NEW ALBUM: Martez "DRONE POEMS" out 2/17/23

The Drone Poems series represents meditations, feelings and moods expressed through expansive breathy textures. These pieces reflect a radical aesthetic departure from the Lamentos series, which primarily features wind instruments (flutes, saxophones) as the primary engines of sound.

I composed and recorded Behind the Veil and the other pieces on Drone Poems over the summer of 2022 and early 2023 in Oakland and Berkeley, California during what we now call fire season, when a barbecue spark, a misguided bottle rocket, or a random lightning strike can set off a chain of ignitions to poison every breath with smoky air for days on end. Fortunately last year wasn’t that bad, but each day nonetheless began with the anxiety and dread and the question: “Is today gonna be the day?”

The daily news: Russia brutalizing Ukraine, government fuckery, ongoing plagues, colonization of space, schools shot up, cops gone wild, catastrophic storms and everyone stressing about money.

Drone Poems is the effort to bear witness to the world while remaining connected to the eternal.

Summer 2022

Happy belated summer solstice from the Bay Area. I am spending my days parenting, walking the flats and hills of the East Bay, trying to find clean water to my kid to swim, picking stone fruits (plums, loquats, apricots) which are just coming into season, and scoring two big pieces for PBS.

Antibalas continues to bring our new repertoire throughout Europe and North America this summer and we’ll be recording all this for a new album this fall or early next year. There’s a feature on us and our back catalogue in the recent Songlines Magazine June 2022 issue.

Hmm…what else. Reading Joan Didion “Salvador,” B.W. Higman “Jamaican Food”, working on some musical / nature prototypes and a big Fire Wedding collaboration at the end of this month with Earth Lab at UCSC, Annie Sprinkle, Beth Stephens, Guillermo Gomez-Peña, Courtney Desiree Morris and other artists.

Now back to the lab. Love to whoever’s reading this.

My kid and I making music at our friend’s desk.

New Music: Ocote Soul Sounds "Sal Si Puedes"

“Get out if you can”, is the best translation. A lot of things to get out of, a lot of things to get into. I wrote this and played the instruments, drums, bass, clarinets, flute, saxophones. My inspirations on this were Yusuf Lateef, Cymande, and RZA. Enjoy the vibe, and stay safe.

Spring 2021 News

One year and counting into this pandemic. So much of what I do and love has been put on ice, indefinitely.

We (Antibalas) didn’t win the Grammy this year, but to quote Bill Withers, “I’m flattered to have mattered.”

I’ve been raising a baby, composing and recording new music, restoring a 1975 Rhodes piano (and playing it). I’ve been getting together regularly with a circle of synth geeks to make improvised electronic music and collaborating with my Antibalas bandmates on new material for our next album.

I was recently appointed contributing editor at Stranger’s Guide, one of my favorite travel/culture/literary magazines. I curated a collection of music for their latest Colombia issue and will be doing a brief chat at their issue launch (online like everything else these days).

UC Berkeley invited me to do a workshop for students and resident faculty on Critical Genealogy. I helped a student and a professor get back to the 1750s in their respective family trees in the span of 45 minutes which was fun and intriguing.

Right now I’m reading “Scammer’s Yard: The Crime of Black Repair in Jamaica” by Jovan Scott Lewis, “Intimations” by Zadie Smith, and spending far too much time than I should scrolling my Twitter feed.

So many people are dying, I’m blessed and lucky to remain alive.

New Music: "Lamentos"

Hey world. I hope you are safe and sound and protecting yourself and your loved ones.

I’ve been working in a new lane of data sonification (turning datasets and numbers into sound).

This is related to that, but turning feelings into sound. It’s a series called Lamentos - quick improvisations, and snapshots of how I’m feeling and what vibes I’m absorbing on any particular day as we get deeper into this global crisis.

It is called Lamentos. A lamento (lament in English) is an expression of grief.

Upcoming Antibalas tour dates postponed

Hey world.

I’m flattered that in this moment of global chaos you dropped in on my website. Here’s what’s new.

I just got off the road from three weeks of touring with Antibalas beginning in Southern California and wrapping up in Denver.

The shows were great energetically, musically, and emotionally. Just a day or two after we finished the leg of touring, we began to get reports of widespread venue closures and health alerts from both inside and outside the United States to halt any large-group events. That put a wrap on all of our remaining touring (about 35 or so shows) between now and the end of May and possibly beyond.

So I (and the rest of the other musicians and my whole musical community) are posted up at home (or worse, stranded on the road) with little to no income for the foreseeable future except for any royalty checks that might be on their way. (My last one from ASCAP was for $66.14).

If you are in a position to help, visit Antibalas.com - you can buy our music there, arrange an online music lesson or consultation with one of the musicians or just kick us a love offering.

Screenplays

I just finished my second feature length screenplay. I’m editing both now and will soon share synopses. This has been challenging but also liberating.

New Music / Collaboration // "Gracias" by La Banda Bastön

This past spring, Antibalas performed at the Bahidora Festival in Morelos, Mexico. The festival was beautiful and amazing, and we made a lot of new friends, including La Banda Bastön, a hip hop group from Mexico City. A few of us stuck around to DJ/perform at a party in Cholula and then we spent some time at the Bastön studios in Mexico City, working on their new record.

The result: the song "Gracias," from their brand new album "Luces Fantasmas."

Check it here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/luces-fantasmas/id1207376131

Benin

Members of the band including myself recently collaborated with students and teachers from CIAMO (International Center for Art and Music in Ouidah) and filmmaker Jon Fine and Sarah Dupont on a music + video project (still in progress) to promote methods of malaria prevention. Last year, malaria killed over 400,000 people on the African continent, so it remains a serious problem which destabilizes families and ruins lives and communities on a mass scale. The song and video outline the most effective steps that families can take to protect themselves: protect all members of your family, particularly children under 5, with a mosquito net from dusk until dawn, go to a community health clinic to get checked if you show symptoms.

I received a demo of a song recorded by Sim de Souza and his students at CIAMO last year. The melody and the lyrics - in French and Fon - were beautiful, the bridge, the verses, everything made sense. What we did was speed up the tempo, and suggest that they change the chorus from "We're afraid of you, malaria" to "We'll beat you, malaria". We wrote some horn lines, and tracked drums, bass, guitars, and horns in New York. Then, we sent the track to Angelique Kidjo, who recorded the verses on the song.

In late March, I as part of a four-person US-based crew, flew to Cotonou, Benin, to begin filming and recording the project. We spent our first night in Cotonou and a meeting at the US Embassy, where we met several partners from UNICEF, USAID and ISMA, the audiovisual college in Cotonou.