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By
Julia Scott
Saul
Williams takes spoken-word poetry to the next level
It's
difficult to write anything about poet/rapper/preacher/musician/actor
Saul Williams without sounding pretentious. After all, he's already
been called a "poet hero" and "one of the most powerful voices of the
new hip-hop generation." As I and an ecstatic crowd at Michael
Franti's San Francisco Power to the Peaceful music festival discovered
in 2003, Williams has a talent to be reckoned with.
Born in 1972 near New York City to a prominent preacher father and schoolteacher
mother, Williams first rose to prominence as the lead in SLAM, a 1998
film he co-wrote about a young convict who empowers himself through
poetry. It won the Sundance Festival Grand Jury Prize and the Cannes
Camera D'Or, and garnered Williams a lot of attention.
Since then he's released several documentaries, a music album, and three
books of poetry (his latest, ,
said the shotgun to the head, was published by MTV/Pocketbooks in
September 2003). Williams has starred on "Def Poetry Jam" and is a recurring
character on the UPN TV show "Girlfriends."
What were your early experiences as a poet and an activist? Who or
what was important to you?
I think I'd have to say it was my parents and my upbringing, in that
they kept me surrounded by activism. The people that they honored and
spoke of were artists, but who always connected their politics or spirituality
to their art. I remember as a kid having the folksinger Odetta stay
in our house.
How did that happen?
She was doing a special concert with my father's church's choir. All
sorts of artists were always passing through. Or ministers, like Jesse
Jackson or Louis Farrakhan. So I grew up in a very politicized household.
As
a kid, I wanted to be an actor, I wanted to be an activist, I wanted
to be a rapper. So when a group like, say, Public Enemy or KRS-One came
out who were rappers/activists, that was the epitome of what I wanted
to be.
What was the first time that you took your
work public?
I guess the first time I took my personal work public, because I'd been
on the stage in plays and stuff since I was 8 or 9, was when I was about
twelve. I used to write rhymes. On commercial breaks of "Knight Rider,"
writing rhymes on my Dad's legal pads which I would steal from him.
And one day he was like, "If you write a rhyme about why people shouldn't
do drugs, you can do it at the rally we're having at the church this
Saturday." This was during the '80s, during the "Just Say No" era. And
the city I grew up in was really ravaged by drugs, so...
Which was?
Newburgh, New York, about an hour upstate from New York City. It just
has a terrible drug trafficking history. So the starting point was a
"Just Say No" rap that I did in front of a couple of thousand people.
That was the fusing of my artistic views with my political views. I
also was into oratory—speech and debate competitions in school.
I would write speeches and they were always about some sort of political
uplift. My sister was an activist in college; she's eight years older
than me. This was during the apartheid era and she would come home from
college, telling us what companies we had to avoid because of their
investment in apartheid. She would encourage me to write my speeches
and school papers on stuff that was going on in South Africa and here
in America.
And
then you'd go and research it.
Yeah. So I got influenced by my parents and my sister when I was young.
They pretty much molded me into realizing the importance of all these
things; I never considered otherwise. However, as an actor there was
a point where I would have performed anything—I was just thinking
of being an actor and participating in whatever project came along.
Luckily for me, the first project I ever really went public with as
far as film was concerned was Slam, which I had the opportunity to co-write,
and since I co-wrote it, it was a highly politicized piece. I guess
before then I realized the importance of meaningful work and the effect
that it has on society.
What did activism look like for you and your
family when you were young?
My parents were really into the work of Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier.
They were definitely idolized—seen as great artists who spoke up,
marched. It was people who spoke up.
I know that different classes of kids have your poetry as curriculum
in school now, and I was wondering what that feels like.
It kind of comes with the territory. I was always one who paid attention
in class, especially when I was interested in the subject matter. And
when I had the opportunity to choose my classes, I chose classes that
really interested me. There was always a great fusion between what I
was studying in school and what I was doing on my own. When I was in
third grade I went to a magnet school and took a class called "Shake
Hands with Shakespeare." That was probably two years before I started
rapping--but by the time I started rapping, I was trying to write rhymes
in Old English, like, "what would Shakespeare be like if he wrote hip-hop?"
Just blending the school stuff with the street stuff… I was always
doing that. And so now the fact that my "street stuff" is there in the
schools makes perfect sense. Because I was always fusing the two.
What's
interesting is that when I first started rapping, most of my rhymes
were straight braggadocio, like, "I'm the coolest blah blah blah…
I'm the baddest blah blah blah…" so that there definitely was a
time when my writing was not politicized. I would think in terms of
what I would see in other people's albums, so I was like, "Okay, I'm
going to do a song about why I'm so bad, then I'm going to do a political
song about how black people need to unite, and then I'm going to do
a song for the girls…" so I would do rap like that. Now it's all
intertwined. I did it all then, but I did it all separately.
What rappers or musicians were you most influenced
by when your style started coming together?
LL Cool J, Run-DMC, KRS-One, Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, Public Enemy…
then De La Soul, Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets, the whole Hieroglyphics
crew. I was inspired by all of these people before I ever hit a spotlight.
And now you've met them, and even worked with
some of them.
Yes, I have. Although I've still never met Rakim. I must have idolized
him too much. Tell me about the work you're doing now that you're most
excited about. I'm excited about this book, , said the shotgun to the
head, because I've always wanted to write an epic poem. It's 160 pages
long .
That's insane! How long did it take you to
write?
I wrote it over the course of four years. I would work on it when I
was inspired. It's an epic poem in the voice of a wandering man, maybe
the homeless man you would cross the street to avoid when you see him
mumbling to himself. It's a microphone held up to his mouth. It's a
love poem to all the things that are decaying, the values and ideals
of the West.
It's
a man telling of the coming of a female Messiah that he has known intimately.
It's kind of a prologue to the new age that we're stepping into.
Which is what?
The Age of Aquarius, the matriarchal age, the shift from the Powers
that Be to the Powers of Being.
Tell me about your music.
I'm working on music at home right now, creating my next album—I
can't say much about it, because it's still shaping up, and because
I don't want to give away anything. The music is all over the place.
I guess I'd call it industrial punk-hop.
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