The poet pulled together members of Sun Ra's band, Marshall Allen--the world's greatest alto sax, Danny Thompson and Noel, also bagpipe master Rufas Harley, drummer Alexander El, jembe master Ancestor Goldsky (former drummer with Patti Labell) and keyboard master Elliott Bey, music director and cofounder of Recovery Theatre East. The poet opened with a monologue to Philadelphia Negroes, accompanied by the healing sounds of Elliott Bey on synthesizer. With the full band, the poet read FOR THE WOMEN; the band went crazy on NIGGUHS ARE CRAZY. In the best tradition of Sun Ra, his men went throughout the house, wailing and screaming--the audience appeared to have lockjaw. Rufas Harley introduced PALESTINE with bagpipes. Marshall Allen gave a screaming intro to BLACK HISTORY IS WORLD HISTORY, then the band joined for a musical tour of the world as the poet read his classic.
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The set ended with THE PARABLE OF BLACK MAN AND BLOCK MAN. I failed to mention the Danny Thompson (flute) Rufus Harley duet--historic. If you can't make the next appearance of Marvin X and the Crazy House Band tentatively scheduled for San Francisco's Loraine Hansberry Theatre in January, send for the CD/ VHS and/or DVD to BLACK BIRD PRESS, 3116 38th Ave., Suite 304, Oakland, CA 94619. Send $19.95, plus $5.00 for priority mail. Credit card holders go to www.paypal.com, credit xblackxmanx@aol.com. The poet is now in the dirty south at the Penn Center Heritage festival on St. Helena island, South Carolina. His book tour ends next week at the University of Houston and at citywide rally for reparations. There will also be a Houston screening of his videodrama ONE DAY IN THE LIFE at the National Black United Front headquarters, 2428 Southmore St., Houston.
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Human Earthquake Hits Houston, TX
Dr. Conyers, chair of African American Studies at the University of Houston, said when he drove Marvin X to campus to speak, the poet was quiet, almost silent, but once he stepped to the lectern, "All hell broke loose. The guy went mad." After reading and speaking with students in a seminar, the poet was asked by the chair if he wanted to return to teaching, since he clearly loves the classroom. Marvin X said he would consider a visiting professorship, but quit teaching twenty years ago. "I've been escorted off campus more than once--been escorted out of countries for that matter."
The poet was also asked to establish Recovery Theatre South by his Houston host, brother Omawali of the National Black United Front. On Friday, NBUF screened Marvin X's video THE KINGS AND QUEENS OF BLACK CONSCIOUSNESS, which features Amiri and Amina Baraka, Dr. Julia Hare, Dr. Cornel West, Phavia Kujichagulia, Destiny, Tarika Lewis, Elliott Bey, Kalamu Ya Salaam, Ishmael Reed,
Askia Toure, Rudi Wongozi, Rev. Cecil Williams, Marvin X and others. The poet read and answered questions for nearly two hours on every topic under the sun: the black arts movement, role and mission of youth in today's struggle, lack of unity, lack of reconciliation among 60s progressives and its effect on youth of today; will there be revolution without family unity; conflict between Panthers and other groups and within the Panthers, e.g. the conflict between Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver; between US and the Panthers. The poet said the rappers of today are our children, their behavior a direct reflection of our behavior during the 60s, 70s and 80s. They have our toxic waste.
He said the hip hop poetry readings are therapeutic for youth--peer counseling and a good thing but they must move to a revolutionary consciousness, get beyond the personal, although it is good to hear youth try to heal some of their wounds since many are without fathers and mothers--although they must come to terms with the fathers and mothers who abandoned them before any healing will take place. His daughter Nefertiti agreed with her dad that revolution must include caring for the family, the first unit of the community, although this reality was often forgotten during the 60s. We thought the family could be neglected for the abstraction called freedom.
We were dead wrong. We had it twisted.
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The poet will speak again on Saturday, November 16, 4pm at the Citywide Reparations Forum, Mt. Ararat Baptist Church, 5801 W. Montgomery St., Houston. Before leaving Houston, the poet will go into the recording studio of his son-in-law, Attorney Eric Rhodes, mixing his CD: MARVIN X LIVE IN PHILADELPHIA WITH ELLIOTT BEY AND THE CRAZY HOUSE BAND, FEATURING MARSHALL ALLEN, DANNY THOMPSON AND NOEL OF SUN RA's ARKESTRA, RUFAS HARLEY and others.
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MARVIN X CALLS FOR A GENERAL STRIKE
On Saturday at Houston's Mt. Ararat Baptist Church, the National Black United Front hosted a forum on reparations. Keynote speaker was Att. Deadra Pellman who filed a lawsuit against corporations who benefited from slavery, including insurance companies. Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee presented a paper entitled "Making the Case for Slavery Reparations." Also on the panel was a sister who is a direct descendent of slaves and she told an eloquent story of her genealogy. In attendance were Mrs. and Mr. Omari Obadele, legends of the reparations movement and founders of N'Cobra, the organization that has spearheaded the call for reparations. The Nation of Islam was present, along with the New Black Panther Party of Houston.
Marvin X called for a general strike to go along with litigation and legislation--mass action to keep the pressure on the American people until we achieve self-determination and sovereignty. He said we should demand reparations for our ancestors if no one else. The poet described his train ride from South Carolina to Houston: as he looked out at the trees, the woods, the swamps, the marsh, the rivers, he thought about the many thousands gone, bones buried deep in the clay, in the creeks. He thought about the slaves who tried to escape but failed and the ones who did make it to freedom. For all these people, we must fight for reparations, and as Brother Kofi of NBUF noted, we must fight for compensation for the vestiges of slavery: our deplorable mental and physical health, our poor housing and now gentrification, lack of economic parity and educational opportunities. On another level, Marvin X noted that we are the 16th richest nation in the world (GNP), so even without reparations we have enough money to come up, if we use it wisely. We must take authority over our economic resources. The forum ended with Marvin X reading his poem "When I'll Wave The Flag."
Later that evening, the poet's daughter, Nefertiti, hosted a book party for her father, but because of the ENRON disaster many of the lawyers and MBAs present were unemployed and unable to purchase his book of essays, but they listened attentively as he read.
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Marvin X Speaks to the Gullah Nation
Last evening, poet Marvin X arrived late for Brother Jabari's radio show in Gullah country, Beaufort, South Carolina. When he finally arrived at the station, he told Gullahland listeners he was late as a result of being caught up in "negrocities," borrowing a term from Amiri Baraka who is writing a book about NEGROCITIES. During the course of the interview Marvin defined the term as an ailment caused by an inflamation of the Negroid gland at the base of the brain.
Brother Jabari, publisher of the Gullah Sentinel, questioned Marvin X page by page about his book IN THE CRAZY HOUSE CALLED AMERICA, starting with the suicide of his son on March 18 of this year. The poet said his pain was cushioned by the fact that so many of his friends have lost sons and daughters to homicide. Dr. Nathan Hare has written that homicide and suicide are two sides of the same coin. Marvin's son suffered mani-depression which the late revolutionary Dr. Franz Fanon called a "situational disorder" caused by oppression." Of course, Dr. Fanon, author of the classic WRETCHED OF THE EARTH, said finally that revolution was the solution to the mental health problems of the oppressed.
When Jabari turned to Marvin's essay THE INSANITY OF SEX, the poet read the first paragraph of the essay but refused to go further on the Christian owned radio station, although he noted that while sitting in the shade of a tree during the Gullah Nation's Heritage Festival on St. Helena island, he was soon joined by a group of church women who--after X showed them his book, immediately turned to THE INSANITY OF SEX and agreed with his opening paragraph one hundred per cent. Jabari, one of the sole lights in the Gullahland house of darkness, asked X about the culture of the crack house.
The poet said "The crack house is like a third world country: there is no electricity, no running water, no bathroom, no toilet paper, no food, no love. It is the worse thing since slavery." He then had the engineer play track ten of his CD version of ONE DAY IN THE LIFE, the drama of his addiction and recovery. In this "Preacher Scene" the minister describes the horrors of crack culture, ending with the lines, "Crack is worse than slavery. Didn't the slave love his Moma? His God? His Woman? His Children? Not the crack slave, the crack slave is a dirty, nasty, funky slave...."
X then said, "I want to say this to the Christian community: see, I lived in Reno, Nevada while teaching at the University of Nevada and the preacher in Reno never said anything against gambling and prostitution--which are legal. Now, members of the audience who have watched my play wanted to know why the pastors in the community never preach a sermon like the preacher in my play. On more than one occasion, a member of the audience stood to testify that many preachers cannot give a similar sermon because the church is compromised due to the fact that mothers in the church have sons and daughters who are contributing money from the drug trade to the church and if the preacher said anything he wouldn't have a congregation in many urban centers. And maybe in rural centers as well."
Marvin X was asked about education. He said Johnny and Johnnymae can sell dope, weigh dope, package dope, count dope money, but the teachers tell us Johnny and Johnnymae can't do math, can't read, can't do chemistry. This is a lie and the fact that youth remember hours of rap songs word for word is a testament to their intelligence. Marvin X spent his final day in Gullah land swimming in the Atlantic ocean off the coast of St. Helena Island. He listened to the pain of a mentally disabled Gullah woman who was camping near the ocean and was a friend of his host, Sister Hurriyah Amanuel, a landowner in Gullah country who is one of the Queens of the Black Arts Movement, having been a key player at Black Arts West Theatre in San Francisco and at the Black House/Political/Cultural Center, visited by the likes of Amiri and Amina Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Bunchy Carter, Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Lil Bobby Hutton, Eldridge Cleaver, Askia Muhammad Toure, Sarah Webster Fabio, Chicago Art Ensemble, and others.
When black clouds appeared, Marvin X knew the hour had arrived for him to depart Gullah country. After all, he had enjoyed the people, the land, the sea, the creeks, the chickens, geese, goats, calves, and dogs. Being a country boy from central calif, he talked to the animals and they to him. But he leaves Gullahland with a heavy heart, for if the ancestors have given the descendents of slavery any part of America, it is this beautiful land, these islands in the sun.
And he has vowed to return to this heaven on earth. Sister Hurriyah was the glue of the West coast black arts movement. And in the new epoch, she is showing the way to heaven on earth. If ever a man shall follow a woman, it is now, for she has created heaven on earth. --Marvin X, November 12, 2002, Beaufort, South Carolina.
Monday night. The event was a recording session for a CD and DVD to go along with X's book IN THE CRAZY HOUSE CALLED AMERICA.
The poet pulled together members of Sun Ra's band, Marshall Allen--the world's greatest alto sax, Danny Thompson and Noel, also bagpipe master Rufas Harley, drummer Alexander El, jembe master Ancestor Goldsky (former drummer with Patti Labell) and keyboard master Elliott Bey, music director and cofounder of Recovery Theatre East. The poet opened with a monologue to Philadelphia Negroes, accompanied by the healing sounds of Elliott Bey on synthesizer. With the full band, the poet read FOR THE WOMEN; the band went crazy on NIGGUHS ARE CRAZY. In the best tradition of Sun Ra, his men went throughout the house, wailing and screaming--the audience appeared to have lockjaw. Rufas Harley introduced PALESTINE with bagpipes. Marshall Allen gave a screaming intro to BLACK HISTORY IS WORLD HISTORY, then the band joined for a musical tour of the world as the poet read his classic.
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