Poet Genny Lim
BAM godfather Askia Tour
BAM baby 2.0, Jena Allen
BAM queen mother Tarika Lewis
BAM living legend Earl Daivs
BAM MC Marvin X
BAM poet Juan Felipe Herrera
Poet Kalamu Chache'
BAM poet Avotcha
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Coming soon to a venue near you: Marvin X and The Black Arts Movement United Front
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Jimmy Smith Playing Midnight Special on Hammond B-3 (1995)
When I think of growing up in West Oakland, on 7th and Campbell, across the street from the Lincoln Theatre, we called the flea house. I knew I would come home from the Lincoln with fleas. My grandmother would prescribe Eucalyptus for me, and I would cover myself with the leaves to stop the fleas from scratching me. And then there were the rats, but it was just nice to be in a theatre that showed Black movies, along with the white man killing Indians as we cheered in our ignorance.
Miles Davis - Around The Midnight (1967)
Round Midnight
for T. Monk
Monk's gone
but I ain 't blue
Monk's gone
but I an't blue
where he's goin
I'm goin too
Monk's gone
but I ain't blue
where he's goin
I'm goin too
death is always around
tryin to steal life
death is always around
tryin to steal life
If it don 't get the husband
it will get the wife
Monk's gone
but I ain't blue
Monk's gone
but I ain't blue.
--Marvin X
Marvin X--Country Woman Blues
The Human Earthquake would like you to bring him and the Black Arts Movement Poets Choir to your city ASAP. $100,000 is needed to bring him to your city for a Black radical concert of spiritual, educational and wellness healing. Art is therapy! Support the cultural revolution. Before political consciousness, there must be cultural and spiritual consciousness. Call him at 510-200-4164. The Black Arts Movement is ready to travel! Baraka said do the 27 cities in the US, promote the United Front! BAM is down fada git down! Long live the Bandung Conference!
Ten people with $10.000.00 each in each city can make this happen. Just know this, we are soldiers, not opportunists greedy for money, after all, we have sacrificed our lives for the freedom of our people. Many of us are in poor health, so we must move expeditiously to at least begin this project. Some of the BAM people will not be able to conclude this project. We call upon the Black Arts babies 2.0 to continue in the BAM tradition.
"Marvin X was my teacher, many of our comrades came through his Black Arts Theatre: Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Emory Douglas, Samuel Napier."--Dr. Huey P. Newton, co-founder, Black Panther Party
"Marvin X is still the undisputed king of Black Consciousness!"--Dr. Nathan Hare, father of Black Studies
"He's Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland."--Ishmael Reed
"The USA's Rumi!--Bob Holman
"A great story teller, I'd put him ahead of Mark Twain."--Rudolph Lewis
I'm down here in da country
grape vines down the street
don't worry bout nothing
country people got everything ta eat
down here in da country
grape vines down the street
lookin fa a country woman
ain't worried bout nothing ta eat!
got plenty of henny
ain't worried bout nothing
but when dat country gul come through
she say daddy I wanna to be wit you
wherever you are
city or country
cause I know you a star
Love dat country woman
so sweet and so true
just treat her nice
she'll be there fa you
she just wanna laugh
don't make her cry
just make her laugh
don't make her cry
she'll be witya
til the day ya die!
--Marvin X
City Woman Blues
I loveya baby
but ya just too crazy fa me
I loveya baby
but ya just too crazy fa me
go on back where ya came from
I'll see ya when I see
took ya all round world
you still wanna act a fool
took ya all round world
but ya still wanna act a fool
go on back where ya came from
need to go back ta school.
--Marvin X
The Human Earthquake would like you to bring him and the Black Arts Movement Poets Choir to your city ASAP. $100,000 is needed to bring him to your city for a Black radical concert of spiritual, educational and wellness healing. Art is therapy! Support the cultural revolution. Before political consciousness, there must be cultural and spiritual consciousness. Call him at 510-200-4164. The Black Arts Movement is ready to travel! Baraka said do the 27 cities in the US, promote the United Front! BAM is down fada git down! Long live the Bandung Conference!
"Marvin X was my teacher, many of our comrades came through his Black Arts Theatre: Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Emory Douglas, Samuel Napier."--Dr. Huey P. Newton, co-founder, Black Panther Party
"Marvin X is still the undisputed king of Black Consciousness!"--Dr. Nathan Hare, father of Black Studies
"He's Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland."--Ishmael Reed
"The USA's Rumi!--Bob Holman
"A great story teller, I'd put him ahead of Mark Twain."--Rudolph Lewis
We love you, revolutionary Black nationalist: Chokwe Lumumba! Celebtration of Life schedule in Jackson, Mississippi
Celebrationof the Life of Chokwe Lumumba
Wed Mar 5, 2014 7:19 am (PST) .
THE BODY of CHOKWE LUMUMBA WILL LIE IN STATE
(Public Viewing)
City of Jackson - City Hall
219 South President Street
Jackson, Mississippi 39205
Friday, March 7, 2014
11:00 a.m. until 3:30 p.m.
(Remembrance Hour)
City Hall - Josh Halbert Gardens
4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
(Viewing
Reopen Back to Public)
5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
CELEBRATION OF LIFE SERVICE
Jackson Convention Center
105 E. Pascagoula Street
Jackson, Mississippi 39204
Saturday, March 8, 2014
11:00 a.m.
Internment following the Celebration of Life Service.
Autumn Woods Memorial Gardens
4000 West Northside Drive
Jackson, Mississippi, 39209
Special Hours of Reflection on the Life of Chokwe Lumumba
Friday, March 7, 2014 - 7:30pm - 10pm
Magee
Fish House & Afrikan Art Gallery
Jackson
Square Promenade
2460
Terry Road
Jackson,
ms
Call
601.601.201.0871
Fresno's Bernard Stringer, the First Black Studies graduate in the United States of America
Donald Warden, aka Attorney Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al Mansour, head of the Afro-American Association that is responsible for Black radical consciousness in the Bay Area during the 1960s.
The AAA gave birth to the Black Panther Party, the Black Arts Movement, including Kwanza (fyi, Ron Karenga was the Los Angeles representative of the AAA) and Black Studies.
Dr. Nathan Hare, father of Black and/or Ethnic Studies, San Francisco State University
AAA member, Ed Howard
At the recent Black Arts Movement Conference at University of California, Merced (Feb 28 thru March 2, 2014), the Black Studies and BAM panel, it was pointed out the Fresno native Bernard Stringer was the first graduate of the Black Studies program at San Francisco State University. He was a BSU leader before and during the Black and Third World Strike, 1968, the longest student strike in US academic history. Bernard served as Dr. Nathan Hare's bodyguard during the time students were demanding Hare be appointed Chairman of the first such program on a major university campus.
As per the community colleges, Oakland's Merritt College had the earliest known Black Studies Program program. Merritt College is where much of the Bay Area's 60s radical tradition was established, inspired by the Pullman Porters Union, headed by C. L. Dellums, uncle of Ron Dellums. Merritt was the one meeting place of the Afro-American Association, headed by Donald Warden, aka Khalid Abdullah Tariq Al Mansur. The AAA campus work of raising Black consciousness, gave birth to such radicals as Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Ernie Allen, Richard Throne, Ann Williams, Maurice Dawson, Kenny and Carol Freeman, Marvin X, et al. It was the birthplace of that radical RAM publication, SoulBook, edited by Ken Freeman. Merritt gave birth to two Black Panther Organizations, first, the Black Panther Party of Northern California and later the Newton/Seale Black Panther Party of Self Defense.
Bernard Stringer was also associated with the Black Panther Party, along with his woman and later wife, JoAnn Mitchell.
When Marvin X was fighting to teach at Fresno State University, 1969, Bernard served as his bodyguard. In 1972, Bernard joined Marvin X's Black Educational Theatre in Fresno and San Francisco Bernard performed in Marvin's musical version of Flowers for the Trashman, Take Care of Business, music by Sun Ra.
As per the BAM tour, Bernard Stringer has agreed to represent the Atlanta GA region.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Jackson, Mississippi Mayor Chokwe Lumumba was murdered!
County Supervisor says Chokwe Lumumba
was Murdered – Wants Autopsy
The death of Chokwe Lumumba was a tough blow to the civil rights community. The Jackson, Mississippi mayor was considered to be one of the great civil rights activists of his time and was respected around the nation. His election was also seen to be a huge step forward in the world of politics.But Lumumba was dead before he even got a chance to get his mayoral tenure started. While most were saying that he died of natural causes, there are others who believe that there were more sinister forces at work. Hinds County Supervisor Kenny Stokes told the Jackson Clarion – Ledger that he believes Mayor Lumumba was killed and that he demands that doctors do a thorough autopsy in order to determine the cause of death.“We gonna ask a question: Who killed the mayor?” He asked during an event remembering Lumumba’s legacy. He says that he doesn’t have proof of his assertion, but believes that this could be the case.Hinds County Coroner Sharon Grisham-Stewart told The Clarion-Ledger that the mayor died of natural causes, but would not elaborate due to privacy laws. The family hasn’t accused anyone of foul play either. But Stokes isn’t backing off, stating that an autopsy would be a good way to ensure that the mayor died the way they say he did.“We gonna ask a question: Who killed the mayor? We’d feel a lot better if there was an autopsy,” Stokes said. “First they say it’s not a heart attack and not a stroke, then what was it? You don’t just die like that and you’re healthy.”Stokes says that, despite what official reports are saying, many in the community are aware that the mayor’s life may have been taken.“So many of us feel, throughout the city of Jackson, that the mayor was murderd,” Stokes told reporters. “I’m not going to sugar coat it. I’m not going to try to say it in a way where the people feel, you know, that we should have said it in another way.”Stokes is now the supervisor for the city and spent years on the city council. He says that he is surprised that the mayor died suddenly, given that he was in good health and his visitors claimed that he was doing just fine.“If he was in any way kind of in trouble, people would have stayed there,” Stokes said.There is no official cause of death stated, but members of the city leadership have proclaimed that he died of a heart attack.
The Mavin X keynote speech at BAM conf, UC Merced--that he didn't give, but talked and performed
Black Arts, Black Power, Black Studies
The Black Arts Movement was the cultural arm of the national
liberation movement. The cultural arm provided the necessary radical
consciousness to awaken the people and inspire them to join the political
movement, though we should not think culture and politics are separate
entities, for they are not, rather they work in tandem in the holistic manner
of African tradition. The body parts are all connected and cannot function
except as a unified whole, each doing its part to make the whole move forward.
The Nation of Islam, by definition, was a political and spiritual movement, even more, it was a consciousness raising project, i.e., Elijah Muhammad taught us our task was the raise the deaf, dumb and blind. But this consciousness raising had been persistent throughout our sojourn in the wilderness of North America as described by Elijah Muhammad. From the time Africans arrived in the American slave system, attempts were made to regain our mental stability. One need only read the socalled slave narratives, especially read the writings of those 19th century North American Africans who clearly expressed a radical cultural and political consciousness, such as David Walker, Henry Highland Garnett, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. DuBois, et al.
But by the beginning of the 20th century, Islam began to rekindle Black national consciousness, after all Marcus Garvey was mentored in London by an Egyptian Muslim and Pan Africanist, Duse Muhammad Ali, publisher of the Oriental Times and Review. It was after reading the writings of Booker T. Washington in the publication that Garvey decided to come to America to meet Booker T, who may have been of Muslim ancestry since Booker T. could be a corruption of Abubakr, a Muslim name. And even before Garvey arrived teaching One God, One Aim, One Destiny, another Muslim Noble Drew Ali was on the scene with his Moorish Science Temples.
Thus, Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam was well grounded in African Islamic consciousness, especially by the late 1950s when Malcolm X came on the scene as the chief minister and national spokesman. It had spread its version of consciousness since 1930, but Malcolm X took things to a higher level after the American media exposed the NOI with the documentary The Hate that Hate Produced by Mike Wallace.
So the seeds that grew into the Black Arts Movement were clearly sown by the NOI and Malcolm X. LeRoi Jones, aka Amiri Baraka, departed the Village for Harlem when Malcolm X was assassinated, 1965. Obviously, he had been influenced by the teachings of the NOI through Malcolm X. It was the same for us on the west coast. At Oakland's Merritt College, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Ernie Allen, Ken and Carol Freeman, myself and a host of other students were inspired by Malcolm X rather than by the Civil Rights Movement. We considered Martin Luther King, Jr. the chief boot licker of the white man and we wanted no part of non violence.
Although after Malcolm X broke from the Nation of Islam and had no organization, we students at Merritt College considered ourselves followers of Malcolm X, we stated this in a Merritt College newspaper article, featuring Isaac Moore and myself.
And even though I did not join the NOI until 1967, my first play Flowers for the Trashman, produced by the San Francisco State College Drama department, 1965, expresses language that came from the teachings of Elijah Muhammad. So we must credit the NOI for influencing the Black Arts Movement, especially Amiri Baraka. See his play A Black Mass, based on the NOI's myth of Yacoub, the scientist who genetically engineered the birth of the white man. See the Islamic writings of Sonia Sanchez and Askia Muhammad Toure. Dr. Mohja Kahf posits that the Black Arts Movement gave birth to the genre called Muslim American literature.
For
sure, white supremacy America, only reluctantly and
with great struggle decided to include other ethnicities in the cultural pie,
especially in academia. And if anything
was short lived it was the inclusion of radical Black cultural expression in
the curriculum known as Black Studies. Radical BAM expressions and personalities were quickly disposed
of and only a weakened Black Studies was allowed until now. Radical BAM expressions and personalities
were purged from Black Studies nationwide, from UC
Berkeley to San Francisco State University to east coast, Midwest and southern
academic institutions, including purges at socalled Negro or Black colleges and
universities. BAM founder Haki Madhubuti, aka Don L. Lee, was recently purged from his position at a university in the Midwest. As we speak, two radical black professors (Dr. Anthony Montiero and Dr. Muhammad Ahmed (Max Stanford) are being terminated at Temple University in Philadelphia. In the central valley, Fresno City College professor Kehindi Solwazi claims every attempt was made to silence and/or remove him, including the filing of criminal charges that were reduced to a $100.00 tax evasion.
The classic example is the treatment of Dr. Nathan Hare who
was removed from the faculty at Howard University and San Francisco State
University. This writer was removed from Fresno State University on orders from
Gov. Ronald Reagan who simultaneously removed Angela Davis from UCLA. The
reasons in each case was radical political consciousness: Hare, Marvin X and Angela Davis.
And so here we are almost fifty years later, attempting to
celebrate BAM and its counterparts Black Power and Black Studies, strangely, in
a little country town in the center of California, and we see the residue of
white power thinking in the resistance of a few who are simply unable to recover from
their addiction to white supremacy. We certainly hope by the end of
this conference that all of us, those suffering the addiction to white
supremacy type I and type II, will have inched forward to acknowledge the need
not fear BAM, Black Power or Black Studies since we are only exercising our
human right to self-determination and national sovereignty.
It is indeed time now to pass the baton to the next
generation, yes, the conscious hip hop youth who are the inheritors of the BAM
tradition. This is not to say that BAM was all positive for it was not, there
were indeed reactionary elements that perhaps led to the abortion of the BAM,
and reactionary elements are doing the same in hip hop. But we should see as
Ishmael Reed has said, “Without BAM Black culture would be extinct.” So let us
indeed pass the baton to the BAM babies and Black Power babies who may find in the
positive aspects of BAM the very
necessary tools needed to infuse Hip Hop with the ingredients to move
Black Culture and in the process global culture forward in the present era.
Before I conclude, allow me to speak on what I call the Psycholinguistic Crisis of the North American African. As a result of the Euro-Arab-American slave system, "...the proud African was beaten down from Kunta Kinte to Toby, perhaps the first level in his psycho-linguistic crisis: who am I, what is my name? Once in the Americas, especially after the breaking in, the psycho-physical deprogramming, he was no longer Yoruba, Hausa, Ibo, Congo, Ashante but Negro, and according to Grimm's law (the consonants C,K, and G being interchangeable) he was a dead, from the Greek Necro, something dead, lifeless, without motion and spirit. Of course, he retained some of his African consciousness in the deep structure of his mind, in the bowels of his soul and he expressed it in his dance, his love life, his work habits, his songs and shouts, but basically he was a trumatized victim of kidnapping, rape and mass murder--genocide, for after all, when it was all said and done, between 50 and 100 million of his brothers and sisters were lost in the Middle Passage, the voyage between Africa and the Americas, thrown to the sharks that trailed slave ships, one of which was named Jesus, perhaps the same one whose captain had the miraculous conversion and wrote the song Amazing Grace! But changing the African into Negro was a primary problem in terms of identity which persists until today, even as we speak a new generation is now in crisis trying to decide whether they shall be called by Christian, Muslim or traditional African names, trying to decide whether they are Americans, Afro-Americans, African-Americans, Bilalians, Kemites, Sudanese, or North American Africans.
With this term I've tried to emphasize our cultural roots by making Africa the noun rather than the adjective. Also, I wanted to identify us geo-politically: we are Africans on the continent of North America, as opposed to Africans in Central and South America, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia or the Motherland. As such, we are unique and have created an original African Culture in North America, imitated throughout the world, and yet, as Franz Fanon noted, the colonized man is disoriented, doesn't know where he's at, the Whispers said we were lost and turned out on the way to grandmother's house. But even in our wretchedness, the whole world wants to talk like us, dance like us, sing like us, dress like us: we have the highest standard of living of any Africans in the world and are thus in the position of leadership even though we lack any degree of National sovereignty, are yet a defacto Nation, albeit captive and colonized, exploited 24/7 by any pimp fearless enough to enter the ghetto, and there are many from around the world, including Asians, Arabs, Jews, Africans, West Indians, and Latins......"
From a writer's perspective, a poet, much of endgame in the psycholinguistic crisis is censorship, pure and simple, a violation of First Amendment rights and human rights. I have a right to say what I want to say the way I want to say it. This is an old tired discussion we encountered fifty years ago in the Black Arts/Black Culture revolution of the 60s: shall we define ourselves or the shall the masters and their pitiful bourgeoisie imps impose their definitions, their hypocritical, perverted moral standards. If a bitch is bitch call her a bitch. If yo mama is a bitch call her a bitch. If your wife is a bitch call it, your daughters call it. The worse bitch in the world is the bitch in denial. And as I've said, men are known to be bitches too!
There was a time when we were kings and queens, in Africa and during the 60s in America, but this was B.C., before crack. With the coming of crack, we reduced ourselves beyond slavery. We returned to the auction block of the crack house, and indeed, in fact, became bitches and hoes. With crack, the sexual etiquette of North American Africans has been forever altered and whether we will again reach the level of kings and queens depends more on the success of our total liberation than our correct grammatical structure, after all, we see Asians, Arabs, Latins, come to America and get rich speaking no English, yet we are being deluded by our leaders into believing we must speak the Kings English in order to be successful. If nothing else, the rappers have shown us they can make millions for themselves and billions for the white man utilizing three words: bitch, hoe and motherfucker. The tragic reality is that the black bourgeoisie failed to teach inner city youth proper English or anything proper for that matter, so the upper and middle classes must reap the reward of neglect, in the form of their children enraptured by rap and thus incomprehensible to the middle-class parents--as my daughter has said, You might not like rap, but if you want to understand me, you better try to understand rap. To paraphrase Eryka Badu, the psycholinguistic crisis goes on and on......on and on....."
Finally, we are calling for a BAM/Hip hop tour of the 27 cities ancestor Amiri Baraka
spoke about so often. We must hurry to put this BAM/Hip Hop tour together since so many
BAM pioneers are making their transitions. This should be in the BAM tradition
of a nationwide project that will be consciousness raising, educational, and
spiritually healing, a tour that will indeed teach that Black is Beautiful,
Powerful and Global! Thank you.Before I conclude, allow me to speak on what I call the Psycholinguistic Crisis of the North American African. As a result of the Euro-Arab-American slave system, "...the proud African was beaten down from Kunta Kinte to Toby, perhaps the first level in his psycho-linguistic crisis: who am I, what is my name? Once in the Americas, especially after the breaking in, the psycho-physical deprogramming, he was no longer Yoruba, Hausa, Ibo, Congo, Ashante but Negro, and according to Grimm's law (the consonants C,K, and G being interchangeable) he was a dead, from the Greek Necro, something dead, lifeless, without motion and spirit. Of course, he retained some of his African consciousness in the deep structure of his mind, in the bowels of his soul and he expressed it in his dance, his love life, his work habits, his songs and shouts, but basically he was a trumatized victim of kidnapping, rape and mass murder--genocide, for after all, when it was all said and done, between 50 and 100 million of his brothers and sisters were lost in the Middle Passage, the voyage between Africa and the Americas, thrown to the sharks that trailed slave ships, one of which was named Jesus, perhaps the same one whose captain had the miraculous conversion and wrote the song Amazing Grace! But changing the African into Negro was a primary problem in terms of identity which persists until today, even as we speak a new generation is now in crisis trying to decide whether they shall be called by Christian, Muslim or traditional African names, trying to decide whether they are Americans, Afro-Americans, African-Americans, Bilalians, Kemites, Sudanese, or North American Africans.
With this term I've tried to emphasize our cultural roots by making Africa the noun rather than the adjective. Also, I wanted to identify us geo-politically: we are Africans on the continent of North America, as opposed to Africans in Central and South America, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia or the Motherland. As such, we are unique and have created an original African Culture in North America, imitated throughout the world, and yet, as Franz Fanon noted, the colonized man is disoriented, doesn't know where he's at, the Whispers said we were lost and turned out on the way to grandmother's house. But even in our wretchedness, the whole world wants to talk like us, dance like us, sing like us, dress like us: we have the highest standard of living of any Africans in the world and are thus in the position of leadership even though we lack any degree of National sovereignty, are yet a defacto Nation, albeit captive and colonized, exploited 24/7 by any pimp fearless enough to enter the ghetto, and there are many from around the world, including Asians, Arabs, Jews, Africans, West Indians, and Latins......"
From a writer's perspective, a poet, much of endgame in the psycholinguistic crisis is censorship, pure and simple, a violation of First Amendment rights and human rights. I have a right to say what I want to say the way I want to say it. This is an old tired discussion we encountered fifty years ago in the Black Arts/Black Culture revolution of the 60s: shall we define ourselves or the shall the masters and their pitiful bourgeoisie imps impose their definitions, their hypocritical, perverted moral standards. If a bitch is bitch call her a bitch. If yo mama is a bitch call her a bitch. If your wife is a bitch call it, your daughters call it. The worse bitch in the world is the bitch in denial. And as I've said, men are known to be bitches too!
There was a time when we were kings and queens, in Africa and during the 60s in America, but this was B.C., before crack. With the coming of crack, we reduced ourselves beyond slavery. We returned to the auction block of the crack house, and indeed, in fact, became bitches and hoes. With crack, the sexual etiquette of North American Africans has been forever altered and whether we will again reach the level of kings and queens depends more on the success of our total liberation than our correct grammatical structure, after all, we see Asians, Arabs, Latins, come to America and get rich speaking no English, yet we are being deluded by our leaders into believing we must speak the Kings English in order to be successful. If nothing else, the rappers have shown us they can make millions for themselves and billions for the white man utilizing three words: bitch, hoe and motherfucker. The tragic reality is that the black bourgeoisie failed to teach inner city youth proper English or anything proper for that matter, so the upper and middle classes must reap the reward of neglect, in the form of their children enraptured by rap and thus incomprehensible to the middle-class parents--as my daughter has said, You might not like rap, but if you want to understand me, you better try to understand rap. To paraphrase Eryka Badu, the psycholinguistic crisis goes on and on......on and on....."
--Marvin X
2/10/14
Umar Bin Hassan of the Last Poets at Eastside Cultural Center, Thursday, March 6, 2014
Thursday, March 6, 2014
UMAR BIN HASSAN (of The Last Poets)
At EastSide Cultural Center
2277 International Blvd
Oakland, CA 94601
4-6pm – Workshop on the roots of hip-hop
(with KEV and Don Juan from ESAA Beats Flows)
Youth 14-25 are invited.
8-10pm – Poetry reading at Holla Back
DONATIONS REQUESTED
Umar Bin Hassan from the legendary Last Poets will be at EastSide Cultural Center to conduct a poetry/hip hop workshop and also to be featured at EastSide’s weekly open mic poetry reading Holla Back.
In the early 70’s, Umar Bin Hassan was a member of the street-poet godfathers of rap, the Last Poets, a group of Black poets spreading a militant political message akin to that of the Black Panthers and Malcolm X. He joined the group in 1969 after seeing them perform in his native Ohio. With Hassan, the Poets released The Last Poets, This is Madness, and The Last Poets at Last. In mid-1993, he released his first solo album, Bebop or Be Dead, Hassan combined rap, house, and jazz elements on the record. Umar recently recorded with Common on his latest hit, On the Corner.
Monday, March 3, 2014
Marvin X proposes a Black Arts Movement 27 City National Tour in honor of Amiri Baraka
The Black Arts Movement Poet's Choir
First row: Eugene Redman, Marshall Trammell, Tarika Lewis, Aries Jordan, Zena Allen, Avotcha
Back row: Marvin X, Kalamu Chache', Juan Felipe Herrera, Tacuma King, Lakiba Pittman, Askia Toure, Genny Lim, Umar Bin Hassan, Ayodele Nzinga
During a session of the Black Arts Movement Conference this past weekend at University of California, Merced, Marvin X proposed a 27 city tour in memory of Amiri Baraka, who often spoke about the 27 cities in America with large North American African populations. At $100, 000 per city, the estimated cost would be $2.7 million. After watching the BAM poets perform with musicians, a young rapper in Merced told Marvin X the concert tickets should be in the $400.00 range. The young man was simply overwhelmed with the beauty and truth of the BAM poets and musicians.
Marvin X is known for drafting people into his projects, so although Kim McMillan, chief producer of the UC Merced BAM conf, says she will never do another event like this, Marvin X says Kim must continue to stand tall on the shoulders of the ancestors and be a critical factor in the success of the national BAM tour. It was the consensus of the BAM poets and musicians that this national tour should happen. Although we are elders and in various states of health, we yet have enough energy to make this project a reality, says Marvin X. We will begin organizing the tour ASAP. Community support will make this project a success, so send us your ideas and generous donations.
This is an educational and consciousness raising affair in the tradition of the Black Arts Movement, a spiritual and healing myth/ritual. If you support this project, please contact me at 510-200-4164; email jmarvinx@yahoo.com. To keep informed of our progress, stay tuned to www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com.
poet Lakiba Pittman
Poet Kalamu Chache'
Poet/musician Avotcha
Poet Juan Felipe Herrera
BAM godfather Askia Toure
Avotcha, Marvin X and Askia Toure
MC Marvin X reading
Poet Aries Jordan, Black Arts Movement Baby 2.0
Eugene Redman of East St. Louis, MO
Ishmael Reed gave the Sunday Keynote Address
Poet Genny Lim with drummer Marshall Trammell
Avotcha
Zena Allen on the Kora. She accompanied Marvin X with his Again the Kora poems.
Tarika Lewis, living legend artist/activist.
Friday, February 28, 2014
Marvin X rocks University of California, Black Arts Movement Conference
Marvin X told the audience at the BAM reception to lighten up on conference planner Kim McMillan. He first declared BAM is a revolutionary movement and must be seen in this light, not as some art for art sake or Negro Renaissance that patronized white people. He thanked UC Merced for having the nerve to bring a group of uppity Blacks to the little country town of Merced. This was a bold move on their part and we congratulate them but they put too much pressure on Kim. He told how other sisters were destroyed by the hostile environment of the UC system, including, e.g., UC professors VeVe Clark, Barbara Christian, June Jordan and Sherley Ann Williams, all deceased. So don't mess with Kim, he told the mostly white audience. Don't make me bring the BAM army back to UC Merced.
While in Harlem for a reception in his honor, Marvin X told the folks that UC was stressing out Kim. We got Kim on the phone and a brother told her to stand tall because she was standing on the shoulders of the ancestors. The BAM conference begins at 9am on Saturday and runs through Sunday afternoon.
While in Harlem for a reception in his honor, Marvin X told the folks that UC was stressing out Kim. We got Kim on the phone and a brother told her to stand tall because she was standing on the shoulders of the ancestors. The BAM conference begins at 9am on Saturday and runs through Sunday afternoon.
UC Professor/author Sherley Ann Williams, deceased
UC Professor VeVe Clark, deceased
UC Professor Barbara Christian, deceased
UC Professor/BAM poet June Jordan, deceased
UC Merced graduate student and BAM project director, Kim McMillan
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