Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 372

POV Shorts: 'The Changing Same' (dir. by Joe Brewster and Michele Stephenson)

'In the Florida Panhandle lies the provincial town of Marianna, Florida, where one native resident, poet L. Lamar Wilson, runs a particular marathon in hopes of lifting the veil of racial terror caused by the town’s buried history.  Wilson retraces the steps of Claude Neal, who was lynched more than 80 years ago on a night buried in the town’s history.' -- POV

Red Summer In Chicago: 100 Years After The Race Riots

'In 1919, some of the bloodiest race riots this country has ever experienced erupted in more than two dozen cities, including Chicago. It was known as the Red Summer.  Chicago was in the throes of a brutal heat wave. Thousands flocked to the beaches lining Lake Michigan for some relief. Among them: a group of black boys that included 17-year-old Eugene Williams. Eugene, who was on a raft, inadvertently drifted over the invisible line that separated the black and white sections of the 29th St Beach. One white beachgoer, insulted, began throwing rocks at the black kids. Eugene Williams slipped off his raft and drowned. That incident ignited a race riot that would go down in history as one of the country's bloodiest, and least-known, to date.' -- NPR Code Switch

To Steal One's Life Back: On the Power of Fugitive Blackness

'African American studies scholar Marquis Bey explores the fugitivity of Black life in White America - as a power in and beyond resistance to oppressive structures, a subversive source of joy in the face of imposed social death, and a posture of intention and resistance in an unjust world. Bey is the  author of the book Them Goon Rules: Fugitive Essays on Radical Black Feminism from University of Arizona Press.' -- This is Hell!

Sickle Cell Patient Reveals Why She Is Volunteering For Landmark Gene-Editing Study

'Victoria Gray, 34, of Forest, Miss., hopes the gene-editing technique CRISPR will relieve her lifelong suffering caused by the genetic blood disorder that affects millions of people around the world.' -- Morning Edition

Five African-American Quilters Create a Robust Patchwork of Faith, Community and Art

'Gee’s Bend (also known as Boykin) is an isolated hamlet encircled by the Alabama River, with a population of roughly 100 people, most of them African American. The tight-knit community has been known for its quilting culture for decades, including its role in the Freedom Quilting Bee – a cooperative based in nearby Rehobeth that was founded in 1966 to give African-American women a means to earn their own income. The short documentary While I Yet Live by the Los Angeles-based director Maris Curran is a rhythmic and gently reverential glimpse into the quilting community of Gee’s Bend today, offering a sojourn with five quilters as they sew, sing and reflect on the ongoing struggle for civil rights and their love of community and craft.' -- AEON
While I yet Live from Nightshade Films on Vimeo.

The Harlem Renaissance's Cultural Explosion, in Photographs

'At the turn of the last century, African Americans from across the country flooded New York City’s Harlem, leading to an explosion of books, poetry and music that is now collectively known as the Harlem Renaissance. A photography exhibit, curated by Stephanie Sparling Williams, currently on display at the Addison Gallery of American Art, traces the history of one of the nation’s most recognized neighborhoods as it continues to evolve. Special correspondent Jared Bowen reports.' -- PBS NewsHour

Philip Bailey Still Keeps His Head to the Sky with ‘Love Will Find a Way’ by Mark Anthony Neal

Philip Bailey Still Keeps His Head to the Sky with ‘Love Will Find a Way’  
by Mark Anthony Neal | @NewBlackMan | NewBlackMan (in Exile) 

Some, perhaps, might not know his name, but no one who has listened to Pop-Top 40, Soul and R&B in the 1970s and 1980s, could ever forget the searing falsetto that belongs to Philip Bailey.  As the co-lead vocalist of the iconic Earth, Wind and Fire, who will be feted by the Kennedy Center later this year, Bailey powered a litany of classics including “Keep Your Head to the Sky” (1973), “Devotion” (1974), “Fantasy” (1977), and most famously “Reasons”, especially the live version that appears on Gratitude (1975). For more than 35 years, Bailey has also maintained a solo career recording both secular and Gospel albums, including Chinese Wall (1984), which was produced by Phil Collins and featured a duet between the two, “Easy Lover”, which earned a Grammy nomination.  With Love Will Find a Way, his first album since Soul on Jazz(2002), Bailey returns to the musical elements that made him a star, bridging the worlds of Soul, improvisational Jazz, Funk and Gospel. 

Love Will Find a Way finds Bailey interpreting a wide range of Soul, R&B and Jazz gems, though with a few exceptions, notably Curtis Mayfield’s “We’re a Winner”, they would fall in a category of lesser-known tracks.  Bailey’s career has largely been defined by singing original songs largely written and produced within the Earth, Wind & Fire eco-system.  Yet Bailey’s first album with the group Last Days and Times (1972) – he joined Earth, Wind & Fire after the band released two albums under their name and the soundtrack to Melvin Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song – is instructive. Among the songs on Last Days and Times are covers of Bread’s “Make It with You” (the year after Aretha Franklin’s Filmore versions) and Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Where Have All the Flowers Gone”. In both instances, the songs work because of Bailey’s Jazz improvisational sensibilities – an  aspect of Bailey’s vocal style that was largely suppressed during Earth, Wind, & Fire’s heyday, save that live recording of “Reasons.” 

Like its predecessor, the woefully underrated Soul on Jazz, Love Will Find a Way is a vehicle for that part of Bailey’s artistic sensibilities that could never find a home on the Pop charts. Bolstered by the production of Robert Glasper, Bailey doesn’t play it straight on anything heard on Love Will Find a Way, beginning with his reading of “Billy Jack”, from Curtis Mayfield’s largely forgotten There’s No Place Like America, Today(1975).  As an opening salvo, “Billy Jack” -- a song about Black lives that matter, in the fullest, tragic, surreal and most inevitable senses -- places Mayfield’s music in a contemporary and cosmopolitan moment, aligning it with a previous era or Black political nadir that was the Nixon presidency.  

“Billy Jack” is one of two Mayfield originals on the album; the aforementioned “We’re a Winner” features Bilal.  Whereas the original Mayfield track is an oh-too-short slice of “All Black Everything,” that implored Black folk to victory, Bailey’s cover feels like a Saturday afternoon drive tuned in to the Smooth Jazz station. Nevertheless Bailey’s double treatment of Mayfield, might be a nod to the influence of the late musician’s falsetto on Bailey’s own, as opposed to Smokey Robinson, or any of Bailey’s peers in the 1970s like Ted Mills (Blue Magic)  or Russell Thompkins, Jr. of The Stylistics. 

Bilal, who possesses a fine falsetto in his own right, is one of many collaborators on the album, including Glasper, Chick Corea, Kamasi Washington, Christian McBride, and Christian Scott Atunde Adjuah. Of his younger musical partners Bailey offers, “they embrace the nuances of jazz and its historical value, but they’ve really infused the game with new possibilities. And I’ve been the recipient of infusion.”

Veteran Corea joins Bailey in a tribute to the Jazz Fusion superband that Corea once led, Return to Forever. “You’re Forever” finds Bailey filling the vocal space of the great Brazilian singer Flora Purim, who provided vocals on the first two Return to Forever albums, alongside percussionist Airto Moreira, and a young Stanley Clarke. Bassist McBride appears with Adjuah on  “Stairway To The Stars”, which features production from Will.I.Am, and also on “Long as You’re Living”, a jazz classic co-written by Oscar Brown, Jr. and recorded by Abbey Lincoln on her important Abbey is Blue (1959), one of the earliest collaborations between Lincoln and Max Roach. 

Bailey pivots towards the Pop charts of the 1980s with cover of The Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime”, that is more evocative of his riff on Weather Report’s “Indiscretions” (Soul on Jazz’s “My Indiscretions”), than the New Wave original. “Brooklyn Blues” -- perhaps a nod to Barry Manilow’s Swing Street (1987) -- finds Bailey offering an extended sermon of the Kalimba.

Perhaps the most arresting track on Love Will Find a Way is Bailey’s meditation on Marvin Gaye’s “Just to Keep You Satisfied” -- a song that never wearies from a good cover.  The song has been given near classic treatments by the late Nancy Wilson ( Keep You Satisfied , 1985) and Randy Crawford’s on her classic Raw Silk (1979), and Bailey is in fine company here, finding possibilities in the moving on, in contrast to the studied distress of Gaye.

The title and closing track, “Love Will Find Away”, is also the title track of oft-forgotten Pharoah Sanders classic. After a decade of blowing fire and brimstone, Sanders mellowed on the Norman Connors produced Love Will Find A Way .  The album has earned a cult-following because of the tracks “As You Are” and “Love is Here” which feature obscure performances from the Phyllis Hyman (Connors worked closely with both Hyman and Sanders in the early 1970s). On the Bailey version, Sanders’ signature riffs are replaced by Casey Benjamin of the Robert Glasper Experiment, who also summons his Vocoder in this latest instance of archival recovery.

Philip Bailey sounds less like a seasoned Soul veteran trying to remain relevant on Love Will Find A Way, and more like still emerging artist, still trying to find out new ways to share his instrument with the world.  Love Will Find A Way is brilliant testament to a musical genius that often choose to share the spotlight, but still has quite a bit of shine. 

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Mark Anthony Neal is the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of African American Studies at Duke University where he chairs the Department of African and African American Studies and hosts the weekly webcast, Left of Black. He is the author of several books including What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture (1999); Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic (2002); and Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities (2013). Follow him on Twitter @newblackman. <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Helvetica; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1342208091 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536859905 -1073697537 9 0 511 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style> -->

New Opera 'Blue' Takes On The Tragedy Of Police Brutality

'Blue, the new opera by Tazewell Thompson and Jeanine Tesori, tells the story of a couple in Harlem who are forced to confront their teenage son's sudden death by police violence.' -- All Things Considered

Inside 'Family Reunion,' A Sitcom With An All-Black Writers Room

'In Family Reunion, the new Netflix series, Tia Mowry-Hardrict plays Cocoa McKellan, a free-spirited mother of four and wife of a retired football player, Moz (Anthony Alabi, himself a former NFL player). The McKellans packed their bags in Seattle, Wash., and have moved to Columbus, Ga. to live with Moz's parents — including his old-fashioned mother M'Dear (Loretta Devine). The family sitcom is penned entirely by black writers, and draws from the personal stories of its writers, including creator and executive producer Meg DeLoatch, who got the idea when she went to a family reunion in Georgia three years ago.' -- Weekend Edition Sunday

Artist Calls Out Her Alleged Rapist & Police With Giant Billboard

'Los Angeles artist Stephanie Montgomery is fighting injustice by creating a billboard addressing her alleged rapist and police for failing to do anything after she reported her rape. "No one did anything, so I painted this billboard." — NowThis New