BEATS AND FEELS

Beats and Feels

Beats and Feels, A Four-Part Suite for Voice and Percussion

©Tavarus Blackmon, 2019

Voice, Lyrics, Improvisation, Arrangement and, Music for The Thing is Me, Tavarus Blackmonster, 2019

Accompaniment, Improvisation and Music for Capitalist Americans, Pop’s Curse and Mr. Simmons, Derek Kwan, 2019

Beats and Feels, Sound Art for Voice and Percussion, 11:10 minutes, 2019

Beats and Feels, Full High Definition Video, 12:01 minutes, 2019

©Tavarus Blackmon, 2019

The Blue Room, Site Specific Installation/Performance (Headlands Center for the Arts, Building 961, Sausalito, CA), Dimensions Variable, June 2, 2019,

©Tavarus Blackmon, 2019

Live Audio and Recording, Capitalist Americans, The Thing is Me, Pop’s Curse, Mr. Simmons

©Tavarus Blackmon, Derek Kwan, 2019

Camera, Tomas Yin Ernesto Montoya, Sac Centric Productions, 2019 ———————————————————————————————————————

Bedtime, Pop’s Curse (Variation), Sound Art for Hip-Hop and Nocturne, 3:35 minutes, 2019

©Tavarus Blackmon, 2019

Bedtime, Pop’s Curse, Full High Definition Video, 3: 41 minutes, 2019

©Tavarus Blackmon, 2019 ———————————————————————————————————————

Blue Room, Full High Definition Video, 1:01 minutes, 2019

©Tavarus Blackmon, 2019

©Tavarus Blackmon, 2019 1

Beats and Feels

This Four-Part Suite explores themes and mood connected to the Black Experience, abandonment, critiques of celebrity Blackness, existential catharsis and empathy. Created over several years, the lyrics for voice were written between 1998 and 2019. Variations on theme have been recorded for acousmatic audio projection for Pop’s Curse; with music for The Thing is Me, written by Tavarus Blackmon and performed by Derek Kwan and, improvisation, music and accompaniment by Derek Kwan for Capitalist Americans, Pop’s Curse and Mr. Simmons, 2019.

Capitalist Americans, written in 2012, is music created just before entering the CSUS Master’s Program in Studio Art. As a direct critique of the musician and Hip-Hop Artist, Kanye West, the work projects ideas about celebrity Blackness, urban culture and themes related to misogyny within the African-American culture, the Black Family and struggles of working class and upwardly mobile society. The vocal style, contemporary Hip-Hop, uses rhyme, slant rhyme and an extended metaphor of satiation. Verbal pictures, descriptive language, references to popular music and intentionally omitted simile are formal techniques.

References to Picture Me Rolling, All Eyez on Me, 2Pac, The Fibonacci Sequence, consumer culture, classic video games and The Occupy Movement and the idiom “Eyes on the Prize,”develop the work into an alternative position or, experience, placing a listening or reading audience into a unique position of being critical of popular narratives.

The Thing is Me presents an existential catharsis. Written and composed by Tavarus Blackmonster, 2019, the work uses an introspective vocal to discuss the prevailing issue of The Other. By the rhetorical statement, “I don’t know what the Thing is supposed to be,” the listener relates to the opposite of the other, in general terms, a Master Perspective. The personae are put through paces of projected senarios: questioning, homelessness, intimacy, the interpersonal, reproduction, spectatorship and ultimately, police brutality.

Transformation occurs through the African Storytelling tradition of Call-and-Response. As the personae confide in the Maternal each verse they subsequently, arrive at the realization that the actual Thing in question is the Self.

Pop’s Curse, written in 1998, explores themes of abandonment, urban culture and loss. Improvisational accompaniment performed and written by Derek Kwan, 2019. Variations on this theme include improvisations on Parenthood and the routine of StoryTime and have been recorded for acousmatic projection (Bedtime, Pop’s Curse) and video projection here: https://soundcloud.com/blackaudiomonster/bedtime-popscurse; https://vimeo.com/325470668, respectively.

Mr. Simmons, imparts the vulnerability of empathy, specifically the interpersonal codependence related to addiction. Written for voice in 2006, the work explores the relationship between the author and his friend. It is a call to action from one-to-another. The addiction to Heroine described in the music has become more poignant, as Tavarus Blackmon lost his nephew Alyis Smith, to a drug overdose shortly after Beats and Feels was filmed.

Vocal projection is achieved in the performance through the use of a circuit-bend, vintage CB radio. The clips and zaps of the DIY device introduce notions of authority and Police which, further highlights the role of authorship, power and privilege in current times. The personae of Beats and Feels delineate critique through humor and admonishment, describe contemporary fear and acceptance through psychological investigation, discover vulnerability in part through the loss of the Black Father and, dictate empty pleas of empathetic compassion. The Radio (mic) as a device to deliver these sentiments outlines a stream of ‘flows,’ connected to the Space of Punk and Jazz and the Place of Childhood, Maturation, Discovery and finally, Death.

Live audio for Beats and Feels, was recorded in the 961 warehouse at the Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA; camera by Tomas Yin Ernesto Montoya; video by Tavarus Blackmonster, 2019. The 961 warehouse was transformed over the course of thirty days before production. The site specific installation, The Blue Room, 2019, Tavarus Blackmonster, after The Blue Room, 1901, Pablo Picasso, is the idea and creation of the artist. Through the process of developing images, objects, time-based media, lighting, writing and sound, the work Beats and Feels is a conceptual, immersive, sound experience. Happening on June 2, 2019, the audio recording and video serve as documentation of the actual Sound Art Performance.

©Tavarus Blackmon, 2019