Here is his interview from this months The ExBerliner:

"Over the past eight years, Darius James has earned a name for himself as an elusive Berlin character - a writer and personality whose politically (and spiritually) charged, humorous, indeed provocative writing and performances are products of living 20 of his most formative years as a black man in the New York City of the1970s-1980s New York City. In 1998, James moved to Berlin, attracted by a certain idea of what a challenging city should be. James has a penchant for army green cargo pants and cozy, well-kept sweaters. In NYC, he was competing for air space amidst crowds of precocious free-style jazz greats and Nuyorican (New Puerto Rican) poets in iconic East Village hangouts. Now he lives with his artist girlfriend ("love of my loins") in a fourth-floor, sparsely furnished Pankow apartment, just a block from where part of the Wall once stood. In Berlin, James has published two collections of writing, performed conceptual Voodoo rituals in local art exhibitions, become somewhat of a recluse, and pissed a lot of people off. He proclaims himself to be un-PC and he's sweet (not self-proclaimed). He raises his voice when necessary and he demands discussion. Working on a book that will explore the influence of Voodoo within the history of American culture, this month he will revive earlier fan-crowded nights as a reader at the Münzsalon (Monday, April 11). On Saturdays you'll find him at Another Country bookshop - where he's just started an English-language creative writing workshop, on Sundays talking to Vincent at the Schöneberg bar Slumberland, a place he describes as "a focal point of the black diaspora in Berlin." text: Emma Pearse

While living in New York City, you published two books, wrote for major magazines like Vibe and were a part of the whole Bohemian scene in the 1970s. Why did you move to Berlin? I've been interested in Berlin since 1987. I was sitting in [what is now] 7B [bar in the East Village] and this news report came on about Berlin's May Day riot. And I said, "What? People are still out there rioting?" I said, "I like those people. I want to know them." Then I published my first book and the German rights were purchased, I was brought over and a lot of the people I met were intellectually stimulating.

Who were those people? People in the literary, the political worlds. You have to understand: I was living in New York, pursuing this money thing and trying to write and never having enough money to take a year or two off which is what I wanted to do to write a novel. There's not a lot of money in it but that's what I wanted to do. I was basically dead intellectually in New York. I was spending all my time pursuing a career. It was frustrating. That wasn't why I got involved in this life.

Why did you get involved? The generation that I came out of, we were very much influenced by the Black Panther Party and various other American so-called revolutionary movements. I still identify with that. Which is an interesting thing about Berlin, the fact that there are a lot of black exiles here who were very much involved with the Black Panther Party and the fact is that a lot of the Red Army Faction people were involved with the Black Panther Party. A story that I've been trying to track down was how the RAF smuggled a bunch of members of the BPP who were in the army into Sweden. I want that story. I haven't been able to get it yet.

Who is your crowd in Berlin? There are great writers here. Brad Fox is one. There's my friend Colin Raff, Phillip Lewis. And, of course, Zeena and Nikolas Schreck. Visual artist Marc Brandenburg, with whom I've collaborated. There was for a period Marco Villabos - a Chicago writer out in California who studied with Allen Ginsberg. He is quite amazing. He'll write a poem, he'll come out and read. He'll have a piece of paper in front of him. People will think that he is reading from the paper but he's just making this shit up. There's also people like Edwin Torres - a real Nuyorican spoken word poet. His approach is quite magical and inspires both wonder and awe if you're not a numbskull.

Where are these people? Marco and his girlfriend, Ayana Jackson, a photographer [who lives in Brooklyn, NYC] opened L'Espace with Brad Fox over last summer in Kreuzberg. It lasted until November. It was an authentic moment in Berlin. In terms of my experience here it was the first time that you saw an actual coming together of different peoples in Berlin. As opposed to this underground techno, whatever, headache white parties with a few token blacks. No, this was some real shit.

This is a rarity in Berlin? I mean there are great people here. Berlin is incredible for amazing musicians. There's Jamie Lidell, Ghazi Barakat - The Boy from Brazil, Nicole Demery of Electrocute. There's Eric Clark - he's been in Germany for years. He's this black musician, producer, performer. The guy is brilliant. There's this cat named Sirone of the Revolutionary Ensemble. He used to play with John Coltrane for Christ's sake. These people are classically trained people who just have this wealth of knowledge and experience. But they get boxed into these situations where you're black. That's my problem - I'm not going to be boxed. People are "ghettoized" - they are perceived as being able to do a certain thing and no one considers they are able to do other things. Like journalism: black writers are restricted to "black" issues. But actually there's this cool tradition in history of black bohemia in Europe that is living in Berlin. It started in Paris and then found its way to Berlin. Nobody recognizes that or is paying heed to that.

Why are they not recognized? I have no fucking idea. But it's here. It's a rich fucking history.

Why are they coming to Berlin? Berliners are very open to jazz. It's very easy to live here despite glitches. Social glitches. It's very easy to live here and to do your work, which is the important thing. What's important is not career, it's not visibility, it's being able to do your work. Remember that. You have to be committed and have the courage. Unfortunately a lot of people here, in this so-called underground, don't have balls. It takes courage as well as talent and all the other stuff. I've met some amazing people here among the mediocrity. A lot of shit here is mediocre. But only because of my experience in New York because I used to meet amazing people all the time. But there are some people here who blow my mind.

So how important is where you are to your work? It's not. What's important is being able to do it. Being in a place where you are not distracted.

But isn't what you are doing informed by where you are? Yes. Absolutely. It's been great living here in Berlin. I've found that I can do things that I wasn't able to do in New York. A certain kind of critical writing which I was intimidated by because of all the critical academic stuff that people were writing there. Now I write from my voice and know that it's going to be taken seriously. It's something that I've discovered since I've been here. It's a growth thing. I was not able to grow in New York. Distractions - it's a whole bunch of things. Money wasn't necessarily the important thing but money was important for me to have in New York. Here I don't have any money. I'm broke. But curiously, I'm able to grow in this environment. I'm challenged.

How have you been surviving here? I have no fucking idea. Before Sept 11 I was able to still secure work in the States. I would just write articles for magazines in the States. In the US I would have to write a major magazine article every three months. Here I could get away with doing something once every four or five months. Sept 11 happened. People stopped buying advertising. The editors changed. Basically, I've been struggling.

But you are well known around town as being part of an artistic and literary community. You've worked as an artist and as a writer. Yes, this new thing happened which I found amusing. Some curators in Berlin started to invite me to participate in their exhibitions. So, occasionally I've done some conceptual art (makes a screwy face). I was asked to participate in this show on conspiracy theories. It was a disaster because I involved people who were not up to the task. But it was an experience. Then there was the Hebbel Theater experience [in 2003], which was quite wonderful for me. My objective was to do something that was a real act of magic and it was. It may have cost me many so-called friends but that's part of it. What I did pissed a bunch of people off.

What was this show? The show was called Art and Crime (Kunst & Verbrechen). I was asked to do a Voodoo ritual. I didn't want to do a Voodoo Ritual that exploited African exoticism: Negroes dancing to drums. Instead I wanted to address the fact that Germany, and Berlin in particular, had its own tradition and history of magic.

What did you do? The idea was to restage a scene from a film that was destroyed by the Nazis that had a satanic ritual. Which is what I did. The punch line was that the film never existed and I made up everything. It was a hoax. Which was the "Crime" part of "Art and Crime". Nobody knew how to react because I was talking crazy. My impulse was I'm not going to feed into the whole exoticism thing because a lot of people in the so-called liberal left realm in Germany patronize people of darker hues. Ok?

Why is exoticising bad? It's bad because it doesn't let the person be who they are. It inflicts stereotypes on them so they have to be those clichés. Voodoo is the subject of your next project and of the collection you have published here, Voodoo Stew. What is Voodoo if it's not what people here imagine it to be?

You want to know what Voodoo is? Yes. The whole aim of Voodoo is, now hold on. (Lights a cigarette) When you do a Voodoo ritual you form a gateway between the material world, the physical world and the world of spirit. And you open that gateway through dance and through drumming. Through trance. Through these rhythms. Once that gateway is open, a spirit comes, enters into the realm of the physical and takes possession of the devotees: you and I - mortals. It's a bridgeway between the mortals and the spirits. And, for a time, mortals are divine. Ok? That's a very simplistic, simple definition of Voodoo.

“My objective is not to piss people off. But I also believe that if you don't piss some people off you're not doing the job properly.”

What about sticking pins into dolls? The stuff in terms of all this hocus pocus: that's all bullshit. You can do this. I've done it. And I've done it successfully. But this is not what's important. What's important is to experience the divine consciousness. You've got people who are into sacrifice and chickens. You don't have to do that. The subject is really vast because there are very different definitions and approaches to worship.

Is this happening here now too? It's here. The guys playing at Slumberland [Schöneberg bar], these are African musicians and the rhythms they are playing are specifically related to specific Gods.

And this is what you are working on in your writing? What I try to do is identify a uniquely American category of Voodoo. The fact is that black Americans are very new people. We are no longer Africans, we're Americans. But we have carried with us the spiritual traditions of Africa and have readapted those traditions to our circumstances in the US. Interestingly those practices have not only affected black people, but everyone. It has consequences for everyone on the planet as a lot of other spiritual traditions do. My Voodoo quest may discuss and describe a secret history of America. It may be informative in terms of music and dance and film and visual arts. That's not the point. The point is that I'm outlining the spiritual tool.

You are doing this through a history of American arts and culture? That's a mask. That's not what it's about. It's about change. It's about changing our spiritual and cultural environment. We are in serious trouble. Look at us: there's war. The US has turned into this pro-fascist society. People are stupid. They don't read. They don't think. They sit and watch TV. People have shut off certain parts of themselves by subscribing to left or right political ideologies. We're just not open. We need that. We have to find a way of negotiating that.

To be a good writer or artist, do you have to be fighting against something? I think writers have to be committed. Artists in general. I consider writers artists. They fall into the category of art. And if you're committed to something, it's naturally going to lead to conflict. My upbringing in the time that I grew up - I was born in the mid-1950s amid all the major upheavals of that time - informs my point of view. I'm known for writing about black subjects but I don't consider myself a black writer. I consider myself a writer. The subject isn't what's important. What's important for me is the creative experience of working with languages and trying to create a reality out of the substance of language - something that's pretty intangible.

Performance is a big part of your work… Of course. I'm the best there is. People steal it. I'm telling you. You came out of a time in New York when spoken word was a revolutionary art. I have a problem with "spoken word".

Why is that? Firstly what you have to understand is the idea of Slam Poetry started in Chicago at some place called the Green Mill. But the performative style of Slam Poetry comes out of Nuyorican Poets Café [NYC, 1973 to now]. Before Nuyorican comes Neither Nor [NYC, late 60s, early 70s]. This is where I came out of. My crew was Norman Douglas, Buddy Meisler, Emily Carter, and a lot of other people. We were reading in a place that was filled with these guys from the old Free Jazz movement of the 60s. Amazing jazz musicians. They were very confrontational. We would come out and read - just read - and they would start talking all kinds of shit, calling us names. Roar roar - all that. As a result our style, the way we had to read was very combative. We had to fight with the audience to be heard. It wasn't about a performance, it was about being heard. Then because of my background of hanging out at the comedy store in LA around '75/'76 - I was a big fan of Richard Pryor - I learned a lot from watching a lot of stand-up comics in terms of how to deal with hecklers. I applied that to these audiences - the audience at Neither Nor. I would utilize a lot of humor and performance and whatever to present my work. And that was a style. It became a style of reading.

Performance poetry is everywhere right now - in Berlin and New York. Do you see all this happening here right now? It's here. It's a strange thing about Berlin. Hip hop is everywhere. There are all these things being transposed to Berlin that have absolutely nothing to do with German culture. (laughs) But it does because it's here now. It's here but people don't have context for it. People can only deal with it on wax but when face to face with real street culture and politics, they can't.

But are you still intellectually stimulated here? Here, I'm challenged. I came here because there was always a lot of discussing, arguing going on. It's always interesting listening. Should we be scared of what to expect from you in the future? My objective is not to piss people off. But I also believe that if you don't piss some people off you're not doing the job properly."

The ExBerliner