Matt Werner, writer & editor
Laura Tomlinson drew portraits for my forthcoming book Oakland in Popular Memory: Interviews with 12 cutting-edge artists from Oakland and beyond.
She drew the portraits in pencil of Chinaka Hodge, Dahlak Brathwaite, Dave Smallen, George Watsky, Ise Lyfe, K.Flay, Kid Beyond, MC Lars, Rafael Casal, Saul Williams, Talib Kweli, and Victor Vazquez. Interviews with each of these artists will be featured in Oakland in Popular Memory.
View the album on Google+
DJ Matt Werner’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Tribute Mixtape takes some of Dr. King’s best speeches and puts them to music.
Free download at http://djmattwerner.blogspot.com/2012/01/dr-martin-luther-king-jr-tribute.html
My interview with Oakland hip hop artist, playwright, and community educator Ise Lyfe was published on the literary website the Rumpus last month. Click here for the interview.
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…. He has a stop-motion video for I Got This Love and a popular video called Pale kid raps fast:
(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.
Honoring the life and legacy of Senator Ted Kennedy, I made a mix to one of his most famous speeches: his 1980 Democratic Convention Speech, also known as “The Dream Shall Never Die.”
(Right click here and select “Save Link As” to download the MP3)
Kennedy’s speech is mixed to Letting Go (Dutty Love) by Jamaican American rapper Sean Kingston.
This was inspired by when I saw Ted Kennedy deliver a rousing speech in support of Barack Obama at Beebe Memorial Cathedral in Oakland, California on February 1, 2008.
I also made a remix to Robert F. Kennedy’s famous South Africa speech here: RFK in South Africa Remix
Fr. Bruno Clifton, who I interviewed back in March 2009 for Fresh Air about the world premiere of his composition “In the jars, dark liquid,” has a new composition entitled “At sunset, troubled light.” The second of three orchestra pieces inspired by Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy, “At sunset, troubled light” received its world premiere by the New Edinburgh Orchestra in Edinburgh, Scotland on June 12, 2010.
Fr. Bruno’s piece can be listened to at: http://mattswriting.com/At-sunset,-troubled-light.m4a
You can download the audio file by right clicking and selecting “Save link as.”
The orchestra piece is 9:30 minutes and is a 18.3 MB m4a audio file, which will play in iTunes.
Alternatively, a 22MB mp3 file can be downloaded by right clicking and selecting “Save link as” here: http://mattswriting.com/At-sunset,-troubled-light.mp3
