Coming soon: A video/audio documentary: The Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience

 

The Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience

A Video/audio documentary based on the archives

of Marvin X

The Life and Times of a North American African

Poet/Playwright/Activist/Educator/Producer/Publisher/Editor/Philosopher

 

“Most of all, I’m a thinker. I’m thinking 24/7. Even when I’m making love, I’m thinking about a poem, or about how nice it would be if there was another beautiful woman beside me (Divine Discontent or the addictive personality?). Sometimes I think it is one of my multiple personalities who desires that other woman, not me. For sure, that other guy ain’t gonna be satisfied until the other woman appears!” LOL

--Marvin X

 

Brief Bio

Born May 29, 1944, Fowler, CA

Parents: Marian Murrill Jackmon and Owendell Jackmon I

Maternal grandparents: John and Eva Murrill, Fowler CA

Maternal great grandfather: Ephraim Murrill, his death at 99 was noted in the Fresno Bee Newspaper, 1941, “....he was respected by both whites and blacks….”

Upon Marvin X’s birth, his parents were publishing the Fresno Voice, a black newspaper in the Central Valley. They also sold real estate. Because of redlining, his parents sold many blacks their first homes, including Odel Johnson, Emeritus President of Laney College, Oakland. When his parents separated while living in Oakland, his mother returned to Fresno to become one of the first black female real estate brokers and the model for black business women.

As a disciple of Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science, Marian Murrill Jackmon used her real estate business to counsel blacks on their multiple issues. Clearly, she passed her spiritual baton to her “star child” who cannot escape writing in the didactic mode, no matter prose, poetry, drama. Of course this is the African style as well. Lately Marvin X uses parables and fables to instruct. You shall see his use of didacticism throughout this documentary. Alas, he is a teacher above all else, although academia did not appeal to him. He briefly taught at San Francisco State College/University, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, Fresno State University, Mills College, Merritt, Laney, University of Nevada, Reno, and elsewhere. He still lectures coast to coast at colleges and universities.

But he is most comfortable at his Academy of Da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland or Lakeshore Ave.

 

 

 Co-Founder of the Black Students Union, San Francisco State University, 1964

Co-Founder of Black Arts West Theatre, San Francisco, 1966

Co-Founder of the Black House, San Francisco, 1967

Co-Founder of the National Black Arts Movement, 1960s

Founder of Black Educational Theatre, San Francisco, 1972

Co-Founder of the Black Men's Conference, Oakland CA, 1981

Founder of Recovery Theatre, San Francisco, 1996

Co-Founder of the Black Arts Movement Business District, Oakland CA, 2016

 

Marvin X's archives were acquired by the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, also by Dr. Ellen McLarney, Chair,  Islamic Studies Department, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. See her chapter on Marvin X in her forthcoming book on Black Arts Movement writers inspired by Islam. On Marvin X as the father of the genre known as Muslim American literature, see Dr. Mohja Khaf, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. 

 

Comments

 

"When you listen to Tupac Shakur, E-40, Too Short, Master P or any other rappers out of the Bay Area of Cali, think of Marvin X. He laid the foundation and gave us the language to express Black male urban experiences in a lyrical way."

--James G. Spady, RIP

 

"The USA'S Rumi, Saadi, Hafiz!"

--Bob Holman

 

"His writing is orgasmic! ...He reaches in and pulls from a life lived hard, deep, wide, high, low, i.e., a sacrifice in blood. At the root of sacrifice is sacred, which is of God and for God. He has lived and examined the lives of the proverbial 10,000 black men and women. His writings give us the truth of that experience, lived and examined."

--Fahizah Alim

 

"He's Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland!"

--Ishmael Reed

 

"He's the African Socrates teaching in the hood!

--Dr. Cornel West

 

"Marvin X has always been in the forefront of Pan African writing. Indeed, he is one of the founders and innovators of the Revolutionary School of African writing."

--Amiri Baraka, RIP

"The starting point for Muslim American literature is Marvin X!"

--Dr. Mohja Kahf, Professor of English and Islamic Studies, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

 

"...Highly informed, he speaks to many societal levels and to both genders—to the intellectual as well as to the man/woman on the street or the unfortunate in prison—to the mind as well as the heart. His topics range from global politics and economics to those between men and women in their household. Common sense dominates his thought. He shuns political correctness for the truth of life. He is a Master Teacher in many fields of thought—religion and psychology, sociology and anthropology, history and politics, literature and the humanities. He is a needed Counselor, for he knows himself, on the deepest of personal levels and he reveals that self to us, that we might be his beneficiaries.

--Rudolph Lewis, Editor, ChickenBones: A Journal

 

 

 

The Wild Crazy Ride of the Marvin X Experience

Written and directed by Marvin X

 

Executive Editor Ken Johnson

 

Academy of Da Corner Production

from the archives of Marvin X, aka El Muhahjir

 

 

 

Featuring

 

Dr. Cornel West

Amiri Baraka

Sonia Sanchez

Fillmore Slim

Dr. Nathan Hare

Rev. Cecil Williams

Mayor Willie Brown, San Francisco

Mayor Libby Schaaf, Oakland

Muhammida El Muhajir

Amira Jackmon

Nefertitti Jackmon

James Rhodes

Tacuma King

Phavia Kujichagulia

Kumasi

Umar Ben Hasan

Geoffery Grier

Dr. Ayodele Nzinga

Rudi Mwongozi

Destiny Muhammad

Raynetta Rayzetta

Mechelle LaChaux

Kele Nitoto

Suzzette Celeste

Dr. Julia Hare

Ishmael Reed

Tarika Lewis

Bobby Seale

Elaine Brown

Pam Pam

Doris Knight

Hunia Bradley

James Sweeney

Cat Brooks

Mrs. Amina Baraka

Nisa Ra

Val Serrant

Zaid Mwongozi

Sam Anderson

Donald Lacy

Davey D

Mutima Imani

Rev. Andriette Earl

David Murray

Earle Davis

Akbar Muhammad

Abdullah Muhammad

 

 

 

Tentative Segments, 60 minutes each

Narrator Marvin X

1 Intro by Marvin X

2 Conversations with Dr Cornel West, Parts I and II

3 In the Crazy House Called America Concert, African American Cultural Center, San Francisco, cerca 2002

4. Interviewed by Pam Pam, KPOO Radio, San Francisco, audio

5. Conversation with  Black Panther Party Co-founder Bobby Seale

6The Black Arts Movement: Conversation with the Last Poet, Umar Ben Hasan

7Black August  and the American Prison Movement, Marvin X interviews Black August Griot, Kumasi

8Introduction and Conversation with Amiri Baraka At Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2009, Audio

9Audio Interview with Donald Lacy on the 50th Anniversary of the Black Panther Party

10Marvin X performance at Yoshi's SF, opens for Amiri Baraka and Roscoe Mitchell of the Chicago Art Ensemble

11Forum on Drugs, Art and Revolution, Sista's Place, Brooklyn NY, participants: Sam Anderson, Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, Amina Baraka, Elombe Brathe, Marvin X

13 Talk at Black Caucus of California Community Colleges

14 Reading at UC Berkeley with Amiri Baraka

15Marvin X in Concert at Black Repertory Group Theater

16 Kings and Queens of Black Consciousness, SF State University, April 1, 2001

17 Marvin X at SF Juneteenth

18Marvin X, producer of BAM 50th Anniversary, Laney College, Peralta College Television 

19Marvin X at Sun Ra Conference, Symposium on Afro-futurism, University of Chicago

20Marvin X in Concert at Warm Daddy's, Philly, accompanied by Marshall Allen, Danny Thompson, Noel,members of Sun Ra Arkestra; Elliott Bey, Alexander El, Ancestor Goldsky, Rufus Harley on Bagpipes

21Marvin X In Concert with Amiri Baraka, Black Repertory Group Theater, Berkeley

22Amiri Baraka 75th birthday party, Yoshi's SF

23 Marvin X reads Amiri Baraka's Dope at Malcolm X Jazz festival Oakland, accompanied by

David Murray, Earle Davis and the BAM Poets Choir and Arkestra

24 Tenderloin Black Radical Book Fair, 2004

25SF Theater Festival

26Memorial for Jayne Cortez and Amiri Baraka, New York University

27Docudrama One Day in the Life, Banam Place Theatre, North Beach, SF

28Talk at Berkeley City College

29Interview by Junious Ricardo Stanton, Philly Locks Conference

30Interview and Reading at WBAI, NYC, National Poetry Month

31 Reading Nigga Wanna Pimp on Wall Street

 

32. December 12 Movement Press Conference at NY City Hall

33. Reading at UMASS Cultural Center

34 Marvin X reads his short film script Driving Miss Libby (Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf), video

35. Marvin X and Dr. Ayodele read X's fictional interview with President Obama, audio

 

 

Photographers, Videographers

Ken Johnson

Khalid Waajid

William Hammons

Kamau Amen-Ra, RIP

Adam Turner

Gene Hazzard

Peralta Television

Berkeley City College

Greg Fields

Amadi Ajamu

Travion Cotton

Leon Teasley

 

Sponsors of past Marvin X projects

Mayor Willie Brown’s Office

Zellerbach Family Fund

SF Arts Commission

Marin County Board of Supervisors

Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission

Columbia University

National  Endowment for the Arts

National Endowment for the Humanities

California Endowment

Cooperative Center Federal Credit Union

Black Arts Movement Business District, CDC

Akonadi Foundation

WBAI Pacifica Radio, NYC

Hard knock Radio, KPFA Radio, Berkeley

Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s Office

 

If you would like to be a sponsor of this documentary,

call Marvin X: 510-575-7148

Your sponsorship can be tax deductible. Here is a final

comment from our recently departed ancestor, James

W. Sweeney: "Courageous and outrageous, Marvin X

walked through the muck and mire of hell and came

out clean as white fish and black as coal! He is the

freest Black man in non-free America!"

--James W. Sweeney, RIP

 

(c) Marvin X 2020

All Rights Reserved

 

Contact: mxjackmon@gmail.com

 

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