Music

Tell us a bit about the concept behind Niggy Tardust.
‘Essentially, it was a way for me to create a character and genre of my own. It was an opportunity for me to use music as a platform to explore everything from music itself to political debate and ideology to so-called racial debate and ideology. I say so-called because I think that, especially in the mindset of Niggy Tardust, the war against racism involves acknowledging race as a social construct and realising that we can only progress as human beings so far if we stay tied down to our concepts of race and nationality. So Niggy Tardust is the voice of a generation, a generation that does not define itself simply by what it’s born into.’
Feature continues

And what’s the thinking behind the name?
‘It’s a satirical play on the name [of David Bowie’s character] Ziggy Stardust of course, but then it has levels of meaning from the resonant, combustible products that go into making tar, the meaning of dust from everything from the earth to the golden compass and all the debates surrounding the word "nigger" – it’s a way of playing with history and mutating it.’

What are your thoughts on the use of the ‘N-word’ in popular culture?
'Well, when I use the word "nigger" I’m talking about everybody because you can’t curse the part without damning the whole. I am a firm believer in [what] John Lennon meant when he said ‘women are the niggers of the world’. I believe that it’s the idea of being disenfranchised and oppressed and overlooked. But in relation to the African-American experience, I think of the word "nigger" as a portable hard drive, that if we were to try and streamline our experience and all that we’ve known and been through as a people on this land, we could simply keep that word and all of the history would be embedded in that word.

'So it’s a springboard, it is so much, but at the same time we have to keep history in its place. In the Niger Basin [along the river Niger in West Africa] there are over 200 languages spoken and in just about every one of those languages there are words that sound exactly like the word "nigger" meaning anything from God to river to grass. So, the word "nigger" may be the only word in the English lexicon that is of actual African origin. And when I look at a generation of young people who have chosen to reconnect to that word, for me it’s not empowering to look at that generation and say: "Oh they are lost. Oh, they don’t know their history – if only they knew." I raise the question of: What is the subconscious process of healing? What does it take? Perhaps it is something like how old schoolers would say you heal from a snakebite: having to spit out the venom again and again until there is no more. Suck it up and spit it out. Perhaps its some sort of process like that. I’m not sure.’

But does that ‘healing process’ need to be done in front of people who don’t have that history?
'If we’re gonna progress as a people we are going to realise that, as one of my favourite poets says, the other is a lie. There are no other people. Race is a social construct. Like I said, you can’t curse the part without damning the whole, so the people who said it have as much healing to do as the people who felt it when it was said. We can’t heal alone. There is no alone. We cannot continually barricade ourselves under some falsified idea of race, because our idea of blackness and race is simply reactionary. Africans didn’t walk around Africa being black and proud, they walked around proud. Only when they had something to juxtapose themselves against did people start saying they are this and that. We have to stop that. We have to get beyond it. Part of the process was becoming black and proud. But now it’s a new age.'

How would describe what you do?
'Er, Saul. Niggy Tardust. Songkeeper. I don’t think that’s the job of the artist. Maybe that’s the job of the listener, especially if you’re looking through CDs in a record store that need to be classified. But for myself, those classifications do no more than limit my expression.'

Would you agree that spoken word tends to be known for its political and social consciousness?
'Well, the term "spoken word" doesn’t really mean much to me when it is set aside from the term "poet" or "poetry". I think we fool ourselves and really negate a great deal of history if we think that the oral history of poetry is shorter than the written history of poetry. It’s not true. Poetry has a longer oral tradition than it does written. You know, even the famous Greek poet Homer was not read in his time – most of Greece was illiterate. People gathered to hear him speak. The same is to be said of [father of Taoism] Lao Tzu or Griots [wandering poets] in West Africa.

We are carrying on a tradition, so I guess the first thing I would do is say why set up this new thing? I guess it’s because there are so many old ideas attached to the idea of poetry but I guess its important to remember that what we are doing in this generation is connected to a lineage.

As far as the politics involved, you can’t do anything that’s not political in this time and age. Nothing. Even Michael Jordan standing up and saying I am not political; that’s a political statement. So that anything you say, anything you wear, anything you drive, anything you listen to – those are all political choices. So anyone who chooses to express themselves through language is going to find themselves working through a whole world of politics. It’s impossible not to.'

But in terms of pop music or indie music, for example, you wouldn’t have such an overt social or political message...
'Right, and that’s a political choice. When you do that. When you decide not to make your message through your music, then you are making a political choice.'

What are your thoughts on the London music and poetry scene?
'Well, I have always been inspired by a lot of the artwork coming out of the UK. As a teenager, the first thing I may have been turned onto coming out of there would have been something like Soul II Soul or the trip hop stuff and a bit later I got into the grime scene and all that stuff. What I love is that in the UK you have artists like Tricky, Massive Attack, Wiley, Dizzee who are exploring beyond a typified idea of what it means to be black. It’s great. As far as the spoken-word scene goes, I’ve met some poets and it’s cool, but I have never had any affinity towards any scene. I have scenes that have welcomed me because they saw what I was doing as a part of what they were doing but I’m just open.’

Saul Williams plays Cargo on February 25.

London Word Festival, Feb 22 until Mar 13 (www.londonwordfestival.com).