Her work has long been eclipsed by her fame. But that may be starting to change. The 73-year-old Ono’s new album, “Yes, I’m a Witch,” features the cream of the indie music crop (Cat Power, the Flaming Lips, Antony of Antony and the Johnsons, and others) reinterpreting their favorite Ono music by creating new backing tracks for her original vocal performances. That musicians who came of age long after the Beatles broke up are responding to her music comes as vindication for Ono. “It just means that my work had power of its own,” she says. “It wasn’t overshadowed by John or the Beatles.”

Salon spoke with Ono about the new album, what her art might have been like if she hadn’t been so famous and whether one ever gets used to life in the public eye.

The people who collaborated with you on the new album are a pretty diverse list. Were they all people you felt some sort of musical kinship with?

These are indie music people, superstars of indie music. They’re very heavy people actually — heavy musicians, heavy songwriters. I’m very pleased that they even bothered to do it. Each of them are very strong people, strong bands, so it became a very strong CD.

Do you think there’s anything in the treatments they gave your music that changed how you saw your original compositions?

I was having fun with it. I just felt great. Because each time I felt there was something totally different. There was creativity that they put on. It just gave a new aspect of that song — which is very nice.

Was the eagerness of people to collaborate with you validating? For a long time your music was overshadowed.

Totally. Totally.

Do you think it has taken time for your work to be judged on its merits? Is that why now we’re seeing more musicians into your music?

It just means that my work had power of its own. It wasn’t overshadowed by John or the Beatles. And that’s great. My feeling is that I was an indie artist in those days single-handedly and now I’m just part of the indie trend. It’s great. Indie music is “it” now. It’s kind of a revolution to the music: 1980s, 1990s music was getting very sanitized; they were complying with the music industry. Music was getting more and more dead in a way. Now, because of the social climate that’s very severe, the artists are compelled to start being real. It’s really great that indie music is now. It’s future, but it’s now too.

Do you think, now, with the music world as fragmented as it is —

It’s very easy to say “fragmented as it is.” In the ’60s, people were still very protective of each field that they belonged to. Avant-garde artists didn’t know about rock or pop or jazz. And the jazz people of course didn’t want to know about any other music. They were all just kind of protecting their territory. Now it’s different. Fragmented is not the word for it. I think it’s very nice that everybody has everything at their disposal. They can use anything.

To what extent are you considering the form of the pop song when you write music? Or are you thinking more conceptually?

Well, when you listen to all the songs on the CD, you will notice that each one is covering a different genre. That’s what I like about it. I was always doing that. When you listen to my CDs you will notice that it’s not really covering just one genre. You can’t say “pop rock” or jazz or whatever. It’s all very different. I like it that way. I think it’s great that I’m doing [music] in many different styles. And also the idea of being an avant-garde artist and saying “I’m avant-garde and that’s it” or something — again, you’re limiting yourself with that label. When I was in the avant-garde, I was really there, but at the same time I was thinking, “Don’t take it too seriously, please.” I was moving away already.

Before you met John, you were already a well-known avant-garde artist. For the last 40 years, you’ve lived in the public eye to a certain extent.

I say I’m still living, please.

How does that affect your relationship to art? Your life is not what it was when you first started.

I don’t feel that way. I’m just me. I was always just me. I was starved during the Second World War and evacuated as a child to some country house. Well, I was still me. When I was living in a rather extravagant environment when I was a little girl — that was still me. In other words, the environment doesn’t really — it does affect me in a way. All different environments were educational, let’s put it that way. But it didn’t change me.

Your fame afforded you a large platform for your views. Do you think you would have been as compelled to engage in politics or social issues if you felt your platform wasn’t —

I was always engaged in politics. Please. When I was sitting in a bag or something and saying I was doing that for world peace in Trafalgar Square, I was not that famous. Well, I was a famous avant-garde artist, but it wasn’t really translated into world fame. I was known in London, and the journalists would come and say, “Is that Yoko?” because I’m in a bag or something standing in Trafalgar Square, and I would say, “Yes, yes, it’s me.” That was the extent of it. I was always political. But we are all political. We have to be because all of us are social animals. Of course we are political, just by not being political even. So I was political, yes.

So you don’t feel you would have been a different type of artist if you had not been so famous?

To the extent of, let’s say that I was an avant-garde artist when I was in London or something and made the “Bottoms” film [Ono's 1966 experimental film that consisted of close-ups of people's butts as they walked on a treadmill], and when I made the “Bottoms” film, all my avant-garde friends were up in arms saying “She sold out.”

You weren’t indie enough.

No, no, I wasn’t indie enough. Suddenly I wasn’t invited to dinner parties by avant-garde artists.

Which is probably not a bad thing.

Well, I don’t know. I felt very lonely because nobody was inviting me. And then John picked me up, so that’s OK. It was really like that. Every turn of my life. It’s literally like that. When I was a little girl I was in — where was I? — Long Island [where, as a child, Yoko lived from 1940 to 1941 before returning to Japan] or something like that, and the block that I was living in, it was OK. Everybody loved me and we all loved each other and there was kindness there. But two blocks away from that district and — surprise, surprise — kids were stoning me. Actually hurling stones at me. And the reason is because it was second anti-Asian time. All the films were showing and any enemy or any baddie was Asian. And then I went back to Japan and they were stoning me conceptually as someone who came back from a foreign land and my body movements or something were a little foreign. Then I was evacuated to the country [in 1945, after Tokyo had been fire-bombed] and the country kids stoned me because I was a city kid — actually throwing stones at me. The thing is, it’s a very strange life, but each time I was just me.

Just recently there was some negative stuff about your personal life that came to light. [Ono's chauffeur was arrested for allegedly trying to blackmail her with private conversations he had recorded.]

Don’t say “came to light.” The point is that there wasn’t anything I was hiding. It was somebody making something up.

That’s the wrong choice of words, but that occurred. Then today I was walking by a comic book store and they had 30 John Lennon dolls in the window.

Oh my God. I didn’t know that there were dolls like that.

Do you ever normalize that level of public interest in your life?

Normalize that? I’m just being normal. A normal woman. Well, I don’t know what a normal woman is, but I’m a woman and I’m Yoko and I’ve never changed that. It’s not like I was insisting on being this one. But it feels like I’m trying to sort of expand my views and try to do something that’s new and that’s totally out of Yoko Ono, that’s distant from what Yoko is. But then in hindsight that’s very Yoko. I can’t escape from myself it seems. And that’s OK. I don’t know what is normal. Do you know what is normal? You just grab one person out on the street and start asking what kind of life this person has, you’ll be surprised that each one is very, very strange, you know what I mean?

What are your future plans?

Do you know what your future plan is? I don’t have any goals. The fact is that maybe that was my strength — I’m always living in “now” and hopefully don’t get too bothered by the past. I don’t think about what’s going to happen in the future. The future for me is an open book. That’s how I was always. I don’t have a goal. I don’t limit myself to a goal.

Tonight’s episode of “Duets” then, in which the rules are largely, if not entirely explained, effectively works as a do-over. Each week, the performances are graded — anonymously — by the superstars, and it is their feedback that determines the amateurs’ chart standings. (There is a moment in tonight’s episode when the first performer of the night is told her place on the chart. Anti-climactically, it’s the top one, because she is the only person yet to have sung. “Duets” is still working out its showmanship kinks.) Starting next week, the two contestants at the bottom of the chart will have to face-off in an a cappella duel (no trapeze sadly), and the loser will be kicked off the show. In six weeks’ time, “Duets” will go live and the audience will begin to vote on the outcome of each episode. (As to how the victor of the duel will be determined or what the ultimate winner will win, see the “not entirely explained” clause above.)

When written out, these rules may sound boring enough to seem like the sort of yawn-inducing information a TV show could reasonably hope to spare its audience. But they matter. On all the other major singing competitions, after the winnowing down of the audition rounds — those dark weeks when it becomes clear that America lacks for neither competent singers capable of melisma or the disturbed and delusional — it’s the audience that decides who stays and who goes. On “Duets,” for the next six weeks four relatively articulate performing professionals will be the deciders. “Duets” is temporarily putting off the rowdy, democratic voting process, and its tendency to favor sleepy-eyed white boys, to practice the more aristocratic style of expert judgment found on Bravo’s competition shows. “Duets” may be ABC’s answer to “Idol” and “X Factor,” but in rare moments, it’s also the singing version of “Project Runway.”

Though the four judges are too nice (they start and finish each comment with something like, “I love you,” or “you’re great”) they are also informed. They give feedback — the singing is pitchy, too perfect, too scared, the mic is too close, the dancing is bad. “Duets” does not embrace the sort of serious crit sessions seen on “Runway,” “Top Chef” or “Work of Art,” and it would be much better if it did. The judges seem up to it — not only does Kelly Clarkson effortlessly remain more likeable than anyone who has ever appeared on reality TV, I suspect that there is a Nina Garcia lurking inside of John Legend, whose high standards and perfectionism are belied only by the goofy, childish, wide-eyed expression he gets whenever he is watching a performance he enjoys. Real criticism would also rescue the show from its current in-between state, in which it drags on like any bloated musical performance show, but without the energy or stakes of one since, thus far, “Duets” is pre-taped.

The judges’ participation adds a nice new wrinkle to the format. Though it may mean that we will never get to know the amateur contestants well (this show could be called “Singing with the Stars,” despite the reversal of expertise), it should fuel some future sharp exchanges. Kelly Clarkson may not want to lay in to a reality TV contestant, but she can feel no such compunction about digging in to the over-confident Robin Thicke.

That the judges are performers delivers the same message –albeit at a much softer, less-compelling volume — as those Bravo shows: Talent is great, but greatness is hard, hard work. Robin Thicke may seem most concerned with making himself appear sexy, and Jennifer Nettles may not be able to contain her inner cheeseball, but they, like Legend and Clarkson, are professionals in the most complimentary sense of the word: reliable, knowledgeable, focused, dedicated. What they demand of their duet partners is surely nothing compared to what they demand of themselves. Clarkson, especially, is the embodiment of this. Exactly a decade ago she won the first season of “American Idol,” and she is now back on reality TV mentoring the two least polished, most insecure contestants on “Duets.” She chose them, she says, because they both reminded her of herself. She may be right, but they have lots and lots of work to do before before I see it.

In this sense, the new music video for Kanye West and Jay-Z’s track “No Church in the Wild” is the best actual riot porn I’ve ever seen. The video, directed by Romain Gavras, is five minutes of a graphic, fiery and entirely staged riot. It opens with a young man lighting a Molotov cocktail and lobbing it at a line of riot cops as masked comrades behind him raise their arms in support. Filmed in Prague, but presented as a non-specific yet decidedly European urban battleground, riot cops on horses violently beat the masked crowd, who fight back with fire and fists while Greco-Roman statues look on. Were it not for the surprising appearance of a chained elephant amidst the fray in the video’s final frames, the footage looks (almost) like something straight out of Athen’s Syntagma Square. Jay-Z and Kanye don’t feature in the video at all, which makes artistic sense: I’d be more surprised to see Hove in a riot than a two-tonne elephant.

So what to make of riot porn brought to you by those hip-hop moguls and emblems of excess Jay-Z and Kanye? As I noted last year when purveyors of eau-de-date-rape Axe came out with a scent called “Anarchy”, the depiction of anarchism and riotousness in commercial ventures are at least “a nod to the popularity of dissent.” Gavras, who directed the “No Church in the Wild” video, has long riffed on the idea of social upheaval and fierce state repression in his work. His short film for rapper M.I.A’s “Born Free” told the story of U.S. military forces brutally rounding up and executing ginger-haired civilians. The message was lost on no one, and the video was banned from YouTube. Gavras offers a stylized, gritty and startling depiction of social rupture; that his brutal vision of a street riot is deemed popular and consumable enough to accompany some the most mainstream of music is worth consideration. It’s not just anarchists getting off on riot porn anymore.

This isn’t entirely new: There was the Levi’s jeans commercial last year that featured a young man in Levi’s squaring up to riot cops under the tagline, “Now is our time.” The ad was pulled from British television in light of the summer riots in London. The video for Kanye and Jay-Z’s anthem with Rihanna, “Run This Town,” also featured gangs in black bandanas — but it was a far cry in terms of realism and police-on-protester brutality from the riot scenes in “No Church in the Wild.”

My friends at the New Inquiry magazine, Malcolm Harris and Max Fox, have argued that riot imagery and revolutionary calls in products can serve as genuine threats to capitalism, even though they may be expensive ad campaigns or music videos. In a published dialogue between the two (which is well worth reading in its entirety) Fox and Harris agree that subway ads and select lyrics from pop songs are ample materials for would-be rioters. So, while some might see the depiction and glorification of rioters in a hip-hop video as exemplifying capitalist recuperation (even Molotov cocktails can help sell records now!), Harris and Fox suggest that these images can be reappropriated by anti-capitalists — after all, the accessibility of a music video featuring a riot suggests, at the very least, that this sort of dissent resonates. Indeed, Harris quipped on Twitter today, linking to the Jay-Z and Kanye video, “Oh hey, capital, are you sure that’s such a good idea?” and continued to joke about whether the hip-hop artists endorsed black bloc anarchism. We don’t need to make new anti-capitalist propaganda; Kanye and Jay-Z can have Romain Gavras do it while they accidentally offer up revolutionary slogans in their otherwise problematic lyrics. The bridge for “No Church in the Wild”, sung by Frank Ocean, is an insurrectionist two-liner: “I live by you, desire; I stand by you, walk through the fire.”

Of course, none of this is to say Kanye or Jay-Z should be praised as agents for revolutionary change. Jay-Z, aside from celebrating a life of unadulterated excess, is a key voice behind developer Bruce Ratner’s controversial Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, which has been widely criticized for pushing people out of their homes and failing to provide affordable housing and jobs. Meanwhile, Kanye is a famous jerk; he walked by Zuccotti Park once to check out Occupy Wall Street last year, but, again, he is mainly a jerk.

And, it’s worth noting, that the way in which the rioters are glorified in the music video is problematic. I question Gavras’s decision to only feature male rioters. It’s a common criticism of black bloc tactics that they alienate women and perpetuate a masculinist expression of anarchist street actions. Problems of patriarchy in radical scenes certainly abound — indeed it’s an issue too huge to really address here. Suffice to say, however, women across the world who have fought riot police in the streets might take issue with Gavras’s ubiquitously male scene.

But what strikes me the most, and what might make a lot of anarchists and other proponents of street confrontation feel pretty smug, is that Kanye and Jay-Z have the resources to produce pretty much any kind of spectacular music video imaginable. And they opted for riot porn.

Watch the “No Church in the Wild” video below:

What I remember is when my parents bought that brand-new album “Abbey Road” and played this LP on their brand-new faux-antique console hi-fi, right about when they were separating. That had some impact. I can remember feeling like “Golden Slumbers,” McCartney’s brief, melancholy lullaby from that Beatles album, was a lullaby for me in a time when I could have used one.

Well, now I am a dad myself, and I don’t want to make my daughter have to listen to stuff she doesn’t want to listen to (though, in fact, I have tried to sneak Sun Ra onto the stereo in her presence). I don’t want her to feel that music is an intergenerational chore. I would do almost anything to make sure that music, for her, is something to love.

And yet: Nothing makes me happier than when my daughter does take to a particular piece of music on her own. Recently, e.g., she became obsessed with a very excellent tune by the Pogues. It was “If I Should Fall From Grace With God,” which my daughter refers to as the loud-and-fast song. As in: Papa, play the loud-and-fast song. No delight is more delightful than dancing to the loud-and-fast song with a 3-year-old specialist in the pogo.

And yet, sometimes, it must be observed, the sadder songs are the more genuine songs, or: there are times when the sadder songs come into focus, or: perhaps affirmation in a song is a thing of which one should always be suspect. And so there was a day recently that I was spending the day with my daughter, just me and her, and after all the usual pastimes had been exhausted I said, at last, falling into the trap of so many dads, We still have a few hours here, how about we listen to some music?

I put on “Let It Be.” By the Beatles. In fact, I put on the song “Let It Be.” And I’m talking about the version from “Let It Be,” the Phil Spector production, not the George Martin-produced single that you can find easily, not the “Let It Be … Naked” version, which I actually love, too, because I like hearing how guitarist George Harrison thought about what he did on the various recordings. I played my daughter the “Let It Be” I knew best, and which had bludgeoned me much as “Golden Slumbers” had, back in the day, when things at home were coming unglued.

I played the song for her while I was making her a sandwich. It’s really unusual for a 3-year-old to stop moving, unless she’s asleep, and my daughter was not asleep. But she was pretty still. She was transported by the song. Look, you have heard this song 10,000 times, I have heard this song 10,000 times, we are somewhat impervious to the charms of this song, even though it’s a very beautiful song, but when you play it for someone else, in this case someone else who has never heard the song at all, you get back something lost, the original emotional freight of the thing. And with “Let It Be,” which is apparently about a dream Paul had about his dead mother, and, self-evidently, also about the Beatles breaking up, it is hard not to feel that the title, the refrain, is sung with real insight, a real understanding about what it feels like to need the sentiment expressed therein. There really is a lot of misunderstanding and disagreement and dispute in the world, all of it essentially pointless, our time here is so brief, and it would be better if we could all just …

Now, when you’re 3, a sentiment of this kind has maximum impact when repeated, but it’s repeated a lot here, in the song, over and over, and my daughter picked it up quick, the theme, but not so quick that she didn’t want to hear the song again, and so I played the song again, and finished making the sandwich, and then she wanted to hear it again, and I played it again, and then again, and on the third or fourth repetition, that plaintive, moving quality had begun to empty out again, and I was just hearing the song I had heard 10,000 times, and then my daughter asked for it a few more times. We played it six times. That first day. And we have played it more times since. Papa, play that “Let It Be” song.

What’s it like to have resounding success in the dad-playing-music-for-the-kid sweepstakes? I am not sure I want my daughter feeling like she has to like something just because I played it for her. I would like to provide an opportunity, make the music available, then step out of the process, so that she’s absolutely liberated, so that she has self-determination in the matter of her musical interests. That way she can die for Uncle Rock or Dan Zanes if that is what she wants. But I can’t deny, and especially not here, the sense of pride that I feel when she likes something that I too liked, once upon a time in the suburbs. I hope she can do the same when she’s a parent. Maybe one day she’ll share with me things she likes with the same enthusiasm. And maybe one day I can sell her on Sun Ra.