An Interview With Shayshahn "Phearnone" MacPherson

Intriguing best describes Shayshahn "Phearnone" MacPherson, member of indie hip-hop band Planet Ubiquity. A kid raised in the Bronx during the birth of hip-hop playing the violin: surprising. But Phearnone's talents don't stop there; add violist, percussionist, and a lyricist to his repertoire. Over lunch at a noisy restaurant in Brooklyn, Phearnone gave me a guided tour of his journey to becoming a successful artist.

Emmanuela Maurice: I described you to a few people- Black guy, about thirty years old, rocking a blow-out 'fro, and has a unique sense of style. I asked them to guess what instrument they thought someone fitting that profile played. They answered either drums or saxophone. How have you been able to overcome people's preconceived notions about you?
PHEARNONE: I actually like preconceived notions because it gives me an element of surprise. It's like the little person who'll put a 230 pound man in a choke hold and make him submit. Still to this day, when I pull out the violin people do a double-take. That's why Miri Ben-Ari blew up. I always felt like I was doing the hip-hop stuff before her. I hate to say that because she's good. She's an excellent jazz/funk improviser with great technique on the violin. But she's not hip-hop. I'm hip-hop. I'm from the Bronx, where hip-hop started, and I rhyme. If there's ever a chance, I'ma battle her.

EM: Bring me back to the moment you realized a musician lived in you?
PHEARNONE: I was in the house with my father and grandmother, and some Janet Jackson song was playing. My grandfather's sax was there-mind you I don't know how to play. I put it together and started trying to play the words on the sax. I would do it over and over again. Now, it's in the heat of the moment and everyone's like, "Oh that's cool." But when everybody was like, "Okay I'm tired of it," I was still there trying. It was almost like an obsession to play it.

EM: What made you choose the violin?
PHEARNONE: I actually started on viola. At my [elementary] school IS181, in the Bronx, they divided you up, in terms of band and orchestra, by your last name. I ended up in the orchestra. I was upset. I wanted to be in the band because I had a sax at home that was my grandfather's. He died before he could teach me to play. So the first day of orchestra, they say pick your instruments. All the kids ran for the violins. The violas were next to the violins. They look like violins, but they're a little bit bigger. The violas looked real pretty because no one was picking them. The violins had scratches on them. I was like, what are these? I picked one up, and I plucked the string. Its sound is low. It's a deeper sound, a little bit lower than the violin. I picked it and played it. It's a mellow instrument. So I was playing it, and I was getting good at it. I picked up the violin at Harlem School of the Arts and when I had to student-teach in college.

EM: You performed at Carnegie Hall when you were twelve years old. Describe that experience.
PHEARNONE: My family was real excited. I'm walking in there and I'm seeing all this professional music. They have all these portraits and stories on the wall. The place is like....I don't even know what. It's huge. The stage has no curtains. The one microphone, on the ceiling, is just for recording purposes. The place is built so acoustically perfect that you can- all the way in the back row- hear a violin clear. There's no real echo. Everything is soaked up and the sound shoots up cause half of it is underground, they say. Then we came out when the parents and everybody are there. It was crazy! It's the first time I saw all these pictures flashing-this huge crowd there to see us. But it wasn't until I saw Carnegie Hall on PBS that I realized the highest level is Carnegie Hall. People strive all their lives to play there. It was probably a benefit of growing up in New York. And later on, because of Harlem School of the Arts, I played Lincoln Center.

EM: You've played with legendary violinist Billy Bang, whose work you admire. Describe that experience.
PHEARNONE: It is always a little surreal to be on stage with someone who you listen to all the time. I felt like I was moving in my music career if I was on stage with Billy Bang. I sat next to him in the dressing room and he told me stories about fighting in the [Vietnam] war. If we saw each other, it'd be like he's my uncle or something. We're similar.

EM: How are you similar?
PHEARNONE: We're both from the Bronx, Black, have a love for [John] Coltrane, play violin, people told us we were not good enough, have cool names like Phearnone and Billy Bang, and play the violin in ways its never been played.

EM: How'd you get dubbed Phearnone?
PHEARNONE: It's a play off my name. Kulture, the frontman of my band Planet Ubiquity, would always call me Phearnone MacPherson because I was always ready to go, as far as performance. When we were NYC +1, we did a show in Hartford, Sunsplash. That can be a hostile crowd if people don't know you. Caribbean people want to hear Busta [Rhymes] and Beenie Man. So we went to do that show and [the band] was a little bit nervous. I was like, 'Come on.'

EM: You say, "I fear none other than God. No opinion, stage, group, gimmick, or pain will ever say I fear them." What's the source of your confidence?
PHEARNONE: I guess God. My mom instilled confidence in me. She always told me to go out and do my best, not to worry about what anyone thinks, and to do what I think is right.

EM: How did you get to that point?
PHEARNONE: No matter what you do, someone is not going to like it. You have to ignore what other people think. Or better yet, extract the good and work on the bad. You can be critical of yourself and still have a positive outlook. I grounded myself by knowing that time here on earth is limited so you better get off your lazy ass and work on your voice that's already in you. You just have to find it.

EM: How do you tap into your confidence and strength?
PHEARNONE: Once I hit the stage that's me all the way. Even if there's slight doubt- because everyone has a little bit of doubt-there's no room for it. If anything, I use any inkling of doubt as fuel for my fire. How I draw on that? I just say that I'm Phearnone. I mean, that's me on the stage. At that point, you only have yourself to let down if you don't live up to what you say you are.

EM: What's the best advice you been given?
PHEARNONE: I was trying to play straight bebop jazz. I said to my music teacher, Kelvyn Bell, "Man, I cannot get this solo." And he was like, "Just get out of your way." I looked at him like, wow! He said it so simple, like you're messing yourself up. Not messing yourself up, but that you're in your way.

EM: What do you think is absent in the music industry?
PHEARNONE: I think risk is absent in the industry. In business you go with what works, and you don't want to strive away from that. Until somebody takes that risk and then all the other companies carbon copy it or try to jump on it. But there's way, way less risk taking in the industry. I can understand that because it's business.

EM: How does your music fill that void?
PHEARNONE: We do the music that we love. There's only so many different ways that you can play these cords, but you gotta make it your own-we call it "ubiquifying" it. A lot of times people say you gotta have an identity, music wise. And I see how it's hard because they want to put you in these categories. It's almost a risk to sell our album because the first couple of tracks might stray away some people who like the end part of our tracks. The kinda people who are gonna like our music are gonna have to like a lot of genres. I can understand that. If you listen to R&B, you just want to hear to R&B. That's the risk in our music.

Check out Phearnone at www.phearnonebutgod.com

Vibe to Planet Ubiquity at www.myspace.com/theplanetu