Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 847

Terry McMillan: "Why I Lie for a Living" @ Chicago Ideas Week

Chicago Ideas Week
Prolific author Terry McMillan performs an intimate reading and analysis of her bestselling novels in this funny and profound talk, blurring the lines between fiction and reality and revealing the spiritual power of writing.

Lecture--Joy James: Women & Political Imprisonment: From Rosa Parks to Ramona Afrika

Lecture by Joy James, Williams College, given Thursday, September 20, 2012 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Organized by the A.E. Havens Center for the Study of Social Structure and Social Change, HavensCenter.org

Will Hip-Hop Grow Up? Jasiri X: '21 Forever'

Directed by Ali Baba Rosenthal III and Xavier Ruffin, "21 Forever" is produced by Religion and appears on Jasiri X's new album Ascension.

Uncle Phil Was a Fresh Take on Black Fatherhood by Mark Anthony Neal

James Avery used the experiences of his own life, and an absentee father, to shape his portrayal.

Uncle Phil Was a Fresh Take on Black Fatherhood
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheRoot.com
When James Avery died on New Year's Eve, he had amassed an enviable career of television and stage appearances, including a performance as the legendary Howard University Law professor Charles Hamilton Houston in the 1993 PBS dramatization ofBrown v. Board of Education. His lasting legacy, though, is as one on the most endearing black father figures in American television history. Twenty-three years after Avery introduced audiences to Judge Phillip Banks, the character still resonates as a counter to the myths of the absentee and irresponsible black father.

Debuting in January of 1990, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air revolved around a working-class teen Will (Will Smith), who was taken in by his wealthy kin. The series, which ran six seasons, was based on the real-life experience of producer Benny Medina. Avery quickly established himself as the typical television patriarch in the show, but as the character developed, many folk began to think of  “Uncle Phil,” as Avery will forever be remembered, along the lines of classic father-figure TV characters such as James Evans Sr.  (John Amos) and Heathcliff Huxtable (Bill Cosby). Indeed, as the traditional black family has largely disappeared from network television, Uncle Phil’s character resonates even more.
Read the Full Essay @ TheRoot.com

HuffPost Live: Guy Ramsey on the 'Amazing Bud Powell'

HuffPost Live w/ Marc Lamont Hill
Guy Ramsey On "The Amazing Bud Powell"
Guy Ramsey, author and the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania, joins us live to discuss his new book, The Amazing Bud Powell: Black Genius, Jazz History and the Challenge of Be-Bop.

Promo: I Love My Hair (The Remix)--Opens January 16th

Sassy, lyrical and nostalgic, I LOVE MY HAIR integrates interview text, poetry, original music, movement and video, to explore family, community, race, class, politics and identity. Created and directed by Chaunesti Webb.Appearing January 16 - February 1, 2014 at Manbites Dog Theater in Durham, North Carolina.Tickets and more info: ilovemyhairtheplay.com

In Search Of (Iton Remix) by Lester Spence

In Search Of (Iton Remix) by Lester Spence on Mixcloud

Tell Me More--Redefining Philanthropy: How African-Americans Give Back

Wisconsin Public Radio: Soul Music Continues to Resonate in American Culture

UNIVERSITY OF THE AIR | Wisconsin Public RadioMusic Of Donny Hathaway And Other Soul Singers Remains Influential.Donny Hathaway was an influential, if tragic, voice in soul music, and his influence remains in what we hear today. Craig Werner and Ed Pavlic explain how.
Listen HERE 

Does Our Music Still Bring the Good News of the Day?

Archibald Motley Does Our Music Still Bring the Good News of the Day? by Bill Banfield | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
May I ask...is a generation possibly being lost to us? I don't want to be dismissive or old cranky, but if you don't at least ask, you feel foolish or lost, tripping backwards in your own dream sleepwalking. Today there are few islands, caves, states or planets where we can totally escape much of this inevitable human maze and dead ends we now find ourselves in. Politics, TV news, entertainment culture, education, economic roller-coasters and our societal cultural climate is in chaos, gone unchecked.  Truth is sometimes a disturbing idea.  And so we wonder, is it better to have a wake up call?"Money chase games" have become the norm and the well of civility, integrity, community went dry. I sense among far too many young people today, total distracted- ness and being mixed up and in fogs of sustained adolescence. I mean like perpetually not growing up. There is a missing piece, a lost opportunity to link us that we dropped? Mentorship is missing.My concern is that we seem destined to fall for wherever the wind lands us and not aware that it takes some digging in and planting seeds for growth, but if nothing happens tomorrow, all are happy with the next storm that brews and nobody remembers the reasons why the winds, storm came.  And this commentary is a larger American modern cultural damage and dysfunction. One of the great triumphs of modern society through technology is that injustice and abuses of the mega-culture system we live in, and our own tripping, no longer sneak by properly cloaked in silence, and so we see and hear Rome burning and screaming all around us and this reality again is inescapable. It's not that I don't have hope and belief that this generation will win with brain filled agency and smart, swift do(s) and changes, but what I'm worried about is the timing of it all.  It's taking too long for consistent fruit, and the low hanging fruit is badly wormed, the soil is crusty, dry and the tillers of the harvest are all very tired. I'm not too heavy lidded to miss the advances in technology, or social-media-contemporary electronic connectivity and the world of fast solutions that have revolutionized our times and literally put the world at our fingertips.  In terms of human/ social/ life culture patterns though, the spin downward is visible and troubling. We are entitled by a new brutally selfish social birthright.  It's a kind of, " I have the right to do what I want to do whenever, and by the way, right now fast" entitlement. “There is no political solution to our troubled evolution. Our so-called leaders speak with words they try to jail ya. They subjugate the meek, but it’s the rhetoric of failure. Where does the answer lie living from day to day? Is there something we can buy? There must be another way. We are sprits in the material world.”—The PoliceIt used to be...The O’Jays used to sing, "I Love Music," and the old men sang, "Give me that old time religion," and Nina mused, "...to be young, gifted and Black with our souls intact".It used to feel different. There used to be a feeling that people  stood up and for things, and demanded what was good for our society. It feels like today people are more apathetic, nothing much matters but getting more stuff we want. It used to be your political party loyalty was a choice in perspectives, not a choice in who you wanted to take up arms against. It used to be that sexuality was a private mature living matter, now it's a selective optioned style you choose over and over and try it again on the fly. Just pick a button and try. Why not you have so many options?All the songs say nothing.All the signs are turned upside down.All the roads, well intentioned and lit, have fuses that go out all the time.All the young moms are, well, are they, mothers..?All the fathers are absent.The grandmothers want to be like their daughters who want to be like their daughters and the little girls are very confused right now.Boys are not focused on what it means to grow up and be men.And all the people in power are lacking in too many ways to count.
It used to be fads were waves of growing up into styles that sharpened individuality. We are wired up with no place to go, games and gadgets and no time to know, how to say excuse me, or pardon me, or I'm sorry, or what would it be like if I stopped to allow you?Music: loud, vacuous, disrespectful and more ugly.I may be just too old fashioned, but the music used to bring the good news of our journey forward too. This is the only musical movement period that makes me wonder have we given up on progressive forward motion on youth and social activism? So much of today’s music, if it could be singled out, is "selling out and selling its soul" to commercial poison-ism, leaving represented communities in dismal, abysmal cultural chaos. The music used to be the good sense, the fabric, the clock, the beat and bloodline.The single best example I see of a slip, is young men in huge numbers as a style movement having their pants hanging, exposing proudly their rear ends, underwear, as they scuffle across the street attempting to hold their pants up. Young women used to dress with a sense of delicate decency, now being " hot" has supplanted being smart.  I think our society as a whole is sleep walking, headed already over the cliff and what's worst is the lack of courage that's exhibited to recognize, speak out.And today we continue in this silence and help further darken for young people an already clouded path. The industry and the consumers who willingly support, produce, sell and sit silent are all a part of a spiraling swift downfall of our larger culture in contemporary society, connected and fast wired to a number of problematic practices escalating daily. Beyond the distractions of everything fast, furious and famous for five minutes, is the preoccupation and being pacified with again gadgets, games and buying thangs.   For me as a musician, the saddest thing is there are fewer great contemporary Black urban musical artists of note. Too much of the music sounds the same in every city, on every mainstream radio station, and most of what we see projected as Black music is rude, loud, crude and lewd. The value codes for our music have changed so much, the music matters less and only that it sells.Where is great music artistry?We pray loudly for a creative and forward aesthetic revolution of sustained substance led by today's young artists. Industry heads who have controlled, made the deal and the steal, really have never known nor cared about the directions for music, but, we do.Creative industry has become a distracted dash to sample, copy and paste, re-tweet, download and stash the cash. Instead of finding creative original human grown solutions in our natural evolution, everybody is in a race to engage the "next new since last week " electronic entertainment info- box operating system. As an artist, ...you must resist.It's all rarely focused on much else, a vicious cycle of bad human drama. Media is fascinated and fastened on disturbing stories and not lifting stories. Guns and blowing things up sells more tickets at the box office, so our cultural chaos is boxed up for us and fed to us as a cultural diet. And this is actually our cultural cancer today, and it grows. How can we expect a healthy society when the picture of it is shown as violent, ruthless, greedy and human-less?  ***
Bill Banfield is a composer, recording artist, musical director, scholar and the Professor in the Music and Societies program at the Berklee School of Music.  He is the author of several books including the recent Representing Black Music Culture: Then, Now, and When Again?  and the host of ACC with Bill Banfield.