Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Cc: WE DEMAND REPARATIONS
Sent: Tue, August 17, 2010 8:10:31 AM
Subject: Re: URGENT: Support Afrika Today on KPFA and Baba Walter Turner!!!

On the proposal to move Walter Turner's Time Slot

As a listener of KPFA since 1962, the station has some positives and negatives. On the positive it is a source of left of center information. But on the negative, I suspect it is an underground Zionist entity. They will tell us about Hamas and Hezbollah, but we never hear directly from Hamas and/or Hezbollah, and this includes that undergound Zionist Amy Goodman. KPFA does not escape Ishmael Reed's labeling as a Jim Crow Media. The majority of the programing is white supremacy in the guise of liberalism and/or radicalism. Their desire to move Walt Turner from Monday night is but a white supremacy move to get Africans off prime time. Greg Bridges informed me they shall be moving on his program as well, Transitions on Tradition, that follows Walt Turner on Monday nights. A brother who recently departed KPFA said he was leaving because it was a Cointelpro entity. There are definitely persons on the air who are suspected agent provocateurs. The station recently had to disclaim their remarks made on the air.

Yes, we need Walk Turner, but we need to move beyond Jim Crow media and its Nigger Breakers as Ishmael entitled his latest book: Obama and the Jim Crow Media, and the Nigger Breakers, Baraka Press, Canada. In short, whites are the minority in the world and shortly in the US, therefore the majority programing should be from ethnic groups who are non-white.
--Marvin X
Academy of Da Corner
14th and Broadway,
Oakland
www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com

Cc: WE DEMAND REPARATIONS
Sent: Mon, August 16, 2010 10:48:26 PM
Subject: URGENT: Support Afrika Today on KPFA and Baba Walter Turner!!!

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: Runoko Rashidi
To: Runoko Rashidi ; BuildingAfricanLibraries@yahoogroups.com; globalafricanpresence@yahoogroups.com; TravelwithRunoko@yahoogroups.com; SmaiTawi@yahoogroups.com; SOA@yahoogroups.com; SonsofAfrika@yahoogroups.com; luv4self_network@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sun, July 25, 2010 9:52:32 PM
Subject: [SOA] SUPPORT "AFRICA TODAY"


Hotep Africans,

I am forwarding you this urgent message below from our Brother Walter Turner regarding a proposed program change from the KPFA's acting General Manager which would in short end brother Walter's ability to host the much needed "Africa Today" program. This could mean the end of this program as we know and depend on it as a media source for both local, national, and international news on the African Continent and the African Diaspora. We must support this Brother by writing the KPFA folks below and letting them know that we don't support their idea of the time change.

I ask you all both locally and out of the area to please take a small bit of your time and let these people know how we feel about losing that space and particularly our media scribe Brother Walter's ability to host this program. Brother Walter does not get paid for his effort of hosting this program so we are not talking about someone's job. This is this Brothers service to African People. Let's show a strong unity in this small but large segment of our struggle for uplifting our people.

In Struggle,
Naeem Deskins

Africa Today/ KPFA/ Your support is needed

From: Walter Turner Host/ Producer/Africa Today / KPFA

I am contacting you as a supporter and or long time listener of the
Program “Africa Today” on KPFA Radio in Berkeley, California.

AFRICA TODAY has been aired in various formats on KPFA Radio for more than 30 years. The initial host of Africa Today was Faraha Hayati and I have now hosted the program for more than 20 years.

I have been informed by Amelia Gonzalez, the Acting Assisitant General Manager of KPFA that there is a proposal to change the time slot of Africa Today from 7PM on Monday evenings to 11AM during a weekday. This time change will effectively end my ability to produce and host Africa Today.

I have attached a letter to the Acting Assistant General Mangager which explains my specific concerns regarding the proposed change and the impact that it will on my ability to host and produce the program.

Africa Today on KPFA is one of a very few national media programs that focuses on the Africa continent. Africa Today is a resource that our global community can not afford to lose. Please voice your support and work with others to voice collective support for the retention of Africa Today, in its current time slot, on KPFA Radio.

Please voice your individual and collective concerns to the following members of the KPFA administrative staff at your earliest convenience.

Thank you

Amelia Gonzalez [ amelia@kpfa.org)
Acting Asisting General Manager and Development Director

Ahmad Anderson ( ahmad@pacifica.org)
Interim General Manager

Baba Jahahara Amen-RA Alkebulan-Ma'at

"Take your steps... and, let our Divine do the rest. Walk in Faith... on each and every day!"

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Ten Steps to Detox from White Supremacy

Here are some additional steps to Detox from White Supremacy


1. Turn off TVs and remove them from your house.
2. Stop buying white supremacy movies and white movies in black face.
3. Stop your woman and children from buying goods at white supremacy malls and stores.
4. Stop buying food that contributes to you getting white supremacy diseases. Most of the food is grown in oil, not soil. So you go from the petrochemical food to the pharmaceutical legal drug dealers in conspiracy with the doctor, nurses and undertaker, as described by Elijah Muhammad in the Myth of Yacub.
5. Stop believing in any myths, stories, tales, from the white man, including his religious myths, male/female myths of ownership and domination, or the socalled Patriarchy. As Dr. Nathan Hare teaches us, everything the white man says is a lie until proven to be a fact. This is Dr. Hare's "fictive theory." Furthermore, don't believe anything nigguhs say either until proven to be a fact.
6. Be in this world but not of this world. Stop worshiping white values and rituals such as Xmas, Easter, 4th of July, New Years (the day slaves were auctioned).
7. Think outside the box of white philosophy, psychology, sociology, economics, history, linguistics.
8. Communicate with your mate by silence, not yapping day and night on the cell phone, talking loud but saying nothing, Mr. Loud and Wrong, as James Brown told us. Use ESP.
9. Detox your children in all the above or they shall grow up to be little devils, ungrateful bastards we call them, who will hate everything you are about, especially after you send them to the white man's colleges and universities to be edumaked. They will hate you because they have been brainwashed by the devil, yet they don't even know what you are about, as Amiri Baraka has said. And if you ain't about freedom, liberation,
land and sovereignty, you ain't about nothing, just a another nigguh in the woodpile, cannon fodder, fuel for the devil's fire.
10. Discard slavery religion and come into spiritual consciousness: you are within God and God is within you. Ain't nobody who's been dead two thousand years coming back to save you.Forget this fairy tale and live life to the fullest, your heaven and hell are right here on earth. Have any of the men and women who've been to outter space seen heaven during their journey? Did they see God in space? Angels? Surely, they should have passed God on their way to space or on the way home!

--Marvin X

See How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy by Dr. M (Marvin X), Black Bird Press, 2007, 1222 Dwight Way, Berkeley Ca 94702, $19.95.

Neo Griot Post on Abbey Lincoln

We shall never forget Abbey visiting when I lived on Fillmore Street during the 70s.

It was a down period in her life but she was an honored guest for she was a shero of mine as a sassy, arrogant, uncompromising soul sista, the kind we need today. When she entered my apartment, I remember giving her a long, hard hug for all she meant to me and our people. Peace and love, Abbey!

--Marvin X


VIDEO + AUDIO + OBIT: Abbey Lincoln, Jazz Singer and Writer, Dies at 80

Posted: 14 Aug 2010 05:27 PM PDT

Abbey Lincoln, Jazz Singer and Writer, Dies at 80

Abbey Lincoln, a singer whose dramatic vocal command and tersely poetic songs made her a singular figure in jazz, died on Saturday in Manhattan. She was 80 and lived on the Upper West Side.

Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Singer-composer Abbey Lincoln at her home in Manhattan in 2002.

Cinerama Releasing

Ms. Lincoln in the 1968 film “For Love of Ivy.”

Jack Vartoogian/FrontRowPhotos

Ms. Lincoln, 1991.

Her death was announced by her brother David Wooldridge.

Ms. Lincoln’s career encompassed outspoken civil rights advocacy in the 1960s and fearless introspection in more recent years, and for a time in the 1960s she acted in films, including one with Sidney Poitier.

Long recognized as one of jazz’s most arresting and uncompromising singers, Ms. Lincoln gained similar stature as a songwriter only over the last two decades. Her songs, rich in metaphor and philosophical reflection, provide the substance of “Abbey Sings Abbey,” an album released on Verve in 2007. As a body of work, the songs formed the basis of a three-concert retrospective presented by Jazz at Lincoln Center in 2002.

Her singing style was unique, a combined result of bold projection and expressive restraint. Because of her ability to inhabit the emotional dimensions of a song, she was often likened to Billie Holiday, her chief influence. But Ms. Lincoln had a deeper register and a darker tone, and her way with phrasing was more declarative.

“Her utter individuality and intensely passionate delivery can leave an audience breathless with the tension of real drama,” Peter Watrous wrote in The New York Times in 1989. “A slight, curling phrase is laden with significance, and the tone of her voice can signify hidden welts of emotion.”

She had a profound influence on other jazz vocalists, not only as a singer and composer but also as a role model. “I learned a lot about taking a different path from Abbey,” the singer Cassandra Wilson said. “Investing your lyrics with what your life is about in the moment.”

Ms. Lincoln was born Anna Marie Wooldridge in Chicago on Aug. 6, 1930, the 10th of 12 children, and raised in rural Michigan. In the early 1950s, she headed west in search of a singing career, spending two years as a nightclub attraction in Honolulu, where she met Ms. Holiday and Louis Armstrong. She then moved to Los Angeles, where she encountered the accomplished lyricist Bob Russell.

It was at the suggestion of Mr. Russell, who had become her manager, that she took the name Abbey Lincoln, a symbolic conjoining of Westminster Abbey and Abraham Lincoln. In 1956, she made her first album, “Affair ... a Story of a Girl in Love” (Liberty), and appeared in her first film, the Jayne Mansfield vehicle “The Girl Can’t Help It.” Her image in both cases was decidedly glamorous: On the album cover she was depicted in a décolleté gown, and in the movie she sported a dress once worn by Marilyn Monroe.

For her second album, “That’s Him,” released on the Riverside label in 1957, Ms. Lincoln kept the seductive pose but worked convincingly with a modern jazz ensemble that included the tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins and the drummer Max Roach. In short order she came under the influence of Mr. Roach, a bebop pioneer with an ardent interest in progressive causes. As she later recalled, she put the Monroe dress in an incinerator and followed his lead.

The most visible manifestation of their partnership was “We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite,” issued on the Candid label in 1960, with Ms. Lincoln belting Oscar Brown Jr.’s lyrics. Now hailed as an early masterwork of the civil rights movement, the album radicalized Ms. Lincoln’s reputation. One movement had her moaning in sorrow, and then hollering and shrieking in anguish — a stark evocation of struggle. A year later, after Ms. Lincoln sang her own lyrics to a song called “Retribution,” her stance prompted one prominent reviewer to deride her in print as a “professional Negro.”

Ms. Lincoln, who married Mr. Roach in 1962, was for a while more active as an actress than a singer. In 1964 she starred with Ivan Dixon in “Nothing but a Man,” a tale of the Deep South in the 1960s, and in 1968 she was the title character opposite Mr. Poitier in the romantic comedy “For Love of Ivy,” playing a white family’s maid. She also acted on television in guest-starring roles in the ’60s and ’70s.

But with the exception of “Straight Ahead” (Candid), on which “Retribution” appeared, she released no albums in the 1960s. And after her divorce from Mr. Roach in 1970, she took an apartment above a garage in Los Angeles and withdrew from the spotlight for a time. She never remarried.

In addition to Mr. Wooldridge, Ms. Lincoln is survived by another brother, Kenneth Wooldridge, and a sister, Juanita Baker.

During a visit to Africa in 1972, Ms. Lincoln received two honorary appellations from political officials: Moseka, in Zaire, and Aminata, in Guinea. (Moseka would occasionally serve as her surname.) She began to consider her calling as a storyteller and focused on writing songs.

Moving back to New York in the 1980s, Ms. Lincoln resumed performing, eventually attracting the attention of Jean-Philippe Allard, a producer and executive with PolyGram France. Ms. Lincoln’s first effort for what is now the Verve Music Group, “The World Is Falling Down” (1990), was a commercial and critical success.

Eight more albums followed in a similar vein, each produced by Mr. Allard and enlisting top-shelf jazz musicians like the tenor saxophonist Stan Getz and the vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson. In addition to elegant originals like “Throw It Away” and “When I’m Called Home,” the albums featured Ms. Lincoln’s striking interpretations of material ranging from songbook standards to Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

For “Abbey Sings Abbey” Ms. Lincoln revisited her own songbook exclusively, performing in an acoustic roots-music setting that emphasized her affinities with singer-songwriters like Mr. Dylan. Overseen by Mr. Allard and the American producer-engineer Jay Newland, the album boiled each song to its essence and found Ms. Lincoln in weathered voice but superlative form.

When the album was released in May 2007, Ms. Lincoln was recovering from open-heart surgery. In her Upper West Side apartment, surrounded by her own paintings and drawings, she reflected on her life, often quoting from her own song lyrics. After she recited a long passage from “The World Is Falling Down,” one of her more prominent later songs, her eyes flashed with pride. “I don’t know why anybody would give that up,” she said. “I wouldn’t. Makes my life worthwhile.”

=======================

Abbey Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation

Cinerama Releasing

Abbey Lincoln at Carnegie Hall in 2004.

Published: May 20, 2007

"I HAD a chance to be myself, and I was,” Abbey Lincoln said one recent afternoon, in a corner parlor of her spacious but unassuming ground-floor apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. This 76-year-old jazz legend was summing up her new album, “Abbey Sings Abbey” (Verve), but she could have been describing the central theme of her long and colorful career. On the walls around her were dozens of artifacts — photographs of her with jazz greats, plaques from politicians and family portraits she painted — attesting to the fullness of that story. Dominating the room was a piano, the instrument with which she wrote many of her symbolically charged and self-reflective songs.

Multimedia

Audio Podcast: Nate Chinen Interviews Abbey Lincoln (mp3)
Cinerama Releasing

Abbey Lincoln with Sidney Poitier in the 1968 film “For Love of Ivy.”

Ms. Lincoln was on the mend from recent open-heart surgery, which might nudge anyone toward rumination. But sitting on a couch in loose clothing, she was as matter-of-fact about her health as she is about her work. Long recognized as one of jazz’s most arresting and uncompromising singers, she has more recently been celebrated as a gifted lyricist and composer. She is the rare jazz singer who writes her own songs, and the rare jazz songwriter whose music conveys the lessons of her life, like, “You can never lose a thing if it belongs to you.”

“Abbey Sings Abbey,” which is out on Tuesday, captures the depth of her art with majestic serenity and bittersweet clarity. As the title suggests, it looks back on her original songs, the first time Ms. Lincoln has dedicated a full album to her own work. Another first: It surrounds her richly textured voice with acoustic and pedal steel guitars, accordion and mandolin, in an American roots-music style. “For some reason,” she said, “it’s better than anything I’ve done before.”

And Ms. Lincoln — who was born Anna Marie Wooldridge, the 10th of 12 children — has done quite a lot in her five-decade-plus career. Her songs are almost certainly her proudest achievement, an impression she reinforces by quoting them liberally, and commandingly, in conversation. “I’m a philosopher, you know,” she said, several minutes into an interview marked at first by wariness, then candor and humor. She frequently reached back into her history, reminiscing even about the things she’s glad to have left behind.

Fifty years ago Ms. Lincoln was on track to become a film and cabaret siren, appearing in the Jayne Mansfield movie “The Girl Can’t Help It,” and on the cover of her 1956 debut, “Affair ... Story of a Girl in Love,” in a décolleté dress and a come-hither pose. She had already spent two years in Honolulu as a supper-club attraction. “I was a glamour queen there too,” she said, smiling faintly. “I met Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday. I’d do my show and run to see Billie. She’d stand on the stage and never move, except for her eyes.”

Ms. Lincoln would eventually be hailed as a successor to Holiday, for her interpretive prowess as well as a slight resemblance between their grainy yet supple vocal timbres. But that accolade was well beyond the horizon when she left Hawaii for Los Angeles, where she met the lyricist Bob Russell, who became her manager. “One time he told me, ‘SinceAbraham Lincoln didn’t free the slaves, maybe you could handle it,’ ” she recalled with a laugh. “He named me Abbey Lincoln.”

Emancipation became a genuine preoccupation for Ms. Lincoln after she met Max Roach, the maverick bebop drummer she credits with “helping me find myself”; they married in 1962. In New York Mr. Roach brought her into his world of artistic experimentation and political engagement. Ms. Lincoln cut herself loose from her satiny image. She’s fond of recalling the emblematic moment when she burned the dress she sported in “The Girl Can’t Help It,” which had previously been worn by Marilyn Monroe. By 1960 she was vocalizing with a raw, spine-tingling power in Mr. Roach’s “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite,” a momentous civil-rights anthem.

In 1961 Ms. Lincoln made some early forays into lyric writing on an album called “Straight Ahead” (Candid) that sparked a public discussion about racial prejudice in jazz, after one reviewer derided Ms. Lincoln as a “professional Negro.” She seems to view those tensions now in an almost clinical light. “People remember you for what you stood for,” she said simply. “And if you didn’t stand for anything, they remember that too.”

One song Ms. Lincoln versified on “Straight Ahead” was “Blue Monk,” by the pianist Thelonious Monk, who stopped by the recording studio to bestow his blessing. “He whispered in my ear just as he was leaving, ‘Don’t be so perfect,’ ” she said. That bit of advice has stayed with her over the years. “Blue Monk” opens the new album.

It wasn’t until her 40s that Ms. Lincoln began to come into her own as a composer. After her divorce from Mr. Roach in 1970, she withdrew from the spotlight, taking an apartment above a garage in Los Angeles. She released an album after a revelatory trip to Africa in 1972, but otherwise directed most of her energies inward. Her songs reflected that spirit of introspection. “I got some people in me,” she wrote.

Moving back to New York in the 1980s she resumed performing, eventually attracting the attention of Jean-Philippe Allard, a producer and executive with Polygram France. Ms. Lincoln’s first effort for what is now the Verve Music Group, “The World Is Falling Down” in 1990, was a commercial and critical success and eight more albums followed, each involving elite jazz musicians and refined jazz arrangements.

The new album purposefully departs from that formula. Mr. Allard, speaking from Paris, said that he and Jay Newland, the engineer on almost all of those Verve releases, had long shared a quiet conviction. “Abbey’s songs have this folk element that is not well represented in a jazz context sometimes,” he said.

Multimedia

Audio Podcast: Nate Chinen Interviews Abbey Lincoln (mp3)

Mr. Newland, who produced “Abbey Sings Abbey” with Mr. Allard, traces the concept for the album back at least a decade, to a recording Ms. Lincoln made of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.” She’s a singer-songwriter too, Mr. Newland recalled thinking at the time.

The idea was rekindled last year, when the producers worked together on an album by the Afro-European pop singer Ayo. Among the songs they recorded was Ms. Lincoln’s “And It’s Supposed to Be Love,” in a new arrangement driven by the guitarist (and as it happens, former Dylan sideman) Larry Campbell. Mr. Campbell was tasked with paring down a number of Ms. Lincoln’s other songs, in preparation for a recording session.

“I was a little skeptical,” Mr. Campbell said by cellphone, driving near Nashville. “How do you take all these really sophisticated harmonic structures and break them down to virtually folk songs?”

It turned out to be easy once he was in the studio with the versatile jazz bassist Scott Colley and the prolific rock drummer Shawn Pelton. Many of Ms. Lincoln’s songs employ a verse-chorus structure more in line with folk songs than jazz standards; some, like “The Music Is the Magic,” resemble nursery rhymes. Though the three musicians had never worked together before, they quickly devised a gently twangy atmosphere for the songs. Later the arranger Gil Goldstein fleshed out some tracks, adding his own deft accordion lines, along with parts for a cellist, Dave Eggar.

Ms. Lincoln exudes a powerful authority throughout the album, whether striking a quietly wistful note on “Should’ve Been” or appealing to a distant creator in “Down Here Below.” Her flickering alto sounds ratified by age; her phrasing is subtle and sure.

“I’ve got about 15 years on some of the songs, so it’s supposed to be a little different,” she said. “If I was imitating myself, that would be pitiful.”

Many more singers are likely to mine Ms. Lincoln’s songs, given that “Abbey Sings Abbey” presents them so clearly, and with so few adornments. Earlier this year the jazz vocalist Kendra Shank released “A Spirit Free: Abbey Lincoln Songbook” (Challenge). Her advice to any artist would be “to sing your own song,” Ms. Lincoln said. “Don’t look to me, look to yourself.” Still, she noted with evident satisfaction a report she had received: a couple of nights earlier, a singer in a club had been pressured by an audience member into singing “Throw It Away,” one of her signature songs.

The singer was Cassandra Wilson, who recorded the song on a recent album, and who has often worked with the rootsy instrumentation now being used by Ms. Lincoln. “I learned a lot about taking a different path from Abbey,” Ms. Wilson said. “Investing your lyrics with what your life is about in the moment.”

That includes the tougher moments, of which Ms. Lincoln has lately had a few. Sitting on her couch, surrounded by the totems of her life, she repeatedly admitted to a lingering fatigue. “I didn’t come here to stay forever, I know that,” she said. “So if they want to bring me home, I’ll be glad to go. It’s easy for me to say it, but I mean it too.” She has vague plans to bequeath her apartment to the community as an arts center: Moseka House, after the name she was given 35 years ago by an official in Zaire.

Of course her greatest legacy will be her music, which she isn’t ready to relinquish. “They’re my songs, and I sang ’em and I’ll sing ’em,” she said. “It’s not the last time I’ll sing ’em, either.” In August she will headline both days of the 15th Annual Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, which takes place in Harlem and the East Village.

“All along the way there were things to do/always some other someone I could be,” Ms. Lincoln said, citing lines from “Being Me,” which closes the album with a rumination on her lifelong search for an honest self. “Abbey Sings Abbey” is the manifestation of that search, a study in gravity and wisdom that could only have come, one suspects, at this point in her career.

“I should be excellent by now,” Ms. Lincoln said. “Otherwise, when is it going to be?” She drew herself up into a regal posture, grinning mischievously. “I’m baaaaaad.”

>via: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/arts/music/20chin.html?pagewanted=1&fta=y

============================

GO HERE FOR TERRY HOWCOTT'S ABBEY LINCOLN TRIBUTE FEATURING 26 VIDEOS!!!

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GO HERE AND HERE FOR NEO•GRIOT ABBEY LINCOLN VIDEO POSTINGS

Thursday, August 12, 2010

New Book of Plays by Sonia Sanchez

INFO: New Book—Sonia Sanchez » I’m Black When I’m Singing, I’m Blue When I Ain’t and Other Plays

I’m Black When I’m Singing, I’m Blue When I Ain’t and Other Plays


Morning Haiku
$19.95 Paperback
$69.95 Hardcover

Available from:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Independent Bookstore

This collection brings together for the first time the plays of Sonia Sanchez, a prolific, award-winning poet and one of the most prominent writers in the Black Arts movement. In addition to Sanchez’s five previously published plays The Bronx Is Next (1970), Dirty Hearts (1971), Sister Son/ji (1972), Malcolm/Man Don’t Live Here No Mo (1979) Uh, Uh; But How Do It Free Us? (1975), and , the collection also includes her two unpublished plays, I’m Black When I’m Singing, I’m Blue When I Ain’t (1982) and 2 x 2 (2009). It reveals the thematic and formal exchanges between Sanchez’s poetry and dramatic works over the course of four decades. Sanchez emerged as a black nationalist poet and playwright in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Like her poetry, her dramas reflect her critique of the racism and sexism that she encountered as a young female writer in the black militant community, her ongoing concern with the well-being of the black community, and her commitment to social justice. I’m Black When I’m Singing, I’m Blue When I Ain’t and Other Plays includes three essays in which Sanchez reflects on her art and activism, and an introduction by Jacqueline Wood situating Sanchez’s plays in relation to her poetry, activism, and the feminist dramatic voice in black revolutionary art.

“Sonia Sanchez remains one of the most read, respected, and visible figures of the Black Arts Movement, as well as its most significant female figure. This volume only adds to that legacy.”—Amiri Baraka

“These seven plays by Sonia Sanchez form an emotional and historic bridge from the loud revolutionary power of the 1960s and the twentieth century to the more insidious and subtle challenges of this first decade of the twenty-first. Their power lies in their ability to present super/real snapshots of their time and circumstance with the mystic clarity that mixing poetry and drama can create. From The Bronx Is Next, where Brothers prepare to burn down Harlem tenements, to 2 X 2, where Beverly and Ramona Smith find one another, Sonia’s persistent call to Blacks—and especially to women—is to find the strength to assemble our ghosts and demons, confront them, and lay them to rest. The plays are startling and open us to a Sonia Sanchez whose vision can see the world as stage, or, perhaps, stage as the world.”—Charles Fuller

“Poet Sonia Sanchez deserves a Nobel for her lyrical representation and advocacy of the universal black woman.”—Ed Bullins

“Whether I encounter Sonia in poetry, prose, or drama, I am always struck by the fearlessness of her intellect, the effortless musicality of her language, and her commitment to putting these gifts—always—in service of the Struggle. I rejoice for those who, through this book, will encounter Sonia for the first time.”—Ruby Dee


I've often equated Sonia as my female counterpart, artistically, linguistically and emotionally, even though she is my elder, yet my comrade in the arts and revolution. Her works often reflect a similar pain and agony in our personal lives, yet the strength to continue on.

I know no poet, especially female, who can match the depth of her effort to search her soul for the truth of her life and ours. Like many of us in BAM, she is both poet/playwright, thus her poetry is dramatic and her drama poetic.

--Marvin X, Black Bird Presss

Monday, August 9, 2010

White America Discovers Marvin X








White America Discovers Marvin X--Fifty Years Later


Marvin X and his Academy of Da Corner rocked the San Francisco Theatre Festival today. Not only did the largely white audience enjoy his very first play Flowers for the Trashman, 1965, produced by the drama department at San Francisco State University, but they enjoyed as well his current production of The Wisdom of Plato Negro, Parables/fables.

Additionally, the audience was blessed with the productions of his two top drama students, Ayodele Nzingha, Lower Bottom Playaz, and Geoffrey Grier, San Francisco Recovery Theatre. Both playwrights, actors and directors evolved from the mentoring of Marvin X.

Ayodele as actress, director and producer was consummate in her rendition of Opal Palmer Adisa's Bathroom Graffiti Queen. Since an actor can only excel when given a proper script, we must acknowledge the fine writing of Opal Palmer Adisa. But the actor takes the script to the next level of excellence and Ayo surpassed the script with her acting ability.

Her Lower Bottom Playaz performed in grand manner Marvin X's first play Flowers for the Tashman. The playwright was totally pleased with the young men who delivered the drama in the classical form it deserved after a half century in the Black Arts Movement.

Ayo's Mama at Twilight remains a touching story of denial and faith in the family drama about HIV/AIDS. The Lower Bottom Playaz of West Oakland, childhood home of Marvin X, have had time to become well skilled in the presentation of their repertory. All the actors must be congratulated. Someone mentioned they were especially happy to see the young men's performance in Flowers for the Trashman.

Geoffrey Grier's plays, Jet, The Spot, and Night at the Blackhawk, are equally honorable and worthy of praise. We especially enjoyed his production of Amiri Baraka's Dutchman. The audience enjoyed it as well. Even though we may have wanted a younger actor to perform the role of Clay, the person who did it was so skillful we excused his age.

It was amazing to see that Flowers for the Trashman and the Dutchman are indeed classics that have withstood the test of time. Fifty years later they are still relevant and powerful dramas of black consciousness in America. Lula said to Clay that it's all about your manhood. And so it is.

The day ended with the Wisdom of Plato Negro, Parables/fables by Marvin X. The mostly white audience sat in anticipation as members of Academy of the Corner Reader's Theatre gathered on stage. Marvin X opened with singer/guitarist Rashidah Sabreen's original song A Real Love, joined by Marvin's poem What is Love. The audience sensed they were in for something different.

Paradise Jah Love came with Parable of the Penguin, then Parable of Oakland's Day of Absence, recounting the day the Oscar Grant verdict was announced. It was a communal ritual read also by Talibah, who joined with her drum. It the background was the music of Elliott Bey's synthesizer. Rashidah added dance numbers. The group held up poster pictures of Oscar Grant.

Mechelle LaChaux performed Parable of the Cell Phone. The audience went stone wild. Mechelle is an actress and singer, so her linguistic flexibility is unmatched. Marvin X's language will put Tyler Perry in pre-school. Critic Wanda Sabir said his language will "knock the socks off old ladies." Well, there were several senior women in the audience who didn't miss a linguistic beat.

We think the hottest piece was Parable of the Woman in the Box, performed by choreographer/dancer Raynetta Rayzetta, accompanied by Rashidah. Raynetta is X's favorite choreographer/dancer. She had the audience inside the box with her, as someone said.

X ended with his poem You Don't Know Me, accompanied by a Rashidah Sebreen original song.

White America has discovered Marvin X! Yes, fifty years later!

The USA's Rumi...the politics of Baraka, the ecstasy of Hafiz, the wisdom of Saadi....
--Bob Holman, Bowery Poetry Club, New York City

If you want to learn about motiviation and inspiration, don't spend all that money going to workshops and seminars, just go stand at 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland, and watch Marvin X at work. He's Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland.
--Ishmael Reed

Saturday, August 7, 2010

George Benson a tribute to Nat King Cole 'Nature Boy' @ North Sea Jazz 2009

Miles Davis - Nature boy

Miles Davis - Nature boy

Nat king cole, Nature Boy

Unforgetable - Nat King Cole

Autumn Leaves - Nat King Cole

Stardust - Nat "King" Cole

Nat king cole, Nature Boy

Nina Simone - I Love You Porgy

Nina Simone - I Loves You Porgy

Billy Holiday - Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do

Billie Holiday - Summertime

Miles Davis "Summertime" (1958)

Friday, August 6, 2010

Academy of Da Corner Reader's Theatre









Academy of Da Corner Reader's Theater


Academy of Da Corner Reader's Theatre performed at Third Eye Video tonight. They were the bomb! Oakland will never be the same, the universe will not be the same, not after tonight's performance that was merely a dress rehearsal for Sunday's performance at the San Francisco Theatre Festival.

This was ritual theatre at its finest, the realization of what we attempted during the 60s at the New Lafayette Theatre in Harlem and Barbara Ann Teer's National Black Theatre in the same location. Of course Marvin X perfected ritual theatre with his production The Resurrection of the Dead, a myth-ritual dance drama at his Black Educational Theatre in the Fillmore of San Francisco, 1972.

All the elements were in use tonight. The event began with a monologue by Marvin X, accompanied by the music of Elliott Bey, Marvin's long-time associate who performs with X coast to coast. Elliott is a Philly native who established Recovery Theatre East to carry out X's notion of theatre. They did a classic concert in Philly at Warm Daddies, along with members of Sun Ra's Arkestra, Marshall Allen, Danny Thompson and Noel, plus Rufus Harley on bagpipes, also Alexander El and Ancestor Goldsky.

Tonight Elliott Bey provided the music for the entire set with his synthesizer, in the Sun Ra tradition. But his sounds were joined by the vocals and guitar of Rashidah Sabreen who entered after X's monologue on the theme of his controversial Mythology of Pussy and Dick.

The host of Third Eye Video, Sister Beverley co-signed his Mythology because it helped heal her pussy issues. She thanked Marvin for getting her out of the box of pathological sexuality.

Marvin X's concert formally began at this point with an original song by Rashidah, accompanied by X's poem What is Love. The audience went wild. But the show hadn't started.

Enter Paradise reciting Parable of the Penguin, a mockery of the brothers with sagging pants walking like a duck or penguin.

And then came Parable of the Day of Absence, read by Talibah, Paradise and a chorus that included the audience who held up posters with the face of Oscar Grant. The audience joined with the chorus in chanting lines from the parable that described the moment in the Bay Area before the verdict was announced in the murder trial of the officer who killed Oscar Grant as he lay on the ground. This was the height of communal ritual drama, but there was more to come.

Enter Mechelle LaChaux reading Parable of the Cell Phone. Marvin X read the preface to her intro. The parable is a mockery of cell phone users. The woman on the cell phone is at her funeral, in her coffin, yet talking to her girlfriend on the phone. It is classic Marvin X language that he has utilized since his first published writings appeared in Soulbook magazine, circa 1964.

Mechelle stole the show, except the ritual master wasn't finished. Next came Parable of the Woman in the Box, choreographed by Raynetta Rayzetta, Marvjn's favorite choreographer.
She can interpret every word of his poetry. Marvin read the parable as she danced using only her upper body until the end when she made her exit dancing to Yolanda Adams. Rashidah accompanied her while she was in the box. The parable is a metaphor of all human beings caught in the box of mythology and self confining ritual. The audience sat stunned.

Marvin concluded the ritual with a song by Rashidah and his poem You Don't Know Me. The poem is the essence of his message in Mythology of Pussy and Dick. We are lovers yet we don't know each other, we are strangers in the night and in the day.

This was only a dress rehearsal but the audience was blown away, far far away. Even the performers could not believe what they'd done, yet it was what it was.

We can't wait until Sunday's performance at the San Francisco Theatre Festival. The last time Marvin X performed at the festival the whites walked out. We don't think they will be able to walk out this time--their paralysis might be too severe! Call the paramedics!