Wednesday, February 26th, at the Philosophical Research Society!

Damon Locks presents List of Demands, his first solo performance in Los Angeles, held with International Anthem.

”List of Demands is my first foray into creating a whole album from spoken, text-based work. It owes as much to MF DOOM, Fred Moten and Sun Ra’s oratory excellence as it does to Kwame Ture/Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis, and Nikki Giovanni, to Michael Smith and Linton Kwesi Johnson (across the pond), to Ruby Dee’s spoken recordings, and to others too numerous to mention. List of Demands is not just my list. The list is in conveyance, in response, and in honor of all of those great Black speakers that turned a phrase to generate movement and change. Thank you.”

Damon Locks is an inspiration. From the lineages of labor that he cites to his on the ground work with incarcerated artists, his art thrives in the richest of dialogues. The sample-based constructions present throughout List Of Demands are steeped in a lifetime of not only keen cultural observation, but direct communal participation in the culture. Locks’s decades-long resume connects the dots between experimental improvisation, sample based hip hop, punk, and poetry – each done at the highest level and with a list of collaborators that could spin the head of even the most jaded listener. And that seems to be the point. To jump-start the entire personality spectrum into action. Ecstatic positivity examined via his nuanced grasp of reality, all working toward that ever-evasive concept of what could be.

Capacity is limited & we highly encourage RSVP’ing in advance. Please reach out with any questions & never lose sight of Beauty, Form, Destiny, Love, Time, Future, and Light.