Dream on Corbeau Mountain - Live in Studio

Dream on Corbeau Montain live in Studio de Meudon near Paris, France. You will find it on Anthony Joseph and the Spasm Band's forthcoming album 'Bird Head Son' to be released in fall 2008.


Featuring :
Anthony Joseph : vocals, Andrew John : bass, Colin Webster : saxophone
Adrian Owusu : guitar, Paul Zimmerman : congas / djembe, Paul Brett : irons / snare / cymbals, Craig 'Cigar' Tamlin : misc percussions, special guest : Joe Bowie on trombone, Jean Paul Gonnod : sound engineer, Julien : engineer assistant, Antoine Rajon : producer.
Filmed and edited by Martin Meissonnier and 'Campagne Première' crew

Two Workshops I'm facilitating in July

The King Died, the Queen Died: Understanding Plot with Anthony Joseph

Saturdays 12th & 19th July 12 - 3 pm at Brighton Writers' Centre
£32/£30 concs, Friends of THE SOUTH £30/£28 concs

Plot at times takes on a mysterious quality. This workshop aims to dispel the myths and to show the universality of plotting in storytelling. Participants will work individually and in groups, examining the relationship of characterisation to plot, generating stories and taking part in writing exercises which will develop suspense and tension in their fiction.

To book and for more info : http://www.thesouth.org.uk/workshops.html#event8



Sounds of Poetry

Music and poetry course to commemorate the Windrush Anniversary.

Work alongside musicians to create work in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the arrival of 492 Caribbean men and women on the Empire Windrush at Tilbury docks in June 1948.

Participants will explore aspects of identity, exile and diaspora and how the influx of Caribbean musicians in particular changed the cultural landscape of the UK, introducing Calypso, Ska and Reggae to Britain.

Tutor: Anthony Joseph

Wednesdays 9, 16, 23, 30 July
7pm – 9pm

Nettlefold Hall
Norwood High Street
West Norwood
London
SE27 9JX
[TRAIN] West Norwood

Number of places: 8
£50/£30 concessions


For more info and to book spaces contact :


Spread the Word
77 Lambeth Walk
London
SE11 6DX
Phone: (+44) 020 7735 3111
Fax: (+44) 020 7735 2666

http://www.spreadtheword.org.uk/index.php?id=events&event=565

Root Strata - circa 78

Cesaire

1913 - 2008


I was introduced to Aime Cesaire's work circa 1994, in particular Cahiers..., I came via the surrealist movement, into negritude and the depth of Caribbean feeling. In my most recent book, The African Origins of UFOs one of the 3 sections that comprise the text - that deals with a return home from exile is called 'Journal of a return to a floating Island', again inspired by Cesaire's seminal work of diasporic identity. A floating island, this is how I still see home; as an island afloat in the sea of memory. Aime inspired that title. He inspired us all, diasporic poets, not simply poetically but politically.
Came home tonight after guesting with the Heliocentrics at Cargo, and then Mulatu Astatke came on with his rolling soul and I knew that that was the closest we would get to see someone like Fela. Came home to read Aime Cesaire passed. May spirits build nests in his beard.

Spasm Band Textology

Spasm Band at Cargo March 2008, pic by Lexxie.
More pics from Cargo Mar 11 08

Early next week The Spasm Band go to Paris to play at the Banlieues Bleues Festival. The next day we go into a sky lit studio on the outskirts of Paris to record our new album with a 10 piece band which includes Joseph Bowie, Keziah Jones, Adrian 'Sun Blooz'Owusu and Jamika Ajalon. The legendary sophomore album blues is upon us but we are blessed by the weight of heavy music and liquid textology.

Rubber Orchestras

Presence Africane

I visit rubber orchestras – Ted Joans


Joan’s velvet
landscape
disorients
shadow/s
expresses its form
as electrical forests


Cesaire’s
virgins
of presence
promises
metamorphasis
initiates
itinerant parades
becoming
engines of cease-
less and fugitive

transperence

engines of
Egypt and suprise



-----------------------------------------------------
From a recent experiment with surrealist technique.
Unfortunately the formatting has been lost so you can't
experience the spacing and tabbing which is as much
part of the poem as the words themselves. I will try
to correct it, eventually. Although I think it also
works well as it is.
-----------------------------------------------------

A poem is a machine made of words - William Carlos Williams

New Poem from 'Bird Head Son'

NURSE



Nurse?

Nurse who used to goal keep for Hilltop United?
Knock knee Nurse who brother was a gangster
an get shoot up down south in San Fernando?
Nurse from Febeau?
Nurse who used to ride with Loaf and Lochan?
An carry ting to chook man? Nurse,
he mother was a teacher.

He self.

Crossing by South Quay in front Royal Bank
where the drag mall used to be. He
poor and humble down in this ketch arse town
where man killing man like mapepire.
He neck like a straw in the bottle he holdin.

Rollin

It like a swan.
In the bitter light.

And the verbs of his eyes: sun wash that out.






..............................


This is a work in progress but it may get included in my fortcoming collection 'Bird Head Son'. More about the title another time. This was started in Trinidad last August, it was my 1st time back in 6 years and I saw an old badjohn I used to know, crossing a port of spain street in the late afternoon light.