Music of the Week: 2

Roots Control - Inner Vision (Wordsound Recordings, 1996)

London Posse

I got my tickets for the London show on April 22nd a while ago. The day before Ish wrote me saying he put me on the guestlist +3 and asked if I could bring some newspapers in Arabic (!??) No problems of course all the tickets were put to good use and I brought my fiance, her friend, and my bros from London town (breakspears boys). We met the man himself in the venue about an hour before they went on stage. Just like in 2005, the legendary force behind some of the freshest music ever made was as affable, real, and charismatic as can be. We chatted for a while, can't remember it all but I did ask about his interest in learning Arabic. Butterfly responded with some feelings and sentiments hard to quote literally but I got the impression he had been blessed with apprehension of the role of the language as a means of transport. I asked whether his old album Ishmael Since 1999 would ever come out. Not only did he not have any copies of the songs any more but he also didn't know any one who had the album and asked if I knew anyone who did! He then confirmed another 'fear' of mine... a 2nd Cherrywine album had indeed been completed c.2005 and Ish similarly just let that recede into the past once Shabazz Palaces began to emerge. 'I've always been happy to just work on something and then let it go' is how he explained his admittedly healthy artistic attitude. Meanwhile us fans can only dream of unknown aural landscapes off-limits for the time being at least. He also mentioned how the tour van was broken into in Brussels and his laptop was stolen. That was a big shame since he had planned to perform SP songs on this tour. Tendai was supposed to come too but couldn't get his passport in time. We asked how he was enjoying London and he responded by expressing his like of the city: I missed him earlier in the day because he'd been out and managed to cover both the Tate Britain and the Tate Modern museums where he checked the exhibition by one of his favourite artists, Chris Ofili. My lady and I gave him a Yemeni mantle; it elated us to see him enrobed in it in his Norway MTV interview which is on vimeo (not really worth watching though... impressive how consistently, brilliantly mediocre MTV remains).

He dropped some hot crumbs of news about SP though: The next 2 albums are going to be released with a Shabazz Palaces feature-length film. There's more: it's being done in collaboration with Kahlil Joseph. And more: the man himself will be acting in it. You heard it here first.

It was good to see C-Know the Doodlebug too. He was on top form and full of good vibrations which he transmitted to the sold out crowd at the Jazz Cafe. I asked him if we'd ever hear some unreleased Digable b-sides and he responded that EMI had all the tapes so it was not beyond the limits of possibility. Anyway the show later that night was seismic. I think I heard some new rhymes that others won't hear until the new SP stuff drops. The band were decent, too: they are Cee-know's band and are all solid musicians. The drummer was particularly tasteful, and sounded supreme on 9th Wonder. You can hear the bassist and guitarist's side project here. Ish was on another level of intensity altogether, though. The crowd was feeling it and that seemed to take his performance to another plane. Afterwards, amidst the ruins on the dancefloor as a dazed crowd filtered out into the night the bassist opined that Ish is making the best stuff of his career at the moment. I could but nod, thankful to have witnessed thunder and lightning once again.

Poetry Inspired by SP

A close friend of mine penned this after hearing Shabazz Palaces and agreed to share. Check Yusuf Misdaq's work (poetry, music, fiction writing, and video documentaries) at his website. If any of you readers have some of your art which is inspired by or somehow related to SP, let us know...

This poem is inspired by the Shabazz Palaces project. Another poem likewise inspired by Ishmael Butler appears in Y. Misdaq's upcoming book of poems 'The Beautiful / Palace Prayers'.


Brandished polished pushers
Hexagram gram grammarian man
Motion marvel at the mansion Mercutio
Build and Guild, the Gilded crest waves of next
Flex spine-water-wisdom when it
Curves to freedom
Curving to freedominion dome-dome-delight
Full far away sands see the star-tipped turqoise
Crescent in the eye-sky
Grandio-galax.
Go for green-gallons of the
Ocean, sip down.


Y. Misdaq aka Yoshi, 2010.

Music of the Week: 1

My dissertation is due on 31st May and I'm very behind schedule; please excuse the lack of updates. I have much news and links to share, best of all I was blessed to spend some time with Ish during his stop in London touring with Doodlebug. All that to be related later. For now I'll commence sharing some music which listeners of Shabazz Palaces might dig.

Muslimgauze - Mullah Said (Staalplaat, 1998)

Mad Shows, Flows, Airplanes Overseas

Digable Planets are now on tour in western Europe!!! Thank you brothers for bringing the love to us here in this increasingly xenophobic corner of the world. I'll be at the London show, and am sure it'll be even better than their phenomenal 2005 appearance, also at the Jazz Cafe. Backed by UGO, who collaborated with Doodlebug back in the day. Dates:

9 Apr 2010, Bohannon, Berlin
10 Apr 2010, Stadtkeller, Linz
11 Apr 2010, Nexx, Brussels
14 Apr 2010, Nouveau Kasino, Paris
15 Apr 2010, Subway, Cologne
16 Apr 2010, Rust, Copenhagen
19 Apr 2010, Paradiso, Amsterdam
22 Apr 2010, Jazz Cafe, London
23 Apr 2010, Crawdaddy, Dublin
24 Apr 2010, MTV Europe, interview, Oslo

Canadian Tour in May: details TBA.

We All Go

Kevin Capp offers a review of Shabazz Palaces hometown debut back in January, bringing out something of the feel of the night. He should note that the headgear in question was a turban, not a 'headscarf'; the latter are worn by women. In the future we can talk about the divine symbolism of the turban. I need a scanner to depict what a Sheikh from Timbuktu explained about that style of turban; it was fascinating.


San Franciscans were treated to a Digable Planets w/Camp Lo show on March 25th. They were backed by Daru Jones's band, and there's a fascinating video clip on You Tube showing the musicians rehearsing the songs. Real musicians. They run through 9th Wonder and Jettin' but best of all offer a sweet take on the beloved and majestic Black Ego. Listen to the bassline as the chords change. Unparalelled. Talking of stupendous musicians, what happened to the Cherrywine players??


The Seattle Times' music writer Andrew Matson has been doing sterling work spreading the word about SP for a good while now via his blog Matson on Music. Last week he appeared on KUOW 94.9FM and discussed We All Go. His interpretation of the song is totally different to mine, and that is part of the magic... like he said, everyone feels an intimate connection to this music, like it was meant just for them. I'm looking forward to discussing the songs in more detail. Matson's view of it being about everyone going to the club together was something that never occurred to me. I always heard it as a reminder of life's transience. Hopefully we can all bring our own insights to the table and draw out some of the treasures within the palaces.

Who am I?

Graham from The Scroll of Bifurcating Considerations website has penned a nice piece on the chorus to Find Out, showing how it echoes Nietzsche in the belief that we shall 'become ourselves'. It's a thought-provoking analysis and I'm sure Ish knows Nietzsche (I don't) but "You shall become the person you are" seems a decidedly modern European sentiment. Let's contrast that with an aphorism this time from a non-European tradition, by Abdul Hakim Murad (aka Timothy Winter, Lecturer in Divinity at the University of Cambridge): "Islam is not about ‘being yourself’; it is about improving yourself."

The monoculture loves this vague notion of 'finding oneself'; it's a cliche, the man who drops his everyday life and goes off wandering aimlessly to 'find himself'. The idea is that we have the 'real me' buried deep within and that if we travel enough or immerse ourselves in whatever our 'self' tells us it wants for long enough, we'll be there. But what is this 'self' we're being commanded to? Big question, but don't we all feel the self has many possibilities? For practical purposes we could say we have a higher possibility and a lower possibility. "Find out", then, in the sense of transcend your lower possibility, reach for your celestial self. I read an interview with Ish once where he distilled his philosophy. If memory serves it was "elevate. relate. enlighten". Elevation and transcendence are at the heart of all true art and all authentic religion. It's an epic battle to turn your back on that lower possibility. You feel a "pain in your neck, comes from staring at stars" but who said transcendence was easy? Moreover, as another of Shabazz's themes remind us, "ain't promised daylight". Life is fast. My friend's little brother passed away in his sleep a few months ago, he was 24 years old, healthy, and happy. But his heart simply stopped beating and that was that.

Find out. The urgency with which he repeats those words is palpable. The monoculture or "depraved devil's heart system", with its marketing men will welcome the ego and ensure it stays super-sized, but listen to the chorus again. The emphasis is on those two words "find out", not on "you" or "love" or "want" or "need". Ish is clearly taking the spotlight off the ego and its desires and shining it onto the path.

The second part of Graham's piece is about how if you look at the last word of each line in the chorus it can be reread in fascinating ways. This is beautiful. I realised the same thing when I transcribed the lyrics to Rebirth of Slick ten years ago for the sole Digable Planets website during that maddening dry spell. The first words of the first eight lines are: we, them, us, you, he, she, our, they; and of the next eight: who, where, why, when, what, how, was, and finally after all those questions, "'cause". Repeated listens can reveal new musical details and that has always been true of Ish's work, but to me the amazing thing was just finding out more about life, black music, african-american history, and thus finally 'getting' many of (though still nowhere near all) those references on Blowout Comb for instance. Transcribing lyrics has to be added as a third way in which we can engage with these messages.

Q: What's wrong with going off wandering?
A: Don't get me wrong; I'm all for wandering and getting free but if it's an important journey you have to know where you're going or you might get lost!

Q: Where can I find the interview with that quotation from Butterfly?
A: Brian Coleman's Check the Technique: Liner notes for hip-hop junkies (Villard Books, 2007) Its illuminating interview has Butterfly and Doodlebug speaking on what was going on around the time Reachin' came together.