DJ Lynnée Denise (Amsterdam, Johannesburg, London, Saturn)

WildSeed Music NYC is proud to present its first ever double mixed cd, High Holy Days: The History and Future of House Music.
Episode 1 ”“The Children of Baldwin,” explores several periods of classic house where I mix both Chicago and New York City underground gay club hits to highlight the infant stages of house music. This compilation focuses on the music of two popular clubs credited with initiating the globalization of house music: Dj Larry Levan’s Paradise Garage Club in New York City and DJ Ron Hardy’s Music Box in Chicago. Many dancers, djs and listeners from the early house music community have succumbed to HIV/AIDS. When mixing this compilation, I made a conscious decision to honor the people who built the temples where “the children” dance, but did not have a chance to tell there stories. Both Ron Hardy and Larry Levan died in 1992 from complications related to intense drug use, although Ron Hardy’s death was also HIV/Aids related. One critical point that I’ve discussed in my project is the impact of addiction and the HIV/Aids epidemic on house music culture. Through this mix I hoped to have brought voice to the untold stories and visibility to the people that generated a global musical movement. This podcast premiered during the Atlanta Black Pride, one of three of the largest festivals in the country, in 2011. My aim for this release was to offer more than a party to celebrate our lives, but to lift the names of those who have passed on and to recognize what LGBTQ contribute to American culture.
Episode 2, “Mighty Real: The Sound of Tomorrow” pulls on current producers who incorporate elements of classic house, but also push beyond the borders of acceptable dance-floor grooves. Sylvester helped shape a soulful, yet formulaic genre of house music that focuses on spiritual-sexually-inspired falsetto vocals and driving, repetitive disco rhythms. This mix is dedicated to his artistry, fearlessness and commitment to authenticity.
Liner notes for High Holy Days feature two of my favorite scholars and house heads:
The first is Thokazani Mhblambi, A South African ill-disciplined musicologist; shifting between diverse creative genres, from classical music to sound art and display. I will interview Thokazani in South Africa to discuss electronic music (Kwaito and House) in the Post Apartheid era. The following excerpt was pulled from his article “Freedom in the Age of Democracy” and best describes the sentiment behind “The Children of Baldwin” mix.
“Music’s fluidity, its ability to exist in-context and in many other contexts simultaneously, can provide a stimulus towards the direction of freedom. But for house music to do this, it needs to be rescued from the context of excess and accumulation and loaded with transformative content of liberation. It needs to be freed from the ghettoes of global cultures of consumerism, which seek to marginalize the contributions of the church, gospel music, African spirituals, gay-club culture all of which have been foundational to its origins.”
Read the article in its entirety here.
http://www.archivalplatform.org/blog/entry/freedom_in_the/
The second scholar provides Haiku poetry inspired by Episode 2. This is none other than the author, poet, activist, lover, freedom fighter, professor, emcee, freestyler, vocalist, edutainer, tease, father, big brother, publisher, friend, papa bear, curator, scholar, raptivist, public intellectual, spiritualist, house-head: Mr. Tim’m West.
Jimmy B-boy blues
wide-eyed and full like his laugh
surrender to joy
We close our eyes
inheriting the praise dance
of sinner sermons
Sweet serenity
baby powder voudou dust
Eden where we dance

In 1985 Loose Ends performed on Soul Train and just like all other performers who graced the stage, Don Cornelius strolled up with a mic and a series of music journalistic questions. When guitarist Carl McIntosh opened his mouth to discuss how the band met, I experienced my first ever encounter with Black Britain. With a precious amount of naiveté my nine-year old mind asked, “So Black people exist outside of America and outside of Africa?” As far as I knew we were between those two places and those two places only.
Prior to discovering their British voices my family had Loose Ends “Hanging on a String (Contemplating)” on repeat. It was a new soul classic, #1 on the US R&B charts, and I couldn't get enough. After their Soul Train appearance, I went through my sister's tapes to conduct a proper review of their discography, which at the time consisted of two albums (1984’s A Little Spice and 1985’s So Where are You?). I did everything I could to find out what their experiences were with love, joy, soul and pain. I read liner notes in search of clues and discovered that a few members of the band were responsible for arranging and producing material for the group Five Star, who I had no idea was Black and British as well.
Amused by my obsession, my mom said with little fanfare, 'yeah, Sade is from over there too.' What? Now you playing! Pretty ass, heartbroken ass, emotionally brilliant ass Sade is Black British too? I'm sold and possibly down for life. And now that I think about it, I’ve been digging in the crates for three decades strong.
My digging is what led me to 'Keep on Movin' by Soul II Soul and shortly following that single the group hit us with the monstrous 'Back to Life' track in 1989. They, too, appeared on Soul Train and at the end of the performance I heard the same British accent falling from their lips of African descent.
By this time my questions were more refined. How did the Black British community come to be formed? What is their parent’s history? What do they eat? I knew that most of my family was from Louisiana, Texas and Missouri and landed in Cali by way of migration. Were there places where people travelled from to be in the UK? A hostile home they escaped by the thousands to feel ‘The Warmth of Other Suns?’ Isabel Wilkerson I see you. Grandma and them were part of the 1950s crew who packed cold fried chicken and biscuits for the train from Mississippi heading west to the left coast.
Inherent to DJ culture is research and my travels today can be traced back to questions I began to ask in the late eighties. I kept my ear to the streets of Black British music and by the mid-nineties I was knee deep in UK Soul and Acid Jazz. The Brand New Heavies, D'Influence, The Rebirth of Cool series, Massive Attack, and Omar were but a few of the folks who put me on to new parts of myself. See that's the thing, these people were me, but at the same time not, and while the similarities between our music and theirs, our social lives and theirs were in some ways parallel, there was a wealth of information to be found in the distinction of our experiences. That said I committed to learning what makes communities of the African Diaspora unique; that feels like the respectful thing to do. White supremacy teaches us to shun difference, as opposed to use it as a tool to cultivate humanizing curiosity. Checking for the lives of Black folks around the planet matters because it's an extension of self-love and a way to strengthen voices of resistance.
In 1998, I left the country for the first time to travel to Brixton and Bristol. This was my first experience with a Black global community and it was electronic music that pulled me in. When in grad school, I learned of an opportunity to attend a summer program at the University of Liverpool to study the influence of Black American Blues on the Beatles sound. I jumped on it and from there took my ass to a San Francisco post office to gets, and I do mean gets! My passport.
I arrived in the UK with what I thought would buy me the world. Here is where I was introduced to the powerful pound. Damn, it was true the sun never sets on her empire. All I knew was that I couldn’t leave without books about Black British culture and history (Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall stand up) and a commitment to Manchester record shopping (Joan Armatrading on vinyl, I love you). I also found it important to find the people and build community with artist folks who could show me around town. This is the beginning of what I call “International Localism.” My developing transnational lens and love for Black folks earned me valuable cultural capital, and I was often times welcomed into places and spaces where the making of culture happened. I, DJ lynnée denise am an International Local.
International Localism took me to Ghana where I discovered Highlife and kenkey, to South Africa where I investigated kwaito while eating braai, to Montreal to spin with Haitian ...

This mix is for Black women who love Björk Guðmundsdóttir. For some of us Björk is one of the guiding forces in the most secret parts of our emotional lives. And there is something to be said about the fact that my deepest, most intimate romantic relationships have been with Black women who speak Björk. She is one of the most brilliant artists of our time, with relevance far beyond the boringly sensational Academy Award swan dress debacle, which on the low, I believe was a challenge to American popular cultural values. Like on some fashion resistance shit. “I thought I could organize freedom, how Scandinavian of me?”
During my New York years, I had the opportunity to witness Björk live at the Apollo with three other Black women. Björk at The Apollo? What a combination and what an honorable way to honor the Black folks that get down with her like that. Aside from the sheer weight of the decision to perform in Harlem, we, like thousands of her students, made sure to have loot in hand ready to buy tickets the moment they went on sale. We managed to get tickets, but please understand, in less than five minutes the show was sold out. And to be honest, it wasn’t Harlem or Brooklyn who showed up to see her, which I understand; Björk is ‘strange fiction.’ It was the usual crew at the Apollo concert; former club kids, angsty white women and entitled hipsters. And of course some of us were in the house. My crew and I represented for all the Black women inspired by her audaciousness, by her work ethic, and by her willingness to make whatever screw face necessary to offer ‘love scholarship’ through song. We cheered from the balcony squinting to experience what looked like an Icelandic ball of glitter performing unapologetically to self-composed electro folk music. I will never forget her relationship with the microphone, dancing around it, stepping away from it, looking into it and making it sing her songs. She’s a beast of a live performer.
After the concert I kept thinking about how to build on the energy felt from the experience. So I reached out to Greg Tate, one of the only Black men in my life who loves Bjork as much as I do, to discuss the possibility of the Black Rock Coalition’s involvement in a tribute to Björk, at the Apollo Theater no less. The vision was to have my favorite artists, including Tamar Kali, Joi and Taylor McFerrin, to not so much perform, but interpret her music. I believe that only an original interpretation is possible. A night of Björk covers would never do. Later I decided to hold off on the tribute in fear of not having the resources to do the event justice. One cannot half step when the name Björk is attached to a project and slowly but surely my budget fronted on my vision.
While a major tribute event was not possible, I kept thinking of ways to express the impact this creature of an artist has had on my artistic and personal development. I’ve turned to Björk’s music so many times for heart education and the inevitable ‘feeling of feelings’ that happen when you find yourself brave enough to face the dark beauty of a song like ‘Unravel’ from the Homogenic album. For years I’ve waited for whatever it is I am supposed to do with this special place that I hold for her work in my heart. It turned out to be this mix, which was partially inspired by the release of her latest and ninth studio album, Vulnicura. My Black girl Bjork tribe was surprised, maybe even betrayed to learn that I don’t love it. It’s brilliant by default, but part of why I love her so much is because she speaks to lovers wherever they are on their journey, excavating lessons buried deep in the nuanced exchanges between intimate partners in any given space and time. A breakup album felt too obvious for me.
Before listening to Vulnicura I had to ask myself if I even had the emotional capacity to hold Björk’s heartbreak this winter? Björk’s triple Scorpio heartbreak? Triple Scorpio? What the hell does it mean to be in partnership with a Björk? She’s always been so perfectly naked or ‘Violently Happy?’ But I listened, hoping that I hadn’t become one of those fans who run away when artists are inspired to drive their work in a different direction? I mean I get it. Sometimes you need something epic, a release, to get the hurt out. Marvin did it brilliantly with “Here My Dear,” Nas even did it with his Post Kelis “Life Is Good” album, and I’m sure there are hundreds of other artists who produced entire projects around mourning, or celebrating the ending of a relationship. And there are jewels all up in and through Vulnicura, don’t get it twisted, I know who she is. But did I miss her impersonal cryptic lyrical finesse?” Yes. And do I understand how honest, brave, vulnerable and musically sound it is? Absolutely. So far there is only one song that I can return to, “Atom Dance” and it too is represented on this mix.
I’ll be revisiting ‘Vulnicura’ at a later time, certainly a different season. Maybe my Europ...

“Your heart has to be ready to handle the weight of your calling,” is what she said casually over Korean BBQ, and for this reason and more I grew up reading bell hooks. ‘Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery’ was my first dance with her mind. In it she taught me how to identify the ways that patriarchy, white supremacy and global capitalism threatened humanity’s well-being. More specifically, she challenged me to examine the ways in which our own families replicate models of oppression, sometimes trumping the need, or the awareness of the need, for self-care. bell hooks called on me to think critically as a strategy to heal from social and emotional trauma, a task that would require a lifetime of unlearning.
When commissioned by Dr. Melynda Price, Chair of the African American and Africana Program at the Univ. of Kentucky to make this mix, I was struck by the fact that not a single song came to mind, which is unusual for my process. Typically I have an idea of the direction of the mix, with at least one song to start. But bell hooks has written over 30 books. What could I say musically that would affirm, celebrate and soundtrack her commitment to education, activism, radical openness and feminist scholarship? What music could match ‘the life of her mind?’ The moment I asked that question, Nina Simone appeared. I had a start.
I continued to dig deep into the crates of bell hooks’ life in search of clues about music she loved. On one of those days, after a few hours of probing, she mentioned Tracy Chapman in a lecture. My second artist arrived. From there, I recognized that women’s voices would occupy a large amount of space on the mix. And how easy it would be to create a mix using only women to pay tribute to a world-renowned feminist thinker, right? No, this would not be true to the range of music I have access to, or the core of her ideas. bell warns us to not confuse patriarchy with masculinity. Teaching us that patriarchal dominance can only be destroyed when all of us adopt feminist politics. That said, I invited men to be a part of the honoring, particularly men I feel loved by. Would bell love Bilal? In the song ‘Robots,’ he critiques hyper consumerism similarly to the way she critiques the commodification of Black culture in her work. And Lionel Hampton is from Kentucky, did she grow up listening to the sound of his vibraphone? And consistently she’s made the important distinction between misogynistic and ‘conscious’ rap, would she dig Mos Def? And could Gregory Porter, speak to her encounter with desegregation in the classrooms of the Black south? In this moment I decided to put together a compilation of music that would communicate the essence of her message, or at least, my understanding of it. It would be a mix in dialogue form.
I’ve learned so much from bell’s refusal to adhere to restrictions about what she could and could not write about, and what topics she could and could not explore. When she shifted her focus from critical gender theory with books like Ain’t I Woman: Black Women and Feminism and Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics to a series of books focused solely on love (Salvation, Communion and All About Love), I knew she was making the decision to become more accessible to communities, beyond the academy. I knew she wanted to have more nuanced conversations about the revolutionary qualities of love and through this series, I was reminded that love was located at the center of the pursuit of social justice. For this reason, I felt jazz had a place among the songs. Betty Carter’s ‘Open the Door’ and Freddie Hubbard’s ‘Red Clay’ has so much emotional and cultural wealth, and jazz itself provided the soundscape for many social movements and plenty of freedom fighters, Malcolm X included.
I discovered the Uptown String Quartet in my college years while working in a record store. I was excited by the fact that they were four classically trained Black women musicians from Harlem and one of them, Maxine Roach, was the daughter of jazz drummer Max Roach. I’ve been listening to their song “JJ’s Jam” for about 20 years and never imagined having the opportunity to add it to one of my mixes. It’s a song from some of the quietest moments in my life; a song with so much space and beauty that I wanted to play with voices and personalities over the music. I thought of the bell hooks book “Rock My Soul: Black People and Self-Esteem,” which features the hand of fellow Kentuckian Muhammad Ali, whom bell loves, on its cover. In my research I discovered an interview between Nikki Giovanni and Ali and it fit perfectly between the song’s imaginary lines.
Another book that came to mind during my process was Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life. It’s a memoir about love, writing and sexuality. Wounds of Passion tells the story of how bell wrestled with an emotionally charged long-term relationship that forced a questioning of her values and worldview. At the same tim...

Liner notes for this mix are brought to you by my brother and friend Asadullah Saed Muhammad. His words speak truth to heart. Authenticity meets history for a future of honesty and peace.
I want to love
Love you like Mother
Father
god
Introduced me to her
As soon as I saw you
Touch you like
Black power
Touched me
Pick the cotton out your mind
And make a cloth of you
West africa and detroit
Your smile
Make your day
With your words
Write me a poem for me
And hand you my art
Coloring in chakras
I met you today
You broke my record.
-asadullah saed
Intro: Who Wants to get Free--Paris Hatcher
1. "Chicago Theme" Glenn Underground
2. "We can Change this World" DJ Spinna feat Heavy (Yoruba Soul Mix)
3. "Feel Love" (Nortenshun Vocal Mix) Ultra Nate
4. "Nowhere" (I Can Go) Clara Hill Atjazz mix
5. "Papawenda" Fabio Genito
6. "Wathula Nje" Black Coffee
7. "After the Club" Tommy Bones
8. No Way" Osunlade
9. "Here Comes the Sun" Nina Simone (Francois K mix)
10. Fugama Unamathe (Culoe De Song Serenity Mix)
11. "Real World" (MAW w Vikter Duplait)
12. "Put it On" Atjazz feat Ernesto (Osunlade mix)
13. HIya Kaya Kentphonic (Rocco Deep mix)
14. "I Love the Night" Raw Artistic Soul (Rocco and C Robert Walker)
15. "Broken Vibes" Taylor McFarrin