And for you, here's Part 2 from Lyrics Born TV shot by the indomitable JB. I'm conjuring breakdowns and yapping about stuff from SoleSides and KDVS up through the writing of CSWS.
I was asked by Dwight Garner to contribute a Living with Music playlist for the New York Times' book blog, Paper Cuts. In celebration of that, I've uploaded a Fuzz mixtape of the songs above. You can check the songs for a coupla weeks.
(If it's popular like that, I'll try to figure out a more permanent solution. Fam feel free to school me on any interesting widgets to try...)
While you're at Paper Cuts, check all the Living With Music lists. Hours of fun. I think Kevin Young's is particularly great. Thanks to Dwight for making this all possible...
Friday, September 21, 2007 Lost And Found :: Jena 6, Juncture, Keith Knight, The Well "And so I threw another log on the fire. Let it burn...": This tree in Jena has been chopped down.
Lots of running around lately so it's catchup time in these parts.
Jena 6
First off, big ups to everyone supporting the Jena 6. Yesterday's rally was a huge testament to the power of grassroots organizing in the hip-hop generation. Even though CNN gave a lot of the shine to the old school (Sharpton, Jackson, Maxine Waters, and others), it was the new school that shepherded the case into one of the most powerful anti-racist demonstrations in years.
Props to the parents, Friends of Justice, Color of Change, and the hip-hop netroots who started the ball rolling. Props also to the radio folks, like Michael Baisden, the Hard Knock crew, and others, who have kept the case in the spotlight. Shouts too to the National Hip-Hop Political Convention heads who came out in force.
Finally, I got to talk today about what the Jena 6 case means and about Color of Change's petition and their other efforts today on Farai's show with Sean Gonsalves and Ernie Suggs. Click here to hear it.
Get Juncture!
Recently editor and writer Lara Stapleton sent this sprawlingly great (just like the town it comes from--Brooklyn) anthology called Juncture, to me. It features some of my old faves (including Mike Ladd, Jonathan Lethem, Pagan Kennedy, and Carl Hancock Rux) and a host of new ones, including Gina Apostol, whom Lara wrote to let me know had her hilarious story "Imeldific" featured on KQED, with music by our world-traveling home DJ Spooky. (Extra plus: the book is published by Soft Skull, one of the great underground presses.) Download or stream the reading now, and then click here to buy it already. It's all about the shoes!
Keith Knight :: Big Baller
This is why he's hot
One of our favoritest cartoonists Keith Knight has won the big old Harvey Award! Woo hoo! I understand through representatives of his publicity machine that he has promised not to forget the little people.
Way Down In The Well
Stop by for a convo with me and my new friends down in The Well this week if you get a chance. We're talking total chaos, hip-hop aesthetics and breaking injuries. Peace.
It tries to account for the global sophistication of b-boy/b-girl competitions in talking about the rise of South Korean b-boys and their journey into evening-length works. It also touches on Benson Lee's fantastic new movie Planet B-Boy, which captures a year in the life of Thomas Hergenrother's essential Battle of The Year, an event that is beginning to look like the b-boy/b-girl World Cup. Trac 2 also gets a strong mention in the piece.
At the same time, it's waaaaaaay off the mark in terms of looking at how b-boy has moved to the theatre stage. "Battle of the Year is largely responsible for the trend toward longer, more artful works featuring characters and plot," the author, Julie Bloom, writes.
Bloom even contradicts the Times' own dance critics, who have been covering hip-hop dance theatre since the Rhythm Technicians took to the stage at PS 122 in 1991 with the acclaimed play "So What Happens Now?", years before BOTY's competition expanded beyond Europe. (That play could also be said to be the birth of hip-hop theatre itself.)
This is not at all a slight to BOTY's influence on global b-boying/b-girling, which has been HUGE. It's simply to say that Bloom overstates the case drastically, and there are effects.
This is not an incidental point. As many pioneer dancers remind me, part of the reason hip-hop dance remains the least understood of the original four elements is because few people really care to get their facts right. Many see this as a campaign to erase and deracinate hip-hop's origins. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I don't. But the effect can be the same.
So mad props, love, and respect to the German and South Korean massive for continuing to expand and change the game. But I'm sure even they would tell you that the history isn't always what it's made out to be by the mainstream media.
BTW just got word today that Raquel Cepeda's film Bling: A Planet Rock, a film on hip-hop and the Sierra Leone diamond trade featuring Paul Wall and Raekwon that aired earlier this year on VH1 will be out in her essential director's cut DVD this September. Another brilliant project that is a powerful must-see.
Brasilintime--the second of B+'s journeys into rhythm, time, generation, diaspora, and the future--is a transforming event. It's impossible to describe all the ways it will make you see, hear, and touch the world differently.
For the LA premiere next week, B+ and Eric Coleman (our esteemed Westside BC, not our esteemed Beantown BC) have lined up these happenings:
July 17 :: Movie Premiere @ The Egyptian Theatre July 18 :: Photo Exhibition Opening by B+ & Coleman @ Turntable Lab LA July 19 :: The Concert! @ The Mayan :: Featuring: Paul Humphrey, James Gadson, Derf Reklaw, Babu, J.Rocc, Cut Chemist, Madlib and direct from Brasil João "Comanche" Parahyba, Ivan "Mamão" Conti & DJ Nuts.
Tickets for the movie premiere and concert and pre-orders for the DVD can be purchased here.
Really inspiring piece by the great Haruki Murakami today on how jazz inspired him to make a crazy move at 29 and try his hand at becoming a novelist.
This piece hit home. I was 29 when SoleSides ended, and I thought maybe, just maybe, I could write for a living. A decade plus later, we're still seeing about that, but so far I have nothing to complain about.
When I turned 29, all of a sudden out of nowhere I got this feeling that I wanted to write a novel — that I could do it. I couldn’t write anything that measured up to Dostoyevsky or Balzac, of course, but I told myself it didn’t matter. I didn’t have to become a literary giant. Still, I had no idea how to go about writing a novel or what to write about. I had absolutely no experience, after all, and no ready-made style at my disposal. I didn’t know anyone who could teach me how to do it, or even friends I could talk with about literature. My only thought at that point was how wonderful it would be if I could write like playing an instrument.
I had practiced the piano as a kid, and I could read enough music to pick out a simple melody, but I didn’t have the kind of technique it takes to become a professional musician. Inside my head, though, I did often feel as though something like my own music was swirling around in a rich, strong surge. I wondered if it might be possible for me to transfer that music into writing. That was how my style got started.
Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won’t keep reading your work. I learned the importance of rhythm from music — and mainly from jazz. Next comes melody — which, in literature, means the appropriate arrangement of the words to match the rhythm. If the way the words fit the rhythm is smooth and beautiful, you can’t ask for anything more...
Friday, March 30, 2007 Snowbound In Laramie / Neocons Who (Think They) Like Hip-Hop Spring in Laramie looks like winter in Alaska.
Thank you to Adrian Molina, Bethany, and the whole Laramie fam for taking care of their boy while we were all snowbound yesterday. The Shepherd Symposium was longish, I know, but great.
Unfortunately I won't be able to make it this afternoon to the Vassar event. Skies are clear here now in Wyo but there is no physical way to be there today. We'll resched the event as soon as we can.
Signs of the end of the world or just that hip-hop really is dead? You decide.
Joseph Abrams begins by critiquing my new book Total Chaos, but he starts heading toward a way of defanging hip-hop by reducing it to just a pleasurable way of understanding "the black street world", his words, not mine. You may remember these are the same folks that last year tried to rewrite rock history recently as a proto-conservative movement.
Might have helped if folks actually read Can't Stop Won't Stop, or for that matter, the book being reviewed, rather than just say they did.
In any case, reducing hip-hop to a simple "identity movement" is one way to make hip-hop safe for the Karl Roves of the world. (And you see what the results are...) Now, although many academics have made the claim, I have never claimed hip-hop began as political movement. I've always repeated the lesson that Kool Herc schooled me in: it simply began as a way for Black youth--African American, Afro-Latino, Afro-Caribbean--in the Bronx to have fun. No more, no less.
So, identity, yes. And yes, hip-hop is a worldview by now. That's what Can't Stop Won't Stop was all about, for anyone paying attention. So the National Review is half right.
But here's where they're got it wrong. I have always said that it is impossible to separate aesthetics from the world it emerges in. If new-century neocons, or anyone else for that matter, would like to separate the rap and hip-hop arts that they think they like from the living, breathing context that it all issues from--the way they did with rock and roll--they will always have beef from me and the large large fam out here. Aesthetics is not a neutral truth that lives above the people.
People make art. Art represents actual lives. We can disagree about what it means, but no one should ever be able to erase those lives, just so that we can enjoy their labor conscience-free. Even if we buy the art, we don't purchase innocence along with it.
But anyway, no use wasting any more time on time wasters. Hit us back here or in person when you see us. It's all about extending the conversation.
