Interview with Blue Scholars
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Keeping it local is a whole different ballgame when you call Seattle home. The clash and melding of America’s titanic super-corporations with our nation’s most organically nurtured independent art scene has birthed a culture as diverse as it is unique. This is the state that rears its children on Nirvana and sends them off to work at Microsoft when they come of age. Growing into one’s own identity, to say the least, is a sophisticated quest for Seattle’s youth. Furthermore, Washington’s cultural separation from the rest of the United States on account of its remote geographic location renders the flavor of Seattle’s youth culture a strange and delicate blend of homegrown idiosyncrasy and imitative exaggeration.

Recently, this socio-cultural phenomenon has provided much food for thought to Saba Mohajerjasbi -– better known as Sabzi of the Seattle-based hip hop duo, Blue Scholars. Deeply invested in giving back to the community that raised them, Blue Scholars are in many ways the antithesis of orthodox rap ideologues who are out to get what is proverbially “theirs.” One clear distinction is that both Geo and Sabzi observably care about how unique audiences around the country respond to their art and showmanship. Indeed, while on tour off the strength of their latest release, Bayani, Blue Scholars have certainly had plenty of opportunity to dissect the local habits and predilections of each city they tear through.

As Blue Scholars’ music gains momentum around the world, Sabzi is using the recognition he receives to raise awareness for issues he finds important. Evil Monito recently spoke to the DJ/beatmaker about TOWNFOLK, his new editorial-based community project that aims to delve deeper into the core of Seattle’s youth culture than ever before.

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EM: For the readers who don’t know – please introduce yourself and what it is you do.

My name is Saba, but most folks also know me as Sabzi. I’m the DJ/producer for Blue Scholars, Common Market, and co-founder/creative director of MassLine Media.

EM: You and Geo have been on the road for quite some time as of late. Is there anything in particular you’d like to share from your travels?

LA is realer and NYC is faker than people think. Ha.
Also, nobody says “filthy” outside Seattle. In the Town, folk use the word “filthy” as an adjective that’s synonymous with “fresh.” When I’m in Brooklyn and I tell a girl her shoes are filthy, she looks at me sideways, ha.

EM: The involvement of the Seattle youth culture is prominent in both the video for “Joe Metro” and “Loyalty,” two singles from the latest Blue Scholars effort, Bayani. Is this involvement limited to on-screen cameos, or do people get involved off-camera as well? Why is it important for you to have local folks this invested in your work?

When it comes to the videos, the involvement of our town-mates definitely extends beyond on-screen contributions.

On any given Blue Scholars video shoot, you’ll see a lot of local youth cast in main or supporting roles, holding lights, photographing for their Facebook or Myspace pages, assisting with production, and generally doing whatever else needs to get done. On the “Loyalty” shoot, for example, our friend and talented artist OneSevenNine created a mural as a backdrop and painted it with a handful of folk from the neighborhood at a local elementary school.

This approach allows up-and-comers in the scene to develop experience while also involving the community as a whole in the creation of an artifact of our local culture. Executing projects in this way is important because it allows the project to become something the whole neighborhood can stand behind, be proud of, and ride for. Then, when they see the video on TV or Youtube it’s like, “Word, I did that.” The music is no longer just about Blue Scholars; it belongs to everybody.

EM: Please introduce and discuss your currently-in-incubation project, “Townfolk.” Who’s behind it, what are its goals, whom does it target, and why does it matter?

Townfolk is a Seattle lifestyle site that I’ve been working on for a minute. Its purpose is to explore the various lifestyles and untold stories that dwell within our humble town. Every neighborhood is different. Each district’s slang, dress, economy, gang history, immigrant population, gentrification trends, knuckleheads and over-achievers, hood cats and trust fund kids, and food and sports all have unique stories behind them that deserve some degree of attention.

To be entirely clear, Townfolk is by no means The Definitive Guide to Seattle, which is why the project will be launched as a blog. Each post will reflect an individual perspective on the Town as seen through the eyes of the writer.

There’s a small but growing cadre of photographers, local artists, musicians, restaurant owners, and community organizers who will be contributing to the site’s content. Some are well-known, some are VERY well-known, and others are just finishing high school.

Although it may seem that Townfolk’s content will appeal almost exclusively to a Seattle-based audience, I expect that anybody who is interested in really digging into a local culture would find something to take away from the site. The idea is to provide the same kind of experience that I had as a kid when I would listen to Nas tell me about life in New York, or how Snoop and Above The Law would help me get up on what was happening in Long Beach and LA, or how Operation Ivy would teach me ethics, or how MoonSka taught me how to look classy on a budget. Anybody can find truth and humanity in the stories of individuals from other places and apply them to their own lives, even if they are from different sides of the planet.

EM: The Pacific Northwest, and Washington in particular, is home to some of the most titanic corporations in the world. On the other end of the dialectic, the region nurtures a considerable share of America’s most organically developed, independent art cultures. Is there something about this singular blend of ideologies and attitudes that you feel is relevant to how the community tends to perceive your work/projects?

You know, if you watch Hype!, which is a documentary about the Seattle grunge scene, you might learn some interesting things about how our exposure to the rest of the music culture in the US is limited because of our geographic location. A lot of big tours don’t come through here often, for example, and there is virtually no industry when it comes to film and music. Even in graphic design, I know people who have had to move out to New York or LA to really get their network on.

That said, this same separation from the rest of the country ideally gives us the freedom to explore our identity – if we choose to. That’s the caveat. There are no actors, musicians, artists, or business players moving here in droves to “make it big,” so it allows for sincere style and identity to develop. That is, again, if the Town chooses to.

EM: How does that geographic phenomenon affect hip hop as a cultural force in Seattle?

Since the end of the grunge scene, Seattle has been stigmatized as primarily an indie rock town. This reputation isn’t so bad in and of itself, but unfortunately it lends to the marginalization of other forms of youth culture. Hip hop in Seattle, specifically, has been consistently overlooked by the national media as well as our own local press.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 — which (coincidentally? hmm) preceded the “Puff Daddy Era” of hip hop and what many in my generation consider the end of hip hop’s “Golden Age”— allowed multiple commercial radio stations to be owned by the same entity. What this did for local music was push it right off the airwaves and replace it with the same stock programming found on every other Top-40 station around the country. You used to be able to fly into a city, turn on the radio, and get up on whatever the local DJ was repping for. Regrettably, this is no longer the case.

For a developing scene in a city of Seattle’s diminutive size (compounded by the rainy climate that compels kids to stay inside the house), radio support is necessary to cultivate an audience of young listeners. Combine this with restrictive measures like the local Teen Dance Ordinance (which effected the shutting down of all-ages clubs in the city) and other social phenomena, like a historic migration of creative talent to other major metropolitan areas, and you get a Town that can’t see the wealth of cultural potential it has in its possession.

EM: What are some of the consequences of that cultural myopia, particularly in regards to Seattle’s youth?

When kids start to think for themselves in regards to developing their identities, they tend to latch on to stereotypical images that are fed to them by major media outlets. In an era where hip hop has shifted so far beyond its point of origin, there’s nothing left on TV but a tragically parochial representation of what hip hop is culturally and stylistically. The result is that too many people in smaller cities try to mimic what is perceived as hot in New York or LA and fail miserably. I’ve seen it in art, in music, and in streetwear.

Ironically, the corporate element does play a part in supporting Seattle’s local talent as well. Everybody here is no more than one handshake away from Microsoft money. About half the emcees in this town have worked as customer service for Amazon.com.

EM: How have all of these factors affected your philosophy or outlook as a hip hop group that is charged with carrying the Pacific Northwest on its back by the international media?

There is one anecdote in particular involving Blue Scholars that I’d like to share.

During the shift to higher watt broadcasting, the University of Washington decided that keeping KCMU, the college radio station, would be too expensive, and dropped it. Microsoft mogul Paul Allen, known to some as a music enthusiast, bought up KCMU and turned it into a public-funded radio station that he subsidized. This eventually became the world-renowned KEXP, which was one of the first radio stations to employ streaming technology that allowed its programming to be heard by listeners across the globe.

Known for playing a hefty stock of indie rock music, KEXP did something in different in 2004 when they put the debut release from Blue Scholars into rotation. Within a matter of weeks, our record was number one on its charts and all of a sudden our one hundred-person shows at the community center in Chinatown turned into a growing mass of Seattle folk who previously had no knowledge of Seattle’s hip hop scene.

Now, Blue Scholars is just one group comprised of two people. We obviously can’t represent the whole city, nor should we. At the end of the day, the lesson to be learned here is that there is much more room for local culture to thrive and get shine. Townfolk is just another small step towards making that happen.

EM: How would you like to see the interaction between the consumers and producers of youth culture develop in the future?

I’d like to see us resolve the contradictions and the antagonism between consumers and producers. Hopefully, we can evolve into equal participants.

We live in a world today where nearly every piece of cultural expression has been co-opted from its point of origin, commodified, and sold to back to the people. In a capitalist economy that has separated everybody into his or her own individual space, we are forced to define ourselves by what we buy. Even people who think they are being politically progressive by purchasing free-trade beans or boycotting Nestle are still ultimately defining where they stand by how they utilize their consumer power. That isn’t revolutionary at all.

You can’t buy yourself a sense of self-worth. You can’t buy yourself an identity. You can try, but you’re eventually going to have to face the fact that that shit is fake and will lose its relevance sooner or later. In order to truly express ourselves, we need to create our own identities rooted in our lifestyles and what sustains us. It needs to be a full expression of who we are and what we do from top to bottom.

Now, obviously, we are all too deeply intertwined in this economic system to just give it the middle finger and try and operate outside of it. An identity based solely on the rejection of what commoditized identities are marketed to you isn’t much of an identity, either.

No, we must define ourselves by what we do. What are you going to contribute to this world that will help you develop your humanity? What is right and what is wrong is up for discussion, but let’s start by deading all that fake shit first.

Only when we begin to communicate to others who we are through concrete actions can we begin to authentically communicate who we are through our cultural expression.

Holla.

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http://bluescholars.com/