I’d like to make a book recommendation. If you have ever been to Lucifers, Leviticus, Justines, Brandi, Bogards in Manhattan, you will want to read it. If you have never been to those places, and you think that you know what Disco was, you should read this book so that you can learn the truth. The name of the book is After Dark: Birth of the Disco Dance Party.
The anger and pride is spoken by the last Texan black chef when he said that we [black people] are the innovators of most everything that is beautiful and in pop culture in America right now and it has been taken, monetized and whitewashed, and exported out TO THE WORLD. It is the same anger and pride I feel as I watch white music educators teach jazz, divorcing the drum and the cultural experience from the music while still being appreciative that the music is being passed down, but just not to us. Jazz is all about putting some grease in it, sing like you eatin’ some chicken.
It’s crystal clear that our government is not going to do anything to stop the murder of Black men and boys by police officers. Killing a black male is a right of passage for some police officers who do so and then go off and join a white supremacy militia.
This is a story with many chapters. Some of them nice. Some of them not…
On the anniversary of his death
As I watched these and many other such films, I wondered does oppression tell our story? To paraphrase an old Roberta Flack tune, does it strum our fate with it’s fingers and sing our lives with it’s words? These stories all are mightily burdened with another aspect of the American black experience: Racism/White Supremacy. It’s unfortunate because in order to view any of these stories one must view them through the prism which reflected the times.
Panel discussion on the 2020 Kwanza Award Winning film “am I Black Enough For You, w/Kevin Harewood, AJ Jamal, V. Jeffery Smith, Monet Cherise, (Bob Davis Moderator
Summer Of Soul (…Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised) is the directorial debut…
I recently saw a great documentary entitled Greatest R&B Legends: Cleveland. Cleveland has a deep…
Soul-Patrol Online Black History Month Events Schedule/Registration