Mustock is the love child of the one and only Mustafa Akbar. The first time I went to his ancestral farmland in Lignum, Va., I was blown away by the festival the brother had envisioned and brought to fruition.

Mu, as many endearingly call him, is a D.C. funk veteran. He’s traveled the world hustling funk to the masses. Whether through his solo music projects or with more commercially known bands like Thievery Corporation, Thunderball, and Fort Knox Five, Mustafa has always been in the mix—and most likely, as some point in time, your mix. He’s rocked many cultures and embraced many customs When I ask him (sometimes jealously, I admit) about his favorite place to rock and entertain, he tells me, “Mustock!”  It’s his home and with his great appreciation for history, Mustafa understands that many people may not be connected to where they come from like he is.  So, since 2003 Mustafa has been sharing his roots; offering an overnight “spiritual grounding” experience to all who attend.

Mustock is a concert event for those brave enough to travel from the hood to the woods.  The artists and their fans come mostly from the D.C. area, but Baltimore, Richmond, and Philly funk, rock, and soul seekers always represent lovely and lively. Folks from as far away as North Carolina and New York City show up. All that is to say that people from all over come to Mustock, and there is mucho good reason!

The artists and performances are always top notch. Something about being on a beautiful big stage with oh-so-perfect sound in a uniquely intimate, natural setting has produced very remarkable performances at past Mustock festivals. I must give a shout out to Marty, who has been providing and working Mustock sound since Day 1, I believe. One of the best, Marty is a well-trusted name when it comes to making sure everyone is satisfied, from the bands to the fans. My guess is that’s the reason he’s the go-to guy for D.C.’s best inner-city indie concert series, the legendary Fort Reno summer concerts (going on now!).

With the talent, sound, and stage tight , Mustock’s hospitality is just as attractive a reason to attend. There are ample outside bathrooms for festivalgoers, and even showers. In past years, a fish-and-chips fry run by Mustafa’s blood relatives was the key featured grub, and I hear this year will see additional vendors on the grounds. There is ample open space where people and pets can dance, play, and meditate while enjoying the live. For me, the highlight of Mustock is playing with my daughter and watching her play with other kids—usually Asheru’s kids (his band rocks Mustock this year). Mustock is very kid-friendly and very family-friendly. It’s a cultural event where folks look out for one another. To borrow a phrase from my man Kush from Violet Says 5 (rocking with GODISHEUS at the Black Cat on Aug. 16), at Mustock we “stay Kings and Queens with it.”

And just who’s rocking Mustock this year? Twenty-five of the Mid-Atlantic’s best  “James Brown overtime grind” funk, rock, and soul artists. Every one is a rock star and the accumulated accomplishments would fill encyclopedias. I already mentioned the mighty Asheru–who wrote theme song to the animated “Boondocks” show–who will be rocking along with The Els. Other notables are Lady Alma, Punk Rodgers, and Nappy Riddem (Friday night), and Pure Light Seed, Tony Ozier, W. Ellington Felton, Tamika Love Jones, Fort Knox Five, Thunderball, GODISHEUS (Saturday day and night). For a full listing of bands and times visit www.mustockllc.com. There will be a tree-planting ceremony on Sunday as folks who camped out the night pack up and prepare for their journeys back home.

See ya’ll at Mustock!

Mustock 2010 Outdoor Music Festival takes place July 30 to Aug. 1. For more information visit www.mustockllc.com.

An occasional feature in which esteemed D.C. rapper Head-Roc shares what’s on his mind.

I have a question I want to ask all my friends, supporters, and patrons in the D.C. indie music and arts scene.

You attend music, theater, poetry, dance, visual art, and other forms of art events. You have your favorite local artist(s).  You're on their e-mail lists. You might even travel a good distance to see them.  Well...

When you drop $5, $10, $15 at the door to support these artists, do you know how much, if any, of that money actually makes it to their pockets? Do you care? And finally, are you willing to ask a venue’s door staff, managers, and event promoters, “Hey, how much of what I’m paying here at the door will the artists receive?”

Well…

As a local professional artist, and on behalf of my fellow peers, I would like to very humbly inform you, the benevolent patron, that we need you to ask! Why? Because, in most scenarios, we’re just flat out not being compensated as working artists at arts-driven entertainment functions.

I am a professional musician and, in recent years, I’ve been playing in a band. Speaking from my own experience, all too often in cases when we are afforded some loot for performing, it’s not enough to cover the blood, sweat, and tears of our efforts to make the night happen.  For a working musician, it’s horrifying when, at the end of the night, the door "take" doesn't match venue’s "expectations," and we get handed $15 bucks to split amongst four grown, professional musicians—with bills to pay and mouths to feed.  What’s worse is when we deliver an amazing show to folks in the house... and we don’t get paid at all.

A big part of the problem is the growing popularity of a very unfortunate business paradigm taking root in Chocolate City’s live-performance circuit. Rather than pay artists based on experience, creativity, and actual talent, some venues use a scheme that pays artist based on the number of people we bring through the door. The venues call this practice "polling," and here‘s how it works:

When patrons arrive at the ticket office, they are asked which band they came to see. Based on the results of venue’s poll, and after some questionable math—where the venue gets to fully recoup all its expenses (dig that!), it pay bands out according to how many patrons the venue says came to see them.

Flat out, this is some bullshit, especially for seasoned vets working to eke out a living in any local indie-music scene. In my opinion as professional musician, if any polling goes on, it should happen at the end of the night.  If venues are going to be so bold as to actually poll showgoers (WTF?), then they should do so by asking who’s live presentation they enjoyed most. Maybe if venues determined payouts that way, I’d be less suspicious of the practice. Even still, I think that there should be guaranteed compensatory minimums for professional artists rocking at local venues, period.

Venues who poll make me wonder if my job as a musician is to entertain the people in attendance, or rather to make sure I bring enough people though venues' doors to patronize their establishments enough to satisfy their night’s money quotas.  The way some “premium” venues carry it in Chocolate City these days, they fully expect the artists to beat the streets to bring people though their doors to buy drinks and purchase food. Entertaining the folks who came out to see a great show is just something for which the venue rewards us, despite all our hard work…  instead of paying us bread for doing our craft.  That’s whack, and polling sounds like another way of giving the shaft to our area’s accomplished and aspiring musicians.

Too many venues featuring live music aren’t doing their jobs advertising why the public should patronize them.  If a venue advertises that it's hosting live music, then that venue should invest toward getting music-lovers through the door to support its business.  Furthermore, venues serious about supporting local live music, while also hosting regional and national acts, should have an adequate street-marketing element supporting this aspect of their business operations. And of course, the ways venues treat local talent are complementary to the development of the local scene.

Instead, what has happened over the years is that venue owners, managers, and booking agents have suckered desperate local artists, and opportunistic promoters, into performing their marketing jobs for them—mostly free of charge!

Everyone in show business knows that planning a show, putting the bill together, coordinating communications with the acts, designing the flyer, making copies, and distributing them, writing and sending out e-mails, creating Facebook and MySpace events, doing Twitter outreach, and such... is a job!  To promote for a show, someone has to work the outreach game for at least a few hours every day. How many hours of work does it take to do all that? How much are the relating promotional and marketing materials? Is that kind of time and resource expenditure recoupable? (Of course it is!)  My last question is: Whose job is it actually? The venue’s or the artist's?

Let's be perfectly clear here: I am charging that venues, and to a lesser extent event promoters, are using artists (professional and amateur) to fuel their businesses without at least minimal compensation. Together, they prey on the dreams, aspirations, and naiveté of artists.  My man Roger Newell at DC Jobs with Justice hipped me to a term I had never heard of before and it seems to accurately describe what has been happening to musicians here in Chocolate City. It's called wage theft.  As a matter of fact, DCJWJ is having a Workers' Rights Board hearing downtown on Feb. 18 at 6 p.m. I just might have to check that jont out! (no, not joint but jont, Joe!)

My point, mission, and hope is that once they become aware of the dynamics, real music-lovers and patrons of the arts in Chocolate City will become instrumental in helping to revert some of the damage wrought by predatory business of some venues. I’m just chipping at the tip of the iceberg, family! Holla black with your thoughts on this one!

An occasional feature in which esteemed D.C. rapper Head-Roc shares what’s on his mind.

On Saturday, August 22, Mustafa Akbar (Riddems Crew ,Thievery Corporation, Fort Knox Five, Nappy), hosts the 7th annual MuStock, a D.C. indie music festival held on his ancestral farmland down in Lignum, Va.

MuStock is a 10-hour concert/ weekend retreat in a beautiful setting with a great stage, fantastic sound, and overnight camping (folks can come down the night before and can actually stay until Sunday afternoon). And yes, there are portable bathrooms with sanitation stations (for washing your hands), and there's also a gigantic tent, so rain is no problem.

The 7th Annual MuStock is a free event, but because it is run with no corporate or institutional sponsorships, we're asking for a suggested donation of $20 to help cover the production costs and the artists' expenses. Supporting the careers of some of our area's undervalued, overworked, and underpaid working musicians is STRONGLY SUGGESTED! …AND GREATLY APPRECIATED!!!

What really makes MuStock especially noteworthy is the fact that it’s one man's labor of love to provide a great show and platform for some of D.C.'s hardest working professional indie music artists.

The first time I went to MuStock I was blown away by the visual presentation and spiritual vibration.  The hospitality Mustafa provided was a welcome change from dealing with some of the folks at the usual venues we indie pros rock: He offered what he had to all musicians who responded to the invitation to participate.

And the way Mustafa hosted the event was done in such a way that the concert day moved along fluidly–much like a mixtape. Artists, in addition to performing their own material, were encouraged to (and did) mix it up with other artists across each others sets.

Maybe the most striking memory of attending is witnessing the farm at dusk, and seeing the full glory of the sky. It made me think of the survival of our ancestors on this soil in the days when the the descendants of enslaved Africans were forbidden to express our spiritual selves freely and out in the open. Taking my daughter to MuStock was huge in this regard, as I watched her observe, emulate, and participate in the musical offerings from my art peers on the scene.

Please make plans to come join us this year!

Performing live at MuStock 09’:

Mustafa Akbar
Tamika Jones
Pure Light Seed
Noon:30
Asheru
GODISHEUS
The Fif
DJ Oji
Punk Rodgers
Bredren Sound System

Special MuStock “Honors” performance by the one and only:

ENGLISHMAN!

Head-Roc is a founding member of legendary D.C. hip-hop crew 3LG, WAMMIE award-winning solo MC, and frontman of the hip-hop/funk/rock group Godisheus.

A regular feature in which esteemed D.C. rapper Head-Roc shares what's on his mind.

Have you ever been Robert Foore? I know what you're saying: "Who the hairy peach is Robert Foore?"
Well, "Robert Foore" is the hypothetical construct that my band GODISHEUS has assigned to the experience of actually having been 'robbed before' as professional indie musicians struggling to earn a living here in our beloved Chocolate City. And that’s right–we wrote a song about it!

I invite you to take a listen to the in-process creation of the track “Robert Foore.” When we take it into the studio there are bound to be changes–some drastic, some subtle, but changes nonetheless. This is your chance to listen, download, rock, and feel the passion of the first version. Yeah y'all, Im-a take the sting off the lyrics in a few places because I am determined to see GODISHEUS be as hugely successful a rock star band as possible.

As soon as someone who can help make that happen hears the line, "Black rock stars on the grind for years/Trying to make a lil' Paper that’s what they fear, Yeah!/Don’t be afraid call out their name/So we can boycott the motherfuckers outta the game," … nuff said!

With some tweaking, I'm predicting this one could be a nationwide indie music anthem that all professional starving artists will identify with–especially people of culture rocking in culture-less environments! So, let’s have some fun with it, eh?
Okay, I realize at this point, some of you may be asking, "What is the reason behind producing a song about being Robert Foore–Heady, what are you talking about?" Well, funk it, I'm gonna say it: I don't know how it is in your hometown, but venues that fancy themselves as playing host to local live performances in D.C. really aren’t doing much to support those nights. Putting our local musicians' names in their City Paper ads isn’t enough. And no, posting on the various online social networks isn’t either.

Who designs fliers and prints them while at the plantation and on the Man's time and dime? Who beats the streets to place them ever so strategically in the appropriate areas at the indie music shops, coffee houses, bars, clubs, schools, community centers, and on streets signs and cars?

We do. And hey y'all, you know what? That's work!

Who shows up to play their hearts out, on a sunny or rainy day, to a crowd of 20 people who paid $10 to come hear great music? And more often than we like, we do all that funking promoting and only 20 people show up . And  even if only half of the 20 in the house are fans and the other are half walk-ins, so what?

They all come out for entertainment purposes, right? Eats, drinks, and beats, right? Venues got the eats and drink, and we have the beats! Now, the question is: How much is it worth to a venue to have the local professional musicians come in and supply the beats on an advertised night?

At the end of the day, all I’m saying is, I believe there should be a more equitable, symbiotic relationship between local live performance venues and the local musicians working to earn a living. I also think that it's time to address this issue here in Chocolate City particularly, because there are some great artists here who deserve more support from within the D.C. metro area entertainment establishment.
This is a conversation starter, so please go ahead and express your opinions. Let’s have some fun, shall we?

Head-Roc is a founding member of legendary D.C. hip-hop crew 3LG, WAMMIE award-winning solo MC, and frontman of the hip-hop/funk/rock group Godisheus. Godisheus performs tonight as part of the Tip the Band concert series at Asylum, 2471 18th Street, NW; and on Thursday, June 25 for Art Unplugged at Helix Lounge, 1430 Rhode Island Ave., NW.