Georgia Anne Muldrow, musician and multi-media artist, speaks with KGNU’s Deep Rawk Dave. Dave also introduces Dan Drossman, creator of the Visible Planets art show and concert. Drossman explains that the event showcases featured artists’ music and visual art together. Georgia Anne Muldrow discusses her artistic journey, emphasizing the importance of positivity, authenticity, and the influence of her artistic community. She highlights her commitment to creating uplifting music and the revolutionary power of joy and love (Interview date: 8/2/2024)
Deep Rawk Dave: This is Deep Rawk Dave. I’m pulling in for the two o’clock break because KGNU is presenting two very exciting back to back art and music shows here this weekend. The situation is called Visible Planets and we’ve got the Visible Planets crew in the place to be. It’s actually the second Visible Planets that has come to Denver, and it is the brainchild of the man sitting to my left, Dan Drossman.
Dan, welcome to the Afternoon Sound.
Dan Drossman: Hey, thanks for having me.
Deep Rawk Dave: Tell us a little bit about the concept of Visible Planets?
Dan Drossman: It’s a handful of rap artists that make visual art as well. So I wanted to have a combination and show their artwork and their music and see how they translate and work with each other. We have this art show and a concert, so all their creativity in one.
Deep Rawk Dave: It makes so much sense. In the history of rap music, there’ve been great visual artists the whole time. Schoolly D, one of the inventors of gangster rap, put down the blueprint for Ice T to make “6 in the Mornin’”. Schoolly D did all his own artwork on his independent label out of Philadelphia. And that was just that tremendous independence and expression that hip hop can open up a platform for.
Dan Drossman: Yeah, everyone here is super creative and it’s gonna translate whatever medium they choose through their voices, through their canvas, anything. I think they have that skill set, so it’s gonna translate very well on any creative medium they use.
Deep Rawk Dave: Who are some of these artists that you’ve been working with to put this all together this weekend?
Dan Drossman: We have a group. Georgia Anne Muldrow, Homeboy Sandman, who’s not doing the art, but his sister is, and Deca, Quelle Chris, Lily Fangz, and Fresh Daily, so from all around the nation.
Deep Rawk Dave: Lily Fangz being a Denver artist.
Dan Drossman: Yeah.
Deep Rawk Dave: You really have pulled together an eclectic collective.Is this sort of like your personal network of doing music or do you reach out to people that you’re introducing yourself to?
Dan Drossman: Homeboy Sandman is the connector. He knows everybody and it’s fun. I proposed this to him. I like this artist. Does he make art? Does this work? And he connects me to him and we figure out together what works well for the music and the artwork. So it’s a collaboration, but he pulls us to get them together.
Deep Rawk Dave: That’s awesome. So Georgia Anne Muldrow, you are in the space. You’re always in space. You’re from some other ship.
Georgia Anne Muldrow: Absolutely. Ex-Earthling. I’m from Earth.
Deep Rawk Dave: Yeah, it’s such a pleasure to have you in the place to be, Georgia.
Georgia Anne Muldrow: Thank you for having me.
Deep Rawk Dave: Just so folks know, the Visible Planets Art is at the Bitfactory tonight on Santa Fe, where you can see all the visual art, and what time does that start, Dan?
Dan Drossman: It starts at 6 o’clock, six to nine p. m.
Deep Rawk Dave: Six to nine in the Art District. It’s a big street closure for the Art District on Santa Fe, Denver’s original Art District, and as it is every first Friday in August. The city shuts it down. It opens up to this sip and stroll situation and all the families are out there and you will see an endless amount of tattoos in the art community. It’s really fun. You get to go to all the galleries. What’s your partnership with this gallery, Dan?
Dan Drossman: I’m an artist as well. I have a studio in that space. So I do a lot of art shows there and became friends with Bill, the owner. I proposed this to him and he was fully on board.
Deep Rawk Dave: Word up. What’s the cross street there on Santa Fe?
Dan Drossman: It’s 8th. It’s 851 Santa Fe Drive. So between 8th and 9th.
Deep Rawk Dave: In the heart of things by the Jiffy Lube. And then, of course, tomorrow, you’ve got a non-conventional music venue in the El Jebel, a really immaculate place to be holding a show. So fitting for people that are really artistic and rooted in that creativity. It’s pretty creative. This is on 17th and Sherman, pretty close to the Fillmore, downtown Denver off Colfax. How did you manage to get a rap concert in such a cool spot?
Dan Drossman: We looked around, we wanted to do a DIY space and try it out. We looked at a couple places, but when I walked in and saw it, It encompasses everything we want. The creativity, it’s unique, the details and everything, it fits exactly what we want. So we were like, yeah, we’ll do this.
Deep Rawk Dave: Easy sell. The way those ceilings have those, for lack of a better word, inverted half pipes, I can’t wait to hear what the room sounds like.
Dan Drossman: Me too. Yeah. It’s going to be art everywhere.
Deep Rawk Dave: Georgia, I want to talk to you about your art specifically, cause I’ve been a pretty big fan since you dropped your debut on Stone’s Throw Records. Back in the day, “Olesi: Fragments of an Earth” associated a lot with my start here at the radio station. It was my super soundtrack. I had the CD and the LP and the Leroy 12 inch.
So going back to ’07, it was really something that just resonated with me. And in the time that’s passed since then, you’ve shown how you continue to be so prolific in your productions. Folks, I guess I gotta let you know a little bit about Georgia’s skills. She is one of the tightest women making music production wise, and then taking it to the stage with the MC side of things with “A Thoughtiverse Unmarred”, the singing that you do, which is so unique to you. So there you go. There’s my total fan out. Flower bouquet delivered.
Now let’s talk about the real story. What I wanna emphasize to folks in our limited time here, is how positive your music is and how you really are one of the few people in our urban music milieu that is consistently delivering messages of love, of family unity, of a lot of these values that we wish were more present from the black arts movement of the 70s up to now. Some of that stuff has fallen off to the wayside. You never stop with the positivity. How are you able to see so clearly that this is your mission?
Georgia Anne Muldrow: I’m happy to say that I’m a product of a community of artists that predate me. I’m a product of that and I’ve had the privilege to be a village child. And so I want to make the kind of music that they will enjoy and they can feel like they haven’t wasted their time on me.
Conversely, I want children and the youth to know that there’s all types of different ways to express yourself and that you don’t have to save the things that are earnest and sincere in your expression for just amongst your friends. You can use it as a means to work through, work with, and that’s also authenticity too. Authenticity isn’t always about your shadow. It could be about the light that’s shining within you.
I think the other thing too, the urgency comes out of a love for life. For all the things that it currently is and all the potential it has in it. I want to speak to that because no, you never know how much time you have, and it’s important to celebrate and cherish it with things that can help. I think a lot of it is because music is my personal growth equipment. The musicianship is about me finding windows of color and joy. And even through things that are hard to live through, there is still a window of color. That’s what music always helps me to do. It’s a tool for that, so I’m just happy that it’s resonated with the amount of people it has. I’m always just surprised that people have heard “Olesi” because it’s so abstract, so avant garde. So it makes me go, wow, you guys are strange.
Deep Rawk Dave: You also have certified bangers. “West Coast Recycler”.
Georgia Anne Muldrow: Yeah. How that’s come to be was just from being a youth. Monitors weren’t as easy to come by as they are now. I think for a lot of people they still aren’t easy to come by. You have your experience where you get a chance to hear your music out of your headphones and through a system. And then pop lockers start activating, break dancers start.
Deep Rawk Dave: It’s a beautiful thing.
Georgia Anne Muldrow: It was crack. I got addicted to it.
Deep Rawk Dave: You talk about that on the album.
Georgia Anne Muldrow: Yes, the dancers. I think that’s why I always have a groovy approach because I always think about dances. I don’t want people just to be nodding approvingly at my show. I hope someone will breakdance.
Deep Rawk Dave: Let’s get going. Yeah, I feel you on that big time. And y’all really keep it moving. You’re part of an incredible team, your duo with your husband, Dudley Perkins.
Georgia Anne Muldrow: Yeah, we’re no longer together.
Deep Rawk Dave: Oh, okay.
Georgia Anne Muldrow: We did 15 years worth of really serious stuff. I really am appreciative of the things that we managed to do and all that I got a chance to learn. Engineering, mastering, graphic design, I had to learn how to do so many different things. And I’m very thankful for that experience. Now I’m just looking into a vaster place. But I’m very thankful. I’m thankful for Dudley.
Deep Rawk Dave: I’m thankful for the two of you because you hear about couples. Okay, they make music, but they don’t team up, get together and say we’re doing this for the babies. It’s mind boggling how this is everyone’s reality, that they have to team up with the people that they live with, but so much of the music is so divisive. That perspective is just rare as hen’s teeth.
Georgia Anne Muldrow: Yeah, I really think that, to put it lightly, capitalism is absolutely a spiritual issue. It can infect the heart. What it can do to a musician in an earnest, actual love for musicianship and just expressing. I don’t think that any of the people who are on the radio don’t have the talent and skill. Everybody got skills out here. It’s just about what’s in your heart and in your spirit and in your beliefs. Do you believe that a message of mirth is going to make it? And do you believe even more that even in the face of great rejection from the hedge fund people and these conglomerated firms of the families of the colonists that introduced globalism to this world. That’s the truth. So that’s what we’re looking at and it’s no shade on them. God’s everywhere and it’s worth your personal growth, it’s worth your expansion to not make the almighty small in your life. To say, hey, anything’s possible.
If I let what’s really loving work through me, then that love is going to meet me. And it might take 20 years. This is my 20th year and I still feel like there’s so much. It’s so new, and it’s because I didn’t think about accessibility, all these kinds of things.
I just surrendered those ideas to the people. And I really feel as though people aren’t as dumb as corporations assume they are, they’re not. I think people really respond to vibration and feeling. For me, the divisive things, it’s just an agenda that we’re looking at the late stages of. It’s the agenda that’s really got people out here without a place to live and that’s not okay. We got people just out here in the street trying to numb the pain and we are better than that. I feel like late stage capitalism doesn’t offer anything to the heart. It doesn’t offer any discipline.
Deep Rawk Dave: We have another way.
Georgia Anne Muldrow: There’s a whole nother way and it’s a spiritual thing. And so yeah, I think that’s what it is. I feel that God can use anybody. They could be a top 40 artist. I don’t see it as, oh, the underground is where it’s real. I feel like both arenas are facing the same beliefs.
Deep Rawk Dave: Yeah, true. The struggle is real everywhere.
Georgia Anne Muldrow: It’s real everywhere. Everybody is facing the same beliefs. I feel like there’s a whole gangster underground rap, like Kingpin underground rap, it’s there too. It’s not like how it used to be, but I’m so thankful for groups like X-Clan and Blackwatch, being local to me as a kid. I’m literally a product of Brother J hand-delivering his music videos for X-Clan to Marcus Garvey School and being at the study group, African Minds United. They had a kid’s program. He’s a friend of mine now, and I’m so honored by that. But that is who I had. That’s one of the first people I heard rap. So what I’m saying is that he hand-delivered it to that place to target the children. I’m part of the target, so it’s just those kinds of things. These are the people I first learned of in rap. Freestyle Fellowship. I learned about them in ‘89. Medusa, all of these people, had a very high art value because they’re coming out of a serious poet community. Kamau Daoud, Aunty V, you got some Dr. Pat, you got Watts Prophets. You got all of these people who are serious poets, man.
Deep Rawk Dave: And movement people too.
Georgia Anne Muldrow: And movement people. And all about love.
Deep Rawk Dave: Right?
Georgia Anne Muldrow: All about love. I feel privileged by that because independent music, DJ Fat Jack, I could go and buy a CD. I could buy Abstract, Tribe, Unique, all of this stuff, I’m getting very LA right now. Listen, I gotta represent cause LA in the building, you feel me? I gotta represent, you know what I’m saying? But yeah, it’s just all those kind of things. DJ Battlecat, when I was on the drum machine, I wanted to sound like him because I just felt his heart and intention through his production values. It would be like this glitter through the air. And I’m going like, what’s happening? That can happen. Through the radio waves you could do that! So that’s the kind of foundation to the Kwanzaa fairy I am today.
Deep Rawk Dave: Yeah. Oh, for sure. And it’s so relatable, Georgia. You’re a mad scientist, but you bring it straight to the people. So that’s why I feel like joints that you did with Madlib, like “Seeds”, is an anthem that I could come with at any time. You have such cerebral stuff, but also the dedication to the knock is really important right now.
Georgia Anne Muldrow: So you know what I want to hear right now. Yeah. I think I have something groovy. But yeah, let me see, because I think I have a knocker.
Deep Rawk Dave: Okay, let’s get into it. Folks, we’re going to get an exclusive special treat right now. Georgia Anne Muldrow is set up here to rock with us in the Denver studio. Albums on Stone’s Throw Records, albums on Ubiquity Records. So many independent albums on the Mothership label, just a tremendous catalog career. You guys can’t believe what a privilege it is right now. I feel like this is my LSAT, Georgia. This is the test of my life. I want to really hear what you’re coming with. So what is the piece?
Georgia Anne Muldrow: Right now, what I’m going to hit you with, because the name of the collection of works that I’m in the throes of right now, what Dan has at the art gallery is called “Omni Studies”. It’s addressing the ‘how’ of the mixed media artist that I am. As far as producing, rapping, singing, whatever, tone generation, sound design, all these things, I still always was a mixed media artist, and so it’s going into the visuals. It’s still omni studies, even though people are talking about a rapper. Like, no, I’m a mixed media artist, you know what I’m saying? I have a conceptual substance called wind grease. And it’s to treat the air as grease would a skillet, grease the airwaves a little bit and bring some peace and love through the airways. I’ll get into something after that, but I want to just throw some glitter through the air. Here we go. It’s about to get crazy.
Deep Rawk Dave: Come on with it. Oh, incredible. Peace and love in the place to be. Come on. Can we get some? That’s what we’re about here on KGNU Georgia. I hope you know there’s the real hippie lineage right here at the station. We got to tap into that.
Georgia Anne Muldrow: We on that. It’s the hippest thing to do. Love has really got a lot in it. It’s got so much in it. It takes care of so much. It imparts a system of operations, no matter what chaos is within the observational capacities that we all share. Love is a solver for that. In loving life we can make a life that’s lovable for others too. And loving one another, there’s a lot that can be solved right away. Cause love is love right away.
Deep Rawk Dave: Oh, that’s true. You don’t have to wait, huh?
Georgia Anne Muldrow: No. I’ve been doing these things called Joyful Noise, free trade outposts at the park. Get into guerrilla joy tactical training. It’s been fun to use joy as a revolutionary measure to get past the blockades of meetings, and meeting about a meeting, about what we’re gonna do.
Deep Rawk Dave: Oh, let’s text about it.
Georgia Anne Muldrow: Rejoicing is very revolutionary because it affects the environment immediately.
Deep Rawk Dave: It’s been since 2020 that I heard somebody say that black joy is revolutionary,
Georgia Anne Muldrow: All over joy, a puppy’s joy, tree joy, everybody’s joy.
Deep Rawk Dave: That’s true, right? There’s no boundary.
Georgia Anne Muldrow: Yeah, we’re black. I am a black woman. Yes, but I’m more than that. I’m a heart. I’m a heart and soul, from the kingdom of heaven. I’m a heart. I’m energy. So when we speak in energetic terms, I can use the sensitivities that have been granted to me in this black space suit. I can use my neuromelanin as a sensor for a deeper joy, to bring to others and to share with others. But if it’s not to do that, then it’s no good. It’s just as vain as anything else. It’s about us loving one another. That’s what it’s, that’s the deal.
Deep Rawk Dave: Oh, absolutely, man. What a vibe. God, I’m just so excited that you’re here and bringing this vibration all across the front range.
We’ve got the Visible Planets Art Show tonight on the Santa Fe Art Walk at the Bitfactory. Tomorrow night at the El Jebel in Denver on Sherman and 17th. The Big Visible Planets Show. It’s such a stacked up situation.
Dan Drossman: Sunday, we’re having Joyful Noise at Benedict Fountain Park. So people can jam out together. 10:30 AM.
Georgia Anne Muldrow: And it’s gonna be a free trade outpost. So feel free to donate or take what you need. We’re going to have things to help you refresh yourself. If your belongings have been confiscated by the police, we have stuff for you and you can get a nice backpack of something, or some nice shoes. And this is to all my fly retail owners, if you’d like to bring something from your store to come to our free trade outposts, there’d be a lot of people who would love to make use out of the things that you have surplus of. And that goes for you grocery store babies, too.
Deep Rawk Dave: And where is this being held, Dan?
Dan Drossman: It’s Benedict Fountain Park. 10:30 to 12:30.
Deep Rawk Dave: There’s a lot of mutual aid, there’s a history of that in that park for sure in resource assistance. So that’s awesome, man. It’s gonna be a packed up weekend here all across the front range. I just love the fact that we’re here doing this. So Georgia, thank you so much. We’re gonna get Erin Stereo back into the mix. Stereo is the whole scenario. So yeah, let’s get it done. And just keep it locked to your community radio station, KGNU. Visible Planets and the place to be. Thank you so much.
Dan Drossman: Thank you.
Georgia Anne Muldrow: Thank you!
