DARIUS JAMES: After living and working in New York City for twenty-two years, Darius James moved to Berlin in 1998. He is the author of four books, a lecturer and spoken-word performer who has appeared on radio, television and film. With the German-based company, tvt film+vfx, and filmmaker, Oliver Hardt, he is currently developing a documentary exploring the influence of Voodoo on American popular culture and the birth of a new pantheon of Vodun spirits titled “The United States of Hoodoo”. In the course of completing this project, he will undergo a dramatic spiritual initiation, and emerge as a member of that religion’s priesthood. In order to understand his collaboration with Quio and Jon Evans in context, one should know Voodoo was the religious, political and military response to the oppressive conditions of slavery in the so-called ‘New World’. In these uncertain times, the Black American composer, Sun Ra, has been reborn as a loa (or ancestral spirit) in the new American Voodoo pantheon.

QUIO (INA ROTTER): Quio, a Berlin based MC, singer, performer wants to be misunderstood and taken unseriously. In 1999 Quio met AGF when they both performed in a club. Various collaborations followed. In 2003 they started QUIO. 2004 they released the first 12" on AGF Producktion and here is the full length album of the Quio. AGF and Quio have put together their different musical heritage, to come up with some uniquely new combinations, e.g. they mixed Drum&Bass MC lyrics with piano and strings into a melancholy anthem, and hiphop lyrics with experimental beats and a blues guitar.

Jon Evans is a Shaman from the Austrailian outback gone walkabout.