Despite being a New Yorker for over a decade, my first trip to Chicago in 2024 made me reconsider the top spot for best American city. Weird, underground, homegrown art is abundant, and there is a rich history and presence of Black music spanning genres and locales that was felt after just a few days. Damon Locks, a visual artist, educator, vocalist, and electronic musician, is an active practitioner and multifaceted performer in the city.
His music comprises experimental sound collage; poetry and text-based compositions; and essayistic sampling and production techniques a lá Madlib, Bomb Squad, and Mixmaster Mike. Locks currently teaches improvisation at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), leads an artist collective in the city, plays in the pirate radio duo New Future City Radio, and is committed to liberatory modes of artmaking and social engagement.
Growing up just outside of DC in Silver Spring, MD in the 80s, Locks was exposed to – then entrenched in – the monumental harDCore scene. Through his advanced visual art classes at school, he met the “older kids,” including future Fugazi bassist Joe Lally. Soon after, the openness of punk ethos encouraged him to start his own band… and then another, and another. Years later, he formed the band Trenchmouth along with guitarist Chris DeZutter, bassist Wayne Montana, and drummer – now-comedian/actor – Fred Armisen. During our recent Zoom call, Locks explained, “My first ever show happened to be a Minor Threat show when I was 13 or 14. The punk scene was so exciting. I didn’t have to know how to play an instrument – you can just start.”
Extending this sentiment of cooperative expression fortified through an underground DIY community, Locks went on to develop his project Black Monument Ensemble (BME) as an adult. Once a solo outlet for electronic experimentation, the Ensemble is now a burgeoning assembly of diverse, intentional, and multi-generational Black Chicagoans. “I purposely create frameworks, lyrics, and melodies, but there’s so much room for artists to add their own flavor to things,” he elaborated. Musicians, movement artists, poets, and other creative Black folks work with Locks on empiric compositions and improvisations with him leading via voice, recordings, and conceptual vision.
Locks holds an affinity for text-based recitation, drawing from his experience working with Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra for over ten years. “With BME,” he explained, “it would show up every once in a while. I would write a piece of text for the particular space we’re in and then deliver that text.” When approached with a commission from Chicago’s incubatory Experimental Sound Studio, Locks knew he wanted to create a set-length text-based work. He was drawn to dub poetry, a Jamaican practice (extended from dub music) of speaking prepared text over live music written specifically for the poem. From there, his solo debut record List of Demands (Jan. 31, International Anthem) was born.
Damon Locks — Photo by Jamie Kelter Davis
Locks convened cornetist Ben LaMar Gay, violinist Macie Stewart, and turntablist-drummer DJ Major Taylor (aka Ralph Darden) to “imbue [the album] with life.” He first recorded all of his own sound and text work, then invited the musicians to build upon it. “I gave Ralph Darden my vocals without the music, and he scratched them using his turntable. I didn’t know what it was going to sound like. At certain points, I asked Ben LaMar Gay and Macie Stewart to ‘go crazy’ or ‘let loose,’” he divulged.
On “Meteors of Fear,” Darden further develops Locks’ choppy, stuttery sampling sounds across the album with analog turntabling – while Stewart’s trills and slides down the fingerboard in “Distance” add to the urgency of Locks’ recitation. Poet, writer, and visual artist Krista Franklin also appears on the record – Locks built the hypnotic and atmospheric “High Priestess” around the present silkiness of Franklin’s voice reading her own work.
Additionally, archival recordings are a keystone of Locks’ work on the record. In creating it, he was guided by sounds from a myriad of source points including the 60s Civil Rights movement, and the late great Nikki Giovanni. Despite the barrage of samples employed throughout the album, his voice rides comfortably in the pockets of groove. The result is a sonic world that defies categorization – perhaps the best term is “poetry.”
Damon Locks — Photo by Jamie Kelter Davis
The compositions he has constructed are situated in a historic lineage of dialogues established by Black artists and thinkers. “If I think of their work as a ‘list of demands,’ I’m adding another number to it. The archival text and samples become integral to the music, and then I think about how to weave my own text around that. That juxtaposition makes the conversation stronger. You have to interpolate the space in between and make a new space.” List of Demands, then, is timeless.
The archive became important to Locks’ process in creating videos and physical media for the record as well. As a visual artist, many of his pieces are made with paper, ink, risograph prints, and collage work – rarely does he opt for perfectionist digital mediums. For List of Demands, he referenced British Black Panthers materials from the 60s and 70s that use one-color printing, which was more affordable to produce.
“The video for ‘Holding the Dawn in Place (Beyond Part.2)’ really utilizes that one color magazine look. It was a great way to think about text and make it feel tactile and palpable. There’s the sound of the text, and then if you’re going to have a holder for it, you’ve got to give it some feeling.” The striking packaging for the record includes photographs and typewriter-like texts that are made to look like letters – Locks even handwrites over typed fonts throughout the zine-style liner notes like a “blast-over” tattoo.
Within the vinyl edition of the album, you can find the title’s origin. Before it was (thankfully) closed in September 2024, Locks taught at Stateville Correctional Center for a decade. The program facilitated by Prison and Neighborhood Arts and Education Project allowed Locks to work with inmates of the maximal-security men’s prison.
“We made this document I called the Artist Constitution where they put down their aspirations, principals, and demands. One of the most difficult things about making [the record] was organizing it into a cohesive whole. By including [the constitution] in the record, it then literally tells you ahead of time that this is text. It started to feel like it was a whole… There it is. That’s the record.”
The incarcerated are among the most disenfranchised in society; through this program, document, and album, Locks aids these men in reclaiming voice, narrative control, and even joy. “Art is everywhere, necessary, and powerful… [it is] our advocate for liberation,” they write. In all tenets of Damon Locks’ artistry today, we can still find that 13-year-old hardcore kid: looking to community both presently and historically, and embracing the DIY ethos of creating the space and future you want when it doesn’t yet exist.
I CARE IF YOU LISTEN is an editorially-independent program of the American Composers Forum, and is made possible thanks to generous donor and institutional support. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author and may not represent the views of ICIYL or ACF.
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