Eccentricities is a six-song, self-released cassette EP which emerged in the fall of 1990. I recall having 100 copies made and being satisfied with that level of dispersion; it was all I could afford in any case. In honour of the 30th anniversary, I present two of the songs here (with a third linked below).… Continue reading 90/30: Eccentricities
Category: Memoir
Black on Steve’s Birthday!
Iconic composer Steve Reich turns 84 today. He was recently alleged to have made some pointedly anti-Black racist remarks in the early 70s. Today is also a kind of late emergence for me; my first performance on a symphony orchestra program (albeit of a chamber work). As a child, I first heard the n-word, directed… Continue reading Black on Steve’s Birthday!
A Juneteenth Musing
The northern Great Lakes steel town took a big fat eraser to my Blackness. The adults had no way to acknowledge it because it exposed the cognitive dissonance of my existence in their world, and thus had no way to deal with the bullies, the rednecks and the N-wordage that swarmed around me like black… Continue reading A Juneteenth Musing
Larger in the Past
Grateful for so much as my history unfolds in reverse. Summer’s first journey to my birth mother’s home, with a family whom I’m so proud of with me. Upon our return my paternal side manifested. A grandfather in the Jim Crow South. Voice on the line who shared this family’s history of migration to the… Continue reading Larger in the Past
1997+20: WhISH
Below are excerpts from the thirty-minute score for WhISH, an interdisciplinary fairy tale performed by Liminal Gryphon Theatre (director Derek Mohamed, choreographer Tracy Renee Stafford). WhISH premiered in February 1997 as part of the Rhubarb! Festival at Buddies in Bad Times in Toronto. The score was also released on cassette. WhISH was an image and… Continue reading 1997+20: WhISH
1996+20: Coupling
“Coupling” (1996) is a section from the score to Woo: Cases of Bloodletting and Natural Selection, a multimedia work by Liminal Zoo Theatre (Derek Mohamed and Tracy Renee Stafford, co-creators). It was heard as a live mix and provided the accompaniment to silent onstage action as well as prerecorded spoken word passages. It is a drone… Continue reading 1996+20: Coupling
Come Through
I created a playlist a couple of years ago, to collect a series of 70s and 80s re-edits emailed to me in draft form for my feedback. One of the tracks arrived by way of reply to an email I’d sent with a gift of remastered music files, the source material for the re-edit. This… Continue reading Come Through
Like It’s 1994/95: Uhuru
A recurring introspective retrospective of my music as it sounded twenty years earlier. In early 1994, I took my first trip to Europe, spending a week in Lyon where my music was heard at a university dance festival as well as in the subway for a pop up freestyle contemporary dance event. I spent the… Continue reading Like It’s 1994/95: Uhuru
II. Sociology (Negroid)
This is my order, redacted. Me in a page, outlines obscured. I have written before about being inside white culture, and outside black, as a young transracial adoptee. About feelings of isolation leading to a suicidally depressed period. About seeing myself identified on generalized adoption records as “Negroid.” I’ve written about the joy I feel… Continue reading II. Sociology (Negroid)
I. Pathology (Black Mood)
It’s the eve of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and MLK’s “I Have a Dream.” It is a media event but more importantly a reminder and celebration of the prime meridian on the map, so to speak, of our era. In an age of spectacular technological innovations and creative visions, these words… Continue reading I. Pathology (Black Mood)
EL MAHBOOB 