Work is Love made Visible: An Interview with Gabriel Teodros

ShareThis Comment(s) January 31, 2007 - 10:39pm | | Permalink | Print |

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Seattle native Gabriel Teodros is a self-described coffee-lover and racially-ambiguous music nerd. He’s also been rapping for a long time. Lovework, his long awaited album drops nationwide February 27th. In this interview, Gabriel shares his experience as an independent recording artist who loves making honest music.

How long have you been rapping?
Gabriel: I’ve been writing for a long time, but since around ‘96, when Tupac died, is when I started taking it seriously.

What aspect of music do you enjoy more: creating and writing music or performing in front of an audience?
Gabriel: I can’t really say which one I enjoy the most, it all depends on the connections made with the people around me. A good recording session with people you love, a performance where all your people are on point and the music connects with the right audience… I can’t say which one I love the most. I love a good freestyle session just as much too.

Where are some of the places that you draw your creative inspiration from at this point in your life?
Gabriel: My songs lately have been like personal diary entrys, everything ends up in there somehow. It’s just real life experience, surroundings, everyday people, South Seattle.

What do you feel about the commercial aspects of music? Or more precisely what do you equate success in music with?
Gabriel: It would be nice if all the real artists in this society got properly compensated for their contributions to the betterment of our world, but that hardly ever happens. Lately I’ve been seeing success in music to mean a few things. To be successful in my mind, your music has to reveal your true self. It has to connect with the people recieving your music, to their core, so that they feel what you felt. And as a musician you have to always grow, to remain inspired, to remain humble, to teach the youth, and be good medicine for everyone you come into contact with. That is true success.

How do you view the music industry from an artist’s perspective?
Gabriel: I’m pretty jaded towards the music industry at this point, as an artist but even more as a fan. I’ve learned as an artist to make it big in the music industry, it takes money, who you know, and how marketable you are, more than the actual music you produce. So now a vast majority of the music coming out is hot garbage. It’s pop today and trash tomorrow, while timeless music goes unheard and the artists who refuse to compromise themselves rarely make it outside of their own communites. The last ten years it’s gotten worse and worse, to where if a lot of your favorite artists from the past just came out today, their music would be just as good (because it’s timeless) and they probably wouldn’t even be given a chance to shine.

How has the creative landscape in the places you’ve lived helped you develop as an artist?
Gabriel: That’s like asking how have the places I’ve lived helped influence me as a human being, because all my music is, is a reflection of who I am and where I’m at. But it’s a really good question. I’ve visited places for one night and made songs about that city. I grew up in Seattle, so most of my music is inspired by home, from the laid-back flow, the internal dialouge you have when it rains too much, the feelings of alienation growing up here, to the influence of every immigrant community in my neighborhood. My mom sent me to Europe to stay when I was younger, it was there I realized the world is much bigger then my block. When my family moved to Las Vegas, I probably picked up some paranoia and started thinking about how everything is political after being exposed to the worst this country has to offer. Then I moved to Vancouver, B.C. If anything that place gave me a deeper appreciation for the Earth and I found people who really connected to my music, it became my second home. Then I moved to Brooklyn, NY for a minute and started walking faster, biting my tounge less, and I think it’s safe to say I felt the most free to be myself. And now that I’ve been back in Seattle for a couple years, sowing seeds and watching an entire community grow, it’s amazing. The last two years especially have been all about realizing our potential. The Northwest has something important to say, and I feel like the whole world should listen.

Who are some of the artists that you like and listen to?
Gabriel: Khingz from Abyssinian Creole is my favorite emcee right now. I know, I’m in a group with him. I’ve also been bumping the Native Guns, Jean Grae, 2Mex, Skim, Toni Hill. Classics like Curtis Mayfield. Fishbone. And it’s really been northwest artists I’m feeling the most, Blue Scholars, Yirim Seck, Alpha-P, Xperience, El Dia, Language Artz, Canary Sing. Oh, and my cousin Meklit Hadero! She’s amazing.

How do you feel you’ve prepared for the other elements that come with being an artist?
Gabriel: I’m not sure which elements you mean. I was never prepared for the attention you get, or the sleepless nights of a 24/7 schedule. Definetly never thought it would be so much sacrifice but it has been worth every struggle and every unforseen obstacle.

How would you describe yourself?
Gabriel: I’m just your everyday coffee-loving, racially-ambiguous music nerd!

Explain racially-ambiguous.
Gabriel: I mean, my mother is Ethiopian, my father is mostly Scottish/Irish. And everyday of my life I get mistaken for everything I’m not before anything I really am.

What do you love about being habesha?
Gabriel: I’ve never been to Ethiopia, my mother left when she was 18. She met my father during some anti-war protests that happened during the Vietnam war (in Seattle). They broke up before I was born, and there I was, the only light-skinned child in this Ethiopian household. My mother sponsored nearly every member of her family and my childhood is filled with memories of the first time I ever met grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins at the airport. What I love about being habesha was that I got to share a home with all of them. I love the way this family could stick together through the worst of it all. I love our sense of humor, our food, our language, even though it’s become more of a memory than something I use everyday. To be honest I’ve learned more about what it means to be abesha in the last two years than I have in my entire life. Just because through new friendships I’ve made (because of hiphop) I realized so much of my life, my family’s influence, is not unique to just my family. And my mother is the strongest woman you would ever want to meet.

What are your favorite news sources?
Gabriel: Real people. I stay up on a few blogs as well. Davey D’s website, ethiomedia.com

How did you pick the name “Lovework” for the album?
Gabriel: That title has so many different meanings to me. It was inspired by one of my favorite quotes from Khalil Gibran: “Work is love made visible” and one of my favorite quotes from Denizen Kane: “The end comes quick and ego says quit/I say work is love, let my body be a brick.” It also comes from one of my biggest influences, bell hooks, in her book All About Love, she talks about how love has become one of the most overused words in the English language and no one can agree on a clear definition. So she borrowed from M. Scott Peck and defined love as “the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Love being a choice, and love as a verb. The title reminds me how important it is for us to change the way we think about love. And this music was also a work created in love. It also means this is work I may never get paid for, but at least I love what I’m doing.

What was the inspiration for the song “East Africa”?
Gabriel: The first verse in that song is just my family and how I grew up,being questioned so much I began to question my own identity. To finally accepting who I am and just being that. The rest of the song was inspired by the election Meles Zenawi stole, the youth who died in the streets during peaceful protests and the tens of thousands of youth who were put into prison camps for protesting the biggest terrorist in East Africa. I feel like artists of East African descent here in the diaspora have a responsibilty to tell the truth about whats going on back home, especially since it barely gets even a mention in the news here, we have to be our own media. If I learned anything by growing in the United States it’s that if you don’t write down your own story, you will be written out of history. No one can save us, but us.

What’s next?
Gabriel: I’m recording the people who saved hiphop in my living room. And I’m going on tour this year to promote this Lovework album. Just finished a few mixtapes. I’m always creating. I’m looking forward to spending more time in the schools as well. And hopefully I’ll get to see Africa and Europe this year. Look out for more music from Abyssinian Creole (Khingz & Gabriel Teodros) soon!

Shoutouts?
Gabriel: Big ups to the almighty Southend, Central District, White Center and West Seattle. East vancouver. Northeast Portland. And PEACE IN AFRICA’S EAST!!!!

Listen to music here: http://www.emusic.com/album/10996/10996779.html
Link to other interviews here: http://www.abesha.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=19513