To join the BAM army for the cultural revolution, email your resume and pic with a one page biography to jmarvinx@yahoo.com. We shall do this BAM fest with or without grant funding. In fact, we should do it in the BAM tradition of DO FOR SELF, i.e., most of the BAM institutions were independent and self reliant, only the more Miller Lite BAM institutions were grant funded. We ain't traveling Miller Lite up in here!--Marvin X
Monday, November 17, 2014
Join the BAM army for the cultural revolution, 2015
We urge you to enlist in the army of the Bay Area-wide Black Arts Movement cultural revolution/celebration, 2015, in honor of Amina and Amiri Baraka. Amiri Baraka was the key mover and shaker of BAM, along with a host of co-workers, including his wife Amina Baraka and Askia Toure, Larry Neal, Sun Ra, Sonia Sanchez, Marvin X, Nikki Giovanni, Haki Madhubuti, Kalamu Ya Salaam, Woody King, Last Poets, Barbara Ann Teer, et al. Although bi-coastal, Marvin X continues to do most of his cultural work in the Bay Area.
To join the BAM army for the cultural revolution, email your resume and pic with a one page biography to jmarvinx@yahoo.com. We shall do this BAM fest with or without grant funding. In fact, we should do it in the BAM tradition of DO FOR SELF, i.e., most of the BAM institutions were independent and self reliant, only the more Miller Lite BAM institutions were grant funded. We ain't traveling Miller Lite up in here!--Marvin X
To join the BAM army for the cultural revolution, email your resume and pic with a one page biography to jmarvinx@yahoo.com. We shall do this BAM fest with or without grant funding. In fact, we should do it in the BAM tradition of DO FOR SELF, i.e., most of the BAM institutions were independent and self reliant, only the more Miller Lite BAM institutions were grant funded. We ain't traveling Miller Lite up in here!--Marvin X
Marvin X calls for Lesbian army to help produce Bay Area Black Arts Festival honoring 50th anniversary of BAM
photo Adam Turner, Black Bird Productions
After an absence of many weeks, Marvin X returned to his Academy of da Corner at 14th and Broadway to encounter numerous young lesbians seeking cultural consciousness and mentoring. Like another dirty old man, Kat Williams, Marvin was overjoyed, "I agree with Kat, too hell with them gays, I love lesbians!" The young lesbians said they will assist Marvin with his latest project, the 50th anniversary of the Black Arts Movement, a Bay Area-wide celebration planned for Oakland, San Francisco, Berkeley, Palo Alto and San Jose. Marvin asked the lesbian ladies to assist with the BAM project after conversing with them and realizing their high level of cultural and spiritual consciousness. This is not a put down of gays because the Black Arts Movement and the arts in general has a great number of same gender loving men. "In my fifty years working in theatre, I have worked with many gays and lesbians. They are some of our greatest writers, actors, directors, choreographers, dancers, etc. The 50th celebration of BAM will need the entire community to get involved, artists, academicians, youth, teachers, preachers, intellectuals and activists. The BAM cultural/spiritual revolution is beyond gender issues. The event is planned for June/July 2015. If you would like to help with this BAM celebration, please contact MarvinX: jmarvinx@yahoo.com. www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com
510-200-4164
Parable of Women Without Men
There was war in the land, for centuries war in the land. The men were bred for labor, sperm donations, and death. The women were booty, the spoils of war. A classical situation, nothing unique, racist, call it the art of war. Men must be destroyed, or humiliated, effeminated, castrated, dehumanized. Where is the movie of David Walker, Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, Toussaint, Bokman?
There is no other way to exercise social control over the population of oppressed people, enslaved peoples, than to desecrate the men and their manhood. There can be no recognition of heroes or sheroes, this would be anathema to the oppressor system of domination. Where is the movie of Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells.
The man in the oppressive society is at best a stunted man, a crippled man, handicapped physically and mentally. He is a warrior but unless he dons the warrior persona, consciously or unconsciously, he cannot assume the title, thus he is a wimp, a punk bitch, a dehumanized human being, a captive in the slave society, no matter how modern the trappings of said society.
Either the former slave exercises self determination and sovereignty, or he/she is a colonized being, a slave or in the modern era a wage slave, but a slave none the less.
He can be afforded the trappings of freedom, the flag, national anthem that he is forced to sing, the election of a president of his own kind (how many presidents of black face do we have in Africa that are actually white men of the most profound kind in their wickedness and debauchery?)
How many African prime ministers, kings, presidents for life do we have who have dungeons full of opposition leaders, writers, poets, journalists?
And so out of this matrix is supposed to arise strong men and boys capable of continuing the tradition of manhood which involves the revolutionary tradition? Meanwhile the purpose of the oppressor society is to dehumanize any semblance of manhood at every turn, to project only the personality of the stunted man, the muzzled dog man, the effete man as the dominate personality.
What woman wants such a man? The woman says, "If I wanted a woman, I do not need a fake woman, I might as well get me a real woman, a woman who knows how to treat me with gentleness, even more so than the gentle man!
The champion of male/female relations, Sharazah Ali says to women, "Be careful when you call for men to be more sensitive, you end up with effeminate personalities that you reject." What does the woman says in T.S. Eliot's poem, "That is not what I meant, that is not what I meant at all...."
And so let us cut to the chase, what are women to do when their men are incarcerated, victims of homicide and/or suicide, depressed, drugged out, bisexual, homosexual, unemployed, etc.?
Nature itself rises to the occasion to answer such questions, such conundrums of life in the hood!
The man cannot sell dope, so the woman sells dope. The man cannot pimp, so the woman pimps. The man cannot carry weapons, so the woman does. The man cannot gansta, so the woman does.
The man cannot care for his family, so his girl's girl assumes the role, dress, gait, voice and language. The woman becomes protector of the woman, since the man is absent, a victim on the battlefield, a causality of life in the hood.
She dons the persona of the man, including pants sagging, swagger in gait, voice, and all manner of the masculine personality. She straps on the plastic or rubber dildo to replace the natural male organ that is absent for innumerable reasons, among them the fact the man is angry, under stress, violent and lacking in tenderness, brutal, while she needs tender loving care in her stress, trying to be mother, and lover to the unlovable male, thus she moves to her sister girl for such tenderness and understanding.
If she is the economic superior, she takes authority as a young lady said, "I leave him with the baby and I bounce. He the baby mama, I'm the baby daddy."
Indeed, we see the men picking up children from childcare. We see the men pushing strollers downtown during work hours, suggesting the male is now the childcare provider while the women is employed. This is all by societal design, of course. Have no illusions why the woman can find employment and the man cannot. The oppressor knows well he can control the woman but he also knows the oppressed male seeks to overthrow him at the earliest possibility, to cut his throat and claim the championship title as the master.
On the educational level matters are devastating. Prison is the institution for educating black males, white the academic prisons educate black women who earn their degrees in higher education but must seek out imprisoned brothers if they are to have a man. After all, black bourgeoisie parents do not send their sons to Harvard, Yale and Stanford to connect with a "black bitch." It was clear to my daughter when she attended Stanford Law School that she and her girls were not to be matched with black males. Black males avoided them like the bubonic plague.
I write as a father with three daughters who graduated college, Yale, Stanford, Howard, Fresno State University, New York University, Albany, so I know the dilemma of black women seeking a husband in academia. One of my daughters said recently 75% of her friends have married or have mates out of the black manhood pool. The Washington Post noted black women have discarded the idea of marriage with anyone.
Imagine the situation at Howard University, Washington, DC, with 14 women for every man, imagine the crisis in male/female relations, no matter how each gender claims they handle the situation. I recently spent a week lecturing on the Mythology of Dick and Pussy at Howard, but I got a clearer understanding of Howard sexuality, from the males and females, and yet what I learned only clarified the tragedy of male/female relations, with Howard as a microcosm. The stats are so outrageous that to consider a functional solution is beyond the Western paradigm.
We now have women with MBAs, PhDs, either giving up on a husband or seeking a husband doing twenty-five to life.
Such is the result of war in the hood. Part of the frustration, anger and rejection of our children who survive the academic world, yet, as Baraka says, "Come home from academia hating us and everything we're about, yet they don't even know what we're about," but the children suspect we have sold them a bogus bill of goods. Many were told to go to college to find a husband, yet there is none.
Dr. Wade Nobles says no matter if our children attend Stanford or San Quentin prison, it is all the same, they are imprisoned, and thus denied their natural right to be with each other, in love and tenderness.
The real question is what does all this forebode for the the future? What shall be the new configuration is gender relations? Surely, not more of the same old bullshit, not after women have enjoyed same gender loving relations, and are economically and psychologically independent.
And yet, how shall they deal with the macho man or the effeminate male or bisexual rejected by the woman seeking a "real man," and yet many matrifocal households can at best produce the effeminate male, possibly the result of bio-chemistry, the petrochemical foods, including hormone produced meats, water tainted with hormones and other bio undegradable chemicals recycled from waste water. We are told the residue from plastics is causing sexual transformations. Surely this all part of the bio-chemical warfare, add in germ warfare with the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
I only know one thing, plastic toys are a sick reasonable facsimile for the real male penis. But it is understandable in war, though the only solution to war is active engagement by males and females, not diversionary tactics that only prolong war. For the day shall surely arrive when the female's biology shall seek the real deal Hollyfield.
The future of the black nation is at hand. Tell me how same gender loving people shall contribute to the this future. They may find themselves just as guilty as the oppressor in the destruction of the black nation. The question is are they pro-life or anti-life?
--Marvin X
6/1/10
Sunday, November 16, 2014
Marvin X poem: Apology to my Higher Self
Marvin X poem: Apology to my Higher Self and Miles Davis - Time After Time (Live 1985)
Apology to My Higher Self
Oh, Higher Self
I apologize to you
Greater Self
Holy Self
Righteous Self
I seek to harm no one
but to glorify You always and forever
Have mercy on me
have mercy on myself
Oh, Higher Self
pleae forgive me for allowing my lower self to rule
Please have mercy on me Higher Self, Divine Self
If I will only flow in the flow of You
pick me up Higher Self
when my lower self comes to call
the whispering devil whispers into the hearts of men
and women and children
to take us all down under
to the thrashing floor
the road where wise men fear to tread
down in the dungeon
rat hole
I become the rat
associating with the rats
dwelling in the dungeon
of my mind
Lift me up Highter Power
let me dwell with You forever
in the Upper Room
surely I know truth from lies
surely I know fire from water
yet I walk into the fire
I am burned again again again
easy to lead in the wrong direction
hard to lead in the right direction,
the Elijah lesson teach us
And why do we love the devil
because he gives us nothing!
Take me Higher Power
into your loving hands
save me from the fire
whose fuel is men and stones,
Qur'an.
let not the weakness of my lower self
ontrol me
let me cast away illusions
a donkey is not a stalion
Oh Higher Power
catch me if I fall
take me forward faster
time after time
time after time.
--Marvin X
9/28/14
Bob Holman says Marvin X is the USA's Rumi. The humor of Pietri,
politics of Baraka, the wisdom of Saadi, the ecstasy of Hafiz.....
Ishmael Reed says Marvin X is Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland. His play One Day in the Life is the most powerful drama I've seen.
Ishmael Reed says Marvin X is Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland. His play One Day in the Life is the most powerful drama I've seen.
Dr. Nathan Hare says Marvin X is still the undisputed champion of Black Consciousness.
On Monday, September 1, Marvin X will receive the Elders Award from the Pan African festival, at Oakland's Mosswood Park.
On Septemer 13, he will receive the Humanitarian of the Year Award from the Los Angeles Black Books Expo.
Earlier this year, Feb/March, 2014, Marvin X (with Kim McMillan) produced a conference on the Black Arts Movement at the University of California, Merced. He is now planning a Bay Area Celebration of the Black Arts Movement, tentatively for February 2015. Paul Cobb, Publisher of the Post Newspaper Group is a co-planner, along with Eastside Arts and the City of Oakland. Stanford University African American Studies and Laney College want to be sponsors also. We have the support of Dr. Ayodele Nizinga's Lower Bottom Players, Geoffery Grier's San Francisco Recovery Theatre. If you or your organization would like to participate on any level, especially as possible funders, sponsors, participants. Contact Marvin X: 510-2004154
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