Join me in celebrating my departure from the big City to a month-long residency at chaNorth.  I’ll be DJing some great music to start your weekend off right.

How lucky am I, to find the WBLS promo copy of disco classic “FREE MAN” by South Shore Commission!!  Could this be the copy that NY radio legend Frankie Crocker would spin on-air?

curate:

experimentbygenenco:

Marion C. Martinez’s Queen of Heaven

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Marion C. Martinez, “Olmec Time Traveler”  3” X 1.75” X  .125”

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Yet, where santos (saints and other Catholic icons) have historically been carved from wood and those colossal Olmec heads were sculpted from stone, Marion C. Martinez’s self-labeled “mixed-tech” (think Mixtec) media wall hangings and “AzTechna” (a play on Aztec) brooches are made of machine parts. These works simultaneously speak of New Mexico’s unique history as a dumping ground for high-tech trash, including radioactive waste, and the planet’s growing pile of so-called e-waste. Instead of applauding science and technology or condemning them altogether, Martinez’s work shows how they have transformed Native American and Hispanic life and culture—and how one self-described “Indio-Hispanic” woman has transformed some of the tools of science and technology. Like black people, especially black women, Chicanas, Chicanos, and Native Americans are usually disassociated from science and technology, signifiers of civilization, rationality, and progress. At the same time, many Chicanas, Chicanos, and Native Americans have been injured or killed by and/or for science and technology. Here, I’m thinking of forced sterilizations, environmental racism, and Jared M. Diamond’s (1997) provocative argument about the important role guns, germs, and steel played in the European colonization of the New World. All too often, we are linked to savagery, carnality, intuition, and passion, and we are fixed in a primitive and racialized past. The future, in contrast, is generally imagined as white, as many of the science fiction movies and TV shows of my childhood made evident. More recently, information technologies such as the Internet have prompted some cultural critics to celebrate the present and imminent future as “placeless, raceless [and] bodiless” (Nelson 2002, 1). Already, people of color have been erased from the future, just as many of us were excised from narratives of the past and remain hidden from view in the barrios, ghettoes, reservations, and prisons of the present. — Catherine S. Ramirez, “Afrofuturism/Chicanafuturism: Fictive Kin,” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies Vol. 33, No. 1 (Spring 2008): 185-194. Read as a PDF.  More on Mártinez

newmanology:

Ebony Jr!, November 1974
Photograph: Moneta Sleet, Jr. 

Source: Google Books (they have the complete 12-year run of Ebony Jr, every issue completely scanned)

RAMMELLZEE: THE EQUATION

The Letter Racers

March 8 - April 21, 2012

The Suzanne Geiss Company is pleased to present its inaugural exhibition RAMMELLZEE: THE EQUATION, The Letter Racers. Rammellzee’s manifestoes “Iconoclast Panzerism” and “Gothic Futurism” explored graffiti’s ability to liberate the transcendental powers of the alphabet that had been corrupted by Western culture. A manifestation of the artist’s theories, his Letter Racers were created over more than 15 years in his loft, The Battle Station. They are being shown in New York for the first time.

Exhibit press release

atane:

In the early 1970s, Motown Records released politically charged albums on a subsidiary called Black Forum – most of which faded into obscurity. Now, the producer and historian Pat Thomas has collected the sounds and the stories of artists like Langston Hughes, Elaine Brown, Amiri Baraka and more, for the book “Listen Whitey! The Sights and Sounds of Black Power 1965-1975.”

Listen to the history of the label here.

Various 1st issues in the Archival Directions collection.

The first edition of any publication will inevitably capture the nostalgia of the very beginnings of the literary endeavor.  In most cases, the aesthetic of the publication changes over time.  An editorial slant may even come into focus as more editions accumulate.  Nevertheless, the FIRST edition says something unique about the ambition wrapped up in between those two covers.

I hold these firsts in high regards.  A few of the publications are now defunct.  One publication series is shown here in its entirety.  For a broader look into the firsts in the independent and commercial magazine world, take a glance here: http://www.premiereissues.com/index.php

(Source: arcdirect)

b-girldocument:

Colors! COLORS! colors!

Nomads On Wheels…Savage Nomads…Ghetto Brothers…Turbans…Savage Skulls…Young Lords…

‘FLYIN’ CUT SLEEVES’ is a cool and essential documentary on Bronx Gang Presidents over a twenty year period made by Henry Chalfant of ‘STYLE WARS’ FAME.. It’s not often that we can hear points of views from gang members at different stages in their lives. There’s a ‘where are they now’ aspect to it.   It’s important to know the origins and original intentions of gangs as social conditions and war amongst other issues can be the reason or at least indication of how the gangs evolved.

I recommend that you check an early post & link by me about another important documentary that features primarily The Savage Nomads and The Savage Skulls   80 Blocks from Tiffanys

There’s a particular segment in Flyin Cut Sleeves when you can’t help but think of the movie ‘Warriors’ …you’ll know it when you peep it.

This is a fly piece of film making no doubt about that.  It’s a real slice of history  and I need to see if there are any other Henry Chalfant documentaries that have past me by, the dude is a legend!

Buy yourself or a lucky friend a copy here

DATED 11/20/11

commonright:

Those who care Please repost -Dr Yosef Ben Jochannan is in
Harlem Hospital Center (13th floor)
506 Lenox Avenue - Rm 5157
212-939-5157
Dr. Ben one of our great elders,has been hospitalized,vistors came
found him ill then got him to the hospital…He shouldn’t be living alone…
Hospital info below…..In any way you can,show this elder some love.

“Yes Dr. Ben was taken back to the hospital last night after he was visited by some concerned community members they found him very weak and lethargic.
They called the ambulance and the attendants deemed he should be taken back to the hospital, he just got home little over a week ago.
Lets circle the wagon family and do whetever we can!!!!

He severely dehydrated and mal-nourished!!!! He is in room 13-120
PLEASE REPOST
Lets circle the wagon family and do whetever we can!!!!

from my collection:

GLOWCHILD - A BELATED BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE TO RUBY DEE, OCTOBER 27, 2011

• Though known as a celebrated actress/activist, Ruby’s earliest interest in the arts was through her poetry, which was published in the Amsterdam News.
• Ruby Dee’s 1st book publication as author/editor is GLOWCHILD and OTHER POEMS from 1972.
• John Henrik Clarke, editor of Freedomways, was instrumental in reacquainting Ruby with her long time passion for poetry through this editorship opportunity.
• The book includes poems from junior high and high school students in Ruby’s neighborhood, New Rochelle, alongside poems by herself, John Henrik Clarke, Abiodun Oyewole, Margaret Burroughs et al.
• Glowchild was later made into a young audience TV special, Today is Ours.  Harry Belafonte , young writers included in the book and the entire Davis family contributed creative skills to the production.
• The Third Press, publisher of Glowchild, also published Katherine Dunham, Chinua Achebe, Angela Davis and many others throughout the 70’s & 80’s.
• Joseph Okpaku, owner of The Third Press, is currently a renowned player in the realm of African telecommunications development.

Dee, Ruby. Glowchild, and Other Poems. New York: Third Press, Joseph Okpaku Pub. Co, 1972. Print.

b-girldocument:

Part 2 of The Jungle

b-girldocument:

THE JUNGLE -  Part 1

I came across this gem of a little short drama documentary, made in 1967 by a Harold Haskins on the streets of Philly.  Many of the participants are real gang members.  This film was shown to teens in local Philly schools in the 60s and 70s to discourage them from joining gangs.

On a superficial level I can’t lie, these gangs had style and the doo wop singing is out-of-sight.  It’s always interesting to hear slang being used now being used decades ago.  I do believe I heard a gang member saying “laying in the cut”, which brings Mobb Deep immediately to mind :)

On a serious level, if the slang hasn’t changed then neither has the inner-city deprivation. The need to be affiliated with a gang is still apparent,  Yeah the gangs look kinda fly but the surroundings look desolate and grim.  It’s a bittersweet affair…

curate:

Tiya Miles, Public Historian on African American & Native American Connections, receives MacArthur Genius Grant 2011

by Susan Leem, associate producer

“In my family, there was an oral history about Native American heritage. And it’s one that my grandmother talked about when I was young many a time on her front porch. So when I went to graduate school I wanted to explore this, and I was at a Native American history seminar when I first learned about Native American slave-holding. So I was confronted with two different ideas, or stories, about these relationships.”
—Tiya Miles

The MacArthur Foundation brought this fresh voice to our attention when it announced a public historian as one of their recent “genius” grant recipients. This is a fascinating title, and a weighty responsibility. What makes a historian a “public” one? And once you hear her speak, you’ll ask, “Why aren’t there more?”

beingblog