JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Two decades after launching Jacksonville hip-hop collective Asamov, Willie Evans Jr. continues mixing and making art. A video artist, graphic designer and sound engineer, he embraces the digital present and future.
“I'm in the digital world. I'm ready for the Google overlords to upload my brain,” he laughs. “I'm ready.”
But his work is also grounded in the analog magic of soul, funk and jazz. His new project, The Brown Wonder, “takes performances from James Brown and Stevie Wonder, and chops them up, like the same way a beat maker would chop up samples from a record,” he explains.
The project is an outgrowth of work he’s done for years – exploring the intersection of audio/video and live mixing. He overlays the musical performances of Brown and Wonder with the rapping and singing of musical partners Tough Junkie, Maestro and Patrick Evan. He then augments the results with graphics, including cartoons, visual static and historic videos.
The project satisfies the longtime beat maker, whose work has always been genre bending and collaborative. But it’s also inspired by, and in part an answer to, his son.
During the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, Evans asked his son – then 11 -- if he understood what was happening, and why.
“His response was, ‘because people don't care about Black bodies,’” Evans recalls. “As a dad, having that innocence stripped away is upsetting. The Brown Wonder is my effort to show him that there is an immutable part of the Black experience that no one can take away or destroy or sully. And that's what this project seeks to do.”
He continues, “Having performances from James Brown and Stevie Wonder, having some of the best artists in the city collaborate, the types of things that they're singing about and rhyming about: Just all of these little DNA pieces that are part of what I am referring to as ‘The Brown Wonder.’”
The seven-song compilation will be showcased Thursday and Friday at Babs Lab on King Street in Jacksonville. Attendees are asked to “bring earbuds” because the pieces can be viewed individually before Evans live mixes the set on stage.
“It'll still be strange to some people, which I kind of like, and it will make some sense,” Evans laughs.
Tickets are available here.