Youth Violence and Black Classical Music

Note the white makeup on Nina to make her more acceptable to the "American" audience on the Ed Sullivan Show, 1960. America did the same to Nat King Cole when he had the first black TV show. He was forced to wear the same white make up.






Youth Violence and Black Classical Musical
At this past weekend's San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Festival, many persons mentioned to me how peaceful it was, none of the incidents of gang banging that occurred during the Juneteenth Festival, even with a heavy police presence. We noted the police are simply another gang under the color of law, so the youth have no respect for them thus they commit acts of chaos in their presence.

The Jazz Festival was, again, peaceful. I heard of no reports of youth madness, although youth were present. I had a little incident with a youth who getting people to sign petitions. When he asked me to sign and I told him to get back with me because I was just setting up and neeed to get my mind in order. The youth told me I had a bad attitude, to which I responded, yes, I am a nigguh with an attitude. He said he was from New York and Newark and was down with blackness and I was reactionary, I assume, because I didn't sign his petition fast enough. He shouted at me his African names and told me I didn't know nothing about Africa and nothing else. The conversation ended when I told him I was in Africa, right here in the Fillmore. He called me a real nigguh and I concurred.

But back to violence and music. Sun Ra taught me armies march to music, and of course in the African tradition of New Orleans, there are funeral marches with music. We know Jazz or Black Classical music appeals to the mind, in particular, as well as the soul and body. Throughout the day a New Orleans band passed by with that second line joyful music that one is forced to join the line or move the body.

But essentially Jazz/BCM soothes the mind, or in the 60s tradition, challenges the mind with sounds smashing traditional white supremacy music. It can be war music or the music of peace and meditation so much needed today, well, we are war today as well.

Sadly, much of hip hop music negatively affects the central nervous system with robotic nursery rhymes and beats that indeed, put people to "sleep" rather than touch their higher consciousness, especially the genre of reactionary so called gangsta rap, the bitch, ho, motherfucker/fatherfucker variety.

Whereas Jazz/BCM revolutionized the people of the 60s,i.e. Coltrane, Miles, Pharaoh Sanders, Archie Shepp, Milford Graves, Nina Simone, Sun Ra, the reactionary rap music has a history of violence at concerts and in the hood, generally, for such music affects our subconscious mind. Young Negroes move to a beat without any music, programmed like Pavlov's dog, mix in mind altering drugs and you have a volatile potent package of poison ready to kill.

This is why I say we must not only pass the tone test when stopped by the police but with each other, especially when encountering youth. We don't know how many blunts a youth may have smoked before he encountered us. The youth taking signatures told me he might whup my ass, OG. Now you know he had to be loaded because he ain't hardly gonna kick my ass, he may kill me but I ain't hardly taking no ass whuppin from little snotty nose fathterness boys who hate me because I represent their long lost daddy.

As per the festival, yes, the music helped keep the peace. Youth, for the most part, don't relate to the music. But there's another reason for the peace: white people. White people flooded Fillmore Street for the festival as per usual. For that matter, white people have invaded the Fillmore District with gentrification, so no matter how violent youth may be, they ain't messing with no white people, they scared to death of white people, plus they know if they harm them, they can be charged with hate crimes or making terrorist threats. As I noted, they fought each other at Juneteenth in front of the police without arrest.

Music can heal you or kill you. For sure, we need healing music today, music that is therapeutic to mind and community. We need to hear real live positive music throughout the hood. How ironic when I lived in Seattle, Jazz/BCM was played everywhere, even in the elevators at shopping centers, it was Jazz. This is music for higher consciousness and sanity in a world where music is programmed to deconstruct and destroy the mind not construct it.

On the positive, the conscious rappers have indeed aligned themselves with Jazz/BCM, producing music with poet Amiri Baraka and others, performing with Trombone Shorty and other noted Jazz musicians. Once youth detox from destructive sounds, they will do more than sample Jazz, they will love it for it is their heritage, part of their DNA. Jazz/BCM is a thinking man's/woman's music, and the Lord knows we are in the time when hard thinking is needed. Life is a thinking man's/woman's game.

Again, the music can kill us or heal us. Sun Ra worked at my Black Educational Theatre during 1972, composing music for Take Care of Business, the musical version of Flowers for the Trashman. When my driver had a mental breakdown, Sun Ra visited him in the hospital, leaving him several albums. My driver was soon greatly improved and deeply appreciated Sun Ra for visiting him and leaving the albums.
--Marvin X
7/5/11