|
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
/
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)
*
* * * *
What Renaissance?
By
Kalamu ya
Salaam
|
Pre-Obama, some
well-meaning person
asked me my opinion
of the so-called
"New Black
Renaissance." My
short essay in reply
is below. Now that
we are in the new
millennium and Obama
is the President of
the United States,
we might ironically
say that the child
was born but the
mother died. The
"new" Black is
literally a mixed
blessing. I have not
bothered to change
anything that I said
pre-Obama because a
priori is de facto
on time
(translation: ain't
nothing changed, not
really) |
A renaissance is a "re-birth."
So what are we talking about? A
resurgence of Black literature?
Like what, like when? Are we
going back to the days of the
Negro Renaissance, which was
itself a marketing ploy of
middle class Blacks and their
White patrons?
The term "renaissance" was
lifted from Marcus Garvey who
was calling for a rebirth of
African culture and
self-determination. But the
Negro Renaissance, just like
today's renaissance, was not
about self-determination but
rather about integration and the
pleading of an educated middle
class that "we, too, are
Americans / humans / artists /
whatever, just like you." What I
see is not a renaissance but
rather a petition for
acceptance.
We Africans in America have
never before had such a large
and literate Black middle class.
Today, a significant number of
us have a meaningful level of
disposable income. To go with
the cash and credit cards, we
also have a desire to see middle
class values affirmed. Make no
mistake, we have had a middle
class before, but it was not
large. We have had literate
people, but the majority was not
middle class, was not White
college educated in mainstream
views and values. Indeed, the
last two decades of the 20th
century are the first time that
educated African Americans did
not have to literally fight for
official recognition as American
citizens.
The result of today's social
reality is that the social
content of much of our
literature has shifted. Some
would argue that we have split
into black professionals on the
one hand, and a black underclass
on the other hand, and that the
literature of today reflects
that split among our people.
If we look at the state of Black
literature we see the popularity
of romance and self help
books—manuals designed to tell
us how to make it and be happy
in America (a country which
allegedly no longer legally and
officially practices racism).
The romance is the belief in the
individual, thus we are looking
for "my" soul mate, "my" dream
job, "my" own business, etc. ad
nausea.
From a more critical
perspective, there is no
Renaissance in Black
literature—what we have are
novels either focusing on the
trauma of life in the ghetto or
offering a road map on how to
escape the ghetto, physically
and psychologically; self help
manuals on doing business with
and just like the descendants of
those whose business
historically was the trade in
our black bodies and the
exploitation of our Black labor.
The so-called Black literary
Renaissance, like its sibling,
"smooth jazz," is a sort of
hybrid funk without feeling,
without the sweat of struggle, a
cigarette dangling from its
lips, a shot of liquor in its
hand, and a self-centered view
of the world. What we don't have
are major publishing companies
and nationally distributed
literary journals that are of
us, for us, and by us. Even
those of us who self publish
tend toward winning recognition
from the status quo.
The hard truth is that there is
no other place to go. If we
don't become part of the
mainstream, we end up in the
wilderness. For those of us who
are trying to maintain a course
of independence and
self-determination, we are like
Du Bois proverbial Negro with a
double consciousness. We remain
marginalized by economic
considerations; literally
unpopular and unpaid. I
understand the reasons behind
the choice made by many, even as
I obstinately choose a different
direction. A true Black
Renaissance will happen when we
get back to the principles of
self-determination, self-respect,
and self-defense.
Right now, I do not see any
Black Renaissance. Nothing is
being reborn, except our own
collaboration in the extinction
of anything and everything that
might be identified as both
Black and opposed to the status
quo.
Source:
WordUp
*
* * * *
Guarding the Flame of Life
(Kalamu ya Salaam)
/
Toni Morrison Presses For Writers' Freedoms (audio)
New Orleans Jazz Funeral for tuba player Kerwin
James /
They danced atop his casket Jaran 'Julio' Green
* * *
* *
|
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) |
* * *
* *
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
*
* * * *
* * *
* *
Black Music in America—ca. mid-1970s
This tremendous educational documentary
from the mid-1970's examines the priceless contributions of
African-Americans to musical heritage, so closely tied to their unique
history in the United States. From Africa upon slave ships captive
immigrants brought with them melodies, cadences and rhythms that inarguably
gave rise to music considered 'modern' today.
Beginning with the genius Louis
Armstrong's triumphant return to Ghana in the late 1950's, we trace the
evolution of music from West Africa to the Virginia colonies of the early
1600's. Over the next 400 years, as this distinct root of American culture
takes hold, incredible clips of filmed performances by Mahalia Jackson,
Josephine Baker, Bessie Smith, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Coleman Hawkins,
Roy Eldridge, and Duke Ellington illustrate the black experience.
Contemporary musicians such as Nina
Simone, BB King, Cannonball Adderly (w/ Joe Zawinal - Mercy, Mercy, Mercy),
and Sly & the Family Stone, along with a funky-ass filmed number from an
as-yet-undocumented-on-the-internet off-Broadway production called "The Me
Nobody Knew" punctuate the memory of the past, the spontaneity of the moment
and determination for the future.
*
* * * *
Marcus Garvey "Africa For The Africans" /
Look For Me in The Whirlwind
Marcus Mosiah
Garvey /
Marucs Garvey Speech
* * *
* *
 |
Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance
By Houston A. Baker
Mr. Baker perceives the Harlem Renaissance as a crucial moment
in a movement, predating the 1920s, when Afro-Americans embraced
the task of self-determination and in so doing gave forth a
distinctive form of expression that still echoes in a broad
spectrum of 20th-century Afro-American arts. . . . .
Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance
may well become Afro-America's 'studying manual'.Tonya Bolden Davis,
Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance is a stunningly original book. opposing the view of
earlier critics, such as Nathan Huggins, that the Harlem
Renaissance was a failure. professor Baker redefines modernism
and establishes a case for a distinctly Afro-American version of
that movement. . . . Rejecting the limitations of a
traditionalist approach to modernism, Baker proposes the
concepts of 'mastery of form' and 'deformation of mastery' as
more suitable strategies for the interpretation of Afro-American
discourse.Faith Pullin,
Times Higher Education Supplement
|
* * *
* *
* * * * *
 |
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
|
* * * * *
|
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 |
 |
* *
* * *
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)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* *
* * *
ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
posted 10 June 2010
|
