by Jason Kelly

              AOTEAROA TOUR DATES

24th April – Poetry Live Auckland

9.30pm – The Thirsty Dog pub, 469 Karangahape Road

with Laurent Dunningham

26th April – Lopdell House Titirangi – Auckland

7.30pm – 480 Titirangi Road

28th April – Otara Town Centre Main Stage – Auckland

10am -12pm with Laurent Dunningham

29th Library Bar – Auckland

8pm 1 Pakenham St, East Auckland

http://www.facebook.com/events/110461809086550/

6th May - Wellington

WORKSHOP with Luka Lesson

Filmed by Leon Fitzpatrick

Edited by Leon and Conan Fitzpatrick

Performed and Written by Luka Lesson

Available from www.lesson.bandcamp.com

The winner of the  ’History Books’ writing competition is the one and only Andrea Louise Thomas!!

The task at hand was to write 8 lines on the theme of Australia’s colonial past and/or using the words ‘History Books’.

Andrea came up with this piece, visually relevant and well thought out:

                       History Books Us

History books us            it prints us            it puts us behind bars,

graphs                        and statistics,             negligent ballistics,            text tells

reducing             some lives             to fine print

while             missing in action             in this black and white faction

pressing on pages             bound by spines             on lines

are             the coloured,             the poor,             the indigenous

the women and children.        History books us or not       but most people

live between the lines        in divine skin       and refined minds            that define us.

Andrea wins 5 free downloads of the ‘Please Resist Me’ Album (worth $75) and a special sneak peek at the brand new ‘History Books’ video clip due for release tomorrow evening.

The ten other poems/writers who also receive one free download and a look at the video are:

Ally Vee

David Vincent Smith

Sally

Glenn Manga

Mary Marshall

Michelle Rao

Miriam Dale

Jacky T

Nour Abouzeid

Jessie Giles

With some special respects also going to Nicole Duchesne, Justine Eltakchi and Tupmaro MC.

See below for the top 10 entries and their amazing words.. it was so unbelievably hard to decide, and in the end I had to go with my gut on this one…

Many thanks to all of you for entering, I was and still am humbled by the response. It looks like some of us really do care!!!

For everyone else reading this, the video for “History Books” will finally be launched tomorrow, the 20th of April, the same date upon which Captain first saw this land in 1770, and the same date when, in 1939, Billie Holiday recorded ‘Strange Fruit’ – an amazing poem which soon became one of the most powerful political works of the 20th Century.

Let us hope that collectively our words can do the same, and open more and more people’s eyes to the often overlooked history of this nation we only just recently began calling ‘Australia’.

Big love and respect,

Luka

Top Ten Poems from the ‘History Books’ Competition

My history teacher, Mrs Freeman, lent against the staffroom trying to smoke the irony out of her name…

before she turned to occupy my class room

She laid papers on our desks about forgotten cultures, forgot to mention the culture.. So, we soon forgot

We watched her black marker mark our history time line on a whiteboard

Reality only began for us, when we saw a similar hand to hers

-one that highlighted only 8 lines of our dark history-

beat a friend senseless on a bus to the city. Rote learning.

- Jacky T

Aboriginal people

do

not

need

to

learn.

Everyone else

does.

- Sally

We plant our face in a book with no pages,

A terminal illness of the soul in its final stages,

Our mind wages war with our heart,

Puts the pieces of history together and gives it a jump start,

So that we.. may start learning,

About the oldest culture in the world left burning,

So we may read and finally hear the thousands of voices screaming,

This is no nightmare, welcome to the dreaming.

- Nour Abouzeid

It wasn’t me – I wasn’t here, when they stole your children, your land,

And poured out a darker red onto your deep dessert sand.

But if I claim a right to be here, then I must claim the history,

of massacres and perjury, that let my ancestors be free.

So I will say, I am Australian – with all that it entails,

And I will accept my history, with all of its pains,

And I will acknowledge what has happened; mourn alongside you if I can

And work to heal what was done in this, our land.

- Miriam Dale

The fuchsia jacket drew the African boy towards the Australian girl on the train.

They talked of colour and war, and he learned of what really happened on Australian shores.

He didn’t know at all about Indigenous Australians, let alone that they were murdered during ‘colonisation’.

And together their shock rose up-his on account of not knowing at all, and hers on account of not knowing enough.

One thing they both understood; that trauma does and trauma could,

leave it’s traces throughout lives and communities, and be passed down

-impacting all and future generations.

This is why healing needs to take place daily.

- Michelle Rao

1788 British Empire downunder

Decimating/splitting Aboriginal Australia asunder

In History Books pusridden words coat genocidal intent/plunder :

“Let us build our churches and civilise the natives”

“Let us utilise our convicts”

“Let us build a great White Australia nation”

(They built a police station)

1788 – 2012 prison cells/livinghells/cultural fragmentation.

- Mary Marshall

The felt fear of losing your own life and those of loved ones,

the pain, sounds and smell of screams, burning flesh and firing guns,

can’t be put on a page let alone the truth when a cursory look,

reveals yet another and another whitewashed colonialist history book.

Hundreds of massacres of Aborigines between 1788 to as late as 1926

in the Forest River killings, with cut up bodies fed to flames involving two policeman,

who were discharged with no trial for murder but promoted instead,

now today’s legacy for more deaths in custody, perpetrators free and their victims dead.

- Glenn Manga

this curriculum is a religion

because you need to have faith that this text is the truth

dispensed to the youth, and presented on page

but you forget that this country’s history was left in a cave

the same lesson remains…

you think we’re destined for change?

destiny requires real action; but the blood still spills

because we let the our leaders be elected in vain

- David Vincent Smith

Broken songlines

Stained with the blood of unremembered massacres

Washed away by the tears of grieving mothers-

for their suicide children

Paved over by concrete blocks-

flat – cold – grey – denial

Words are too small for this history

It must be danced

- Ally Vee

An apathetic nation, reading Australian history books, written by colonial crooks.

These books written in a language from distant lands, a language which is palatable and easier for us to swallow.

These books talk Of stories borrowed, of wars won and lands conquered, seeds sown of pastures, and treason.

You read books of colonial pride and aussie men who worked hard, their own hides sun worn and weathered.

While we forget those images of men tethered, slaves in their own land.

I ask of you one thing… Listen, listen to stories sung in a oral tradition, of a history and understanding of this land that which we stand.

These songs, sung in arrente, walpiri, barrara, yolunga matha, an honour it is to hear.

But be quick to listen to these histories, because we are stamping them out, our colonial pride, half hidden in shame, but not enough, to listen and help the rightful, reclaim.

- Jessie Giles

Leon Fitzpatrick and I have a finished video for my poem “History Books” ready for release on April 20th

April 20th is the day that Captain Cook officially first saw the land which was to be stolen to become part of the “Commonwealth” and now called ‘Australia’ in 1770… interestingly enough it also the day Billie Holiday recorded her famous song ‘Strange Fruit’…. in 1939.

To encourage the dissemination of knowledge surrounding Australia’s horrid history of colonial rule (that we seem to sweep under the carpet so easily), and in the vein of art being able to bring light to important issues like the song ‘Strange Fruit’ does so well –  I am asking people to submit an 8-line poem unveiling the often overlooked colonial violence of Australia’s past OR – for those far away from our shores – simply using the words ‘History Books’.

Please try to research your claims and make all the information solid so these poems can carry weight as both informative as well as beautiful. Also you may only wish to speak of your emotional reaction to this part of our history, please feel free to express yourselves in any way you want… you are poets after all!
The ‘winner’ will receive the pleasure of educating the people around us on the issues we face in Australia today and bring light to the fact that many of them stem from the imperialism and ingrained traditions of capitalism, racism and apathy…all of which we must learn to overcome if we are to survive as a community.

The top piece of writing as chosen by me will have it’s own feature on my website… and the author with receive 5 free electronic download codes for my album ‘Please Resist Me’ – one for themselves and the other for four friends who may want it…or need it

The top 10 writers will receive a sneak peak at the video before it is released and one free download of the full album each…

So get writing my friends – ALL ENTRIES MUST BE POSTED ON MY FAN PAGE BY THE 18TH OF APRIL  —–> http://www.facebook.com/lukalesson 

let us learn from each other, because our systems are failing us.

Love and respect

From Los Angeles
Luka Lesson
http://lesson.bandcamp.com/track/bonus-track-history-books

So the story goes like this:
I had a gig in brisbane two days before I left to travel to China for a literary festival. An amazing film-maker named Conan Fitzpatrick was at the gig. He was extremely keen to make something with me before I left after he saw the show, and I could tell he was so good at what he does. We figured out we had about half an hour of cross over time in our schedules… when I happened to be at the Mt Glorious rock pools near my parent’s house outside Brisbane… seeing some friends for the last time before touring overseas for 2 1/2 months.

He drove up, we did three and a half takes of ‘Face The World’ before the sun totally disappeared…

This video is the result.

I hope it speaks to you in some way. If you feel the motivation share it with your contacts please do so… for full time artists ‘shares’ are like currency. or air.

I do what I do to help people, so hopefully it helps you or someone you know through the hard times… sitting in San Francisco at the moment I’m really contemplating what is means to have a crew who backs you up… so I’m sending so much love especially to Julez for recording the vocals and doing the mixing for practically the whole album, Marty and Nick who made the beat and Raf who wrote the chorus and especially Conan for making this clip happen… big ups!!!

much love to all of you…keep strong and keep shining.

Luka

get the whole album here: www.lesson.bandcamp.com

WHY ‘PLEASE RESIST ME’?

Poetry for me is something tangible. It is a wall, a brick, a river, the soles of my feet, a snake, a blade. Over the past few years, I feel like my words have pulled me through swamps, over mountains and into clouds.

Truly.

Each one of the pieces on this album have given me the strength to take the next tiny step on the great journey towards personal freedom.

Most of these pieces were written in the darkest moments of my life. This is when I truly began to write. These words, constructed out of my own need to reassure myself of my ability to survive, helped save me from suicidal thoughts, deep pain and mental, emotional and spiritual incapacity. On a very fundamental level, they became my cornerstones, each word a rock to cling to, each sentence a mantra to repeat and each performance further etching the legitimacy of my experiences and of my right to speak into my own gut. I really began to write out of necessity, although I was already writing hip- hop and making music, it was not until 2009 that I came to the point in my life where I felt cornered. I had found myself between a rock and a hard place, and it was my writing that pulled myself out of it. Letter by letter, line by line.

This sounds dramatic, but such was the temperature of the hearth within which this poet was created. At that time in my life I had fallen towards losing my mental and physical health, and all of my meaningful personal relationships had all but disappeared. My foundations fell out from under me, and in so many ways it was the time in my life where everything was up for grabs. Most of the tangible and intangible things that I had relied upon for stability were demolished and internally my protective and self-serving ego was being shattered.

Only the very basics remained: the sun still came up every morning, the grass still smelt fresh when cut, lemons still tasted sour and my pen still made a mark when I dragged it along a surface. Other than that, everything else I had known felt like quicksand. And I was suffocating because I had, as we all do, relied upon the structures in our lives so much.

The year before all of this eloquent drama occurred in my life I was lucky enough to have written my first piece of performance poetry: ‘Please Resist Me’. I had been writing raps for maybe 5 years before that, but ‘Please Resist Me’ was my first piece that I had written to be performed specifically without a beat behind it – strictly as a poem. This piece and the philosophy behind it was written for my own need to escape the chains of racism in Australia. Growing up in Brisbane caused a lot of pain and frustration for myself and my family in our day-to-day interactions with the wider public. Being Greek-Australian, it seems a joke now to think of racism in relation to our ethnicity, but in the 80s and 90s and even in some states and towns still today people are scared of Greek names they can’t pronounce and food they can’t imagine eating. We were the ‘way too different’ migrants of the era. Used for the same ends then as governments now use Refugees; fodder for steering elections. And the impact on us as a group was that we would reign in our interactions with the mainstream and form our own set of ideas about what they represent, why we can’t trust them, and how to avoid interacting with them in any way.

I felt however that as a community, our Greek-Australian identity and culture began to become based on our complaints of ‘White’ Australia, on our whinging and story-telling about how they ‘did this to me’ and ‘that to me’ and how I will never get a job and it was all because of them. Somehow we were placing the keys to our freedom and happiness into their hands, and because they were ‘good-for-nothing, culture-less, binge drinking sex fiends’ there was no hope in trying to convince them we were good people. The usual ‘us and them’ rhetoric had arisen from within us, which, by our own admission was their greatest fault, but up until then had never been ours.

Eventually, I recognised that this lose-lose situation was suffocating me as a human being. And so to stop myself from engaging in the cycles of oppression and anger I began to use the challenge that this provides as motivation. And so the ‘Please Resist Me’ mentality was born. I began to become thankful for the ‘walls’ that were seemingly erected by racism and ‘othering’ I had experienced throughout my life, and to use the resistance of society as an invitation to get better at everything I do.

Now I am not saying that I would like everyone to be racist towards me so that I can improve exponentially with their ‘help’. Far from it.  Nor am I anywhere near supporting racism as has been suggested in the past. What I am saying is that it is this mentality that has helped me through hard periods of my life; where racism was initially my enemy, seemingly holding me back from realising my potential, and into seeing it as my challenge, my power position, my motivation to make change. It recognises that sufferers of racism so quickly and easily use the same racist slurs as their oppressors, but projected backwards in some sort of rally towards making change. But in reality we are reinforcing the same values in our children that we have suffered from for so long, so how will we break the cycle?

It was also this mentality that helped me and now others get through periods of their lives that have nothing to do with racism, but the various challenges life throws up at us, no matter if we are ‘Black’, ‘White’ or ‘in between’. This is how Please Resist Me also began to help me through the darker parts in my life mentioned earlier… without racism, or ‘enemies’ –  just as a drive to continue to move forward for my own good, and the good of those around me.

It is a philosophy of facing every challenge that comes into your path with a smile. Smiles are revolutionary. They reflect self-respect and freedom from our oppressors. Those people I know who smile the most, often have seen the most pain. So may we be grateful for these challenges as they teach us how to be better humans, but let us not become complacent;  we can still fight for our causes, but with joy, belief and passion in our hearts. Without the baggage of victimhood or ‘impossible odds’.

So I only hope you enjoy the album and I pray that my words may hold some simple answers for you along your journey.

Big love to you all,

Luka.

Check the full-length album

‘Please Resist Me’

at www.lesson.bandcamp.com

Produced by Billy Hoyle

From the “Please Resist Me” Album

FREE UNTIL IT HITS 100 DOWNLOADS

LUKA LESSON IS TOURING NATIONALLY IN AUSTRALIA FROM FEBRUARY 19th WITH ALIA GABRES AND JOEL MCKERROW

For more information visit the Upcoming Gigs page

Spoken Word Video Commission

After hosting the YANQ Youth Affairs Summit last year, I was asked by their inspirational leader, Siyavash Doostkah, to write a piece addressing a very important issue in social and political spheres in Queensland.

It is an honour for me to be asked to write to enact real world change in Queensland. I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with the place and the Government policies have often been the impetus for much of the hate. I feel like my own and YANQ’s intentions align so well. It has been my absolute pleasure to work on this piece so far and I see it as an opportunity for Hip-hop to do what it was born to do; create awareness around an important topic and help those who are disadvantaged to rise up. 

The issue is as follows.

My home state of Queensland is the only state in Australia which still incarcerates seventeen-year-olds within the adult prison system.

In every other prison in Australia only 18-year-olds and above are incarcerated in these prisons, with every juvenile facility containing young people from seventeen-years-old and below.

This violates the United Nations bill, ratified by the Australian Government who stated that eighteen should be the legal age of adult imprisonment.

Queensland’s own Anti-descrimination Commissioner has condemned the current state of affairs, as has the Children’s Commissioner and The Queensland Law Society.

It has been proven through both scientific testing and through qualitative research that young people of seventeen years and below generally have more of a chance of rehabilitation than 18-year-olds. It has now also been proven that the seventeen-year-olds subject to this kind of treatment have been much more likely to reoffend and become ‘career criminals’ as compared to their counterparts in juvenile detention in other states.

In 1992, the Juvenile Justice Act was written with the provision to change this fact spread throughout the document. At that time the amount of beds in Juvenile Detention facilities meant that ‘temporarily’ seventeen year olds would be sent to adult prisons. But this was always designed as a temporary issue, which would be attended to immediately.

Twenty years later and nothing has changed.

Of the young people in juvenile detention approximately 75% of them are on remand. This means they have no home to return to on the outside – so they are kept in custody without an official charge, or they are still awaiting trial. At the same time however, the main excuse coming from the government as to why seventeen-year-olds are being incarcerated in adult prisons is that there aren’t enough beds in juvenile detention. If 75% of these beds are being taken up by young people on remand, it seems that dealing with homelessness issues on the outside may go a long way towards freeing up these beds to accommodate the seventeen-year-olds in adult prisons.

In Queensland, you will be locked up in an adult prison before you are allowed to buy cigarettes.

You will be thrown into jail with men or women twice your age before you are even allowed to cast your vote in national or local level elections.

Check this link for more solid information from the Commission for Children and Young People.

Speaking of elections, there is one coming up very soon in Queensland… and the point of this exercise is to have an affect on the outcome, to put this issue back on the agenda and to embarrass the government enough to get things right. So please, when the video drops, if you dig it, pass it around and do what I say, there is one simple thing you can do to make this long awaited change a reality and I will let you all know in the video. It’s simple and will take you all of ten minutes.

I will be filming the piece entitled ’17′ this Monday 9th Jan and releasing it at the Brisbane leg of the “Please Resist Me” Poetry Slam Tour on Sunday February 26, 2012.