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1:53This is T

5:23This program is brought to you by Resonance FM. If you like what you hear, please support or work by making a donation at ResonanceFM.com and that's Nush, donate. You'll listen to Resonance 101.4 FM. It's midnight. That means it's time for the alternative black music show that we call is Black Music. We're going to move on up.

6:27We're going to move on up. We're going to move on up. We're going to move on up. We're going to move on up. This week's program features the London-based vocalist, writer and spoken word artist, Roger Robinson. Born in Hackney and brought up in Trinidad.

7:28Roger Robinson performed poetry in the 90s with bands including TechnoAnimo, Flytronics, The Bug, Attica Blues and Speaker. Robinson is the lead vocalist for the musical crossover project, King My The Sound. It's critically claimed debut album, Waiting for You. It was released on Hyper-Dub Records becoming number 10 in the top 50 releases of 2009. The books have won a wide range of plotlets in 1999. He was one of the 30 poets chosen for the influential new generation poets collection at the National Portrait Gallery London. His one man shows the shadow boxer, letter from my father's brother and prohibition all premiered at the British Festival of Visual Theater at Battersea Arts Center.

8:32He's playing the Cafe Otto on January 23rd this Sunday night. It's almost sold out but there's still some tickets left so I want you guys to be hip to it if you want to go. He's playing with his band called Black Space Quartet. I also want to invite you to the eclectic on February 17th. I'll be playing with my band. We're going to be doing the self-isolation songbook and also showing the 30-minute short film made by Helen Smith. So now let's check out Roger Robinson. We're going to start with something from the Solitude album by King My The Sound and then we're going to go into some of Roger's other solo works. We're going to show also featured an exclusive interview with the man himself. His Black Music Resonance 104.4 FN.

10:25You disappeared by the melting ice on trees that fall like tear drops. For so long just how wet skin, a long hair dripping, stepping from a shower, the winding of her hips would create a thirst in me. But now nothing. And time breaks down one second into another. You can like ask questions in us. Yeah, I tell you. Thanks to the people who are hard to figure out stuff that just means. We did it. I'm trying to make it work.

11:27Watching TV to the end. I should have helped you. We turned into reaching a factor. Some member than some fan to face them high. As she said, hatred will turn into reaching back. Some member than some fan to face them high. Beware these hot nights in New York City. When cabin sit outside, laugh in the corner of the shoes and charge twice the coin rate together. And brackets will put presidential coupons to meet dealers whose brother has brought against their feelings. And somewhere up in the trees in people's fears are light in the tower block. Grandmother's dice goes deep and season it with curry and sweat. A young man stops to brush his feet in the mirror and looks deep into the loose light brown thread of his own eyes.

12:33But downstairs in the car park, a young father whispers, we smoke about how his life feels like a boom out car that never moves. The one with shattered windows leaving diamond haired in nothing as for us. I should have helped you. We turned into reaching back. Some member than some fan to face them high. As she said, hatred will turn into reaching back. Some member than some fan to face them high. If not too hot for good or too fast, well-cooked I mean if they're rich, but it is too hot to sleep. So the whole town is out. So the bad rump of stars are taking their own world walk. Even the one begging man is hopping down the center of the road begging traffic for revolution money.

13:36Out tonight too, a certain man who don't take tree steps without looking backwards. Because they know their boy who freestyles from his wheelchair. Let them pack a man called from behind him with handguns 45 long-low slum-low trying to slump man. Roll, roll, roll, watch. Even a bus driver will kick your ass tonight if you're trying to ride the tree. He's a bus driver now but he's come up on the same road and tonight is too hot to take shit. On hot nights like this, imprints are swept to make man remember where we'll beat their next man's rock. And somebody might get caught sleeping with none of his boys around again. Whatever right there, the off-lices, to the magazine and the special group. And an annual old girl spying might take a straight bullet so she may never skip to a beat on concrete again. So beware, the way of these hot nights give all sorts.

15:40If you're young or if you're old, no need this feels like a loan. When your story is told, not every house felt like home. Everything is pain and it's hardship. When you have nobody, you're the only one who can't be a burden. Everything is pain and it's hardship. When you have nobody, you're the only one who can't be a burden. And this only you and your heart beats. Every time you turn in the darkness. I listen to wonderful boy, reason the poor stuff last. Shouting for his mommy. He's been left alone again. Locked in the flood on the corridor. Sometimes he'll cry. Sometimes he'll stop me.

16:41And I worry if something has happened. And then he starts again and I have no more conflict at all. His mother is a McDonald's, seven happy meals to other children. Smiling the dead matters. I go outside and talk to him through the postal flood. Try to sue them. Every five minutes he brings up the flood to see if I'm still there. And I say, I'm still here. And he laughs. Already he knows the weight of a little room. A smoke of cigarette.

17:42He smokes through stint and killing trudy hole. And I can hear him sleeping on the other side of the postal flood. This cigarette ends and I listen for a while. This is Tower Block Life. I don't believe this mother. She has the wood to live. Her stints are compromised. It's what I worry. I worry about this little boy.

18:53This woman is called the missing for the victims of the grandfathers. I think their bodies became lighter. Ten of those seated in the front pew of the church began to float. And then to lie as if on a bed of pure air. Then down the aisle as if on a conveyor belt. Past the congregants. Some of them dropping to their knees in prayer watching what about me, Lord? Why not me? The risen moving slowly, so slowly down the aisle of the bluffing doors of the church and up into the clouds, fintches darting deathly between them.

19:53Ten streets away. A man tries to hold on to the feet of his floating wife. And at times her force pulls him slightly off the ground. His grip slips and falls to his knees with just her high heel shoes in his hands. As she's backlit by the sun, he shields and squints his eyes. From a tall block, hundred people start floating out the window. From far enough away, it could look like black smoke from a spreading flame. A blue indigo hitch up, flapping in the breeze. A man with his child on his shoulders. Men in sand-colored gallop hairs. A woman with vintage glasses. And an Elvis quiff floating slowly, so slowly. Someone looking on may think them arrived to earth. Like human lantern wishes.

20:55They became the city of the missing. And we became the city of the state. I crave the taste of raw meat. I tried to walk barefoot and grass. And the night as often as I could. The sun was irritating. At night I thought about tattoos.

21:59The red and blue ink piercing my skin. And piercings. I thought about piercings through my tongue. I thought about the pain. All my thoughts and passions. Journey with design. Mix of secret flame. Burning inside me. And as that is my hand. Joy is as the wind. Right on your lips. Stay twinkling in your eyes.

23:01At the trees. Here. Breathe. Keep this glow. Say, I shall take the dark. Yes. Lady, stay right by my side. All my thoughts and passions. Feel out by these aches. Love is as rotating. Stay with me tonight. Don't give me your cruelness, God. On this breath they come. Help me build this game in life.

24:02It's you from now on. And I'm just here. Breathe. Keep this glow. Say, I shall take the dark. Yes. Lady, stay right by my side. And I'm just here. Breathe. Keep this glow. Say, I shall take the dark. Yes. Lady, stay right by my side.

25:09Say. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

26:12Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. We are here right now with the great Roger Robinson the singer vocalist spoken word artist. Foremost I would say he's a writer to be dealt with.

27:15He's an amazing writer. All kinds of accolades. And he's just been on the scene and London writing about the Black British experience in so many different forms. for joining us here on his Black Music project. Oh, right. It's a pleasure. It's a pleasure for me. Yeah. This is a head of your Cafe Auto show. Yeah. That's January 23rd, I believe, isn't it? Yeah, John, you're turning to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's his first London show. So we haven't had a London show before. Yeah, yeah. So it's cool. It's nearly sold out, which is quite cool. I like that. Oh, cool. It's sold out. OK. No, nearly, nearly. OK. OK. I think that's it. OK. I think that's like 10 tickets last time I checked. You know what I'm saying? All right. Yeah. So you playing with your band Black Space, right? Yeah, Black Space 410. Yeah, yeah. And then the Black Space 410, some young guys who are met, like they're half by age, but I met them.

28:15They're from Wales. And they just just so in tune with music. It's just I haven't heard musicians so in tune, except for my other main band, King Myder's song, with Kevin Martin. It's like, these are younger, younger, younger Kevin Martin's, but like a whole band of them. I'm like, oh, these cats are great. So I kind of connect with them. They're fresh, man. They come with fresh ideas too, you know? Yeah. So I'm playing with them. First London show. So it was super exciting. I was super excited because we've been making a lot of music, but we don't put out a lot of music. There's this thing that DeAngelo says. It's like, yo, I'm a musician. Because you know, DeAngelo takes a lot of time to put these albums out. Who's that? Basically, DeAngelo. OK, OK. Yeah, DeAngelo. Yeah. So he takes a lot of time. And I saw this real, this German documentary, where he said, listen, I don't have to put an album to be a musician.

29:18I'm a musician. The albums are a spin off of my development. OK. He says, the albums are not about me to a rotor, about one every two years. That's what I'm developing as a musician. And as I develop as a musician, the albums come out of that. So he was like, he was learning to play guitar and stuff like that. Yeah. So he was just like, yo, I ain't going to put it out before I learned everything. So I was like, man, that was kind of refreshing. It was about being the artist as opposed to posing as the artist. You know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's really, but you know, you have had some lovely, some lovely recordings out. The last one that was the solitude, I believe. Oh, yeah. It's my this came out of song. Yeah. My the sound. Yeah. Yeah. What would you be doing in a cafe? I'll tell you what the material from the solitude. No, that's a different band. So the track is a different band. So what we're doing is from like, we

30:19had a tape out with boomcat documenting sound. And so we, we've been playing that EP and on, and on really strikes. So it's like, like 45 minutes of that EP and other on really strikes with it, you know? It's cool. It's a nice set. Boomcat. I didn't, I didn't find it. OK, I got. Yeah. Boomcat editions, boomcat editions. So it was documenting sound. Roger Robinson and Blacksmiths were set. OK, OK. OK. All right. Yeah. We part tape, we put out a tape because we kind of experimented with this idea. Are you hear me? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all coming through. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we experimented with this idea of avoiding the, avoiding the idea that counting, having views or counts on music makes it good. It's like, this is Jimless, Joshua Carman, my name, no? But she had this thing with just like, if you only count, like the times it's been listened to, what you get is like Spotify is like, Ibiza Jazz.

31:24Because these only those things, very repeating, because they don't really mean anything. Yeah. And for people to interact with the idea of Blacksmiths go to interact with a book. I want to, I want to approach this idea. I'm going to pull it out. So we've been avoiding things like we be doing like all the releases we're going to do, I'm going to be on tape. OK. Yeah. So also like all the things going to be analog, anywhere we could avoid being counted in terms of views and stuff like that. That's what we're going to do. And another idea is that one, the music will take you anyway. It needs to take you to, it will make people feel like I have found this band again. I've found the band. As opposed to this is just any other band that I can just get up on Spotify. And it's true, we're not really done with Spotify, Arms, deals and stuff like that. We're not really done with metaphors in terms of how things are being taken in that direction. It's just like it's not that we anti-de things totally,

32:24but with this band, we're trying to keep it as much as an idea that you interact with as opposed to this is background music. Yes, yes. That is background music vibe, where it's just like wallpaper. And then exactly. Yeah. It's a privilege position to be able to do that, because of course everybody trying to make a living from their music. You know what I'm saying? But we're in a privileged position in terms of we trying to make a living, but we also thinking about a long tail. Yes. We're not thinking about blowing out. Yeah. What we're thinking about is making an archive of decent music. So. That's a good approach, man. I might take you up on that. Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. I like it. So we want to release like, I think it was five songs on the EP. And you've probably had another five unreleased songs, but we recorded over 55 songs. You know what I'm saying? But we don't we release what we think is apt, you know what I'm saying?

33:27And right. And then and all the other songs is building up your craft and all that type of stuff. Yeah. So were you, are they based in London now? Do you work in Wales with them? No, no, no. I would, I would, I would can wail for them. Yeah. Sometimes it's just send their send their files back and forth to. Mm-hmm. You know, I go up the way sometimes. Wales is beautiful, man. No, don't yet. They're from a place called Snowdo. Have you been to Wales? Not for a long time, but I remember I never forget that that I was up in the mountains. Yeah. Stondonians. Beautiful place. Mm-hmm. The name of the album recordings called Bethesda. It's a part, it's a place in Wales. Oh. I love your eyes so empty. And the light of your face. That you can't see again. Brown for you.

34:30I will be your true self. Oh, take your eyes. Tell me what's a mess like me to do. And the crazy news slicing through this dark night. Everything is giving us a sign. And the trees are whispered. And the crickets clizzle. I can't wait forever to think of you, my hands.

35:58Come, let's talk that you could do. Die of the light underneath the skies. The cloud below. The clicking on the castle. Stars of the white. And the universe is safe. And the crying leaves. Slicing through this dark night.

37:00Everything is giving us a sign. And the trees are whispered. And the crickets clizzle. I can't wait forever to think of you, my hands. I love your eyes so empty. And the face. You can't see me anymore for you. I will be your true self.

38:04Oh, take your night. Tell me what's a mess like me to do. I love you. I love you. I love you.

39:09Oh, that's beautiful. Oh, that's beautiful. We're going to do this whole show around you. It's going to be you. I don't think it's going to be our last time we're going to do you. We're going to do this whole show around you. We're going to do this whole show around you. I'm going to do this whole show around you.

40:09I'm going to do this whole show around you. I'm going to do this whole show around you. I'm going to do this whole show around you. I'm going to do this whole show around you. I'm going to do this whole show around you. I'm going to do this whole show around you. I'm going to do this whole show around you.

41:10I'm going to do this whole show around you. I'm going to do this whole show around you. I'm going to do this whole show around you. I'm going to do this whole show around you. I'm going to do this whole show around you. I'm going to do this whole show around you. I'm going to do this whole show around you.

42:10I'm going to do this whole show around you. I'm going to do this whole show around you. I'm going to do this whole show around you. I'm going to do this whole show around you. I'm going to do this whole show around you. I'm going to do this whole show around you. I'm going to do this whole show around you.

43:14I'm going to do this whole show around you. I'm going to do this whole show around you. I'm going to do this whole show around you. They're quite like what I call black wedding music. They're quite like what I call black wedding music. They're quite like what I call black wedding music. They're quite like what I call black wedding music. The last time that music was good, I was like, wow, wow. Okay. That's The my interest. It's like obsession. It's a proper obsession with 90s.

44:16When I talk to young people and I find them like, wow, is this what you into? You know driving and I cut driving and I cow that you. You. And he's just playing. SWE. Right. Whoa. Crazy. Dude was like just 29 years old. You know? Yeah. Yeah. It's all new to them, I guess. It's all new. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's like wow. Yeah. It's a trip. Even when I'm doing this show, I'll be like, you know, I'm going beyond, you know, everybody's hair, coach, rain, and mouths, or I'm going to be like, you know, it's for the, yeah, it's new to them, you know. It's new. It's still as long as they're mine. So. Yeah. It's refreshing. I mean, you work with schools a lot. Yeah. You're doing, I don't know anymore. I used to do that a lot. I would, like, the main reason, like, you get your money and, you know, like, you know, like, kind of teaching, teaching poetry with shops and stuff. I ain't done that for a while, you know? I think all my information probably need updates. It is like, but I ain't done that for a while.

45:16But I teach, I teach like people who are trying to, like right now, into helping people get out of the way to be creative. And so I'm going to have a, like, a small book come. Yeah, just get out of the way of the head. Down, down. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's it for you to know. You know, and say try to get people back to creativity. So I thought, some of your website said that you talk a lot about the writing process, the most important part of it is editing. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Like the idea, you can't edit nothing. You don't say it to just like lay your standards and just write something down here, you don't say it, then the process is the editing you know and like people get stuck in just

46:17like like, especially with Black people. people in a special black people music and writers every song has to be the best song that was ever made in a history every poem has to be the best poem in history and have all that psychic weight you know holding them down and it prevents them from doing stuff apart that psychics weight is the kind of you know one lack of resources that lot of black people have access to and to feeling you have to prove yourself because black people always have to prove themselves all the time right you know to answer yeah yeah yeah yeah so black people is like I have to be a thousand times better than everybody has just to be seen and that kind of psychic weight often stops writers and musicians of color from just relaxing and being a channel for some you know that's what our parents told us wasn't a lot of our parents said of course of course of course gotta be twice as good to the white person yeah yeah yeah but then you know we have to really start shrugging off these things because some of them are helping us you know by the idea of the black superwoman or the black superman

47:19not helping you man like I'm in to like my friend Johnny pits has this idea I did a I'm doing a book with Johnny pits where we uh travel up the coast and talk to black communities and he has this really interesting idea of black banality yeah and it's just like ordinary black people black people who are on performative black people who are not in trauma just ordinary black people because he says if all the media shows is people who performative yes or people in trauma just if this you call to me no what's going on what time what time is in there oh oh five you gotta go yeah yeah okay brother we got we got what we need we'll be in touch yeah okay okay thanks for that man you listen the residents 104.4 FM we we featuring the artist Roger Robinson is playing at Cafe Alto January 23rd we're

48:28gonna carry on with it we're gonna carry on with our program the world is music I use the know these parts and now they draw this town with new maps now a complete stranger Looking at me like I am the leader. I used to know these parts, but now they draw this town with new maps. Now a complete stranger. Looking at me like I am the danger. Snap the ears of your Jimmy Chou's. Bormit up your green juice and burn in your heart your studio. Wash the feet of a nurse who worked for 25 years keeping this community alive.

49:33Ask her for advice on how to live when you feel her color's souls. Ask her about making a whole mind reason of family. You miss the point. People first things out there. Do you want to live somewhere with meaning or do you want to live somewhere where they think I dare of meaning? You have no clue about what it means to dress up for church where there are drums and tambourines. You have no respect for culture. You never seek divinity in the common mind. Believe the world people of your penthouse is a council house. World people that are filled with chicken stew and fried planting. Beneath your pocket floors, cocoa butter babies grow. To you that visit the tropical cocktail. And as always everyone on your street look just like you. It's all good.

50:38I used to know these parts and now they draw this tongue with new maps. Now I'm a complete stranger looking at me like I am the danger. I used to know these parts but now they draw this tongue with new maps. Now I'm a complete stranger looking at me like I am the danger. You know how many grassroots artists how wild tones of microphones amongst feeds and head ties before it was your fine wine shop. Can you feel the vibrations amongst the murals? I want these holy streets to remember in the reggae shops and parties made the Christmas perfection. There was a sacredness in community strivet. You are racing the mystery and crackle of excitement. The mix of dreams of a people who came here from everywhere to make a world. Tower blocks of bays and now statues of silence.

51:40Does heritage mean nothing to you? Does lineage mean nothing to you? Does a man make an elephant selling fruit for 18 years mean nothing to you? Asking about the philosophy behind a ripe and bruised manhole. You learn more than your expensive turfis. Then taste it. Then it takes you to different lines and feel the juice filling you up. The only dance you've done is ballet. You are a tragedy to tradition. A tragedy to tradition. I used to know these parts and now they draw this town with new maps. Now I'm a complete stranger looking at me like I am the danger. I used to know these parts but now they draw this town with new maps. Now I'm a complete stranger looking at me like I am the danger.

52:43I used to know these parts but now they draw this town with new maps. Now I'm a complete stranger looking at me like I am the danger. Now we sit watching TV most evenings in the dark. Most these sports and shows about cooking. The blue bird in my heart can't make me cry anymore. And he can't make me think about the woman's skin all day. But late at night, we lie awake and I can feel he wants to sing. But he can't. While good people sleep, we'll still kill in sheep.

53:45And it goes on that way until they judge me day. While we watch and we heep, seems like light fish cheap. And mama sees her prayers hoping that God will heal. Soon as the flowers dry, there's another one that's out there dying. Soon as the flowers dry, there's another one that's out there dying. While the city's hot, chalk lines draw the spot. Days pass randomly from this unending grief.

54:45Corners full of coast, friends we used to know more. And more die every day, hunters still kill their brains. Soon as the flowers dry, there's another one that's out there dying. Soon as the flowers dry, there's another one that's out there dying. And more die every day, hunters still kill their brains. And more die every day, hunters still kill their brains. And more die every day, hunter's hot, chalk lines draw the spot. I crave the taste of raw meat.

55:48I try to walk barefoot and grass in the night as often as I could. The sun was irritating. At night I thought about tattoos, the red and blue ink piercing my skin. I thought about piercings through my tongue. I let the garden grow wild in the field itself, with creeping, strangling vines.

56:52I run my tongue over the blisters on my lips. I dreamed that a helicopter crashed through my bedroom window, and I walked with my heart racing covered in sweat. I rode a poem with your lipstick in the air and took a picture. Water tasted disgusting, so I drank black tea all day. I started doing push-ups. As soon as I woke, I craved the swell and boon of my muscles. If I was out, I'd do push-ups in a toilet. It brought me back into myself.

57:53The breathlessness, the pain. I took a train to Scotland and camped on the shore of Loch Lomon. And I'd done a walk barefoot into the lake, the mud squalching between my toes. And I shouted your name till the surface of the lake rippled and I grew hoarse.

59:33Hey everybody, listen to Residence 104.4 FM. My name is Art Tateri, and we've been featuring the great artist Roger Robinson. I want to mention right now we're listening to the great Sunra Orchestra playin' with the song we use as our theme called I'll Wait For You. We started the show with Billy Paul, with the gamble and half composition, and my black enough.