The War of Art: A Conversation between Walidah Imarisha and Not4Prophet PDF Print E-mail Written by Walidah Imarisha and Not4Prophet Sunday, 19 September 2004 What role does an artist play? What role does a politically conscious anarchist artist of color engaged in community organizing play? And a bigger question, what social responsibility? Not4Prophet, voice for the Puerto Rican political band/collective Ricanstruction, speaks with Walidah Imarisha, the bad half of the poetry duo Good Sista/Bad Sista, about anarchism, art, creation and the different ways of struggle. Walidah: Right now we are seeing the birth of an anarchist people of color movement here in the United States, which is really exciting to me. I think that artists have a role to play in that movement, because art occupies a unique space in social struggles. In fact, the members of Ricanstruction came to anarchism partially through the art you were creating together, right, rather than through reading about it in books? Not4Prophet: Well, I don't know so much if we came to it through art or if we just started interpreting it through art once we started engaging in "art." As I said before, the quest was always to find your own way, but not because we were trying to adhere to, or create ay kind of lifestyle or ideology. Fact is, that when we came to the realization that we weren't really meant to exist within this shitstem that was created and engineered by our conquerers, then we came to overstand that we were already, for hundreds of years, resisting it in order to continue to exist, and that we were in the process of finding ways to live outside of this shitstem in order to survive it. So the idea of the necessity of living an autonomous lifestyle was already in effect. It was just my "intellectualizing" of the shituation that had to get a late pass. So by the time we became "artists" we were already engaged in a battle for autonomy, a struggle for freedom, so the art just became a reflection of that and another beautiful, raging and vivid outlet for that necessity for freedom and autonomy. I don't think we could have come to it through books, because the quest for freedom is not something the slave has to be taught. It's something we live everyday. W: Right, and it's that real life struggle that is the focus. Anarchism, or any political ideology or movement, can't just rely on art or subcultures or youth rebellion to give it life in communities of color, as it often has in white communities. I think a lot of the difference for political artists of color and activists of color is that connection to the community, being strongly rooted in where you came from. And while in idealist terms, both for myself and other APOC folks, that's true, I know a lot of us in the APOC movement are middle class, and that affects the way we approach anarchism, art and community-based organizing. I know your experience has been different. N4P: Yes. In the case of Ricanstruction, we were Puerto Ricans from the barrios of Nueva York, whose parents came to the U.S. as exiles fleeing a colonial condition, only to enter into a neo-colonial condition. Babylon hasn't been kind to boricuas. When you gotta dumpster dive or beg and borrow to eat, and be homeless in the dead of winter or live in condemned buildings waiting for a knock at the door at midnight (if there's even a door), and you get stopped by the ghetto occupying forces we call pigs on the daily because you "fit the description," then you're always trying to find a better way, a better place. Speaking personally, I've been a gang banger, a nationalist, a Marxist, a rasta and a santero, all in search of something better than this. It took me a long time to realize that there is nothing better than this, unless we create it ourselves. It was when I came to this realization that I began living what some might characterize as an anarchist lifestyle or perhaps an outlaw culture, which is just another way of saying you are existing outside the laws that have been created by the shitstem. I started trying to create not just a counter culture but also an autonomous culture. And I stopped discussing how we need to reform the police force, and instead began talking about abolition. And instead of discussing our right to food, shelter and clothing, I began stealing food and clothing and squatting. But of course, police brutality, hunger, homelessness, a corrupt government are problems that affect all ghetto dwellers; these are not specifically anarchist issues. What's "anarchist" is what you do about these things. Yeah, I do think that APOC will have to deal with issues of class and privilege if we are really gonna get anything done on the streets, which is where it counts. We can't just assume that we are all in the same boat because we are all pocs. Some of us may have a boat with a hole in it, and some of us may not have a boat at all. Maybe a tire, if we're lucky. W: What tie do you think art has to community organizing? Is it important in reaching out to folks, or are the more immediate concerns of food, housing and clothing what matter most? I think it's really easy for middle class folks to lose focus of those basic survival needs while getting caught up in the lofty ideals of making art, or on the other side, it's easy for them to think that working class and poor folks only need their physical needs met, while neglecting the soul. So how important is art to community organizing? N4P: For us, it's been very important because art is used by downpressed cultures as a tool of resistance against the enslavers, the "authorities," and it's everywhere; in the streets, the barrios, ghettos, shanties, prisons, churches and mosques. We use art to communicate, to resist and to rebel, so it's importance can't be denied or minimized. There's music in the domino players slapping the dominoes down on the table, the baby crying cause momma's got no more milk to give, the brother preaching on the corner of 125th and Lenox Ave., our feet as the tap the sound of the calle as we run from the cops across 110th Street. The revolution may not be televised, and it may not make it on to the radio (unless it's pirate radio), but it damn sure will be seen and heard on the streets. For us, we have mostly tried to make our art another part of the resistance struggle, the anti-authoritarian struggle, the struggle for freedom. We create political resistance murals on "private property," outlaw art, and we encourage the passerby, the ghetto dweller to join us, even if all they feel that all they can do is paint the red line on the Puerto Rican flag. We show films on the sides of buildings while abuelitas sell cuchifritos that they made at home. We always overstood the need for the people to take back the streets from the authorities, to not allow them to have authority over us, so we tended to utilize our art in this capacity. We would set up our instruments on the street, plug into a light pole for power, start jamming and encourage others to join us. Those who couldn't play musical instruments could draw on the walls around us or dance and sing, jeer at the pigs as they rolled by. What could they do? The people had created a TAZ {temporary autonomous zone) and the pigs feared turning a "revolution party" into a "riot," and the sense of liberation is so deep, so thick in the air itself that the people can feel their own freedom. Art is only effective as a tool of community organizing when it is as real and honest as the people and their quest for liberation; if it doesn't engender the people's rebellion, quest for autonomy and ultimate freedom, then it's just entertainment waiting to be swallowed whole by babylon, regurgitated and wrapped up in pretty ribbons or punk patches, and sold back to us, revolution in Nike kicks and gap jeans. Art is only worthy of the people's struggle if it, as Amiri Baraka said "screams poison gas on beast in green berets and cleans out the world for virtue and love." W: Do you have a problem calling yourself an anarchist when you do community-based artwork? For me, it feels tricky when you are trying to reach folks in the community who know about anarchism through mainstream media, who think of anarchist as black mask wearing white punk kids who throw rocks and start fires but who don't do any work. I know in the community organizing I do, mostly work with prisoners' families and hip hop organizing, I don't necessarily introduce myself as "Walidah Imarisha, anarchist poet activist." I have tried to find a balance by instead incorporating anarchistic ways of working; consensus and mutual aid, into the work I do, without expressly calling it that. I feel it bypasses the stigma, and gives people a chance to experience what anarchism is really about, without getting caught up on titles. N4P: Personally I am not down with any titles, tags, or designations. I've spent most of my adult life trying to find ways to do away with genres and borders and envelopes, so I think we are always better off if we don't label ourselves or allow anyone to label us. Anarchy or anarchism is really something we seek and live and struggle for, so it doesn't matter what we call ourselves (or don't) if we are in the midst of action doing it. At the same time, we do live in a world of designations based on our perceived politics. Socialist, communist, Marxist, nationalist, capitalist, terrorist, and often these tags are overstood by the people better than some amorphous non-definable non-title. So I think, sometimes these "names" are just a way of giving some kind of clarity (to others) as to what we are doing or trying to do. It could be easier to say to someone on the street, "We are anarchists and here's what we want," then "I don't want to be labeled and neither do any of my companer@s, but here's what we want." I think also a lot of "activists" are afraid of scaring the "people on the street" or confusing them, so they don't want to use any terms that they feel might be misconstrued by "the people," but I think you gotta give the "people" more credit than that. So, really, putting an A in front of POC is really just a way of defining what we want to others and to ourselves. But I tend to tell folks not to sweat the A in apoc. It could mean anything: Anarchist, anti-authoritarian, autonomous, activist, armed, angry. I like that one. Angry People of Color. W: That idea of giving people on the street more credit is a really important one. It goes back to the class issues we were talking about before, because what's being implied is that folks on the street aren't sophisticated enough to get what you mean, so you have water it down for them. N4P: The hip-hop artist Jay-Z recently copped to the idea that he "dumbs down" his lyrics and message for his audience so he can continue to sell a bunch of records. This, to me, is a really sad premise, that you would perceive your audience as a bunch of dummies that you have to step down to talk to. It would be even worse if those who consider themselves activist or soldiers in the struggle felt that it was necessary to "dumb down" our struggle politics in order to "reach" the "people" or the sufferahs. W: That speaks to the larger dilemma of doing political art that I know I have experienced; how do you keep it fresh and interesting, not let it turn into propaganda, while at the same time still making sure that your music expresses the politics you believe in, so you're not watering it down? As a poet, the politics of my art are pretty overt, because all I have are words to make my work. But I've also felt a trend as a poet to produce art that is personal, and, not to trout out a worn cliché, prove how the personal is political. But I have realized that none of my poems are expressly anarchist in nature. I'm not even sure what an anarchist poem would look like. And Ricanstruction's music is obviously extremely political, but I wonder, do you consider anarchist? And if so, what makes it that way? N4P: We've always tried to avoid the cliché or propaganda or the "political song" by simply writing about what is important to us, regardless of what we are talking about. If we feel strongly about it, we write about it. So we are firm believers in the idea that the personal is political. Fact is, a song about fucking in the back seat of a Lexus is no less political than a song about dropping bombs on innocent people. Just different reasons… or maybe not. Just because I am not interested in writing about big pimping doesn't mean that the person who does is not making some kind of political statement, for better or for worse. A lot of people make the mistake of believing that if you are talking about so called "political" issues than you are a political artists. But that means everyone else gets to be just a straight up "artist," regardless of what they talk about or don't talk about. If we are "political artists," then everyone else are "a-political artists," but then what does their A mean? If we are "anarchist artists," then everyone else are audio slaves I guess. I don't imagine that there could be such a thing as an anarchist poem unless it were totally free. But once it's committed to paper it ceases to be free. We've called our music revolution music at times, and other times we've just called it music, but we try to make it at least free and flexible and, I guess you could say anarchistic. Beauty and harmony within the chaos. W: That's such an important point, that everything is political. If you aren't conscious of what you are promoting, then you are promoting the same ole mainstream politics, which are still intensely political. Sometimes, I feel like the artist in me and the organizer in me are at war, with the organizer saying, "Well, why are you writing about love or heartbreak or relationships, when there are real issues to write about? You should be writing a political poem." I know that the two sides aren't opposed, and that how we love is political, and therefore a love poem is a political poem. Like you said, "All Ricanstruction's songs are love songs." But still, I do find myself trying to walk a line, because even if love poems are political, there are still bombs dropping on babies' heads around the world, hungry bellies growling, nightsticks beating tender flesh, over 2 million people in this country going to sleep in a prison cell. So then do we start rating the issues we discuss in our art in terms of social relevance, do we ration out one relationship poem to two police brutality poems? How do you keep that balance? N4P: Well, we are still trying to figure out exactly what part does art really play in this struggle at all. Is there such a thing as an anarchist poem, and, if so, what the hell is it for? Is art a tool for revolution? Does it lead us any closer towards an ideal? And, if so, how? Is arts power in it's lyrical message, or is that yet another straight jacket? Maybe its power is in its sense of freedom. When we first formed the group of artists that we now call Ricanstruction, many people automatically expected us to play a specific kind of music based on where we grew up, our ethnicity, our race. So we made sure that the music would instead be a fusion, a not-necessarily describable amalgam of everything that ever inspired us, everything we ever heard in the air. We didn't want to be pigeon-holed, so we made sure that one person would say, "They're a punk band, "and another, "They're a hip hop group, "or "They're a salsa orchestra," or a "jazz combo." We used to say that revolutionary music should sound like everything you've ever heard before and nothing you've ever heard before. So I sometimes feel that in this quest for revolution music, and how it works as a tool, that the sonics are more "important" than the words because you can only go so far with language. But then of course, it's not so simple because the words are still important and they are the easiest way to communicate, short of throwing a molotov cocktail at an appropriate target. The words are no less important then Malcolm preaching on 125th street, or George Jackson writing from prison, or Che writing Guerrilla Warfare, or even Abbie Hoffman writing Steal This Book. Or for that matter, Nina Simone writing and singing "To Be Young, Gifted, and Black." I think it's easy and expedient for the shitstem to write art off as being nothing but some sort of entertainment, which serves as a way of declawing art so that they can then commodify it and put it in a pretty wrapper and sell it back to us as packaged "political album." But as artists who are engaged in the struggle, it's important that we not get caught up in "bizness" and start second guessing ourselves. W: Yeah, there's always that questioning process going on inside you, and we often put limits on our art. Which in a way is a very good thing, to be very aware of what you're putting out in the word and how it will be interpreted. But at the same time, sometimes it becomes more about the right language and the mechanisms of intent, rather than creating something powerful and beautiful and terrible, all at the same time. I have written pieces that I love and feel are some of my best work, but I would not put them out in a book or read them at a performance, because of some of the language I use, and mostly the fear that what I have written is vague enough that it can be misconstrued in a way contrary to what I intended. So you try to create work that is art and not just propaganda, make it wide enough for other people to immerse themselves in it, to put your poem on and call it their skin, while at the same time making it narrow enough that they can't pull at it and stretch it large enough to clothe whatever they want to. N4P: Which I think is also the beauty of art. It is not something that can be straight-jacketed unless you let it be. It is not a political speech. It's not an ideology or a party line or a ten point plan. It's free to talk about fighting or fucking, freestyle or funk. Yes, people can stretch it and clothe themselves, and stay warm in the winter or cool in the summer, or bulletproof on the frontlines. The language can be raw, "real," or revolutionary. Redemptive like a Bob Marley song or Bad like the Brains. It can call us to fight the power, encourage the people to get up, stand up, or go to sleep. In the end it can be madder than Malcolm. Or not even matter. W: Which is the all important question, that keeps political artists awake at night: does it even matter? Does all the thinking and agonizing and debating I put into my work really make a difference in the grand scheme of things? I have to believe it does, both as a poet, but also as a person who has been moved by art. It's not the revolution by any means, and people sometimes get it so twisted, thinking that spitting radical rhetoric on a stage is the extent of their responsibility and obligation. But art is salve for the soul, and we all need that to continue in the lifelong struggle we were born into (and born to win, as the hip hop group The Coup says). We can all remember a song, a poem, a single word even that moved us beyond measure, that gave us the strength to get back up and push forward. Historically we can see that at the center of almost every fight for freedom and justice was some form of art to carry people's spirits when their bodies were too tired to stand. Whenever I think of the question of is art important, I think of Nikki Giovanni's poem "For Saundra," where she is asked by her neighbor is she ever wrote happy poems, and so she tries to write a tree poem, or a beautiful blue sky poem, and she can't because of the despair and destruction she sees out her window. She writes: "so i thought again and it occurred to me maybe i shouldn't write at all but clean my gun and check my kerosene supply perhaps these are not poetic times at all." For me, this was so incredibly moving, because it's what I think all the time. Franz Fanon once said something like, "A poet must learn that nothing can replace the unequivocal picking up of arms on the side of the people." It's such an important reminder, that these words, this art, is part of a larger struggle we must be engaged on many different levels. But I think the fact that Nikki asked that question in a poem shows that there is some purpose, because it reached mine and many other people's eyes and hearts. There is some sort of redemption after all.