Electric Heart Alive: Ten Questions for the Aussie Hip Hop Raconteur Morganics

Morganics was the feature of July's SLAMALAMADINGDONG

"Jam Slam (Stripped Back!)"

1) What was the first piece of spoken word, poetry or rap you heard? How did it affect you?

I did a fair bit of acting from the age of eleven and I think one of the pieces which blew my mind a lot was Franz Wedekind's play "Spring Awakening". It was heavy, wild, sexual and desperate and I played the lead, Melchior, so I had to beat Wendla - the lead girl - up with a stick every night. It was confronting and challenging as were my memories of hearing Public Enemy's first tracks on a Def Jam sampler, I remember thinking "What are all those people and politics he is referring to and why is that police siren going through the whole song?!". I don't think good art has to be beautiful like a Monet, it's great when it can be invigorating like a slap in the face sometimes too. 2) Who is your favourite Artist of all time?

Monet - haha, no, actually I am probably most inspired by the energy and mischeviousness of the Futurist movement out of Italy just before World War 1. They were super creative, questioning and optimistic - even though they worshipped the speed of industrialisation and thought war was a great cleanser - and a bit like Hip Hop they made things do what they weren't supposed to do. Their Manifesto on the Art of Noises celebrated the amazing new sounds being made by the emerging industrial machinery. I think they were like a pre cursor to sampling and I love a bit of Dada cut and paste like Burroughs did. Keep it surreal baby! 3) What is your method for writing?

I think I write my best stuff in response to direct experience - working in jails, walking through a desert, relationship breakups, a killer night Bboying and rhyming at a club. Often I have an opening line in my head before I get to my writing pad and then I have a real trajectory and it's just a matter of staying in charge of that slippery muse and trying to not get too tangential. The other way that works sometimes is that I write a lot and by the second page I have warmed up and then when I finish writing I may have reached one pithy hook, from which I can then come back and further explore. Like a lot of writers I get bored with things I have already done, topics I have covered, turns of phrase and so on, but at art school in a creative writing class they taught me not to self censor and just write through it. 4) Where is the most fascinating place you’ve travelled to with hip hop as your passport?

After doing a two man Hip Hop Theatre show with MC Ty in the UK, I flew to freezing Amsterdam for one night, rolled myself the most embarrassing joint in the world - I can't roll - and somehow ended up at an underground club where legendary DJ Kid Capri from New York spun a four hour set where I threw down with local Bboys and Bgirls. I went back to my hotel, got my stuff, went to the airport and flew to Tanzania where a group of young ex street kids were waiting with a sign which said "Welcome Morganics!". They sung songs to welcome me at the airport and we drove through the hot sunset over the Serenghetti plains in the back of a jeep with me beatboxing and them rhyming in Swahili. I was there for three weeks and I produced an album and shot a clip in a Maasai village for them. They were so passionate, respectful, poor and talented, it was a real honour. I remember sitting there one day looking at Mt Kilimanjaro out the window as we recorded and thinking "This is my Ry Cooder moment!". A real blessing.

5) Most memorable moment in your life as an Artist working in community?

Docker River is one of the most isolated Aboriginal communities near the border of SA, NT and WA. It's also some of the landscapes that Namatjira painted, and I've never felt so small as I have walking through those huge, beautiful, purple desert canyons. At the end of my two weeks there we put on a disco in a tiny room and every single kid came on down. I looped my beatbox, did a short rap I had taught myself in Pitjanjarra, then the kids hit the dancefloor. One of the young fellas who had stopped sniffing petrol for the two weeks of the workshops busted out a mad combo of Michael Jackson, traditional emu dance and a backspin that blew the roof off. Discos in Maningrida (Arnhem Land) and Lockhart River (Far North Queensland) have been like a life affirming combination of chaos theory and dancehall - crazy! 6) What does a typical “being an artist” day look like for you?

Answering email interviews (rarely, actually, so thanks for the opportunity Michelle!), producing an old school instrumental track for Candy Royalle's workshops with Koori kids in NSW, recording some young guys from Sierra Leone and Tanzania at my house over some random beat they took off the internet, cyphering with my mates Elf Tranzporter and Listic at Elf's studio, chasing up music permissions for the credit roll for my my upcoming independent feature film "Survival Tactics", worrying about how to market myself in this digital age when I'm not on facedrone and debating whether or not I should get a real job next year cause Melbourne is great for creativity but being an artist is my financially suicidal hobby. 7) What’s the hardest lesson you’ve learned as an Artist?

Good question. Not to be too ambitious. I am at the final stages of making an independent feature film and the toll it has taken is......well, let's just leave it at that. My magic word is "Next!". As a freelance artist I think if I finish the gig/project and have enough energy/time/money to go onto the next, then all is well. I think I am happiest when I can just concentrate on the work, not the planning, budgeting, marketing or networking, just putting my energy into the art, I am happy to be anonymous and let the art speak.

8) Fill in the blanks... Hip hop can...

Change the world - oops, it already has. 9) Why do you do what you do?

There's a quote from Nina Simone saying something like "I don't sing because I'm a good singer, I sing because I have to sing". There are plenty of better MCs, beatboxers, Bboys, poets, community workers and film makers than me, but I do it because I have no real choice in the matter. 10) Soren Kierkegaard once said: “If you name me, you negate me. By giving me a name, a label, you negate all of the other things I could possibly be.” What are the “other things” you could possibly be?

I get labelled "Hip Hop" all the time but it's not so well known that my background is theatre and acting as well as a lot of performance art. Before I became "Morganics" I was doing solo performance art shows as "Hot Banana Morgan" where I would play 45 characters in an hour, dressing up in drag while talking about graffitiing trains and dancing to "Say My Name", but I'm not exactly sure what label you would give to describe that anyway.