Damon Locks is the creative process come to life. He embodies art. He represents the dreams and aspirations creative folks hold for themselves, but may not actually achieve. And yet he does, again and again.
He does so through his visual art, which as it turns out, is how he first entered the creative world. And he does so through his music. Since the ’90s, Locks has established himself as a unique creator unbounded by the limitations of genre or the expectations of others.
Whether performing in his hardcore band, Trenchmouth, or helping lead jazz-based groups such as the Black Monument Ensemble, Locks has been able to unlock the universality of music. His latest solo release, “List of Demands,” is a dense, tour-de-force collection of improvisational jazz and punk poetry that enhances this musical legacy.
“List of Demands” began as a live performance. Locks was commissioned to “do something [he’s] always wanted to do.”
Locks is inherently a creative person, whether making work himself or consuming art across different mediums. “I try to grab from all those resources that I’ve been collecting on a day-to-day basis. Luckily, it’s like taking all the things that interest you. I feel so lucky that watching an interesting film is serving the creative process,” Locks said about his making music.
A poem here or a movie there or a concert or two can help Locks tap into a creative spirit that tweaks and shapes his creative output. After some contemplation, Locks decided to explore spoken text.
“I do recitations in the group Exploding Star Orchestra, and there’s a recitation occasionally in Black Monument Ensemble. But I thought it might be time for me to really investigate what that looks like and put out a kind of statement based on that work,” he recalled.
That one-off performance at the Museum of Contemporary Photography unfurled into a 2-year-long creation process. During the course of shaping this album, Locks wrote and released another work, “3D Sonic Adventure,” which came out on vinyl. But “List of Demands” is something heftier.
“Having that time of having other experiences and then coming back and returning to it was completely invaluable,” Locks said. “In this instance, the first idea was just the beginning. Sometimes people say ‘first idea, best idea,’ but this was ‘first idea, great idea — but what can we do now?’”
Locks lists a number of influences and motivations for the overall shape of his work. One ongoing influence that runs through all of his work is the unspoken truth of the “Black nod,” the public form of communication between Black American folks in our day-to-day lives.
“How do you make work that, when other Black people see it, they go, ‘Yeah, my guy, I understand’,” asked Locks. “So that is kind of an ongoing premise, but within that, there’s abstraction, and liberation, and all these other ideas floating around.”
Another motivation stems from his experiences working for the Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project at Stateville Correctional Center. Locks considers his time teaching art there to be “transformative,” not only because of the relationships he formed and the connections he built with the prisoners, but also because it influenced his work outside of those walls. In one class, Locks and his students developed a document of the incarcerated artists’ wants. The document, titled the Artist Constitution, listed their “beliefs, aspirations and demands,” and will be distributed outside the center’s walls.
These lessons and realities came together to form the heart of “List of Demands.” He also brought together many of his frequent and trusted collaborators for the album, such as Macie Stewart, Ralph Darden and Ben LaMar Gay. One collaborator, Krista Franklin, proved especially significant. A longtime friend of Locks, Franklin’s poetry helps anchor the album.
“I feel like if our life essays were a book, then we could be in the same book, and it wouldn’t be unusual to go from my chapter to her chapter,” Locks said about their working relationship.
The result of his collaborative and solo efforts is a body of work that feels entirely present, an astute representation of these changing times and his place within it as a Black artist.
“I want to make work that is clear and that expands the conversation and moves the needle forward in ways that I think Black artists have been doing since we got here,” he added.
As a well-versed student of society, Locks is able to ascertain the truths of the world we live in. Later, he transfers this understanding to record, to song, to spoken word text. The result is riveting.
Britt Julious is a freelance critic.
