This interview occurred in December, 2014 in Mexico City. Bocafloja was kind enough to meet up with me, after I had discovered his music and thought it important to bring him to a different type of political audience. Bocafloja is a rapper, poet, academic, and founder of Quilomboarte, a collective of artistis/musicians working on decolonial aesthetics. He has produced five albums and two books, along with an amazing number of collaborations. Born in Mexico City, and currently living in New York City, he focuses on the way race, class, and oppression can be overcome and analyzed through music. He has toured around the world. I would say his overriding message is to organize the hood, admirable as much as it is important. This interview covers politics, identity, aesthetics, and race. I transcribed it from a recording that has all the life of Mexico City in the background, as we sat outside off a main street in Taxqueña. It has taken me a bit of work, but I also translated it, cussing included.
My many thanks to Bocafloja, who also invited me to a private show in Xochimilco off the beaten path, down a back alley. I will be forever indebted to him for that experience, and this interview.
Lastly, congratulations on Quilomboarte’s 10th Anniversary! Enjoy the celebration in Mexico City this weekend with Brother Ali. -AS
Andrew Smolski: This is an interview with Bocafloja. We are here in Mexico City, DF, at Café El Jarrocho. Thanks so much for coming to be with me today.
Bocafloja: Thanks to you guys for the opportunity.
AS: In order to share the ideas you express in your music, I believe this interview is very important. Especially, when with rap right now there are Lil Wayne and others dominating the market and fucking everything up.
So, the first question I have is very general. Aesthetically how do you base the production of music on the sociopolitical idea of decolonization? What differentiates it from the culture industry’s colonized, capitalist music?
B: Well, first, I would say that the primordial difference is the political agenda. On the aesthetic level, decolonized music presents itself as a direct antagonist to the traditional values promoted by the culture industry. But, more important than anything else, is the form of signifying the body in a different manner, the body of the oppressed, giving it an intention distinct from the one the culture industry is hoping for us.
So, we believe in the irremediable negotiation, not due to conviction, but for having no other possibility of subsistence with the capitalist schematic. We are trying to devolve it, to resignify it. So, probably we would be utilizing a lot of aesthetic icons that appear to be coherent with capitalism, but through our body and the significance we are giving to these icons, we are changing completely their aesthetic façade. Obviously, we are vindicating another type of values, another type of historic icons, another type of individual and collective experiences.
AS: Then, it isn’t exactly counter-hegemonic, but more transmodern? Like, it is inside the capitalist system, using some of its symbols to change the language?
B: It is using them, but it isn’t embracing them, it isn’t glorifying them. It is very different. And it is inside not because I have a reformist position. It is inside because I believe there is nobody that isn’t inside. Inside this center of power, we represent the margin and a periphery. It would be romantic to think that we aren’t a part of this capitalist monster. There isn’t anyone who isn’t or wouldn’t be a part of it, there isn’t a person who exists who wouldn’t be. In my way of seeing realistically the situation, in one way or another we have some relationship with this monster. So, more than embracing it or trying to reform it, we are there negotiating inside of it.
AS: Ok, I believe this is a good point, because in the past it was blow up everything, this was the line of attack…I want to say the leftist line of attack, but sometimes I don’t like that word, I like more as you say, the oppressed of the periphery. So, when we speak of not reforming it, and we are speaking of negotiating within it, that, I believe, is linked to what you discuss in your class syllabus, “self-managing economies in the context of counter-hegemonic cultural production.” And for me, I want to know what links this idea has with the work of Enrique Dussel, the philosophy of liberation, and autopoiesis. Because to me, it seems well connected to it, especially when we speak of the oppressed and periphery.
B: Ya, well, in reality what happens is the decolonial turn, or the decolonial agenda, necessarily has to include in its process the economic part of financial sustainability. Especially, representing peripheral entities that are inside the structure of power that is at the center. Then, it is part of our responsibility to try and generate forms of self-sustainability and financial business that are able to give us autonomy and on certain levels able to keep us producing, subsisting, and existing. So, we have a direct relationship with the use of money, capital’s coin, as such, but with an “approach” different to the significance it has and the value money possesses.
AS: Because, in the end you can’t live without money in this world. And, at the same time, in the US you can’t sell yourself without having a gangsta representation, which isn’t linked with any fight for rights, for justice, or things of that sort. So, another question, and linked to autopoiesis, is how can you construct self-sustainability in rap, accounting for this point of view and concept of the body, when the gangsta representation, that image, is very hegemonic and is used to damage and criminalize young black and brown men in the United States and on this side of the border as well? What do you think of this gangsta representation and is there a way we can use it to fight for justice?
B: Look, I believe that corresponds to a phenomenon of cooptation that power and hegemony have for neutralizing movements surging organically as manifestations of marginality. It is not only limited to the experience of gangsta rap as such. I believe this includes other manifestations, such as conscious hip-hop, which lends itself more to being coopted by the hegemony, and they are more dangerous because of how they operate and the narrative they manage.
We have to remember that the experience of gangsta rap as such in its foundation is an anti-systemic experience primarily. And it is an anti-systemic experience that is not in some cases politicized, but in general results in a much more transgressive, much more uncomfortable music for the structures of power, than conscious rap or political rap.
We have to remember examples of many artists of conscious rap who have been coopted by the Department of State of the United States to be cultural ambassadors in different parts of the world, like Syria, like other parts of the Middle East, including conscious Islamic-American rappers that are representing an international political agenda for the United States through cultures more affable for people of color in other parts of the world. So, I believe gangsta rap, as such, in its foundation is simply anti-systemic and transgressive.
We should remember, for example, what a rapper like Tupac Shakur was doing, to a certain degree, who came from an experience of politicization very close to being a “Panther Baby”. He knew, he came from that experience of the Black Panthers, and accounting for all his contradictions and process of growth, he achieved politically through gangsta rap things that no conscious rapper has achieved, such as establishing political, ethical, and moral codes between Crips and Bloods in the United States. At the end of the day this is the type of community that most makes uncomfortable the system, that they would organize and politicize themselves, the marginality of the people in the prisons.
So, I believe a lot in gangsta rap, I see in it a lot of positive things as it is. I believe it is only about doing politicization work. Revolutionary change will come from there, it won’t come from conscious rap.
AS: Ya. Really, I wrote a question following that thought, because for me, I grew up in a working class neighborhood in the US. We weren’t poor, but we didn’t have money. And there, it was simply a question of how to navigate the ideal of Robin Hood, the outlaw that isn’t an outlaw in the eyes of those like him, the working class. So, what have you seen, your experience of people navigating this to politicize the barrio, when there is this other gangsta life, other gangsta culture, that pulls them towards being egoists?
Like there is a rapper in Houston, Z-Ro, that always says “I ride one deep”, that “I don’t have friends, only associates”, and that life, that thinking, so egotistical and destroys the solidarity that we can have, especially in organization like Crips and Bloods, that has happened various times in history.
B: That is part of the structure of power’s job, to coopt and neutralize those political experiences. What is MTV doing and what is the hegemonic culture industry promoting in gangsta rap? It is the glorification of violence for the sake of violence, the violence itself, like consumption for the sake of consumption, hypermasculinity writ-large with an adapted potency. That is what MTV and the culture industry sell easily and want to promote, and it is that dream and that part of their political strategy of neutralization. Nothing more. MTV and the culture industry never are talking about community relevance, hood organization, they aren’t talking about ethical codes, they aren’t talking about forms of political organization, they don’t speak about codes inside the jails. What they talk about are superficial things.
So, it is a phenomenon that can’t be delimited to the experience of gangsta rap. It happens in almost every cultural manifestation that has been coopted. What you are talking about, the exercise of cooptation is part of the present structure of power. Then, what they do, when they start to note the relevance, they capture it, they neutralize it, they take away its flavor, its edge, they package it, they invest money in it and they sell it massively. I don’t believe it is a phenomenon you can delimit to just gangsta rap.
AS: Ya, basically they promote corporatist fascist organizations, in my opinion. Like in the US, we have the “History Channel” where they put on programs about mafiosos. Mafia organization have ethical codes and everything like that, but they have a corporatist structure, and in my opinion are very fascist. “You do what I want, or I kill you.” “I am going to kill this guy because he is the Other.” So, thinking about how they neutralize people, music, how they use the media, and you expressing decolonization, how can you express that idea to people so inside this other ideology, the dominant ideology? Really, how can you say to another person that they are inside when they say, “I want money, its all I want.”? How is it possible to break, possibly little by little, or all at once, that sensibility people have after all these years?
B: Well, it is a complex mission in which we aren’t measuring the success of this process based on how many people we convert. I believe what we are trying to do is open up this platform for discussion and put it on the table in a form that people would be able to have some type of connection with and with who are promoting this type of knowledge, this platform of operation. So, it is much easier for a lot of people that through music they are able to identify themselves with me than being able to identify themselves with a person that perhaps has a sterile, flavorless, dry, academic discourse who represents a different politics.
So, for that we use media like rap in which we are sharing the same language, we have experiences growing up very similar, and we have a discourse that is in some way, I believe, that anyone is able to identify with. We, like I said, are not rejecting the idea of being a part of that system or questioning if someone has like Jordans on his feet, you understand? We are part of that experience and we have to go beyond those exercises which are disconnecting us from the barrio. We can speak to the gangstas, because we come from the same experience.
AS: Yes! I am really in agreement. Yesterday, I was with an academic friend from Poly, and we were talking about the fact that now Mexico confronts a possible revolutionary moment, but also possibly it is just the recurrence of the same dumbfuckery. And we arrived at an agreement on the fact that the most advanced political position is the Zapatista’s, and your position is similar to that. We don’t want a politics that is separated from society. We want a politics inside of society, speaking the way society is speaking, in its way of talking. But the political parties, which is the formal way of taking power in Mexico, don’t want any of that. So, my question is what do you think of the ways of taking power inside of society, like organizing without organizing, or ironically, how to be political without being political? Inside of rap, how to use a decolonized discourse at the same time as having Jordans?
B: It is complicated work that has to be negotiated with its proper contradictions and its proper forms of connecting to power. I believe a lot in the subject of the power our own bodies have as marginalized beings to be able to change the sense of things. I believe the example of the Zapatistas is a very relevant historical example. I would say it is one of the forms at the idea level, and through the work they have achieved, one of the most dignified historical examples that has happened in the history of the world.
Power functions in a more complex form. So, power, as it is, has a whole apparatus operating that goes about cutting down, closing doors, so that protests, exercises, platforms, and organizations, such as the Zapatistas, can’t grow further in the barrio. Look, I can’t marry myself to one idea or one form of doing politics or one form of understanding politics. I believe that we have to play the game of strategy, and understand how to move the pieces because this is how the political spectrum functions. Then, I believe that we should value the contributions of every movement, and to make strategies and keep pushing. And the fact that a Left in Mexico would be governing doesn’t mean automatically that we have to stop critical thought. It is complicated, not easy, it is a difficult process. We have to negotiate and continue doing.
AS: Really, this is like a conversation I had with my buddy Mario about Venezuela. People forget that there is a Left that is more Left than the Socialist Party in Venezuela. The militant barrios there have and want power, and they are in a struggle with and against the government. We always talk about the Right against the Venezuelan government, but there are people who are to the left of it that never get covered in the news, even in La Jornada, just forget about it.
Well, I want to return to some other questions. So, this act of making invisible these people is part of the power system. I know that was a concept on your recent album Las Patologias del Invisible Incomdo: Lado B [Pathologies of the Uncomfortable Invisible: Side B], and possibly you could explain a bit more, because in the US this is also an important theme with the protests against the police for killing black folks every day and there is no justice. So, please, could you explain more about the invisibles?
B: Ok, the pathology of the uncomfortable invisibles is a medical term basically identifying a symptom causing a physical or mental problem, identifying what makes you feel bad. In this case, it is a metaphor for colonialism as an infirmity, like a physical and mental problem in the body of the oppressed. We speak of the uncomfortable invisible, which is historically curious that we are made invisible, we have been reduced to zero inside the structure of power, but at the same time that invisibility doesn’t stop being uncomfortable for certain structures, for certain hegemons. So, it is about identifying colonialism as the origin of a lot of problems we have as individuals, and from there comes the theme and title of the album.
Then, the album speaks about a lot of things, having colonialism as a central point for talking about different themes. There is a theme of food, diet, the form the system takes infiltrating and contaminating our corporeal systems through food, we speak about sexuality, we speak about social and political problems like gentrification, we speak about an infinity of themes from international politics. And we speak always from the body of the oppressed and invisible to achieve with this platform emancipation and decoloniality, and this is the central point of the album.
AS: Something you said right now made me think. I have a hybrid experience. I have passed a lot of time with whites like myself, and with blacks and “latinos” in the US. And I have always noticed that whites always say they aren’t racist, but the moment only whites are around say really racist shit. And the moment a black dude shows up they don’t say that racist shit, but even then say racist things, and the black dude isn’t supposed to call them out for it. Like that, subjectivity and the being of the uncomfortable invisible can be understood? In New York, have you had an experience like that, or visiting a university?
B: Ya, well, I am conscious of how my body signifies in every space. In every place of the world our body has a different significance. And a lot of the exercise of embracing identity as a political affirmation is not just simply parked in the question of skin color or culture, but more it is a political affirmation with all these implications and more. And well, one has a body language, as well very specific, that results in making a lot of people uncomfortable.
So, in this sense every day of my life I have been in situations, not just in Mexico, in the US too, in which I identified the form of operation as racism. Like you said, there are situations in which a smile, a laugh, a greeting are racist exercises. Not necessarily do you have to wait until someone would tell you, “Nigger son of a bitch; Indian, son of a bitch” or this or that. There are many forms for racism to operate.
Especially, when we speak of liberal democracy and all their politics, like Hillary Clinton, which are the politics of “kill you with a smile”. They promote multi-culturalism, they promote ethnic, racial, and cultural diversity, but they are always putting us in a secondary position in making decisions, in the platforms of power. That, as it is, is a racist act of multiculturalism. So, it is even more complex, because these types of politics where they smile and give you their hand, is all a suspicious act. It is not like the white Republican, the conservative, who clears it up for you and says, “I don’t like you”, to your face and then you know immediately he is an antagonist. Racism operates in a lot of ways, and so I live it every day.
AS: Mao said something, and I am not a fan of Mao, but he said something funny when he met Henry Kissinger, the most evil person of the second half of the 20th century, and Richard Nixon, “I trust Republicans more because the Republicans are more honest with their hate of me. The liberals come and they are friendly with me but they do to me exactly what you Republicans do in the end.” Like you were saying, how do we manage, something for which I have no experience as a white guy. And if I am honest with myself, I have my own problems and proper subjectivity that fucks me up and I think “Screw this black guy” and I have to tell myself, “No way jackass, this dude is more oppressed than you and he is a human being just like you and he has a history and I need to take that into account.” So, when we speak about being honest in a liberal society, how can we manage that conversation? And sometimes, I have the thought that it isn’t people of color’s responsibility to tell the dumb white fuck how things run, right?
B: Of course not! Because there is a structure of power that benefits one side and not the other, so we are always in a disadvantaged position: historically, textually, tangibly, and palpably. So, with all that, then having to explain ourselves is really problematic.
I believe that also it should be stressed and made clear that our antagonistic position is not to say “I don’t like whites” for the simple fact of not liking white people. It’s like, our fight is not against the white person per se, but against the exercises of white supremacy and the form in which whiteness and the politics of whiteness operates. I believe that white people need to check themselves, account for their privileges, and undergo whatever interaction with communities of color with that understanding. They have to add up all those processes and articulate those privileges to try to equalize the historical process.
So, no it isn’t like we don’t work with you because you are white, or not want anything to do with you. It is more like you have to check your privileges, the whites have the responsibility to put themselves at attention with the form they operate in with people of color and try to always lay out that pattern to connect with people and say, “I am conscious of my privileges and I am accounting for myself.” Because there is a thin line between that and a “white savior” who arrives and says, “I am going to help you, but I have to tell you how you have to help people, I am going to tell you how to organize, I am going to tell you how to speak.” That is a rancid structure of power, and like that it don’t function.
AS: You are right, a white savior normally turns into an authoritarian dictator quickly, telling everyone what to do.
B: Ya, and in some way that is what it is, just dressed up with an inclusive and multicultural agenda. But, at the end of the day, you see it in Mexico and places like Guatemala, places like that, where white people arrive with apparently good intentions, bring their liberal political agendas, promoting multiculturalism, etc. with money, but you have these organizations and who makes the decisions, and who directs the organizations for helping the community and developing the community are the white people. So, at the end of the day, they just keep reproducing the same patterns of oppression that exist in the other structures those same people criticize. It is very complicated, very harmful, very rancid.
AS: In this conversation, especially about white supremacy, there is also the cooptation of the gangsta image by rich white kids.
B: It is seductive for white rich kids in the suburbs to adopt this image, because it is an exoticized image that sells easily, that is attractive, that it is cool to be a thug. But, that is part of white privilege. You are some little shit in the white suburb, and you can dress up gangsta for four days, but the moment you get tired of it, the moment you are exhausted of it, you take off your costume and you go home and you are happy with your life. That is what privilege does historically to the body. It is easy to glorify it, it is easy to consume it, it is easy to exoticize it from the platform of privilege. The problem is what if they would have to go through what others have to go through because of it. Surely they wouldn’t do it, they wouldn’t be involved in that life.
AS: Part of that is in the vocabulary, right? A white guy dressed up gangsta is not described the same as a black guy, because the black guy isn’t dressed up, it is possibly part of his life in his barrio. The white guy is just an idiot, like other white folks will say, “look at this idiot.” But, the black guy is always labeled a criminal, “Look at this criminal.”
B: Exactly.
AS: So, especially in this moment, and not only for the other side of the border where black folks are protesting, but for this side of the border where the indigenous are protesting. And music can manage this tough job because it can explicate what are people’s ideal and what they want. Instead of having someone impose demands, like they have tried to do on black folks in the US with the idea of cameras of police. Seriously, we know that doesn’t matter, camera, no camera, Eric Garner is still dead there in the street for selling a loosie. So, in this sense, and thinking about this further, what do you think are demands music is able to express in a more general sense, or are there demands that you have in mind for this or that side of the border?
B: Well, I believe that music offers us possibilities for analysis, at least in my case, more profound in many ways, but at the same time that profundity is an accessible profundity that has atemporal repercussions. That means, if I stop today at a protest and I read a speech, it is a speech that remains in that moment, and whoever captures it does, and whoever doesn’t, doesn’t, and just keeps walking. It is very sterile, and it can seem even inaccessible and boring for a community. I believe the advantage music has is the capacity to multiply itself, the capacity to keep itself in space and access itself at different times and in different processes and to make profound analyses, analyses that through musicality would be able to connect with people who don’t necessarily have the energy or wish in any exact moment to connect to well-read or critical analysis.
So, I think in terms of the themes that I have worked on most is establishing questions of race in the context of Latin America. This is a theme that makes uncomfortable a lot of people, and it obviously makes the Latin American Left uncomfortable. The Latin American Left, the criollos, direct descendents of Spaniards, they don’t want to accept that they are the whites of Latin America. They don’t want to talk about race. The discussion for them is based on class struggle, rich against poor, but doesn’t offer the possibility of a dialogue about racial questions.
I think the case of the Ayotzinapa student speaks very well to a historical process of structural racism in this country. A white leftist Mexican activist isn’t the same in the media as the son of a farmer in Guerrero, they aren’t worth the same. In the same imaginary of the Latin American Left exists a racism, a racism that corresponds to processes of colonialism internal to this country and almost all countries in Latin America. The countries made themselves independent from Spain, but only changed owners, who stayed in positions of power were the criollos, the Spanish descendants who were the new administrators of power and wealth in the country. And those families for generations have maintained themselves in positions of power. Latin America founded itself on everyone being equal, but in reality we aren’t. So, I believe in terms of the work that I do, in establishing this dialogue about race relations in Latin America, steps on one of the most relevant themes today.
AS: Ya, there is something stupid on the other side of the border where they think in Mexico it is just about class, and there is no racial structure.
B: Right. This is the discourse, including when you arrive really inside the discussion of race, practically they institute a Mexican-ness, a Latin-ness, a racial community that just isn’t true. So, we know who are the people that have the majority of power, access and privileges in Mexico, and they are white Mexicans.
AS: For that, there is a failure of identity politics, because if identity is only something as strict as “latino”, this doesn’t allow for the expression of all these other identities.
B: Exactly.
AS: A Nahua woman is not considered a Mexican in Mexico, And really, maybe they don’t want to be Mexican. It is because of that that they fight against the State. And that demand is important and forgotten, because the moment you turn on the TV in Mexico, you note the racial structure. Every telenovela I have seen demonstrates that structure.
B: Clearly.
AS: All the rich are white, and the moment a servant arrives in the scene she is brown. And I am gringo, I still see it quickly. It is the same on the other side of the border. You turn on the television, and all the shows about professionals are all white, except for a token friend. The moment a black person is in the scene, they are typically a criminal robbing white folks.
B: Exactly. It is the form of operating, there is nothing else to it. The schematic of white supremacy operates perfectly in Latin America, it is rancid. The white colonial aesthetic, you see it all the time. From here going back to your house, check out the billboards and it looks like you are in Norway.
AS: Ya. American hegemony is very strong. Almost all the movies I have seen advertised are from America. I have been here a week so far, and I have not seen one advertisement for La Dictadura Perfecta. Not one!
B: I think that in the colonial imaginary of the average Mexican, in how it drives us, the economic dependence on the US, and in some cases cultural dependence, is quite palpable, very strong. But, the strongest referents on the aesthetic and cultural levels, considering here beauty, good living, still go back to Spain. Like, the hegemonic pattern of good living, aesthetics, beauty, and a whole series of dispositions implicitly considered positive are based on the character of the white Spaniard, and that still counts a lot in Mexico, even more than the US. The question of the US is more a question of consumption and its dynamics, and some very specific cultural referents. But, on the larger scale, and I think the more perverse part, the hegemony is still Spain.
AS: I can agree with that because I see it with the fashion. Fashion here in Mexico is not from the US.
B: No, it is European.
AS: Ya, because the hypermasculinity of the US doesn’t permit men to dress like men dress in Mexico City. Seriously, it is something I had not thought of before, that there is much more linked to Spain than the US.
B: A lot more.
AS: It is part of my bias toward the imperialist Yankees.
B: Exactly. The colonial relation with the United States is a lot more about economic effects, consumption, financial and monetary dynamics. But, on the aesthetic and cultural level, let’s leave aside the everyday Mexican and talk about the Mexican intelligentsia. For a Mexican intellectual, all the referents are Europeans. The Mexican intelligentsia belittles manifestations like rap. The Mexican intelligentsia doesn’t have a fucking idea about Assata Shakur. They undervalue her. For them, she has no value. They don’t care about Angela Davis. They just don’t care.
You mentioned a bit ago La Jornada as a serious, responsible publication more associated with people’s causes, which still isn’t absent from reproducing the rancid problematics. Just look at the cultural agenda of La Jornada. For them, it is still much more relevant the painting going on in the Czech Republic, some Czech painter, than some painter in the Bronx.
It is curious, for another example, that even with the Mexican militancy and the particular case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has a certain popularity in Mexico because he arrived here through European anarchists, through that route. Mumia Abu-Jamal had to make a symbolic journey to Europe to receive his credentials of legitimation to be received by Mexican militants. Which is really problematic because it is a complete disconnect, a product of racism that belittles other protests. It is really rancid what happens here. European militants recognize Mumia Abu-Jamal, and the Mexican militants followed their example and legitimated his work because the Europeans said, “Hey, Mumia Abu-Jamal is relevant in the US. I, the European, am telling you. I am your political guide, your icon, your mentor for political references. I am telling you that you should support the relevant causes.” And so, the colonialist jump is like that, you understand me?
AS: Ya, I get it.
One last question, and speaking of race and class, there is an author, Paco Ignacio Taibo, that tries, sometimes and not all the time, to include in his novels and short stories, both. It is very problematic to try to navigate between the two, with each having its own singularity, and at the same time mixing in the social struggle. Is this something you have grappled with in your work?
B: Ya, it is a fundamental part of my body of work. The racial question, and thus class struggle, of course. I think they are processes which necessarily are intersecting all the time. I understand that there are moments they disassociate, but in the end they are things that go walking together practically all the time. Because, we see cases like the US about which some authors call the Lumpen Black Bourgeoisie, that is a class with a certain amount of participative black power facilitated by the structure of power to utilize them as an example of the black community in the US, which is part of the national project. So, you have blacks with money who are completely depoliticized, the racial questions seems to them as not outside of the constitution of the question of classes, but they are select percentages, very small numbers that the hegemony permits to flower in order to be able to justify the democratic national project. Perhaps because of that, class and race go hand in hand in my artistic project, not just music, but also literary and visual, implicit in all my work.
AS: Thank you so very for your time. Where are you headed too now?
B: Thank you. I am headed to Morelia.
AS: Ouch, safe travels.
As we parted, he gave me a gift, his most recent book Prognosis: Decolonial Poetic Exhale. In that book, in the poem, “Delicatessen”, he writes:
“The pig accepts its position as a pig and celebrates it.
This is a pleasurable exercise that
generates a process of affirmation of porcine pride,
such that the pig
self-destructs in its own consciousness and turns its miserable condition
into an orgiastic carnival of shit.
I learned from Malcom that the pig is disgusting.”
His most recent album is Patologias del Invisible Incomodo: Lado B, which is discussed in this interview. His website is www.emancipassion.com. Also, check out the songs “Autonomo” and “Aire”, my personal favorites, which I have been waking up to as of late. Check out “Mecanica” w/ Cambiowashere if you are looking for a good time.
Solidaridad y abrazo fuerte. Hasta la próxima vez.
Andrew Smolski is a writer, and this interview was done as a labor of love for music that brings us closer to a social revolution.
