Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 788

'A Chosen Exile': Black People Passing In White America

Historical Society of Cheshire County

Left of Black Preview: Anti-Black Violence and Mass Incarceration

The Root
Left of Black host Mark Anthony Neal is joined in the studio by Daryl Atkinson to talk about mass incarceration's impact on America. Atkinson is a senior staff attorney at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice .

What Your Sense of Smell Tells You About Your Health

Public Radio International
Researchers at the University of Chicago say a decreased sense of smell is one of the strongest predictors of five-year mortality — stronger even than a diagnosis of heart or lung disease. According to the study,published in the journal PLOS One, people with no sense of smell were more than three times as likely to have died within five years than people with a normal sense of smell.

Videos Of Deadly Police Encounters Grab The Media Spotlight, But Why

Ali Shaheed Muhammad talks Midnight Marauders: Outtakes from The Hip-Hop Fellow

Price Films
Ali Shaheed Muhammad discusses the iconic cover art for A Tribe Called Quest's classic 'Midnight Marauders'.  The Hip-Hop Fellow Outtakes - Ali Shaheed Muhammad talks Midnight Marauders from Pricefilms on Vimeo.

The Hip-Hop Fellow is a feature length documentary, directed by Kenneth Price, following Grammy Award winning producer 9th Wonder's tenure at Harvard University.Interviewees include Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Kendrick Lamar, Young Guru, Dr. Mark Anthony Neal, Phonte, Dr. Marcyliena Morgan, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Ab-Soul, Rapper Big Pooh & DJ Premier.

Remembering Geoffrey Holder, Renaissance Man by Thomas F. DeFrantz

Remembering Geoffrey Holder, Renaissance Man by Thomas F. DeFrantz | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
The term “renaissance man” truly applies to few; Geoffrey Holder (1930-2014), who passed away earlier this week after a long illness, numbers among those.  Holder had extensive success as an actor in films and stage, as a recording celebrity, costume designer, painter, director, dancer, and choreographer.
Born in Trinidad, and educated at Queens Royal College, Holder studied dance and painting alongside his older brother Boscoe, and began performing in Boscoe Holder's Dance Company as a boy.  Holder took over directorship of the company in 1947, and toured Puerto Rico and the Caribbean in revues of his own design, before making his New York debut in the Broadway musical House of Flowers (1954). 
Flowers  was a watershed among the “all-black” Broadway musical craze of the 1950s. The show starred Pearl Bailey and Juanita Hall; it introduced audiences to the prodigious talents of Diahann Carroll, and included in its chorus many future dance luminaries. Alvin Ailey, famed musician Joseph Comadore, famed choreographer Louis Johnson, Dance Theater of Harlem founder Arthur Mitchell, influential Katherine Dunham dancers and teachers Glory Van Scott and Walter Nicks, and the exquisite Carmen de Lavallade all appeared in the show at its opening.
Holder and de Lavallade married during the run of that musical, and their partnership lasted sixty years. He became a leading dancer with the Metropolitan Opera Ballet in 1955, noted for his expressive fluidity and his striking, 6 feet 6 inch stature.  He ran his own dance group, Geoffrey Holder and Company, who performed his dances in New York from 1956-60. He appeared in several films, including the James Bond favorite Live and Let Die, and in 1975 directed and designed the Broadway musical The Wiz to great acclaim.   
His choreography drew on Caribbean themes and movement vocabularies.  The abstract ballet Prodigal Prince(1967) explored the life of Haitian artist Hector Hippolyte through a series of dance tableaus combining spiritual dancing, ballet, and modern dance techniques with flamboyantly colored fantasy costuming. 
Dougla Suite (1974), performed by both the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the Dance Theater of Harlem, staged a stylized wedding ceremony, and offered a synthesis of African and Hindu motifs common to daily life in the Caribbean in its pageantry and processionals.  He also directed, choreographed, and costumed the 1978 Broadway production Timbuktu starring Melba Moore and Eartha Kitt. 
I was lucky enough to meet Holder and de Lavallade several times, and always enjoyed their glamorous, commanding presence together. He created unforgettable ballgowns for de Lavallade that she would wear to New York City galas and opening nights; together they were an unstoppable juggernaut of black romance, mystique, and energetic force.  One of Holder's collaborations with de Lavallade had her dancing his 1972 work The Creation forty years later (2012) check the youtube and check out how exquisitely he clad his primary muse, and how much care they shared in creating unimaginable vistas of black creativity. Holder was an original, and we can learn much about our own capacity to create through our shared reflections on his many achievements. 
Axe to the maestro!
***

Thomas F. DeFrantzis Professor of African and African American Studies, Dance, and Theater Studies at Duke University. He is a dancer, a choreographer, and the author of Dancing Revelations: Alvin Ailey's Embodiment of African American Culture and the co-editor of Black Performance Theory.

No Struggle No Progress: Educator & Activist Howard Fuller in Conversation with Mark Anthony Neal | 10/16

No Struggle No Progress: Howard Fuller’s Activism at Duke and Beyond
Thursday, Oct. 16, 201412:00 – 1:15 p.m. Forum for Scholars and Publics – 011 Old ChemLight lunch will be served.
Join us on October 16, 2014, noon-1:15, for a discussion with Howard Fuller, moderated by Mark Anthony Neal. Drawing from his recently published memoir,  No Struggle No Progress: A Warrior’s Life from Black Power to Education Reform , Professor Fuller will discuss his experiences working for racial justice and radical social change, from his days as a young activist in North Carolina in the 1960s to his current engagement with the school choice movement.Dr. Howard Fuller is Distinguished Professor of Education and Founder/Director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University. Among his many leadership positions in the field of education, he has served as the Superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools, Dean of General Education at the Milwaukee Area Technical College, and Senior Fellow with the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University. He is currently Chair of the Board of the Black Alliance for Educational Options and of Milwaukee Collegiate Academy. You can follow him on Twitter at @HowardLFuller Mark Anthony Neal is Professor of African & African American Studies and the founding director of the Center for Arts, Digital Culture and Entrepreneurship (CADCE) at Duke University. He is the author of several books including the recent Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities (NYU Press) and the co-editor of That’s the Joint: The Hip-Hop Studies Reader (Routledge), now in its second edition.  You can follow him on Twitter at @NewBlackMan .

"Jericho"--Hasan Salaam ft. Immortal Technique & Hezekiah #WhentheWallsComeTumblingDown

Hasan Salaam
The new music video for 'Jericho' featuring Immortal Technique and Hezakiah, from Hasan Salaam's new album, Life in Black and White, released on Viper Records on October 28th.  The track was inspired by recent incidences of anti-Black violence and the shooting death of Black teen Phillip Pannell, 24 years ago, by a Teaneck, NJ police officer.

Ballantine’s Presents Black Coffee’s Human Orchestra: "Rock My World"

Ballantines

"Recreating one of my tracks using only vocals has given me the chance to really push the boundaries, something I love to do.” -- Black Coffee

For our next global #StayTrue Story we travelled to Johannesburg to hook up with Africa’s leading DJ and producer Black Coffee to discover his personal Stay True story, and see him undertake a unique musical experiment as he leads a 40 strong group of Africa's finest vocalists in 'Black Coffee's Human Orchestra', recreating one of his biggest tracks ‘Rock My World’ (featuring Soulstar) using only the power of 40 human voices and a real #StayTrue mentality.

Born in Durban and now living in bustling Johannesburg, Black Coffee has been involved in music since the age of two. Since then he has gone on to become one of the biggest DJ/producers from Africa, playing all over the world and all whilst pushing his desire for musical experimentation in everything he does.

"Street Sounds" (2001)--Charlie Hunter w/ Yasiin Bey | "Scorched Earth" (2008)--Mark Bradford

"Scorched Earth" (2008)--Mark Bradford"Street Sounds" (2001)--Charlie Hunter w/ Yasiin Bey