First time I talked to Desdamona, you get to come too.

 

I sat in my Freshman rap-based poetry class waiting to hear pieces from “local rappers” coming in to share with the class. Yea, I know “local rappers.” Everyone and they grandmamas rap now. Especially in this class, man, every day I had to hear wack ciphers clouded with clichés and homophobic, ignorant, offensive, uncreative assholes trying to slang their garbage to me. If it wasn’t Slug, I Self Devine, or Crescent Moon I just plain didn’t care to hear it.

So in they parade, one by one. The first, a clown, short locks, mad tight t-shirt, and a spinning-rim belt buckle; which he obliged us in a demonstration before he shouted the phrase “off the dome” like 60-times during a freestyle. Sorry, I’m thinking, who’s next?

Up she walks. A thicker white woman, calm, dressed almost forgettable in jeans and a hoodie, asymmetrical haircut. The professor introduces her and where she’s from—Iowa. He runs off his credentials about her and she waits standing in the front with her hands tucked in the front of her hoodie. Then, she speaks.

Hip hop. And not in a way that I had heard it before. She connected her experience with hip hop and artists so wittingly—I almost couldn’t keep up. Using names of rappers she listened to creatively by paralleling them with her life. It wasn’t the over-exaggerated, loud performance that poets mask their lack of words with; it wasn’t even the understated quiet modern-art poetry (that I could never understand), she just created how she felt. I could feel the organic, genuine and unique story that manifested into the room.

That’s all I can remember; the rim-spinning clown and her, Desdamona. Not that all the others were bad, just in comparison they all faded in my memory because she was just that tight. Since then, I’ve always been both inspired by Desdamona and intimidated at the same time. As it is for many people that I admire. Since that class years ago, she has released two formal projects. In 2005 she released The Ledge (with production from Sly & Robbie) and then The Source in 2007. She is one of the founders of international festival B-Girl Be; celebrating women in hip-hop that we are so lucky to have annually here in MPLS (this has since inspired more festivals around the world). Desdamona has had residencies in prisons and classrooms, won awards, and has performed all over the world. Of course she lives in MPLS.

Saturday, November 21^st marks the release of her newest project, The Inkling. You’re invited to celebrate with her and the community at Sauce.

DESDAMONA THE INKLING CD RELEASE

Sauce Spirits and Soundbar

Corner of Lyndale and Lake St.

10:00pm 21+ $5

Featuring special guests: Alicia Wiley, Carnage the Executioner, and Bill Mike

 

We met up for drinks at Urban Bean this weekend. Her, hot chocolate with whip cream, me, Sunset in Seattle tea—tastes like birthday cake.

 

ALICIA: Your third project, since The Source, is releasing this Thursday! What is it called?

DESDAMONA: It’s called The Inkling and it’s official release is Nov.21 Sat. at Sauce.

 

ALICIA: Did the CD already release or have copies leaked out early?

DESDAMONA: No, it’s not officially out yet, but this is the first time I’ve given some copies out early. I’ve never really done that before, but giving them out has created a nice buzz.

 

ALICIA: Who has beats on the album? How is this different from your first two albums?

DESDAMONA: No one. It’s all poetry. Everything besides the last piece on the album. The last piece doesn’t really have a beat, but a rhythm created with breathing, a repeated phrase, and other sounds knocking. That’s the best way to describe it. No musical pieces, unless you consider words as rhythm. Then yes.

 

ALICIA: Who do you like recording with?

DESDAMONA: I recorded with Paul Marino, (the Source). He is a really good listener. When I went in he said, “Okay, I’ll just push record, you’ll lay it down and we’ll come back and edit to separate each poem.” It took one day. I went back and listened to it, decided there were a few changes I wanted to make on a second day, so we got it done in less than 12 hours.

 

ALICIA: So what were the biggest challenges in the creation of The Inkling?

DESDAMONA: The creation of the album was so easy; I’d say the biggest challenge was wondering if anybody would want to hear it. I said, ‘I don’t know if anyone is gonna wanna listen to an all spoken word album.’ And Paul said, “I’d listen to it.”

Sometimes even I get annoyed of listening to spoken word. Even though people talk about deep things, there is a popularized formula that is frustrating to me. I want to hear people’s genuine voice and style. Not something they were taught to do.

Why are we training poets instead of nurturing them? Let’s stop the judging thing. I know that gets more kids involved in it and all that, but it also gets kids involved in the idea of ‘this is what it takes to win.’ Its like, are we writing to win now or are we doing it to express ourselves?

All of us as writers know that the truth and the lie are sitting right next to each other—like complete lovers. We tell stories all the time that involve both the truth and the lie. That’s what it is to be a story teller, marrying the two and maybe being able to keep a secret inside of all that.

But I feel like that formula can destroy the creativity. If you get kids thinking that way, even adults, that ‘I have to write something to win,’ what does winning mean anyway?  If you starting to write to win what are you writing for. What does that mean anyway? That you’re the one? What does that matter?

If we are manufacturing poets that sound the same and write the same, who is going to stand out in history? It won’t be the people that use that style, it won’t be. Maybe the people that started that style, or translated that style into a different way, but it won’t be the people who all sound the same.

 

ALICIA: What poets do you like in the city?

DESDAMONA: Ibe Kaba, Truth Maze’s poetry even though I don’t hear it as much as I used to, and Tish Jones. To me, these poets are inspiring, creative, unique and consistent in their work not only on the page and stage but in the community.

Cynthia French is another one. She used to be the Slam master for the MPLS slam team. She uses a lot of funny situations in her work. I’ve watched her grow and change over the years. I really appreciate her work because it is so different from what I do. Totally different. Sometimes humor is hard to write, so when somebody can do it, it is really interesting to me.

 

ALICIA: I totally agree! Humor is so hard to write. I think I’m hilarious, but I’ll straight be the only person in the room laughing.

 

DESDAMONA: It’s like what you think is funny is not always going to be what somebody else thinks is funny. I try to say funny stuff at the open mic all the time, and everyone just sits and stares. I’m thinking to myself, ‘I’m funny, man! Come on!’

 

ALICIA: What keeps you working?

DESDAMONA: As a writer and artist. We want to be remembered…I mean, I want people to remember the work, I think that is that way for all artists.

 

ALICIA: How do you develop a song? Do you get a beat first? Write first? What’s the process?

DESDAMONA: A lot of times I don’t write to a beat. I can tell you specific songs that I wrote to a beat. I wrote “The Source” and “Infinity” to a beat. A lot of the other ones just came as words first and then turned into something. Sometimes I wrote them thinking they’d be songs that turn into poems and vice versa, it just depends.

I don’t have a formula that I go by. I don’t wanna do that. Like “Reflacted Light” as an example is on The Source and the first opening part is only six bars long, which is odd. It is actually more of a poem, but I say it to the rhythm. Then the middle verse is 16 bars long, and then the last part that I say is different every time because it is a poem. So when the band plays with me, when I’m done with speaking I ask them to keep playing and I cue them when I’m ready to go back to the chorus. There is definitely an improvisational element to it. I think it keeps things fresh to not always have a rigid structure.

So that song is 6, 16, and then somewhere between 10-14 bars depending on how fast or slow I say it, because it’s not set to the rhythm, its spoken over the beat. So that one is weird, it’s not the traditional song writing verse, chorus, verse, bridge formula. I’m kinda like ‘whatever man.’ I’m not adding two more lines just to make it eight bars because it supposedly needs to be that long, no. I mean, I can do that and you might do that at times, but I like doing something else.

That’s why poetry is fun. You can ride the rhythm or not, you can rhyme or not. There are less restrictions. You can have a hook, you can have whatever. I just like to play around with it. Whatever the song calls for. I let it set its own structure. I don’t think I have any two songs that match up structure wise.

 

ALICIA: Where do you write?

DESDAMONA: I mostly like to write in situations where it’s not conducive to doing it, like in the car. Yea, that’s when stuff comes to me. I carry a digital recorder around, when I remember to, and that helps. Other places I would say are places where live music is happening. There are some places where it just happens. I don’t write a lot at home unless something really inspires me to write.

 

ALICIA: You are also the creator of the Too Big for My Skin Campaign. Last I checked there were over 20,000 views! What is the inspiration for this campaign? What are your goals with it?

DESDAMONA: My goals are have it become a saying that people know and use. I’ve actually had people come up to me after hearing it and say, “I’m too big for my skin.” As if they had an epiphany while listening. It’s great. When I wrote the piece it was obviously very personal, and I had no idea it would actually be personal to other people—which I didn’t realize till after I started performing the piece. Now I’ve partnered with some women at Loyola University. They are a group of women that mentor high school women and they took on the [campaign’s] title for their theme this year. They are getting their own t-shirts printed up and are bringing me there to lead a workshop. I’m actually going to get some t-shirts as well. I’ve also got some interest in Washington state. They are looking to bring me out there and now somebody in Kansas City at a wellness program wants to play the video and I’ve been talking to someone at the Women’s Center at the U of M as well. I’m hoping the requests will start pouring in.

I have a 3 day workshop curriculum and I’d like to take it around to schools and different youth programs. What I want do is take the video around, show it and talk about it, maybe have a performance and invite people to respond to the video in their own way.

It is pretty much based around women and girls, but I don’t think it is solely restricted to that. It is for anyone who doesn’t fit in or feels insecure. The workshop would be around the idea of strength and insecurities and what makes you feel strong. The project is actually more than just the video; there are interviews with all the people that are featured in the video. So, we have to do some editing to get that all together. I’d like to eventually submit it to film festivals. It’s not really a documentary; it’s something a little new. I guess I don’t know how to describe what kind of film project it is. BFresh was the cinematographer and  editor of the piece and I couldn’t have done it without her.

 

ALICIA: I love the video. I love beautiful people from here. First time I watched it, I’m like ‘oh snap!’ Seeing pieces of the city represented in a new way. Everybody looks so happy; it is very empowering to see the video. I’m so proud that it is coming from Minneapolis.

DESDAMONA: Yea, I’m excited about it and other people have gotten excited about I too. We involved 50 women and kids in the video and I told them from the beginning about trying to make this a campaign. What I asked of them as a participant is that they pass it on to others and quite obviously that has happened otherwise there is no way we would have 20,000+ plays. And people are still passing it on.

I want people to submit video responses. Not like an ‘I thought it was good’ or ‘I thought that sucked’ but something poetic or a song or even just them reflecting on how the video made them feel.

 

ALICIA: One of the last times I was at the Blue Nile open mic that you do, you had a nice photographer there. What’s going on? Are you working on documenting the night now? Growing in a new way?

 

DESDAMONA: They requested to come down and record it to potentially put it online, it wasn’t something that we set that up. A lot of people have come and asked us if we wanted something recorded. I’m interested, but I’m more interested if there’s somebody in the community that wants to step up and do it. I’m not a filmmaker, I mean, I’ve done a video, but that isn’t my passion. So if someone wants to do that, take ownership or a leadership role and let’s do it. We are supplying the space and the art and the moment, so I’d be open to it. There are also logistics like getting everyone’s permission and contacts, so it is a big job.

It would be kinda cool though. Like having a feature every week maybe? So then you could check every week to see if you made it onto the feature. It would engage people in a different way.

 

ALICIA: If you weren’t rapping what else would you be doing?

DESDAMONA: Some other form of art. Whether it was visual or movement, things I did when I was younger. I was a dancer and visual artist, but they are both things I sort of let go. I taught and took dance from a really young age.

 

ALICIA: What? I didn’t know that!

DESDAMONA: Yup, everything: classical, ballet, modern jazz, acrobatics—flips and all kinds of stuff. Right, not anymore, I’d break my back. But, when I get around all these dancers, which happens often, it does two things; it breaks my heart and it makes me happy. I’m like, oh man, I’m too old to do any of this. Watching them makes me feel like I can.

I’m actually going to do a collaboration with some local ladies where I am going to do some movement and they are going to do some speaking, so we’ll be reversing the roles. It would be a more theatrical type of thing.

I do yoga now, almost every day. It definitely helps. As a performer it’s important to have a good sense of your body. For a while I felt like I had forgotten that, so doing stuff even if it’s a quick workout, to connect with how my body is feeling and how stiff we can be can help you on stage.

I went to school for graphic design. I realized that wasn’t for me. I knew I wanted to create art, but for me. Not as an advertisement.

I’d be doing something artistic, no matter what. Even if I worked at the bank, I’d figure something out.

 

ALICIA: Who else are you listening to in the city?

DESDAMONA: Brother Ali, Roma di Luna, The New Congress

 

ALICIA: I feel like you are working all the time. What do you do when you are not working, really?

DESDAMONA: I am working all the time cause it’s fun. When I’m not working, I’m working. But if I’m not working, working. I’m relaxing sometimes.

 

ALICIA: Okay, now what does that look like?

DESDAMONA: Well, sometimes it just means I’m staying home, cause I actually get the chance to stay home and just veg and watch Netflix all day long. Or watch movies with friends. I like to go out to eat with friends, although I don’t get to do it a ton, and then it has the potential to turn into business. Which is fine cause it’s usually a relaxed environment. I do yoga, but to me that is part of the work, since it keeps me feeling so that I can work.

I’m gonna have to send you my Netflix list, cause I’ve been watching some great documentaries recently. Have you seen Very Young Girls? It’s about girls that have gotten into prostitution through pimps. The documentary actually talks directly to the girls to capture their story.

 

ALICIA: It hurt my chest even thinking about it.

DESDAMONA: I know it’s crazy.  There is another one I just watched about how in Russia in the 70’s when birth control was illegalized. There ended up being a lot of orphans because families would abandon their children cause they couldn’t afford them or didn’t want them. Oh man, it’s burned in my mind forever. It stuck with me after I watched it for a while.

 

ALICIA: It is so amazing how big the world is and how here we really only think about the 5 feet around us. I can really get caught up in my own drama. Not that my own personal battles aren’t valid, it’s just wild the strength people are forced to have in other places—or the strength they are born with. I have to really recognize my privilege here.

 

DESDAMONA: Right, and that’s the hard thing to do when you know about what’s going on in the world. 

 

ALICIA: You’ve been teaching poetry and rap class all over in schools, community workshops, and prisons. Last week my girlfriend Jaz went to a rap class you taught in St. Paul. I didn’t get to hear about it yet. How’d the class go?

DESDAMONA: I think it went pretty good. I started off talking about my story. About who I am and where I’m from to have some sort of reference and how I’m involved in it. I didn’t go in trying to teach them anything in particular, but to give them access to somebody locally who has been doing it, who has a little bit of history in it. Then I opened it up for questions.

We talked about what you think a good song is. What is that draws you to an artist? Who do you like and what do you like about them.

We did this exercise with clichés where they got a whole list of clichés, and you get to pick one of the clichés and you write about it, but you can never use the cliché within the writing. The thing about this is that it stretches you to think about things and say the same thing in a new way, so that it is not a cliché phrase  any more—it’s from your perspective. Then we share them and then try to figure out the cliché. This is something you can do every day, you know? Like pick one a day as an exercise for yourself.

 

ALICIA: I know you do writing prompts on your Facebook page that are helpful for this too.

DESDAMONA: Ha, yea, sometimes I wonder. I was sitting there today trying to write one and I just couldn’t think of anything. So I was like ‘what are you hungry for, literally and metaphorically?’ It doesn’t really matter if it’s a paragraph or less. Sometimes the answers are really short, but at least it gets people thinking and writing.

We finished our Urban Bean hot chocolate and Sunset in Seattle tea and talked about food. Her love for home cooked Italian and Mexican and my obsession for a new curried kale recipe that I’d be making over the weekend. We searched through the creative selection of “I heart MPLS” t-shirts for sale; Desdamona’s inescapable love for graphic design still holding on in the back of her mind. We waited for a business card to find out who the designer was, shifted through the mugs, and glanced of the lack of gluten-free pastries at the front counter on our way out.

Desdamona is strong, focused and doesn’t take herself, the world or time for granted. You can tell that she invests and believes in her surroundings and the future.

After years of listening to her music and learning from an outsider’s perspective, it is interesting to learn about Desdamona—what drives her. This is the first time I’ve ever had the chance to sit down with her. I felt like I could have asked her much more about her experience as an artist in the city and how she has branched nationally. The connections she has created for herself and other artists in the city are really significant for our scene.

Desdamona has a real pulse on what is new in poetry, hip hop, and feminist movement, keeping herself involved in the discussion by always creating, always challenging herself to create something new; while maintaining her identity and how she has grown. My conversation inspired some creation in me; I encourage you to do the same.

Standout tracks off The Inkling:

Don't Listen To The Lyrics

Miss America

Love At First Write (That Shit He Say) !!

 

How you can get in touch with Desdamona:

Blue Nile Open Mic – Every Tuesday night from 10:00pm – close  FREE!

2027 Franklin Ave. E.

Southside MPLS

612 338-3000

 

If you'd like to bring Desdamona to your school, college or organization for a performance and/or workshop, please email deirdre@zlinkentertainment.com

Inkling is also available on
iTunes and CDBaby.com

www.myspace.com/desdamona
www.facebook.com/desdamona.rox
www.youtube.com/desdamonaone
www.twitter.com/desdamona1