Forward by Sandra Beckmeier
Interview by Ariel

Poet/activist/musician/self-taught artist Alli Aweusi and his gordian knots. Some are like singing to the choir, but waiting for the choir to return goodwill. Aweusi is a proponent of what is right and what isn't, and if anyone should grab a symbol, it's this poet, and catapult himself into his own. The new "Austin legacy" would leave a lot of people blind and stupid. Aweusi's got the power behind the punch, and his observance of the importance of underground drumming and its emergence and ties to the spiritual revolution sweeping through our karma-ridden United States would override the atheist's wind chime and bring everyone culturally into these elements of realism and truth; then maybe we could all toss up the proverbial finger at the "man."

Because of the weight of this piece, I tend to think it's star-crossed that shaman artist Ariel was intuitive enough to interview Aweusi several years ago, and random luck for Austin Downtown Arts, since she recently returned after a spiritual hiatus at Mt. Shasta, California. As always, Ariel is giving, and willing to let us reprint the interview, previously published in her alternative arts publication Samarai Poets.

Intuitive to this point, Aweusi is known for his shenanigans as well as his many graces, including his writings and the formation of the poetry group, Catfish Poets, which surfaced in 1994, and subsequently caused a rift through the community of spoken word artists. Catfish Poets, named for the music venue on Sixth Street, became one of the few platforms built for African American poets. Catfish Poets opened up a vein for internal perspective and criticism to widen and fold and began a trend of sorts, including the formation of Nailah Foscette's group, the Talking Drum Poets.

Dr. Marvin Kimbrough, whose work is about as funny as blues can be when they're real, and Floyd Freeman, whose presence is always felt far beyond his spoken word, are two of the groups cruisers. When the forum began a small circle of underground artists, as with anything, it strengthened cultural diversity by way of the heavy foot, and created a platform for artists from all kinds of lineages to respond to, while rediscovering relevant issues that always get lost in the mainstream shuffle.

Trying to find Aweusi for this story was fruitless -- he reminds me of the elusive J.D. Salinger, known for great works like Catcher in the Rye and Nine Stories as well as stirring things up in the brown-nosing publishing world by reissuing stories through the advent and encouragement of small presses. If anything I'd be willing to bet Aweusi is hiding out, carving a new course of action and, of course, writing.

Alli's poetry is a reflection of his simplicity, but his talent stretches beyond his use of language, merging the complexity of issues with a stride. It literally takes you on a walk. Works like The Drum is Silent and Walk of Death are indicative of his talent of lifting a veil on "violence of the mind" issues including the censorship of rap music, the spiritual slaughter resulting from the African Diaspora, and the fight against the judicial system baseboard -- you know, tossing people in jail, exposing that course of thought as neglectful and ignorant as the people tossing out the penalties.

The Big Time

Aweusi was mentored by Alex Haley, and credits him for the introduction and fascination he formed and the strides he's made with writing.

Aweusi: Alex Haley was my teacher. When he died I had to do something. He helped me in a lot of ways. He got me on the track of writing, and showed me how to do it. I had the illusion as a child that writers lived in big houses at the beach, looking out to the sea. Everything they wrote was just written out all the time and then it was published. He showed me that you don't even have to know how to read very well or spell, you don't have to have the grammar thing. You just have to have the idea. All the other stuff can be fixed. When I looked at his manuscript for Roots, I saw all these red marks and cross-outs and erasures. That just did something to me. So I felt I could be a writer too. Langston Hughes was also a great influence for me. I was reading Walt Whitman and other white poets. I didn't know black people wrote poetry. Someone slipped me a book by Langston Hughes. I read his book until it fell apart.

Rap Poetry

Aweusi: I think people need to hear the Rap Poets because they have a musical style and a very political message. All these rappers who want to call themselves rappers need to hear the original rappers that started in the '60s before everyone else started doing it (except the Delta blues men in the early 1920s). The Last Poets are poets but they use a style that rappers use today. The other style they use is with drums and poetry. So they have some rhythm and a chorus, and whomever the poet is will recite the poem while the other poets -- there are four of them -- will repeat some words over and over as they play the drums.

Ariel: Does rap have a connection with African rhythms?

Aweusi: Yes, definitely. There is documentation on that. You know how rappers walk? There is a tribe in Africa that does the same steps. When the rappers are performing, the African dance is like the same performance style and if both are shown together, there is an overlay.

Ariel: The rappers don't know where it comes from, it just comes out of them unconsciously?

Aweusi: Deep, deep down inside we know and feel our Africanism. We may not know it but we feel it and act it out, through songs and the way we do church, the way we communicate with each other. Some of it was beaten out of us but not completely, like when they took the drum away. They said, "well we can't let slaves have drums, right?" But the drum is still here and we're still playing it. They can't take it away from us anymore. Although we have been 400 years in this country, we are just beginning to see these things. If allowed to be free it could develop and thrive. The only problem I have with rap now is that it has been out so much that the system that oppresses all of us has been able to manipulate it, to make it negative. Our children have always been radical, we were radical. It's okay for them to be that way. But they've got to make their own expression. But their expression is being guided and pushed in a direction where it defeats folks. The master says he wants the slave not to think, so let's put this junk out there that's degrading to women, let's call each other negative names, and put out a negative message, so they come out acting like this negative message. We can't let them be positive because we don't want what happened in the '60s to happen again.

Ariel: So how are these companies manipulating, do they just buy and promote the guys that do that, and don't promote the guys that don't?

Aweusi: Right. They allow them to write that junk and put it out. A few years ago there was Two Live Crew. Their stuff is pure junk, it's X-rated sexist junk. The government wanted to ban them. They had it all the way to Congress (thanks to Tipper Gore). Now we understand that from the '60s as a TACTIC. You put junk out there, then say we got to censor it but what they really do is censor the political thinkers.

Ariel: They're doing that right now with the Internet and child porn. There's no law controlling the Net because technology is moving 15 years ahead of the law process.

Aweusi: They use this tactic to get at the critical minds. That's why I say we have to support Two Live Crew, because if we defend them we will still have our voice even though we don't like what he is saying. It's a slick way to do things, you know. Gangster rap is horrible, kill the police and all that kind of stuff. If you listen to the music like Ice T's you'll hear that he said he wanted to kill the bad police. But see, nobody put that out there. They just flatly said it was all against the police.

Ariel: I was listening to a woman called Soldier?

Aweusi: Sister Soldier. She's a good rapper, a lot of women are good because they are sensitive to the sexist issue, therefore they understand the whole picture. There was a movement but they changed it in the '60s, they said "we're gonna have real black music." It's gonna be conscious and uplifting, and somehow they changed it to rhythm and blues. Too bad because it took the power out of it. So you really have to be careful. It's important for us to be out there. It's important for us to get to young people, to confront this negative junk. I confront things to the Rappers because I think they haven't accomplished anything in this world which is positive to me and they make a lot of money and spend it on junk, so they won't last. You can go to the store and buy it. Used to be you couldn't even say that stuff. I think it should stay there. I don't want my kid to hear that.

Ariel: Artists can take that form and really use it. You got a huge audience of kids.

Aweusi: That's how it all got started. It was useful in the beginning. It was how people expressed themselves. So they had a development. We got to jump on this thing quick. If we don't they will control it and it will get out of hand. They used to call rock n' roll devil music, cause the kids were jumping up and down and having a good time and the white community was fearful of rock n' roll so they started killing off many rock n' roll leaders like Buddy Holly, who had an accident, then they put out easy-going smooth types like Frankie Avalon. They had to change it cause it was taking over the kids.

Ariel: That could bring all those kids together as kids.

Aweusi: Yeah and they didn't want kids listening to black music and enjoying it. So they created people and said OK we're going to promote this and that.

Ariel: So they called it rhythm and blues. I remember KDIA from Oakland, you remember KDIA? I was listening to that when I was 13.

Aweusi: I was always thinking it was rhythm and blues but I got to researching it and found some stories from old timers who expressed the fact that REAL BLACK was the name of the music. You'll run into that if you talk to the old timers. They'll tell you how they changed it and put them out of business. They took them out of business because they were going to be the promoters and stuff.

Ariel: They took all the money away from black business.

Aweusi: Who we gonna let in, and who are we not gonna let in. That's how they control it. First they had the white singers sing the black songs, like Elvis.

Ariel: Like jazz. We got white jazz.

Aweusi: But now we've got the other part of it. We've got young people who don't listen to jazz or blues anymore. The only people who play jazz are white.

Ariel: Yeah, and it's not real jazz.