I’m an Erykah Badu fan. I dig her music, dig her overall attitude. And I’m always impressed by her intelligence and fresh perspective on a wide range of topics. the New York Times ran a long interview talking about her doing some serious retooling of her business model shifting from live performance to paid streaming performances during the pandemic. A lot of musicians have been livestreaming but most of have done it strictly for promotional purposes or at best, doing it as virtual busking with Venmo tip jars etc. She’s levelling up in some canny ways. I also noted some seeming offhand references that the interviewer just breezed past:
“And she showed off the notebooks that she uses to catalog her ideas: a black Moleskin, and another, replete with color-coded tabs, that was a vintage spelling book. ‘Because what I’m doing is, I’m casting spells, girl.’
“You know how you call on deities? Well, for me, it was Yoko and it was Josephine Baker and Nina Simone and many others — Ana Mendieta. Lots of visual artists and women who take risks to make these statements, even though they know that they will most likely be misunderstood, because they’re generally ahead of their peers or time. ”
If you take Miss Badu at her word and then go back over the interview I think you could make the case that she’s employing some of the meta-magick that sorcerer/teacher Jason Miller talks about.
Check out the whole interview
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/arts/music/erykah-badu-livestreams.html.
