Political rapper talks about 'dark side of revolution'

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Political_rapper_talks_about_dark_side_0217.html

Felipe Coronel is, all at once, a Peruvian-born student of history, a thickly-accented New Yorker, a child of Harlem, and an incredibly well-read man. Better known by his stage name – Immortal Technique – he writes and performs some of the most politically saturated and emotionally charged music to appear in the work of any American artist since perhaps Bob Dylan, only darker and more raw.

Tech does not create music that is peace-oriented or anti-war. He does not create music about gang violence or the need for racial equality. Instead, he explores the history of all of these issues and shows, rather than tells, his listener why he believes we – humanity, America, African Americans, Latinos, et cetera – are where we are.

In a song called The 4th Branch from his second album, Revolutionary Volume 2, for example, Tech sings:

Media censorship, blocking out the video screens
A continent of oil kingdoms, bought for a bargain
Democracy is just a word, when the people are starvin'
The average citizen, made to be, blind to the reason

The song is an exploration of how the United States got into the Iraq war, rather than something as overly simplistic as a call for peace. Who is responsible? How could this war have happened? Tech places the blame for the selling of this war on the shoulders of the fourth estate, the press.

Tech expresses his frustration with the whole concept of "fair and balanced" reporting, telling Raw Story that facts don’t always have another side to them nor should two sides always be portrayed as equally balanced and equally legitimate.

"What if there is no other side of it?" he asks. "That is not enough for [the media]. They feel that they are supposed to present two sides of a story, which is great most of the time, or should be most of the time. But when it comes to the balance of those two sides, they take great care in making them equally balanced when they are not always equally balanced or even equally true. They give credence and legitimacy to ideas that deserve no legitimacy."

Tech was born in Lima, Peru in 1978 and first came onto the New York underground Hip-Hop scene as a battle rapper in 1999. In 2001, he released his first album, called Revolutionary Volume 1, and in 2002, his second album, Revolutionary Volume 2. With hardly any marketing campaign, he has become an underground international folk hero of sorts, from South America to the Middle East and, of course, on his home turf in Harlem.

Tech says that he uses imagery to explore complex issues.

"I think putting together historical facts to rhymes and metaphors helps people to understand what it is I am talking about and it gives people a direction if they want to look up something in a particular discipline. Like putting a bookmark into music and saying 'Look over here.'"

In a song called "Peruvian Cocaine," for example, Tech presents the narrative from the viewpoint of each of the participants along the route of drug trafficking, from the poor South American farmer, to a political leader, to a drug distributor, to an undercover cop, and so forth. Each point of view, each persona, shows the listener their motivations.

The Peruvian leader shows one face of this saga:

Yo, it don't come as a challenge
I'm the son of some of the foulest
Elected by my people...the only one on the ballot
Born and bred to consult with feds, I laugh at fate
And assassinate my predecessor to have his place
In a third-world fashion state, lock the nation
With 90% of the wealth in 10% of the population
The Central Intelligence Agency takes weight faithfully
The finest type of China white and cocaine you'll see

Tech's interview with Raw Story was wide-ranging, extending from the Ottoman Empire to European colonialism in South America. He brings off conversation with the ease of a professor in front of a graduate level history class.

"We still emulate the European oppressor in everything: In terms of the standards of beauty; in terms of governmental structure or even in terms of religion," Tech says. "Contemporary America would look at Aztecs as savages for sacrificing people to their God. But you would not look at Europeans in the same light, even though they used to burn people alive as heretics to honor their God."

Tech also speaks about the side of him that was involved in petty theft and assault, running with a rough crowd in Harlem and eventually doing time in Philadelphia.

While in college at Penn State, Tech was sent to jail for a year, after getting into a altercation with crack dealers. He was paroled to his father’s home, on the condition that he attend school at least part time and work. This time, he excelled, until his music career took him away from formal study. He says he read everything he could get "his hands on" as he joined the battle rap scene.

The complete Raw Story interview follows.

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Larisa Alexandrovna: Where does the name Immortal Technique come from?

Immortal Technique: Originally I battled under the name Technique. But I always felt like a person’s spirit is immortal, you know?

LA: Yes

IT: … [It’s] not simply what we just do in this life, but how we are remembered, and how we affect the world around us. In that sense, some people enjoy a sort of immortality based on their contributions. Technique is what you need to accomplish anything. So the combination of the two can change the world, you know? Besides, I feel like a man who walks with God can walk anywhere.

LA: You were born in Lima, Peru. Are both your parents Peruvian?

IT: My mother’s father is black, from the Caribbean. His family bought their freedom from slavery and moved down to South America and lived there ever since.

LA: How did that affect you as a child?

IT: You know, I grew up with my mother being very honest and candid about that, and with some of our people had a certain amount of racism ingrained in them. You are going to find many Latino people who are in denial about their African blood.

LA: And you are not?

IT: No, I have never been like that. I look at my grandfather and by all means and standards he is more black than people that consider themselves black in America. They don’t consider themselves Black or “Indio” out there because they cling to nationalistic titles rather than embrace cultural and racial origin. An interesting way to discount a majority and create a Eurocentric ideology by not acknowledging that such a thing exists.

And the people in these countries didn’t want to maintain a relationship with their ex-colonial powers. The people who ran the countries were in themselves all European and not of any indigenous background until the late 1980’s early 1990’s.

LA: The cycle where the victim becomes the oppressor.

IT: Yeah. If you’re less than indigenous, it is because you are in some part African. So people avoid that like the plague. It’s terrible. We still emulate the European oppressor in everything: In terms of the standards of beauty, in terms of governmental structure, or even in terms of religion. Contemporary America would look at Aztecs as savages for sacrificing people to their God. But you would not look at Europeans in the same light, even though they used to burn people alive as heretics to honor their God.

LA: You don’t even have to go back to Europe. You can look at the Salem witch trials in America. Your family moves from Peru to the United States, Harlem in particular. Why do you move?

IT: The economy had collapsed. There was massive inflation. Of course there was a war going on between the Shining Path and the US-backed government [of Peru]. At this point it was violent, there were no jobs and my father was looking for opportunity.

LA: So why Harlem?

IT: [laughs] My father was trying to find a place less violent than Peru, right? So we move to Harlem, New York in the 1980s.
The Fourth Estate
LA: Let’s talk about "The 4th Branch," from Revolutionary Volume 2 (The song is available to listen to below). You take the 4th Branch – the media – to task for failing to do their job in the lead-up to the Iraq war. Do you think it is a matter of systemic corruption, a trade-off of truth for access, or do you think it is more based on wanting ratings and churning out sensational stories?

IT: Oh they did their job. They did their job.

LA: Do you think it is yellow journalism?

IT: It was their job to do what they did. That is their real job.

LA: When you say that is their real job, what does that mean?

IT: Their real job is to sell an agenda, not the news. I can see parts of the news on the news, you know? It is like when democracy is not fully a democracy. As soon as one aspect of it is betrayed, it stops being what it is. In this case it stops being the news.

LA: So once the ethics of it are violated, once a little is traded off for expediency or for ratings, it all becomes suspect?

IT: More like when I look at it from that perspective, it is as though I am capable of telling everyone what is going on, in telling 100 percent truth. I have that ability, right? But because I cannot present another side of it, for example, then I cannot tell any of it? What if there is no other side of it? That is not enough for them. They feel that they are supposed to present two sides of a story, which is great most of the time or should be most of the time. But when it comes to the balance of those two sides, they take great care in making them equally balanced when they are not always equally balanced or even equally true. They give credence and legitimacy to ideas that deserve no legitimacy.

And not just from the right either. They give people legitimacy from the progressive side who deserve no legitimacy, just to have out there as an example of how radically left someone is, when they don’t represent the left at all. Instead of finding someone logical enough to express themselves, they find people who are ignorant enough to just get by on the topic.

That bias really exists no matter what the topic is. We could be talking about Iraq, or we could be talking about the Israeli-Palestine conflict, you know?

LA: So where do you get your news?

IT: I am not saying that I don’t watch the news or read the news. It is just that I will see it or read it and supplement that with what I have read about the history of the country or issue and I will talk to people who are there. So if I want to hear something about Gaza, for example, I can call someone there. I know people there, I can call them or they can call me, you know? I can be in contact with them and be like yo, what is really going on over there?

LA: But what do you say to your listeners who do not have the benefit of knowing someone in Gaza or in any other place?

IT: Hopefully they could read stuff on The Raw Story.

LA: [laughs] Thank you for the plug. Who else?

IT: Democracy Now is a very good program. There is also the Real News.com. There is plenty of independent media and although they may not have maybe the legitimacy in the market of a CNN or something like that, I think they are a lot less filtered.

Religion vs. spirituality
Raw Story's Larisa Alexandrovna: On religion – many today seem to frame it as faith vs. belief. Do you have faith or do you believe?

Immortal Technique: I definitely have faith in myself, but I don’t think there is necessarily an applied balance to the universe. ... I think that you are on a path in some way, shape or form, and things are likely to happen if you do certain other things and you place your belief on a specific direction. But to answer your question, I am not an incredibly religious person. But there are some rituals I may observe, as we all do, without knowing necessarily where they come from. Like when you carry your wife over the threshold of your crib or you say grace or when you say "Our Father." Sure I may have said a prayer before I eat, but I believe that we pay so much attention to religion in itself, but we don’t pay attention to the history.

LA: Give me an example of this.

IT: I know people who can quote the Bible for days but don’t understand anything about the time when Jesus Christ was born of it, or the time of fledgling Christianity, when it was in its fetal stage. So when I look at that, I think of someone telling me, "Hey you know, I know what America is about because I read the Constitution. I never read American history, but I have read the American Constitution. So I know what America is all about." You know?

LA: Right. Yes.

IT: And I’m like, "No you don’t. You know what America is in theory. You know what America is in terms of what was written down 200 some odd years ago. You have no idea what America is about because you have never read about manifest destiny, about the Mexican American war, about the Louisiana Purchase, about World War II, The Civil War, slavery and so forth." You know?

LA: Sure. Of course.
Underground battle scene
LA: How are you getting across to your audiences? I mean your music is incredibly complex and involves topics that most Americans are unfamiliar with.

IT: I think I try to put things in a way that implies what I am talking about, you know? I think putting together historical facts to rhymes and metaphors helps people to understand what it is I am talking about, and it gives people a direction if they want to look up something in a particular discipline. Like putting a bookmark into music and saying "Look over here." I took some of these songs that I wrote as a young man, some in prison, and the majority of them I compiled into an album called Revolutionary Volume 1.

LA: Yes, I know. I have the album.

IT: Thank you.

LA: [laughs] I’m not sure if I mentioned this to you when we have talked before, but I approached Rolling Stone about me doing a piece on you and the music. Your metaphor structures, your use of imagery, the internal rhyme and the way you use it, and the passion and focus on politics. My contact there said that you were "too niche" and didn’t have mass appeal.

IT: Too niche?

LA: Yeah. You know, how niche can you be if I am digging your work, me – a refugee from the Soviet Union, a Jew, a white female in her mid thirties who studied literature and poetry? [laughs]. There is some hip-hop I like, but it is limited to people who have something to say, like 2 Pac. Not guys glorifying and sensationalizing their street cred and sexual prowess.

IT: Not surprising. If you do something [positive], they don’t want to hear nothing about it. You know, if I had been shot a few times [or] if I was promoting gang violence or something, then they would want to write about it.

I wanted to study the dark side of revolution. My music is really violent, but not violent without direction, you know?

LA: That is a really good way of putting it. Yes. And your music is not really about a political party or the simple way in which government and politics are viewed.

IT: Yeah. My music is not like "Okay, there is a right-wing authoritarian conspiracy." I’m like "Now don’t you understand that the same way American has colonized and used its influence the Caribbean, Central and South America, and parts of West Africa is the same exact thing that the USSR was doing to Eastern Europe?" It is two empires that are competing and if we consider one as a perversion of democracy, then the other is a perversion of socialism. That is not real socialism. That is not real communism. It is an ideology that is used to sell a specific interest. Look at early Christianity, where the faith was brought together and unified under a state religion and later, subsequent wars were justified by the religion, even though the religion did not teach this as just, right?

LA: Yes, but the perversion of democracy and the perversion of communism have a common thread: capital. The emphasis is not on human rights or a just social system, it is simply a matter of who controls the capital. Either way, there is no "we the people" in any of it. But because we are running short on time, can I ask you about a song or two?

IT: Yeah.
College and incarceration
LA: Why did you choose Penn State? Why not a school in New York?

IT: I think it’s 'cause we took a road trip to Pennsylvania and I saw the logo or something. [laughs]... I don’t know. It was something. I like the football team.

LA: How long did you attend?

IT: About a year.

LA: But you got arrested, right?

IT: When I was growing up in New York, I did really fucked up things that I look back on and think that was just fucking stupid. We were robbing people, breaking into motherfuckers’ cribs. And it was not because I was starving. I was by no means rich. I had the basics. I just wanted shit. I realized later that it was really selfish and childish. I realized that if I wanted something I could work for it instead of taking it from someone else. I was following the blueprint laid out for me by the colonizer. So at some point I realized I had to take personal responsibility for myself and stop blaming my situation on others.

LA: But that arrest was before that realization? What was the arrest and imprisonment for?

IT: I took that mentality I had to school with me. My first few months of school, I went to a party and me and my people from school got into a gigantic fight with a bunch of crack dealers and we beat the fuck out of them. And looking back at this as a young adult, as someone who was just crawling into adulthood at that time, I think to myself, you know what? You are lucky you did not get yourself killed with that bullshit. But I did get arrested on a gang of assault charges.

LA: So a year at school and a year in prison. Two different types of education.

IT: Yeah, it is weird, you know? A year and a year.

LA: You did not continue your education at Penn State?

IT: I was suspended for a year. But I don’t like the way they handled it. I highlight these things about me and my personality as a young adult to emphasize not how bad I was, but to show you how far I have come as an individual. I am so far from that now.

LA: So what did you do after you left Penn State? Did you continue your education in New York on your own or augmented that with classes?

IT: When I got out of being locked up, my dad allowed me to be paroled to his house, but he had one condition, that I go to school at least part time. So I went to Baruch College in New York for two semesters. It was interesting. When I was at Penn State, my GPA was like a 2.0 because I did not give a fuck about shit. I never clicked with the classes. You know, whenever there was something that had to be read for school, I would go into the library and I would find a book that was completely not related. You know, I would find a book like Tecumseh and the story of early Colonial years or some shit like that and I would be like fuck, this is so interesting, you know? So when I went to Baruch I took strictly political science classes and my GPA was like 4.0, 3.9 and I realized that this was what I wanted to do the whole time.

LA: Thanks for your time, Tech.

IT: Thank you, Larisa.