Dewey Redman and Black Arts West Theatre

We remember Dewey Redman at the Black Arts West Theatre playwright Ed Bullins and I founded at Turk and Fillmore, San Francisco, 1966, along with Ethna Wyatt, Karl Bossiere, Duncan Barber and Hillery Broadous. Into our theatre came a plethora of jazz musicians to accompany our plays, including Dewey Redman, Monte Waters, Donald Rafael Garrett, Earl Davis, BJ, Paul Smith, et al. They took authority of the music department by telling us to go ahead and do our thing, they would accompany us by coming on stage and accenting our words, or going out into the audience or even out the door to address the Fillmore Street crowds, including the bumper to bumper cars passing along Fillmore.

Dewey and bassist Donald Garrett were probably the most free in teaching us what would become known as Ritual Theatre, that smashing of the wall between stage and audience, merging them into the oneness so well known in the Christian ritual. The difference between the church ritual and the Black Arts ritual was that we came to smash tradition, not enforce it. Of course, we must know tradition before we can smash it. So Dewey, Donald and the rest taught us tradition then how to transcend it.

They forced us to abandon our concept of European theatre, dragging us, sometimes screaming and hollering, back and forward to our African dramatic tradition, freeing us once and forever.

Of course, the ultimate transformer of our dramatic consciousness was Sun Ra, the Grand Master of African theatre. Sun Ra taught the necessity of African mythology as the basis of ritual expression, and with his Arkestra demostrated the unity of music, dance, poetry and mixed media.
--Marvin X
Black Arts West Theatre, 2011

Marvin X's forthcoming drama is Mythology of Love, a womanhood/manhood poetic rites of passage, featuring Ptah Mitchell as Eternal Man and Aries Jordan as Eternal Woman.



Dewey Redman, A Biography



Dewey Redman (born Walter Dewey Redman in Fort Worth, Texas, May 17, 1931; d. Brooklyn, New York September 2, 2006) was an American jazz saxophonist, known for performing free jazz as a bandleader, and with Ornette Coleman and Keith Jarrett.

Redman played mainly tenor saxophone, though he occasionally doubled on alto saxophone, played the Chinese suona (which he called a musette) and on rare occasions played the clarinet.

His son is saxophonist Joshua Redman.

After high school, Redman briefly enrolled in the electrical engineering program at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, but became disillusioned with the program and returned home to Texas. In 1953, Redman earned a Bachelors Degree in Industrial Arts from Prairie View Agricultural and Mechanical University. While at Prairie View, he switched from clarinet to alto saxophone, then, eventually, to tenor. Following his bachelor's degree, Redman served two-years in the US Army.

Upon his discharge from the Army, Redman began working on a master’s degree in education at the University of North Texas. While working on his degree, he taught music to fifth graders in Bastrop, Texas, and worked as a freelance saxophonist on nights and weekends around Austin, Texas. In 1957, Redman earned a Masters Degree in Education with a minor in Industrial Arts from the University of North Texas. While at North Texas, he did not enroll in any music classes.

Towards the end of 1959, Redman moved to San Francisco, a musical choice resulting in an early collaboration with Donald Rafael Garrett.

Redman was best known for his collaborations with saxophonist Ornette Coleman, with whom he performed in his Fort Worth high school marching band. He later performed with Coleman from 1968 to 1972, appearing on the recording New York Is Now, among others. He also played in pianist Keith Jarrett's American Quartet (1971-1976), and was a member of the collective Old And New Dreams. The American Quartet's The Survivor's Suite was voted Jazz Album of the Year by Melody Maker in 1978.

He also performed and recorded as an accompanying musician with jazz musicians who performed in varying styles within the post-1950s jazz idiom, including bassist and fellow Coleman-alum Charlie Haden and guitarist Pat Metheny.

With a dozen recordings under his own name Redman established himself as one of the more prolific tenor players of his generation. Though generally associated with free jazz (with an unusual, distinctive technique of sometimes humming into his saxophone as he played), Redman's melodic tenor playing was often reminiscent of the blues and post-bop mainstream. Redman's live shows were as likely to feature standards and ballads as the more atonal improvisations for which he was known.

Redman was the subject of an award-winning documentary film Dewey Time (dir. Daniel Berman, 2001).

On February 19 and 21, 2004, Redman played tenor saxophone as a special guest with Jazz at Lincoln Center, in a concert entitled "The Music of Ornette Coleman."
Redman died of liver failure in Brooklyn, New York on September 2, 2006. He is survived by his wife, Lidija Pedevska-Redman, as well as sons Tarik, and Joshua Redman also a jazz saxophonist. The father and son recorded two albums together.

Marvin X and Tamika at Fillmore Jazz Festival

Marvin X and Tamika at Fillmore Jazz Festival, San Francisco

Marvin hawks 45th anniversary edition of the Black Panther Newspaper. Catch him at the Bay Area Muslim Unity and Reunion Celebration (1950-2011), Defermery Park, aka Bobby Hutton Park, Saturday, July 16, 11-5pm.

He will also be at the Celebration for Black Panther Geronimo Ji-Jaga, Sunday, July 17,Defermery Park, 2-7pm. Location is 18th and Adeline, West Oakland.

photo Gary Jamerson

Photo Essay:: Danny Glover and Marvin X at SF Anti-War Rally, 2003, photos by Kamau Amen Ra

From the Marvin X Archives: Photo Essay by Kamau Amen Ra of Danny Glover and Marvin X at San Francisco Anti-war Rally, 2003.

Danny and Marvin were students at San Francisco State University during the 60s. Danny later performed at Marvin X's Black Arts West Theatre in the Fillmore, 1966.

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

What is African American Studies?

From: yusufnuruddin@yahoo.com

Available Now
For price info and copies please contact
zendive@aol.com

Special Issue of the journal Socialism and Democracy:

What Is African American Studies,Its Focus, and Future?

Edited by John H.
McClendon III and Yusuf Nuruddin


Preface

Introduction by John H. McClendon III

Articles

John H.
Bracey, Jr., Black Studies in the Age of Obama
De Anna Reese and Malik Simba,Historiography against History: The
Propaganda of History and the Struggle for the Hearts and Minds of Black Folk
Stephen Ferguson, The Utopian Worldview of Afrocentricity: Critical
Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy
John
H. McClendon III,Materialist
Philosophical Inquiry and African American Studies

Yusuf Nuruddin, Africana
Studies: Which Way Forward – Marxism or Afrocentricity? Neither Mechanical
Marxism nor Atavistic Afrocentrism
Reiland
Rabaka, Revolutionary Fanonism: On Frantz Fanon’s Modification
of Marxism and Decolonization of Democratic Socialism

Rose M. Brewer,
Black Women’s Studies: From Theory to Transformative Practice
Rod Bush, Africana Studies and the Decolonization of the
U.S. Empire in the 21st Century
Greg Carr,What Black
Studies Is Not: Moving from Crisis to Liberation in Africana Intellectual Work
Anthony
Monteiro, The Epistemic Crisis of African American Studies: A Du
Boisian Resolution
Carter Wilson, The Dominant Class and the Construction of Racial
Oppression: A Neo-Marxist/Gramscian Approach to Race in the United States
Charles
Pinderhughes, Toward a New Theory of Internal Colonialism


Review Essays

Robeson Taj P. Frazier, Afro-Asia
and Cold War Black Radicalism

Charles L. Lumpkins,Rediscovering Hubert
Harrison: Revolutionary Socialism and Anti-White Supremacy for 21st-Century
Americans

Gerald Meyer, James
Baldwin’s Harlem: The Key to His Politics

Book
Reviews

Michelle
Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass
Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
reviewed by Lenore Daniels

Safiya Bukhari, THE WAR
BEFORE: The True Life Story of Becoming a Black Panther, Keeping the Faith in
Prison, and Fighting for Those Left
Behind
reviewed by
David Gilbert

Yale University Black Collection Online

Yale University Places its Huge Cultural Collections Online: Thousands of Items Relating to African Americans Are IncludedYale University is making its vast art and cultural holdings available to the public over the Internet. Digital images of more than 259,000 items are now available online. In the future, millions of digital versions of items from the university’s museums, libraries, and archives will be accessible. The Peabody Museum of Natural History alone has more than 12 million items in its collection.

The online collections are fully searchable with a collective catalog. A search for “African American” turns up more than 2,700 items. A search for “black Americans” produced nearly 15,000 results.

Marvin X's Daughter Muhammida and Last Poet Omar Ben Hasan

Marvin X's Daughter Muhammida and Last Poet Omar Ben Hasan


Muhammida El Muhajir is the middle child of Marvin X's three daughters. Of his two sons, Abdul transitioned at 39 and Marvin K is estranged. Muhammida El Muhajir grew up in Philadelphia. Her mother, Nisa Ra, was a student of Marvin X's when he taught at the University of California, Berkeley. She danced in his myth-ritual drama Resurrection of the

Dead, performed at his Black Educational Theatre in San Francisco's Fillmore, 1972.


Nisa Ra of Philadelphia, Mother of Muhammida

Muhammida graduated from Howard University in Microbiology, but turned to the arts. Her film HIP HOP the New World Order has been screened internationally and was taught in a class at Harvard University on Hip Hop. After traveling with her daughter to Europe, her mother exclaimed, "My daughter is as well known on the streets of Paris and London as she is in Harlem and Brooklyn."

To make her film on hip hop, she traveled to Japan, Cuba, Brazil, South Africa, England, France, Germany and Denmark with her own money, alone with her camera.

For a time she was a music marketing manager at NIKE, serving as liaison to musicians and rap artists. As event planner, she organized a VIP party for the NBA All Stars at San Francisco's NIKETOWN, producing a party on all seven floors.

She wrote a film script but after her father's critique, she came full strenght, shocking her father with her bluntness and skills with the linquistics of the hood.






Muhammida and daughter,


Mahadevi.


photo Sam Anderson









Check out her web:

http://www.suninleo.com/