Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 467

Change-Makers: Librarians Bring Books and Answers to Rikers

'As part of our Change-Makers Series, Sarah Ball, Louise Stamp and Emily Jacobson discuss their work at the New York Public Library’s branch on Rikers Island. They provide a crucial service to library patrons who are often overlooked-- men and women who are in jail. Emily also runs the Reference by Mail program, where people all over the country who are incarcerated mail in questions and Emily and her team answer. This segment is guest hosted by Jonathan Capehart.' -- Midday on WNYC
                  

Randy Weston Distills Music's Spiritual Essence

'The American pianist, composer, innovator, and "Legend of Jazz," Randy Weston, joins us to play some of his solo piano works - many of which border on ritual blues with a dash of Ellington stride here and there a crashing note cluster of Thelonious Monk in mind. His latest recording is a two-album set called Sound, which contains many of his own compositions, recorded when he was 75 years old, back in 2001. In advance of his 92nd birthday, he honors our studio once again.' -- Soundcheck

Immigration, Inequality and the Labor of Latino Baseball Players

'Immigration researcher Karina Moreno examines the impact of immigration and labor laws on the lives of Latino baseball players - from the travel ban and wave of populist nativism in the Trump era, to the laws enforcing inequality and exploitation of minor leaguers at the base (and future) of a $10 billion-a-year industry. Moreno  co-wrote the article "Baseball, Latino America's pastime, faces new challenges in age of Trump" with Mike Elk for The Guardian .' -- This Is Hell! Radio

Prophetic Stories of Freedom: Connecting Hip-Hop and Higher Education

'Lauren Whiteman, M.Ed., discusses how she uses hip-hop pedagogy to motivate Black and African American students in higher education to succeed in college and aspire to greatness.' -- TEDx Talks

The MusiQology Podcast -- Episode 1: Laurin Talese

'In the debut episode of the MusiQology Podcast , Dr. Guthrie Ramsey interviews multitalented vocalist and performer Laurin Talese. The two discuss her beginnings, rise, and craft.'

Left of Black S8:E16: The Black Arts Movement and Twenty-First-Century Aesthetics

Left of Black S8:E16: The Black Arts Movement and Twenty-First-Century Aesthetics

Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal is joined in the Left of Black studio by Margo Natalie Crawford, Professor on English at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Crawford is the author of Black Post-Blackness: The Black Arts Movement and 21st Century Black Aesthetics (University of Illinois Press, 2017) and Dilution Anxiety and the Black Phallus (2008), and the co-editor of New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement (with Lisa Gail Collins, 2006).

Panel: Black Panther, Wakanda and Liberation

A panel discussion on themes from the blockbuster film Black Panther such as community, modes of resistance, Black utopian visions and, consumption of Black culture featuring Duke University Professor Wahneema Lubiano, Dr. I. Augustus Durham and Duke graduate student Kenya Harris. The event was moderated by Mark Anthony Neal Chair, African & African American Studies,  at Duke University and sponsored by the Department of African and African American Studies at Duke, the Duke Council on Race and Ethnicity and the Center for Arts, Digital Culture and Entrepreneurship.

Chicago's Gang Database Casts an Invisible Net Around Black and Brown Communities

'Policy researcher Janae Bonsu explains how Chicago's secret, massive Gang Database criminalizes entire communities of color - by identifying and cataloging suspected gang members through flawed criteria, and distributing that data upwards, across a larger framework of state and federal surveillance networks operating in secret, and targeting Black and Brown neighborhoods. Bonsu is the lead author of the report Tracked & Targeted: Early Findings on Chicago’s Gang Database.' -- This Is Hell! Radio

“Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?”: Dirges for a King by Mark Anthony Neal

“Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?”: Dirges for a Kingby Mark Anthony Neal | @NewBlackMan | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
James Brown’s appearance at the Boston Garden on April 5, 1968 -- a concert that was televised on Boston’s WGBH — has become part of the widely remembered lore associated with the aftermath of Martin Luther King, Jr's assassination on April 4, 1968; the proverbial Soul Man helped avert a “riot” in the streets by encouraging Black youth to stay off the streets and watch his concert on TV.  Less remarked, and perhaps remembered, is Nina Simone’s concert at the Westbury Music Fair on Long Island, three days after King’s death. Simone’s concert is notable because it produced one of the first recordings that mourned King in death, and one of the most affecting dirges from that period that addresses not only the loss of Reverend Dr. King, but so many others in the Black Freedom Movement.
Simone opens the concert with statement “We hope that we can give you something…”, highlighting her own and audience’s self-awareness of the events that had taken place just days before.  The Westbury concert was captured on an album titled ‘Nuff Said  (1968) that includes eight tracks from the concert, and three studio tracks, overdubbed with audience applause to sound like they were part of the concert, including the album’s one “hit”, “Ain’t Got No, I Got Life” from the musical Hair.
The moment’s self-awareness shifts quickly into protest mode with Simone’s “Backlash Blues,” a song that appeared on Simone’s Nina Simone Sings the Blues (1967), which featured lyrics from Langston Hughes who had died a year earlier.  Where the studio version is performed as a traditional barrel-fisted Blues, the Westbury version picks up a pace animating a sense of  defiance, particularly with additional lyrics where Simone recalls Hughes imploring her to resist: “When Langston Hughes died, he told me many months before Nina keep on working until they open up the door.”  Broadly viewed, Simone’s live rendition of “Backlash Blues” is one of her her most political performances, performed as it were within the context of what political retribution looks like in real-time with the murder of Reverend King.
The centerpiece of the performance is “Why? (The King of Love is Dead).”  Ms. Simone offers a poignant introduction to the song, acknowledging “we want to do a tune, written for this day, for this hour” adding “we had yesterday to learn it” in reference to her bassist Gene Taylor, who had written the song two days earlier.  As Simone’s brother and organist Samuel Waymon recalled to NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday in 2008, "We learned that song that (same) day...We didn't have a chance to have two or three days of rehearsal. But when you're feeling compassion and outrage and wanting to express what you know the world is feeling, we did it because that's what we felt."

The song is performed as a dirge that is as timely as it was telling, given the gravity of a moment when death was not singular, but communal, as Simone emphatically sings  “Will the Murders never cease, are they men or are they Beast?.” Simone sings, with more than a hint of resignation, “and Did Martin Luther King just die in vain?” And as that lyric barely registers among the crowd, the song is quickly transformed into a strut — feeling more like a reserved second-line — with the reminder that King “he had seen the mountaintop, And he knew he could not stop.”
One of the most powerful moments of ‘Nuff Said, is Simone’s spoken monologue at the end of “Why? (The King of Love is Dead)”, where she reminds the audience of the literal bodies that had been lost in the field:  “Lorraine hansberry left us...Langston Hughes left us, Coltrane left us, Otis Redding left us. You can go on. Do you realize how many we have lost...we can’t afford any more losses (oh my God), they’re shooting us down one-by-one.”  Here Simone is recalling not only the losses just in that moment, but the impact of others losses like Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and so many others in the five year period prior to King’s death.
The were many pop songs that tried to give significance to the sense of  loss experienced by the nation in that historical moment, particularly after the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy in June of 1968. The Rascals “People Got to Be Free” and Dion’s (of Dion and the Belmonts fame) “Abraham, Martin, and John,” written by Dick Holler before Robert Kennedy’s death are but two examples. The latter song was covered by many artists, becoming a standard of the era, particularly among Folk music audiences. A version of the song appears on Marvin Gaye’s 1970 album That’s the Way Love Is, and as expected Gaye’s treatment  — with a touch of longing -- resonates within the context of the Black Freedom Movement.  Yet it is another song from that period that appears on the album, Lennon and McCartney’s “Yesterday,” that perhaps more fully captures the collective mourning on the era (listen to Gaye humming the song’s bridge).  That’s the Way Love Is is notable because it would be Gaye’s last studio album before the groundbreaking What’s Going On (1971)
Jazz drummer Max Roach was one of the young guns of the Be-Bop in the late 1940s, and by the early 1960s was a leading voice of Jazz’s revolutionary wing, largely on the strength of his collaboration with vocalist Abbey Lincoln with We Insist! Freedom Now Suite (1960). When Roach went into the studio to record Members Don’t Get Weary in the June of 1968, it seemed his goal was to remind folk that there was no time to mourn; indeed Roach’s “Equipoise” (written by pianist Stanley Cowell) was literal exhortion to find the balance of the moment. The title track  “Members, Don’t Git Weary” featuring Andy Bey on vocals, was a line in the sand in this regard; Roach’s drum is insistent throughout, along side Bey’s “voice of God”.
Yes, there would be time to mourn, and Roach does just that on his 1971 outing Lift Every Voice and Sing, where he is joined by the J.C. Watt Singers. Recorded only days after the third anniversary of Reverend King’s death,  the album opens with a rendition of “Motherless Child” and closes with “Joshua”, a song that reminds the congregation, if you will, that others have to pick up the mantle. “Joshua” appears after Lift Every Voice dénouement, “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord.”
When JC White, bravely asked  “Were You There, When They Crucified My Lord?” it was something more than just another memorial recording marking the passing of the greatest symbol(s) of Black liberation struggle.  “Were You There?” is a timeless “Negro” spiritual but at the moment that the JC White Singers sang its words, it became a defiant response from a culture that long understood that filling the air with the sound of Black grief and Black trauma was perhaps the most defiant act possible. “Were You There?” begins as a dirge — a literal death march — musically transporting listeners back to the horse-driven carriage that so many boldly walked behind on the day of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s funeral in April of 1968.   
But just as you could imagine the collective Black body kneeling at yet another grave, for yet another murdered soul and succumbing to an unfathomable despair, the song’s tone changes.  Like the phoenix, the collective Black body musically rises and when the JC White Singers ask the subsequent question, “Were You There...When They rolled away the stone?,” as in the Resurrection — the place and space of death, the physical and psychic — is transformed into something like a freedom, a freedom not explicitly in the traditional sense of the world, but something more philosophical as simply represented in a phrase like “I’m — We’re still here.”
The power of these songs — these dirges — cultivated in the darkest and most dire moments of Black life in the Americas — is that they are so easily recalled at a moment of great distress. These songs were not simply emotional responses to loss, but really an important intellectual response — the way that Blackness thinks life, through death.

A Resurrection Sunday Guide to the Folk Who Ain’t Been to Church in a Year

Ekua Holmes -- "Easter Sunday"A Resurrection Sunday Guide to the Folk Who Ain’t Been to Church in a Yearby Lauren Whiteman and Lawrence Ware | @itsmewhiteman ‏+ @law_writes | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
Easter—or, as the “woke” Christians call it, Resurrection Sunday—is one of the most iconic Black holidays. Not because of the deep, symbolic weight of the day, but because of the fashion.
Black folks are aesthetically creative on a regular day—yet, on Easter, everyone is a Black dandy. There will be pastel suits, white hats and reflective sunglasses, but our favorite part of Easter, without question, are the little kids in ill-fitting suits and poufy dresses...but let’s be honest.
Some of y’all will be in church Sunday who ain’t been there in a solid year—and that’s being charitable. Since that is the case, and church folks won’t be pretending otherwise, here is a quick rundown of what to expect this Sunday.
1. An Offering Every 65 Seconds Bring singles like you’re going to a strip club because churches require money to run, and Easter is one of the biggest Sundays of the year.
2. A Marathon Worship ServiceIt would be wise to drink a double espresso before you leave the house. The choir is about to stunt, announcements will be at least an hour long and there will be no less than three minutes of “praise dancing” after each song. Church ’bout to be lit AF this Sunday.
3. ShadePassah is probably going to get on the mic and take not-very-subtle shots at the folks who don’t come to service regularly. You might hear something like, “I don’t see y’all often, so I’m going to take my time with this word” or “Don’t let it be a whole year before I see you again.”
4. Horrific ParkingLike you, there will be a number of people who usually don’t go to church in the building; therefore, parking will be at a premium. Unless you want to walk over the mountains and through the woods because you had to park in Jabari Land, I suggest you get there early.
5. The Opposite of Black Girl or Boy JoyThis does not always happen in the North, but down South Easter Sunday means there will almost certainly be a black child in brightly colored clothing crying at the mic because his or her parents forced him or her to do an Easter speech. If the child is not crying, then he or she will certainly stand there looking like someone drank the last of the Hennessy White and put the bottle back without telling anyone.
The congregation will have the same facial expression when older children that are too old to struggle through their speeches get to the microphone and . . . struggle through their speeches. If you listen closely enough you’ll hear a deaconess comment “that boy too old to still be struggling. He’ll be 32 next week, chile.”
6. Rain, Cold or BothThe weather is consistently terrible on Easter. This means that the “chirren” are going to end up dirty by the end of the day. Take pictures early.
7. A Dumb Political Statement You may need to listen to Anita Baker or Sade while meditating before church this Sunday because it is almost certain that a punch-bucket-shoe-wearing crumb cake will go on the mic and talk about how the Bible says we need to pray for our political leaders, and, therefore, we need to pray for Trump. You need to have your mind right for when that happens. Black church folk love to be political contrarians with the Bible while ignoring the fact that the prophetic homies Jeremiah and Isaiah were outchea on that truth-to-power tip.
8. A Dumb Theological StatementHopefully it does not come from the pulpit, but someone will put forth a theologically asinine assertion. You might hear “When the praises go up, the blessings come down” or “Make the devil mad” or “Favor ain’t fair.” All these statements are illogical theologically. The first turns the Divine into an ATM machine; the second makes no damn sense, given our finitude; and the last one is similar to how some may get on social media and say, “Let me brag on God,” and then just brag on themselves.
Yet you will hear one or all three of these statements on Sunday—mark my words. I suggest bringing a flask so you can take a shot each time you hear one. Turn it into a drinking game. Why not? After all, Jesus did turn water into wine. Just call it communion.
9. The Seven Last Sayings of ChristSaints that do Easter services regularly know the Seven Last Sayings of Christ almost by heart. And we don’t mean the actual statements--we mean the sermon about them. (Or sermons if there was a special Good Friday service featuring associate ministers trying to out preach one another.)
Without question, there will be a sermon featuring the following conclusion: “On the first day, hah, they laid Him in the tomb. On the second day, hah, the devil thought he had won. Death thought it had Him! Ohhhhh but on the third day, hah, eaaaaarrrrly Sunday morning, hah, He rose up, with alllllll powuh.”
Selah.
10. Black LoveFor all the antics that accompany Easter, we should all remember that part of the reason this day packs such a cultural punch is that it was one of the few days on which slaves were able to be with family. After we were freed from that evil institution, we took to celebrating the day by showcasing black sartorial creativity. When we dress to the nines and go to church on Easter Sunday, we join those of our ancestors who were Christians (many were not) in an activity that refuses to give white supremacy the final word. That’s why we love this day—and why we continue to love the black church.
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Lauren Whiteman is Coordinator for Men of Color Initiatives at the University of North Texas and freelance writer.
Lawrence Ware is co-director of the Africana Studies Program and Teaching Assistant Professor and Diversity Coordinator in the Department of Philosophy. He is a contributing writer to Slate Magazine, The New York Times and The Root.