RISING: Saul Williams Meets Carlos Niño & Friends

For over 50 years the conservationists at TreePeople have been helping protect the hills up in Coldwater Canyon National Park, just off Mulholland Drive. It’s here, under black walnut trees and oaks, that Saul Williams met up with Carlos Niño and six other members of LA jazz’s new guard to record an open-hearted missive of revolutionary thought and melodic release.

The set was a return of sorts for Williams, who helped popularise slam poetry in the late 90s with the film SLAM (which he wrote and performed in), before becoming one of hip hop’s most formidable poets. In this collaboration, he pushes back past hip hop into older black oral traditions, with words that sprawl like a cosmic vista – from the exploits of the Dutch East India Company onto the lecterns of the 'President of Archaeological Indifference'.

Shakers, gongs, chimes and cymbals and woodwinds work in symbiosis. Bask in community, 'calling from the roots of trees'.