Held In Love Mantra Practice

Kindly recorded for Brain Pickings. Poem text and context: https://www.brainpickings.org/2021/07/26/david-whyte-the-truelove

POEM TEXT / CONTEXT

David Whyte reads his poem "The Truelove"

Gotta go
She’s on my mind
Big ole globe
@odmongrel

These are the prophetic words of Dasan Broadnax, AKA O.D. Mongrel, a supremely talented and visionary poet and writer of many things who felt and witnessed in his 26 short years of physical life what most of us could only hope to imagine. He felt love. He felt peace. He felt pain. He felt joy and pleasure. He felt bottomless possibilities. And he felt and saw himself, his fully free self.

Persona is a posthumous musical experience by O.D. Mongrel. We had to piece together this project from notes and files due to his unexpected passing.  He kept a journal with instructions, as if he knew he wouldn’t be the one to finish this project. This is what O.D. Mongrel was working on before he passed. 

Dasan adopted the moniker O.D. Mongrel as a display of pride for his African-American and Afro-Latino roots. Mongrel was a foul description of Black folks, because the definition is an undefinable dog. Flipping words the way his two communities have done forever, Dasan sat in a space outside of perceived normalcy. He would claim Mongrel for himself, make it mean something—something new, different, and so so dope. 

Him, a kid raised on hip-hop and salsa as well as gospel and soul. Him, a proud man-child in his own private promised land raised by his Puerto Rican mother and his Black father, just like Jean-Michel Basquiat, another dreamer without a pause, another product of multiple cultures.

Because Dasan and his alias, O.D. Mongrel, believed in dreams. That is why Dasan landed on creating electronic music because it allowed him those visions, that freedom. There were no rules, no boundaries. He could hear an organic sound and turn it into art.  Literally, footsteps, a bird chirping, or a bubbling stream. 

Without question, it is the spirit of O.D. Mongrel, our beloved Dasan, who is presenting this musical experience to you as a gift—a spirit that remains alive and is still writing and creating and soaring and questioning, like everywhere:


“When Now vs. Now asked me to describe my music I told them it was Proto-Apocalypse Post-Rap. I make all of my own beats, I like to sing, I like to rap and I like to write as well as spoken word—poetry and stuff like that. I’m informed by many genres, I like soul and ballads from Motown and Benton Wood; but also dancehall. I was a music kid, because of my mom, I grew up around a lot of music. My favorite artists growing up were Eminem and 50Cent. I’m heavily informed by rap but also heavily informed by rock, electro, and also, you know, soul. I think I do a lot of different things and sometimes I don’t like to be categorized as only doing rap. You can listen to the first AC/DC album and hear Bon Scott, he has these cadences and flows that sound like he could be rapping. So is it really rap what I am doing? You know sometimes it is like rap but other times is more melodic and futuristic beats. And I really like the idea of post-rap. But ultimately when you listen to it you make your own decision of what it’s really like.” 

—Dasan Broadnax, AKA O.D. Mongrel

Experiment 132

Composition 61

Remember This - 3 into 4 (featuring DMC)

I want to save the World,
But I'm too busy trying to save me.
I want to do something right for all of you.
But I'm too busy trying to fix me.
I don't wanna be left alone. 
Yeah I don’t wanna...
Here!
Everybody echoes, Everybody echoes, Everybody echoes
The world's anxiety (oh, it's your family).
Everybody echoes, Everybody echoes, Everybody echoes
The world's anxiety (oh, it's your family).

Everybody echoes, Everybody echoes, Everybody echoes the world,
We're your family.
Everybody echoes, Everybody echoes, Everybody echoes the world,
We're your family.

Ant Ballad

I'm a Renaissance Artist. 
Yeah I studied Boccaccio.
I was livin' in Florence.
But I had to get away.

(Run away, Fiesole!)
I’m ready for the Plague.

Yeah, I’m ready for ya.

(Beats and Synths by my big brother, Rudy Sanwald. Guitar, vocals, and arrangement by Idgy Dean. Poem and photo by Terry Tempest Williams).

Easter 2020

The Eyes of the Future (Something Other Than Other)

I got this be sting walkin’ 53rd and Oracle. Woo! Tell me what the stars say! Seance psychology is trickin’ me to make-believe in him. I make-believe in her. Holy moment, Marina, mold it. I couldn’t help it. I was too alive. Zoom! The tension of this taut bow is pointed at me, is heartbeat increase. And when I lean, your pulled back threat seduces me. Let’s sing! Let’s circle around the globe! Go! But don’t let go! Holy moment, Marina, mold it. I couldn’t help it. I was too alive. And my skeleton, my heavy skeleton, was lifted away. Oh, true! Girl, you’re too cool. God is too cruel, for me. Maybe I’m not meant to mother, or love another. Oh, true! Girl, you’re too cool. God is too cruel, for me.

Be(e) Sting

Green Fingers Records Presenting some lovely Breakbeat Jungle tracks crafted & selected by Coco Bryce, including exclusive tracks yet to be released, enjoy listening & getting your groove on people!

More Music from Coco Bryce: https://soundcloud.com/cocobrycebeats

Other Sites you might like...
▶https://soundcloud.com/greenfingersrec
▶https://www.instagram.com/greenrecordings/
▶https://greenfingerecords.bandcamp.com/
▶https://myor.bandcamp.com/
▶ https://www.instagram.com/cocomyor/


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GFRecords Presents: Coco Bryce's Selection

A one-woman psychedelic rock band, with DIY beats and reveries built from the bottom up. Idgy Dean is the solo music project of Brooklynite Lindsay Sanwald. All songs are composed alone, then looped live on stage.
