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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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WORDS: A Neo-Griot
Manifesto
By Kalamu ya Salaam
words. words are the basic element of all
writing. seems obvious. except the obvious is misleading. for
the last 400 years or so, western culture has defined the
"word" primarily and almost solely as
"text." enter the mating of digital technology and
african-heritage aesthetics, and we are on the verge of
liberation. sankofa: fetching an ancient view to fashion a
future vision.
in the beginning was the word. and it
wasn’t text. it had sound and gesture. Gutenberg’s printing
press combined with the alphabet to mute words; stripped words
of sound and gesture. (that was not the first instance, but,
thanks to western military hegemony, the roman alphabet became
the dominant form of word discourse. today, even the chinese use
that alphabet, even though their glyphs are older and their
language spoken by more people.) western imperialism ensured
that the muted text of the printed page became the standard for
literature, for writing.
following the first revolution of the
printing press, came the 2nd revolution, the reproduction of
sound for mass dissemination via recordings and radio. that
happened around the turn of the 20th century. sound was re-mated
to words. although most recordings were used for music, radio,
for a long while, hung in with all kinds of "talk"
shows, from political speeches to orson wells declaring
interstellar war had arrived, from cartoons come to life (like
the shadow do) to declarations of what soap made you whiter, i
mean, cleaner--question: was the golddust twins more clean than
the ivory soap chile? even today, talk shows still have a major
foothold on radio.
the third revolution is digital, and
digital completes the turning of the word back onto its original
self: the trinity of sense (literal meaning), sound and gesture.
talking cinema, which had its popular birth with al jolson’s
"jazz singer" in 1927 was the opening salvo of putting
sound and gesture back with the word. and then in the fifties
came television. but the distinction is that it cost a lot of
money, as well as access to and expertise with highly technical
equipment, in order to produce movies and television. the girl
next door and the guy in the mirror were not able to make their
own movies or produce their own television shows.
the significance is that with digital, we
can all make movies, we can all present our words with sound and
gesture as well as sense. digital is completing the re-animation
of words via high quality sound and gesture. the democratization
of mass media through the digital revolution is perhaps the most
significant development in terms of third world cultural
development.
as a writer using digital technology, i can
concentrate on what i do best, i.e. use words to convey ideas
and emotions. and i can do it from the holistic african-heritage
perspective which tends to mix and amalgamate rather than
specialize and segregate. moreover, digital makes it possible
both technically and financially for me to "write"
about my culture in both the fullest expression of the culture
and the fullest expression of the means and style of
communicating that culture.
moreover, i can now afford to do so without
regard to the strictures of the market place. i can make a movie
about the sister next door who integrated her elementary school
fifty years ago, or the brother down the street who joined the
deacons for defense after he came out of the korean conflict --
you don’t know who and what the deacons for defense was, well,
that’s precisely why the digital revolution is so important.
digital will make it possible for us to tell all the tales,
present the total vision that up til now has been severely
limited.
at the same time that, through the use of
digital technology, we can ignore the demands that dealing in
the marketplace often put on production (both in terms and
content and in terms of style), if we choose to, digital also
allows us to produce broadcast quality work that can compete in
the marketplace. for example, thanks again to the digital
revolution, our work can be distributed on cable television.
the days of major network strangleholds on
mass communications are coming to an end even as there is more
and more concentration of wealth and power in fewer and fewer
hands. global capitalism is moving toward monopolies, but the
underside is that the communications infrastructure has a
voracious appetite for content. 300 cable channels require over
2.5 million hours of content to operate year round. there will
be room, indeed, there will be a need for locally produced
content.
if one needs an example i give you
"rap" music. if there was no digital technology, there
would be no rap as we know it today. yes, i understand that rap
started with analog equipment and the human voice, but that’s
not what it is today. the rap that dominates musical culture
worldwide is produced via digital equipment. rap is the
electronic enhancement of words. machines turned to drums under
the wit and wisdom of human speech. the digital revolution is
all in our face but many of us don’t see it because it
doesn’t have a white face, a ph.d. face, a technical
"you-got-to-be-highly-educated-to-do-this" face. the
truth is that brothers and sisters at the street level have
completely revolutionized the making of music, indeed,
revolutionized the very definition of music.
my argument is not that all writers need to
become rappers. my argument is that rappers demonstrate what we
can do if we are willing to grasp the technology and use it to
facilitate our self expression. and this is not simply a
question of music. we have so many stories that need to be told,
sounded, and/or shown. digital technology and our own human will
to create makes it possible for us truly and fully express
ourselves. as writers, as cultural workers, our task ought to be
to investigate our past, critique our current conditions and
create visions of our future.
so, on the one hand, with digital we can
tell our story in our own way. although the aesthetics question
is a story onto itself, suffice it to say at this moment, with
the ease and affordability of digital we can present our culture
in our own way like never before. on the other hand, the local,
national and global marketplace needs our content. now is the
time.
there are, of course, issues to be dealt
with, obstacles to overcome, and cultural battles to be waged,
but there is a future if we are willing to seize the means of
production and actively participate in the distribution of our
vision. and it is no accident that i distribute this manifesto
via the internet rather than as a pamphlet or an article in
somebody else’s magazine. can you hear me now?
(kalamu@aol.com)
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Audio:
My Story, My Song (Featuring blues guitarist Walter Wolfman Washington)
New Orleans Jazz Funeral for tuba player Kerwin
James /
They danced atop his casket Jaran 'Julio' Green
Guarding the Flame of Life
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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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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
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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