The Roots of a Heartbeat : The Spoken Word

Many genres of music include the spoken vision of a poet, songwriter, or musician within the track : its the lyrics themselves, while at the same time some artists understand that freedom of communication is the most important part of any peice of work. That the work is about more than just the scenesters and the dramas they whirl about for public display...That somewhere inside of each chest lays a heart, beating...somewhere, some how the voice of authentic expression must get heard... In its purest form, hip-hop is fast, on-the-spot, spoken poetry. But hip-hop is hard to define because it's more than poetry or music--its the way we're livin'... it's a label for a type of urban culture which includes music, many anti-establishment understandings, and collectives with attitude. But you think this is new? What's so new about a beat (or a heartbeat for that matter)? Hip-hop's origins can stretch far back to the oral traditions of the mid east and africa. In more recent times, it was the basis for the spoken-word expressionism of activists in the 1960s. In the early 70s, New York-based mc's began "rapping" spoken rhymes about street life to the beat of dj-manipulated drum machines and turntables. Thus "rap" emerged, a subculture was born. The rapping of this era was often edgy and political. The early 90's enjoyed a brief spate of creative, artistic hip hop/rap. Though a significant number of rap acts have positive messages, mainstream rap has become big business and show business. Underground scences were always there, throughout the commercialisms, challenging society at large to authentically communicate messages of positivity, ethics, and values...The roots of oral tradition have spawned the present spoken word phenomena quite naturally...Today, the poetry we speak may be heard a little more clearly because of those who came before us and their choice to speak out!

SEVEN

Spoken word examples by Seven and others from a set of open mic poets in Jerusalem : click
http://www.cornerprophets.com/audio/andromeda.php?q=f&f=%2FDowntown+Sound+I
...and more recent work by Seven can be found here:
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=418524

Got Cancer? A Warning to U.S. Milk Drinkers!

milkaisle
Originally uploaded by hogan dog.

We can't stop kids from playing with their food, but we can stop Monsanto from playing with their milk!

Monsanto Chemical Corporation is playing a dangerous game with our children's milk.

About seven years ago, Monsanto (creators of Agent Orange), started selling their synthetic growth hormone -- rBGH -- to our nation's farmers. This hormone stimulates cows to overproduce milk

Now, an alarming percentage of our milk comes from cows injected with this genetically-engineered hormone.

Seven years after rBGH's debut, we know for certain rBGH is bad for cows and bad for the small farm economy.

And, quite possibly, very bad for humans.
Disturbingly, the health effects of rBGH on the human body -- especially on fast growing children's bodies -- are unknown.

But there are many reasons to be fearful, chief among them: Canadian scientists reported in 1998 that Monsanto covered up negative test results from their own rBGH studies. This discovery, among others, prompted Canada to ban rBGH.

In addition to Canada, all 15 countries in the European Union plus Australia and New Zealand have banned rBGH from their milk supplies because of the suspected health dangers.

This web journlist believes it's time for Monsanto to stop playing with the world's milk supply.


Learn about the dangers of rBGH in milk supplies.
Work to make you school rBGH-FREE
Purchase rBGH-Free milk products from these organic dairies.

Monsanto Company and/or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Covered Up Results of Human Safety Study !

...new information from Canadian government researchers indicates that the Monsanto Company and/or the U.S. Food and Drug Administration covered up the results of a primary human safety study which found that rats exposed to rBGH experienced negative health effects: findings which should have led to long term human health studies before rBGH was approved.

To get genetically engineered foods off our tables, make a donation on-line through our secure server!

A release of the Canadian report is available in the U.S. since October ...this site will work in the coming year to investigate the FDA approval process and remove rBGH from the market until long-term human studies are conducted.


What is rBGH?

Synthetic Growth Hormone?
Recombinant synthetic bovine growth hormone (rBGH or rBST) is a genetically-engineered drug -- a close copy of a cow's natural growth hormone -- injected into cows by farmers to force cows to make more milk.

Bad for Cows, Bad for Humans?
rBGH is bad for cows and bad for family farmers. It may be bad for humans. We simply don't know yet because there have been no long-term health studies.

Driving Milk Prices Lower?
rBGH's package itself cites many potential health problems for cows. Wide rBGH use could lead to an over supply of milk, thus forcing down prices for farmers, and pushing more farms out of business. Many are jeopardized now with low milk prices because they can't meet their costs of production .

rBGH is banned in Europe, Canada, Autralia, New Zealand, and other countries because of these potential threats to people and family farmers.

U.S. Is the Exception
Despite these concerns, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) approved its use in 1993. The FDA did not require labeling for rBGH milk and dairy products.

At present only the Monsanto chemical company makes and distributes the drug commercially.

Consumers Want rBGH labeling
Vermont is one of ten states with rBGH labeling laws or regulation for dairy products from cows not treated with rBGH.

Surveys show 94% of consumers want rBGH labeling and 74% are concerned about rBGH's long-term human health effects. Recent surveys also indicate that as few as 5% of Vermont dairy farmers use rBGH on their cows.

Milk is just the Beginning...
Milk from rBGH treated cows was the first genetically engineered food widely available to consumers. Since then, several other genetically engineered foods have entered the marketplace, such as corn, soybeans, and potatoes. These are often found as ingredients in a wide variety of foods.

Consumers are Powerless to Choose
Like rBGH, no genetically engineered foods are labeled, making consumers powerless to execise choice at the supermarket. This is true despite widespread support for labeling genetically engineered foods and concern for their potential impacts on human health and the environment.

Related Issues:

www.GEFoodAlert.org Take 30 seconds to tell Campbell's and Kellogg's to test and label Genetically Engineered foods.

Choose rBGH-free dairy products. Boycott all genetically engineered foods.


Ask your grocer to carry only rBGH-free dairy products, or to order more rBGH-free dairy products. Ask them to identify dairy products that may contain rBGH. Shop at stores that label or will not stock genetically-engineered foods.


Urge your local school board to make a policy to buy only rBGH-free milk and dairy products for local schools.


Give this list to stores and consumers in your area.


Citizens, push your state and federal legislators to give YOU the right to know what's in your milk and how your food is made.


Residents, write the FDA Commissioner. Demand product labeling about how your food is produced so you can exercise choice.

Your health is the most important thing you have!

Don't let corporate greed destroy our lives!

Got Cancer?

For More Information:


www.purefood.org provides information on rBGH and Monsanto

www.sustain.org

How To: Stencil Revolution!

borf-tastic
Originally uploaded by fortune cookie.

INTRODUCTION


Stencil Graffiti is the poor persons’ printmaking. It is the easiest and cheapest way to print the same image over and over on different surfaces and in different places. To start off, the three most important things for making a stencil are an idea, something to cut with, and something to cut the stencil out of. I cant’ help with the idea part, but you should’t feel like you have to be an artist to do this. One of the great things about stencils is that since each print looks the same and consists of only a positive and negative, it makes almost all designs look really sharp and good.


CUTTING

Any kind of knife, or even scissors, can be used to cut stencils. Some people like big box cutting blades, but I find them heavy and unwieldy. I always cut everything with the simple exacto knife. Nothing fancy, just the regular size and the regular blades. They’re really easy to find (most copy shops have them out on the counters for customers to use.) and replacement blades are pretty cheap and accessible. I also find them the easiest to use; I hold mine almost like I would a pencil, and they have a really nice tight cutting radius so it’s pretty easy to cut small details with after practicing a little.


THE MATERIAL TO CUT

The material you cut a stencil out of completely depends on a number of factors, but the most important are use and size. My personal favorite is 6 ply card stock availible at craft stores, it's not the easiest to cut , however it is quite durable and alot of detail is possible with this material. I also recommend making a sort of "support frame" for the stencil itself , it will not buckle as easily under heavy usage and also allows them to be stored while keeping them rigid. The material i recommend for the "frame" is foam-core board. Its is inexpensive (around $2 for a 20"x30" piece) and very easy to cut. Attaching a frame accomplished by cutting out a square shape (in the foam core board ) a few inches larger than the stencil image, then cutting a hole in the square roughly the size (but at least as big) as the design. Then, using rubber cement or glue, attach the "frame" to the side of the stencil that you will be spraying on to. This "frame" has allowed me to use on stencil over 50 times in one night and kept the image from getting blurry or distorted.


OUTSIDE STENCILS

When painting outside, the most important question to answer is what size do you want to stencil? If you’re going to paint something small, I’d use the manila file folders. Most people’s first idea is to use corrugated cardboard because it seems so strong. It isn’t that rigid (it folds easily, especially when it’s wet), and is a pain the ass to cut, making detail almost impossible. It will last for a long time, but you have to deal with too many negative factors to make it worth it. File folders won’t last forever (collected paint can make them crack) but are really durable and available for cheap/free. I have some that I’ve been using for tow or three years. They’re easy to hide, such as being slipped into a folded newspaper or shopping bag, and light to carry.
When I want to make a stencil larger than 12x18, I use 6ply poster board. You can get it anywhere and it has the same basic qualities as file folders. It's more durable and will last a long time using the framing technique described above. It’s really important that stencils stay flat so that you can get a clean print, so the bigger they are, the trickier it gets to carry and maneuver them.

PAINT

You get what you pay for.

I always use high quality paints Cheap paint offers many diadvantages :

You won’t get as much paint out of them.
The paint is low quality and doesn’t survive the elements very well.
The caps on them usually suck.
The seal on them also sucks, leading to frequent clogs, which make a mess and sometimes even make the paint unusable.

With some practice and experimentation, everyone finds the materials they like to use best. Go for what you’re comfortable with.

Have fun, and don’t get caught!

ESSAY: Enabling Equals:

roots
Originally uploaded by idiotthewise.

The most important question for the revolutionary is how to escape disciples—and enable equals.

It was right in front of everyone’s face—we just made it visible. It was on the tip of everyone’s tongue—we just gave it a name. All the words you wish you could speak, all the life you wish you could live—that’s us. We fight like you wan

t to fight, we love like you want to love, we never submit or compromise—we are free in all the ways you wish you could be.

We do not exist.

You were looking for a way to change your life. You could not do this on your own. You were looking for evidence that what you wanted was possible. You found it in a ghost—which you made flesh.


People do this every day—they talk to themselves, they daydream, they see themselves as they would like to be. They project what they long for, fear, worship upon others, when it is already present within themselves.

...you search for inspiration but you already know how to inspire!

Naturally, you’re still wrestling with this, so sometimes you’re still you—“just you.”

Those moments of absolute terror when everything around and inside you is alien should come as no surprise. You’re not just tweaking a few knobs here, you’re trying to step into an alternate universe. Sometimes nothing will make sense. Be patient, let the fear wash over you, survive until the wave passes and the horizon is a step closer.

During those instants, it will seem like everyone knows what is going on but you. Is it unusual that at such moments you are capable of inventing fantastic underground societies possessed of super-human powers?


Other times, you imagine yourself watching us. Little by little you’re breaking free, letting yourself go.

The lengths the child of the bourgeoisie must go to in order to shake off his conditioning are incredible. It may be that for some to begin they need a myth to believe in, as some recovering addicts claim to need a “higher power.”

If sometimes you still need us, then so be it—“we” will drag you kicking and screaming into the new dawn, bearing all the blame for the suffering you have been yearning to bring upon yourself: for the one who wants to be born must first destroy a world. But you cannot arrive until you divest yourself of your crutches. In the end you will turn to thank us, and find you are all alone.

“We” are still here if you need something to rebel against.

“The adolescence of every free human being is a war, a struggle with those who came before; it is this war that maintains vitality, that fashions destiny—a deadly war one must wage against the very factors and influences which gave birth to oneself.” –Brutus to Julius Caesar

...choose for yourself...
----7

ESSAY: Corrupting the Ism

corrupting the ism
Originally uploaded by idiotthewise.

Play

Head for horizons . . .

Play is what takes place when all the problems of survival have been solved and there is energy left over. Play is not constrained by external demands—the player establishes her own values and meanings in the course of acting. Play takes place in a condition of freedom—rather, it is the condition of freedom. In play, the individual interacts with the forces around her rather than reacting to them, creates the context for her actions as she acts rather than being shaped by the situation: it is thus that self-determination is possible. You can see play today in the collages on teenagers’ walls, in the eccentric furnishing of squatted buildings, in the break between skirmishes with the police when the insurgents dance, in the movements of lovers’ bodies together.

The resources for play are available in abundance. As a general rule, the more one plays, the more others are enabled and encouraged to play; true playfulness is infectious. One can’t play at the expense of others for long—being “free” at such a price ends up taking a lot of work, as in the case of the “successful” executive, and doesn’t lend itself to much real, spontaneous play, as the ennui typical of the trust-fund playboy demonstrates.

It’s ambiguous whether many of the things currently called “play” actually are: Is it play when a businessman goes golfing with his boss? When a group of young men play basketball together according to a strict set of rules, with a struggle for dominance as an ever-present subtext? How about when a young man comes home from work so exhausted that he doesn’t have enough energy to do anything besides “play” video games?

Children, on the other hand, come into this world knowing all about play—at least until they’ve spent a few years cooped up in small rooms with the television on. We can recapture that lost innocence, for them and for ourselves, by approaching everything we do as a game rather than a struggle or responsibility—by creating environments in which we can run wild. For the best-kept secret of capitalism is that play activities can also provide for our survival needs: except in extremities, work is unnecessary.

1. The more pleasure you take in your activities, the more willing you are to share the fruits.

2. The more you approach life as a game, the more full and free it becomes.

Work

. . . not destinations.

Work provides for survival, nothing more. It always appears as a response to necessity, whether it be the need for food and shelter and life insurance, the establishment of social status, or the obligation of the Protestant work ethic. Work answers to imperatives; play creates its own rules.

3. The more you work, the more you feel the need to be compensated for your sacrifice.

4. The more you work, the less you live.



Gift Economics

We know everything is priceless.

In stark contrast to exchange trading, gift-giving is its own reward. In a gift economy, which exists whenever anything is freely shared and no score is kept, the participants receive more the more they bestow. Everyone who has shared a real friendship or a morning of incredible lovemaking knows intuitively that when the option opens, human beings return to this natural relationship.

This is a challenge to find and share the trust and responsibility it will take to reinstate this as the basis of all human affairs, as it was before the cancer of avarice took hold.

My liberation, my delight, my world itself begins where yours begins. Nobody can command my services because I have, of my own, pledged to give all—and gratuitously, for that is the only way to give.
5. The more able you are to share freely with others, the more they share with you, and the more you are thankful for their existence and open to their beauty.

6. The more freely you give and receive, the more your life can be a game rather than a struggle...maybe we just learn the enjoyment life has to offer us within our struggles...

7. "Life is beautiful;
Life is a struggle...

Life is a Beautiful Struggle..."
-Mos Def

8. You search for inspiration but you already know how to Inspire!

A Commentary and A Call to Action For Artists!

graf
Originally uploaded by SkullKid.

Unless we make building socially just institutions part of our understanding of what it means to be an artist, all the verbiage about “content” and all the pieces of art dedicated to peace, equality, and a better way of life, will, in the end, serve only as evidence that we got it wrong, that we fundamentally misunderstood what it is we do. All that stuff will serve as evidence that when we needed to and when we were called upon to build better ways of being creative as a people, we thought that art was simply about things.

For the past seven years I have made my living entirely as a visual artist. I have been able to do this only by exhibiting outside of the institutionalized academic-museum-gallery system. I exhibited out of doors in the parks of cities across the world so that I could control the distribution of my work and enjoy direct and personal relationships with my audience. In addition, for a ten year period, I worked with public and private officials and artists in re-inventing this mode of exhibition to the point where it was something quite unexpectedly professional, wonderful, enchanting and lucrative - as opposed to the conventional “swap meet” set of exhibitions that one might expect to find outside of established venues.

However, the model was impossible to sustain for a simple reason. Too few artists wanted to take time from their work to build an organization. Most artists had only one set of interests: making their art and promoting themselves within established institutions. In other words, the dominant modus operandi of the artist, as I know it, is the artist as individual and as entrepreneur. However, within the art industry today, entrepreneurialism cannot lead to ownership of any consequence. Decision making with regard to distribution (exhibition), what counts as important art, and what gets funded is not in our hands no matter how “good” any of our art might be. The decisions that structure our life chances are in the hands of an investor class, an oligarchy, that exercises substantial influence over boards of trustees, both academic and museum, non-profit foundations, public art commissions and the galleries and auction houses that follow in their wake.

The individualist/entrepreneurial approach cannot lead but to utter dependency – a dependency on those who own galleries and control exhibition spaces, on critics, on those who control foundations or access to education, on those who direct competitions, on curators. This list is endless. And because we have become so thoroughly dependent on the institutions within the art industry, we are compelled to adopt as our own, the very ideas, assumptions and practices that the oligarchy uses within those industries that require our marginalization in the first place.

If we provide free inventories to galleries before they take 50 or 60 percent of any sale, we say that that is the nature of things. If the work we make following art school is not saleable it is because the public is uneducated. If the "experts" define important work as conceptual – that is a non-visual visual art - we make an effort to understand not to challenge. When we are told that only 12 of us in a city of nearly one million people can make a living in the gallery system because we have chosen a difficult way of life, we believe it.

But it gets worse. According to these so called specialists, art is not a thing of Value, it is the thing of value. We produce that incredibly valuable thing and yet we are tagged, as a class of workers, with the moniker “starving.” And we accept it! Unlike other trained professionals, we have no expectation of having health insurance, a modicum of security, the ability to buy a home, have kids, send them to college, go out to dinner regularly or even travel comfortably. Instead our expectation is that we will have a second job or a partner to support us in order to do the work that transforms the filthy rich into better people.

My argument is that we toil in isolation and buy into the notion that the average person cannot really understand our noble sacrifice or that it is beyond the intelligence and aesthetic sensibility of the public because we have lost touch with the history of our profession particularly as it relates to our life outside the studio. In order to become free artists we need to become free from the institutions that require our marginalization. We need to get back into the game of defining art ourselves, of teaching art independently of universities, of building movements with other members of the community and other artists, of controlling exhibitions, and of enjoying direct and personal relationships with the public that artists from Micheangelo to the Abstract Expressionists enjoyed. In short we need to build alternative institutions that permit us to have some important say over what we do, what we make and how it is distributed!

ESSAY: Giver, Taker, or Infinite?

P9030068.JPG
Originally uploaded by r.d.i..

People from the (rapidly splintering) "mainstream" of society in Europe and the United States today take a peculiar pleasure in considering themselves "normal" in comparison to legal offenders, political radicals, and other members of social outgroups. They treat this "normalcy" as if it is an indication of mental health and moral righteousness, regarding the "others" with a mixture of pity and disgust. But if we consult history, we can see that the conditions and patterns of human life have changed so much in the past two centuries that it is impossible to speak of any lifestyle available to human beings today as being "normal" in the natural sense, as being a lifestyle for which we adapted over many generations. Of the lifestyles from which a young woman growing up in the West today can choose, none are anything like the ones for which her ancestors were prepared by centuries of natural selection and evolution.

It is more likely that the "normalcy" that these people hold so dear is rather the feelings of normalcy that result from conformity to a standard. Being surrounded by others who behave the same way, who are conditioned to the same routines and expectations, is comforting because it reinforces the idea that one is pursuing the right course: if a great many people make the same decisions and live according to the same customs, then these decisions and customs must be the right ones.

But the mere fact that a number of people live and act in a certain way does not make it any more likely that this way of living is the one that will bring them the most happiness. Besides, the lifestyles associated with the American and European "mainstream" (if such a thing truly exists) were not exactly consciously chosen as the best possible ones by those who pursue them; rather, they came to be suddenly, as the results of technological and cultural upheavals. Once the peoples of Europe, the United States, and the world realize that there is nothing necessarily "normal" about their "normal life," they can begin to ask themselves the first and most important question of the next century: Are there ways of thinking, acting, and living that might be more satisfying and exciting than the ways we think, act, and live today?

II. Transformation

If the accumulated knowledge of Western civilization has anything of value to offer us at this point, it is an awareness of just how much is possible when it comes to human life. Our otherwise foolish scholars of history and sociology and anthropology can at least show us this one thing: that human beings have lived in a thousand different kinds of societies, with ten thousand different tables of values, ten thousand different relationships to each other and the world around them, ten thousand different conceptions of self. A little traveling can still show you the same thing, if you get there before Coca-Cola has had too much of a head start.

That's why I can't help but scoff when someone refers to "human nature," invariably in the course of excusing himself for a miserable resignation to our supposed fate. Don't you realize we share a common ancestor with sea urchins? If differing environments can make these distant cousins of ours so very distant from us, how much more possible must small changes in ourselves and our interactions be! If there is anything lacking (and there sorely, sorely is, most will admit) in our lives, anything unnecessarily tragic or meaningless in them, any corner of happiness that we have not yet thoroughly explored, then all that is needed is for us to alter our environments accordingly. "If you want to change the world, you first must change yourself," the saying goes; we have learned that the opposite is true.

And there is another valuable discovery our species has made, albeit the hard way: we are capable of absolutely transforming environments. The place you lie, sit, or stand reading this was probably altogether different a hundred years ago, not to mention two thousand years ago; and almost all of those changes were brought about by human beings. We have completely remade our world in the past few centuries, changing life for almost every kind of plant and animal, ourselves most of all. It only remains for us to experiment with executing (or, for that matter, not executing) these changes intentionally, in accordance with our needs and desires, rather than at the mercy of irrational, inhuman forces like competition, superstition, routine.

Once we realize this, we can claim a new destiny for ourselves, both individually and collectively. No longer will we be buffeted about by powers that seem beyond our control; instead, in this exploration of ourselves through the creation of new environments, we will learn all that we can be. This path will take us out of the world as we know it, far beyond the farthest horizons we can see from here. We will become artists of the grandest kind, painting with desire as a medium, deliberately creating and recreating ourselves—becoming, ourselves, our own greatest work.

To accomplish this, we'll need to learn how to coexist and collaborate successfully: to see just how interconnected all our lives are, and finally learn to live with that in mind. Until this becomes possible, each of us will not only be denied the vast potential of her fellows, but her own potential as well; for we all make together the world that each of us must live in and be made by. The other thing that is lacking is the knowledge of our own desires. Desire is a slippery thing, amoebic and difficult to pin down, let alone keep up with. If we're going to make a destiny out of the pursuit and transformation of desire, we first must find ways to discover and release our loves and lusts. For this, not enough experience and adventure could ever suffice. So the makers of this new world must be more generous and more greedy than any who have come before: more generous with each other, and more greedy for life!

III. Utopia

Even from here, I can taste the question already on the tip of your tongue: isn't this utopian?

Well, of course it is. You know what everyone's greatest fear is? It is that all the dreams we have, all the crazy ideas and aspirations, all the impossible romantic longings and utopian visions can come true, that the world can grant our wishes. People spend their lives doing everything in their power to fend off that possibility: they beat themselves up with every kind of insecurity, sabotage their own efforts, undermine love affairs and cry sour grapes before the world even has a chance to defeat them... because no weight could be heavier to bear than the possibility that everything we want is possible. If that is true, then there really are things at stake in this life, things to be truly won or lost. Nothing could be more heartbreaking than to fail when such success is actually possible, so we do everything we can to avoid trying in the first place, to avoid having to try.

For if there is even the slightest possibility that our hearts' desires could be realized, then of course the only thing that makes sense is to throw ourselves entirely into their pursuit and risk that heartbreak. Despair and nihilism seem safer, projecting our hopelessness onto the cosmos as an excuse for not even trying. So we remain, clutching our resignation, as secure as corpses in coffins ("better safe and sorry")... but this still cannot ward off that dreadful possibility. Thus in our hopeless flight from the real tragedy of the world, we only heap upon ourselves false tragedy, unnecessary tragedy, as well.

Perhaps this world will never conform perfectly to our needs—people will always die before they are ready, perfect relationships will end in ruins, adventures will end in catastrophe and beautiful moments be forgotten. But what breaks my heart is the way we flee from those inevitable truths into the arms of more horrible things. It may be true that every man is lost in a universe that is fundamentally indifferent to him, locked forever in a terrifying solitude—but it doesn't have to be true that some people starve while others destroy food or leave fertile farms untilled. It doesn't have to be true that men and women waste their lives away working to serve the hollow greed of a few rich men, just to survive. It doesn't have to be that we never dare to tell each other what we really want, to share ourselves honestly, to use our talents and capabilities to make life more bearable, let alone more beautiful. That's unnecessary tragedy, stupid tragedy, pathetic and pointless. It's not even utopian to demand that we put an end to farces like these.

If we could bring ourselves to believe, to really feel, the possibility that we are invincible and can accomplish whatever we want in this world, it wouldn't seem out of our reach at all to correct such absurdities. What I am begging you to do here is not to put faith in the impossible, but have the courage to face that terrible possibility that our lives really are in our own hands, and to act accordingly: to not settle for every misery fate and humanity have heaped upon us, but to push back, to see which ones can be shaken off. Nothing could be more tragic, and more ridiculous, than to live out a whole life in reach of heaven without ever stretching out your arms.

featured ARTIST : Rocker T

technics
Originally uploaded by negativz.

This brother is truly an inspiration to some of the most free spirits on the planet...I'm sure he would want me to mention rainbow 'cause people need to Exodus phisically from modern cities in order that we aid one another toward a collective vision of One. A personal friend and inspiration, Rocker-T. was an integral part of the formation of the downtown New York City Ska scene and is one of the founding elements of the New York City Dancehall/Ragga Hip Hop scene. He has performed alongside and worked with artists such as KRS-One, Glen Adams, Rita Marley, Yellowman, Burning Spear, Super Cat, Aswad,Shinehead Maxi Priest, Half Pint, Sugar Minott, Jamalski and a multitude of others. Besides having a unique form of chanting and singing called "sing-jay", Rocker-T. plays the guitar, melodica, niyahbinghi drum, bass guitar and some keyboards. He writes his own lyrics and music, programs drum machines and samplers, and is an up and coming producer. He was born, raised, and currently resides in Brooklyn, New York and sometimes in Madison, Wisconsin, San Francisco, California and Amsterdam.

Rocker-T. formed the band Skadanks in 1986. Soon thereafter, he began toasting for Rob Kenner's BBC2 Sound System at Mars Bar, Wild Pitch, and the Wetlands as well as many other venues in New York City. He gained notoriety toasting with internationally famous DJ Puppy Ranks for Eruption Hi Power and TNT Boys & Girls in Flatbush, Brooklyn and at the Reggae Lounge (aka The Island Club) in Manhattan. In the early 1990s, he started dee-jaying and selecting on his own sound system, Jah Warrior Shelter High-Fidelity, at the now famous Lion's Den and other tri-state venues.

Recently, Rocker-T. has been performing in the U.S. and abroad with the Cannabis Cup Band, Version City Rockers, Stubborn All-Stars, Positive Sound Massive, and his I.R.T. Band. As a solo artist, Rocker-T. is currently working on album projects for PSM Recordings with Stand Out Selector, Stubborn Records with Victor Rice, and also Capo Records with Glen Adams.

Rocker-T. is an innovator whose conviction to love and truth has kept him from selling out, yet secures his progress as well as maintaining a reputation with the people. Rocker-T. is an asset to any festival, dancehall, club venue, stageshow or rodeo.

For Rocker-T. booking inquiries, please contact Lou-I Muniz at Jah Minds Eye Productions, 831-588.4811.

SOURCE: http://www.psmrecordings.com