Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 613

Terrace Martin: 'I Believe You Should Be Yourself'

"My job is only to be a servant of the community, and just to inspire. That's it. That's my whole job, and I know that."--Producer and musician Terrace Martin talks with Frannie Kelley and Ali Shaheed Muhammad on Microphone Check.' -- +NPR Music  

Sanford Biggers: An Artist's Unflinching Look at Racial Violence

'Conceptual artist and TED Fellow Sanford Biggers uses painting, sculpture, video and performance to spark challenging conversations about the history and trauma of black America. Join him as he details two compelling works and shares the motivation behind his art. "Only through more thoughtful dialogue about history and race can we evolve as individuals and society," Biggers says.' -- +TEDx 
 

"How Many Rules Can One Woman Break?": Remembering The Legacy Of Sister Rosetta Tharpe

'Before there was rock 'n' roll, there was Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a leading figure in birthing rock 'n' roll from gospel music in the mid-20th century. A group of Greensboro musicians honor Sister Rosetta Tharpe with an evening of storytelling and music.' -- WUNC's The State of Things

Waiting for Home: The Refugee and Immigrant Experience

'The root causes of migration vary widely. Some people migrate and return to their homes depending on the season. While others migrate and never return. Often, people are forced to leave or flee their homes indefinitely because of poverty, extreme environmental events, armed conflict, social strife, political turmoil, and economic hardships. On this edition of Making Contact, we hear stories from Central American migrants that take on oppressive debts or face challenges in schools in the U.S. We also hear from Cuban migrants stuck in limbo on the route to the U.S.'

The Prophecy of a Whispering Heart: A Review of Corinne Bailey Rae’s The Heart Speaks in Whispers

The Prophecy of a Whispering Heart: A Review of Corinne Bailey Rae’s The Heart Speaks in Whispersby I. Augustus Durham | @imeanswhatisays | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
On the evening of April 5, 2016, BET Networks aired the most recent iteration of Black Girls Rock! With its many celebrants—inclusive of Gladys Knight, Shonda Rhimes, and the #BlackLivesMatter co-creators Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi—there was a moment that, unbeknownst to the average viewer, signaled both an ostensible homage to and a foreshadowing of an untimely death.
With the death of Maurice White on February 3, the Black Girls Rock taping united Marsha Ambrosius, Imani Uzuri, and Corinne Bailey Rae to perform the Earth, Wind & Fire standard “I’ll Write a Song for You”. No one could have known that within 16 days of the broadcast, Prince would die on April 21, and roughly three weeks later on May 13, Corinne Bailey Rae would release her third studio album The Heart Speaks in Whispers.
Living in the wake of Prince, really in a post-Prince world, Rae’s album becomes an accounting of Prince, her friend, living on in perpetuity, and the prophecy of a whispering heart.
What makes the album cool, in what I consider a this-is-for-the-cool-in-you manner, is its nod to intergenerationality, and that it is an album made for the mature, the adult, at heart but is not self-conscious of that fact. With feature, production, and writing credits given to the likes of KING, Valerie Simpson (“Do You Ever Think of Me?”), Esperanza Spalding (“Green Aphrodisiac”), and Moses Sumney (“Caramel”), what the listener recognizes is that the album, just based on the aforementioned listing, has a sound that is difficult to capture precisely because the musicians on the album are, for lack of a more limiting term, free. And this freedom weaves itself throughout the project.
The Valerie Simpson co-written track sounds as if it interpolates on Curtis Mayfield’s “The Makings of You”; the KING tracks solidify their confirmation as protégés of Prince in that he has imparted upon them the effect of affect, auricularly speaking, such that when you listen to the album, you can pick out with ear-point accuracy which songs they have touched; Spalding’s background singing points to the sonic d+evolution of Emily, and perhaps Cora, formerly known as Corinne; and Sumney’s track is mellifluous, even though it does not reference honey.
At the same time, the album is a departure from a rather prototypical music industry frame. This is to say, artists often wait for the second or third album to “experiment”. While Rae’s body of work thus far has offered solid projects to the general music catalog, this album feels and sounds like a return to her self-titled LP but more seasoned.
Maybe it is the case that The Sea, her second album, was the experiment, as she somehow found a way to produce art after wading through personal loss. Emerging from the water as a fully dressed woman, no different than Beloved, Rae stunningly resounds in the liner notes of The Sea, “God is a mystery and a healer.” That album is indeed a mystery, but listeners should hear with gratitude this third album installment from Rae precisely because a whispering heart likely symbolizes the healing that has occurred and continues—thanks be to God . . .
The adultness of the album is in its ability to heal insofar as Rae is not working in excess of her vocal abilities, nor does her approach to the records—vocally, emotively—take for granted the abilities of others she has invited to the project. Really, the album is a gesture to other hearts to begin the work of the utterance, even as whispered, after experiencing the mysterious.
This, in turn, brings me back to the moment of that April evening on Black Girls Rock! Who would have known that a mystery would have emerged again for Rae in the friend she would soon lose a week and two days after the cable broadcast? The coincidence of her performance of that song, on that night, for that event, post-Maurice White, seems like a portent of how God may in fact be music.
The mystery of that song’s presentation that night startles me even now because Rae’s album seems like it could in fact be a set of songs “for” him. Then again, if the mystery catalyzes the healing, and Rae’s heart is indeed the one speaking in whispers, then perhaps what the album signifies is not only a set of written songs “for” him, and you, but also that Corinne, à la Steph Curry, is back.
***
I. Augustus Durham is a fourth-year doctoral candidate in English at Duke University. His work focuses on blackness, melancholy and genius.
Other essays from I. Augustus Durham:
KING Me: Soul for a Black Future
Mr. White! *said in echo*: Charting the Black(ness)

Black Lives + Black Youth + The Reemergence of Malcolm X by Lamont Lilly

Black Lives + Black Youth + The Reemergence of Malcolm Xby Lamont Lilly | @LamontLilly | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
Below is a slightly modified talk that Lamont Lilly gave at the 2016 Left Forum, Saturday May 21st, 2016 at John Jay College in Manhattan, NY.  The Left Forum is a yearly assembly of progressive forces from social democrats to revolutionary Pan-Africanists.  Organizers requested insight on current developments of the Black Freedom Struggle.  This is his response.
Thursday, May 19th was the 91st revolutionary birthday of Brother Minister, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Brother Malcolm X).   He was born May 19th 1925, brutally assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom February 21st, 1965.  And it would be just like Malcolm to request upon us that we not only lift his name in love and respect, but to also lift Yuri Kochiyama, Lorraine Hansberry and Brother Ho Chi Minh’s name in love and respect.
I think the way that Malcolm was evolving that he would want us to recognize all of their contributions to the struggle of poor and oppressed people.  This was the same Malcolm X who said “I, for one, will join in with anyone, I don’t care what color you are, as long as you want to change this miserable condition.”
Unfortunately, comrades, we’re still living many of those same miserable conditions.  The same conditions that Malcolm was preaching about in 1964/65 are the same conditions we’re living today: racism and Jim Crow legal practices, police murders of Black men, Black women and Black babies, church burnings and mass incarceration, poor housing and third class living conditions.  The murder of Tamir Rice was no different than Emmett Till half a century ago.  The same poverty then, is the same poverty now, even worse.  The same imperialism.  The same police state.
Though those same conditions exist today, comrades, Brother Malcolm did leave a blueprint, so to speak.  Notice I didn’t say a guaranteed winning path; I said a “blueprint.”  Blueprints still have to be executed.  Blueprints still have to be constructed through work and collective struggle.
And I think that’s the time that we’re living in right now—a renewed period of work and struggle.  A new generation of young freedom fighters have stepped forward, comrades, teenagers, 18, 20, 21.  We had a young sister soldier who came to Baltimore with us last month who was 16, and ready to fight.  She was sharp, too y’all!  And do you all know what’s so absolutely kickass amazing?  Brother Malcolm X is right back in the swing of things, right back on the front line from the depths of his grave.
Believe it or not, comrades, other than maybe Beyoncé (laughing), NO ONE is being studied and paid more homage right now than Brother Malcolm X, at least among the movement’s Black youth.  It’s very interesting, funny almost, but I’m actually being serious.  Sis. Beyoncé put Malcolm X front and center on her new album, which instantly went global.
For those who haven’t heard it yet, it’s called “Lemonade” (as in how Black women, the Black community, and Black people have always taken America’s lemons and somehow, still made lemonade out of our very lives).  The album features Malcolm X live, as if he were talking right in your left ear:
“The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman.  The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman.  The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.”   
It’s quite riveting, comrades, and still true today!  When I heard that live vocal sample on the album, I couldn’t help but to think of Sandra Bland, murdered by police in a Texas jail cell, Rekia Boyd, Renisha McBride, and 7 year old Aiyana Stanley-Jones, murdered by Detroit police while she was sleeping.  For all the criticism she’s received, for Sis. Beyoncé to put Malcolm X on her album like that was actually quite revolutionary.  I didn’t say she was a revolutionary, I said the act was revolutionary.  
Let me break this down for those who may not understand the significance of that.  As of last month, you have Black girls—girls of color ALL OVER THE WORLD, as young as 6 years old, googling Malcolm X now, reading about him, writing about him, learning about him, listening to his speeches.  Not in the public school system, but on their own independent free thinking terms.  
Right here in Manhattan somewhere, I can almost promise you, there’s a crew of 12 year old Black girls braiding each other’s hair right now, discussing Malcolm X’s political theory.  That’s happening right now, in 2016!  That kind of enthusiasm for Malcolm X hasn’t happened in 40 years, comrades.  
A good friend of mine, Dr. Ashley Farmer, who’s currently working on her post-doctoral degree at Duke University, just published a major academic article on Malcolm X.  It’s entitled, “The Many Women Mentors of Malcolm X,” a must read.  It was published via the African American Intellectual History Society on May 3rd and has gone viral ever since.
Please understand what’s happening right now.  As the state has clamped down, and decent employment has dried up—as conditions have worsened and white supremacy has once again mounted an ugly surge via the Trump Campaign and the Ku Klux Klan’s new membership drive , Black and oppressed youth have sought guidance in an old friend.  The youth in Ferguson.  The youth in Baltimore.  The youth in Palestine.  Black girls and Black boys are discovering Malcolm X for the first time again.
I think the reasons he has reemerged are multifaceted.  Not only was Malcolm ahead of his time regarding the role of women, Malcolm X was thinking, traveling and organizing internationally in the early 1960’s, long before social media or the internet.  
Today, we have Facebook and Twitter, which is how our Palestinian comrades were assisting the struggle in Ferguson during the 2014 rebellion.  Malcolm didn’t have that, but he did organize a very similar network of friends, allies and comrades—in Cuba, in Ghana, in Egypt, in Algeria.
Interestingly, when I was in Lebanon last year for the International Forum for Justice in Palestine, it was the youth from Algeria and Tunisia who knew all about Malcolm X.  I learned firsthand that Malcolm X is still, very much so, a bridge of international working-class struggle, worldwide.  When Malcolm stated in 1964 that:
“It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a racial conflict of Black against white, or as a purely American problem.  Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter.”
I think the youth really took note then. And it’s obvious they’re taking even more notes today.  This renewed brand of internationalism, was no question, inspired by Malcolm X over 50 years ago. There’s also another recent phenomenon that was inspired by Malcolm X.
One of the current and most beautiful aspects of the Black Lives Matter Movement is this new emphasis on things, “Black.” Not only do Black Lives Matter, but the masses of Black youth are now “unapologetically Black,” redefining what Black Power means for a new generation.
If you haven’t noticed, Black youth are wearing their hair natural again now. The young sisters today have said the hell with straightening their hair. They’re rocking their locs, braids and cornrows—the short doobies, their natural coils and twists.  It’s not only happening down in Durham, North Carolina, it’s happening all over the U.S.  And this “mental shift” isn’t just a matter of aesthetics; it’s a reflection of a political and cultural shift.
Some people say this kind of thing isn’t important, but I sure think it is.  If you don’t have any pride in who you are, how in the hell can you be a good freedom fighter?  If you don’t love the very essence and beauty of who you are, who your people are and where you’ve come from, you’ve already lost before you can even get started.  If you don’t love the people, how can you serve the people?
You have to love yourself and love your people, first, then you’ll have a cause to fight for—a worthy cause, a noble cause, a righteous cause—the kind of cause that will make you sacrifice for the next generation—out of love, out of pride and solidarity.  We learned that from Brother Malcolm X!  He lived that, sisters and brothers, every day.
Last year, during the Movement for Black Lives Convening in Cleveland, Ohio, we actually lived that feeling in a genuine manifestation.  Personally, I had never experienced anything like that before.  Everybody there was Black and proud!  I thought I was going to be the only one [laughing], but no, that wasn’t the case at all.
Now, when I say “proud,” I don’t mean the arrogant kind of proud.  I mean the SHUT SHIT DOWN kind of proud—the kind of proud that makes you stand up and fight back instead of laying down and begging.  The kind of proud that makes you defend yourself, resist and hold your head high, despite the teargas, despite the tanks.  The kind of proud that makes you so angry that you get organized and take over highways and universities.
It was Malcolm X who gave us that, comrades—not only 50 years ago, but today in 2016.  And the young people have taken that and run with it.  So let’s help them go as far as they can with it.  COINTELPRO thought that they had killed Malcolm, but the youth are keeping him alive.  What a beautiful struggle!  Let’s get behind them, comrades.  Let’s get behind them and seize the time.
In the words of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, “The future belongs to those who prepare for it today. In all our deeds, the proper value and respect for time, determines success or failure.”  All power to the people! ■
***
NC-based activist, Lamont Lilly is the 2016 Workers World Party, U.S. Vice-Presidential Candidate.  He has recently served as field staff in Baltimore, Ferguson, Oakland, Boston and Philadelphia.  In 2015, he was a U.S. delegate at the International Forum for Justice in Palestine in Beirut, Lebanon.  He is currently working on his forthcoming debut, Honor in the Ghetto (Fall 2016). Follow him on Twitter @LamontLilly.

The Combat Jack Show: The David Banner Episode

'On this episode of The Combat Jack Show , David Banner discusses new project  The God Box and his challenges  overcoming bouts of depression and sex addiction, as well as effective meditation techniques, and much more. The God Box drops August 19th.'  

Confessions of a D Girl: Colorism and Global Standards of Beauty

'If you look like me, you’re used to colorism, says Stanford Graduate Business School student Chika Okoro. She calls the phenomenon known as colorism – discrimination against those with a darker skin tone -- “both as sinister and as subtle as racism.” In a world where light skin, light eyes and long “real” hair are sought after features, Okoro tells us how she copes, and what we can do to unlearn this deep rooted, destructive mindset.'-- +TEDx Talks   

The Late Show: Cynthia Erivo Performs 'I'm Here' From 'The Color Purple'

Tony Award Nominee Cynthia Erivo, performs "I'm Here" from  The Color Purple on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. 

"Half Short, Twice Strong"-- The GZA + Mark Anthony Neal @ MoogFest 2016 [Photo]

The GZA and Duke Professor Mark Anthony Neal talk Dark Matter + Bars + Science at MoogFest 2016 (The Carolina Theater, Durham, NC). Photo Credit: Michelle Lanier