Music enhances the way we think, create, and interact with the world. As a composer I am eager to engage in the art of storytelling.

Chavez the Fisherman is an artist working in music and visual art. He grew up in Scottsdale, Arizona, far from hip-hop’s origins. In 1986, a cassette labeled “Beat Street” lit the spark. 

The sound, which he called “the music with all the talking,” took hold. Reggae followed. Nothing else stuck. In college, he picked up guitar.  Sublime, Beastie Boys, Tribe, Fugees, and Rage Against the Machine all shaped his fusion of storytelling and rhythm. He released Underground Truths and Mainstream Lies and Things More Real Than This in the 2000s. 

His new album Haunted By Hymns, self-produced and dropping soon, blends acoustic loops, dusty drums, and half-sung prayers. He also paints as Man Art Nation, exploring masculinity, wilderness, and silence in oil, ink, and linocut. For Chavez, music and art come from the same place. He does not chase a genre. He follows the work.  Hip-hop as art.

I write to understand the world and find the beauty in its brokenness.

Followers of C. C. Kimmel