Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 771

SOULS Special Issue: “Transition with a Real Slow Fade”: The Life and Work of Richard Iton

Photo Credit: Lester Spence SOULS: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society Issue 3-4 2014 pages 143-378
Special Issue: “Transition with a Real Slow Fade”: The Life and Work of Richard Iton

Guest Editors' Note Lester K. Spence& Mark Anthony Neal
Productively Destabilized: Black Studies and Fantastic Modes of Being Lia T. Bascomb
Uncovering the Black Fantastic in Black Body Politics Margo Natalie Crawford
The Fantastic Olivia Pope: The Construction of a Black Feminist Subject Utz McKnight
Black Political and Popular Culture: The Legacy of Richard Iton Aneeka Henderson
Of Fathers and Sons, Prophets and Messiahs Vincent Lloyd
Song Uncaged: Prison Temporality and Black Pop Culture Escape Shana L. Redmond
Hyphy Rap Music, Cooptation, and Black Fanatics in Oakland, CA (1994–2010) H. Lavar Pope
The Politics of Making Home: Opening Up the Work of Richard Iton in Canadian Hip Hop Context Mark V. Campbell
On the Question of “Who's Out in Hip Hop” C. Riley Snorton
Rapping in the Light: American Africanism and Rap Minstrelsy Damon Sajnani
On Post-Blackness and the Black Fantastic Greta Fowler Snyder
African Space Programs: Spaces and Times of the Black Fantastic Anthony Reed
Poetry
Liner Notes
Christian Campbell

Author Jacqueline Woodson On Growing Up, Coming Out And Saying Hi To Strangers

NPR | Fresh Air
Jacqueline Woodson won the National Book Award for young people's literature for her memoir Brown Girl Dreaming . She says that growing up in South Carolina, she knew that the safest place was with her family.

Samuel L. Jackson Challenge Celebrities to Call Out the “Violence of the Racist Police”

The Free Thought Project
In a bold move, heavyweight actor Samuel L. Jackson has issued a call to action, similar to that of the ice bucket challenge, but for police.
Jackson challenges celebrities to sing the “We ain’t gonna stop, till people are free” song.
The song starts off with a reference to Eric Garner’s last words.

I can hear my neighbor cryin’ ‘I can’t breathe’Now I’m in the struggle and I can’t leave.Callin’ out the violence of the racist police.We ain’t gonna stop, till people are free.We ain’t gonna stop, till people are free.

Jackson then ends the 47 second challenge asking celebrities to “come on, sing it out.”

J. Cole Performs 'Be Free' on The Late Show with David Letterman

'Revolting Music': An Interview with South African Musician Neo Muyanga

The Root

In this preview of the next Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined in the studio with composer and musician Neo Muyanga , co-founder of the Pan African Space Station (PASS). Muyanga's latest project is  Dipalo: A Mixtape For Those Who Practice Counting  and he is currently working on a libretto, Revolting Music .

#WhatDigitalHumanitiesLookLike: "You Can't Win" (for #TrayvonMartin)

#WhatDigitalHumanitiesLookLike: "You Can't Win" (for #TrayvonMartin)

Writing about the song “You Can’t Win” in his autobiography Moon Walk Michael Jackson recalls “My character had plenty to say and to learn. I was propped up on my pole with a bunch of crows laughing at me, while I sang “You Can't Win,” The song was about humiliation and helplessness—something that so many people have felt at one time or another. "(140)

With “You Can’t Win” as backdrop students in the Michael Jackson and the Black Performance Archive course at Duke University re-staged the final minutes of Trayvon Martin’s life highlighting the deeper connections between Jackson’s music, the vulnerability of Black youth and the political moment defined, in part, by the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter.Shoutouts to Archana Gowda, who served as curriculum consultant and Duke Librarian Karen Jean Hunt, Duke Professor and Dance Historian Tommy DeFrantz, Universal Music Enterprises’s Harry Weinger, and artist Pierre Bennu, whose presentations to the class provided the students with disparate examples of the Archive(s).

Cornel West's Thoughts on Ella Baker

Time

Noted thinker Cornel West tells TIME that Martin Luther King, Jr., couldn't have done what he did without Ella Baker.

Left of Black S5:E12: Curating the Soul Music Archives

Left of Black S5:E12:  Curating the Soul Music Archives
Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined in-studio by Harry Weinger (@harryweinger),  Vice President of A&R for Universal Music Enterprises (UMe) and lecturer at the  Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at New York University.
A two-time Grammy Award winner for his work on the ground-breaking James Brown box-set Star Time (1991) and the film and soundtrack Standing in the Shadows of Motown (2002), Weinger and Neal discuss his access to the vaults of Soul music,  maintaining and curating the musical legacies of the Motown label and James Brown, teaching courses at NYU on Stevie Wonder and Prince, and co-teaching a class on “Great Albums” with Ahmir ?uestlove Thompson.  Weinger also discusses his dream project which involves a decade’s long project by Marvin Gaye to record a series of Big Band ballads arranged by Bobby Scott.
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 and in conjunction with the Center for Arts, Digital Culture & Entrepreneurship (CADCE).*** Episodes of Left of Black are also available for free download in @ iTunes U*** Follow Left of Black on Twitter: @LeftofBlack
Follow Mark Anthony Neal on Twitter: @NewBlackMan

Cornell University To Digitize A Rich Hip-Hop Archive

NPR's All Things Considered
The founding publicity director of Def Jam Records, Bill Adler, amassed a highly valuable collection of music, writing and images.

"Glory" -- John Legend feat. Common (SELMA Soundtrack)