--Am looking for someone interested in helping me revamp my main website( www.matanaroberts.com). its so depressing, i'd like to make it a little happier and more representative of things I like to look at.. am tired of dealing with the generic-ness of dynamod...... email me here if you've got some skillssssss. my budget is tiiiiiiight, this is gonna be a relatively broke summer for me but i know i can work something out with whomever might be willing.

---am  considering putting together a COIN COIN page over on facebook and stumbled across a fan page that someone  created for me. cuuuuuuuuuute! thank u so much for whomever did that. some of those fans are people i knew soooooooo long ago ( shout out to the bms cheerleading sqaud-- yes, i was cheerleader. a really, really, really,really, really bad one. i just liked the outfits. high comedy leme tell u. later on down the line  i was drum major too -- the ultimate marching band geek-odess, yes that was me....)

---and yes i watched the michael jackson memorial in all its wierdness on CNN/facebook today. The combo of CNN and peoples facebook comments popping up  from all over the world was quite amusing, especially when people no one recognized would pop up on the stage. I hate giving Al Sharpton kudos, but his sermon was so in the beauty of  what is the quintessential  southern black church tradition even i  had to say an amen-- especially when he got to " yo daddy wasn't strange, what he had to deal with was strange".( i'd have to disagree with this, MJ was definitely strange, but so am I and you too maybe, and i take great comfort in this ) and  interested also in  the number 7 that keeps popping up in the  whole saga. I use a lot of numerology  in a lot of my compositions ( especially the graphic scores) and so  the way that number keeps popping up in MJ's story is really interesting to me.
 here's the break down:
-- Michael Jackson signed his will on 7/7/02.
-- Michael Jackson's memorial was on 7/7/09 ... exactly 7 years after the will was signed.
-- Michael Jackson's two biggest hits -- "Black & White" and "Billie Jean" -- were each #1 for 7 weeks.
-- Michael Jackson's three biggest albums -- "Thriller," "Bad" and "Dangerous" -- each produced 7 top 40 hits.
-- Michael Jackson was the 7th of 9 children.
-- Michael Jackson was born in 1958 ... 19 + 58 = 77
-- Michael Jackson died on the 25th ... 2 + 5 = 7
-- Michael Jackson has 7 letters in his first and last name.

thats gonna give conspiracy theorists something to digg into for ages.

keep it easy,
m

i remember seeing my mom shedding tears listening to a marvin gaye record  back in the day and she was crying, it was the day he was shot dead by his own dad--- i remember thinking even as a little wee one wtf? i landed in london  for the first time as a teen the morning princess diana died and remember thinking as i ran into random strangers on the streets, totally redfaced in tears crying, wtf.  and tonight  i totally cried when it was confirmed that mj died. now i  sort of get it.  wtf  no longer confuses.i hate being grown up sometimes.

Its  totally ironic  to me that Farah Fawcett and MJ died the same day. I mean I know FF was  as an idol to  some little growing girls born in the 70's who saw her moves as an  bad assed angel on tv, and i respected some of her work as i got older ( like the burning bed movie) but for me her iconic-ness represented an addition to an inner self confusion surrounding being litte and brown and not understanding where i fit in  the very one sided cultural  imagery that was  shown  on the idiot tube  by the  time i was doing the latch key thing and using the idiot tube as my companion.( it got even worse in jr high for me. DJH was a  god damned life saver. thank you(once again) canadaland!). And MJ just kind of made that shit worse for me honestly. I sometimes harbored an inner shame about sir m   that actually deep down inside kind of  really hurt because it was sooooooooooo hard to watch him as a growing little avant  colored girl  in the 80's cut his face up into elderly ghostlady-oblivion( ironically looking more like farah fawcett than his own plasticized family by the time he died. ), and even tho i  kind of tossed him aside once prince  started parading his little awesome  sexy mf booty around, deep inside i still had a reverence for mj's ability to make people forget his insanity momentarily and focus on his bad assed midwestern grown  beats, insanely fluid dance moves, and lyrical genius. awesome art in real time. part of me is glad we wont have front row seats to seeing him tear his  surface up even more for all to see and get accused of some more stomach churning stuff, but damn, it still would have been somehow wierdly comforting to have his americana complexities floating through the airwaves?  His messedupness( totally not a word), reminding us that we are all for better or  worse a bit fucked up too. With Michael gone,  if u think about it ,now all we have ( in the african american  20th century pop icon shame department continuum)is R Kelly( thats totally gross to think about but i think it's is true. or maybe whitney? shes nowhere near as grossly sad tho? I'd throw Lil' john up  in there, but it's kind of  different, he's more 21st century to me anyway and i kind of like dude, but in a different kind of way...). Anyhow R's messedupness ( which i get double shame from cause the fucker is from chitown--my sister went to his highschool. My grandmother knew all the words to I believe I can fly....)  is no where near the depth  and complexity  and history of a one Michael Joseph Jackson.  100% home grown,Made in the USA,  American spectacle people.( which was always slightly embarrasing too)

  as an aside  as working artist it kind of comforts me a little in that i can be as complicated, and maybe messed up in the social norm sense,  as i need to be but still have a work ethic thats TIIIIIIIIGHT?!?!?! Just like MJ? (Except i'm a poor mess versus a millionaire mess, but hey if anyone  was the poster child for --" mo' money, mo' problems", mj certainly was.)  A totally untrue  utopic artistic view of the madness that is art making, but whatever, it brings up interesting questions. We all have to deal in whatever way we can.

regardless  of all this, dance yr asses off folks!!!!  seriously.   that will always be  the mad positive side of his legacy for sure.
xo
m

many thanks to those that made it out to last weeks COIN COIN show. it was fantastic to see all of you ready  to deal with a somewhat challenging listening experience. some folks didnt know what they were getting into and chose to leave early ( including a friend of mine), thanks for trying to deal at least part way. That segment of COIN COIN( gens de couleur libre) is pretty emotional and I scared a shitload of people in Italy last year with this one so seeing a few folk leave did not ruffle me too much( tho i do get a little sad inside for just a moment, but its only a moment)..... That segment of COIN COIN  still needs more tweaking but i was really happy with where it positioned itself last week. there was someone videotaping this show-- i would love to have a copy of that  if you are out there reading this.... any coin coin bootlegs ( there are atleast four out there somewhere) i'd love to get my hands on.Stay tuned for a release of some of this music by years end. As well as a new solo release, separate from the COIN COIN madness, coming up soon.

Issue 6 of  my zine Fat Ragged is done. if u want a copy write me a REAL letter. be creative people! (remember letters? big points if u actually write in your own hand)
 send it:

Matana Roberts
545 8th Avenue #401
New York, NY 10018
( lazy  new yorkers-- Blue Stockings has them in stock)

 i'm tired of looking at my zine screeds.... but hope you get something out of it worth thinking about tho. theres a heavy focus on race/gender stuff and im sorry for that, but the entire issue is about my COIN COIN project and my thoughts on my family's history as it relates to my 21st century ( sometimes uberconfusing) existence. talking about shades of american difference could not be avoided. I do keep my sense of humor intact tho....also unfortunately there's a pretty  bad margin copy floating around that shouldn't have been put out there. sorry for that. If you happened to get one of those at the last few COIN COIN shows let me know and I'll send u the corrected one.

an essay i wrote about creativity is also being released in John Zorn's journal of essays written by musicians--  ARCANA IV. keep an eye out for that.


After this NYC date in a few weeks no more  shows  of my own music stateside  until almost summers end. I need a fucking break. its been a crazy spring. Have a lot of writing to do, sounds to think about and dig deeper into and some day to day  life decisions to stop avoiding, family madness to pay a little more attention too than i have been in recent months.... y'all know how it is. I'll be spending as much time as i can playing good music behind the scenes with friends new and old, visiting family, seeing as much music as i can,  busking as is my usual and just enjoying another summer pretty much as physically  intact as the 1st day i arrived on this planet.god willing. my life is  a bit insane at the moment but  fuck,  i am sooooooooooo lucky. i am sooooooooooo grateful..... also i"ll spend some time trying to make this page a little more interesting with new tracks and such as well as finally also  maybe updating my website and maybe not being so annoyed with facebook.

 to play this music you have  to be totally punk rock about it.always. such a cliched over marketed idea, but at the same  time if u shave all the b.s. away--- so true. fight overconsumption in every way possible, do the shit yourself in every way possible. live simple in every way possible. share what you've learned and what you want to learn  in every way possible( even in this technological maddening time you can still control what gets leaked into/onto your brain.use the shit but make it personally educational....).  and enjoy yourself ( in every way possible!) to think  i almost forgot that. theres no concrete glory to be had in this process, but  it's still an amazing experience if you just try  and atleast remains my #1 reason to breathe each day. Some folks aren't so lucky...

happy spring/summer

xo
m