Ishmael Butler is a lyrical and musical visionary creating his own worlds of freedom and wonder since the first Digable Planets hit way back in 1993. And he’s continued to stay relevant as Shabazz Palaces, releasing his own work and collaborating across cultural, geographic and genre boundaries.
COLLIS BROWNE: I’ll tell just a couple things about me, leading into the interview, so you know something about who you’re talking to. I’m known as Collis Browne, artistically. I’m from just outside of Toronto, and grew up in a small town. Being in a small town, all “culture” seemed to come from very far away. In Canada a lot of the pop culture is from the US. And a lot of the American culture is very strongly Black culture, because Black culture is such a huge, beautiful part of American culture. And so I just want to, cite a couple milestones in my life that lead me into the interview. One: when I was six years old in the early 80s, the first cassette tape I got was the Fat Boys, which changed my mindset of what you could do in music, what you could do all with a capella music, with the Human Beatbox and with the storytelling and melodiousness that can come from just the voice. Two: five years in the future, another milestone was, like ‘89 when Public Enemy became really, really big and exploded globally, and it really changed my understanding of that you could be “political” and have a really clear stance about structural iniquities, and have it sound amazing and hard and beautiful, really blending those things together in a way that is inspiring. You know that Chuck D, really, spoke to so many people — my experience is very far from his, but he really spoke to us. And Three: in 1993 and I was, I think, 14-15, and there was this group called Digable Planets that made this tune — of course, “Cool Like That”. The whole record is amazing. And it made a big impact on us, but I want to call out this one song that is La Femme Fétal. It changed the way that I understood that you could have a specific viewpoint on an issue that’s highly politicized, controversial if you will, but be first of all, smooth and awesome to listen to. To be really rooted in a very personal experience, but speak very powerfully to the broader situation, the broader social dynamic. That song is where I heard of Roe v Wade. So just to see this song where you could very specifically use, twice, the word fascist in the song, but it’s very smooth and natural. And these lines that was like,
“Pro-lifers need to dig themselves,
because life don’t stop after birth,
and to a child born to the unprepared,
it might even just get worse.”
— Butterfly (Ishmael Butler), Digable Planets
I used to know all these lyrics, and just thinking about the empowerment that came from out of that. Came from out of that. So first of all, I just wanted to like, thank you from that moment, but the breadth of it, that it carried far and wide in geography, and it carried wide and like opening our understandings of like, what you can do musically and politically, and it still resonates.
ISHMAEL BUTLER: I appreciate that, bro. Thank you, man. That means a lot.
COLLIS BROWNE: You have always had a clarity around the relation between the personal, and the political, and the cultural, and the global.
ISHMAEL BUTLER: When you say the political — How do you define that?
COLLIS BROWNE: Political in the broader cultural sense. Definitely outside of electoral politics; electoral politics is a very small part of what we think of as political. I’m using political, in this sense: any aspect of who you are or what you do, or how you want to live, or who you want to love, or whatever it is, is politicized, and has a relation to power, domination and exploitation in the world.
Everything has a relation to power, to structural power, to the dynamics that are the economies and everything that runs the world. And so let’s do it mindfully. Let’s do it clearly, critically and loudly. Speak our biases. Loudly. Our bias is toward liberation for all, freedom and liberation. Our bias is toward looking at the true structures of power that run the world and how everybody either goes under the radar, or goes along with it and benefits from it, or tries to chip it apart and make it broader and more free for everybody. So that’s what we mean by political.
ISHMAEL BUTLER: Right on.
I was raised by people that directly understood that they themselves and their social situation was political, so they actively pursued that reality and gave themselves over to it as youth and on into their adulthood. The principles of taking care of yourself and really having a good self confidence was definitely instilled, but you always were to be aware that you are part of a family, a community, a city, a place, a neighborhood and a culture, you know. So that’s why I was able to naturally approach those kind of things, but also have a naturalness to it, because it was natural — I had it was all I had known, due to my people and the people that they surrounded themselves with. And my parents were the ones that were involved in the Civil Rights Movement and had seen change. You know what I mean? They had been instrumental in bringing it about. So they understood what coming together for action could attain. So we, being their offspring, that was something that they were really, really keen on instilling in us, because me and all my homies and all the people in my school did all the things that teenagers do and kids do, but we all had that sensibility as well. That’s just how it was.
And that sensibility and awareness has suffered a hit in terms of it being a prevailing sort of attitude with everybody, but it’s still very much alive, you see in activism and participation, but it’s also very much under threat. You know, by the Empire and their goals.
COLLIS BROWNE: The way you say the Empire. I hear the capital E. That’s how I say it.
ISHMAEL BUTLER: But we’re post-apocalyptic when it comes to political things, you know, we we’re still sort of hanging on, especially here in the States, to these vestiges and notions of civility and “rule of law” and all of these things that were really miraculously held together by regardless of whether they were right or or left wing. They all sort of had an understanding of basic right and wrong. But these cats… their whole thing is, I’m trying to let you know that I’m on top and you on the bottom, and if you do what I say, then you cool. We’ll let you in. But if not, we don’t care anything about you, and we’re willing to see the end of you and your destruction.
COLLIS BROWNE: I came across a video of you a couple years ago, because we were invited by a group of Kanaka Maoli people into Hawai‘i to go to O‘ahu and join the struggle and the movement around defueling Red Hill, and while we were there we also met with Dr. Akiemi Glenn of the Popolo Project — an incredible project to “redefine what it means to be Black in Hawai‘i”. And then I came across a video of you performing and speaking there as Shabazz Palaces. And I was, I was surprised, because I love it when worlds collide.
First of all, speaking of the Empire, and the freshness of the conquest: literally, invasion, conquering and continued oppression and brutal oppression in Hawaii. It’s very, very fresh. But you had said something in the video that was something to the effect of: we want to move in a way that is centering ourselves and not centering the Empire and kind of not giving it that power. Has your thinking changed since then about how you move in direct opposition or relation, to the Empire?
ISHMAEL BUTLER: Understanding what the Empire is, to me is actually de-centering. Like, once you realize that they really are small and petty and that they’re just trying to gobble up everything, trying to be the center of everything. That’s when I was able to really get into myself and my values and the things around me, because I’m not with all that. If everything is about the Empire, the Empire, we always gotta be talking about, thinking about them and studying them — while I’m not. I mean, I try to pay attention, to stay abreast, because it’s interesting to know about the world that you live in, and the forces that influencing what is happening in your day to day life. But beyond that, they’re not the center. It’s not centralized in my life at all. That, to me, is the point: to get them out of there in that way. You know, because what they got, everybody believe in this, this fantasy of who they are. It’s just, it’s just smoke and mirrors, man. It ain’t really based on no substance. You know, always lies, always deceit, always destruction, always nefarious, always theft, always, always rape. You feel me? So 100% yeah, they’re not at the center of nothing, they’re not centralized in my world.
COLLIS BROWNE: Like not giving them the satisfaction of being the main character in your story type of thing, right?
ISHMAEL BUTLER: Exactly, because they’re really not.
They’re asserting themselves as that, try to keep a hold on, and trying to convince you with propaganda; and they’ll kill mass amounts of people to hammer that point home. But you know, it’s still not true. It may be real, it may be a Reality, but it’s not a Truth. You know what I’m saying?
COLLIS BROWNE: There’s more of a future in creating a world where the Empire is not in the center.
ISHMAEL BUTLER: I mean, look, look at Donald Trump, without illusion and deceit. If it’s just the bare presentation of the reality of the man himself, how could he be considered a statesman or or any of the things that he’s convinced the world that he is? He wouldn’t be able to. There’s no way.
COLLIS BROWNE: It’s all smoke and mirrors.
ISHMAEL BUTLER: I mean, it’s literally a man standing before you who never speaks anything true, ever, right? And let’s just look at his appearance. He’s covered up his real self with a covering, right? And his concept of the the coloring of the covering is absolutely bonkers. That’s a hell of a presentation for a world leader to be coming out with. It’s so deceitful, and it’s such a hiding. It’s like drag really. You know what I mean? It’s trying to show I’m a bronzed, healthy my skin is, you know, I’m saying, but in reality, it’s something else.
COLLIS BROWNE: I love, that no insult to drag, but it’s very fun, actually, to take, to take Donald Trump as drag.
Given that all of that that we’ve said, then what’s the world you’re building? What’s the center? if it’s not this, that the other, this psychopath, this lunatic, then tell me the world you’re building and the center of your world.
ISHMAEL BUTLER: My family, the ideas and emotions that they are coming up with and dealing with and creating. And my passion, which is music. Making music and learning about music and learning things musical, and also the notion of, you gotta learn and you gotta work, you know. And if you’re on a learning path and a working path, you’re going to inevitably come across new ideas, at least to you have motivation to participate in the world and look at the world and try to understand it, and meet individuals that are open minded like you, and can teach you things and show you new things, and vice versa, so that it’s a rich energy is in motion, and you’re participating with the world, and you’re alive, you know, so even when things seem unclear in terms of a specific path to take, to try to surmount this stuff, at least, I know, through getting back to these things, That Imma be alive, Imma be living, and Imma be participating. You know what I mean? It’s saying something in this day and age to be able to do that.
