El
Machetero |
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El Machetero: I'm a DJ and lyricist, poet and renegade MC, communicator and community builder, with almost 10 years now in this game. My peoples come from Chile, we arrived in Canada in 1979, when i was four years old. We came here as political refugees in the immediate shadow of the military coup'd etat which occured in our country with the U$'s government's full armament and enablement. Much of this experience of my family's has been a very dominant influence in too many aspects of my life, creative and otherwise. Revolution is basically the religion i was raised with, i would say that the need to live and speak truth and clarity is my primary guiding principle as an artist, organizer and human being. I released an album last year called "Clash Like Rock Smackin Tank" that i know some people dug, i'm planning on dropping another one this year called "Permanent Underclass" that was produced by my bredren and producer extraordinaire Gigz the Unknown Producer, and which features the brilliant, amazing and spellbinding vocal accompaniment of my dearly beloved sistren Amina Alfred. It's gonna be dope. Tanya: How did you get into writing rhymes? El Machetero: I got into writing rhymes because writing was basically my refuge and my escape. The childhood part of my life wasn't very pretty and i spent a lot of that time feeling very alone and confused and afraid, and disappearing into that world was something i felt very naturally drawn to. Rhymes was just a part of the day to day being a kid, whether it was the fun times when me and my cousins would be just razzing each other, or when you're just singing along to the words to your favourite song. But when i heard Grandmaster Melle Mel drop his verses on "The Message" when i was only 8 years old, it was OVER. Never cared much about being the best rapper or even about rocking crowds at first, i just wanted to be able to tell stories like that which you'd never ever forget. Tanya: Some people would call your musical craft, poetry what is your response to that? El Machetero: I suppose it's somewhat understandable, considering that many i got my start kicking acapella rhymes in the open mic circuit. i first began seriously putting myself out there after i heard some acapellas by folx like Ice Cube, Scarface, Sister Souljah and Boogie Down Productions, and the power of the lyrics on their own blew me away. This was around the same time as i first got hip to folx like the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron and Sonia Sanchez and Amiri Baraka. Poetry and spoken word inspired me, because i felt that i could be more introspective and speak more about the world around me, as opposed to what you find in even the greatest Hip-Hop, where you have to always come like you the man who runs things and it often feels like it's more about the messenger than the message itself. Poetry itself is just the creative use of words in a manner which is fully aware of their power, so from that perspective, it ain't all bad, if you are willing to consider folx like Nas, Pharoahe Monch, Jean Grae, Kool G Rap, Slick Rick, Black Thought (the Roots) and Buckshot (Black Moon) to be poets. In the mid-late 90s, there WAS a very vibrant scene built around the spoken word here in Toronto as well as other places, and i very much found myself a home and carved myself a space within it. The problem for me began to emerge when i found that the poetry scene was becoming this insular elitist scene that was completely disconnected from the streets, and it just became this boozhy downtown scene where you drink lattes and wear sandals and snap your fingers a lot and drag out every syllable to every word extra long and act super flakey and you put out these horribly boring 22-track acapella CDs that's just your voice talking, that you actually expect people to stop everything they're doing to listen to more than once, and i ain't NEVER been about that. The nail on the coffin for me was when i heard the "Open Mic Poetry" skit on MF Doom's album "Vaudeville Villain", and the Brother Sambuca cat who gets on the mic and bores the shit out of everybody, who just plain sounded too much like certain cats i've heard in real life. This is where the poetry label became something of a problem for a while, because i worked hard to make my first album one that you'd actually want to blast out your speakers with at the same time as you'd feel your own life being deeply reflected in. When you make music, you have to respect your audience no matter what, and if you're delivering a deep message of any kind, whether it's political or spiritual or whatever, it has to taste sweet like dessert, you don't want it to be like the brussel sprouts you're being forced to eat. So when i'd be trying to sell a CD that i really busted my ass on, and cats is all snide and dismissive like, "Oh, what is it? POETRY?", it can get really frustrating, because i know exactly what they are associating that word with, and trust me when i say that it ain't something that they think is gonna speak to them, or to anybody for that matter, other than the self-indulgent fool who's just hogging up his time on the mic, let alone something that they're gonna wanna actually lose themselves in. Tanya: How has your experience been in Toronto with your genre of music? El Machetero: Well, folx who've actaully heard it and taken it in absolutely love it. i have to say to the feedback i have received has been overwhelmingly positive, for the most part. The response at my shows has been good, i have always appreciated the degrees of love and respect and recognition i receive from people who know and love good music and good lyricism and who have told me how much they relate to the stories i tell. But i ain't about to sugarcoat anything either. It's hard to make a livelihood doing this, Toronto is cliquey and fickle as shit, there's always people out there who seem to feel some sense of purpose working against you for whatever reason, i've never been big into kissing anybody's ass or being a scenester who goes out of their way to been seen hanging out in the cool spots with the allegedly cool people, and if you ain't the youngest or the prettiest mofo with the fancy designer clothes who on top of that likes to tell it like it is in a way that makes some people VERY uncomfortable, it ain't gonna be easy. Toronto has long been reputed to be this place that if you're from here, you basically have to leave here before anybody gives you any love. Call it a low self-esteem thing, an inferiority complex, whatever, it just is what is. Tanya: Do you think that Toronto is ready for music other than "indie rock"? El Machetero: Well, of course. Most of the people i know who are hardcore into reggae or soca or Hip-Hop or R&B, for the most part, wouldn't piss on most indie rock if it was on fire. But for reasons that i am certain have as much to do with race and with culture as much as it does with money and power and influence, it's always gonna be the whiney skinny white boys with the greasy hair and the tight clothes who are gonna get most of the love from the industry. Not saying some of them don't sometimes make cool music, i'm just saying that some of them need to move out the way. But then again, that to me mainly just speaks to the need for us to set up more of our own labels and distribution companies and open more of our own venues that are SUCCESSFUL and that we put aside our silly hater-ism and actually support one another and take ourselves and one another seriously first before anything else, which unfortunately, is considered to be much more of a subversive reolutionary idea than i think it really needs to be. Tanya: Would you call your genre of music "hip-hop" and why? El Machetero: Sure I would, because i love Hip-Hop, it's a culture i have watched and to some degree or another participated in since i was a kid, and it's a culture that i will always actively work in the interests of. The spiritual principles which guide the MC guide me, i'm a DJ, i'm a lyricist and performer who is profoundly influenced by other lyricists and performers, i spit over break beats, i speak to the streets and to all who strive for better, and it's the Hip-Hop community is the community that hands down has always shown me the most Love and most inspired me to be better at what i do, and where i tend to meet some of the greatest minds and communicators out there today. But that doesn't mean that it's the only kind of music i have ever done or will ever do, nor does it mean that the kind of hip-Hop i do is very likely to be included with the more mainstream side of it. nor does it mean that i'm gonna usually be in line with what's considered trendy, nor is it the only thing i'm influenced by. and nor am i gonna be nice to it when it's half-assing and doing damage to itself. Tanya: What are you hoping to accomplish in this music scene? (in and outside of Toronto). El Machetero: Really and truly, far as me is concerned, i'm just trying to do something i Love and been gifted with, and be successful doing it, and help other folx do the same. i really can't say that i plan on doing it in Toronto for too much longer, or that i always like it here, but the reality is that this is where i've spent most of my life, and this is where a lot of who i consider family is based and probably will be for awhile to come, so i can't completely turn my back on this place, tempting as it might sometimes be. On a bigger level, the world is a hot mess and a lot of destructiveness is being constantly enabled in every way, and these things have been set in motion for a very long time. Lots of blood has been shed and lots of sacrifices been made to try and make this world a better place, and so much of what has been attempted has failed for so many different reasons, and most of us are children of this wreckage dealing with its influences and breathing its air and eating its food and paying its rent, so, most of the time, all i feel can be done is being clarity to the situation and call it out for what it is and try to find solutions with all those i'm reaching out to, and that ain't never gonna change. i'm a severely imperfect man, but what i have to share i'll share, and hopefully you'll be feelin it too. Tanya: Are there any Canadian artists that you would like to collaberate with? El Machetero: Absolutely. Besides Gigz and Amina, i've worked with loads of producers and MCs and artists, such as Mindbender, Malik IM, MC Nomad, and Madscientist of Infidel Crew, Dov Shalyn-Gray, DJ Curtis Smith, Rasul Phoenix, Eddy "Da Original One" David, Wasun Allah, DJ Sawtay, Masked Man, Vanessa John, to name a few, and i will happily work with all of them again. Me and L.E.V.I.A.T.H.A.N. are doing a track together for JD Vishus's
next album, and then there's other artists who i've been done things
alongside but never actually formally collaborated with yet, such
as d'bi young, Kamau, Equinox 199, Motion, Poor Man Militia, T1ne
and Fame of African Rulerz, Flexx Ali, Santerias, Agile from Brass
Munk, and shoot, so many others, who i would love to do things
with in the future. Otherwise, i like to stay open and down for
whatever. If you can picture me rocking out with you, than chances
are, i can picture rocking out with you too, so then i'm down. Tanya: I hear that you are coming out with a follow up cd? El Machetero: Yea, "Permanent Underclass" is the name of an album i been working with Gigz the Unknown Producer and Amina Alfred to create, which i'm gonna be dropping later this year. i have three tracks from it up on www.myspace.com/elmacheteromusic, that i encourage people to check out. It's a very gritty and dark and raw album with some crazy lyricism and some slamming dirty soulful beats, with a powerful and classic sound, i got no problem saying how excited i am about it and how much i myself like it, and that's for real. i wrote most of it when i was going through some very rough times, and when i was having to reflect deep on some of the choices i'd made with my life and what happens when those of us who've lived through certain things survive and are forced to figure out in a mature way what to do with those experiences that have shaped us for better and for worse. It's a lot of shit that a lot of us as people go through, but often tend to usually keep hidden from each other, and my album is sort of like a window into all that, and how that connects with the overall state of the world. Tanya: Who produced this up and coming cd? El Machetero: Gigz the Unknown Producer, whose work can be checked out at http://www.myspace.com/theunknownproducer, who is a true heavyweight champion in doing what he does and who has been the Grimey Beat Champion and hands-down victor at just about every Battle of the Beatmakers competition he has battled in from here to NYC, and who is every bit as much of a music nerd as me. Him and i are both true OGs when it comes to crate digging and when it comes to our shared love for dirty raw soulful organic classic-sounding beats and dissecting and playing with different forms and genres of music. His music very much brings out the rabid dog MC in me, but he balances that out very nicely with sounds that are almost smooth and jazzy at times and act as a very vivid soundtrack for real life, so needless to say, i really enjoy working with him and our creative chemistry is not one to be slept on by anybody for a minute. Tanya: As a artist do you feel that a good "artistic connection" with your producer is important? explain El Machetero: Definitely, unless you're just trying to bring out the big guns for a huge hit that's designed to give Mariah Carey a run for her money, but i haven't felt the need to do a track like that yet, at least not in any way other than financially.....and even then, i most certainly wanna have a good artistic connection with my producer, because if it ain't there, i think it's gonna be transparent. Tanya: As an artist of colour (latino), do you feel that the Canadian music industry embraces multi-culturalism? explain El Machetero: Yeah, right. Does the rest of Canadian society embrace so-called multiculturalism in any way that's meaningful, and not completely condescending, hierarchical, tokenistic, unbalanced, parasitical or self-serving? No offence or maliciousness intended, but the Canadian music industry, from what i've observed of it at least, up to now, really ain't no different, and that's just the truth, sue me. I don't wanna dwell on just the negative, but just like in mainstream electoral politics, so-called "people of colour" or those not exclusively of european descent, to be ultra-PC with my wording, are really not paid much mind as a so-called demographic, even though we are rapidly becoming the majority population in most of our large urban centers, and it's really not smart for anybody to sneeze at that. Aside from First Nations people and the Black folx who been here since the 1800s and some of the South and East Asian people who been migrating here since the early 1900s, the reality is that even those of us who are first generation are still immigrants and not really quite considered as first class anything. In my own case, from what i've seen up til now, the mainstream Canadian music industry has its own idea of what type of so-called "Latino" artist it's looking for, and for the most part, i think it's safe to say that it ain't me, or somebody who sounds like me or looks like me or says what i say how i say it, and honestly, that's okay with me. i have zero bitterness towards that fact. They really don't have much of anything to do with why i do what i do in the first place, so that really wouldn't be fair of me. It just simply means that i might not be doing it here for much longer, that's all. Tanya: Are you planning to do a full length spanish cd? El Machetero: Maaaaaaaaaaaaaybeeeeeeeeee, gonna hafta wait and see when that's gonna happen. Like anything else, gonna hafta be with the right people and right everything else. Tanya: Other than music what do you do? El Machetero: I'm a fulltime drop-in worker at Weston-King Neighbourhood Centre up near Weston and Lawrence, and i work providing a safe space and community meals for homeless people and people living in poverty who don't got much other places to go, and i'm planning on studying independent music production at Seneca College in the fall. i do a lot of writing on many different subjects, and i put in as much time as possible being available to the people i care most about. Tanya: Where do you see yourself 5 years from now? and why? El Machetero: Most of what i am focused on right now has to do with family, career and education, and being able to see more of the world. i am at that cycle of my life where everything is about building the rest of my pyramid after its four corners have been laid down, so i'm all about building one that stays good and strong regardless of what hapens in the external world. i know i'm being vague, but the reality is that i have more plans than half the people i know, but it's as much up to the will of something far higher than myself for me as it is for anyone else. But artistically and creatively speaking, i would like to be as self-sufficient as possible, and as knowledgeable in all aspects of the work as i can be, and i would like to find and spread the most beautiful feeling of fulfillment that way, so that i have something meaningful and beautiful to provide for my family with and give to my kids. That's what my revolution is all about at this time. Tanya: Being a "Social Worker" in your field do you think as an musical artist you are adding a form of educational teachings to the music industry? El Machetero: I think i'm certainly bringing a perspective to it that it may not be very accustomed to having to take seriously. Working in the streets being eyeball to eyeball with so much of what is out there definitely makes a lot of the politics in the music industry appear pretty damn silly to me. But then, perhaps more than some, i also have to observe quite closely what role a lot of the music plays in spreading the messages that, for example, get repeated by the youth that feel like their backs are smacked tight up against the wall, and what images of ourselves and each other we're gona end up having, whether it's as Latino people or Black people, or between men and women, or to what the youth feel like they can aspire to be. I have to say that i have to always pay close attention to the power of what you tell people when they come to you for help, and where is it that you're gonna take them from there. It's a big responsibility, and as an artist with an audience, even an audience of two, you better take it seriously. But again, that's not really something i expect the music industry to care too much about, for the most part, because their interest seems to be more in selling images and in selling you a lifestyle than anything else. Obviously as artists, we have a massive role to play, but we have to take that seriously and acknowledge it first, and unfortuantely, there's not too many artists here who've done that yet. Tanya: Name your top 5 hip hop cds( that your have on heavy rotation)? El Machetero: Whew! Thanks for not making me have to name my top favourite Hip-Hop CDs of all time!! i been killing "Hell Hath No Fury" by Clipse and a beautiful album by the name of "Shine Through" by a triple-threat artist by the name of Aloe Blacc who is signed to Stone's Throw, "Hip-Hop Is Dead" by Nas is the type of album i think it's safe to say most of us dream of one day making, and i was Blessed to be able to just scoop a copy of Madlib's "Liberation" album with Talib Kweli. Other than that, i'm waiting on Pharoahe Monch's next one, i hope Jean Grae comes with something new soon, and i been blasting lots of classic shit, like Organized Konfusion and Ultramagnetic MCs and Freestyle Fellowship. Tanya: Name your top 5 Latin cds? ( that you have on heavy rotation )? El Machetero: Aloe Blacc's album i mentioned above would definitely fall in that category too, cuz he's an Afro-Panamanian brother who reps that to the fullest. i just picked up one of my favourites of all time, "La Voz Y La Guitarra de Jose Feliciano" on CD recently, and a comilation of 60s garage punk and psychedelic rock from Peru that a Spanish label called Vamprisoul just released, and i been listening to lots of music by this experimental noise doom band from out of LA called Santa Sangre. Tanya: I hear that you love your punk rock....can you talk a bit about that? El Machetero: Oh hells yeah, that's the most aggressive, cathartic, raw and primal music that's out there. It really don't get any more real than diving off a speaker or than screaming into a mic or blasting away on instruments that you can't really play. i'm always a bit shocked at how overwhelmingly white and suburban the hardcore and punk scenes tend to be here in Toronto, cuz i think a lot of the younger cats who are caught up in a lot of the destructive gun and gang shit who are confused of where to direct all that rage might really benefit from checking out something like punk, as would all the other people in our communities who are going mad being sick from conforming to how mainstream white supremacist capitalist culture expects us to be. It's music that pisses and bleeds rebellion and discontent and to me, is all about release. Yea, you have your mainstream and corporate side of it which is what you mostly see on MuchMusic, but i got into it back in the 80s, when i was in my teens and it was a very undergound scene. i was very blessed with the fact that i knew a whole bunch of Latinos who were in the scene, which helped me to see that i wasn't completely alone. i'm not saying that i can blast punk rock 24/7, but i'm grateful that i had that connection to that scene growing up as something different to get into. i did reach a point in the early 90s where the more militant Hip-Hop from that time, such as Public Enemy and X-Clan and Paris and Sister Souljah and NWA and BDP and Poor Righteous Teachers and Brand Nubian and the whole Native Tongues click became much more relevent to me, and once Wu-Tang dropped "Enter the 36 Chambers", it was over. a lot of that was because there was a lot i felt the need to free myself from, and hardcore punk wasn't doing it for me anymore at that point. But when Martin Sorrendeguy released his documentary about Latino punk rockers called "Mas Alla De Los Gritos (Beyond the Scream)" and when James Spooner released his classic amazing film "Afro-Punk", i just felt all those old faculties of mine being re-awakened, and i understand that this is not something everybody can relate to, but at least i feel much better-rounded within my own self as a result of the fact that i know am well connected to an international scene of Black and Brown folx who are as much into punk and other non-mainstream genres of music and culture as me. Tanya: How have you applied your love of punk rock to your musical genre? El Machetero: Well, the essence of punk rock is in DIY (Do It Yourself), and if you're an artist who the labels and promoters and what have you ain't trying to touch with a 10 foot pole, then what else is there to do? Punk is a music that you don't have to be a classically trained musician to play, or be a good singer to sing, and what you need more than anything else is the heart to get out there and do it anyway.It's pure rage and pure energy that goes into punk, in a manner that is not at all different than what you see in dancehall or some Hip-Hop. As a result, you become likely to experience the most alive feeling you can imagine when you experience it live. i've always seen punk rock and Hip-Hop as basically being one and the same in that regard, it's just that historically, Hip-Hop is music made by young people who are sick from being oppressed, and hardcore punk is often (but by no means always) music made by young people who feel alienated by their privilege in society and who just plain know that something is wrong with the world being how it is and wanna find a way to express that. Much of my anti-materialistic sentiments i always felt were better echoed by punk, but most of my experiences that i've had as a Latino man who don't come from much money i always saw better reflected in Hip-Hop. Really and truly, i'm all about striking the best balance between the two. Tanya: Any advice to our audience that wants to make moves in the music industry? El
Machetero: Own
your own music. Don't sign anything without doing the research
first. Whatever you don't know how to do yourself, you're gonna
end up having to pay somebody else to do for you, so you best learn
how to do it yourself. At some point, somebody is gonna rip you
off.....don't allow that to make you bitter. Respect your audience.
Don't lie to them, cuz it's gonna catch up to you. Stay grounded
in the real world, cuz you're a working and hustling person just
any other. Just cuz you make good music don't make you better than
anybody else. Wait awhile before you quit your day job. Learn the
rules of the industry first before you break them. And have fun.
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