On Mon, 10 Jul 2000, Cyclone Wehner wrote:
> I've seen him and he was OK - he did this live double-bass thing as well,
> not a great DJ, but the concept was interesting. Spooky doesn't see himself
> as mainstream at all, in fact he gets a lot of flack for his intellectual
> approach from the NY establishment. He sees it like, why can't an
> African-American man be an intellectual, a conceptualist, I don't want to do
> what the mainstream deems to be 'Black music' like gangsta rap or whatever.
> He is big on contemporary French philosophy (more influential than you'd
> think) and sees himself as intervening in those discourses.
I think this is how he sees himself. But in discussions with him in
another email forum (dedicated to the idea of "afrofuturism") I've come to
the conclusion that he's running the DJ equivalent of a "Proudhon scam."
Proudhon was a French philosopher cum activist who, when with philosophers
would tout his activist credentials, and when with activists would tout
his philosophy credentials. But Karl Marx peeped that he was actually
NEITHER--his thoughts weren't that deep, and he simply wasn't doing any
activist work, just faking it.
I suspect that when he's with DJ's what he's really trying to claim is his
reading of Marcuse, or Foucault, or even Cruse....but when he's with
intellectuals, he's trying to claim his status as a DJ. But when I've
tried to talk to him about the intellectual end...his ideas are shallow at
best. He ends up losing in the long run because in the end his body of
work won't be worth noting in either category....but in the short run he
gets PAID.
peace
lks
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Lester Kenyatta Spence [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Assistant Professor, Political Science
Washington University at St. Louis
"We illuminate the contradictions and call it
the light"
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