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Selasa, 10 Januari 2012
New Video: Omar Offendum | Straight Street
Straight Street | Feat. Meryem Saci
Producer | Oddisee
Director | Jean-Laurent Ratel
Commemorating one of the most ancient urban spaces in the world ... The Street Called Straight: (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Called_Straight)
________________________
Chorus:
it's just what we call fate
llivin on a Street Called Straight
it's just what we call fate
llivin on a Street Called Straight
Verse 1:
i took a stroll down the straight called str8
met a medicine man about 1/3 of the way
predecessor to the pusherman
with somethin to say
about an apple a day
keepin the sickness away
i valued his advice at face
at first
till he enlightened me to how precise nature worked
givin us citrus fruits in winter time for vitamin c
just met each other but im already invited for tea
(sub7an allah)
as fate would have it
he & i turned out to be related
a small world's even smaller when you're arab - aint it?
made it a point to soak in all his information
bout regenerative meditations
& preventitive medication
like a modern Ibn Sina
with a pretty calm demeanor
& a remedy for everything
that plagued the arab nations
yet when asked of how to cope with our impossible fate
he just said follow the middle path
to a Street Called Straight
Chorus:
it's just what we call fate
llivin on a Street Called Straight
it's just what we call fate
llivin on a Street Called Straight
it's just what we call fate
llivin on a Street Called Straight
that's where we cease all hate
& pray to 3ish peace all day
Verse 2:
i took a stroll down the street called str8
met a spiritual teacher about 2/3 of the way
predecessor to the preacherman
with somethin to say
about a prayer a day
keepin the satan's at bey
he spoke of angels on our shoulders
and the angles of our solar
systematic self-destruction
metaphysical corruption
with a danger to our polar
ice caps
till it's out of our control
& in the hands of our beholder
we philosophized for over
20 minutes like that
taught me lessons
any questions he would
give em right back
said the answers were within us
& i didnt like that
but i realized later why he did it like that
i had so much more to learn
clock was ticking - couldnt stall
committed his words to my memory
his wisdom was enthrallin
yet when askin him what was the most important to recall
he just said follow the middle path
Straight Street & that is all
Chorus:
it's just what we call fate
llivin on a Street Called Straight
it's just what we call fate
llivin on a Street Called Straight
it's just what we call fate
llivin on a Street Called Straight
that's where we cease all hate
& pray to 3ish peace all day
Verse 3:
i took a stroll down the street called str8
met a carpenter hard at work at the end of the way
predecessor to the architect with somethin to say
about not doin tomorrow
what should be finished today
he manipulated wood & metal till it followed function
building all through Via Recta
& Cardo Maximus junction
somethin told me he was wise beyond his years
i had a feelin
from the way that he'd exposed the beams
& ornamented ceilings
with an ambidextrous half
nonchalantly jest & laugh
sayin that my western education
made it hard to grasp
his connection to the past
deep-rooted in his craft
but was more than willing to share with me
the tools he knew i lacked
and for that i would be grateful
learnin how to build the monumental for the playful
& the humble for the faithful
yet when asked of how we'd stack against our impossible odds
he just said follow the middle path
Straight Street to the Gods
Chorus:
it's just what we call fate
llivin on a Street Called Straight
it's just what we call fate
llivin on a Street Called Straight
it's just what we call fate
llivin on a Street Called Straight
that's where we cease all hate
& pray to 3ish peace all day
________________________
From 'SyrianamericanA' | Album Released 04 July 2010
Digital Download & Lyrics Available @ http://offendum.bandcamp.com/
CD Available @ http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/OmarOffendumcredits For more information on Omar Offendum, visit:
http://www.offendum.com
http://twitter.com/offendum
http://tumblr.com/offendum
http://offendum.blogspot.com
http://myspace.com/offendum
http://facebook.com/offendum
Copyright © Cosher Ink, LLC
Rabu, 23 November 2011
Left of Black S2:E11 | Has the Hip-Hop Generation Squandered Black Music’s Legacy?
Left of Black S2:E11
Has the Hip-Hop Generation Squandered Black Music’s Legacy?
w/ Nicole Fleetwood and William Banfield
November 21, 2011
Left of Blackhost and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined via Skype© by Bill Banfield, the author of Representing Black Music Culture: Then, Now, and When Again? Banfield is a composer, recording artist, musical director, scholar and the Professor in the Music and Societies program at the Berklee School of Music. The Detroit native talks about growing up in the city that bred the Motown sound, and highlights the significance of his relationships with communities of artists including composer T.J. Anderson. Neal and Banfield also contemplate why younger generations are not knowledgeable of great music in history.
Later Neal is joined by Nicole Fleetwood , Professor of American Studies at Rutgers University and the author of Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness. Fleetwood and Neal discuss the promises and pitfalls of black iconic images, the photography of Charles “Teenie” Harris, and the role that her grandmother played in having her consider how “blackness” is seen. Lastly, Fleetwood discusses the importance of a realist aesthetic in black art.
***
Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.
***
Rabu, 16 November 2011
Vijay Prashad: Hip Hop Occupies
It's Politics Time Again
Hip Hop Occupies
For Heavy D, 1967-2011.
I. We the 99.
“Nobody got more welfare than Wall Street /Hundreds of billions after operating falsely/And nobody went to prison that’s where you lost me /But my home, my job, and my life is what it cost me.”– Jasiri X, Occupy (We the 99).
The students at UCONN invited Jasiri X to headline their “Political Awareness Rally” on November 4. Jasiri is a rapper from Pittsburg, PA., who burst on the scene with his powerful, political music, such as Free the Jena 6, What if the Tea Party Was Black, I Am Troy Davis and most recently Occupy (We the 99). Shortly before he was to come to the event, Jasiri received an email from the Chief Financial Officer of the Undergraduate Student Government at UCONN. The student wrote that Jasiri could perform most of his songs (“they all promote social justice and ending racism”), but the Student Government could not allow him to perform songs “that contain obvious political statements (such as Occupy – We the 99) – as referring to the Occupy movement.”
I asked Jasiri what he made of this curious distinction between his other work and the Occupy song. “I do political songs,” he said. “How can they say Occupy is a political song and not I Am Troy Davis?” At the event, Jasiri followed Ken Krayeske, who is running for U. S. Congress on the Green Party Ticket. Krayeske made his name through an interview with UCONN’s star basketball coach (he asked Jim Calhoun if he’d give back some of his millions as austerity struck the campus, and Calhoun barked, “Not a dime back”). At the Rally, Krayeske invoked Occupy. Jasiri recalls looking out at the students and thinking, “they have got to hear the song.” He went for it despite being warned that if he did the song he might not get paid.
Later Jasiri wrote, “At some point in this movement all of us are going to have to make sacrifices, if we truly want to see real change. The 1% control the 99% with promises of money, access, and comfort; we have to put our own souls above all three.”
II. Contagious Struggles.
When I asked Toni Blackman, a rapper with the Freestyle Union, what she thought of the Occupy dynamic, she said that it brought her “a sense of relief. I exhaled and thought ‘finally.’ I believe the energy will be contagious.” “Hip Hop is inching closer and closer to the Occupy movement. Soon singing about your riches and your bitches will be less and less acceptable. The Occupy movement has agitated the stagnant air just enough for artists who felt powerless to begin acknowledging their power again.”
It is not just the artists. Nor is the contagion going in one direction.
Read the Full Essay @ CounterPunch
I asked Jasiri what he made of this curious distinction between his other work and the Occupy song. “I do political songs,” he said. “How can they say Occupy is a political song and not I Am Troy Davis?” At the event, Jasiri followed Ken Krayeske, who is running for U. S. Congress on the Green Party Ticket. Krayeske made his name through an interview with UCONN’s star basketball coach (he asked Jim Calhoun if he’d give back some of his millions as austerity struck the campus, and Calhoun barked, “Not a dime back”). At the Rally, Krayeske invoked Occupy. Jasiri recalls looking out at the students and thinking, “they have got to hear the song.” He went for it despite being warned that if he did the song he might not get paid.
Later Jasiri wrote, “At some point in this movement all of us are going to have to make sacrifices, if we truly want to see real change. The 1% control the 99% with promises of money, access, and comfort; we have to put our own souls above all three.”
II. Contagious Struggles.
When I asked Toni Blackman, a rapper with the Freestyle Union, what she thought of the Occupy dynamic, she said that it brought her “a sense of relief. I exhaled and thought ‘finally.’ I believe the energy will be contagious.” “Hip Hop is inching closer and closer to the Occupy movement. Soon singing about your riches and your bitches will be less and less acceptable. The Occupy movement has agitated the stagnant air just enough for artists who felt powerless to begin acknowledging their power again.”
It is not just the artists. Nor is the contagion going in one direction.
Read the Full Essay @ CounterPunch
Rabu, 08 Juni 2011
Hip-Hop is Gay: Seeing Mr. Cee
Hip-Hop is Gay: Seeing Mr. Cee
by James Braxton Peterson | special to NewBlackMan
Hip Hop is gay. Not in the colloquial/vernacular sense of ‘gay’ as something negative or deplorable, but gay as in actually gay. I am gay too – about the possibility of actually having a real conversation about human sexuality, human resources and Hip Hop culture. It’s high time that Hip Hop had some real discourse about the homophobia that plagues us socially and I think at this point any other front(ing) is simply a thin veneer for the Hip Hop community’s inability to embrace the sexual reality of this culture that we know, love, and sometimes hate.
Recently, HOT97’s Mr. Cee (ne Calvin LeBrun) was arrested for public lewdness when police allegedly saw him receiving oral sex from another man in his car. According to the New York Daily News this is the third time that (in less than a year) Mr. Cee has been caught/detained for solicitation, loitering and now public lewdness. Even more recently, Mr. Cee pled guilty to lewd conduct in public. As J. Desmond Harris reported on The Root.com, the online response to Mr. Cee’s predicament was typically homophobic and at times downright ignorant. To my mind this is simply more evidence that Hip Hop is gay.
In his award-winning documentary, Beyond Beats and Rhymes, filmmaker Byron Hurt unveils hypermasculinity and homosocialism as foundational pillars in the construction and performance of black masculinity in Hip Hop culture. The film also suggests that some of the rampant hypermasculinity, misogyny, and violent themes are ways in which men attempt to over compensate for their own homoerotic and homosocial desires. As more and more narratives like Mr. Cee’s emerge, the response to the alleged activities/crimes seem to be more indicative of Hip Hop culture than the actual alleged acts in question.
For his part, Mr. Cee originally denied these allegations, shielding himself in a playlist of oddly defensive rap tracks, and ramping up a twitter account so that he can defend himself against the perceived ‘plague’ of being gay in the homophobic world of Hip Hop. There are several situations in the not so distant past that have unraveled similarly in the public sphere. Eddie Murphy was arrested for a rendezvous with a transgendered person and rumors of him being gay have pretty much dogged him ever since. In a more honest discourse we might be able to consider that Eddie is more bi-sexual than gay, or better still, he, like many folk, have sexual preferences that can not simply be defined by hetero/homo terms.
You might also remember that New Jersey governor (McGreevey) who frequented Turnpike truck stops in order to satiate his socially repressed desires to be with other men. Or you might likewise recall Ted Haggert’s scandalous meth-drenched affair with a ‘personal trainer’, or former Senator Larry “wide stance” Craig’s arrest for lewd conduct. Maybe you haven’t seen the self-photograph of a svelte Bishop Eddie Long, in full pose – making a virtual/visual gift for his young targets of seduction. Bishop Long also, very recently settled his case. Mr. Cee is not the first and certainly won’t be the last public figure to be “guilty of” engaging in gay sexual activity.
Yet his recent plea, the responses, defenses and protests tell a powerful story of repression and utter fear of severe social rebuke. For the ministers and senators, their professional anti-gay rhetoric belied their personal gay desires. If we situate Mr. Cee’s alleged activity within the context of a long history of homophobia in Hip Hop – and here I am thinking specifically of the ways in which Wendy Williams stoked the flames of hatred and fear in the very first gay-rapper witch-hunt-like scandal. Nothing really came out of it except for the violent verbal attacks on Wendy Williams and the vehement denials of any rapper ever even having a gay thought.
Seriously, we cannot at this point in time as adult constituents of Hip Hop culture believe that no rapper (or DJ/producer) has or will ever be gay. It just doesn’t add up and this is not to weigh in on how/why you think people are gay – whether you think they are born that way or they somehow ‘choose’ their sexual preferences. Somebody in Hip Hop must be gay, but for me, our exceeding willful denials of this fact simply belies our culture’s repressed gay identity. We’re much like those ministers and senators who protest gay sexuality/marriage just a little too much – or just enough to signal the repression of deep-seeded gay sexual desires.
In Hip Hop this repressive denial often takes the shape of hypermasculine narratives with a no-homo brand of homophobia functioning as the frosting on the cake. Check out Funkmaster Flex’s seething defense of his homie Mr. Cee delivered in response to a rival station’s bit about Mr. Cee’s alleged public fellatio scenario. Flex goes on for at least five minutes straight, berating the entire station, defending Mr. Cee, and intimating that (gasp) there may be some folk at that other station who are actually gay, not (as Flex suggests re: Cee) framed by the NYC Hip Hop police.
But let’s pretend for minute that Mr. Cee is gay. Does that mean that his show, “Throwback at Noon” isn’t hot like fire? Does it diminish his pivotal role as Big Daddy Kane’s DJ? Is Ready to Die any less dope to you now than it was before you thought about the possibility that Mr. Cee was gay? I hope that you answered NO to all of these rhetorical questions and I hope that starting now the Hip Hop community can at last be persuaded to confront its irrational fear of the full range of our community’s human sexuality.
***
James Braxton Peterson is Director of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University and the founder of Hip Hop Scholars, LLC. Follow him on Twitter @JBP2.
Kamis, 03 Februari 2011
Kool Herc, Hiphop, and Healthcare
Kool Herc, Hiphop, and Healthcare
by Kevin Powell
WRITER’S NOTE: Please visit this site right away to learn more about Kool Herc and how you can support him during his time of medical challenges: http://www.djkoolherc.com/
I can’t even remember the first instance I heard the name “Kool Herc,” but I am fairly certain it was during the mid to late 1980s. Ronald Reagan was president, Jesse Jackson was, well, different, a new jack filmmaker named Spike Lee was stirring the pot called Hollywood, and I was a young and avid “hiphop head.”
Ever since I digested the boom-bap strands of hiphop in the late 1970s in my native Jersey City, New Jersey (my hometown’s local hiphop heroes was a crew called Sweet, Slick, and Sly) I was hooked. The Sugar Hill Gang’s landmark song “Rapper’s Delight,” which I would later learn plagiarized lyrics from Grandmaster Caz of the legendary Cold Crush Brothers, was the shot heard ‘round the world. Kurtis Blow was hiphop’s first solo superstar. Afrika Bambaataa was the spiritual and musical emissary from funk and soul to hiphop. Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five spoke so poignantly to my then-ghetto existence that I cried, hard, the first time I heard “The Message.” And Run-DMC was for us bboys and bgirls what The Beatles had been for screaming White teens two decades earlier.
Fitted Lee Jeans with stitched creases, suede Pumas, Le Tigre shirts, Kangols, name belts, baseball caps with sketched designs in the front folded on top with paper stuffed inside thus the caps floated on our heads like royal crowns, magic markers in our front or back pockets so we could tag our names here there everywhere (my tag was my nickname, “kepo1”), and so many of us popping locking breaking moonwalking doing the Pee Wee Herman the trot the wop the smurf the running man. We had no idea we were in the middle of a cultural revolution, but that is exactly what it was. And I am sure most of us did not know it was Kool Herc who kick-started the whole thing.
Right after my high school years I left Jersey City and went to college at Rutgers University where I would stumble upon the anti-apartheid movement, Black and Latino history in ways I had never contemplated previously, an upper class student named Lisa Williamson who would later change her name to Sister Souljah, and a spirit of activism that has been with me ever since. Indeed, we did not call it “hiphop activism” back then, but that is precisely what folks like myself, Souljah, Ras Baraka, April Silver, and many other Black and Latino babies of the Civil Rights Movement were doing, to a hiphop beat. Organizing in welfare hotels in mid-town Manhattan; building a summer camp for poor youth in North Carolina; re-registering voters in the Deep South; marching against police brutality here there everywhere; and staging state of the youth rallies and concerts in Harlem and Brooklyn.
It was somewhere between my trips to clubs with names like The Rooftop, Union Square, and Funhouse, and that work as a youth and student organizer, that his name first pushed its way into my consciousness:
Kool Herc, the father of hiphop—
But the details were sketchy at best:
Born in Jamaica as Clive Campbell.
Came to America in the late 1960s, on the heels of the Civil Rights Movement.
Heavily influenced by great artists of the funk and soul era, including James Brown.
Lived in The Bronx, one of New York City’s five boroughs, and the birthplace of hiphop culture.
Earned his nickname, “Hercules,” because of his height, frame, and demeanor on the basketball court as a youth. It was later shortened to Herc. And DJ Kool Herc & The Herculoids would become one of the early groundbreaking hiphop acts.
Along with Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash widely considered the founding fathers, and the holy trinity of hiphop.
Generally credited with creating “the break beat” in the early 1970s, a djing technique that forms a critical foundation for hiphop music.
And that is essentially what I would know until far into the 1990s, when I first met Kool Herc in person at one or another hiphop program attempting to make hiphop into the political movement it never was, and that it will never be.
For hiphop is a cultural movement with political roots and political overtones, no question, but I have always been clear, even as a youth, that leaders have to emerge from hiphop’s multiple generations who, while nurtured on hiphop culture, must engage and work with the artists and iconic figures of our day just the way, say, Malcolm X engaged Sam Cooke, Maya Angelou, and Muhammad Ali or Martin Luther King, Jr. engaged Aretha Franklin and Harry Belafonte. Artists, cultural icons, can highlight, reflect, and support a movement, but those of us with real organizing skills and consistent activist mindsets must be the ones to make movements happen. The artists inspire activists to do what we do, and we activists inspire the artists to do what they do. And every now and then a great artist also happens to also be a great activist. (Think of Bono of the rock group U2, or Chuck D, front man for Public Enemy.)
That, for sure, is what we were doing in the late 1980s and early 1990s here in New York City, and in other parts of America. Making a movement go as we connected with everyone from LL Cool J and MC Lyte to Doug E Fresh and Ice Cube. But somewhere things went awry, many of us young activists fell off and out of the work for the people, and what we thought was a burgeoning social movement for change, fueled by hiphop, got decimated by a shift in what the corporations were suddenly permitting to be marketed and sold, with enthusiasm. Or not. In other words, ever since the early 1990s we’ve had those of us who represent hiphop culture, with its five core elements (djing, mcing, dancing, graffiti writing, and knowledge). And then there is the hiphop industry, the bastard child of the culture, manipulated, twisted, and bent out of shape by a few corporations more interested in a dollar bill than the holistic development and natural growth of this art form. That is why we’ve been bombarded with over-the-top cursing and use of the N word, glorified violence, sexism and a ruthless disrespect for women and girls, excessive materialism, and soft porn and gangsterism passing as music videos for far too long. I am a writer, an artist myself, so I do not believe in censorship in any form. I am also a history buff, so I know full well our society is riddled with racism, sexism, violence, anti-intellectualism, and materialism, and that hiphop did not create any of these things. Hiphop, being the dominant cultural expression it is, simply is the most immediate and accessible frame flashing, 100 beats per minute, what is very wrong in too many to count American ‘hoods, both urban and suburban.
Likewise, what I do believe is missing is balance. Yes, I am absolutely clear that hiphop is a multicultural movement, belonging to people of all races, ethnicities, cultures, throughout the globe. And I love that I have come across, say, Israeli and Palestinian hiphoppers using the music to talk peace, or Italian, German, or French hiphoppers learning English via the music, or South African or Latin American hiphoppers using it as a tool for social change, or Asian American hiphoppers in California who love, embrace, and represent the culture far more than the offspring of the founders do. But the harsh reality is that the images we see, the sagas of mayhem we hear most, are of Black and Latino people. This is not just damaging to our psyches, just as crack cocaine was, but it is damaging to our spirits. And we’ve become stuck in a very vicious cycle where I sometimes wonder how many of us truly grasp that there is nothing wrong with rhyming about the ghetto, about parties and material things, if we also are expanding our worldviews enough to discuss other concerns, too. But that can’t happen if specific gatekeepers in the industry game block that kind of personal and cultural evolution from occurring. A Lil’ Wayne, talented and fascinating as he is, is put on a mighty big pedestal because he is not really saying much at all and has become a cartoonish figure merely there for entertainment and shock value. Meanwhile, someone as intelligent and insightful as a Talib Kweli has to grind, hard, just for airplay, gigs, and our Twitter attention spans. As long as that kind of awful imbalance exists, then you can bet your bottom buck that Kool Herc and every other hiphop pioneer are not a part of conversations around the state of hiphop, the culture or the industry.
And just as there is a huge gap between older folks who know and can speak to the social struggles of bygone eras and the youth who often do not know those tales, there too is a huge gap between we heads who understand the history and traditions of hiphop, and those who actually believe it must’ve begun with Tupac or The Notorious B.I.G. I wish I were exaggerating, but the things I have heard in my travels across America about what hiphop is or is not are often, at best, numbing. No fault of our own, it is simply not taught in the schools, as it should be at this point. And God knows very few grade or high schools, or colleges or universities, ever consider bringing a living, breathing hiphop legend in to guest lecture, to be an artist in residence, especially given how much hiphop music and culture have penetrated every single crevice of American society.
And that is why quite a few who claim to love and be hiphop do not even know who Kool Herc is. And why those who have benefited, culturally, spiritually, and, yes, monetarily, have rarely engaged him from this thing we call hiphop. And this thing called hiphop, which was, for the most part, created by poor, working-class African Americans, West Indians, and Latinos in New York City, with a parallel energy generated by Latinos and Black on the West Coast in the 1970s, is now a multi-billion dollar global industry, and the dominant cultural expression on the planet for 30plus years and counting.
That, I imagine, is why Kool Herc and other pioneers of hiphop have always made it a point to stand up at various hiphop-related events and state who they are—sometimes with love and respect, sometimes with shades of bitterness and resentment framing the edges of their mouths—because if they do not, then they would remain largely invisible, or completely ignored. Think about how, for example, Black basketball trailblazers from back in the day, the ones documented in that great ESPN film “Black Magic,” must feel when they hear of the millions a LeBron James can command because of the sweat and blood equity they put in when there was no cable television, no endorsement deals, and these players were just as likely to be the victims of racial injustices as cheers.
As a matter of fact, I recall when I curated the very first exhibit on the history of hiphop culture in America, at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 1999, I encountered this kind of weariness, born of years of neglect, on numerous occasions. But I also remember the great joy many of these hiphop legends displayed because they were being recognized for their contributions. Unfortunately, that exhibit was so woefully under-funded, that we had to scrape together sponsors as best we could just to mount the show and fly pioneers there. For all the billions of dollars hiphop has made our economy and certain corporate giants, the great irony is how some still don’t view it as a legitimate art form, then and now. Regardless, as you can imagine, it was profoundly moving to meet, one by one, the architects of hiphop. Folks with names like Lady Pink, Popmaster Fabel, Lee Quinones, and an army of others. But the one person who always had the greatest mystique around him, without question, was Kool Herc.
For the record, we need to understand that Kool Herc is to hiphop what individuals like Big Mama Thornton, Louis Jordan, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard are to the history of rock and roll. Or what Jelly Roll Morton and The Creole Band are to jazz: visionary figures that far ahead of their time that they have been taken for granted, save a handful of diehard fans and historians.
And therein lies the enormous dilemma of Kool Herc’s current health condition. According to his sister Cindy Campbell who, as long as I can remember, has always been there supporting the legacy of her brother, Herc was hospitalized last October. He has serious kidney stones and they must be removed. $10,000 worth of medical bills have been piled up, and there is a need, according to Cindy, to raise at least $25,000 to cover expenses tied to this very necessary surgical procedure.
And Kool Herc, founding father of hiphop, is like so many dwelling in America: He does not have health insurance. Kool Herc makes his living djing and speaking, but he undoubtedly has not been treated in the way rock and jazz heroes and sheroes are treated.
Moreover, such a twisted paradox, this theme of Kool Herc’s lack of healthcare coverage, as we watch lawsuit after lawsuit being filed, throughout our nation, to dismantle President Obama’s historic legislation. And the Republican-dominated House of Representatives has already voted to repeal the president’s healthcare reform. Although that will not happen in the Democratic-controlled Senate chamber, the House vote is, assuredly, part of a long-term strategy aimed at undermining and derailing our president’s legislation.
To put this in a different context, as Kool Herc was setting foot in America in the late 1960s, Dr. King was publicly condemning the war in Vietnam and ultimately calling for “a poor people’s campaign.” For Dr. King understood that true democracy could never be fully realized in America if each and every one of us did not have access to the most basic of needs, including a quality education, a decent place to live, an opportunity to work, and the ability to get help if we were to take ill.
Dr. King was assassinated, and as quickly as major civil rights victories were won, conservative forces moved to dismantle or destroy them. That is why I always say to those critical of hiphop to keep in mind that if Kool Herc and others had not created this art form in the first place, there would be even more Blacks and Latinos, especially, who are unemployed, on the streets committing crimes, in jail, and without healthcare, or without anyone to petition for us to get help as hiphop icon DJ Premiere initially did for Kool Herc.
“Herc wants to use this to bring awareness, not just about healthcare,” says Cindy Campbell. She adds: “There are so many other hiphop legends in similar situations, but they are not Kool Herc, so no one is going to rally around them. We want to create a foundation, a union, a fund, that makes sure these pioneers are protected in their time of need.”
And that is what we who truly care need to do. I have been bombarded with facebook messages and tweets from individuals not only angry and disturbed that Kool Herc is in this position, but also that certain hiphop luminaries are not moving, quickly or at all, to cover Herc’s medical bills. Names are being called. And hiphop moguls and superstars are being denigrated publicly. I personally don’t think that is the way to go. If the wealthy in hiphop America want to step up, they will. I hope they do, but I am not expecting much at this point given how much our culture has deteriorated into a space of spiritual imbalance and extreme individualism at the expense of the larger hiphop world. When any people, community, or culture has been dumbed down that much by forces beyond our comprehension, then it is not difficult to get why someone as valuable as a Kool Herc is as easily discarded as one’s last text message, or one’s last order of fast food.
Thus, what would be much more effective is, again, that permanent fund or foundation to support hiphop pioneers and classic hiphop artists just like we see with other genres of popular music. That way we never again have one of our legends sitting without healthcare as they make their way through their 50s, 60s, and beyond.
Additionally, I echo Cindy’s contention that hiphop, after all these years, needs to be recognized by our country, on a federal level, for the great cultural contributions it has made to America, and to the planet. No Kool Herc, no hiphop, and there would be no Queen Latifah, no Will Smith, no Jay-Z, no Russell Simmons, no Eminem, no mass popularity of professional basketball, no swagger to President Obama’s walk, no street teams as a marketing concept, and no spice to our American vocab (Do we really think catchphrases like “I’m good” just fall from the sky?).
Similarly, my friend, Toni Blackman, is not only one of the best freestyle rappers in the world, but she has made a career of being an American cultural ambassador, traveling from nation to nation, as a hiphop artist, crossing boundaries in the same way that American jazz musicians, for years, have done with the U.S. State Department.
Imagine if someone in Washington acknowledges our hiphop legends for their cultural contributions. It would be the path to truly honoring and recognizing a Kool Herc, an Afrika Bambaataa, a Grandmaster Flash, a Cold Crush Brothers, a Rock Steady Crew, a Universal Zulu Nation, an Ernie Paniciolli (the dean of hiphop photographers), and the numerous founding fathers and mothers of hiphop culture.
By treating them like the national treasures that they are—
by Kevin Powell
WRITER’S NOTE: Please visit this site right away to learn more about Kool Herc and how you can support him during his time of medical challenges: http://www.djkoolherc.com/
I can’t even remember the first instance I heard the name “Kool Herc,” but I am fairly certain it was during the mid to late 1980s. Ronald Reagan was president, Jesse Jackson was, well, different, a new jack filmmaker named Spike Lee was stirring the pot called Hollywood, and I was a young and avid “hiphop head.”
Ever since I digested the boom-bap strands of hiphop in the late 1970s in my native Jersey City, New Jersey (my hometown’s local hiphop heroes was a crew called Sweet, Slick, and Sly) I was hooked. The Sugar Hill Gang’s landmark song “Rapper’s Delight,” which I would later learn plagiarized lyrics from Grandmaster Caz of the legendary Cold Crush Brothers, was the shot heard ‘round the world. Kurtis Blow was hiphop’s first solo superstar. Afrika Bambaataa was the spiritual and musical emissary from funk and soul to hiphop. Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five spoke so poignantly to my then-ghetto existence that I cried, hard, the first time I heard “The Message.” And Run-DMC was for us bboys and bgirls what The Beatles had been for screaming White teens two decades earlier.
Fitted Lee Jeans with stitched creases, suede Pumas, Le Tigre shirts, Kangols, name belts, baseball caps with sketched designs in the front folded on top with paper stuffed inside thus the caps floated on our heads like royal crowns, magic markers in our front or back pockets so we could tag our names here there everywhere (my tag was my nickname, “kepo1”), and so many of us popping locking breaking moonwalking doing the Pee Wee Herman the trot the wop the smurf the running man. We had no idea we were in the middle of a cultural revolution, but that is exactly what it was. And I am sure most of us did not know it was Kool Herc who kick-started the whole thing.
Right after my high school years I left Jersey City and went to college at Rutgers University where I would stumble upon the anti-apartheid movement, Black and Latino history in ways I had never contemplated previously, an upper class student named Lisa Williamson who would later change her name to Sister Souljah, and a spirit of activism that has been with me ever since. Indeed, we did not call it “hiphop activism” back then, but that is precisely what folks like myself, Souljah, Ras Baraka, April Silver, and many other Black and Latino babies of the Civil Rights Movement were doing, to a hiphop beat. Organizing in welfare hotels in mid-town Manhattan; building a summer camp for poor youth in North Carolina; re-registering voters in the Deep South; marching against police brutality here there everywhere; and staging state of the youth rallies and concerts in Harlem and Brooklyn.
It was somewhere between my trips to clubs with names like The Rooftop, Union Square, and Funhouse, and that work as a youth and student organizer, that his name first pushed its way into my consciousness:
Kool Herc, the father of hiphop—
But the details were sketchy at best:
Born in Jamaica as Clive Campbell.
Came to America in the late 1960s, on the heels of the Civil Rights Movement.
Heavily influenced by great artists of the funk and soul era, including James Brown.
Lived in The Bronx, one of New York City’s five boroughs, and the birthplace of hiphop culture.
Earned his nickname, “Hercules,” because of his height, frame, and demeanor on the basketball court as a youth. It was later shortened to Herc. And DJ Kool Herc & The Herculoids would become one of the early groundbreaking hiphop acts.
Along with Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash widely considered the founding fathers, and the holy trinity of hiphop.
Generally credited with creating “the break beat” in the early 1970s, a djing technique that forms a critical foundation for hiphop music.
And that is essentially what I would know until far into the 1990s, when I first met Kool Herc in person at one or another hiphop program attempting to make hiphop into the political movement it never was, and that it will never be.
For hiphop is a cultural movement with political roots and political overtones, no question, but I have always been clear, even as a youth, that leaders have to emerge from hiphop’s multiple generations who, while nurtured on hiphop culture, must engage and work with the artists and iconic figures of our day just the way, say, Malcolm X engaged Sam Cooke, Maya Angelou, and Muhammad Ali or Martin Luther King, Jr. engaged Aretha Franklin and Harry Belafonte. Artists, cultural icons, can highlight, reflect, and support a movement, but those of us with real organizing skills and consistent activist mindsets must be the ones to make movements happen. The artists inspire activists to do what we do, and we activists inspire the artists to do what they do. And every now and then a great artist also happens to also be a great activist. (Think of Bono of the rock group U2, or Chuck D, front man for Public Enemy.)
That, for sure, is what we were doing in the late 1980s and early 1990s here in New York City, and in other parts of America. Making a movement go as we connected with everyone from LL Cool J and MC Lyte to Doug E Fresh and Ice Cube. But somewhere things went awry, many of us young activists fell off and out of the work for the people, and what we thought was a burgeoning social movement for change, fueled by hiphop, got decimated by a shift in what the corporations were suddenly permitting to be marketed and sold, with enthusiasm. Or not. In other words, ever since the early 1990s we’ve had those of us who represent hiphop culture, with its five core elements (djing, mcing, dancing, graffiti writing, and knowledge). And then there is the hiphop industry, the bastard child of the culture, manipulated, twisted, and bent out of shape by a few corporations more interested in a dollar bill than the holistic development and natural growth of this art form. That is why we’ve been bombarded with over-the-top cursing and use of the N word, glorified violence, sexism and a ruthless disrespect for women and girls, excessive materialism, and soft porn and gangsterism passing as music videos for far too long. I am a writer, an artist myself, so I do not believe in censorship in any form. I am also a history buff, so I know full well our society is riddled with racism, sexism, violence, anti-intellectualism, and materialism, and that hiphop did not create any of these things. Hiphop, being the dominant cultural expression it is, simply is the most immediate and accessible frame flashing, 100 beats per minute, what is very wrong in too many to count American ‘hoods, both urban and suburban.
Likewise, what I do believe is missing is balance. Yes, I am absolutely clear that hiphop is a multicultural movement, belonging to people of all races, ethnicities, cultures, throughout the globe. And I love that I have come across, say, Israeli and Palestinian hiphoppers using the music to talk peace, or Italian, German, or French hiphoppers learning English via the music, or South African or Latin American hiphoppers using it as a tool for social change, or Asian American hiphoppers in California who love, embrace, and represent the culture far more than the offspring of the founders do. But the harsh reality is that the images we see, the sagas of mayhem we hear most, are of Black and Latino people. This is not just damaging to our psyches, just as crack cocaine was, but it is damaging to our spirits. And we’ve become stuck in a very vicious cycle where I sometimes wonder how many of us truly grasp that there is nothing wrong with rhyming about the ghetto, about parties and material things, if we also are expanding our worldviews enough to discuss other concerns, too. But that can’t happen if specific gatekeepers in the industry game block that kind of personal and cultural evolution from occurring. A Lil’ Wayne, talented and fascinating as he is, is put on a mighty big pedestal because he is not really saying much at all and has become a cartoonish figure merely there for entertainment and shock value. Meanwhile, someone as intelligent and insightful as a Talib Kweli has to grind, hard, just for airplay, gigs, and our Twitter attention spans. As long as that kind of awful imbalance exists, then you can bet your bottom buck that Kool Herc and every other hiphop pioneer are not a part of conversations around the state of hiphop, the culture or the industry.
And just as there is a huge gap between older folks who know and can speak to the social struggles of bygone eras and the youth who often do not know those tales, there too is a huge gap between we heads who understand the history and traditions of hiphop, and those who actually believe it must’ve begun with Tupac or The Notorious B.I.G. I wish I were exaggerating, but the things I have heard in my travels across America about what hiphop is or is not are often, at best, numbing. No fault of our own, it is simply not taught in the schools, as it should be at this point. And God knows very few grade or high schools, or colleges or universities, ever consider bringing a living, breathing hiphop legend in to guest lecture, to be an artist in residence, especially given how much hiphop music and culture have penetrated every single crevice of American society.
And that is why quite a few who claim to love and be hiphop do not even know who Kool Herc is. And why those who have benefited, culturally, spiritually, and, yes, monetarily, have rarely engaged him from this thing we call hiphop. And this thing called hiphop, which was, for the most part, created by poor, working-class African Americans, West Indians, and Latinos in New York City, with a parallel energy generated by Latinos and Black on the West Coast in the 1970s, is now a multi-billion dollar global industry, and the dominant cultural expression on the planet for 30plus years and counting.
That, I imagine, is why Kool Herc and other pioneers of hiphop have always made it a point to stand up at various hiphop-related events and state who they are—sometimes with love and respect, sometimes with shades of bitterness and resentment framing the edges of their mouths—because if they do not, then they would remain largely invisible, or completely ignored. Think about how, for example, Black basketball trailblazers from back in the day, the ones documented in that great ESPN film “Black Magic,” must feel when they hear of the millions a LeBron James can command because of the sweat and blood equity they put in when there was no cable television, no endorsement deals, and these players were just as likely to be the victims of racial injustices as cheers.
As a matter of fact, I recall when I curated the very first exhibit on the history of hiphop culture in America, at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 1999, I encountered this kind of weariness, born of years of neglect, on numerous occasions. But I also remember the great joy many of these hiphop legends displayed because they were being recognized for their contributions. Unfortunately, that exhibit was so woefully under-funded, that we had to scrape together sponsors as best we could just to mount the show and fly pioneers there. For all the billions of dollars hiphop has made our economy and certain corporate giants, the great irony is how some still don’t view it as a legitimate art form, then and now. Regardless, as you can imagine, it was profoundly moving to meet, one by one, the architects of hiphop. Folks with names like Lady Pink, Popmaster Fabel, Lee Quinones, and an army of others. But the one person who always had the greatest mystique around him, without question, was Kool Herc.
For the record, we need to understand that Kool Herc is to hiphop what individuals like Big Mama Thornton, Louis Jordan, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard are to the history of rock and roll. Or what Jelly Roll Morton and The Creole Band are to jazz: visionary figures that far ahead of their time that they have been taken for granted, save a handful of diehard fans and historians.
And therein lies the enormous dilemma of Kool Herc’s current health condition. According to his sister Cindy Campbell who, as long as I can remember, has always been there supporting the legacy of her brother, Herc was hospitalized last October. He has serious kidney stones and they must be removed. $10,000 worth of medical bills have been piled up, and there is a need, according to Cindy, to raise at least $25,000 to cover expenses tied to this very necessary surgical procedure.
And Kool Herc, founding father of hiphop, is like so many dwelling in America: He does not have health insurance. Kool Herc makes his living djing and speaking, but he undoubtedly has not been treated in the way rock and jazz heroes and sheroes are treated.
Moreover, such a twisted paradox, this theme of Kool Herc’s lack of healthcare coverage, as we watch lawsuit after lawsuit being filed, throughout our nation, to dismantle President Obama’s historic legislation. And the Republican-dominated House of Representatives has already voted to repeal the president’s healthcare reform. Although that will not happen in the Democratic-controlled Senate chamber, the House vote is, assuredly, part of a long-term strategy aimed at undermining and derailing our president’s legislation.
To put this in a different context, as Kool Herc was setting foot in America in the late 1960s, Dr. King was publicly condemning the war in Vietnam and ultimately calling for “a poor people’s campaign.” For Dr. King understood that true democracy could never be fully realized in America if each and every one of us did not have access to the most basic of needs, including a quality education, a decent place to live, an opportunity to work, and the ability to get help if we were to take ill.
Dr. King was assassinated, and as quickly as major civil rights victories were won, conservative forces moved to dismantle or destroy them. That is why I always say to those critical of hiphop to keep in mind that if Kool Herc and others had not created this art form in the first place, there would be even more Blacks and Latinos, especially, who are unemployed, on the streets committing crimes, in jail, and without healthcare, or without anyone to petition for us to get help as hiphop icon DJ Premiere initially did for Kool Herc.
“Herc wants to use this to bring awareness, not just about healthcare,” says Cindy Campbell. She adds: “There are so many other hiphop legends in similar situations, but they are not Kool Herc, so no one is going to rally around them. We want to create a foundation, a union, a fund, that makes sure these pioneers are protected in their time of need.”
And that is what we who truly care need to do. I have been bombarded with facebook messages and tweets from individuals not only angry and disturbed that Kool Herc is in this position, but also that certain hiphop luminaries are not moving, quickly or at all, to cover Herc’s medical bills. Names are being called. And hiphop moguls and superstars are being denigrated publicly. I personally don’t think that is the way to go. If the wealthy in hiphop America want to step up, they will. I hope they do, but I am not expecting much at this point given how much our culture has deteriorated into a space of spiritual imbalance and extreme individualism at the expense of the larger hiphop world. When any people, community, or culture has been dumbed down that much by forces beyond our comprehension, then it is not difficult to get why someone as valuable as a Kool Herc is as easily discarded as one’s last text message, or one’s last order of fast food.
Thus, what would be much more effective is, again, that permanent fund or foundation to support hiphop pioneers and classic hiphop artists just like we see with other genres of popular music. That way we never again have one of our legends sitting without healthcare as they make their way through their 50s, 60s, and beyond.
Additionally, I echo Cindy’s contention that hiphop, after all these years, needs to be recognized by our country, on a federal level, for the great cultural contributions it has made to America, and to the planet. No Kool Herc, no hiphop, and there would be no Queen Latifah, no Will Smith, no Jay-Z, no Russell Simmons, no Eminem, no mass popularity of professional basketball, no swagger to President Obama’s walk, no street teams as a marketing concept, and no spice to our American vocab (Do we really think catchphrases like “I’m good” just fall from the sky?).
Similarly, my friend, Toni Blackman, is not only one of the best freestyle rappers in the world, but she has made a career of being an American cultural ambassador, traveling from nation to nation, as a hiphop artist, crossing boundaries in the same way that American jazz musicians, for years, have done with the U.S. State Department.
Imagine if someone in Washington acknowledges our hiphop legends for their cultural contributions. It would be the path to truly honoring and recognizing a Kool Herc, an Afrika Bambaataa, a Grandmaster Flash, a Cold Crush Brothers, a Rock Steady Crew, a Universal Zulu Nation, an Ernie Paniciolli (the dean of hiphop photographers), and the numerous founding fathers and mothers of hiphop culture.
By treating them like the national treasures that they are—
Senin, 31 Januari 2011
Wayne Marshall: Kool Herc: A Biographical Essay
Kool Herc: A Biographical Essay
by Wayne Marshall
Author’s note: the following essay was originally published in a reference volume, Icons of Hip Hop. Citations should provide the following bibliographical info:
Marshall, Wayne. “Kool Herc.” In Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture, ed. Mickey Hess, 1-26. (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2007).
Few individuals can claim a life story that so closely parallels hip-hop’s narrative arc as Clive Campbell, better known as DJ Kool Herc. Often considered the movement’s founding father, an early participant in and innovator of the musical and cultural practices that have since swept the world, Kool Herc embodies hip-hop’s roots and routes, its booms and busts, its struggles and triumphs. From his childhood in Kingston, Jamaica to his coming-of-age in the Bronx, from his rise as a streetwise, peerless DJ to his decline in the wake of hip-hop’s new forms and commercial success, from his drug addiction in the 80s to his recent return as standard-bearer and spokesman, Herc’s tale can be read as a thread running through hip-hop history. Although his story has been told and retold and sold many times over, often making it difficult to extract the truth from the myths, the representations, and the press releases, Herc has been generous in granting interviews over the years, and his myriad recollections, as well as those of his peers, provide a strong outline for understanding his role as an architect and inventor, as one who forged so many of the forms we recognize today as hip-hop.
Trenchtown Rock: Clive Campbell’s Knotty Reggae Roots
Clive Campbell was born in 1955 in Kingston, Jamaica, the first of six children of Keith and Nettie Campbell. He spent his early childhood living in an area of the city known as Trenchtown, the same storied public housing scheme and “concrete jungle” that produced such reggae luminaries as Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Alton Ellis. Clive’s father worked as a foreman at Kingston Wharf garage — a respectable, working-class job that eventually allowed the Campbells to move to Franklyn Town, a lower-middle class neighborhood where the family had their own house and yard. It was while living in the government yard of Trenchtown, though, that Herc got his first taste of the powerful sound systems he would later emulate as a Bronx-based DJ.
Although Herc has at times denied the influence of Jamaican-style DJing on his own performance practice, arguing that the Bronx audiences he played for demanded a more local style, he has also acknowledged how being a witness to Kingston sound system dances deeply informed his sense of the power of music and of the DJ in particular — not to mention his sense of what was cool (e.g., suavely-dressed, well-respected gangsters and rebellious, ratchet-knife-wielding rude boys), as much as that may have had to be recalibrated upon moving to the Bronx. When asked about his musical influences by a reporter for the Jamaica Observer (Jackson 2004), Herc broke from his typical list of American performers and disc jockeys and instead named such Jamaican greats as Prince Buster, Don Drummond, the Skatalites, Big Youth, U-Roy, and sound system pioneer, Clement “Coxsone” Dodd.
It was at these dances — or just outside of them (since, due to his age, he often had to settle for spying through holes in the zinc fences that enclosed the dancehalls) — where young Clive got his first glimpses of sound system culture. He would watch the sound systems’ crews wheel in speakers and amplifiers on hand carts, the vendors set up their wares and stew up some curry goat, the gangsters and rude boys and dancehall queens strut their stuff before passing through the gate. But then, seeing was often less important than hearing the sound systems at work — and one need not have gotten too close to hear the selectors and DJs do their thing. Whether Clive was sitting just over the fence or in his family’s home down the road, there was no avoiding the engulfing sonic presence of the neighborhood dance. His body vibrating along with the heavy bass and his ears tickled by the well-designed systems’ crisp highs and clear mid-range frequencies, he developed a taste for the power and clarity of sound produced by the systems’ custom-crafted components. Later, seeking to reproduce this aesthetic with his own system in the Bronx, Herc would distinguish himself from his contemporaries and vanquish his rivals.
Beyond hearing the sound of the systems, of course, Clive also heard the music they played, as well as their style of playing it. It is worth noting that Clive left Jamaica before the term “reggae” gained currency and before the style that it describes emerged from rocksteady, the soul-infused, balladeer tradition that followed ska’s lead out of American influences and into a distinctive Jamaican synthesis of foreign and familiar styles. So the music that Clive would have heard emanating from the dancehalls in his youth comprised a mix of exciting, new local forms — often infused with the ebullience of independence, granted in 1962 — and imported favorites, especially soul and R&B sides. Although Jamaican popular music increasingly expressed a localized aesthetic over the course of the 1960s, cover versions of American pop songs remained staples of the local recording industry, stylistic nods to rock, soul, and R&B abounded, and the sounds of black America never totally fell out of favor in the dancehalls, though foreign-produced records no longer constituted the bulk of the sound system repertory as they had in the 1950s. Indeed, sound system performance practice, for all its uniqueness, can itself be traced to so-called foreign sources — in particular to African-American singers and disc jockeys. (Though one might ask, given the prevailing cultural politics of the day, what would be considered “foreign” from a Pan-Africanist or Black Power perspective?)
Trenchtown Rock: Clive Campbell’s Knotty Reggae Roots
Clive Campbell was born in 1955 in Kingston, Jamaica, the first of six children of Keith and Nettie Campbell. He spent his early childhood living in an area of the city known as Trenchtown, the same storied public housing scheme and “concrete jungle” that produced such reggae luminaries as Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, and Alton Ellis. Clive’s father worked as a foreman at Kingston Wharf garage — a respectable, working-class job that eventually allowed the Campbells to move to Franklyn Town, a lower-middle class neighborhood where the family had their own house and yard. It was while living in the government yard of Trenchtown, though, that Herc got his first taste of the powerful sound systems he would later emulate as a Bronx-based DJ.
Although Herc has at times denied the influence of Jamaican-style DJing on his own performance practice, arguing that the Bronx audiences he played for demanded a more local style, he has also acknowledged how being a witness to Kingston sound system dances deeply informed his sense of the power of music and of the DJ in particular — not to mention his sense of what was cool (e.g., suavely-dressed, well-respected gangsters and rebellious, ratchet-knife-wielding rude boys), as much as that may have had to be recalibrated upon moving to the Bronx. When asked about his musical influences by a reporter for the Jamaica Observer (Jackson 2004), Herc broke from his typical list of American performers and disc jockeys and instead named such Jamaican greats as Prince Buster, Don Drummond, the Skatalites, Big Youth, U-Roy, and sound system pioneer, Clement “Coxsone” Dodd.
It was at these dances — or just outside of them (since, due to his age, he often had to settle for spying through holes in the zinc fences that enclosed the dancehalls) — where young Clive got his first glimpses of sound system culture. He would watch the sound systems’ crews wheel in speakers and amplifiers on hand carts, the vendors set up their wares and stew up some curry goat, the gangsters and rude boys and dancehall queens strut their stuff before passing through the gate. But then, seeing was often less important than hearing the sound systems at work — and one need not have gotten too close to hear the selectors and DJs do their thing. Whether Clive was sitting just over the fence or in his family’s home down the road, there was no avoiding the engulfing sonic presence of the neighborhood dance. His body vibrating along with the heavy bass and his ears tickled by the well-designed systems’ crisp highs and clear mid-range frequencies, he developed a taste for the power and clarity of sound produced by the systems’ custom-crafted components. Later, seeking to reproduce this aesthetic with his own system in the Bronx, Herc would distinguish himself from his contemporaries and vanquish his rivals.
Beyond hearing the sound of the systems, of course, Clive also heard the music they played, as well as their style of playing it. It is worth noting that Clive left Jamaica before the term “reggae” gained currency and before the style that it describes emerged from rocksteady, the soul-infused, balladeer tradition that followed ska’s lead out of American influences and into a distinctive Jamaican synthesis of foreign and familiar styles. So the music that Clive would have heard emanating from the dancehalls in his youth comprised a mix of exciting, new local forms — often infused with the ebullience of independence, granted in 1962 — and imported favorites, especially soul and R&B sides. Although Jamaican popular music increasingly expressed a localized aesthetic over the course of the 1960s, cover versions of American pop songs remained staples of the local recording industry, stylistic nods to rock, soul, and R&B abounded, and the sounds of black America never totally fell out of favor in the dancehalls, though foreign-produced records no longer constituted the bulk of the sound system repertory as they had in the 1950s. Indeed, sound system performance practice, for all its uniqueness, can itself be traced to so-called foreign sources — in particular to African-American singers and disc jockeys. (Though one might ask, given the prevailing cultural politics of the day, what would be considered “foreign” from a Pan-Africanist or Black Power perspective?)
Read the Full Essay @ Wayne&Wax
Kamis, 14 Oktober 2010
'The Busy Signal' Takes On Conscious Music
The Busy Signal: Discussion between J.A. Myerson and Akie Bermiss on Conscious Music in 2010 from The Busy Signal on Vimeo.
J.A. Myerson and Akie Bermiss Discuss John Legend, Hip-Hop and Conscious Music.
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