It goes without saying that the majority of Americans who know who Chief Justice William Rehnquist is, probably don’t know who Nick Cannon is. But as Rehnquist considers retiring from the Supreme Court, it’s a good bet that many more folk will suddenly be introduced to Cannon
For the uninitiated Nick Cannon is a twenty-something rapper-actor, who first came to fame as a bit player on the Nickelodeon “tween” series All That. Most recently Cannon has had starring roles in John Hughes like “black face” fare such as Love Don’t Cost a Thing (2003) and Charles Stone III’s directorial debut Drumline (2002). Cannon has attracted attention lately for his new song and video “Can I Live?” in which he thanks his mother for not aborting him. Not surprisingly the song has been celebrated by pro-life/anti-abortion groups. For his part Cannon is non-committal about the song’s political sentiments—he ain’t trying to judge nobody—and I take him at his word on that.
But in an era when popular culture is increasingly little more than unadulterated ideology and network news can be better described as “ideo-tainment” one has to wonder what kind of impact “Can I Live?” is gonna have as the pressure increases to repeal Roe vs. Wade—particularly as Rehnquist’s retirement could push the court further to the Right. For folk who usually don’t watch Fox News and wouldn’t know William F. Buckley if he knocked on their door, Cannon’s video can become an incredible influence—much like the façades of down-low brothers and gay marriage became the wedge issues that Carl Rove exploited in the 2004 Presidential election.
For the record, my own politics are pro-choice—a product of my pro-feminist sensibilities, though I am deeply affected by arguments from my feminist sister home girl Joan Morgan and others about the parental rights of fathers, in the pro-choice debate. As the parent of two adoptive daughters, I am also touched by Cannon’s video—what if the birth mothers of my daughters had choose the path of abortion?
These are not easy issues, hence that passion that erupts on all sides, but my hope is that Cannon’s lovesong to his mom, doesn’t become an unwitting accomplice to those who don’t really have the best interests of women and black folk in mind.
Monday, June 27, 2005
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Don’t Call It a Comeback
Great, great piece on Michael Jackson by Greg Tate in Sunday’s Newsweek. Tate has always been outside the box in his criticism—it’s the reason he’s never had the visibility of Nelson George. These days though, it’s like he’s goin’ through a renaissance, harking back to the pieces he did for the Voice in the late 1980s and 1990s, most of which was collected in Flyboy in the Buttermilk. A lot of the younger cats didn’t have the chance to read Tate during those days, so it’s great that he’s still putting it down in major way. Check the flow:
Damn.
***
Charlie Braxton, who is one of my favorite journalists, has a funny, but ultimately very sad piece on Flava Flav and VH-1’s Strange Love. For those of you who don’t know Charlie’s work (shame on you, btw), check out the liner notes to The Best of Pete Rock and CL Smooth—worthy of a Grammy nomination in my mind.
***
I’ve been loving NPR’s Fresh Air, simply because the host Terry Gross
has opened the door wide open for the kinds of folk who come through: Ice Cube, RZA, Don Byron, to name a few. Yesterday Gross spent some time with Hank Jones—pianist and brother of Thad and Elvin. He’s 86 and like my hero John Hope Franklin, I hope I have that kind of energy and fire when I’m that age.
what if Jackson's alleged pursuit of forbidden man-boy love, and even his artificially induced albinism, were not simply pedophilia and African-American self-loathing? What if all of this has really been Jackson's form of black rage turned inside out for the world to see - his way of showing white America the monster he thought a black man had to become to share in their American dream? After all, how was Jackson supposed to predict gangsta rap and the revelation of its rewarding racial paradox: that there was as much love and money in the heartland for a prancing, predatory-acting black man who pretended to be armed to the teeth as there was for one who pretended to be defanged?
Damn.
***
Charlie Braxton, who is one of my favorite journalists, has a funny, but ultimately very sad piece on Flava Flav and VH-1’s Strange Love. For those of you who don’t know Charlie’s work (shame on you, btw), check out the liner notes to The Best of Pete Rock and CL Smooth—worthy of a Grammy nomination in my mind.
***
I’ve been loving NPR’s Fresh Air, simply because the host Terry Gross
has opened the door wide open for the kinds of folk who come through: Ice Cube, RZA, Don Byron, to name a few. Yesterday Gross spent some time with Hank Jones—pianist and brother of Thad and Elvin. He’s 86 and like my hero John Hope Franklin, I hope I have that kind of energy and fire when I’m that age.
Monday, June 20, 2005
Summer Book Roundup, Volume One
One of the things I hope to do with NewBlackMan: The Blog, is to give some shine to the scholars, critics, and artists who putting in down in major way. This week I want to shout some folk doing their thang, thang in the literary world
Daphne Brooks is one of my favorite people and also one of the most brilliant people I know. Her long awaited book about Jeff Buckley’s Grace has just been published by Continuum as part of their 33 1/3 Series (book length studies of important pop albums). Anybody who has heard Daphne talk passionately about Buckley and the need for a black feminist perspective in Rock criticism (which this book is), knows that she can bring her own style of crunchy granola funk. Now hopefully we’ll see her “big” book--Bodies in Dissent: Performing Race, Gender, and Nation in the Trans-Atlantic Imaginary-- in the world soon, also.
When Judith Halberstam dropped her brilliant Female Masculinity
back in 1998, it opened up a whole new spaces to theorize about gender and sexuality. I was indeed enraptured listening to Judith talk about Big Mama Thornton within the context of female masculinity during last year’s Experience Music Project (EMP) Pop Conference. Judith has just published a new book, In A Queer Time And Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (NYU Press). According to Popmatters reviewer N.A. Hayes, “This small seductive book pours warmth as Halberstam confesses and connects movements of pop culture and high art to a deeper understanding of the potentials of the body.”
Speaking of a fabulously brilliant women, Maureen Mahon will be at Harlem’s Hue-Man Book Store and Café on Thursday June 23, 2005. I’ve already given Maureen major propers for her book Right to Rock: The Black Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race and was fortunate to have her spend some time with my graduate students in our seminar on Post-Black Culture.
Venus In The Dark: Blackness And Beauty In Popular Culture, Janell Hobson’s new book on black female bodies in popular culture will be published late next month. A brilliant book throughout, the chapter “The "Batty" Politic: Toward an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body” is worth the price of admission alone. Janell’s voice is a great addition to the on-going debates about the policing of black female sexuality.
For one year S. Craig Watkins and I, were to the University of Texas at Austin, what Chauncey Billups and Rip Hamilton are to the Detroit Pistons. Watkins been putting it down in the lone star state for a bit and now he’s back with a follow-up to his vital Representing: Hip Hop Culture and the Production of Black Cinema (still one of the top five scholarly studies of hip-hop). According to Robin D.G. Kelley, Watkins’ Hip-Hop Matters: Politics, Popular Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement is “A fantastic voyage into a culture that has defined a generation.”
Daphne Brooks is one of my favorite people and also one of the most brilliant people I know. Her long awaited book about Jeff Buckley’s Grace has just been published by Continuum as part of their 33 1/3 Series (book length studies of important pop albums). Anybody who has heard Daphne talk passionately about Buckley and the need for a black feminist perspective in Rock criticism (which this book is), knows that she can bring her own style of crunchy granola funk. Now hopefully we’ll see her “big” book--Bodies in Dissent: Performing Race, Gender, and Nation in the Trans-Atlantic Imaginary-- in the world soon, also.
When Judith Halberstam dropped her brilliant Female Masculinity
back in 1998, it opened up a whole new spaces to theorize about gender and sexuality. I was indeed enraptured listening to Judith talk about Big Mama Thornton within the context of female masculinity during last year’s Experience Music Project (EMP) Pop Conference. Judith has just published a new book, In A Queer Time And Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (NYU Press). According to Popmatters reviewer N.A. Hayes, “This small seductive book pours warmth as Halberstam confesses and connects movements of pop culture and high art to a deeper understanding of the potentials of the body.”
Speaking of a fabulously brilliant women, Maureen Mahon will be at Harlem’s Hue-Man Book Store and Café on Thursday June 23, 2005. I’ve already given Maureen major propers for her book Right to Rock: The Black Coalition and the Cultural Politics of Race and was fortunate to have her spend some time with my graduate students in our seminar on Post-Black Culture.
Venus In The Dark: Blackness And Beauty In Popular Culture, Janell Hobson’s new book on black female bodies in popular culture will be published late next month. A brilliant book throughout, the chapter “The "Batty" Politic: Toward an Aesthetic of the Black Female Body” is worth the price of admission alone. Janell’s voice is a great addition to the on-going debates about the policing of black female sexuality.
For one year S. Craig Watkins and I, were to the University of Texas at Austin, what Chauncey Billups and Rip Hamilton are to the Detroit Pistons. Watkins been putting it down in the lone star state for a bit and now he’s back with a follow-up to his vital Representing: Hip Hop Culture and the Production of Black Cinema (still one of the top five scholarly studies of hip-hop). According to Robin D.G. Kelley, Watkins’ Hip-Hop Matters: Politics, Popular Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement is “A fantastic voyage into a culture that has defined a generation.”
Friday, June 17, 2005
A Father's Day Love Song
Dance For My Father
Two years ago my mother asked for one of those favors, that you really don't want to do, but you know you ought to, particularly when you're an only child. For the last seven years, my father has suffered from a degenerative disease that has left him paralyzed from his waist down and with limited movement of his arms. Though my father has nursing assistants with him for up to ten hours a day, his health has also paralyzed my mother by limiting the amount of time she's able to spend outside of their home to trips to the store or visits to the doctor. Thus I really couldn't deny her request that I make the drive from upstate New York to spend the day with my father in their Bronx apartment — the same apartment I grew up in — while she took a trip to Baltimore Harbor to spend the day with some family and friends.
As a kid my father and I were reasonably close. Willie Mays was his favorite ball player, so when Mays was traded to the New York Mets in 1972, Mays became my favorite ballplayer and I've been a Mets fan ever since. But as I ventured into adulthood I can't say that our conversations ever broached subjects beyond sports, music and the more than occasional query about how much money I make. Understanding that I'd be spending some ten hours with homie, I copped some music for the day — The Best of The Dixie Hummingbirds, The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi
and The Mighty Clouds of Joy— and though we talked very little that afternoon, my father shared with me a lifetime of joys, pains, and hopes simply in the way he listened to the music. At one point as we sat there, he stopped me mid-sentence, so that he could hear Archie Brownlee, the original lead-singer of the Blind Boys of Mississippi, sing a riff. It was a reminder that with my father, it has always been about the music.
Indeed my earliest memory of hearing music came with my father sitting shotgun in my uncle's car while Junior Walker's "What Does it Take (To Win Your Love)" blared on the radio. That would have been the summer of 1969 and I would have been three. Most of the time that I spent with my father as a child was on Sunday mornings, his day of "rest" — he worked 60-hours a week, Monday through Saturday in Brooklyn — and I had to share him on those mornings with his music. Thus by the age of eight-years-old, I had already acquired a taste for black gospel quartets like the Highway QCs, The Swanee Quartet, The Pilgrim Jubilee Singers, The Soul Stirrers and of course Joe Ligon and The Mighty Clouds of Joy.
While my father clearly dug all of the quartet groups, including the Sam Cooke version of the Soul Stirrers, by far his favorite was The Mighty Clouds of Joy. It resulted in much of the Sunday music being devoted to them, most notably their recording In Concert: Live at the Music Hall (1966) which was recorded in Houston, TX. Founded in 1960 in Los Angeles, The Mighty Clouds of Joy quickly became the standard bearers of the quartet tradition, in large part because of their ability to bridge the gap between the black secular world and the black sacred one. That was undoubtedly part of the appeal they held for my father, who was never a religious man and who, as I recall, has been in a church less than ten times in my lifetime. Within the tradition of black vocal groups the legend of the Mighty Clouds of Joy rivals that of The Temptations and The Dells, and during their peak in the late '60s and '70s, The Mighty Clouds even shared a tailor with The Temptations. Their lead singer Joe Ligon, still with the group after 44 years, belongs to a small group of black male singers whose voices should be regarded as national treasurers — Marvin Gaye, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Donny Hathaway, Sam Cooke, Al Green, Marvin Junior, Teddy Pendergrass, Walter Jackson, Jerry Butler, Luther Vandross, Russell Thompkins, Jr., David Ruffin and Jeffrey Osbourne.
I've listened to Live at the Concert Hall hundreds of times, many of those times while sitting on the living room floor, not far from my entranced father. And of course this was back in the day when folks didn't have turntables, but record players, so my father often let that first side of Live at the Concert Hall play over and again. He listened to the first side so much so that when I hear that album today, it recalls a singular memory in my mind — that of my father getting up to do his version of the "holy dance." Never the most agile of men (something he definitely passed on to his son) my father's version of the "holy-dance" — a one-footed stomping affair, with almost Frankenstein-like finger-snapping gestures — was barely different than the dance he did while listening to Jimmie Smith, B. B. King and Jimmy McGriff (his listening pleasures, once he put the quartets to rest). Though most of the time he listened to his music in a sorta gangsta-lean, with a cigarette dangling from the ashtray, whenever The Mighty Clouds sang "I Came to Jesus" he was up on his feet. Years later, I can still hear the searing falsetto of one of the Mighty Cloud members —"I came…I came…I came" — while Little Joe begins to hoot and holler — "when I get happy, I do the Holy Thing! Hey!"
With my father in his current state, I think often about The Mighty Clouds of Joy and Joe Ligon singing "I Came to Jesus." The memories are bittersweet. Those days watching my father, my hero, were some of the best times of my childhood — what son didn't love the times he could share the world with his father? But I also realize that my father will never again dance to the Mighty Clouds of Joy, and that my daughters will never fully understand where their father gets his sense of rhythm from. Every once in awhile when I'm by myself, I'll put on Live at the Concert Hall and when "I Came to Jesus" comes on, I get up and dance — for my father.
* Orignally Published at Africana.com (June 2004)
***
Also check out my NPR Commentary, about my dad and his Record Collection.
Two years ago my mother asked for one of those favors, that you really don't want to do, but you know you ought to, particularly when you're an only child. For the last seven years, my father has suffered from a degenerative disease that has left him paralyzed from his waist down and with limited movement of his arms. Though my father has nursing assistants with him for up to ten hours a day, his health has also paralyzed my mother by limiting the amount of time she's able to spend outside of their home to trips to the store or visits to the doctor. Thus I really couldn't deny her request that I make the drive from upstate New York to spend the day with my father in their Bronx apartment — the same apartment I grew up in — while she took a trip to Baltimore Harbor to spend the day with some family and friends.
As a kid my father and I were reasonably close. Willie Mays was his favorite ball player, so when Mays was traded to the New York Mets in 1972, Mays became my favorite ballplayer and I've been a Mets fan ever since. But as I ventured into adulthood I can't say that our conversations ever broached subjects beyond sports, music and the more than occasional query about how much money I make. Understanding that I'd be spending some ten hours with homie, I copped some music for the day — The Best of The Dixie Hummingbirds, The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi
and The Mighty Clouds of Joy— and though we talked very little that afternoon, my father shared with me a lifetime of joys, pains, and hopes simply in the way he listened to the music. At one point as we sat there, he stopped me mid-sentence, so that he could hear Archie Brownlee, the original lead-singer of the Blind Boys of Mississippi, sing a riff. It was a reminder that with my father, it has always been about the music.
Indeed my earliest memory of hearing music came with my father sitting shotgun in my uncle's car while Junior Walker's "What Does it Take (To Win Your Love)" blared on the radio. That would have been the summer of 1969 and I would have been three. Most of the time that I spent with my father as a child was on Sunday mornings, his day of "rest" — he worked 60-hours a week, Monday through Saturday in Brooklyn — and I had to share him on those mornings with his music. Thus by the age of eight-years-old, I had already acquired a taste for black gospel quartets like the Highway QCs, The Swanee Quartet, The Pilgrim Jubilee Singers, The Soul Stirrers and of course Joe Ligon and The Mighty Clouds of Joy.
While my father clearly dug all of the quartet groups, including the Sam Cooke version of the Soul Stirrers, by far his favorite was The Mighty Clouds of Joy. It resulted in much of the Sunday music being devoted to them, most notably their recording In Concert: Live at the Music Hall (1966) which was recorded in Houston, TX. Founded in 1960 in Los Angeles, The Mighty Clouds of Joy quickly became the standard bearers of the quartet tradition, in large part because of their ability to bridge the gap between the black secular world and the black sacred one. That was undoubtedly part of the appeal they held for my father, who was never a religious man and who, as I recall, has been in a church less than ten times in my lifetime. Within the tradition of black vocal groups the legend of the Mighty Clouds of Joy rivals that of The Temptations and The Dells, and during their peak in the late '60s and '70s, The Mighty Clouds even shared a tailor with The Temptations. Their lead singer Joe Ligon, still with the group after 44 years, belongs to a small group of black male singers whose voices should be regarded as national treasurers — Marvin Gaye, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Donny Hathaway, Sam Cooke, Al Green, Marvin Junior, Teddy Pendergrass, Walter Jackson, Jerry Butler, Luther Vandross, Russell Thompkins, Jr., David Ruffin and Jeffrey Osbourne.
I've listened to Live at the Concert Hall hundreds of times, many of those times while sitting on the living room floor, not far from my entranced father. And of course this was back in the day when folks didn't have turntables, but record players, so my father often let that first side of Live at the Concert Hall play over and again. He listened to the first side so much so that when I hear that album today, it recalls a singular memory in my mind — that of my father getting up to do his version of the "holy dance." Never the most agile of men (something he definitely passed on to his son) my father's version of the "holy-dance" — a one-footed stomping affair, with almost Frankenstein-like finger-snapping gestures — was barely different than the dance he did while listening to Jimmie Smith, B. B. King and Jimmy McGriff (his listening pleasures, once he put the quartets to rest). Though most of the time he listened to his music in a sorta gangsta-lean, with a cigarette dangling from the ashtray, whenever The Mighty Clouds sang "I Came to Jesus" he was up on his feet. Years later, I can still hear the searing falsetto of one of the Mighty Cloud members —"I came…I came…I came" — while Little Joe begins to hoot and holler — "when I get happy, I do the Holy Thing! Hey!"
With my father in his current state, I think often about The Mighty Clouds of Joy and Joe Ligon singing "I Came to Jesus." The memories are bittersweet. Those days watching my father, my hero, were some of the best times of my childhood — what son didn't love the times he could share the world with his father? But I also realize that my father will never again dance to the Mighty Clouds of Joy, and that my daughters will never fully understand where their father gets his sense of rhythm from. Every once in awhile when I'm by myself, I'll put on Live at the Concert Hall and when "I Came to Jesus" comes on, I get up and dance — for my father.
* Orignally Published at Africana.com (June 2004)
***
Also check out my NPR Commentary, about my dad and his Record Collection.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Can’t Knock the Hustle; MAN Unplugged with MED
I been getting my hustle on. Though I had been largely silent about the Michael Jackson drama, I jumped at the opportunity to join the fray when the Los Angeles Times asked a bother to write an op-ed piece about the role of race in MJ’s trial. Of course an op-ed piece is perhaps the worse forum to really get your flow on—anything that runs at a length at 700 words is gonna lose all sense of nuance. Nevertheless folk came at me from all sides, from the usual folk accusing me of playing “the race card” to the “black” folk who thought I was too critical of MJ. While I’m willing to give anybody the room to argue that on face value (no pun intended), MJ has transcended race, I am adamant that the “race” of the children who were his accusers does matter.
In my mind there’s simply no way, there is a media frenzy about MJ’s case had the accusers been black. The national mainstream media has little interest in the travails of little black girls and boys—they are not a bankable commodity in the battle for news ratings. Eugene Kane , for instance, has written at length about the case Of Alexis Patterson, who was abducted in May of 2002—a full month before the abduction of Elizabeth Smart, who became a national obsessions after her disappearance. It would be still two weeks AFTER Smart’s adduction that the national mainstream media finally interviewed Patterson’s mother. Three years later, she is still missing.
In another example, do we really think that R. Kelly would have time to be “In the Closet” had he been caught on tape with a 13-year-old white girl? More like he’d be singing “in a jail cell”.
But back to the hustle. The same day that my LA Times Op-Ed hit, part two of my three-part examination of R&B ran at Popmatters. Folk who I deeply respect, like O-Dub and Jeff Chang, have recently commented on my prolific output and damn if there ain’t folk out there in the field who think that I don’t write my own shit or that the shit I write ain’t all that good. Cool. I function in the marketplace of ideas, be it on-line journals like Seeingblack.com or the world of scholarly publishing, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t also promoting the “newblackman” behind those ideas. I am simply committed to getting my flow on.
It is of course the lesson that I have taken from my man MED—who with his new book on Cosby, has been like the “king of all media”. Some of the old-heads in the field—and quite a few young ones--are critical of MED cause he ain’t really writing for them—he ain’t really furthering the cause of “true” black scholarly production. And they might be right, but that’s never been MED’s calling. This is a cat that’s writing for the public—a public intellectual in the best sense of the word, this side of Ariel Dorfman. And true indeed MED is a straight hustla—promoting the man behind the ideas—but his work is not a hustle, and there is a difference.
The thing that ultimately sold me on the cat’s importance was his Tupac book which is , in my mind, somewhere in the middle of the MED oeuvre, in terms of quality—His King book is the real gem. But the chapter in the ‘Pac book on 'Pac's reading list was a revelation, especially when I started to run into younger cats and students, who began to read the books that Tupac read after reading Dyson’s book. Now I love me some hard-core theorists like Hortense Spillers and Paul Gilroy and love even more some passionate and politically committed scholars like Robin D.G. Kelley, Joy James and my Duke homie Charles M. Payne, but the shortie on the block ain’t checking them out. We need to give cats like MED, The Notorious Ph.D. (Todd Boyd), bell hooks, Kristal Brent Zook some credit for reaching cats, who don’t give a damn about the Ph.D.s at the end of our names.
Anyway, I got unplugged with MED for AOL BlackVoices, which given the venue, meant we really couldn’t get all that unplugged--in terms of length and quite frankly, depth. Can’t Knock the Hustle.
In my mind there’s simply no way, there is a media frenzy about MJ’s case had the accusers been black. The national mainstream media has little interest in the travails of little black girls and boys—they are not a bankable commodity in the battle for news ratings. Eugene Kane , for instance, has written at length about the case Of Alexis Patterson, who was abducted in May of 2002—a full month before the abduction of Elizabeth Smart, who became a national obsessions after her disappearance. It would be still two weeks AFTER Smart’s adduction that the national mainstream media finally interviewed Patterson’s mother. Three years later, she is still missing.
In another example, do we really think that R. Kelly would have time to be “In the Closet” had he been caught on tape with a 13-year-old white girl? More like he’d be singing “in a jail cell”.
But back to the hustle. The same day that my LA Times Op-Ed hit, part two of my three-part examination of R&B ran at Popmatters. Folk who I deeply respect, like O-Dub and Jeff Chang, have recently commented on my prolific output and damn if there ain’t folk out there in the field who think that I don’t write my own shit or that the shit I write ain’t all that good. Cool. I function in the marketplace of ideas, be it on-line journals like Seeingblack.com or the world of scholarly publishing, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t also promoting the “newblackman” behind those ideas. I am simply committed to getting my flow on.
It is of course the lesson that I have taken from my man MED—who with his new book on Cosby, has been like the “king of all media”. Some of the old-heads in the field—and quite a few young ones--are critical of MED cause he ain’t really writing for them—he ain’t really furthering the cause of “true” black scholarly production. And they might be right, but that’s never been MED’s calling. This is a cat that’s writing for the public—a public intellectual in the best sense of the word, this side of Ariel Dorfman. And true indeed MED is a straight hustla—promoting the man behind the ideas—but his work is not a hustle, and there is a difference.
The thing that ultimately sold me on the cat’s importance was his Tupac book which is , in my mind, somewhere in the middle of the MED oeuvre, in terms of quality—His King book is the real gem. But the chapter in the ‘Pac book on 'Pac's reading list was a revelation, especially when I started to run into younger cats and students, who began to read the books that Tupac read after reading Dyson’s book. Now I love me some hard-core theorists like Hortense Spillers and Paul Gilroy and love even more some passionate and politically committed scholars like Robin D.G. Kelley, Joy James and my Duke homie Charles M. Payne, but the shortie on the block ain’t checking them out. We need to give cats like MED, The Notorious Ph.D. (Todd Boyd), bell hooks, Kristal Brent Zook some credit for reaching cats, who don’t give a damn about the Ph.D.s at the end of our names.
Anyway, I got unplugged with MED for AOL BlackVoices, which given the venue, meant we really couldn’t get all that unplugged--in terms of length and quite frankly, depth. Can’t Knock the Hustle.
Wednesday, June 8, 2005
Where is Hip-hop’s Audre Lorde? Or is it Time to Move On…
“To read the tribe astutely you sometimes have to leave the tribe ambitiously, and should you come home again, it’s not always to sing hosannas or a song that tribe necessarily has any desire to hear…Griots, it is decreed, are to be left to rot in hollow trees way on the outskirts of town. With that wisdom typical of African cosmologies, these messengers are guaranteed freedom of speech in exchange for a marginality that extends to the grave.”—Greg Tate, “Nobody Loves a Genius Child: Jean Michel Basquiat, Flyboy in the Buttermilk”
The above quote is taken from the title essay in Greg Tate’s 1992 book Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America, which will be republished by Duke University Press next year. I thought hard about the current state of hip-hop as I re-read this passage in Tate’s book. Specifically I wondered where were the oppositional figures in hip-hop?—those “marginal” figures who are endowed with the responsibility of telling our truths, especially when we don’t want to hear them. Now I know that the common response is to look at the so-called conscious rappers, but in reality what many of them posit are common sense commentaries on the reality of race in contemporary America. The fact that so little of that actually exist is contemporary rap music is part of the reason that we place so much significance on the work that the conscious rappers do. But very rarely do their analysis of the work take into account the complexities of race, gender and sexuality—in fact a good many of the so-called conscious rappers need to be checked on their politics of gender and sexuality—calling a woman your queen ain’t necessarily any more liberating than calling her your bitch. What I want to know, is where is hip-hop’s theory of intersectionality? Where is hip-hop’s Bayard Rustin? Where is hip-hop’s George S. Schuyler? Where is hip-hop’s Audre Lorde? In other words where are those folk in hip-hop that we will banish the far recesses of our consciousness because they made us uncomfortable and forced us to think and respond to the things we never want to talk about. And I ain’t saying Bill Cosby is nobody’s George Schuyler.
***
Now understand, I have a personal stake in this. As I suggested in my review of Common’s BE—my relationship with hip-hop is no longer about how much I enjoy the beats and the rhymes—I’m having real issues about the legacy of this culture. For the record, I can appreciate my man Joe Schloss’s reminder that hip-hop is comprised of five elements and that much of the commentary about hip-hop, like my other man Marc Lamont Hill’s lament that hip-hop sucks, is too focused on the music. But we also have to acknowledge that no matter how vibrant the DJ, break-dance, and graffiti scenes might be, they remain insular sub-cultures that will never have the impact that the music has—the lindy-hop might have been the thing that broke down race relations in the 1940s, but it was the music—Be-Bop—that brought folks together in the first place. The most visible and lasting legacy of hip-hop will be maintained via the music, in part because music has been the primary conduit for black expressivity, often taking on, as Tate suggests, extra-musical attributes rendering the music as a form of literature, cinema, etc. Say what you want about hip-hop culture in 2005, but there’s little doubt that rap music is still primarly informed by black musical sensibilities (though I’m willing to be challenged by O-Dub’s insights on Cali’s Filipino DJs.).
As a nearly forty-year-old son of hip-hop, I guess I becoming fatigued by all of this. There are certain things that I need from hip-hop—ok, rap music—that I’m not getting. And this is no disrespect to some of the younger cats out there like my man Bomani Jones, or my new homie Joycelyn Wilson, who is gonna bring southern rap into the academy in major way (Ken Wissoker, Eric Zinner, Matt Byrnie—y’all need to get with this woman). Rather it’s a grudging acknowledgement that the things that brought me and mine to hip-hop ain’t the same thing that keeps the younger cats diggin’ it.
The reality is there is a generational divide around this culture—my hip-hop generation ain’t your hip-hop generation (or the “millennial generation” as Bakari Kitwana likes to describe it). And this ain’t really a call for nostalgia—as much as I dig Kane and Rakim—I’m far more likely to be listening to 50 or Jay Z on the RIO, if only because of the production and wit/skill that both, respectively, bring to the table. Perhaps this is just the final realization, that instead of hoping that hip-hop will save the world, perhaps this nearly 40-something hip-hop head needs to start doing the work of Bayard Rustin, Kimberle Crenshaw and Audre Lorde and leave it to the younger cats to hold hip-hop accountable.
The above quote is taken from the title essay in Greg Tate’s 1992 book Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America, which will be republished by Duke University Press next year. I thought hard about the current state of hip-hop as I re-read this passage in Tate’s book. Specifically I wondered where were the oppositional figures in hip-hop?—those “marginal” figures who are endowed with the responsibility of telling our truths, especially when we don’t want to hear them. Now I know that the common response is to look at the so-called conscious rappers, but in reality what many of them posit are common sense commentaries on the reality of race in contemporary America. The fact that so little of that actually exist is contemporary rap music is part of the reason that we place so much significance on the work that the conscious rappers do. But very rarely do their analysis of the work take into account the complexities of race, gender and sexuality—in fact a good many of the so-called conscious rappers need to be checked on their politics of gender and sexuality—calling a woman your queen ain’t necessarily any more liberating than calling her your bitch. What I want to know, is where is hip-hop’s theory of intersectionality? Where is hip-hop’s Bayard Rustin? Where is hip-hop’s George S. Schuyler? Where is hip-hop’s Audre Lorde? In other words where are those folk in hip-hop that we will banish the far recesses of our consciousness because they made us uncomfortable and forced us to think and respond to the things we never want to talk about. And I ain’t saying Bill Cosby is nobody’s George Schuyler.
***
Now understand, I have a personal stake in this. As I suggested in my review of Common’s BE—my relationship with hip-hop is no longer about how much I enjoy the beats and the rhymes—I’m having real issues about the legacy of this culture. For the record, I can appreciate my man Joe Schloss’s reminder that hip-hop is comprised of five elements and that much of the commentary about hip-hop, like my other man Marc Lamont Hill’s lament that hip-hop sucks, is too focused on the music. But we also have to acknowledge that no matter how vibrant the DJ, break-dance, and graffiti scenes might be, they remain insular sub-cultures that will never have the impact that the music has—the lindy-hop might have been the thing that broke down race relations in the 1940s, but it was the music—Be-Bop—that brought folks together in the first place. The most visible and lasting legacy of hip-hop will be maintained via the music, in part because music has been the primary conduit for black expressivity, often taking on, as Tate suggests, extra-musical attributes rendering the music as a form of literature, cinema, etc. Say what you want about hip-hop culture in 2005, but there’s little doubt that rap music is still primarly informed by black musical sensibilities (though I’m willing to be challenged by O-Dub’s insights on Cali’s Filipino DJs.).
As a nearly forty-year-old son of hip-hop, I guess I becoming fatigued by all of this. There are certain things that I need from hip-hop—ok, rap music—that I’m not getting. And this is no disrespect to some of the younger cats out there like my man Bomani Jones, or my new homie Joycelyn Wilson, who is gonna bring southern rap into the academy in major way (Ken Wissoker, Eric Zinner, Matt Byrnie—y’all need to get with this woman). Rather it’s a grudging acknowledgement that the things that brought me and mine to hip-hop ain’t the same thing that keeps the younger cats diggin’ it.
The reality is there is a generational divide around this culture—my hip-hop generation ain’t your hip-hop generation (or the “millennial generation” as Bakari Kitwana likes to describe it). And this ain’t really a call for nostalgia—as much as I dig Kane and Rakim—I’m far more likely to be listening to 50 or Jay Z on the RIO, if only because of the production and wit/skill that both, respectively, bring to the table. Perhaps this is just the final realization, that instead of hoping that hip-hop will save the world, perhaps this nearly 40-something hip-hop head needs to start doing the work of Bayard Rustin, Kimberle Crenshaw and Audre Lorde and leave it to the younger cats to hold hip-hop accountable.
Friday, June 3, 2005
Deep Covers: “Deep Throat,” Civil Rights and COINTELPRO
I was a mere 8-years old when the Watergate Hearings were taking place. Despite my general lack of knowledge of electoral politics at the time, like many in my generation, the hearings and the subsequent resignation of then President Richard Nixon, long colored my view of electoral politics. Years after Nixon’s resignation, Gil Scott-Heron’s “H20 Gate Blues”, a chilling critique of the debacle (“the government you have elected is inoperable), was echoed in KRS-ONE’s “Why is That?”(1988)—evidence perhaps that Watergate was part of the political fabric of the hip-hop generation. But I suspect that for many in the post-Civil Rights generation, the fine points of Watergate were conveyed to us via the film All the President’s Men. More than anything the film—based on a book by Washington Post journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward—provided me with a romantic view of the power of Fourth Estate (a romance dutifully squashed in the Bush era). Indeed the figure of “Deep Throat” was a hero to me.
That all changed on Tuesday May, 31 2005 when 91-year-old Mark Felt, a former deputy director of the FBI, was identified as “Deep Throat.” While many heaped praise on the man who helped topple the damn-near despotic regime of Richard M. Nixon, the reality is that Mark Felt is no hero—he was a prominent cog in the mechanism that was used to destabilize many of the insurgent political movements in the United States in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, including the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement. COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence program) was created by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in 1956 to begin the illegal surveillance, infiltration and ultimate disruption of political organizations, particularly those aligned on the Left. Former US Attorney General William B. Saxbe made information about COINTELPRO public in 1975, including information about how the FBI targeted Martin Luther King, Jr. Many of the radicals of that era have been able to read files related to COINTELPRO via the “Federal Information Act”. It is because of the FIA that we now know the role that the FBI played, for example, in the death of Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton.
COINTELPRO was supposedly disbanded in April of 1971 and that no doubt played a part in the Justice Department’s decision in 1975 not to prosecute any FBI officials implicated in COINTELPRO activities. That all changed a few years later when a Justice Department investigation led to the indictment and subsequent conviction of our man MARK FELT (Deep Throat) and Edward S. Miller for “illegal break-ins” (for the purpose of illegal surveillance) related to the activities of the Weather Underground. Felt served no jail time—he was fined $5,000—and was later pardoned by President Ronald Reagan a few month after he took office. According to Reagan, Felt and Miller, served the nation “with great distinction” (NYT 4/16/81)
The indictments of Felt and Miller led to a period when the practice of illegal surveillance by government entities was significantly curtailed. Because COINTELPRO is something that many Americans remains ignorant of, there is little connection made between COINTELPRO and some of the core attributes of the Patriot Act (2001)—this ironically at a time when one of COINTELPRO’s architects is being hailed as an “American hero”.
That all changed on Tuesday May, 31 2005 when 91-year-old Mark Felt, a former deputy director of the FBI, was identified as “Deep Throat.” While many heaped praise on the man who helped topple the damn-near despotic regime of Richard M. Nixon, the reality is that Mark Felt is no hero—he was a prominent cog in the mechanism that was used to destabilize many of the insurgent political movements in the United States in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, including the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement. COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence program) was created by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in 1956 to begin the illegal surveillance, infiltration and ultimate disruption of political organizations, particularly those aligned on the Left. Former US Attorney General William B. Saxbe made information about COINTELPRO public in 1975, including information about how the FBI targeted Martin Luther King, Jr. Many of the radicals of that era have been able to read files related to COINTELPRO via the “Federal Information Act”. It is because of the FIA that we now know the role that the FBI played, for example, in the death of Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton.
COINTELPRO was supposedly disbanded in April of 1971 and that no doubt played a part in the Justice Department’s decision in 1975 not to prosecute any FBI officials implicated in COINTELPRO activities. That all changed a few years later when a Justice Department investigation led to the indictment and subsequent conviction of our man MARK FELT (Deep Throat) and Edward S. Miller for “illegal break-ins” (for the purpose of illegal surveillance) related to the activities of the Weather Underground. Felt served no jail time—he was fined $5,000—and was later pardoned by President Ronald Reagan a few month after he took office. According to Reagan, Felt and Miller, served the nation “with great distinction” (NYT 4/16/81)
The indictments of Felt and Miller led to a period when the practice of illegal surveillance by government entities was significantly curtailed. Because COINTELPRO is something that many Americans remains ignorant of, there is little connection made between COINTELPRO and some of the core attributes of the Patriot Act (2001)—this ironically at a time when one of COINTELPRO’s architects is being hailed as an “American hero”.
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