Dear Black people,
Yes, that's me. I didn't tell you I grew my eyebrows out?
I have some things I need to get off of my chest. We have been together for a long time. Almost 25 years, plus ancestral memory and such. This is the silver anniversary! You know most Black folks don't make it much further than wood! Shoot, a lot of us didn't make it past cotton, if you think about it.
Ahem. Anyway, I need you to do something for me. Something big. Consider it a birthday gift. Or hell, let's just call it reciprocity for 25 years of loyal service.
Black people: STOP EMBARRASSING ME!
Seriously, this is getting old! Lord knows I have made some mistakes in my day, but for the most part, I have fallen short of any sort of behaviors that reflect on the collective in a bad way. And yet, I have the unfortunate luck of being bound by race to so many....miscreants! Ne'erdo'wells!
I'm sick of your homophobia, I'm sick of folks thumping the King James version of the Bible (when they've hardly even read it, let alone challenged the notion of a political figure deciding that he can rewrite such a text), I'm sick of the Tyler Perry industrial complex, I am sick of auto-tune, I'm sick of gold teeth, I'm sick of award shows, I'm sick of name brand clothes.
It's not that I care so much about what other folks think of us. Especially now when we have the big trump card that is our President. It's just that folks like the goon who came up with "My president is Black/my Lambo's blue" have a lot of sway over how young Black folks perceive Blackness and what it means to be us. Furthermore, it just blows my mind how some of us disregard the work our elders did in order to gain basic human dignity by making an effort to go out and be as niggerish as possible. There is not a day that goes by that I don't want to grab one of our folks on the street and shake them and say "WE DESCEND FROM GREATNESS! AND I DON'T JUST MEAN THE KINGS AND QUEENS FROM THE DAMN BUDWEISER CALENDAR FROM THE 90'S! WE HAD DIGNITY JUST DECADES AGO! PULL UP YOUR PANTS! TURN YOUR 'SWAG' OFF AND YOUR BRAIN ON!"
When it comes to Negritude, I'll teach you how to stunt, my people. Angela Davis will teach you. Michela Angela Davis will. Jill Nelson. Jill Scott. Kevin Powell. Mark Anthony Neal. Barack and Michelle Obama. And from the ancestral cabinet, George Jackson, El-Haji Malik and Betty Shabazz, John Henrik Clarke and so many others will. And you can go forward and do us proud, okay? Just please stop cooning and clowning and making us shame.
Now, since I am trying to be in the business of walking the talk...lately, I have been feeling sad about the lack of exposure most Black folks have to Jazz. And no, not that smooth B.S. that made Kenny G a millionaire many times over. I'm talking about REAL Jazz. While I was raised on Jazz, particularly by my father's influence, even I am very short of being a true expert or afficianado. I own albums by folks including Nina Simone, Coltrane, Miles, Mingus and my great-uncle by marriage Thelonious Monk, but there is so much for me to learn. Sadly, most of the folks who are interested in Jazz these days aren't Black. I can't blame them, that'd be like throwing a filled fridge away and being mad when your neighbor decides to make a good meal with your trash. But I don't want us to completely let other folks take ownership over that which our people created.
That said, I will be adding "Jazz Messenger" to my list of self-appropriated titles. No less than thrice a week, I will be including a video or a link to something Jazz related at the close of the post. Some of these songs will be familiar to me and others will be new discoveries. Let's learn and grow together, folks. We come from Charlie Parker and Alice Coltrane, let's not only limit ourselves to Little Wayne and Rihanna, mmkay?
The first clip is one of my favorite tunes of all time, Miles Davis' "Blue In Green". It appears on the seminal Kind Of Blue album, which is believed to be the greatest selling and most influential Jazz record of all time. "Blue In Green" is a ballad and embodies the modal* sound of the album.
Ya dig?
Sister Toldja
*I'm still trying to figure out how to totally process the difference between the different sub-genres of Jazz (modal, cool, hard bop, bebop, etc)beyond the obvious distinctions. If anyone has any suggestions on how to do so without knowing how to read music, please drop me a line!
** Shout out to Polly Pocket, who I met at the Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival! I love meeting readers! If you ever see me in the streets, holler at your girl!
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Monday, June 22, 2009
Stop It. Now. b/w Enter The Jazz Messenger
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18 props:
Thank you for this. For the past few years, I have been interested in getting more familiar with jazz, but I dont know where to start.
Side note: I'm glad I'm not the only one who remembers those Budweiser calendars lol
I'm extremely dense about Jazz. My ability to articulate about the genre begins and ends at "I like that...I don't like that!"
My jazz collection was appropriated from my old football coach. I've got Charlie Mingus, George Howard, Herbie Hancock, Joe Sample, Nelson Rangell, and John Coltrane on deck.
So yeah...I'm looking forward to these.
I also thank you for this as well. Based on your influence and inspiration, I'm changing my stage name to 'Melodious Thunk'.
As a hip hop cat nearing 40, I've gone hoarse from telling folk that our beloved cultural creation with its rich subcultures will go the way of jazz sometime soon.
But ever since I gave up the swine and got refined, they act like they're blind and they lost their damn minds... So I'm getting to the point where I think I can't share anymore.
Who am I? Well I'm a revolutionist, with skills to Malcolm X to improve my intellect, while another man checks my information, relayed identity... I'm John Doe, and far for him to see. Why? because so many have lost the ability to accept themselves and know how rich their culture is because someone else is passing it off as their own creation and profiting off of the embarrasing process.
Except for the chosen few such as yourself. I applaud you and wish to meet more like you. That gives me hope.
That's nice because that ish right there can win elections and reboot the matrix. Or at least I hope it does.
Spread it around, girl!
The Mama is a jazz fiend, so naturally I love me some Coltrane and the like. And ladies, specifically, need to get up on that jazz. It is great reflective music and perfect for those long relaxing bubble baths. Definitely puts you in the right mood.
Ms. Toldja,
Maybe, just maybe we share a little of the same blood. Could happen, this is America, with its history an’ all. LOL!
Because I was thinking something SO similar, I just can’t believe it. I’d had a conversation with a good work-type friend about that exact subject. The Jazz one. We both lamented about its historical roots, even at present some of our greatest talent and yet the consuming audience is about as white as a racist rally! It kinda gives the bad feeling of usury, as in the Roman gladiatorial concept; or more modern, our American sports structure, using black athlete’s for the entertainment of the privileged. I also worry that as the years roll forward we will lose the very “heart and soul” of the whole innovative side of Jazz, as it all becomes like “Jazz in a Blender” - Kenny “I just puked on your record” G. (God, I laughed so hard when you referenced him, because I feel the same way).
Ms. Toldja, I’ll take this even farther. You’ve also given up Rock & Roll. Quick history ok? Early development: Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, etc. That ol’ Elvis got picked for the well known fact he was white, but could fake (copy) the “soul” of others. Enough said about the beginnings, that’s a given. But it gets worse. Everybody who knows anything about all the great (white) Rock bands that came later all acknowledge the huge influence these early pioneers and the great older Blues players all had on their music. Heck, I don’t think Led Zeppelin, whose interpretations I do like, would be half of what they were if their music wasn’t a direct rip-off of many Mississippi Delta blues guys! I mean, one of their best is “When the Levee Breaks” and that is a direct plagiarism of an old Delta blues song!
This, of course, isn’t even taking into consideration the monumental impact Jimi Hendrix had on all of Rock. Even Sly Stone or early Isley Brothers inspired others in Rock. The Band of Gypsies trio, really just a rock jam band of Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Miles and Billy Cox, was probably the greatest ever. Guess on their skin pigmentation, lol.
But it all died somewhere in the late 70’s early 80’s. I’ll blame Rap, lol. Much easier to just rhyme than, like learn music and how to really play instruments and stuff. Just develop a Thug image and yer in.
But, I know for a fact Black Rock was some of the best. Many today don’t even remember that this was what Funkadelic was all about (George Clinton’s first successful innovation). I’m gonna include 3 YouTube links. Watch the live performances all the way through. Then tell me ya’ll can’t ROCK! Geez.
The links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z14hl67oZUE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBNJ52YSKww&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHORdkEFq5E
But, sadly it’s gone away. I fully lament the unique, inspired and innovative approaches black rockers always used to add to the music collective.
Ms. Toldja,
Follow-up here (slap me if I shouldn’t do that, lol):
While large blame can be absolutely pinned on the horrible record industry, about the loosing black rockers, Ms. Toldja, you can’t deny the self-limiting feeling “It ain’t Black to Rock” “Real Ni@@a’s (sorry for the use of that term) don’t do that”. It will call into question your “blackness”. Is that really healthy? The same could even be applied to Jazz now (and that’s just terrible). It’s now why I really wonder whether these ideas have largely served their purpose (for the necessary past situations of black Americans), but am unsure about their future applications. From the outside view, these concepts have become self-limiting factors. And therein lays the fundamental problem with “blackness”, the defining of what that would even mean, with many of the chains of direct oppression gone now. You CAN be/do about whatever you want in America today. Heck, you could date ME, if you’d so want (I’d accept. Even pay for Dinner, LOL!) So now that your choices of life are so open, how in the world could you confine “blackness” to some fixed arbitrary categories? Is it possible, in that weird way world history works, that clinging to “blackness” becomes an oppression in itself, having to conform to it?
Just my thoughts; from the outside. That’s all. I’m certainly not trying to challenge anybody and their feelings, that’s for sure.
I wonder if my nieces will roll their eyes at me if I tell them, "Turn your swag off and your brain on".
All I know about Jazz is Miles Davis and Nina Simone so I'm looking forward to it.
TURN YOUR 'SWAG' OFF AND YOUR BRAIN ON!"
Quote of the week.
I love music and listen to almost anything music-worthy. I (really)discovered John Coltrane in Junior year of High-school... One of our mandatory reading book was "Jazz et Vin de palme", a short stories compilation of parallells between Jazz and the socio-economic status of post-colonization, post-independence and often communist young African republics... It was science fiction and it was perfect (there is a short story about aliens abducting Coltrane because of the power of his sound).
Prior to that, my exposure to Jazz had been through the parental unit, so I thought of it as uncool. When I rediscovered it, I was entranced... and went on Jazz rampage.
Nobody gets a raw emotion out of me better than Mr. Davis on a stormy late Sunday afternoon while sipping a Pinot Gris. It is heaven and hell at the same time... and it is music.
Looking forward to the jazz messenger.
BNG is that shit, I must say. I haven't really listened to much jazz since a college music class about the origins.
YAY! I love this. I was blind for a long time, but now I see... when it comes to jazz this is.
I took a survey of Jazz class in college, and there are books out there that help with the distinctions for those who aren't musically inclined...
If I could sort through my books/find them I'll let you know about them.
I'm looking forward to new insights on jazz. I started with my dad's record collection and kept going from there.
In a sentimental mood and blue in green are my two all time favorite jazz songs
Thanks for the shout out!! It was so great to actually see you in person! You're so sweet! I'm so sorry you didn't get in the festival. It did kinda get crowded to the point where I had to start looking @ ppl with the sidewards glance when they pushed through without excusing themselves! BTW-Great Post!
Thank you and Good Night!
Sister Toldja, Thank you for this one! Jazz is my passion,(I am working hard to promote it here in Bahrain)and here if people hear or play Kenny G they swear they KNOW Jazz!
My own blog is all about the music and history of us, written from a music point of view of my personal story.
So I am very happy to see you going in that direction with the music.
One more time thank you and Keep The Beat....
Power to you ST.
P/S My Favorite cut on "Kind of Blue" is number 4 All Blues..also check out the last Cd by Randy Crawford and Joe Sample,it is pure soul.. and anything by Cassandra Wilson and Rachelle Farrell.
Keep the beat..
I look forward to your choices..
D W JazzLover,
Absolutely right about Cassandra Wilson! Man, can that woman sing! I just love her rendition of the old Van Morrison song “Crazy Love”. I could listen to that ‘til the kids pull the plug on my (cheap) CD box, lol.
And I could just look at her all day too, but … that’s too personal (and kinda weird, LOL) to get into …
“Blue in Green” is my favorite (like many people’s, I’m sure). The history on the approach Mr. Davis took on just how they did that set of recordings, to get the authentic feel, is as fascinating as the music (almost).
Bahrain?! Tell ‘em to quit buying their way into the world class running world, lol. Geez, they flat out buy African running talent to change nationality, to “represent” Bahrain in World Athletics. But Qatar’s doin’ the same, so, well. And like America didn’t “import” all of its phenomenal world-class Sprint talent several hundred years ago right, so ‘fair play’ huh?
My uncle is a jazz enthusiast and played in a semi-big Chicago band in his early days. I've been exposed...but I'd never call myself knowledgable on the genre.
Thanks for this blog. I look forward to the selections.
Hey hunn just stopping by showing your blog some love...very interesting...we love it : )
**YANTAN**
COME STOP BY SOMETIME.. ;-P
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