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Immortal Technique Interview
RnB/Hip Hop | Tuesday 23rd October 2012 | Jacob
Earlier this week we caught up with Immortal Technique at a his sold out Southampton show, to talk music, history and his new album:
Having a look at your tour schedule, you’ve been pretty busy this year. What’s been the highlight of 2012 so far?
There was an interesting show I did recently, that was one of the highlights at a thing called Harvest Fest in upstate New York, I played with a man called Pete Seeger, who is a huge influence for folk music and revolutionary music. The guy is like 93 years old, and everyone is still singing along, and the oldest person in the audience is like 50. That was very inspirational to see someone like that, who has the spirit to keep going. He’s still here, and he can transcend an age barrier.
What are you most looking forward to on the tour?
Every time that I go to London, it’s always insane, so I’m really looking forward to that show. This is nice, I mean it’s a small intimate venue here, the smallest I’m doing this tour, but London is always a fucking madhouse. It reminds me of 1995 or something; people are brawling in the audience and going crazy.
At the beginning of a eleven date UK tour, do you find you get a different reaction to the political content of your music overseas?
No, I think people are open minded here, the only time there has ever been a misunderstanding is that some of my music is very critical of the way the Catholic Church colonised Latin America. And over in Ireland people were like ‘How can you criticize the church’ and I said to them ‘Listen, I’ve got a different experience of the church than you do. The way you were colonised was by British feudalism, replacing Irish tribalism with a different, more corrupt system. The exact same thing happened in Latin America except that feudalism came in the form of people pretending to proselytize religion when all they wanted was money. And they’re ashamed now to write that in their history books. They say that the pilgrims came here looking for religious freedom, but why can’t they just say what it is? They were looking for gold, looking for slaves, but they’re ashamed, even though they are the champions of capitalism, which in its rawest form is all about gold and slaves!
Do you think people here are more or less open minded to dissent and criticism of the government than in America?
It’s funny because most of my music is built upon the criticism of imperialism and corrupt religion, these are universal themes. Corrupt government is not something the UK is a stranger to! Corrupt media? You see what’s happening in the BBC at the moment? Jesus Christ they’re protecting a child molester! People might take it the wrong way if all my music was criticising things in Britain, so I have to start with myself before I can criticise others.
Britain has been following the run up to the US election very closely, has it been something that you’ve been following?
You know, one of my good friends who isn’t particularly political said something very piercing to me today. He said, you know what, if I don’t vote for Obama, and I don’t vote for Romney, then my vote doesn’t count. And there is something fundamentally wrong with that. If voting 25 times every century is the benchmark of democracy, then those ideals have been betrayed already. The institutions that protect the civil liberties of the people, that’s what safeguards democracy, the ability to ask whatever question you want. As soon as people tell you ‘You can’t ask that question’ then you don’t live in a democracy anymore, you live in fucking North Korea!
Musically have you ever encountered a subject that you’ve found too difficult or nuanced to break down into the format of a song?
No, not difficult but there are some concepts coming out on The Middle Passage that I’ve never touched on, very personal things, speaking about my personal story and things that are very dear to my heart and are a little bit painful to talk about. But there is always pain in music. Like ‘Sign of the Times’ the last song on The Martyr. It talks about how a person looks at their own people and asks can we live for revolution rather than always dying for it, constantly sacrificing young men and women at the altar of freedom? Because if we don’t evolve we meet the same fate of everything else that doesn’t evolve, we become extinct.
Finally, do you have a set release date for The Middle Passage yet, and what can fans expect from this release?
No, but we’re looking early to middle of next year. We’ve got some really good production on it from DJ Green Lantern, Southpaw and DJ Premiere. It’s shaping up to be a very powerful project.
Tech, thanks for talking to The Guestlist Network. We look forward to seeing your London show: 25th October Electric Brixton.
By Jacob Alexander Guberg
