It's a new beginning. A return to our roots, embracing our heritage, remembering a simpler, quieter time.
Music will return to its roots as well. Acoustic honesty, emotional content, altering reality with the sounds
of our voices, our axes. True performance is supposed to be a religious experience. There's no denying it,
when tens of thousands of teenagers rush headlong to some arena to bask in the presence of a commercial
supergroup who doesn't even need to perform at full capacity to preternaturally charge the throng. Throng, Throng, Throng, throng, throng.

In the smaller venues, a revolution is soon to be televised. Regardless of whatever else was wrong with the 70's, we had musicians. Bands, orchestras, talent, spectacle. That science is being revisited.

Music is a communicator. A mediator betwixt the mundane and the Divine. Between Man and Creator. Man is a creator, made in the image of the Creator of All. Our great works are our songs.
Song, Song, Song, song, song.

Civil Rights? What about the right to expand beyond our mortal limits and exist among the cosmos as heavenly bodies with form unlike that which we have become accostumed to? I may be a Black Man, an AmeriCan, with a beer Can in my Hand, but I understand that my role in this scheme is undefined. But I find
peace in bringing joy and contemplation in others, and that's why I chose to become a musician.

blacklieder
July 2009

You know what gets me? I don't consider myself a big guy, but other people do. Now I see all these real big guys hanging out on street corners and bouncing in and out of programs. That pisses me off. Big guys. Guys who centuries in the past would be feared and respected for their size alone. Gain power, fame, fortune and prestige commanding men and women. These men are squandering themselves. Anyone can make it. I'm talking about success. There are no steps. Laugh discrimination in the face.

Maybe I simply don't understand because of what my genes did to me. I don't hide my color, but I don't flaunt it like a dowry either. How come a Nigerian can prosper in this country when our own suffer poverty? We need to stop weighing ourselves down with psychological fetters and create some progress. Someone said the black race is arrogant. Well, arrogance need not be connected to pride. Arrogance should be connected to substance and education.

I think it's OK to be arrogant, as long as you have enough knowledge to back you up.

 Why was I born?
Don't my parents realize what they did?
The combination of these two individuals is a contradiction.
I'm poisoned by my own nature.
When I was born, I had my father's blood type. My parents
have different blood types, and traditionally, a child is supposed
to have his mother's blood type (which in this case was O+).
I was born with AB-, my father's blood type, so my own blood
was killing me. In order to save my life, I had to have a full
blood transfusion.
Physically, the damage has been corrected, but mentally? spiritually?
My parents couldn't stay together, they were young and confused, and I
am the product of that schism and confusion.
The very qualities that seek to make me an exceptional human being
thwart me time and time again. How can one be stubborn and obsequious
at the same time? To be overconfident in one's abilities while
simultaneously being crippled with self-doubt? To be a pacifist and
yet be obssessed with fighting?
If my parents couldn't stay together, how can I expect to stay together?

I'm in pain.
I feel guilty if I succeed, I feel cheated if I fail.
I'm choking on my ideas, and drowning in my ideals.
I'm swimming in an ocean of uncertainty, and I can't see the shoreline.
No cries of "land,ho!" escape my lips, as I navigate poorly through
this cesspool we call life.
Now I'm supposed to take all this anger, confusion, resentment
depression, loathing and betrayal and transform it into something
meaningful, but I've forgotten the address.

 MUSIC AND DRUGS: THE TRAGIC LOVE AFFAIR
Antonio Jacobs

For too long, the myth of Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll have masked the true dangers of a lifestyle whose consequences include addiction, insanity and sometimes death. Just like Romeo and Juliet, music and drugs as a couple have proven to be a tragic romance time and time again.

Frankie Lymon, Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix trampled by Horse.

Louis Armstrong, Bob Marley, Biggie Smalls enshrouded in a ganga fog.

Come let us explore the harsh realities of this mostly damaging relationship between music and drugs, a relationship spanning tens of thousands of years and resulting in the cultivation of new and improved mind-altering substances powerful enough to blow your head off, while in the process, removing from this earth some of the most influential musical geniuses of all time. Examine how society has exploited musicians through drugs, media spectacle, and blaming them, the victim, for getting hurt in the first place.

C’mon. Even Beethoven was a drunk. But why?


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