THE BLACK POWER TAROT A CONVERSATION WITH KING KHAN: BY MADAM NEVERSTOP King Khan Left home at 17, when he played punk music in a band called The Spaceshits, known for a chaotic audience that got them banned from a lot of clubs in Canada, where they resided. Two friends of the band were Mohawk Indian, which led him to spend a lot of time on their Kahnawake Mohawk reservation where they practiced, something he mentions as one of his first influences, as well as his Canadian and Indian mixed heritage. Khan tells me he read Malcolm X at 12 and was touched by his story of catharsis due to torture, prison and enlightenment and for this reason, Khan’s choice of including him in the Black Power Tarot, the subject I have asked him to discuss on this issue of the <strong>Red</strong> Transmissions Podcast. He adds that it was Malcom X’s autobiography that led him to understand another world was possible. This is how we begin our interview. Straight to the point and with plenty of stories to accompany each important piece of information. At 22 he fell in love and married, and him and his partner began a family in Europe, where they still reside. It was around this time, twenty years ago, that he also started the Shrines, a band Khan envisioned as a combination of Sun Ra and James Brown. Ever since, he’s been playing, making music scores for films along with other multimedia collaborations, and for the past 8 years, working on the soundtrack of a documentary called The Invaders, to be released by NAS in the near future. It seems everything King Khan does is interrelated, a beautiful dance of brain and heart in action. The movie discusses activism in late 60’s movements and peaceful rallies, Martin Luther King’s focus on the poor people’s campaign which almost cost him his following, the Black rights’ movements and the militant group The Invaders, who took care of the community with little means, in the style of the Black Panthers. Police infiltration and tactics of disruption. And how all of this is deeply interconnected to our current present. Then our conversation flows to a subject I am very fond of once he mentions Naked Lunch as another influence for his life and creative process. Naked Lunch was a book, he says, that helped him cope with the bullying he received due to him not understanding his early sexuality and others not understanding his mustache, his long hair and brown skin. He explains that this book left and “ooze” or residue in his brain that never left. “If I want to get inspired, I can reach out and touch that stuff and get inspired. He gave a middle finger to America, he was a volcano. What happens with a volcano? After it erupts it becomes magma, and becomes fertile soil. He paved the way”. “Picture a 13 year old me, you know, picking up Naked Lunch, getting their mind blown… and then years later, (…) I started a tour, met Jodorowsky, and it turns out Lou Reed is a fan of my music. Him and Laurie Anderson, and we get a call, they invite me to play in the Sydney Opera House. (…) I ended up getting arrested and begging the guards to let me out so I could go play for Lou Reed. I get to Australia, I’m a mess, sitting next to Lou Reed, and he’s singing a song called the ‘Vanishing Act’, (…) these are some of the most fucked up times in my life, around a time when I lost 3 friends (…) and reality was bending, and this is where I met Hal Willner, who passed away from COVID this year. Not only did he produce all the Burroughs albums before, as well as Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson and Nick Cave and Sun Ra, but he also invited me all the time to be part of his compilations, his civil right shows… and after Lou passes, he calls me and he sends me an email, he says ‘I have a gift for you’, he sent me 10 tracks of William S. Burroughs reciting the worst, unspeakable parts of Naked Lunch. And I’m like a kid in a candy store… it was pure alchemy. He told me I could do anything I wanted with them. (…) and when I sent the first track to Hal, he told me cried.” This is how the record “Let Me Hang You” was born, with titles such as ‘Gentle Reader’ and The Exterminator, and a cover which was a collaboration with Michael Eaton, where Burroughs appears as The Devil. it was redesigned. In this devil image, the leashes are soft leather, and the young creatures can be interpreted as demons or other entities, with leather covering their privates. “The devil in that card is the one who laughs with all of his body, the one who laughs at non-sense, and that was Burroughs. He always had the last laugh”. I’m really proud of that record, think about the fact that it was the book that changed my life… and then to be able to add something to it. When something like this happens to you, then you realize you’ve found the right path.” We also talk about the other questionable aspects of Burroughs’ character, and the privileges of wealth and color which allowed him to remain free throughout his entire career and life.
“Tarot is simply language. If you figure out how to read it, you can help people find their path of illumination.” - King Khan ISSUE # <strong>23</strong> - LANGUAGE 19
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