John Forte: Outside the Lines
As he embarks upon his new career as a teacher at the City College of New York which started just weeks ago, John Forté is open. An Exeter Academy graduate and Grammy winning songwriter/producer, the Brooklyn native grew up with artistic values and limitless possibilities. Consequently, he has also dealt with his fair share of rules, regulations and rigid thought.
After a drug-related conviction in 2000 landed him in prison, John aspired to keep his train of thought as pure as possible during his incarceration. He wrote and recorded songs, but was not even allowed to hear what he recorded. He read books, but was questioned as to why he had so many. He wrote down his thoughts, but it was only with the help of friends that he could share brief quotes on blogs with fans.
After serving seven years, Forté’s sentence was commuted by President Bush, and he was home free just in time to see the new year of 2009 come to life. He immediately hit the stage and studio with longtime friend Talib Kweli, and began acclimating himself to a world that had changed immeasurably in less than a decade.
From communicating with fans online years before it was popular to mashing up Euro-pop and folk music with hip-hop, John Forté always excelled at being ahead of the curve. Now, as he plays catch-up with the world, he is preparing his third full-length album - undoubtedly with a unique spectrum of sound. Okayplayer spoke with John about his new career path, thoughts on education and music today, and why it’s most certainly bigger than hip-hop.
OKP: You’re one of the first artists that I knew of that had a website where you interacted regularly with your fans [in 1997], and Okayplayer became the next big juncture for that. As a person who has always been very progressive in technology, how do you think these new technologies play in to the music business now, as you understand it?
John Forté: I’m still garnering an understanding of it, but I think that, much to the chagrin of some and to the benefit of others, that technology has empowered the fans as well as the artist. Now artists have unprecedented access to their fan base if they want it, and fans can legitimate or delegitimize the artist because there’s so much information floating around out there. So I think that some artists are going to love the proliferation of information out there, whereas other artists are gonna be found out. And rightfully so - you reap what you sow.
I think all-in-all its good news. Like I wrote this blog when I came home, and technology was basically thrust into my lap quite literally. [I bought] a Blackberry, an iPod, a laptop… I had to catch up. A big fear of being away is that you’ll be left behind. We used to have a joke that you’ll come home and it’s like The Jetsons. Some young brothers go in and they get so much time that they think “Cars will fly by the time I touch down,” and to an extent cars are flying right now, at least metaphorically when it comes to the advancements that have been made in technology within the last 10 years alone.
When I left there was no Facebook, Myspace, or these social networking sites. It’s incredible and it can be humbling, but you can’t turn your back on it and act like it’s not somehow going to impact you or your family. Even ignoring it, you’ll somehow be affected by it. I was watching The State Of The Black Union about a year ago, and one of the guest panelists on it was saying we have a mentality where the older people in the communities of color will say, “Oh, my child knows how to use the computer more than I do,” or “They’re more internet savvy than I am” and the panelist said, “That’s not cute.”
We need to raise the babies and teach them. We can’t just relinquish all of this information and technology to them, we need to guide them. It’s no wonder you have predators abound out there actually getting through to the kids, because we’ll turn our back on our responsibilities, and there are technological responsibilities that we have. So we’ve got to suck it up. Just like we went to school and learned our ABCs and 123s, we have to learn how to utilize what’s before us.
OKP: You recently got a teaching job. I think it would be overwhelming to have so many thoughts in your head, and to speak to young people in these politically charged times. What are some priorities for you at the moment, in terms of what you would like to convey through your teaching and music?
John Forté: Teaching is really interesting. I read a really great book by Paulo FreireM called Pedagogy Of The Oppressed, and we in the Western developed world have a tendency to look at the teaching role not only with reverence, but as a one-sided vehicle. A teacher normally imparts that information with a certain amount of condescension, not negatively speaking, but normally the teacher’s role is, “I know this, listen to me, I’ll look down at you and feed you, and you’ll drink from the wellspring of my information.” Paulo Freire’s book is predicated on the notion that teaching is not like that, and that a teacher has to be as much of a student as a student has to be a teacher, so there has to be a willingness to exchange information rather than just forcing it from one and to the other.
So when I think of teaching I don’t think of it as me being the old, wise sage schooling the youth. I think I’m going into this with a willingness to learn as much as I have the willingness to impart information, rather than to just speak to someone. I’d rather just have a dialogue with young people and learn from them, and perhaps they can learn from me in turn. I feel the same way about music, it’s not just this one-way mirror, it’s all reflective. Like Kweli’s Reflection Eternal… it goes on ad infinitum, so as much joy as I might give to someone being on stage and saying something that resonates within them, it’s the same joy that I get in return.
What I do is a labor of love, so I’m extremely grateful. There’s not a day that I’ve been home that I’ve been to the studio and felt, “I’m too tired, I don’t wanna be here.” I love what I do and it’s a blessing to have this opportunity, it’s such a gift and I’m just wholly humbled by the opportunity. Whether the fans are buying albums or singles, or they’re downloading and sharing them, that’s almost irrelevant to me because that’s not what I’m doing it for. Yes, it’s a business, and I think like all things that the truth will come to the light, and I think that if people appreciate what you do enough that you’ll be compensated for it, so I’m not necessarily worried about that. I’m not from the mindset of trying to take all I can, hoard and run. I do this because I love doing it, and that’s my attitude whether I’m on stage with a guitar or in front of a classroom, there is a love for this.
OKP: You’ve been a person who has had pop culture references in your music in the past, and they say that everything reinvents itself and comes back in “new” trends. Are you seeing any particular hip-hop trends that are coming back, or hearing anything that you like about the music that’s out right now?
John Forté: I think we’re at the precipice of an awakening of sorts. When I was at the Highline Ballroom the other night, ?uest and Tariq (from The Roots) brought me up on stage and I said a couple of verses. Afterwards, a couple of young people came up to me and they had no idea who I was. They were like, “What’s your name? Is it Sean?” and it was eye opening to me, but it was also pretty cool because its almost like I kind of have a clean slate. So with any sort of misrepresentations that I may have made or others may have made of me in the past, it’s almost like I’m getting a second shot at this.
The one thing that I’m particularly inspired by is this amalgam of genres, the kids’ unwillingness to identify themselves as one thing over another. They’re listening to punk rock and dressing like hip-hop kids, but they can just as easily play speed metal guitar. The walls are coming down, and with that is a mindset that we are entitled to every square inch of this earth. We might not feel that, “This is my corner or block and I had better stay here.” I think that young people and young musicians are embracing each other, so you’re seeing these collaborations that might not have taken place 10 years ago. I think it’s cool, not to mention I think that we’re about to really start saying things again, which has always been good.
OKP: I think the fans appreciate that some people are putting a little bit of thought back into their lyrics. There always has been the fun element as well, but I think that we did lose balance for a while.
John Forté: It’s still a business after all, and some people will come in and they might not be around 10 years from now, but they’ll make a killing and do what’s known as good business. I can’t fault anybody for doing good business as long as it’s not at the expense of others, as long as other people aren’t getting hurt. If you wanna make dance records I don’t care, who am I to judge you? Who am I to say that what I’m doing is more important or somehow more valid? Some people just want to dance, let them dance. I’m not hard pressed to watch anybody’s bankroll, that’s not my job. My job is to make sure that I’m okay and that my family’s okay.
OKP: Since you are a classically trained musician, you must have an in-depth understanding of everything that goes into creating original music. How do you think the knowledge you have of the music trends right now will affect how you put your album together?
John Forté: It can go either way. I can get too over the top with my theory and end up making something heady that most people might not be interested in, or I can not give myself enough musical credit at all and rely on old paradigms, which I hope doesn’t happen. I’m approaching the new record with openness. I don’t know where it’s gonna go, but I know that it’s not going to be sample heavy.
I know that I would like to have more instrumentation than not, the problem that I have with instrumentation in so-called urban music is that sometimes it sounds too clean, and urban music for me has never been clean. I’m not even saying that I’m doing urban music, because I’m actually writing folk songs and the whole nine yards. The one artist that I’m extremely excited about trying to work with is Lisa Hannigan, and she’s an Irish folk singer, so no way on God’s green earth will they ever call that song remotely urban if it comes to pass. But the music that I gravitate towards has always been a little darker and grittier, it’s always had that undercurrent of pain, resistance and melancholy.
Not to say that the message is, but it’s almost like going back to the W.E.B. Dubois notion of striving is how we as a people of color are defined. That’s been my life, even in the good times, I’ve found myself always striving. Right now is a good time for me, but I’m striving to get back and acclimate myself to society and technology all over again, and to the industry which has changed dramatically. I’m still striving, and I think that that striving will be reflected in the music.
Again, I think you can have instrumentation, but just to have one bar of instrumentation, meaning that I can do a song with just one or two chords. I can play it live and there won’t be any changes, bridges or any particular choruses, it’ll just be a two-bar song. But I’m playing it live and still connecting it to my instrumentation and that old notion upon which hip-hop was built, where the DJ found the break in the record and the MC just went in on it. I’m still that dude to an extent.
OKP: I’m glad that you brought up going outside of the boundaries and refusing to be defined by the music you listen to and make. Hip-hop is growing up, and a lot of people who are now in their 50’s were around for the beginning of hip-hop; they were the originators and they’re becoming senior citizens. How do you think that this next generation of hip-hoppers will define themselves?
John Forté: I think it’s going to stay in line with what hip-hop has always been to an extent, and that’s the willingness and the ability to speak truth to power. Whether you’re talking about the gangsta rap days or the Native Tongue days or the commercial days, there was always a subversive element lingering just beneath the hook or verse that challenged the status quo. Even if you’re talking about wanting to get rich, if you’re saying, “I’m tired of this condition and I’m gonna do anything that I can to get out of this condition,” it’s always just a check to the status quo. I think that is going to be the constant in hip-hop. I can’t say whether it’s gonna be more conscious, more gutter or more inclusive, but I think it will always have an underlying element of checking the status quo.
OKP: With your album, are there people you’re already committed to work with or that you want to work with who you feel will add to the sound you have in your head?
John Forté: Right now, for the past few weeks when I’ve been recording hard, I’ve just been downloading songs that I’ve written over the last seven and a half years from my mind to the computer’s hard drive in really simple skeletal forms, just so I can have time to really listen back to it. For all of these years I haven’t been able to hear my songs, I’ve been able to write and perform them, but I’ve never been able to sit back and listen and get a little objective.
In terms of who I’d work with, I think the sky’s the limit. I could have 100 people come in and work with them for the sake of working, but I’m not committed to say I will or won’t work with anyone. It is what it is. This is a cathartic time for me. This is a grand opportunity for me to use my voice again, and who knows what’ll happen. I have a title, Water Light Sound [which represents birth], but I don’t know what the album’s going to sound like.
- Dove ~Sheepish Lordess of Chaos~
Watch John Forte's "Homecoming," feat. Talib Kweli, below.
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