Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 469

Dr. John Carlos Has No Regrets

'Civil Rights leader and legendary athlete, Dr. John Carlos, made history on the Olympic podium in 1968. After medaling in the 200 meter race in Mexico City, he and Tommie Smith raised their fists in the Black Power salute during the national anthem. Marking fifty years since that iconic moment, Dr. Carlos spoke with Sports Editor of The Nation and co-author of his memoir, Dave Zirin. Carlos shares his story of meeting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the hardships he faced after the '68 Olympics, and the message he has for athletes continuing the movement for racial justice today.' -- NYPL

Journalist Reni Eddo-Lodge on Privilege, Denial and Why She's No Longer Talking to White People About Race

'Journalist Reni Eddo-Lodge examines the social production and preservation of structural racism - from the ways privilege denialism blinds White people to the existence of the inequalities they benefit from, to the burden of prioritizing White feelings and narratives about race, politics and humanity. Eddo-Lodge is author of Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race from Bloomsbury.' -- This Is Hell! Radio

Finding The Antidote for Toxic Masculinity

'If toxic masculinity is learned, can't consideration and respect be taught? On the season 2 premiere of Going In With Brian Vines, Brian zeroes in in on toxic performativity and what we can do to combat it -- with Mark Pagán, host & creator of the podcast, Other Men Need Help, and Tatyana Fazlalizadeh, Jonathan Metxl, Quentin Walcott, Anthonine Piette, and Omowale Adewala who walk viewers  through the pervasiveness of learned performative masculinity, the dangers of this performance, and each propose their own creative solutions.' -- BRIC TV

Farai Chideya: The Episodic Career

'In her book, The Episodic Career, author and professor Farai Chideya considers how professionals can protect themselves and achieve their personal definition of success in an age of uncertainty. In her 99U talk, Chideya focuses on how creatives in particular can not just survive, but thrive amid disruption.'

Seeing Black Panther: Art and Design in Global Context

'Daphne Lamothe (Africana Studies, Smith College), Samuel Fury Childs Daly (Duke African and African American Studies), and Jerry Philogene (American Studies, Dickinson College) explore the visual references and global resonances in Ryan Coogler's blockbuster film Black Panther (2018). The conversation was moderated by Mark Anthony Neal (Duke African and African American Studies). NGOZI Design Collective of Durham, NC, provided the clothing on display.' -- Scholars and Publics

The Unsung Heroes of Black American Cinema

'Shola Lynch, Elena Rossi-Snook and Sandra Schulberg talk about the black films we don’t know about, why they are important, and how to preserve them. Shola Lynch has worked at the New York Public Library Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture as the Curator of the Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division. Elena Rossi-Snook is the Collection Manager for the Reserve Film and Video Collection at The New York Public Library. Sandra Schulberg, a former film producer, is president of Schulberg Productions. This segment is guest hosted by Warrington Hudlin.' -- Midday on WNYC

        

The Howard University Takeover, Fifty Years Later

'Many of America’s historically black colleges and universities played a vital role in the country’s civil rights movement. Influential Black leaders and artists such as Thurgood Marshall, Toni Morrison, Stokely Carmichael, and Mamie Clark were graduates of one such college, the prestigious Howard University in Washington, D.C. But fifty years ago this week, students on campus were deeply unhappy about the direction the institution was headed in the civil rights struggle. Howard University ran a compulsory R.O.T.C. program which some students claimed was a factory for sending black officers off to war in Vietnam. Among other grievances, students were also disappointed about the lack of academic programs covering black and African history and literature.  Tony Gittens, a former student-leader of Howard University's March 1968 protests, recalls the lead-up to the tumultuous events and offers advice for those who are part of today's student protest movements.'  -- The Takeaway

Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Blues: A Conversation with Cornel West

'In February 2018, the Cambridge Public Library hosted a conversation between Harvard University professors Tommie Shelby, Brandon M. Terry, Elizabeth Hinton, and Cornel West. The occasion was the publication of two books, To Shape a New World: Essays on the Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., published by Harvard University Press, and Fifty Years Since MLK, published by Boston Review. 2018 marks the fiftieth anniversary of MLK's death, and the conversation that night revolved around his fraught legacy and what activism today can learn from it. This podcast presents a small selection of Cornel West's remarks on MLK's politics, life, and dream.'

What Happens When White Parents Adopt Black Children and Move to Black Neighborhoods?

'Sometimes the best intentions to bolster identity and culture contribute to gentrification and displacement of the Black community. YES! Magazine’s Bailey Williams interviews contributor Angela Tucker about the unique challenges of White parents raising adopted Black children.'

Meshell Ndegeocello Revels in the Soundtrack of Black Life in the 80s

Meshell Ndegeocello Revels in the Soundtrack of Black Life in the 80s by Mark Anthony Neal | @NewBlackMan | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
Black R&B in the 1980s is mostly remembered for the folk who got out; in Janet Jackson, the late Prince, Lionel Richie, the late Michael Jackson, and to a lesser extent Whitney Houston -- who was introduced via collaborations with R&B stalwarts Teddy Pendergrass and Jermaine Jackson -- were figures who crossed-over the mainstream, setting the path for the success, a generation later, for Beyonce, Usher Raymond, Alicia Keys, and so many others that we just refer to as pop stars.
Yet the very foundations of R&B in the 1980s were lesser known R&B acts like The S.O.S. Band, Cheryl Lynn,  Paul Laurence. Kashif, Midnight Star, Atlantic Starr, The Deele, Evelyn “Champagne” King, Freddie Jackson, Full Force, Roger Troutman and Zapp, New Edition, and Luther Vandross -- and the producers that served as their connective tissue like the The Calloway Brothers, Mtume, Marcus Miller, Reggie Lucas, James Carmichael, the aforementioned Laurence and Kashif, and the young collaborative teams of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (Flyte Tyme), and Antonio “LA” Reid and Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds (LaFace),    
Save the role that Flyte Time and LaFace played in the crossover successes of Janet Jackson, Toni Braxton, TLC  and Whitney Houston (in the 1990s), these are artist that have been largely given short shrift in remembrances of the period; Reggie Lucas’s role as the primary producer on Madonna’s debut in 1983 is but one example of what has been overlooked.
A decade later it was on Madonna’s boutique label Maverick, that Meshell Ndegeocello recorded her first album Plantation Lullabies.  Twenty-five years after her stellar debut, Ndegeocello offers Ventriloquism, her twelfth studio recording and fourth for the French indie label Naïve.  Ventriloquism, is a fitting tribute to the R&B of the 1980s and early 1990s that Ndegeocello came of age listening to.  As Ndegeocello explained recently to Billboard, “All of this was a soundtrack to my youth. And the D.C. Go-Go bands always would take the hits of the time and filter them through their collective lens.” Like those Go-Go bands, Ndegeocello takes license,   offering thoughtful and at times original interpretations of R&B staples from The Force MDs, Al B. Sure, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, Janet Jackson, George Clinton and Prince.
Ndegeocello plays it mostly straight on the opening track, “I Wonder If I Take You Home” (1985), Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam’s Full Force produced technofunk classic. Lisa Velez's career was a legitimate precursor to that of Jennifer Lopez -- a Nuyorican raised Boricua -- and answers questions about the so-called cultural appropriation of Bruno Mars before such questions can be asked.  That Ndegeocello referred to Mars’ music as karaoke, has less to do with encroachments, and more to do with the derivative nature of his music, particularly in comparison to the actual contributions that Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam made to the culture thirty-years ago.
“I Wonder If I Take You Home” is one of the few tracks in which Ndegeocello lets loose; even on “Atomic Dog 2017” she chooses restraint, though turning the tables on Ralph Tresvant’s “Sensitivity” (easily the best single of the New Edition solo efforts), which she transforms into a bluesey shuffle, accompanied with cowbells. The Force MDs “Tender Love” gets a little bit of that gutbucket swing, though pitched as a waltz. “Those songs by Ralph Tresvant and The Force MDs” Ndegeocello shared with Billboard, “were the Black wedding songs...They all spoke of this amazing tenderness.”
Like her classic Bitter (1999), and so many of her recent efforts like Weather (2011), Comet, Come to Me (2014), and Devil’s Halo (2009), Ventriloquism finds the bassist impressionistic and working the contours of musical interiority. Indeed the seeds of this project might be found in Ndegeocello's cover of Whodini’s “Friends” (Comet, Come to Me) and, in particular, her oh so sweet interpretation of Ready for the World’s “Love You Down” from Devil’s Halo.
There are resonances of that Ready for the World cover on many of Ventriloquism’s covers including TLC’s “Waterfalls” (perhaps the most Meshell-like track in the bunch), The System’s “Don’t Disturb This Groove,” Al B. Sure’s “Nite and Day,” and Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer” (the most poppish track in the archive that Ndegeocello chose).
Much attention will be given to Ndegeocello’s lovesong to “Christopher Tracy”; “Sometimes It Snows in April” is a fitting dirge for Prince Rogers Nelson, especially for an artist whose career might have been even more illegible than it is, without his presence. The biggest surprises though are Ndegeocello’s radical re-imagining of “Smooth Operator,” -- which seemingly retrofits Sade for the #MeToo era -- and a rather sublime rendering of Janet Jackson “Funny How Time Flies (When You're Having Fun)” from her breakout Control (1986).
According to Ndegeocello, “it was nice to just sit with tunes that you love and you know in and out in an emotional way. It was cathartic for me to try to give them another life, these songs.” New life she gives,  and a much needed catharsis for those who can discern the difference between a really good cover act, and musical brilliance.
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Mark Anthony Neal is the author of several books and Professor of African + African-American Studies and Professor of English at Duke University, where he chairs the Department of African + African-American Studies.