Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 815

How a Brawl At Bar Brought Michael K. Williams His Big Break

When Ishmael Reed Met Bobby Womack: The Author Reflects on his 35th Birthday

The Author Reflects On His 35th Birthday by Strider22

Amerigo Gazaway Presents: The Big Payback Vol. 3: J​.​B. & The Soul Mates

Amerigo Gazaway

This time around, Amerigo takes on James Brown in The Big Payback Vol lll. In the third and latest offering from "The Big Payback" summer mix series, the producer follows the exceptionally awesome first and second volumes from the legendary DJ Scratch and master craftsman, J. Period. 

Bringing together a fantasy league of all-stars for his "J.B. and The Soul Mates" tribute concept, the producer's latest offers an alternative to the sometimes uninspired, profit-driven, posthumously released albums. 
With guest appearances from Bob Marley, Nas, Busta Rhymes, Fela Kuti, The Notorious B.I.G., Mobb Deep, and more, Amerigo pays tribute to the God Father of Soul with a re-imagined set of co-conspirators. The Big Payback Vol. 3: J.B. & The Soul Mates by Amerigo Gazaway
"I'm not sure any other artist has left their imprint on popular music, especially across so many genres, as much as James Brown has. With as many of today's hit songs that were built around some sort of James Brown flip, it's almost like he had a say in what the music of future generations would sound like without even knowing it." 
*The Big Payback album artwork was developed exclusively for this series by Cojo "Art Juggernaut" - www.ArtJuggernaut.com*

Anna Holmes: A Woman, A Writer, A Wit | One with Farai

One with Farai | PRI Anna Holmes, author of The Book of Jezebel, riffs on life in New York and womanhood todayFarai Chideya speaks with New York Times Book Review columnist Anna Holmes, who applies her wit to questions of everything from womanhood, children in New York, and her former job as the editor of Jezebel.com.  

The Hiphop Archive & Research Institute at Harvard University [Promo]

HipHop Archive
The mission of the Hiphop Archive & Research Institute at Harvard University is to facilitate and encourage the pursuit of knowledge, art, culture and responsible leadership through Hiphop.

Two Measures and a Downbeat: Mabon “Teenie” Hodges and the Gift of the Memphis Soul Sound by Zandria F. Robinson

Two Measures and a Downbeat:  Mabon “Teenie” Hodges and the Gift of the Memphis Soul Sound by Zandria F. Robinson | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
With two four-count measures and a downbeat—five quarter-note introductory rhythm taps, followed by oDiscovered by the late and legendary Willie Mitchell of Royal Studios, Hodges was the gifted guitarist in the Hi Rhythm section of Hi Records, playing alongside bandmates and brothers Leroy and Reverend Charles Hodges. He wrote or put his spirit on genre-defining songs as he invented new sonic soul methodologies. And he did so with a singular personal and sonic style that rendered his nickname an oxymoron. In short, Teenie Hodges was one of the central pioneers of the globally popular soul sound that is the foundation for the vast majority of popular music. It is difficult to write in the past tense about someone whose work, in this case the music, is so obviously from the future and so fundamentally transcends time.
In Susanna Vapnek’s 2013 docu-short film about Hodges’s life and work, the guitarist's electric spirit, demonstrated by his fluid mixture of profundity and one-line quips funnier than your funniest uncle’s, belied the guitarist’s fragile health. Hodges’s piercing genius was a function of several intersecting factors: his country rearing on the outskirts of Memphis; his birth into a family with the most perfect musical genetics possible; a particular moment in the trajectory of American music and Memphis music; and a cool, almost unassuming, personal tenacity that effortlessly defied convention to birth new conventions that are now widely accepted in soul and pop music. Soul music is at once spiritual in a godly sense and a carnal-secular sense, and Hodges’s music captures this intertwined ethos.
In the film, ruminating on the lyrics, “take me to the river/wash me down,” Hodges argued that in some ways one can best articulate feelings of human love and partnership by swaddling them in the traditional spiritual language of fervency, water, and baptism. (And let everyone in the church say, “amen” and “amen.”) Hodges’s syncretic and conscious understanding of this co-existence of the sacred and the secular made him, and the music he created in the spirit of this understanding, especially unique. 
I sat in the row behind the Hodges family, including a beaming and dapper though ill Teenie Hodges, at the premiere of the documentary at Indie Memphis in October 2013. In one scene of the film, he gives us those two famous measures, tapping his foot those five times and strumming out the opening notes of the song on his guitar sans electric hookup. It was a perhaps unintentionally climactic moment in the film. Through the raw delivery of that rhythm and those notes, we were transported to and through an era in American music that we have been extraordinarily fortunate to inherit and remix. Claps and cheers (and tears) from the Memphis audience after the documentary’s conclusion reverberated back to the screen and swirled around Hodges.
Down front and far too modest given the transformative effect he had on American spirit, sound, love, and soul, Hodges turned to us and waved vigorously, giving it right back. In response to an audience member’s question about legacy and the endurance and future of musical genres, Hodges told us, “any music that catches on will last always.” 
Certainly, soul music, Teenie’s music, our music, has done more than catch on in the traditional sense. It has become a part of the sonic repertoire and vocabulary of a people, a region, a nation, and the globe. It has endured in new forms and is outlasting the most complex and unexpected challenges. Next to James Brown, Memphis soul music remains some of the most widely sampled music in hip-hop. And thus it is Hodges who has provided us with the soul structure that undergirds our most influential musical and cultural export.
We are now stewards of Hodges’s radical gift to us, of the “always” of sound and soul he bequeathed. Somewhere in Soul Heaven, or the Soul Afterlife, Teenie Hodges is busy teaching somebody to play on the one. 
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Zandria F. Robinson is a native Memphian and Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Memphis. She is author of This Ain’t Chicago: Race, Class, and Regional Identity in the Post-Soul South. Portions of this post appeared originally on her blog, New South Negress.

Actor Wendell Pierce on Acting, Entrepreneurship, and Social Justice in New Orleans | One with Farai

One with Farai | PRI
Actor Wendell Pierce on Acting, Entrepreneurship, and Social Justice in New OrleansFarai Chideya speaks with actor Wendell Pierce ( Treme ,  The Wire ), who co-founded a chain of grocery stores in urban "food deserts." Pierce, a New Orleans native, speaks passionately about the joys, jazz and struggles of his city.

Kara Walker: "A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby" | an Art21 Exclusive

Art 21
Episode #204: This episode provides an in-depth look at the creation of Kara Walker's monumental public project, "A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby" (2014), at the Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn, NY. Seated in her Manhattan studio, Walker explains how the molasses-covered space, along with her extensive research into the history of sugar, inspired her to create a colossal sugar-coated sphinx, as well as a series of life-sized, sugar and resin boy figurines. A team of artists and fabricators are shown constructing and coating the sphinx, which, as Walker says, gains its power by "upsetting expectations, one after the other." 
Commissioned by Creative Time, "A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby" is the first large-scale public project by Walker who is best known for her cut paper silhouette installations, drawings, and watercolors. "A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby" is on view until July 6, 2014. Thereafter, the factory will be demolished to make way for condominiums.

Shape-Up And Checkup: LA Barbers To Start Testing Blood Pressure

Jeff Roberson | AP

Left of Black Summer Special (vol. 1): Poet and Yale Professor Elizabeth Alexander Talks Black Studies, Black Poetry and the Art of Archibald Motley

Left of Black Summer Special (vol. 1):  Poet and Yale Professor Elizabeth Alexander Talks Black Studies, Black Poetry and the Art of Archibald Motley
Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined in the Left of Black studios by Elizabeth Alexander, the Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of African American Studies & Professor American Studies & English at Yale University. A widely published poet and essayist, Alexander is the author of the classic The Venus Hottentot , American Sublime (a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize), and the recent Crave Radiance .  She is also the author of the  collection of essays The Black Interior .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.
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Episodes of Left of Black are also available for free download in @ iTunes U
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Follow Left of Black on Twitter: @LeftofBlackFollow Mark Anthony Neal on Twitter: @NewBlackManFollow Elizabeth Alexander on Twitter: @ProfessorEA