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Books by Kalamu ya
Salaam
The Magic of JuJu: An Appreciation of the Black Arts
Movement /
360:
A Revolution of Black Poets
Everywhere Is Someplace Else: A Literary Anthology
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From A Bend in the River: 100 New Orleans Poets
Our Music Is No Accident /
What Is Life: Reclaiming the Black Blues Self
My Story My Song (CD)
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LISTEN
TO THE PEOPLE
The Neo-Griot New Orleans Project
Listen
to the People Update: Give Thanks
29
November 2005
Never say die.
There is a lot of confusion as to what will happen to New
Orleans, but the New Orleans “never say die” spirit is
shining brightly through the fog. As we travel around the
country interviewing people, it is clear that New Orleans is
special. New Orleans culture remains strong even to those
natives who were not living in the city when Katrina hit.
Listen To The People is both an important and inspiring
project. It is important that we record and share our voices.
Experiencing the cultural strength of Katrina survivors is
inspirational, both for those who want to return as well as
those who may never return.
Listen To The People is now moving into Phase Two. We
have moved beyond an idea. We are recording interviews. Our
website (www.kalamu.com/listen) is up and running. We are
developing long-term partnerships. We have received a seed grant
of $10,000.
Interviews
Thus far, we have done the following video interviews:
Adrinda Kelly (18 minutes) – New Orleans
native, graduate of McDonogh #35 high school and Harvard
University. She was one of the first students to participate in
the Students at the Center (SAC) program. She lives and works in
New York City as an editor at McGraw Hill Publishing. Adrinda is
the director of publications for SAC.
Interviewed: New York City
Niyi and Kemi Osundare (2.5 hours) – Nigerian nationals
who were living and working in New Orleans. Niyi is an
internationally respected poet and English Professor who was
teaching at the University of New Orleans. Kemi is a social
worker and nurse who was working at Charity Hospital in New
Orleans. After nearly drowning, they were evacuated to
Birmingham, and ended up at Franklin Pierce College in Rindge,
New Hampshire.
Interviewed: Rindge, New Hampshire
Maria Hernandez (3 hours) – Maria is a New
Orleans-born, 16-year-old, Afro-Cuban (her parents are from
Cuba). She was a senior at Frederick Douglass high school in New
Orleans and a SAC student for three years. Maria was in the
Superdome during Katrina. Evacuated to Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Interviewed: Clemson, South Carolina
John Scott (45 minutes) – John is a New Orleans native,
visual artist and MacArthur awardee who evacuated the city
shortly before Katrina hit and is now living in Houston. John
Scott taught at Xavier for over 30 years. Interviewed: Houston,
Texas
Towana Pierre (1 hour) – Towana is a New Orleans
native, Students at the Center (SAC) graduate from McDonogh #35
high school and Howard University graduate who is now teaching
7th grade reading in Houston, Texas. Towana was teaching at
Abramson High School in New Orleans when Katrina hit. Evacuated
to Vicksburg, Mississippi.
Interviewed: Houston, Texas
Jarvis DeBerry (3 hours) – Jarvis is a Mississippi born
columnist & editorial writer for the Times Picayune (New
Orleans’ daily newspaper). Jarvis evacuated New Orleans two
days after Katrina hit. Shortly thereafter, Jarvis returned to
New Orleans and is now living in New Orleans. Interviewed: New
Orleans
Mary Shelbia (I hour) – Mary, a New Orleans native and
parent of SAC high school student, spent five days on an
expressway during Katrina and was then evacuated to San Antonio,
Texas. Interviewed: Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Kenneth Ferdinand (3 hours) – Kenneth and his wife
Melba are the proprietors of Café Rose Nicaud in New Orleans.
He is a New Orleans native and survivor of Hurricane Betsy in
1965. Kenneth and Melba evacuated for Hurricane Katrina to St.
Francisville, Louisiana but quickly returned and were the first
business owners to reopen in the Faubourg Marigny area of the
city. Interviewed: New Orleans
Ukali Mwendo (2 hours) – Ukali is a firefighter with
the New Orleans Fire Department and a long standing community
activist. He was on duty in New Orleans throughout Katrina.
Interview: New Orleans
Jose Torres Tama (3 hours) – Jose is a performance
artist, visual artist and arts activist, born in Ecuador, South
America, reared in the New York/New Jersey/Connnecticut
tri-borough area, and spent the last half of 44 years in his
adopted home of New Orleans. Jose rode out Katrina and evacuated
from the city on the Wednesday night after Katrina hit.
Interview: New Orleans
So far, the interviews are going extremely well. I have about
four or five more I plan to complete before the end of the year.
Rohn Barras, who is a member of the Neo-Griot Writing Workshop,
is also conducting interviews. Rohn is in Houston and has
gathered stories in Houston and in New Orleans. She is working
on her Masters in Anthropology from Clark-Atlanta. Her
interviews focus on cultural memory. We plan to audio stream
some of Rhon’s interviews.
Our immediate goal is to stream video and audio interview
excerpts on the Listen to the People website (www.kalamu.com/listen)
beginning New Year's 2006.
I am also working on a book project with Lola Vollens of
Berkeley, CA who is the creator of a series of oral histories
called Voice Of Witness. She is currently putting together the
latest volume, an oral history of Hurricane Katrina survivors.
More on this project as I get more details.
From survivors telling stories to those who just want to help,
people across the nation are supportive of our project. The
fiduciary agent for Listen To The People is The Renaissance
Project, a New Orleans community development organization.
Because conditions in New Orleans, including mail delivery,
remain unreliable, The Renaissance Project has an office at the
Strom Thurmond Institute at Clemson University. Until New
Orleans is stable, all of our financial business will be
conducted through the Clemson office.
Donations to Listen To The People may be sent to:
The Renaissance Project
Strom Thurmond Institute
Clemson University
Clemson, SC 29634
All checks and money orders should be made payable to “The
Renaissance Project” with a notation “Listen To The
People” on the memo line of the check or money order.
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building the database of volunteers
15 September 2005
This
project is designed to document, archive, and share the life
experiences of New Orleanians. While we will focus on
Katrina-related events, we plan to include selected life
stories.
Although 65% to 70% Black, New Orleans had a rich mix of people.
For example, one of, if not the largest community of Hondurans
outside of Honduras was located in the greater New Orleans area.
Over 12,000 Vietnamese lived in New Orleans, principally in New
Orleans East, which was entirely flooded. Additionally, the
adjoining parishes (counties) of St. Bernard and Plaquemines
contained large populations of poor whites. Listen To The People
will focus on Black residents, but we will not disappear or
ignore other ethnicities and races who lived in the New Orleans
area. All voices will be included.
Listen To The People contains three activity levels: 1. existing
material, 2. field recordings from writers and interested
individuals, and 3. intensive video interviews.
These three levels are designed to offer the maximum opportunity
for everyone to participate in building this people-based
communications program.
1. Existing Material.
Listen To The People will identify, gather, archive and index
existing Katrina-experience documentation. While we do not plan
to index every newspaper account, we do want to archive features
that focused on first hand experiences, including letters to the
editors, op ed pieces, features, audio and video interviews.
We encourage people to send us material in whatever form it may
be avaialbe: print, electronic (including physical media such as
cassette tape, mini-dv tape, cd reproduction, etc.) as well as
internet references. We are particularly interested in receiving
material in digital formats.
2. Field Recordings.
The New Orleans Diaspora is spread far and wide across the
United States. Writers, activists, or individuals who want to
participate are encouraged to record the experiences of
evacuees. Although digital formats are desired, analog cassette
recordings are acceptable. The important point is to make sure
the interviews are clearly recorded.
3. Video Interviews.
The Neo-Griot media crew will conduct in depth interviews with
selected individuals. Some of these interviewees will be
selected from the “existing material” and the “field
recordings” areas of Listen To The People.
This project will work in cooperation with Students at the
Center and Douglass Crossroads. Students at the Center is an
independent writing program that functioned within the New
Orleans public schools over the last ten years. Douglass
Crossroads is part of a national initiative at high school
reform and improvement, based out of Frederick Douglass High
School, located in the ninth ward of New Orleans.
Once the material and interviews are gathered, they will be
archived, indexed and listed on the Listen To The People
website. Selected interviews will be available as streaming
audio and downloadable mp3s. A smaller selection of video
interviews will be streamed online.
All interviews will remain the intellectual property of the
witnesses and may not be used for any commercial purpose without
the written concept of the interviewee (or their guardians).
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Listen
To The People
using
digital technology to document and share a people’s history
from New Orleans
Kalamu ya Salaam / c/o Joseph McCoy / 8222
White Chapel Court / Brentwood, TN 37027 /
504/710-9694 / kalamu.salaam@gmail.com
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kalamu
travel update -- building the database of volunteers (9/15/05)
==========================
although the following dates are subject to modification,
excepted where noted otherwide, they are confirmed. i invite and
encourage e-drummers to attend when they can. please make yourself
known to me. i would like to meet as many e-drummers as possible.
these speaking engagements are our main support at this time and
are especially important for our listen to the people project. we
are not simply looking for money. we need the all around
involvement of people. because this is a digital-based project, it
will be possible to parcel out sections of each task. because new
orleanians have been sent all over the united states, it will be
possible for you to participate in a number of different ways.
right now we are building the database of volunteers. as we
bring the infrastructure online, we will specify resources needed
and specify how people can work on the project from their home,
school or office.
we appreciate everyone's input and support. any and all comments
are encouraged, we develop best through openness and consensus.
Appearances
kalamu will appear at: cornell university - sunday, 17 sept
- tuesday, 19 sept /
nyc - thursday 29 sept - monday, 2 oct / (the bowery poetry club on friday, 30 sept. /
the caribbean culture center, 1 oct.) /
madison, wisconsin - tuesday, 11 0ct - sunday, 16 oct /
m.i.t. - 17 or 18 oct. (tentative)
kalamu.salaam@gmail.com
posted 15 September 2005
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music website >
http://www.kalamu.com/bol/
writing website >
http://wordup.posterous.com/
daily blog >
http://kalamu.posterous.com
twitter >
http://twitter.com/neogriot
facebook >
http://www.facebook.com/kalamu.salaam
Guarding the Flame of Life
New Orleans Jazz Funeral for tuba player Kerwin
James /
They danced atop his casket Jaran 'Julio' Green
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Track List
1. Congo Square (9:01)
2. My Story, My Song (20:50)
3. Danny Banjo (4:32)
4. Miles Davis (10:26)
5. Hard News For Hip Harry (5:03)
6. Unfinished Blues (4:13)
7. Rainbows Come After The Rain (2:21)/Negroidal Noise (15:53)
8. Intro (3:59)
9. The Whole History (3:14)
10. Negroidal Noise (5:39)
11. Waving At Ra (1:40)
12. Landing (1:21)
13. Good Luck (:04) |
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Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.— WashingtonPost
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
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The White Masters
of the World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest / Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The
Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding
of Haiti
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ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
update 17
January 2012
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