A Response to “Notes on a Dying Culture”

A Response to “Notes on a Dying Culture”

by James Ford III | special NewBlackMan

Whitney Houston’s unexpected passing shocked me. I mourn for her and her loved ones who feel her recent passing more profoundly than I ever will. I thought Bob Davis’s recent post would help me consider the impact of this loss. Sadly, his post repeats the same Civil Rights vs Hip-Hop generation storyline. As a member of the generation he criticizes, I see his post as an invitation for further discussion.

Davis says the culture of the American Civil Rights Movement was “rejected…by its own children” and two camps sprung up: one upholds the Civil Rights Movement’s values and another doesn’t. The latter group may erase black culture altogether. This decline storyline sabotages communal self-reflection, which is only effective when every generation is accountable for its strengths and weaknesses. I learned this from listening to hip-hop, in the rawness of the Rza’s beats, the low-end of 808s, Big Crit’s bluesy production and lyricism or Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Sometimes, rawness refers to uniqueness; it’s not wrong, just different. At other times, rawness points directly to what is detrimental and must be overcome. How does this relate to Davis’s post? Davis doesn’t want to deal with all that is raw withinthe Civil Rights Movement and those who witnessed it. He scapegoats hip-hop to avoid facing this issue.

First, Davis doesn’t identify the “values” of the Civil Rights Movement or the hip-hop generation. He says “sacrifice today, so that future generations can be better off” is the “simple notion” for the Civil Rights movement. But in Why We Can’t Wait, King treats the Civil Rights Movement as the culmination of political currents, perspectives, and movements in the US and around the world, rather than a single notion. Everyone across the political spectrum uses the “we sacrifice for future generations” slogan because it grants immediate legitimacy. Ironically, it is even used to support agendas that directly hurt the youth. This is great for political power plays, but not critical self-evaluation. In sum, Davis is unclear about the value differences between generations, so how can he be so sure the younger have betrayed the older?

Davis doesn’t consider that some in the older generation have betrayed—or, at least, are highly inconsiderate of—the younger. Was Jesse Jackson an “elder statesmen” fatigued from guiding rebellious youth when he said he’d castrate President Obama? Was Ice Cube betraying the values of the Civil Rights Movement when he, a rapper, said Jackson’s words were deplorable, considering the history of lynching in the US? My point is that, in Davis’s account, there’s no room for Jesse Jackson to make such a terrible, selfish decision or for Ice Cube to be appropriately critical of it. He makes criticism a one-way street, when it should always go both ways.

But there’s more. Was Kanye betraying Civil Rights Movement values when he publicly critiqued racism and Hurricane Katrina? Or when David Banner volunteered along the Gulf Coast? Was Mos Def betraying the tradition of Civil Rights Movement public protest when he was arrested outside the Video Music Awards for his impromptu performance of “Katrina Clap,” his song critiquing the Bush Administration? On another note, what about Common’s recent performance in the White House or Lupe Fiasco’s critiques of Obama in “Words I Never Said”? On yet another note, there’s Pharoahe Monch’s album W.A.R. (We Are Renegades), an epic album placing black culture amongst the anti-war movements. I mean, Monch has a song called “Let My People Go” on the album. What more can he do to draw on Civil Rights culture? We can’t understand the continuities and discontinuities between these eras with Davis’s antagonistic perspective. More importantly, why don’t these examples of hip-hop and politics show up on his radar?

Perhaps he misses them because they don’t fit his image of black “culture on display.” Davis says America first saw it with Aretha Franklin’s performance at King’s funeral. Davis sees glimpses of it in R Kelly’s and Alicia Keyes’s “killer performances” at Whitney Houston’s funeral. I wholeheartedly oppose the idea that R Kelly, of all people, can reinstitute any morality. Kelly counts on people conflating the beauty of his performance with moral virtue so he can get away with abuse. It’s hard for me not to ignore the misogyny that links Jesse Jackson to R Kelly, Davis’s potential “elder statesmen” to come. I wonder, can spectacle truly make up for everything? Is the Civil Rights Movement all spectacle? Connect his focus on Kelly’s performance to his emphasis on witnesses of the Civil Rights Movement and to televised events, and it seems that spectacle is what counts most in Davis’s post. It’s not a difference in cultural values. It’s a difference in spectacles…King’s or Houston’s funerals vs XXL magazine.

But maybe that’s it. The best (or even just decent) hip-hop interrogates and displays the shortcomings of seeing the Civil Rights Movement as spectacle. Hip-hop discusses King’s activism, speeches, relationship to Malcolm, and assassination—the latter being the element that no spectacle can or should be able to supplant. Hip-hop also focuses intently on the complexities of the drug abuse that troubled Jimi Hendrix, Michael Jackson, Richard Pryor, Gil Scott Heron and, yes, Whitney Houston. Noting this does not condemn these brilliant artists. It condemns a world that pushed them to despair and profited from their momentary escapes from pain. But it also means that in the 80s and 90s, when Davis blames hip-hop for rejecting the Civil Rights Movement, the hip-hop generation could see the pain and frustration of their parents and other community members who witnessed the Civil Rights Movement. Why wouldn’t this encourage the younger to seek alternatives to what didn’t work out in the previous generation? Indeed, hip-hop culture inherited some of its deepest issues from its immediate predecessors, who witnessed the Civil Rights Movement. But few will admit this because it shatters the image of the Civil Rights Movement that has replaced the complexity of what actually happened, good and bad.

Whitney Houston did amazing things. Her angelic voice literally unified a nation with the 1991 Superbowl. In her recent interviews she gave all the right answers about overcoming drug abuse. She knew the exact scriptures to quote when Oprah asked if she finally believed in herself. Millions of fans loved this. But none of us saw she was still doubting herself, still hurting, still feeling anxious about the future. Admitting this should not take away one iota from her artistry, because these are troubles we all face to some degree. But it should challenge us to consider the relationship between spectacle and substance, which is not always easily understood. Hip-hop is just one of the artforms in black culture that participates in and questions the spectacles in American popular culture. I’d like to think that if she answered interviewers differently and acknowledged she was still struggling, that we would have listened. Then again, I fear that we, whatever our generation, have been so caught up in the spectacle that we call “Whitney Houston” that we might have missed her calls for help. This, and not hip-hop, is the sign of a dying culture.

***

James Ford is Assistant Professor of African American Literature at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA. He is currently working on two book projects. The first book, Thinking through Crisis: Depression-Era Black Literature, History, and Politicsexplores the insights that Black Radical writers from the first Great Depression can teach about the current depression. The second book, Hip-Hop’s Late Style: Liner Notes to An Aesthetic Theory, uses aesthetic philosophy to consider what post-Golden Era hip-hop can teach us about living after America’s Golden Era has ended.

Notes on a Dying Culture #666 (The Whitney Houston Funeral Telecast)

Notes on a Dying Culture #666 (The Whitney Houston Funeral Telecast)

by Bob Davis | special to NewBlackMan

As I watched the Whitney Houston funeral services, as broadcast on American cable TV yesterday, several things struck me.

Here was the root of the mid 20th century Black American culture on full display for the American public to see. Of course this should come as no surprise, because this was indeed the culture that had produced Whitney Houston.

It is also the very same culture that had produced Michael Jackson, Julian Bond, Magic Johnson, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Julius Erving, Jessie Jackson, Richard Pryor, Berry Gordy and many others.

This was the culture that had provided the fuel for the American Civil Rights movement. Up until about 1990, this genius of a culture had produced nearly 100 percent of that which was considered a contribution of Black Americans and probably 75 percent of the American culture, exported to the rest of the world. It was a culture built upon simple notions of "sacrifice today, so that future generations can be better off."

Then around 1990, a very curious thing happened to this culture. It was rejected, lock, stock & barrel by its own children. This rejection is sometimes expressed by Black Americans themselves when they describe this rejection using terminology like "Old School" vs. "Hip Hop." Because of the terminology that is used, it is easy to think that somehow this is an inter-generational dispute about music.

Of course, the dispute isn't really about music. The dispute is really about what is the correct path and set of behaviors that Black Americans should take as they march into the future. The people at the heart of this dispute fall roughly into two categories

1. Black Americans who are old enough to have first hand knowledge of the American Civil Rights Movement, who are committed to those inherent set of values.

2. Black Americans who are too young to have first hand knowledge of the American Civil Rights Movement, who have committed to a set of values that have little in common with the values inherent in the American Civil Rights Movement.

One of the things that is clear about culture is that it will decline and eventually disappear if younger people do not embrace it and carry it forward. In fact over the past few years, it feels like that Civil Rights culture is being destroyed at an accelerated pace, because people seem to be dying at an accelerated pace. I discuss these two categories of Black Americans in more detail in an article I wrote for Elmore Magazine back in 2008 which you can read at the following link: http://www.soul-patrol.com/bd_elmore.pdf

I have spent much of the past 15 years doing is documenting the decline of the mid 20th Century Black American culture, here online and elsewhere, as its creators pass on and the younger group imposes its own culture and expands it out into the mainstream. Documenting this decline is especially painful for me, especially since I am also product of the American Civil Rights Movement and am clearly a person who has brought into its values "lock, stock and barrel."

In watching Houston’s funeral services the thought occurred to me that this could very well be the last time that this great genius of a culture might be on display to the mainstream American public for the very last time, at a nationally televised funeral for Whitney Houston.

I remember the first time that this culture was on display for the mainstream American TV audience. It was in 1968, at the funeral of Dr. Martin Luther King. I remember watching it on TV, one of the artists who performed was Aretha Franklin. She was also supposed to perform at Whitney Houston's funeral, but we were told that she was too ill. However there was another person who was a key figure at Dr. King's funeral, who was also a key figure at Whitney Houston's funeral.

Reverend Jessie Jackson of course first came to the national spotlight in the aftermath of Dr. King's Assassination. He was the young and fiery "street preacher," out of Chicago. At Whitney Houston's funeral Reverend Jesse Jackson, sat front & center for the entire service. Not only was he no longer young and fiery, he never uttered a single word. He looked tired and worn out, as I suppose an elder statesman should? However I wondered if he looked that way because he knows that the battle for the hearts, minds and values of Black America has been won by the hip hop generation?

I have wondered that very same thing myself.

Will the values of Lil Wayne, XXL Magazine, etc become what Black Americans are known best for in 20 years, once all of the people who have first hand knowledge of the American Civil Rights Movement are gone?

Or is there still a possibility that younger people—as  illustrated by the "blood on the floor," killer performances by two artists (R. Kelly & Alicia Keyes) who are too young to have any first hand knowledge of the American Civil Rights Movement—will suddenly wake up and understand that they have a responsibility to sustain/advance a culture that seems to mostly be on "life-support."

Perhaps this nationally televised funeral can prove to be a watershed event not only for Black Americans, but for White Americans as well? For example, I thought that Kevin Costner's story of his friendship with Whitney Houston was one of the best cases for the notion of having an integrated society that I have heard laid out in many years.

Time will tell.

***

Bob Davis is co-owner/creator (with his brother Mike) of the award winning Soul-Patrol.com. Follow him on Twitter @Kozmicfunk

RIP Clarence Clemons

RIP Clarence Clemons

(and the kozmic significance of the ordinariness it all)

by Bob Davis | Soul-Patrol.com

I have written about Clarence Clemons many times in the past, however it has never been enough. I say that simply because people like him simply never get quite enough credit because their accomplishment is in the extraordinary manner that they go about doing what should be ordinary, but isn't.

1973 - FRESHMAN ORIENTATION

Next fall my daughter will be a college freshman. That means later this summer, she will be attending something called "freshman orientation." Here in the Davis household the topic of "freshman orientation," has been the topic of much conversation over the past few days. The passing of Clarence Clemons takes me back to my own "freshman orientation," at the University of Pittsburgh way back in 1973.

Freshman orientation is supposed to be a period of time when you as the recent high school graduate, but not yet college freshman can be introduced to your selected institution of higher learning in earnest. You get to live in the dorms, you get to learn about the administrative procedures in registering for classes, you get to learn about the support system available to you at the institution and more. It is designed to assist you with the transition between high school & college. I am all but certain that they vary from college to college, yet are all designed to be somewhat similar.

In 1973 my freshman orientation at the University of Pittsburgh was all of the above, strongly enhanced by something else that was quite unexpected, and yet at the same time something quite significant. You see perhaps because it was 1973 or perhaps it was the University of Pittsburgh or perhaps for reasons that I am completely unaware of, the memory of my own freshman orientation of almost 40 years ago is completely filtered thru the haze of "sex, drugs & rock n' roll." And at the very center of that "haze" is Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

You see the University of Pittsburgh has arranged for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band to perform in nearby Schenley Park for what seemed like morning, noon and night for all 4 days of freshman orientation. Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band were onstage performing whenever I happened to be in the park (which was as often as I possibly could be…..LOL)

The first thing that I noticed was that while the band was integrated, the crowd was almost 100 percent white. The music however seemed rooted in 1950's/1960's R&B and Doo Wop, so it was "retro." Yet at the same time it was contemporary and fresh. During that freshman orientation weekend I returned to that park many times, because I dug the whole scene (it was much like I had envisioned Woodstock to have been,) yet each time I returned, I was stunned by the fact that while there were many Black students attending freshman orientation weekend, almost none of them were in the park. One one occasion I did see a Black student in the park and we sought each other out. His name was Kevin Amos, who has been my friend ever since that day and whose name you will recognize from his many contributions to Soul-Patrol.com over the years.

1984 - JERSEY SHORE

In 1984 I found myself living in Red Bank New Jersey. I been living and working as an operations manager in Houston Texas for a well known "enormous nationwide public utility." As you all may recall 1984 was the year when the "enormous nationwide public utility" was deregulated and broken up. This "break up" created opportunities for employees who were willing to relocate to the New Jersey headquarters of the "enormous nationwide public utility." And I was one such employee. I headed for New Jersey for not only a new home, a new career and yet another intersection with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, at a transitional moment in my life.

As things would turn out I ended up living in Red Bank for no particular reason other than the fact that a friend of mine from HS was now living there and he offered me a place to crash, during my transition. Many of you will recall that 1984 was also the year when Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band became a nationwide/worldwide musical and cultural phenomena. And I found myself living in the very place that was the heart & soul of the culture from which sprang Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

In fact Clarence Clemons was from Red Bank, New Jersey. If you were to drive down the main drag (RT 35) thru Red Bank New Jersey, you would think that you had somehow been transported to a place in the Middle America. On RT 35 you will see beautiful early 20th century homes, tree lined streets with children playing, leading to a downtown area that looks like it could be in a Jimmy Stewart movie.

However if you peel back the onion just a bit you will find a small city where quite literally the Blacks live on one side of the tracks and the whites live on the other side of the tracks. Despite that legacy of segregation, the flip side of Red Bank as well as all of the dozens of other towns/cities stretching along the coast of New Jersey that make up this mythical place called "The Jersey Shore," is that it's probably among the most liberal places that you could possibly find in the United States. You see the real life "Jersey Shore" (not the TV show) is the complete antithesis of current day "2011 Tea Party Amerika."

As such race relations are quite a bit different then they are in almost anyplace else that I have ever lived in the United States, north, south, east or west. The reality of the Jersey Shore is that you have a large geographical area, with a large Black/White population where there is in fact something that approaches racial harmony. Oh to be certain, the Jersey Shore is by no means perfect, but it approaches the very ideal of what the people who fought so hard for something called "integration," during the last century had envisioned during that fight.

An understanding of what life is like at the Jersey Shore provides a quick answer to not only the "concept of "Bruce Spingsteen/Clarence Clemons," but also to their reality. I have seen "music/culture experts" at publications like Rolling Stone Magazine, eMpTVy, etc. describe the relationship between Bruce/Clarence as being somewhat analogous to that of Huck Finn & N*gger Jim. I would suggest that while that description might sound ok, that it is somewhat misleading (and also panders to a lingering kind of racism.) Huck & Jim weren't "equals." Not only were Bruce/Clarence "equals," but based on my own personal observation of 1984 Jersey Shore life, they weren't all that unusual either. I can tell you for a fact that wherever you went in the summer of 1984 you could see Black kids and White kids hanging out together. You could see Black families and White families hanging out together. You could see the vision of America that many Americans had been hoping for many generations would become a reality in actual practice all along the streets and boardwalks of the mythical place called "The Jersey Shore."

The music of the Jersey Shore is the same way. It harkens back to the roots of Rock n' Roll itself, where the guitar and the sax were at the heart of the music. The integrationist 1950's notion that lies just under the surface of rock n roll, "equal parts blues & country," serving as a musical metaphor for "equal parts black & white," serves as a revolutionary concept for a nation whose very creation is rooted in slavery of those who were constitutionally declared as "3/5 th's of a human being."

Only a place like the Jersey Shore, could give to us an integrated musical entity like Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band to remind us all not only what Rock n' Roll is supposed to sound/look like, but more importantly to remind us all what we are supposed to be like. To remind us all of just how "ordinary" our "extra-ordinariness" is actually supposed to be.

2006 - ROCK N' ROLL HALL OF FAME INDUCTIONS

In March of 2006 I traveled from New Jersey to NYC to do my then annual coverage of the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame Inductions at the Waldorf-Astoria. The primary reason I went was to interview the family of Miles Davis, who was being inducted that year. I had done the interview the night before the day/night of the induction. As I written before here on Soul-Patrol, it is the daytime of the induction, when the rehearsals take place that is my whole reason for being there as opposed to the actual awards ceremony at night. The Rock n Roll Hall of Fame Induction REHERSALS are perhaps the very best LIVE PERFORMANCES that I have ever been personally a witness to in my life. On top of that, the opportunities that I have had to speak with the legends of music in such a casual setting have provided me with experiences that I simply are unable to describe to you in words.

One of the most memorable of many such experiences was in 2006, when I spotted Mr. Clarence Clemons inside of the rehearsal hall (actually the same ballroom where the awards ceremony was to take place later.) I walked up to Clarence Clemons and I introduced myself. I mentioned to him during my introduction that I had once lived in Red Bank, NJ for a period of time in the 1980's and Clarence hugged me.

He said "I don't really know why you are here, and yes I have heard of your publication, but you do realize the kozmic significance of you and I being here at this place, at this moment in time, don't you?"

As I looked around the room, of course I knew EXACTLY what Clarence meant. Although the room was packed with people, very few of them besides Clarence, our friend Greer Brooks-Muldoon and myself were Black Americans.

I said to Clarence, "this meeting has the EXACT same kozmic significance as the very first time that I ever saw you perform live, during freshman orientation at the University of Pittsburgh, back in 1973."

I then told Clarence the story of me seeing the integrated Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, perform over the course of an entire weekend, during my freshman orientation.

He smiled and said "I told you it was kozmic.."

We then proceeded to have a one hour conversation about music, life, race, money and a whole lot more in a way that if you had been listening, you would have no idea that it was the very first time that Clarence & I had ever spoken with each other. Instead it sounded like two people who had known each other for 35 years. About ¾ of the way thru the conversation, I realized that I hadn't turned on my tape recorder and that this had in fact been one of the very best interviews/conversation that I had ever conducted. I also realized that if I had turned the tape recorder on, that the conversation would have been nowhere near as good or life effecting. (But I was able to get him to cut a Soul-Patrol Radio Station id.

6/19/2011 - TODAY

Clarence Clemons passed away yesterday, but today is also Fathers Day. This past Friday, I got the best Fathers Day present that I could possibly get as I watched my daughter walk to the podium and receive her HS diploma.

As I am sitting here composing this piece about the passing of Clarence Clemons, I can't help but to think of how the people who fought so hard for integration in the 1950's weren't doing so, just for the sake of doing so. They did so because they believed that integration would lead to equal opportunity for all of those who wanted to fully participate in American society. I too am a believer in that concept, have tried to live my life accordingly and tried to extend that notion to my daughter. My hope is that as she moves forward in her life that she will understand that the only restrictions on her are the ones that she places upon herself.

Clarence Clemons in his public life was a real life symbol for that philosophy. He was also one hell of a nice person, that I was privileged to admire from a far for decades and when I finally got the chance to spend some time with immediately connected with and in one day learned that although we had never met prior to that day, we had indeed been friends all along. That's because we had been "kindred spirits." And I say all of this simply to say that, if you have led your life in a certain kind of way, you are also probably a "kindred spirit," with Clarence Clemons, and most likely would have become his frind if you were ever to meet him, just like I did...

At the 2011 Soul-Patrol Convention on July 23 in Philadelphia, one of our panel discussions will be a topic entitled "WHO STOLE THE SOUL FROM ROCK N' ROLL." I have absolutely no doubt that Mr. Clarence Clemons will be listening in to that conversation and smiling. I also have absolutely no doubt that his name is going to be mentioned at least once or twice :)

***

Bob Davis is co-owner/creator (with his brother Mike) of the award winning http://www.soul-patrol.com/ website. He is also the web master/moderator/editor/radio program director of Soul-Patrol.