Jean Grae’s album.

Strong Arm Steady’s album will be coming out through ADA [the Alternative Distribution Alliance], which is another chapter of Warner, which we put out the Jean Grae Jenius album last year through. And also look out for our participation in the Blu situation. Blacksmith as of marketing, with the online stuff, you’re goin’ to be hearing more about Blu from LA, who just signed with Warner Brothers. And you’re gonna be hearin’ more about John Forte.

DJ MATT WERNER: And also I’ve seen that there’s been a number of mixtapes. There was a Coast 2 Coast Mixtape that was just recently released on your site. I was wondering if you could talk a little about this March Mixtape Madness that you’re hosting.

TALIB KWELI: Yeah, that’s my man Fillet Harrison [Donald Harrison], he’s a DJ up in Portland. With him and his homeboys, they have this Coast 2 Coast Mixtape, where every month, they have a different artist host a mixtape, and this month, it just happens to be me.

DJ MATT WERNER: I was wondering, is there any question, or an area that I haven’t covered yet that you’d like to address or bring up?

TALIB KWELI: No, besides Idle Warship, that the Party Robot album at this point is still independent. I don’t know if it’s gonna remain independent or if we’re going to put it out through our label or whatnot, but Idle Warship is an extremely, extremely exciting experience for me at this point, doing these shows with this live band.

DJ MATT WERNER: And also, I was reading that you had participated in experimental theater at NYU. And I was wondering if this was accurate. Just ‘coz other artists I’ve interviewed on my show who include Saul Williams, and other people who’ve been on the Def Poetry Jam with you like George Watsky, Ise Lyfe, Dahlak Brathwaite, and all of them have somewhat of a theater background. And I’ve seen that with more of the “conscious rappers,” or people who have amazing stage performances, they have this theater background, and I was curious if this background, you think has influenced how you perform onstage.

TALIB KWELI: Yeah, I think without a doubt. The thing about theater, especially experimental theater is that you have to embody everything you’re doin’. Like you have to…You get a character, right? But you have to create everything about this character, like the backstory and the blocking, like the way the character is gonna speak and talk and everything like that. And it’s like, that’s what you do when you come up with a rap name, like you create a character. But your character is based on some sort of fantasy version of yourself. You know what I’m sayin’? So it’s like, it’s really the same skill-set. The only difference is you have to write rhymes that go along with the attitude of this character.

DJ MATT WERNER: The thing that I like is that you keep it real, where you just use your own name. And so it’s not like you have this caricature of yourself. But you do come across a lot more fresh and a lot more real than the kind of emcess who’re frontin’ and have this whole image of them set up.

TALIB KWELI: I’m glad I’m havin’ that effect because even though I do use my real name, who you see onstage is definitely a caricature of who I am in real life. And you know, who I am in real life is somethin’ that I strive to protect at times. I’m a lot funnier and I’m a lot angrier in real life. You know I’m sayin’? I’m a lot more balanced as an artist. You try to present a perfect picture of yourself, even in exposing your history. Some artists…I don’t have no real bad, no real traumatic thing in my past to expose. But artists who expose that sometimes, they expose it sometimes with the intention that you’ll feel it.

And with me, the stuff that I reveal, whether it be my social views, or how I feel about somethin’, it’s with the intention that people will be like “Yeah, I feel you.” That is something that drives you on the ego side as an artist. And that’s somethin’ that’s real, but as an artist, as your stage persona, you try to present the best version, I think.

DJ MATT WERNER: And going with this stage persona and presenting your image, one trend that’s been very popular in the last couple of years is the use of Auto-Tune, with people doctoring their vocals. And I was curious-have you pursued Auto-Tune, are you thinkin’ about doin’ that, or are you just gonna keep with your fresh voice?

TALIB KWELI: Auto-Tune: you know makin’ music is not a paint-by-numbers thing, so it’s not a thing where someone could be like “Okay, I’m gonna test Auto-Tune this year, or I’ma try….” If it works for the song, it works for the song. And there are certain songs where it certainly works for. The problem is not Auto-Tune. The problem is people’s overuse of it. Same thing with conscious rap back in the day. Back in the days when PE [Public Enemy] was on top, and you had…[indecipherable]… KRS One, you had a lot of people doin’ conscious rap, positive rap. Not all of it was good, though, and a lot of it felt fake. And so it made the way for groups like NWA. And so they blew up, and then you had a lot of copycat gangstas, and so then that felt forced and fake. And that’s the just the way things go naturally, I think.

DJ MATT WERNER: Thank you very much for taking time out of your busy touring, CEO, emceeing schedule…

TALIB KWELI: [laughs]

DJ MATT WERNER: …to talk with us here on Fresh Air: The Alternative.

TALIB KWELI: Thank you.

DJ MATT WERNER: Thank you very much for taking time out.

TALIB KWELI: No problem.

[For more podcasts and show transcripts from DJ Matt Werner, including his interview with Saul Williams, please visit Fresh Air: The Alternative at http://freshair.org.uk and DJ Matt Werner's website at http://mattswriting.com]

DJ Matt Werner’s award-winning interview with the ground-breaking poet, musician, and actor Saul Williams was recorded on November 21, 2008 and originally aired on Fresh Air: The Alternative on December 9, 2008.

Topics and ideas discussed in the interview include Saul Williams’ third album, the Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!, collaborating with Trent Reznor, esoteric religions, William Butler Yeats, poetry as an intuitive artform, what is beyond words, Walt Whitman, how we are so much more than how we are perceived, and Barack Obama. This hour-long phone interview and feature on Saul Williams also features much of his poetry and music, including: Sha Clack Clack, Black Stacey, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Wine, Twice the First Time, Release, Amethyst Rocks, 1987, and Children of the Night.

A PDF transcript by Korin McGinty of this interview can be downloaded here.

You can download this podcast from iTunes by clicking here.

For more on Saul Williams, please visit http://saulwilliams.com.

(Right click and select “Save Link As” to download the large, 139 MB mp3 audio file)

Click on the player to listen to the hour-long phone interview and feature on Saul Williams.

This transcript can be downloaded as a PDF by clicking here

The audio of DJ Matt Werner’s interview with Saul Williams can be found here

DJ MATT WERNER: Saul, I was wondering if you could come on the line now and discuss a little bit about your latest album Niggy Tardust.

SAUL WILLIAMS: Sure, well the name of the album is The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust! And it’s a concept album where I am essentially exploring the idea and reality of liberation, of freedom, and what it means in the face of, or under the context of our existing definition of race, and how that relates to music and identity, and what have you.

It’s essentially a very danceable dialogue, you know, self-exploration, and the need to step beyond the boundaries imposed by society as far as what people come to expect of someone when they assume that they’re from a particular place or look a particular way or talk a particular way, or what have you. So yeah it’s basically me finding the freedom to just break out of my shell and make the music that I want to make regardless of the executive who says, “Well this doesn’t actually fit the formulaic mold of what we’re expecting from you, of what we would need in order to get this to these people over here.” It’s about just breaking those boundaries.

DJ MATT WERNER: How was it collaborating with Trent Reznor on the album?

SAUL WILLIAMS: Working with Trent was great. Trent was someone who never stood in the way of any of my creative ideas on anything. And everything that I brought to the table, he’d be beaming with excitement about and basically just helped me facilitate getting those ideas executed in ways that really translated for the listener. So he was extremely helpful

DJ MATT WERNER: So the first track we’re going to play is your single Black Stacey, and I was wondering if you could introduce the track and talk a little bit about how you came to write it. I’m curious as to how autobiographical the track is.

SAUL WILLIAMS: Right. Well firstly Black Stacey is not from Niggy Tardust. Black Stacey is from the album before Niggy Tardust which is called Saul Williams. Although it’s related to Niggy Tardust in that, that’s the beginning of me wanting to break free of the constraints of race, or the paradigm of race, what have you. So my middle name is Stacey and the song is about simply learning to be comfortable in your own skin and that’s it. I think that’s all you need to know.

DJ MATT WERNER: So this is Black Stacey by Saul Williams.

[Black Stacey plays]

DJ MATT WERNER: You were just listening to Black Stacey by Saul Williams. And here at Fresh Air, on DJ Matt Werner’s show we’re very privileged to have Saul Williams on a pre-recorded phone interview. Saul, the next track we’re going to play is the cover you did of U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday and I’m curious, do you know, has U2 listened to it? Have you heard what their feedback is on it?

SAUL WILLIAMS: I know that Bono has heard it, and I know he liked it enough to let us put it out. [laughs]. Yes, I know that he’s heard it. Aside from that, my reason for doing this song was simply because I grew up listening to it and always related to it as if it was about I guess the struggle that was happening in the United States with African-Americans. I was not as informed about what was happening in Ireland at the time when I first heard the song. And when I learned about it, it just confirmed my perspective of struggle. And being [in a] struggle, regardless of where you face it, how you face it, people that go through some sort of institutionalized oppression or suppression can oftentimes relate to one another, and so I’ve often related to a lot of the music coming out of Ireland for whatever reasons, and this song is a prime example of that. I chose to cover it on Niggy Tardust just cuz I love it.

DJ MATT WERNER: And I think it is an incredible cover of Sunday Bloody Sunday. You’re about to listen to Saul Williams only on Fresh Air.

[Sunday Bloody Sunday plays]

DJ MATT WERNER: You were just listening to Sunday Bloody Sunday the cover by Saul Williams and that is on his latest album The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust! And the way you disseminated this album was quite unique through an online method. It was very non-traditional, similar to how Radiohead disseminated their album. I was wondering if you could describe how you came to release it how you did.

SAUL WILLIAMS: Well yeah, we actually released our album about 10 days after Radiohead released their album. And so it was an idea that friends and I had had very close to the same time that Radiohead had had, when we simply realized that there was a window that was open in the industry and in our ability to be able to reach our fan base at this time without the aid of a label initially. So we decided to just essentially offer it for a very cheap price as a download. We gave people the option of paying for it, or not. So they could pay it-they could get it for free or they could pay 5 dollars and choose the quality of the download that they wanted. We were also able to include artwork and lyrics in their download. And all that led up to our physical release, which we did with The Fader Magazine and Label and yeah it’s worked perfectly for us it’s really gone well as far as the number of people we reached as the result of 1) Of course being able to offer it for free, 2) Being able to offer it at an inexpensive price, so that people who heard of the project and said, “Hmm, I think I want to try it out,” didn’t really have much difficulty in saying, “Ah, you know, I’ll spend the price of a soy latte to listen to this album.” It really works in our favor.

DJ MATT WERNER: And it’s been very popular indeed and if people want to download this album what website should they visit?

SAUL WILLIAMS: Well that’s the thing, once we made it commercially available in stores, and what have you, now it’s available in two places: in stores and on iTunes or Amazon or something like that. So now it’s at the official downloading places. We spent the first not year, but the first 8 months away from those avenues so that we could do it our own way, but now we’re in the mainstream retail places, so iTunes would probably be the best place to go or a store.

DJ MATT WERNER: So for my next question for you, I’m going to go back a little ways. Back to your Amethyst Rock Star album, and I’m going to play the end of your track Wine, and it’s one of my favorite poems of yours. And I’m going to shift focus a little bit because I’m a literature student. I’m working on my Master’s in English literature here at the University of Edinburgh where we broadcast Fresh Air, and one thing I’m fascinated about this song is the line, “We put language in zoos to observe caged thought and toss peanuts and pea-funk at intellect,” and I’ve always been curious as to what that means or what you were intending behind the meaning, because I’ve taken my own interpretation from it, but I’m curious what your take is.

SAUL WILLIAMS: Lao Tzu says, “The Tao that can be told can is not the eternal Tao.” And as someone who writes poetry it’s often been important to me to keep words themselves in perspective, to realize that although I may find myself capable of expressing an idea or a sentiment, that many of the greatest ideas or sentiments are very difficult, if not impossible to put into words. And that intellect itself-and it’s funny because poetry I would argue is not necessarily an intellectual art form it’s an intuitive art form, but because it uses words in the way that it does it’s usually admired by people who have some strong identification with the intellectual process. However I think that often it’s the intellect [that] can get in the way of understanding the poem or understanding love or the simplest most compassionate aspects of reality. It’s not your intellectual prowess that makes you say, “I don’t want to harm animals,” it’s your compassion. And so in many ways I believe that intellect is put up with not necessarily as high as a standard as many would place upon it. And so the poem says “we put language in zoos to observe caged thought.” It’s simply a way of saying that we must keep language and cleverness in perspective and realize that there’s something beyond that. There’s something intrinsically linked to our soul, and that linkage is beyond words, and that’s the goal of life, of art, of music and of poetry and of being itself.

DJ MATT WERNER: So you are about to listen to the end of Wine by Saul Williams off of his Amethyst Rock Star album.

[Wine plays]

DJ MATT WERNER: Saul Williams, to continue with this discussion-I don’t mean to get too academic with it-but I really enjoy studying literature, and some of what you’re saying reminds me of this text I’ve been reading this semester: it’s Jacques Derrida’s Of Grammatology, and it’s about this whole notion of deconstructing language. One thing that I think a lot of your poetry gets at is how words lack the ability to express the nature of true reality. In your track Release, you have some amazing lines like, “These words are not tools of communication, they are shards of metal dropped from eight-story windows.” And then you also talk about “There isn’t a mantra to fill my being in those moments,” and a lot of that it seems to connect back with even your early writing like the poem you wrote:

they say
that i am a poet
i wonder what they would say
if they saw me
from the inside
i bottle
emotions
and place them
into the sea
for others
to unbottle
on distant shores
i am unsure
as to whether
they ever reach
and for that matter
as to whether
i ever get
my point
across
or my love

And it seems like in the decade I’ve been following your work, there’s this sort of struggle between reconciling language with how reality presents itself.

SAUL WILLIAMS: Yes, I think you have voiced it perfectly. There has been this struggle, although it’s not something that I seem to ponder too much nowadays. I think that being able to clearly articulate a thought, a feeling, an idea is possible. I believe that it’s possible. But within that, I think that there’s also a need to raise one’s ability to confront a topic, an issue, whether gracefully or ungracefully, but I think in that attempt to articulate something, there has to be a strong enough desire to want to articulate it because some things-well they say some things are left better unsaid-but truly I think there’s some things that we may be afraid of saying because of their resonant power, and so there are things that I’ve dodged and things that I haven’t wanted to say or haven’t felt ready to embody them or to hear them aloud, or what have you. But yeah, it’s certainly been a journey and that journey has included that struggle with wrestling with the [Saul gives a long exhale], just the ability of words, as you put it, to express truly what’s being felt. [pause] But I think that dance itself is poetry, you know?

DJ MATT WERNER: And in addition to your playing with language and your infusing with many different sort of linguistic and poetic traditions, another thing I’ve noticed is your interpretation and playing with many different religious and spiritual traditions. Just this summer I had the opportunity to collaborate with a Persian scholar on translating Rumi’s Book of the Sun. And in it there’s a lot of pantheistic Sufi philosophy and collaborating with this Persian scholar, a lot of the ideas that we were talking about in Rumi’s work, I’d first encountered actually in you work, like when off that track Wine you say “All words and worlds are metaphors of me.” And I’m curious as to what different religious influences you’ve had, because I know your father’s a preacher.

SAUL WILLIAMS: Well you know, that’s really been where my interest has really gravitated towards over the years. It’s in investigating all these different religions and what have you. As you put, I was raised Christian. My father was a Baptist minister. He pastored a Baptist church, and with time, and when I was a teenager I began questioning that religion. Not really the teachings of Jesus at all, but just the institution surrounding that and those teachings, and realized that institution itself seemed at odds with what I felt in my gut. And when I started exploring a lot of more esoteric Christianity and teachings surrounding that, and then I started studying its roots in Judaism and Egyptology and then of course being exposed also to a lot of Middle Eastern writers, and what have you.

Well one, like Rumi and Hafiz and so the Sufi writers-which is like an esoteric brand of Mohammadism, so to speak-really became influential. And then of course Hinduism and Buddhism, the Vedas, and all of those things. I’ve definitely traveled in terms of wanting to grasp and experience other people’s expression of connection to spirit. It’s all been of interest to me. I think all of these religions have really grasped at articulating something clearly for man to be able to identify with his spirit and express that and enhance that with time, and that’s been important to me, and interesting.

DJ MATT WERNER: In exploring these different esoteric religious and spiritual traditions, I found there seems to be some parallels between your poetry and that of William Butler Yeats like with his poem The Second Coming and also Walt Whitman as well, in the listing in some of your tracks like Release and Coded Language, those seem to very much have that Whitmanian quality to them.

SAUL WILLIAMS: Well Whitman is definitely very influential, and I’ve definitely read some Yeats as well. And these older poets have definitely opened a door for me to, [Saul gives a long exhale] I guess, to step beyond. And they have like me I think there is this thing that’s being so deeply entrenched in this Christian society and seeing something deep within it and something well beyond it as well, and wanting to explore and using words to do that and realizing that the writing itself and the reading of the writing in my case often is a form of ritual. So that I look at much of my writing as a form of incantation. Or I’m aiming to essentially call on or release a certain amount of energy, of power through the recitation of this piece. And so quite simply I guess sometimes I go there in the writing in trying to crack open the vortex. I think Whitman for example is someone who’s kept that really in perspective and kept very grounded in his perspective, and I really admire him for that. Whereas Yeats seemed to be a lot more embedded in the same thing that I have to fight against sometimes, which is that Christian upbringing.

DJ MATT WERNER: The final track I’m going to play is Twice the First Time, which has the reference to the Sha-Clack-Clack poem that was famous in the movie Slam. And so we’ve covered a little bit about your linguistic and religious explorations, but I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the racial dimensions of your poetry, and also how that connects with Barack Obama’s election. Because I know you released recently a track right before the election on telling people to get out and vote, but it was done quite in a unique style.

SAUL WILLIAMS: Yeah, being born in this nation, I think that it’s been implicit that change is coming, and what have you, but at the same time there’s been a consistent need to express for many that we are so much more than how we are perceived. And you know that poem Sha-Clack-Clack is about that, it’s about realizing we’re so much more than the history that’s been taught us about ourselves, and I think it’s been necessary to crack that shell for people to begin to think outside of the box and imagine what sort of future or present is possible. And I think Barack Obama symbolizes that perfectly.

My latest album’s called Niggy Tardust, and I supply him as a hybrid, as somebody that embodies the best of many worlds. And in the same way, I think that’s what Barack Obama symbolizes, this sort of hybrid sensibility, and that people from many walks of life can see themselves reflected through him. And that is something that you know, not only in our art, but in our being and realizing that standing under the banner of race or nationality as if we are simply one thing, is a limiting approach to reality. And this poem is one of my early ways of beginning that quest of expression and shift in perspective. I wrote Sha-Clack-Clack in 1996, the song [Twice the First Time] came out in 1997, I believe, Slam came out in 1998, and here we are now.

DJ MATT WERNER: Saul, thank you so much for your time. You have been listening to DJ Matt Werner’s exclusive interview with Saul Williams it was recorded over the phone on November 21, 2008.

[For more podcasts and show transcripts from DJ Matt Werner, including his interview with Talib Kweli, please visit Fresh Air: The Alternative at http://freshair.org.uk and DJ Matt Werner's website at http://mattswriting.com]

DJ Matt Werner’s interview with hip hop artist Ise Lyfe originally aired on Fresh Air: The Alternative on March 3, 2009.

Ise Lyfe wrote and performed in the best play I saw in 2008, a one-man play entitled “Who’s Krazy.” Having followed Ise’s early work in Youth Speaks since he was a teenager, I was excited to have a phone interview this author, educator, hip hop artist, actor, and community organizer from East Oakland, California.

In the hour-long radio broadcast, Ise Lyfe talks about the commodification of poverty related to the exploitation of black culture in the U.S., the BART police shooting of Oscar Grant, his latest album Prince Cometh, his forthcoming book Pistols and Prayers and forthcoming mixtape Take Them to School, the fears of Obama’s assassination held by people in East Oakland during the 2008 presidential campaign, and how Obama’s election is not the end of racial struggle in the U.S.

The show also features a dispatch from Joe Sciarrillo on the New Year’s shooting of Oscar Grant by a BART police officer in Oakland, California, and the subsequent protests. Amanda Mohammed speaks at the end of the show about her March 13, 2009 event in Berkeley, California raising awareness on the genocide in Darfur, Sudan.

For more on Ise Lyfe, please visit his websites: http://iselyfenation.com and http://www.myspace.com/iselyfe

(Right click and select “Save Link As” to download the large, 125 MB mp3 audio file)

Click on the player to listen to the hour-long interview and feature on Ise Lyfe.

DJ Matt Werner’s interview with hip hop artist Dahlak Brathwaite originally aired on Fresh Air: The Alternative on November 18, 2008.

In this 40-minute interview and feature on Dahlak Brathwaite, Dahlak discusses his Kanye West tribute album Commencement, touring with Ill-Literacy (his group with Adriel Luis, Nico Cary and Ruby Veridiano-Ching), his views on race in the United States, life after graduating from UC Davis, and Barack Obama. The interview also features 6 of Dahlak’s tracks and poems, including A Peculiar Evolution, Take It Away, Black Genius, Fight! Fight! Fight! (with George Watsky), Do It, and Never Know.

For more on this dynamic MC and spoken-word performer, musician, writer, and theater actor Dahlak Brathwaite, please see his websites: http://www.thisisdahlak.com/ and http://www.ill-literacy.com/

(Right click and select “Save Link As” to download the large, 84 MB mp3 audio file)

Click on the player to listen to the 40-minute interview and feature on Dahlak Brathwaite.

DJ Matt Werner’s exclusive interview with beatboxer, singer, live-looper, and voice actor extraordinaire Kid Beyond originally aired on Fresh Air: The Alternative on November 25, 2008.

In addition to playing his live cover of Wandering Star by Portishead and I Shall Be Free off of his album Amplivate, the interview also features his voice-overs for video games like Call of Duty, Sims (and how he improvised speaking Simlish), Guitar Hero and American Idol video games, and Nokia commercials. Kid Beyond also showcases his impersonations of Barack Obama, Don LaFontaine, Thurl Ravenscroft, and many more.

This in-depth interview covers many topics, ranging from Kid Beyond’s beginnings as a performer in an a cappella group at Brown University, to joining The House Jacks, being signed to Warner Brothers and almost being made into a boy band, to his solo touring, live looping gigs, to his exploration of Buddhism and the inspiration for his song I Shall Be Free, as well as his work fundraising for Barack Obama in 2008.

For more on Kid Beyond and his EP Amplivate, please visit http://www.kidbeyond.com

Note: All of the male voices and music performed in this 50-minute interview (besides DJ Matt Werner’s voice) including the commercials, are done by Kid Beyond using only his voice and live looping. This interview was also featured on Human Beatbox.com

(Right click and select “Save Link As” to download the large, 109 MB mp3 audio file)

Click on the player to listen to the 50-minute interview and feature on vocal artist Kid Beyond.

DJ Matt Werner’s exclusive interview with spoken-word artist George Watsky, originally aired on Fresh Air: The Alternative on November 11, 2008.

In this interview, rising hip hop sensation, writer, and performer George Watsky addresses his beef with Michael Cera, and his experiences performing on the Def Poetry Jam, and working with Robert Redford in sustainability. This podcast also features 6 of Watsky’s tracks and poems: Lonely Hearts Club, Half Jewish, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Fight! Fight! Fight! (with Dahlak Brathwaite), Run My Mouth, and his Michael Cera diss track.

Also, check out his website http://georgewatsky.com/ for some funny blog entries, like this one: The Whitest, Least Famous person performing at the NAACP Image Awards…. Also his popular stop-motion video for “I Got This Love” is below.

(Right click and select “Save Link As” to download the large, 89 MB mp3 audio file)

Click on the player to listen to the 40-minute interview and feature on writer and performing artist George Watsky.

DJ Matt Werner’s exclusive interview with Dave Smallen, originally aired on Fresh Air: The Alternative on March 17, 2009.

Many topics are covered, including Dave’s time touring the U.S. with Street to Nowhere while signed with Capitol Records, and his latest singles America and Every Time I Leave (I Leave for Good). In addition to these new tracks, additional songs played in the hour are off of the Charmingly Awkward album: Georgia, Can You Hear Me?, You Can’t Go to Sleep, and Tipsy.

Check out Dave Smallen’s latest tracks from his forthcoming album “Everything Changes & Nothing Changes” at: http://www.davesmallen.com/

(Right click and select “Save Link As” to download the large, 140 MB mp3 audio file)

Click on the player to listen to the hour-long interview with alternative rock songwriter and musician Dave Smallen.

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DJ Matt Werner’s exclusive interview with modern classical music composer Fr. Bruno Clifton, OP. Originally broadcast on Fresh Air: The Alternative on March 24, 2009.

In the interview and hour-long feature, Matt and Fr. Bruno Clifton discuss Fr. Bruno’s latest compositions for the New Edinburgh Orchestra, including “In the jars, dark liquid,” which is one of the three pieces he’s composing, inspired by Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy. Also discussed and played are Fr. Bruno’s other compositions, including “Letters for string quartet,” “Four Last Things IV,” and his “Stations of the Cross” piece, for which he plays the organ. Fr. Bruno talks about his musical training, having his work performed on BBC4, and how he integrates his passion for music with his vocation of being a Dominican friar.

Click here for a BBC article on Fr. Bruno Clifton.

(Right click and select “Save Link As” to download the large, 143 MB mp3 audio file)

Click on the player to listen to the hour-long interview with Fr. Bruno Clifton.