This interview took place in Stockholm on June 20, 2002.  Aisha provided her views on a number of topics related to the music of African people in America to me, ExiledOne.  She had points to make on its impact in the world, and the forces of exploitation that threaten the music and culture.

 

Q.      I would like to speak with you about your music, and music in general.  You have come up with a term.  What is the Fake Realness ?

 

A.      The Fake Realness is basically about people who, on the surface, pretend to be real and progressive, but, who are really about chasing dollars and money.  They are ”entertainers”, meaning that they will do whatever the record or music industry tells them to do.  So, if the record company thinks that it’s a good marketing ploy to have an artist who talks about a strong black nation, they’ll produce that.  And then, on another CD, the same artist will be directed to call women ’bitches and hoes’, or tell people that everyone should salute the American flag, or whatever, you know?  And these artists are presented as being radical, free-thinking and, of course, the paramount of the ’movement’.  People are taught to look up to them and regard them as progressive, grassroots and everything.  They are not really grassroots.  A lot them are privileged, and they are a manufactured product of the corporations, not anybody who is really connected to the people or about the struggle.

 

Q.      When you say the people, who are you referring to?

 

A.      African people in the States and other places too.

 

Q.      Concerning Hustler’s Revolution, which is the title track of your second CD, which you’ve done in Sweden-when you say it’s a “people’s revolution”…and you are saying these things about the people that many would say should be respected, professionals.  What’s that all about? 

 

A.      Well, it’s back to the Fake Realness!  In the 60’s, The Black Panther Party and other people, worked on what they called ’the principle of ten’.  This was just ten people who organized ten other people, and so forth.  And if you went into the office of the Black Panther Party, you would come out with food, clothing and some kind of help, because they were about food, clothing, shelter and defense – it was practical help and organizing.

 

People today in America, and other places, are not about any of this stuff, it’s the Fake Realness.  You have phony organizations that are funded by the same governments and corporations that they say they are opposed to.  So, if you go to these organizations for help, they follow the agenda, just like the entertainers, of the corporations or government.  So many organizations are not giving practical help or support to anybody in the community who needs it 

 

Q.      And this is directly opposed to the way things were, say, forty or fifty years ago, when there was no government funding for  anything that the people might do?  Is that correct?

 

A.        Yes.

 

Q.      Now, how can people appreciate Soul Blues and Jazz, how can they support the musicians?

 

A.      People can support musicians by purchasing CDs and attending shows.  No one  should make bootleg copies of independent CDs.  If somebody is signed with a big label that’s one thing.  But, what people don’t seem to understand is that, if you’re an independent artist, you have put up your own money to produce a CD, and in order for you to survive, you have to get a certain amount of money back.  People need to be educated about supporting their own. 

For example, people would never expect the printing company that prints the color copies of the CD covers, or the CD manufacturers to give away their products.  But they expect the independent artist to pay the CD manufacturer, the printing company, buy state of the art computer equipment, pay for music school, and many other expenses, and then give their CD away to the public for free or below cost.  This doesn’t make any sense.  So, I think that people need to educate themselves about the whole economic process and support artists in the correct way. 

 

Also people to need to understand, what Sun Ra said, they should support things that are good for them, not things that are against them.  It’s like I say in one of my songs, people are paying money to see their own demise and their own destruction, on stages and screens.  It's simple, they need to stop doing it.  A, lot of jazz clubs and festivals refuse to even hire African-American musicians; and it’s our music.  All over the world these people won't hire us.  We  should stop going. 

 

So many people go to these different jazz clubs, and then they complain about the way that they’ve been treated, how the music stinks, and the fact that we aren't allowed to play it.  Well, people should stop going!  And they should do what people did in the 60’s, and that is, to do things in their basements if they have to, do things outdoors if they have to, but people need to give their money to the independent artists who are doing something to uphold the culture and uplift the community.  They should stop supporting these corporate rubber-stamped people and institutions that are just racist and that are tearing them and their community down.

 

Q.      It sounds as if there many musicians who have the viewpoints that you have, and that there are many just waiting for the...I guess, we could call, the ordinary music customer, to be better educated.

 

A.      Well, that’s right, and people have to be educated, because the sad part about the average musician is that they don’t know anything about business and they are not generally involved in the education process.  So many times they can’t produce CDs or they end up getting ripped off trying to do so.  You have business people and you have creative people.  Musicians are generally creative people.  These days you find mainly White musicians, and some others, who do a lot of business for themselves, and that’s for a particular reason.  But a lot of our people come out of a cultural, creative tradition, and it’s very difficult for those people to organize themselves and whatnot.  It’s very difficult and expensive for an independent artist who’s African so-called American to produce a CD. 

 

The public has to be made to see that when an ordinary musician organizes himself or herself to make a CD, it’s usually a quality product that he or she has put a lot into.  And usually it's well worth buying.  People should just support independent artists.  It’s very simple.

 

People also have to realize that many African independent artists do not have the organization behind them that a lot of White musicians do; the management, the society and all of that kind of stuff.  

 

If people hear someone who is great they should just support by attending shows and buying CDs – that’s it!!!  They should stop expecting for the CD to look like something produced by Elektra Records or something in 17 colors on the slickest of paper, you know what I mean?  If it’s good, quality music, just buy it.  Just because the poster advertising the show doesn’t have fifteen colors in it doesn’t mean that the show is not good.  If somebody produces their own show, people should just support it, you know?  And drop all of this, bullshit, of expecting independent people to have the kind of money to do the same promotions that these racist record companies provide.

 

Q.      Who are some musicians and artists whom you have benefited from, or cultural workers, and maybe you can explain what that means; people that you have admired over the years?

 

A.      Well, I think Sun Ra is definitely someone whom I admire, because, way back before there was this cross-over stuff, which is a bunch of racism too, Sun Ra had his own record company.  I think it was the 40’s, wasn’t it?  Of course, these big record companies weren’t promoting Sun Ra, so he hand painted his own records and sold them, and became world famous. 

James Brown promoted and funded a lot of his own shows.  I read a book where he talked about booking  places like Madison Square Garden with his own money, because the record companies wouldn't do it.  He took all the risks.  These are the kind of people I look up to, people who do not wait for the record industry to tell them what to do, like in the case of James Brown.  I don’t agree with everything that he’s done, but, in this book, he talks about how Polydor Records ruined his sound.  And, that’s a really good lesson for me and a lot of people that came after that generation, we should know what to expect. 

 

We have the lessons in front of us and people don’t have any excuses.  By now we should know what’s wrong with the picture.  So, those are the people that I admire.  My uncle Tal, (Talley Beatty) is another person, he was a pioneer of Black dance.  He did choreography for Alvin Ailey and a lot of other people.  He too, is an example, in my opinion.  

He always told me that it doesn’t matter if there was one person in the audience, or a thousand, you perform the same way, because you never know who the one person is.  These are the kind of lessons  that you never forget. 

 

Q.      There’s a famous musician who has spent a number of years not too far from us, location-wise, here in Europe, Archie Shepp.  He has said that he is an anti-fascist artist.  Do you have any comments about this?

 

A.      Well, I’m not sure what he meant by that, but, in my opinion, this whole music industry bullshit is a bunch of fascism, you know?  Like I said, if you look at most of these jazz clubs and these so-called jazz festivals, they have just what we had in the 70’s in the workplace, a couple of token African American famous acts, and then the rest of these people are White or other people.  They don’t even want us to play our own music, define our culture in any way, or teach people about it.  They don’t want us to have anything at all to say.  How can you describe that as anything except fascism?  When people don’t want you to have any kind of opinion, you’re not asked  anything about what they’re doing with your culture, or anything like that, and you’re persecuted when you speak out, how can you describe that as anything but fascism?

 

Q.      Why is what is being called soul, or neo soul, today in 2002, not Soul?

 

A.      Well, because, basically, Soul music, in my opinion, is mixture of Blues Jazz and Gospel, and it comes from the African American experience.  I’ll repeat that.  From the African American experience.  You know, Soul music is the experience of our people, Black people in America, who came over on those terrible slave ships, as they call them, and who had to make something different because we weren’t allowed to deal with our traditional African culture.  That’s where Soul music came from.  It became popular in the 1960’s and 70’s, when people were singing about political issues.  And people were letting their feelings and their emotions come out in the music. 

 

What these people are doing today in Europe, America and Canada and everywhere else has nothing to do with Soul music!  They’re not African American, they don’t know anything about our history, they don’t know anything about us, and it doesn’t have any Soul in it.  It’s nasal and doesn’t come from the gut, or have any foundation.

 

Personally, I think it needs to have another category, when these people try to deal with what they call Soul music, ’cause it has nothing to do with what Soul music is.  Soul music is a cultural product of the experience of our people in America, so how can you take somebody who is Swedish or Lithuanian or German, and say they are a Soul singer?  It’s impossible! 

 

You know, it would be like me saying I’m a Lithuanian folk singer because I took a course and learned something about Lithuanian folk music at a Swedish folk music institute.  That’s not real, and nobody would accept it.  That’s the folk music of those people which comes out of their experience, and everybody understands that.  So how do you get a Swedish soul singer?  There’s no such thing.  When you learn about European music you are forced to learn about the roots of the music, where the composers come from, the sociology, the history.  But when it comes to our music these things are totally ignored or defined by racist white people.

 

Q.      That’s very interesting, it correlates to some things I’ve been reading that Ray Charles and others have said about the music.  The late Curtis Mayfield, born, like you in Chicago,-it’s pretty apparent that he was a genius...Now despite him not finishing high school and being said to be unable to read music, he led a consciousness) raising artistic wave during the 60’s and the 1970’s.  Do you see this happening for young Africans in America one day?

 

A.      Music being used as a consciousness raising effort?  I think it has been used over the generations like that, which is why I don’t believe that  a lot of White people can deal with Soul music.   I think that in its true form it’s the cultural expression of African people in America. 

 

It’s just like the drum that was used in Africa as a means of communication, but also used as a weapon, to tell people when there was going to be a rebellion, and so forth, Soul music is the same thing.  It has inspired people to fight, it has inspired people to be strong.  And what you have now is a water-downed distortion of the music and culture designed specifically to prevent people from fighting!!!! 

People have been beaten down to the point where some don’t have strength to fight anymore, partly because they don’t have their culture.  It’s in the hands of the racist, the greedy the unjust and people who are either too young to understand it, or beat-down musicians who won’t say anything.  That’s the biggest problem. 

 

Nonetheless, I think a lot of people are trying to bring about this, like you said, this wave of music that will inspire people, and help people to be strong again, and I’d like to think that I’m part of that.  But, in order for people to get this music, they’re going to have to drop the corporate bullshit that they have in their minds, and again, if somebody like myself, or some of the other people that are independent, are presented people should simply support us by buying our CDs, coming to gigs and getting into our music, not by grinning, talking trash and make bootleg copies. 

 

This is how Atlantic and Capitol and all these record companies got big, because African people in the States bought the music!  They (the people) can do the same thing for us today, the independent artists.  So, I think that it will come about, but I think that people have to want a change and they have to want to do something different than just being about, you know, glossy, materialistic bullshit stuff.  They have to be about their own culture and a meaningful cultural exchange if they are white or another race.

By a meaningful cultural exchange I mean real multiculturalism where the people themselves are allowed to define and share their own culture and get something in return from other people in the world who want to share culture.  This has happened with our friends in Sweden, Wales and a few in Canada, I believe, because they help us to be heard and they support us by their actions. 

 

Q.      Nina Simone, in order to maintain a steady gig, in the 1950s, pretty much, had to learn to sing, as well as play the piano.  She did, and of course, creatively she grew, and she went on to be known around the world.  Can you relate to this?

 

A.      Yes I can!  Because when I moved to Canada, in 1998, and when I started my music business there in 1999, there wasn’t anybody who I had met in Toronto, that could play the music properly in terms of being a rhythm accompanist, like a guitar or pianist.  It was mostly these arrogant White people who called themselves jazz musicians who couldn’t play worth shit, really.  You know, everything’s fast and loud, no feeling and no dynamics.  And then people were afraid of what I was saying, of this particular message, so it was like maybe they’ll come to the gig and maybe they won’t, you know, all this crazy stuff. 

 

So, I was put in the same position as Nina Simone, in a way, only in a foreign country with a potentially hostile audience!  If I wanted to do gigs and have concerts and talk about the music and have some kind of work, I had to learn to play piano for myself.  So, I can really relate to that, and I’ve been able to travel to places like Europe and Canada to do gigs because I am able to play for myself.  It’s worked out well for me, but it was a big challenge.

 

Q.      I’ll throw a few names out there, and maybe you can give me your impressions?  Les McCann?

 

A.      I think Les McCann is fantastic.  He’s one of the people that I look up to in terms of someone who has a high level of understanding of the music, and someone who’s carrying on the culture.  I don’t know much about his personal life right now, or what he’s doing, but I think he’s certainly made a tremendous contribution to the music and he’s someone whose shoulders we all try to stand on, I think, as we try to take the music forward.

 

Q.      Shirley Horne?

 

A.      Shirley Horne is the same, you know? And I  think that she’s one of those people that does get to do a lot of these jazz festivals and all this other corporate crap, but deservingly so.  I think that she is also fantastic, it’s just that I just wish that there was some kind of access for musicians to learn from people like her and to be able to experience the culture.  I’ve never been able to afford to see Shirley Horne, because when I lived in Toronto, for example it cost $60 Canadian dollars.  I, like most people, couldn’t afford $60 Canadian dollars to see a performance.  So, I think, personally, that she’s really great, but also, that she should make herself accessible to those of us who are trying to come along and carry on this tradition.  Musicians who are part of the culture should have access to hear her play and sing as well as rich, white and other Canadians.

 

Q.      Assata Shakur, who is, like yourself, is a Political Exile, and Assata Shakur is in Cuba, she stated that a cultural war is going on.  Do you have any observations about this?

 

A.      Yeah, I think it’s really beautiful that Sister Assata Shakur would say that the cultural war is important, especially with all the things that she’s been through, and the stuff she’s still dealing with.  It is a cultural war, and like I said before, people learn to fight and be strong, because of their culture.  And this is what is so wicked, about what the global, corporate, music industry has done.  People are constantly being told that they don’t have a culture.  ”Everything’s for everyone” when it comes to people’s cultures – they are sprinkled around by global corporations like spices in cans on a shelf.  And somehow the cultural artists are never involved when it’s time for a payday or to define their own culture. 

So, I think that Assata is absolutely right.  It’s easier to destroy people physically once they have been psychologically damaged, and one way that you can do that is to take their culture from them.  So, I think that it’s all part of the psychological war that’s being perpetrated against African people all over the world.

 

 

Q.      In the United States, do you see such a war intensifying?  Do you see the wonderful, artistic gifts that people have provided in the 20th century?  Do you see a big conflict in the 21st century?

 

A.      Well, I think that people need to understand that what is going on with the cultural war now is really no different than what went on in 1619, with the culture.  When the English stole our people from Africa and brought them  to America on those terrible ships, one of the first things that they did, was tell us that we couldn’t speak our languages, we couldn’t play the drums, and we couldn’t perform our music and dances.  It was a very effective way to divide and control people. 

So, people need to understand - our people especially, that what’s going on now in 2002  is not different.  If it worked in 1619 and 1800, well it’s certainly going to work now – this is the thinking of the corporation.  So I think that people need to understand that’s the situation we’re in.  I think that it’s the same conflict...and you asked if it will intensify.  It has intensified, and I think in the 60’s, people had a certain mindset.  There was still sort of a collective way that African people in the States did things, we didn’t have the U.S. government to depend on. 

We didn’t have the small business loans and all of that crap, the Red Cross, which discriminated against my family by the way, so people had to come together and help each other.  And so in the 60’s, certain things just could not be done to the people, because they had a collective spirit.  But now, that’s been completely destroyed, in America.  The war now is very intense, and in my opinion, just as intense as it was 150 years ago.  Some people might disagree, but I think that things are much worse now than they were in the 60’s.  Again, when you steal a people’s culture and dismantle it, break the people’s spirit, and abuse them psychologically, physical violence is very easy to carry out.  When the people have no spirit, they have nothing to fight with, and can’t deal with what’s happening to them.  So, yeah, I think this whole war has intensified in the 21st century.  It’s a very dangerous situation.

 

 

Q.      If you have young people, who, in the United States, are under-educated, if we could put it that way, under-employed, and yet and still, their heroes, they think, as far as entertainment, have jewelry, cars that cost US$ 100,000, that’s a recipe for this kind of physical containment, wouldn’t you say?

 

A.      Well, yeah I think so.  The people have no self worth.  It goes back to this whole thing about the Fake Realness.  Most of the rappers in the videos don’t even own that shit, you know what I mean?  They rent the house, they rent the car, they rent the jewelry, and then our people believe that they actually have that stuff, and that, they too, should have it.  And it becomes more important to them than life, their own children, eating, whatever.  It’s a very dangerous situation.

 

Q.      Can you explain some of the future plans for the Soulful Expression?

 

A.      I’m writing a lot of music.  So, hopefully, at some point I’d like to produce a third CD, which will be even more political than the first two were.  Hopefully, to expand, to be able to stay in Europe as an artist, to have a family, to have a safe country to live and work in.  And to have our people in the States know about my music and support it.  It would be nice if a label signed me, and I could have artistic control. but if not, if the people support me, it will be the same thing.

 

Q.      So you are going to continue to put your message out there, and put your views out, via music and culture?

 

A.      That’s right!  Exactly!  Precis!

 

Q.      Thank You.

 

A.      Det Lugn! (”It’s kool!” in Swedish)

  

Interviewer:  Bankole Irungu, ExiledOne
20 June 2002
Stockholm, Sweden

 Since this interview Aisha has produced 3 more CDs during her tours of Sweden, England, Scotland, Wales and The Republic of Ireland. (link to available CDs)

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To  find out more about The Soulful Expression...
soulful_expression@yahoo.com

 

Last modified: 02/18/04