Notes of Artistic Freedom Fighter Marvin X: How to transcend the low information vibration

MLK, Jr. and MX

"You can be a Christian nigga, Muslim nigga, Communist nigga, Capitalist nigga, Democrat nigga, Republican nigga, Gay/Lesbian nigga, but you still a nigga in America. When WEB DuBois spoke in China's Tienanmen Square, after being introduced to a million people by Chairman Mao, our greatest intellectual ever produced in the hells of North America, WEB DuBois, said, "Thank you for your kind remarks, Chairman Mao, but in my country, America, I am just a nigga!' "

--Marvin X

February 21, 1965

Assassination of Malcolm X, El Hajji Malik El Shabazz. Since then has anyone done anything Malcolm said we should do? Alas, is anyone doing the things the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said do, e.g., do for self? What about the teachings of Marcus Garvey or Noble Drew Ali, or Booker T. Washington? Jesus, Prophet Muhammad? For the most part, most of us have no intention to do anything anyone said. Elijah said we are hard to lead in the right direction, easy to lead in the wrong direction. And why do we love the devil? Because he gives us nothing!

Black Arts Movement co-founders poet/playwright Marvin X and father of Afro-futurism Sun Ra, the mystical man from Egypt and  another planet, outside X's Black Educational Theatre in the Fillmore, San Francisco, 1972. Both men taught Black Studies at University of California, Berkeley, 1972. Sun Ra and his Myth-Science Arkestra arranged the musical version of X's BAM classic Flowers for the Trashman, renamed Take Care of Business, performed with a cast of 50 at San Francisco's Harding Theatre, a five hour concert without intermission.  Cast included the Ra Arkestra, X's cast, plus the Raymond  Sawyer and Ellendar Barnes dancers. The audio version of Sun Ra's UCB lectures are on Youtube. Marvin X's archives are in the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley. 

Let us recall the dialogue Sun Ra had with a Negro in Ra's classic film Space is the Place (shot in Oakland):

Sun Ra 

What ya doin?

Negro

Ain't doin nothin.

Sun Ra

Wanna job?

Negro

Doin what?

Sun Ra

Doin nothin!

Negro

Well, how much ya gonna pay me?

Sun Ra

Ain't gonna pay ya nothin!

These days you can't pay a nigga to do nothin or somethin! Ya didn't hear me. I repeat, you can't pay a nigga to do nothing or somethin. More importantly, whatever the nigga do, he ain't gonna do it right! Yes, he won't do wrong right or right right! For example, my daughter bought a taco truck but couldn't hire her own kind, they wanted to tell her how to run her business. She had to fire them.

She hired a Mexican who didn't like working for a nigga. She hired a white man who didn't like working for a nigga. She closed her business. Yet, I'm so proud of my daughter. She called me to go with her to buy the truck but I was in a meeting so she went to East Oakland by herself  and paid $20,000.00 cash for the truck! 

But there's light at the end of the tunnel and it ain't the train comin at ya. We are so deep in the low information vibration, even a fantasy film such as Black Panther may be the spark the ignites the prairie fire of Black African consciousness in the present era.

As some of you know, I have called for the necessity of reversing the "breaking in" process that psycho-socialized and traumatized us and  transformed our African identities  from Kunta to Toby.

If Black Panther has any possibility of rekindling  our African personalities so long dormant in the deep structure of our low information vibration Negroid minds, steeped in "Negrocities" (AB term he wanted you to know, not a MX term) but now allowing us to acknowledge African mythology and rituals in our lives, then there is the most wonderful possibility that Toby may indeed one day  reclaim his true royal identity as Kunta, and most especially devoid of that royal corruption of kings and queens who, along with the Europeans, benefited from the triangular trade and the surplus capital Africans and Europeans accumulated from 400 years of slavery. See Dr. Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, also his classic monograph West Africa and the Atlantic Slaver Trade. 

My recently departed patron, Abdul Leroy James, used to said, "The Negro ain't never done nothing right in his life!" No matter what intellectuals thought about Roots and no matter what they think about Black Panther, if this film can make the so-called Negro or Toby reclaim his long suppressed African consciousness and move toward the Kunta man and Kunta woman, then let us thank the filmmakers. 

We imagined a most violent process to return Toby to Kunta, after all, the historical reality is that Toby was beaten with a black bullwhip to transform his personality. And there are societal forces ready to force him to continue his persona as Toby and never return  to Kunta, to traumatize Toby for eternity,  although we suspect the oppressor's plan will fail and Toby will resist and persist until he recovers his mental equilibrium that Dr. Frantz Fanon and Dr. Nathan Hare teach us about, although this process can only be achieved through the process of revolution. Ultimately, a movie won't accomplish the revolutionary process, only on the ground seizure of land and political institutions. 

Again, a single spark can ignite a prairie fire. Here in the Bay Area during the fire storm in the hills, embers traveled down to the hood and set houses on fire. So a little ember, a fantasy film has the possibility of being the catalyst to help us begin again that Sisyphusian

journey up the mountain to reach the mountain top Dr. King told us about. And perhaps for once and maybe for all times, we shall begin to follow the wisdom of our ancestors such as David Walker, Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, Booker T., WEB DuBois, Noble Drew Ali, Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X. 

--Marvin X/El Muhajir

2/21/18

Oaktown

City of Resistance