Monday Morning Driveby

Hip Hop Women Recount Abuse at Their Own Risk

This is Carla Thompson writing for Women's eNews about hip-hop artists and domestic abuse. Essentially a riff from Elizabeth Mendez Berry's brillant piece from Vibe last year. Lizz and Angie Collette Beatty get some good words in.

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Six black professors departing from Duke?

Yet another spin on the Duke-Lacrosse drama, though the mainstream press plays this out as a black exodus from Duke in light of the scandal. Far from the case as Lee Baker, Deb Thomas (one of the departing profs) and I suggest on the local NPR station last Thursday.

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From the SeeingBlack Files...

Makani Themba-Nixon on Halle Berry's "Storm" : "By casting the coquettish Halle Berry to play the fierce and dominating Storm, Fox disempowered the only Black heroine to star in a major comic book franchise."

What??? Voter Disenfranchisement? Greg Palast visits (courtesy of Democracy Now): "The Republican National Committee has a special offer for African-American soldiers: Go to Baghdad, lose your vote."

For the Love of the Soul--MAN on compliations by Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson and Oliver "O-Dub" Wang: "It's NOT always about the money. Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson and Oliver Wang dig in the crates, not to find new music samples to rip off, but to create two new soul compilations for both the new school and old heads."

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Black Power, Black Power, in The New York Times

Peniel Joseph on Black Power: "Historians tend to regard black power's polemics, boisterous nationalism and misogyny as antithetical to the civil rights movement's dreams of community. Its reputation as having helped unleash urban violence — and a white backlash — remains a fixed part of civil rights scholarship and public memory...But four decades later, it's worth reminding ourselves that (Stokley) Carmichael's role was more nuanced than we tend to acknowledge. And it is his friendly relationship with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., now largely forgotten, that exemplifies the hidden connections between two movements often seen as mutually exclusive."


Joseph's narrative history of the Black Power Movement, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour, will be published next month.

L-BOOGIE in the HOUSE

Lisa Thompson's SINGLE BLACK FEMALE Opens Off Broadway


Lisa Thompson or "L-Boogie" as I affectionately call her, was my colleague at SUNY-Albany. She remains one of my favorite people in the world and damn-near the funniest person I know. On top of that, she's brilliant.

Her play, SINGLE BLACK FEMALE, opens Off-Broadway this week. Come out and Support

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from Broadwayworld.com

Thompson's Single Black Female Runs Off-Bway, 6/15-6/25
Back to the Article
by BWW News Desk

New Professional Theatre -- the New York-based company that is home to minority playwrights and theatre artists -- will present the premiere of Dr. Lisa Thompson's Single Black Female, a comedy "about single black women and their search for love, dignity and clothes." Previews begin June 15 prior to an official press opening of June 17 at Peter Jay Sharp Theatre (416 West 42nd Street) in Manhattan. The play will run through June 25.

"Single Black Female is Lisa Thompson's comedy about the pleasures and perils of being a single middle class black woman who's got everything she wants and needs except more R-E-S-P-E-C-T -- and a man! The play mines topics such as dating (on the Internet and the old-fashioned way!), gynecology, family gatherings, shopping, racial bias, white folks and, poignantly, the odd sense of loss a black woman feels when she does find a man and leaves her single sisters behind," state press notes.

Directed by Colman Domingo, the cast of Single Black Female features Soara-Joye Ross (who has appeared Off-Broadway Dessa Rose and on Broadway in Dance of the Vampires) and Riddick Marie (who starred in the international tour of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night under the direction of Niky Wolcz, and in the 2005 Metropolitan Opera production of Faust). Domingo, recently in the cast of Well on Broadway, has directed productions at Geva Theatre and the Tony Award-winning Berkeley Rep.

Thompson is an English professor at the State University of New York at Albany where she teaches courses on African American literature and culture. Dr. Thompson is the author of Single Black Female (Nominee for 2005 LA Weekly Theatre Award for best comedy); Monroe; and Dreadtime Stories: One Sista's Hair. She is currently finishing her latest play Underground.

"New Professional Theatre (NPT) was founded by Sheila K. Davis to empower, sustain and advance the careers of minority playwrights and theatre artists. This institution is unique and as such must continue to fulfill its core mission to empower and sustain minority theater writers so that people of all races can benefit from a truly diverse theatre. NPT strives to be the internationally acknowledged, foremost incubator for and producer of minority playwrights and other theatre professionals." Past productions presented by NPT include Coming Apart Together and the musical The In Gathering.

Single Black Female plays Thursdays through Saturdays at 8:00pm and Sundays at 3:00pm except the first performance on Thursday, June 15 when the show begins at 7:00pm. Tickets are $15 and can be reserved by calling TicketCentral 212-279-4200 or online at TicketCentral.com

Billy Preston Goes Home

Growing up in New York City in the 1970s and listening to the classic top-pop 40 station WABC-AM, I was exposed to the great hits of Billy Preston. Tracks like "Outta Space", "Will It Go Round in Circles", "Space Race" and especially "Nothing from Nothing" were part of the soundtrack of my childhood. At the time I was oblivious to Preston's status at the 5th Beatle or any of his early Apple recordings. I was finally introduced to the genius of Preston's early work via Donny Hathaway's cover of Preston "Little Girl" which appears on Preston 1970 recording Encouraging Words. Most fans likely remember Preston most for his duet "With You I'm Born Again" with the late Syreeta Wright.

Preston was never out of the public eye, often making cameos on recordings of his friends like Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr and Joe Cocker, who made Preston's composition "You Are So Beautiful" a modern standard. For me, my favorite musical memories of Preston are the Hammond B-3 solo that opens Luther Vandross's "'Til My Baby Comes Home" and his stellar backing behind Aretha Franklin during her legendary Fillmore West dates ("play Billy!", as the Queen would say).

I am sure as I write this, Uncle Ray, Sam Cooke, John Lennon, Donny Hathaway, Mahailia Jackson and Lulu Hardaway are welcoming Billy Preston home.

Shake a Hand, Shake a Hand: Thomas Glave wins a LAMMY

Congratulations to my colleague and friend Thomas Glave who won the Lambda Literary Foundation Award in Nonfiction for his latest book Words to Our Now : Imagination and Dissent