Black Music Month 2011: Urban Soul | "it was the fabric our lives" 1978-1982"

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Urban Soul: The Making of Modern R&B
A film by John Akomfrah

Part One: "It Was the Fabric of Our Lives, 1978-1982"

All About The 80s: The Music Influence

Duke University professor of African American Studies, Mark Anthony Neal, talks with My Carolina Today co-host Valonda Callaway about 80s music.

25 Years Later, Edmund Perry's Case Still Resonates

The predominate question after Edmund Perry’s death was not about the reality of police brutality, but rather how someone with so much promise and opportunity, could engage in such reckless behavior?

Twenty-five Years Later, Edmund Perry's Case Still Resonates
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21

If there was a shared belief regarding the promises of the Civil Rights Movement, it was the faith that with the legal limits of segregation removed, young Black Americans would be able to achieve the American Dream if they adhered to a program of hard work and dutiful study.

In June of 1985, Harlem bred Edmund Perry seemed the embodiment of that faith, having just graduated from one of the nation’s most prestigious prep schools with his first year at Stanford University awaiting him in the fall. Instead, 17-year-old Perry was shot to death in his Harlem neighborhood by a White undercover detective, in what was “officially” termed an act of self-defense. Twenty-five years after his shooting, Edmund Perry’s death still resonates in meaningful ways.

On the evening of June 12, 1985, Perry and his 19-year-old brother Jonah, a second year student at Cornell University, were walking on Morningside Drive in Harlem. After a skirmish with an undercover police officer, Perry was shot in his abdomen and died shortly thereafter.

The story of Perry’s death elicited many public responses, particularly in the context of regular charges of police brutality directed at the New York City police department. Suspicions of the NYPD occurred in the aftermath of the questionable deaths of the graffiti artist Michael Stewart and 66-year-old Elenor Bumphers who was shot-to-death during a forcible eviction in the Bronx. As noted cultural critic Nelson George queried at the time of Perry’s death, “Was Edmund, like so many other victims of this city, just too black for his own good?”

Less than a month after Perry’s death, a police investigation cleared the officer of any wrongdoing and Jonah Perry was indicted on charges of assault of the police officer. Perry’s family was represented by attorney C. Vernon Mason, who along with attorney Alton Maddox, who successfully defended Jonah Perry, and the Reverend Al Sharpton, would form the political triumvirate that came to national prominence in the late 1980s in response to the rape case of Tawanna Brawley and the murder of Yusef Hawkins. Edmund Perry’s death was one of the many events that inspired Spike Lee’s depiction of racial tensions in New York City in his film "Do the Right Thing" (1989).

Yet the predominate question after Perry’s death was not about the reality of police brutality, but rather how someone with so much promise and opportunity, could engage in such reckless behavior?

Read the Full Essay @ theloop21.com

Where Br'er Rabbit Meets Nas: Michael Jackson, the Lyrical Trickster

Michael Jackson: The Writings on the Wall

by Diana Ozemebhoya

The King of Pop’s greatest hits were penned by the King of Pop himself. On the one-year anniversary of his death, The Root takes a look at Jackson’s lyrical prowess.

Read the Full Essay @ The Root

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Moonwalkin' in the Briar Patch:

The Trickster Legacy of Michael Jackson

by Red Clay Scholar

The trickster figure in folklore uses his wits and cunning to remove himself from difficult situations, to teach a lesson, or instill awareness to those around him. (In this case) He was unable to be restricted to a rigid space and often found comfort (and identity) in difficult situations. The Br'er (Brother) stories/fables often showcased the antics of Br'er Rabbit, the original "one-upper." In slave stories, Br'er Rabbit not only outwitted his fellow animals but also the white farmer, whom he taunted consistently and fervently. In "Tar Baby," Br'er Rabbit is tricked by Farmer (or Brer Fox or Bear, depending on the adaptation) and gets stuck to a tar baby (doll made out of tar). Facing death, Br'er Rabbit begs and pleads for his captors not to throw him into the nearby thorny briar patch because it would be a tortuous demise. Pleased with the thought of (finally) harming Br'er Rabbit, Farmer throws him into the briar patch waiting to hear the sounds of Br'er Rabbit's slow death. Instead, Farmer hears Rabbit's laughter and taunting, stating his comfort in his birthplace, and escapes.

While the briar patch suggests a problematic, often impossible space to navigate, Br'er Rabbit signifies the ability to do so. Br'er Rabbit was a folk hero, able to do the impossible - get over on the white man. His creation and comfort to navigate those spaces speak to the black experience in white America and slaves desire to rebel against the social hierarchy that viewed them as inferior. Toni Morrison's Tar Baby (1981) stretches the Tar Baby plantation story to construct and contextualize black masculinity. Morrison creates her own Br'er Rabbit in Son, a young black man who manipulates both racial and gender spaces on a plantation on La Isles de Chevaliers and New York in order to progress and survive. Son performs whatever role is placed on him - charmer, bad nigger, buck, abuser, manchild.

Michael Jackson both aggrandized and fell victim to these spaces. Through one lens, Jackson transcended both his blackness and even genre to become the King of Pop Music. I guess King of R&B was being held hostage by Bobby Brown at the time of crowning. MJ's ability to blend and deconstruct musical genres to produce a new sound or concept only rivaled the genius of Prince. Jackson pushed the envelope, refusing to be restricted to static indicators of black music. Collaborations with artists ranging from Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney to Guns N' Roses Slash shook the spirit, captivated the mind, and left the listener breathless.

Read the Full Essay @ Red Clay Scholar

A Year Later, Jackson Estate Is Prospering

A Year Later, Jackson Estate Is Prospering
By BEN SISARIO

In death, Michael Jackson has had the comeback he always wanted. His estate, managed by two longtime associates, the entertainment lawyer John Branca and the music executive John McClain, has nearly settled his troubled finances by making a string of big deals: a record-contract extension with Sony, a new Jackson-themed video game, two Cirque du Soleil shows and a plethora of merchandise.

Over the last year, the Jackson brand has generated hundreds of millions of dollars, and experts in the management of celebrity estates say that in the long term it might very well equal or eclipse the value of what until now has been the ultimate entertainment estate: that of Elvis Presley, which earned $55 million last year, according to an estimate by Forbes magazine.

“Michael Jackson’s This Is It,” a film drawn from rehearsal tapes for the O2 arena shows in London that had been scheduled before he died a year ago, grossed $261 million around the world, according to boxofficemojo.com. And last year Jackson sold nearly 8.3 million albums in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan — far more than any other artist.

“What they’ve done brilliantly is that they’ve taken advantage of the emotion surrounding the tragic and unexpected passing of Michael Jackson, and done it in a way that’s tasteful yet profitable, and that’s challenging,” said Robert F. X. Sillerman, the financier who until recently was the chairman and chief executive of CKX, which controls the Presley estate. (Mr. Sillerman remains CKX’s largest shareholder.)

Before Jackson died on June 25 at the age of 50, he was on the brink of financial disaster, and he was about to embark on a risky move to return to performing after a 12-year absence. He was more than $400 million in debt, and bookmakers in London were placing bets that he would not appear for a planned series of 50 concerts at the O2 arena.

The change in public perception since Jackson’s death has been just as remarkable as his estate’s financial turnaround.

Although tickets to his London shows sold out in hours, the Jackson brand had been hurt by allegations of child abuse that had dogged him over the last two decades. (He settled a case in the 1990s, and was acquitted at a trial in 2005.) Last spring few fans turned out to view memorabilia at a planned auction in Beverly Hills, Calif. (it was canceled after Jackson objected), but when another Jackson auction opens in Las Vegas on Thursday, significantly bigger crowds — and higher prices — are expected.

Jackson’s executors were well aware that his public image needed tending.

“We felt we needed to restore Michael’s image, and the first building block of that was the movie,” Mr. Branca said in an interview on Tuesday. “People came away from that movie with a completely different view of Michael. Rather than being this out-of-control eccentric, they saw him as the ultimate artist, the ultimate perfectionist, but at the same time respectful of other people.”

But many cultural critics and estate managers say that the enormous, worldwide outpouring of emotion upon Jackson’s death — aided by an Internet-fueled news engine that has kept the issue in the public eye for the last year — established a momentum of its own.

“His sainthood began the moment that he died,” said David Reeder, vice president of GreenLight, a licensing agency that works with the estates of Johnny Cash, Steve McQueen and other celebrities. “That’s been beneficial for the estate. They haven’t had to overcome a lot of obstacles that might have made him less desirable commercially.”

Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of black popular culture at Duke University, said that death has changed the way Jackson is remembered and discussed, particularly among African-Americans. Last week Jackson was inducted into the Apollo Theater’s hall of fame, along with Aretha Franklin.

“Ultimately it comes down to the fact that the Michael Jackson story is such a sad story in the end,” Professor Neal said. “And in reading him that way, some of his humanity has been recovered. We don’t necessarily see Michael as the demon that some folks might have seen him as in those last couple years of his life.”

Read the Full Article @ The New York Times

Arthur Jafa on The Impact of Michael Jackson's Isolation From the Black Community

After the Dance: Conversations on Michael Jackson's Black America
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
June 5, 2010

Panel: To Be White, Gifted and Black: Managing Acceptable Representations of Blackness as the "King of Pop"
DJ Qool Marv, Arthur Jafa, dj lynnee denise, Esther Armah

Arthur Jafa on Michael Jackson as Self-Loather, Shape Shifter & Classically Black

After the Dance: Conversations on Michael Jackson's Black America
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
June 5, 2010

Panel: To Be White, Gifted and Black: Managing Acceptable Representations of Blackness as the "King of Pop"

DJ Qool Marv, Arthur Jafa, dj lynnee denise, Esther Armah

Michael Jackson: Queer or Gay?

After the Dance: Conversations on Michael Jackson's Black America
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
June 5, 2010

Panel: Keep it in the Closet: The Historic Speculation Around Michael Jackson's Gender Bending Persona

Moderator: Steven Fullwood
Panelists: Mark Anthony Neal, Asadullah Muhammad, DJ Reborn, DJ Selly

After the Dance: Conversations on Michael Jackson's Black America

After the Dance:

Conversations on Michael Jackson's Black America

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Langston Hughes Auditorium
Friday June 4, 2010 at 6pm
Saturday June 5, 2010 at 11am

Michael Jackson died of cardiac arrest on June 25, 2009. After a year of media-sanctioned mourning through concert tributes, film specials, video marathons and an extravagance of merchandising, who will bear the questions of music industry exploitation, self-hate, sexuality, addiction and apparent madness that Michael’s life and death urge us to ask? Who will discuss the value of Michael’s Philanthropy an environmental consciousness? Michael’s story echoes the ongoing crises of experience and identity faced not only by Black America, but the Black Diaspora. These conversations demand space beyond a video tribute.

Day 1:

Friday, June 4

6 p.m. Opening Reception

7 p.m. Opening Plenary with featured guests Nelson George, Author, Filmmaker, Television producer, and Critic & Touré, Music journalist, Cultural critic

9 p.m. Closing Reception: Jackson Rhythms provided by WildSeed Music NY

** Sugested $10 donation at the door.

Day 2:
Saturday, June 5

11 a.m. Can You Feel It? A Multi-Media Collage of the Decades-Long Jackson Family Musical Career

Panel Discussions

12 p.m. To be White, Gifted and Black: Managing Acceptable Representations of Blackness as the "King of Pop"

Moderator: Esther Armah, International journalist, Published author, Public speaker, Radio host, and Playwright.

Panelists:Arthur Jafa, Filmmaker, Cinematographer, Writer; Dream Hampton, Hip Hop journalist; dj lynnee denise, WildSeed Music NYC; and DJ Qool Marv

2 p.m. Keep it in the Closet: The Historic Speculation Around Michael Jackson’s Gender Bending Persona

Moderator: Steven Fullwood, Schomburg Center

Panelists: Mark Anthony Neal, Professor of Black Popular Culture at Duke University, and Author; Asadullah Muhammad, Educator, Father, Poet, Writer; and DJ Reborn, Music Consultant and Teaching Artist; and DJ Selly

4 p.m. Black Ain’t Green: Honoring Michael’s Environmental Consciousness and Philanthropic Endeavors

Moderator: Walker Sands, Majora Carter Group

Panelists: Andres Carter, Sustainable South Bronx; William Thomas, Green Jobs Leader, Trainer, Business Man; and Anisa Keith, Sustainanble Business Committee, Co-founder

5 p.m. Closing: Jackson Rhythms

Snap that Tiger

One of the striking features of photographer Anne Leibovitz’s work is her ability to bring an historical gaze onto her subjects. What is the story that her new Vanity Fair cover of Tiger Woods trying to tell?

Snap That Tiger
by Mark Anthony Neal

Amidst a media panic about Tiger Woods’ domestic failings and regular announcements that another corporate entity has severed ties with the legendary golfer, one might expect that quite a few people cringed at the sight of Woods’ Annie Leibovitz lensed cover photo for the February issue of Vanity Fair magazine. The last two months of Woods’s life have been perhaps the most visible “gotcha” moment in recent American history and the Vanity Fair cover story, authored by Buzz Bissinger, is a continuance of that trend. Yet we are still left with that stunning portrait of Tiger Woods: black wool skull cap, bare-chested, barbells in each hand and a look of utter resignation about the reality of his life as one of the most well known living icons in the world.

It goes without saying that prior to Thanksgiving evening, Leibovitz’s photos, taken in early 2006, would have made no sense—even absurd—and that perhaps explains why they stayed in the photographer’s archive as simply further evidence of her brilliance. Leibovitz’s work has often courted controversy; some of the most famous photographs in her oeuvre include her nude cover shot of a pregnant Demi Moore for Vanity Fair in 1991, Chris Rock in whiteface also for Vanity Fair (1997) and a recent shoot with a semi-nude Miley Cyrus.

Once the story about Woods broke, it was Leibovitz who contacted Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter about the photos. To read Leibovitz’s efforts as exploitive is natural, but the photo itself—and Leibovitz’s own body of work—demands that we accept that there are others kinds of labor at work. Great art provokes, in part, because it contains a surplus of meanings—and some of the most perverse and disturbing of those meanings are accessible to us in the public square. Leibovitz’s photo of Woods, recalls the very controversial cover photo she did of NBA Star Lebron James and model Giselle Bundchen that was featured on the cover of the April 2008 issue of American Vogue. James appears on the cover of the magazine in practice gear, with a basketball in right hand, Bundchen in his left arm and his mouth wide open easily evoking the image of King Kong swinging across the metropolis with Fay Wray (1933) or Cybil Shepherd (1976) in his arms. James looks like he might literally consume Bundchen.

Indeed Leibovitz regularly captures in some of her black subjects a latent liberal racism directed at them, that she can be said to also embody. Yet the blatant racist sentiment that some perceived in the James and Bundchen photograph is not the only interpretation that Leibovitz encourages in the photo; is the photo a projection of the racism that is still directed at black men or a projection of white sexual desire onto black (male) bodies? Perhaps the photo was a sign of changing societal beliefs regarding interracial relations, at a moment when a biracial man was running for the highest national office in the country? Maybe, Leibovitz simply enjoys capturing hot young bodies on film. Perhaps it is all of the above, thus it might be apropos to ask what is the “all of the above” that Leibovitz is asking us to consider in her photograph of Tiger Woods?


Why Jack Johnson Might Be Smiling?

One of the striking features of Leibovitz’s work is her ability to bring an historical gaze to her subjects. Given the now known knowledge that we have of Woods’s particular taste in women—and this would have been relevant even in 2006 given the ethnicity of his wife Elin Nordegren—it is impossible not to read Woods against the public persona of Jack Johnson, the “first” black heavyweight boxing champion. Johnson became heavyweight champion in a sport, that like golf was exclusively white among its professional ranks. The racist animus directed at Johnson after his victory was so pronounced, that when film footage of his 1910 title defense against the “great white hope” James J. Jeffries was circulated, it instigated race riots.



In the early years of the 20th Century, Johnson was White America’s biggest nightmare—the big black buck that pummeled white men in the boxing ring. In the parlance of the day, Johnson was an “uppity nigger” who flaunted his new found wealth, his superior athleticism and his insatiable desire for white women. Johnson then became victim of a media panic, associated with the concept of “white slavery.” As Thomas Shevory writes in The Notorious H.I.V., his book about Nushawn Williams (who inspired his own media panic in 1997), the “white slavery scare…stemmed from the belief that young girls from farms, hamlets and small towns were being lured by unscrupulous conspirators into large cities, where they were ultimately forced into prostitution”(4). Shevory notes that it was two of the major newspaper chains—newspapers being the dominant media of the time—that were the primary instigators of the panic, in large part because it generated sales. This media panic eventually led to the passing of the Mann Act in 1910, which made it a federal crime to transport women across state lines for the purposes of prostitution.

This brings us back to Jack Johnson, who will forever be known as the first person prosecuted under the Mann Act. Johnson was arrested for traveling interstate with a former prostitute, Lucile Cameron, even though he was in a relationship with her. The two married shortly after his arrest, so that Cameron couldn’t testify against Johnson. When that case fell apart, Johnson was again arrested on the same charges for a relationship with another white woman named, Belle Schreiber, despite the fact that her travels with Johnson occurred before the passage on the Mann Act. Convicted in 1913, Johnson skipped bail and left the country until 1920, when he returned and served his year-and-one-day sentence at Leavenworth, where political prisoner Leonard Peltier and Michael Vick would later serve.

Though the Mann Act was deployed by federal prosecutors to “legally” punish and discourage miscegenation and interracial desire (as opposed to lynching), it is important to remember that there were other implications associated with Johnson’s prosecution. Though Johnson continued to defend his title abroad until he was defeated by Jess Willard in Havana, Cuba in1915, it would be another twenty-years before another black man, Joe Louis, would hold title. Johnson’s transgressions were used as a convenient excuse to deny other black boxers, access to the upper echelons of the sport, at a time when Johnson was among the handful of black athletes who competed against whites in professional sports. Indeed, Louis’s handlers carefully crafted his public image to be the antithesis of Johnson, perhaps culminating in his historic victory over German fighter Max Schmeling at the height of Nazi military aggression, which made Louis a national hero in ways that were unfathomable in Johnson’s case.

With Johnson unable to fight in the United States and thus unable to demand the kinds of purses that he would otherwise, the use of Mann Act also siphoned his finances and in the process dampened one of the symbols—however problematic—of black achievement in the early 20th century. Additionally in an era—less than twenty year after the Supreme Court’s Plessey Vs. Ferguson decreed “Separate but equal”—when blacks endured miserable travel conditions, Johnson’s wealth allowed him to travel more freely and in greater comfort than the vast majority of blacks. The Mann Act was also a direct attempt to curtail his mobility and the inspiration that such mobility instilled in many blacks.

Jack Johnson’s career and public profile are instructive when considering the case of Tiger Woods. The golfer may not be facing any serious criminal charges but he is subject to a media panic—one that has led his various corporate entities to, in effect, censure him via economic sanctions. Of course companies like Accenture and Gatorade are within their rights to sever ties with Woods, though their motivation for such is largely tied to public opinion about Woods, which the folks at Gallup tell us has dropped from an 87% approval rating in 2005 to 33% in recent polling, including a 57% unfavorable rating. To what extent, though, has public opinion been framed by the media panic that ensued after news of Wood’s domestic drama began to unfold? According to Shevory, “media panics dredge up feelings of fear and shame as they reveal real or potential social disorder.” He adds that “the stimulation of a media panic allows conservative politicians (who are often joined by their ‘liberal’ brethren) to lament societal decline and call for a return to traditional moral prescriptions and practices”(5). In a society that is partially defined by our pronounced addictions—to everything from prescriptions drugs, to food, to electronic media—Tiger Woods’s supposed sex addiction strikes as firmly American. Woods, instead, has become the target of our collective anxieties about our addictions and failings, much the way our adoration of him for his symbolic perfection—“high performance”—helped mask those same anxieties. But what does it mean when such investments are made in the body and psyche of a “black” man and what does it mean when that “black” man is knocked off his perch?

Criminal Minded

Michael Jackson. Orenthal James Simpson. We are all too familiar, particularly during the past two decades, of what is looks like when the perfect Negro is knocked off his perch. That the two figures who preceded Tiger Woods, are also men, who for the most part socially transcended their blackness, only makes sense. Both Simpson and Jackson were products of a different era in race relations, and as such, both were hyper-vigilant about making their idiosyncratic blackness palatable to whites, to the extent that it was hard to believe there was a public/private split in their personas. What happened after their falls from grace is historic and akin to what might be described as being “niggerized”—the bizarre mug shot of Jackson from November of 2003 and Time Magazine’s darkened photo of Simpson that adorned the cover of the June 27, 1994 issue of the magazine are legendary examples of this. There are some who believe that Leibovitz’s Vanity Fair cover, represents Woods’s “nigger” moment. For all of the concerns about Woods’s relationship to blackness (or lack of), he has clearly been “raced” throughout his public career, even if we’ve never quite had the language to describe it—and Wood’s own offering of Calibasian, an attempt to distance himself from the very racial world his father prepared him to navigate—offers little relief. The lack of language to adequately read Woods beyond a black/white dichotomy befits a national race discourse that discounts the complexity of how race is lived—it’s the reason why Barack Obama could have never been elected president in this country running as the “mixed” race candidate.



With the wool skull cap, bare chest and dumbbells, Woods looks less a “nigger” and more like a run-of-the-mill criminal, not unlike what you might see in a prison film from the 1970s. If the Woods that appears on the cover of Vanity Fair looks resigned, it a resignation about the elaborately staged prison that was his public reality. Vanity Fair author Bissinger admits as much in one of the more perceptive moments of his cover story, “Tiger in the Rough.” As Bissinger writes, “It now seems that when he returned home after a tournament and vanished back inside his gated community, the persona he left behind, the one he so obsessively presented to the public, was…empty.” Bissinger notes that there were cracks in Woods’ public persona, like the infamous GQ interview from 1997 where he trafficked in “big dick” jokes, and of course the legendary anger—written off as competiveness among the sports writers who desired to be in a non-existent inner circle—when the perfect Negro was simply a regular PGA golfer trying to save par.

The reality is that Woods is not a common criminal, but one of the few figures in the contemporary world that we could describe as peerless. To her credit, Leibovitz starkly captures the isolation the engulfed the world’s greatest golfer and pitchman. Woods’s excesses—his voracious appetite for practice, fitness and apparently the naked flesh of “skanky” white women—is not unusual as the media would have us believe. Even Martin Luther King, a particularly notable peerless Negro from a generation of black overachievers that preceded Woods, had his sexual foibles. With no one else available to fully understand the uniqueness of his charge—perhaps only Malcolm X—King found comfort in recreational sex and chain-smoking. That so few people knew about his activities during his lifetime, even as FBI head J. Edgar Hoover engaged in blatant dis-information, only suggest that Hoover might have benefited from some of the talent currently working for TMZ (just another form of surveillance, right?). As Michael Eric Dyson details in his book I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr. the Civil Rights leader convinced himself that his sexual exploits were just rewards for his service to the race and to the Lord—and such a sentiment was real for a man who fully understood the dangers that literally awaited him every-time he walked out of a hotel room.

Tiger Woods is no Martin Luther King, Jr., but you can’t help but wonder, if every time he bedded one of those women, he hadn’t convinced himself that he was doing it for Nike, the PGA and perhaps, even for Jack Johnson.

Now Available on YouTube: "Office Hours with Mark Anthony Neal"

from the ASALH

Had the pleasure of presenting on a plenary panel at the annual Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) in Cincinnati. The session was dedicated to the legacy of Michael Jackson and I was joined by Dawn Ellisa-Fischer and the legendary Sonia Sanchez. First heard Ms. Sanchez speak/read 25 years ago and still cherish my signed copy of HomeGirls and Hand Grenades. Thought I'd use this occasion to reprint my review Sanchez's 2004 recording, Full Moon of Sonia.

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Critical Noir: The Full Moon of Sonia

by Mark Anthony Neal

“Black people’s reality is controlled by alien forces. This is why Sonia Sanchez is so beautiful & needed; this is also why she is so dangerous.”

—Haki Madhubuti (Don L. Lee)

For those who’ve heard ever Sonia Sanchez perform, you know that she possesses a spirit that seemingly gains energy with each word that she offers to the world. Indeed, I can still her poly-syllabic chants in my head as if I was 19 year-old again watching her weave her poetic magic the first time I saw her perform in 1985. For those who’ve never heard Sonia Sanchez perform, she has just released her first solo recording, Full Moon of Sonia.

Sonia Sanchez was born more than seventy-years ago in Birmingham (Bombingham), Alabama. Ms. Sanchez is more likely though, to claim herself as a native of New York, the city that she moved to as a nine-year old and the place where she began to cultivate her poetic skills after graduating from Hunter College in 1955. Sanchez’s poetry workshops in the 1960s at places like the Downtown Community School proved politically challenging to her employers. According to Sanchez, she was “white-balled” in New York and eventually left New York taking teaching positions as various schools until she landed at Temple University in 1977. She retired from Temple in 1999.

Ms. Sanchez’s first collection of poetry, Homecoming, was published by Dudley Randall’s Broadside Press in 1969, followed by We a BaddDDD People in 1970. Both collections featured poetry that literally screamed off the page as if Sanchez was struggling to find language to fully convey the emotions that informed her poetry, whether it was the plight of African-Americans in the United States or her failing marriage with the late “prison” poet Etheridge Knight. As Ms. Sanchez told MELUS, “you must remember, when we were reading poetry at that time, there was not an interest in poetry. People had their ears tuned to radios…something with a beat.” Sanchez and many of her peers such as Haki Madhubuti (Don L. Lee) and Nikki Giovanni found success in the late 1960s and early 1970s by gearing their poetry to the dance-floor and the street.

Not surprisingly, Ms. Sanchez’s legacy is being recovered by the hip-hop generation, particularly among spoken word poets. Danny Simmons, executive producer of Def Poetry, refers to Ms. Sanchez as the “spiritual mother” of spoken word. And indeed Ms. Sanchez gives love back citing the late Tupac Shakur (who she pays tribute to on Full Moon of Sonia), Rakim, and Ursula Rucker (who bears a striking resemblance to Ms. Sanchez) as exemplars of hip-hop generation wordsmiths. More than anything Full Moon of Sonia is an attempt to speak more directly to the hip-hop generation.

Recorded during the National Black Arts Festival in 2003, where Ms. Sanchez was celebrated as a “living legend”, Full Moon of Sonia is Ms. Sanchez’s first solo recording after more than thirty-five years as a published poet. Backed by a stream of R&B, Funk, Jazz, Soul, Blues and Gospel, Ms. Sanchez brings to musical life a range of poetry that captures the demons and passions of African-American life. Poems such as “Bubba” (which first appeared in Home Girls and Hand Grenades), “Tupac” and “For Langston/I’ve Known Rivers” (for the legendary poet) recalls figures from Ms. Sanchez’s past, allowing her memories of them to speak to the humanity of black men in the midst of on-going demonization.

Earlier in her career, Ms. Sanchez was often lock-step with the most fiery expressions of 1960s styled black nationalism. Though Ms. Sanchez remains fiery, Ms. Sanchez black nationalist politics are muted these days, in part because of her embrace of feminist politics. So a piece like “Poem for Some Women” performed to the gospel track “There’s a Leak in this Old Building” gives light to a women who leaves her baby in a crack-house, indicting the men who take advantage of both the woman and her child, as well as a society that offers little support for poor single mothers. Even more powerful is a track like “He/She” which examines the utter tragedy of domestic abuse. And still Ms. Sanchez takes time to have fun as she does with “Good Morning Sex.”

Full Moon of Sonia, represents Sonia Sanchez as a poet women at her peak. At once she embodies the power and promise of African-American expression and a clarion example of longevity and vitality for a hip-hop generation in dire need for artistic role models.

Office Hours Now Open!

Mark Anthony Neal Holds Online "Office Hours"

Mark Anthony Neal to Discuss Musical and Cultural Legacy of Michael Jackson in Online 'Office Hours'

The conversation takes place at noon Friday, Aug. 28, on the Duke University Ustream channel.

Pop icon Michael Jackson, diversity in baseball and why this is an exciting time for scholars of black culture will be among the topics discussed during a live webcast with Mark Anthony Neal, a Duke professor of African and African American Studies. This latest installment of Duke’s new online "office hours” series will begin at noon EDT Friday, Aug. 28.

Neal is the author of the book “New Black Man: Rethinking Black Masculinity” and wrote the main essay for “Hello World - The Complete Motown Solo Collection,” a 3-CD box collection of Michael Jackson solo recordings released between 1971 and 1975. He is currently writing album notes for a collection of unreleased Jackson 5 master recordings. (Jackson would have celebrated his 51st birthday on Aug. 29.)

Viewers can submit questions in advance or during the session by email to live@duke.edu, on the Duke University Live Ustream page on Facebook or via Twitter with the tag #dukelive. The program will run live on Duke’s Ustream channel.

In recent months, Neal has addressed such issues as the lack of black players in Major League Baseball and how President Obama’s election provides ample opportunities to advance discussions around issues of race.

“The Obama presidency is akin, for some, to having the first black family move into an all-white neighborhood,” Neal wrote in Duke Magazine last spring. “… this bodes well for those of us who make meaning in both the mundane and the exceptional in African-American life and culture. There's little doubt in my mind that Obama's presidency -- and its long-term influence and implications -- will usher in an exciting period in the study of black popular culture. It also promises to provide an unprecedented opportunity, and inspiration, for black artists and entertainers, as they scout and interpret new cultural terrain.”

Neal is the author of four books, including “Songs in the Key of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation” (2003), and co-edited, with Murray Forman, “That’s the Joint!: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader” (2004). His essay, “Music: Bodies in Pain,” on the music of R&B artists Linda Jones and Keyshia Cole, was published in the collection “Best African American Essays 2009”.

He was also a frequent commentator for NPR and contributes to several online media outlets, including NewsOne.com, TheRoot.com and TheGrio.com. He regularly updates his own blog with essays written by other scholars and himself.

Duke’s Office of News and Communications launched Online Office Hours series on July 31 with economist Dan Ariely, the best-selling author of “Predictably Irrational.” Last Friday’s guest was David Goldstein, director of the Center for Human Genome Variation at Duke’s Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy.

Dear Michael: Love Letters from Cyberspece

Michael Jackson: Morning's End
by Jeff Chang

Many of his most affecting performances were about distance and displacement, the desire to be somewhere else, the inability to return to a lost past. Think of the songs that the hip-hop generation adored so much: “I’ll Be There”, “I Wanna Be Where You Are”, “Who’s Loving You”, “Maybe Tomorrow”, “All I Do Is Think Of You”, “Ready Or Not”. On these songs, Michael’s “knowingness” sounds more like fragility.

Read the Full Article @ Zentronix

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Chasing Michael Jackson
by Teresa Wiltz

I remember covering Michael in 2004 as an arts writer for the Washington Post. He was making a tour through Capitol Hill, making nice with the Congressional Black Caucus and talking about AIDS in Africa and philanthropy, etc., etc. Not that the public was privy to any of this. “Covering” Michael Jackson on the Hill amounted to standing around and waiting for hours, and hours, and hours on end, interviewing fans who used to love him but were no longer sure he was a good role model. Keeping an eye trained on the door, lest the Altered One jet before you could get next to him. Feeling just a little foolish.

Read the Full Article @ The Root

Chatting Up Michael Joseph Jackson

CBCRadio
Q with John Ghomeshi

June 26: Michael Jackson Remembered. We'll talk to several cultural thinkers and musical figures about the life and legacy of the King of Pop. Plus, Friday LIVE guest, Homecookin', featuring four of Canada's top jazz and blues musicians.

Listen to Q

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NPR's Tell Me More with Michel Martin

The King of Pop is Gone

Tell Me More, June 26, 2009 - The world is mourning the loss of a music icon. Michael Jackson died yesterday at the age of 50. Duke Professor Mark Anthony Neal and Journalist Bryan Monroe, former Editorial Director of Ebony Magazine, share their thoughts about Michael Jackson, his influence and his legacy.

Listen to Tell Me More


Jackson's Musical Peers Remember His Genius

Tell Me More, June 26, 2009 - Behind the scenes in the music industry, Michael Jackson was more than a star. He was a genius.

Record producer Kenny Gamble and Howard Hewett, lead singer of the 70s R&B group Shalamar, both worked closely with Jackson. They remember what it was like to share a studio with the 'King of Pop.'

Listen to Tell Me More

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The Michael Eric Dyson Show
WEAA-FM Baltimore

The Life and Legacy of the King of Pop, Michael Jackson with Reverend Jesse Jackson, Professor James Braxton Peterson, Music Critic Ann Powers, BET Founder Robert Johnson, and Professor Mark Anthony Neal

Listen to the Michael Eric Dyson Show

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Soundcheck with John Schaefer
WNYC-FM New York

Death of Thriller

Michael Jackson was one of the most successful and influential entertainers of the 20th Century. He won 13 Grammys and sold 50 million copies of his 1982 masterpiece, Thriller. But his fame and reputation declined starting in the 1990s. When he died yesterday at age 50, Jackson was attempting a comeback with 50 sold-out concert dates in London. Today, we look back at Jackson's career. Guests include: music critic Jody Rosen of Slate.com; Los Angeles Times chief pop music critic Ann Powers; Mark Anthony Neal, professor of black popular culture at Duke University and contributor to TheRoot.com; Susan Blond, founder and president of Susan Blond Inc. and a former Jackson publicist; Details magazine editor at large Jeff Gordinier; and Bruce Swedien, the recording engineer behind Thriller among other Jackson albums.

Conjuring Michael (the “uncut-before-u-git-the-academic-ish” mix)

Conjuring Michael (the “uncut-before-u-git-the-academic-ish” mix)
by Mark Anthony Neal

“Schumaw”—like some ancient African dialect that only he, James Brown, Miles Davis, Nina Simone, Macy Gray, and quiet as it’s kept, Lil’ Wayne quite understand. Random utterings like “Mama-ko, mama-sa, ma-ka-ma-ko-ssa” and even Cameroonian musician Manu Dibango can’t quite claim it. The point is that this was some deep knowledge and there was never any explanation for it—like that riff in the middle of “Remember the Time” that can’t even be transcribed. Much the same with the infamous audition tape—the grainy black & white one, where the lil’ boy is singing JB and moving through an archive of masculine movements known only to Mr. Brown, Mr. Wilson—and quiet as it’s kept, Mr. Presley. Mr. Gordy was hooked, not quite knowing what he had and misreading the lil boy as some kind of novelty, like that lil blind boy, who asked for his freedom only to return with Music On My Mind under one arm and genius under the other. But that boy had almost a decade of seasoning before the breakthrough; this other cat was 10-years old, singing about stuff he ain’t supposed to know about.

Aks him who he dug and the boy say “William Hart.” What? Yeah, William Hart. Like what this 10-year-old know about The Delphonics, and then you listen to “Can You Remember?” from that first Jackson 5 joint and it’s like damn—this boy ain’t real. Smokey must have thought the same thing listening to the playback of “Who’s Lovin’ You?”—the b-side of the original hot ish, “I Want You Back.” Naw, Smokey, flip that ish over. I mean damn, you did write this joint right—and you did record this joint right? But damn if that ain’t yo’ song no mo’. And the rest was history.

My story with the boy started just a bit after that. Call it a serious boy crush and who could blame me, he was like the prettiest M’fer we’d ever seen, especially with the Apple Jack on his head. I talking from the beginning, like I listened to that ABC album on 8-Track—years before I figured out what the actual album sequencing was like. Years later I danced with my mother to that album’s “I Found that Girl” at my wedding. The boy was my first muse—literally. Used to copy lyrics from those early albums—“Darling Dear,” “Wings of Love,” “In Our Small Way”—and sent them in secret notes to the first shortie who really caught my eyes. Got the idea peeping an old episode of the ABC Afterschool Special where the boy’s “We’ve Got a Good Thing Going” played in the background and I got that queasy first love thing in my stomach. The song that’s on the album with the rat. Boy was on some queer ish even them. Shame the boy wasn’t free to be on some Ziggy Stardust ish, but what’s a little black boy to do in the mid-1970s.

Boy tried to get his own freedom in the late 1970s frequenting dance clubs like 54, checking the scene, watching cats like Gamble and Huff work the boards and when he and them other boys took control over their own music and that young boy hooked up with Q, all was magic. Young boy found his own muse in the scarecrow, easing on down the road to the Emerald City—“can you, feel it, brand day?”—and damn if those early videos for “Rock With You”, “Don’t Stop ‘Till You Get Enough” and “Can You Feel It” don’t feel inspired by The Wiz. Truth be told, Off the Wall was the crown jewel—ish was still innocent, earnest, organic. Thriller seemed contrived—like that young boy was trying to sell 20 million records. Find the boy’s true fans by asking “Thiller” or “Off the Wall”? If they say the former, than you know that were on some Johnny/Janie come-lately ish when that young boy took claim to the world.

The rest was a blur, like if you drop like 26 millions sales, what exactly do you do next? The young boy never figured that out and the less it was about the music, the more surreal the ish got. Then it became about young boys, ‘cept he was now a grown ass-man, though true be told, if I’m to believe that this grown ass man was fondling young boys, I also got to believe the ass whumpings that occurred at the hands of that once young boy’s daddy. That boy spent a lifetime seeking a meaningful freedom, perhaps from the tyranny of family, but later from the tyranny of celebrity. And yeah perhaps Mr. Presley, Ms. Monroe and those four British mop-tops could relate, but when that young boy was hitting his half half of them were dead—and they never had to deal with MTV and 24-hour cable networks in their prime.

I will shed a tear sometime soon, not for the man who breathed his last breath today, but for that young boy that helped to define the me that I be. That young boy was special and it’s that young boy that I choose to remember today.

Loving Michael

special to NewBlackMan

Loving Michael
by Stephane Dunn

The calls came fast – Michael Jackson was dead. The words flashed across the screen in typical pop news form – sensational and impersonal. I muted the television and stopped taking calls. It was not hot, shocking news to me. It was heartbreaking.

I want you back

Michael was my first crush. There were the posters on my wall and the journal entries about meeting and marrying him and protecting him all that might wound him.

Abc, 123

As a little girl, my cousins and I lip synced, kicked, and spun, trying to follow the studded bell bottoms of Michael and his brothers. In secret I wrote him letters by the dozens and sat in my room, daydreaming of our fairytale love story.

Just call my name and I’ll be there

Later, I ‘shook my body to the ground’ and grew into adolescence as Michael, the wide eyed cutie with the magical voice, eased out of the Afro on his way to the jheri curl and a solo career.

Keep on, don’t Stop ‘till you get enough

I moved beyond posters on the walls and accepted that he was a star flung too far for me to marry – though I hung on to the prayer that at least we’d meet. He was still my Michael and I stood applauding telling him to go on with his bad self as he moon-walked onto MTV and further into pop performance history.

Reaching out to touch a stranger

The lighter his skin got, the more that nose changed, the more I worried about him. But still the voice, the feet, and something of that little boy of long ago remained in the eyes. The awards, the glove, the sparkling sock, and the imitators came and went and the stories grew.

Just call my name and I’ll be there

Weird, bizarre, - the king of pop branded child molester, masked freak, wanna-be-white recluse, bad father. And he retreated even, from that beloved stage that had so long been home and went further in search, I believe, of a wonder-world fit for the child the spotlight and fame had stolen him from too early. And there he was – the barred topic, the disgraced has-been pop star, fallen prey to the world’s amnesia.

You’ve got a friend in me

They will say, are saying, he was a musical genius, a pop icon. They will catalog his ‘bizarre behavior’, trot long anonymous fans across the television screen, show images of flower tributes against the back drop of his pale face and ‘Michael Jackson 1958-2009.’ They will debate the sequence of his death, calculate his emotional state, review his achievements and cultural importance, and surmise on the future of his children.

I’ve been a victim of a selfish kind of love

None of it will mean much to me – not the images, the talk, and debates. I’ll be mourning my Michael, my first crush, the boy with James Brown and Jackie Wilson in his feet, the man with the sweetness and the haunted soul in his voice . . .

Oh I never can say good-bye . . .

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Stephane Dunn, Ph.D, MFA, is currently an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Morehouse College. She has also taught at Ohio State University. A scholarly and creative writer, she specializes in film, popular culture, literature and African American studies. She is the author of articles and commentaries and the book, Baad Bitches & Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films (University of Illinois Press 2008).