"Reverse-Gentrification Of The Literary World"

About seven years ago, Dawn invited me to a concert she was giving at Indigo Café, a small Black-owned café/bookstore in Ft. Greene that has since gone out of business (they still exist online though, and they carry my book, so you should buy it from them if you don’t already have it).

Upon arrival, I learned two things:

1) It was actually a concert-slash-reading with said reading to be provided by a local Jamaican ex-pat author by the name of Colin Channer; and

2) I was mad early. Dawn wasn’t even there yet.

Sociable as I am, I struck up a conversation with a woman sitting at the next table, who turned out to be a writing student of Channer’s. We had what I recall as a great conversation, although I suppose any conversation is going to seem vibrant and bohemian when you’re listening to jazz in a café/bookstore in Ft. Greene.

Anyway, after we had been talking for about an hour, Channer entered the café, strode over to us and affectionately rubbed my new friend’s (i.e. his student’s) head. Suddenly, he realized he had interrupted our conversation, looked slightly embarrassed, took a moment to ponder how to rectify the situation, and then, without uttering a word, reached out and rubbed my head as well. A complete stranger. It was a bold and hilarious gesture, particularly considering that – while I am in fact the world’s nicest guy – you wouldn’t necessarily know that to look at me.

So ever since then, I’ve always checked for his work, which turns out to be really good. In fact, from what I can tell, Channer has subsequently become one of Jamaica’s leading literary figures, founding the Calabash International Literary Festival and Writers’ Workshop, and publishing four novels, a book of short stories and an edited anthology.*

Anyway, I mention all of that because he’s hosting a celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Brooklyn-based, Caribbean-friendly, independent publisher Akashic Books at the central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library tomorrow (Thursday). I mean, come on, their motto is "Reverse-Gentrification Of The Literary World":

10 Years of Akashic Press

October 18, 2007 7:00 PM

Brooklyn Public Library, Central Branch

Novelist Colin Channer hosts an evening of readings by Akashic authors: Amiri Baraka [!], Arthur Nersesian, Preston Allen, T.Cooper, Felicia Luna Lemus, and Tim McLoughlin.

*This is kind of a side issue, but Channer was the first writer I’ve read to portray conversations that switch back and forth between Jamaican Patois (a/k/a Patwa) and Standard English, a phenomenon that has fascinated me since I moved to Brooklyn. Virtually everyone who speaks Patois also speaks Standard English, so when two West Indian people are talking to each other, they often switch back and forth for emphasis or to make various kinds of rhetorical points. Now if the people have Jamaican accents anyway, you almost wouldn’t notice that they were switching – it’s mainly a matter of grammar. But Brooklyn is home to many, many folks who speak Patois with a West Indian accent but Standard English with an American accent (usually because they were raised in New York and their parents came from the islands). The point is, if you didn’t understand that Patois was a separate language, it sounds like they’re just switching back and forth between an American accent and a Jamaican accent for no reason.

I hear people do this every day now, but when I first encountered it, I was amazed. Especially because of the way it actually works in conversation – one of the people will switch, then the other one will follow. Then one of them will switch back and the other will follow. And on and on. So their relationship to each other - and their perception of which aspects of the other person's identity are most important at that moment - is overtly encoded in the way they talk. So once I became familiar with the dynamic, I began to really appreciate the way Channer uses that dynamic to provide subtle clues about his characters' frame of mind.

Howl

This past week marked the 50^th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl winning its 1957 obscenity trial, and WBAI had planned a 90-minute special commemorating the occasion. Unfortunately, they were informed by their lawyers that broadcasting the poem could result in FCC fines substantial enough to actually put the station out of business.

Call me crazy, but I think the fact that the single most influential work of twentieth century American poetry cannot be broadcast in America says something about our society.

Now, theoretically, it might be acceptable to broadcast it during the “safe harbor” hours of 10pm to 6am. I say “might” because, as a matter of policy, the FCC will not tell you whether something is OK or not until after you’ve already done it. So your only options are:

1) Try it and see if you get fined $350,000 per word per broadcast (conservatively, that would be around five million dollars to play the whole poem once); or

2) Don’t broadcast the poem.

Under that system, most people will simply not bother to broadcast material that they think even might be a problem. And, since it was their own decision, the FCC can claim that they didn’t censor anyone. And they’d be telling the truth. Sort of.

Ultimately, WBAI decided to produce the special anyway and just put it on the web. You can listen to or download it here.

From a hip-hop perspective, one of the most intriguing comments on the whole situation is made at 59:59 by Bob Holman, of the Nuyorican Poets Café:

“I was just thinking about…what this says about the vision of orality and literature. You know, that you can buy the book. And that it can be in a library…There’s no legal repercussions…for anyone to take this book out of the library, or to buy it, or to give it to anybody of any age.

And yet, nobody is allowed to hear it…

The idea that a written text somehow can pass a test, that there is a certain kind of intelligence inherent in one’s ability to read and decipher language versus - shall I just say it? – you know, “the animalistic immediacy and impact of orality must be stopped.” You know, if you start to think about it, it becomes a really damning piece of analysis of this country’s appreciation of different cultures.”

Ironically, I’m not sure if his point comes across as well in written form, but what he’s talking about is the fact that American society sees written literature as being so much more valuable than oral literature that the exact same work can be considered OK for a 12 year old to read, but worthy of a five million dollar fine if that same kid were allowed to hear it. His implication at the end is that this is because European cultures tend to value the written word, while African and Asian cultures have historically been more oriented toward oral literature, so the bias towards the written word basically amounts to racism.

If you disagree with that, a useful exercise would be to try to come up with a better explanation. I’ve had this conversation many times, and usually the best people can do is an argument about how written literature is just obviously, inherently better than oral literature, which is of course a tautology at best (“European culture is superior because European culture is superior”). Usually, this doesn’t stem from intentional racism, but from a lack of familiarity with the successes of oral literature (e.g. Vedas being passed down by word of mouth for 3500 years in India, Sundiata epic being passed down by word of mouth for 700 years in West Africa, Genghis Khan transmitting all military information throughout his empire in the form of songs, African American spirituals containing important information about Black history and escape strategies, etc., etc. etc.)

It’s also worth thinking about how this issue has affected the perception of hip-hop lyrics. I’m just saying.

The Table Manners of Black Folk: A Fair and Balanced Analysis

By now you’ve heard about Bill O’Reilly’s ill-advised comments regarding Black people’s table manners. So you’ve probably also heard his unsurprising claim that his comments were taken out of context.

Believe it or not, I actually think that’s true.

But here’s the thing: if you take his comments in the spirit in which they were intended, they’re actually worse. And the fact that neither he nor anyone else seems to realize that tells you everything you need to know about the state of public discourse about race in America.

So let’s break it down. If you read the transcript, he makes four basic points:

1. “You know, I was up in Harlem a few weeks ago, and I actually had dinner with Al Sharpton, who is a very, very interesting guy. And he comes on The Factor a lot, and then I treated him to dinner, because he's made himself available to us, and I felt that I wanted to take him up there. And we went to Sylvia's, a very famous restaurant in Harlem. I had a great time, and all the people up there are tremendously respectful. They all watch The Factor. You know, when Sharpton and I walked in, it was like a big commotion and everything, but everybody was very nice.

And I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship. It was the same, and that's really what this society's all about now here in the U.S.A. There's no difference. There's no difference. There may be a cultural entertainment -- people may gravitate toward different cultural entertainment, but you go down to Little Italy, and you're gonna have that. It has nothing to do with the color of anybody's skin.”

OK, first of all, any time you find yourself saying a phrase like, “even though it’s run by Blacks,” you need to just stop talking and go sit in a corner. That said, maybe I'm giving him too much credit here, but I think that what he was really trying to say is not so much that he was surprised by the fact that Black people were normal, but that he wanted to make sure that his audience knew that. He just happened to do it in a very awkward way, and in the process admitted that his own listeners were racist...And that's me giving him the benefit of the doubt.

2. "Now, how do we get to this point? Black people in this country understand that they've had a very, very tough go of it, and some of them can get past that, and some of them cannot. I don't think there's a black American who hasn't had a personal insult that they've had to deal with because of the color of their skin. I don't think there's one in the country. So you've got to accept that as being the truth. People deal with that stuff in a variety of ways. Some get bitter. Some say, [unintelligible] "You call me that, I'm gonna be more successful." OK, it depends on the personality.

Look, he’s admitting right here that not only is there racism in America but that all Black people have been a victim of it! He’s a stand-up guy! Fair and balanced! What reasonable person could possibly have a problem with that?

Me, that’s who.

Because, if you’ll notice, in the process of making his generous admission, he defines racism as “a personal insult that they’ve had to deal with because of the color of their skin.” And this is important, because if that was actually what racism was, then a lot of the other things he has to say would actually make sense. I mean, you want reparations just because somebody once assumed you were good at basketball? Why, that’s crazy!

Except, of course, that’s not what racism is at all. Racism is housing discrimination, disproportionately high infant mortality rates, lack of political representation, difficulty in getting small business loans, lack of access to certain kinds of education, tokenism, lack of inherited wealth due to slavery, the totally nonsensical belief that the dialect of English spoken by white people is superior to the dialect of English spoken by Black people, and on and on and on…very little of which can reasonably be overcome by simply vowing to be “more successful”…

3. Americans are starting to think more and more for themselves. They're getting away from the Sharptons and the Jacksons and the people trying to lead them into a race-based culture. They're just trying to figure it out: "Look, I can make it. If I work hard and get educated, I can make it."

What he’s saying here is basically that the best way to fight racism is to ignore it. This, in and of itself, is not racist per se, although it is extremely stupid. The main reason is because it's based on the misunderstanding of racism that I mentioned above. If the problem is somebody calling you a bad word, then ignoring them may actually be a good way to deal with it (in certain circumstances, at least). But if the problem is a lack of access to medical care, then I really don't see how someone can just , in O'Reilly's words, "get past that."

But O'Reilly is also saying that if people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton didn’t make such a big deal about it, racism would have already gone away. In other words, the activists are actually encouraging white people to become more racist, by annoying them with their constant harping. This is of course a standard argument of anyone that wants to preserve the status quo. It's also frequently used to justify domestic abuse.

...And, by the way, the idea that Black people are just now starting to realize the importance of education may actually be the most offensive part of his whole rant. The first Historically Black Colleges and Universities were founded in the South less than 24 months after the end of slavery!

Just think about that for a minute. How seriously would you have to take education to go from not being considered human to actually starting a college in under 2 years? Pretty seriously, I would imagine.

4. You know, and I went to the concert by Anita Baker at Radio City Music Hall, and the crowd was 50/50, black/white, and the blacks were well-dressed. And she came out -- Anita Baker came out on the stage and said, "Look, this is a show for the family. We're not gonna have any profanity here. We're not gonna do any rapping here." The band was excellent, but they were dressed in tuxedoes, and this is what white America doesn't know, particularly people who don't have a lot of interaction with black Americans. They think that the culture is dominated by Twista, Ludacris, and Snoop Dogg.

[Juan] WILLIAMS: Oh, and it's just so awful. It's just so awful because, I mean, it's literally the sewer come to the surface, and now people take it that the sewer is the whole story --

O'REILLY: That's right. That's right. There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, "M-Fer, I want more iced tea."

WILLIAMS: Please --

O'REILLY: You know, I mean, everybody was -- it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn't any kind of craziness at all."

This is the part that really has been taken out of context. He’s not saying that he expected people to be screaming “M-Fer, I want more iced tea,” he’s saying that people who learned about Black culture through hip-hop would expect that. And again, I have to admit, in a very, very, very narrow sense, there is some truth to that. But, unfortunately, he doesn’t mean it in a very, very, very narrow sense. He’s saying that if there were no hip-hop there would be no racism.

So there you have it, what Bill O’Reilly really meant:

Jesse Jackson, hip-hop and thin-skinned Black people are causing racism in America, especially the racism of O’Reilly’s own fans.

You’re welcome, Bill.

...Now I am being glib here, but this is really a "laugh to keep from crying" situation. The ONLY way you could honestly hold these positions is if you didn't know the actual, undisputed, brutal history of race in this country. That's the problem - that ignorance - and that's what we should be talking about.

If you disagree with me, I would only ask that you do one thing: Take a look at this website (not for the faint of heart) and then tell me again how Al Sharpton and hip-hop and uptight Black folks are to blame for racism in America.

Equinox

The Earth is turning, and as a result I wish you a Happy Equinox, L'Shana Tova, and Ramadan Mubarak.

Don't forget to listen to Coltrane's "Equinox" and maybe even a little Organized Konfusion to balance things out...after all, the Equinox is all about balance. By the way, can anyone explain to me why we consider the solstices and equinoxes (equini?) to be the dividing lines between seasons? It just seems like the longest day of the year should be considered the exact middle of summer, not the beginning.

Is it just me?

While I may never know the answer to that question, or where people got the idea that it's OK to just stand in front of an open subway door and not let people on the damn train, at least I have had one of my longtime conundrums resolved, via the good offices of the one Jay Smooth, namely why it is that Bill O'Reilly seems so obsessed with the hip-hop. If you didn't just click on that, go back and do so immediately. You will not regret it.

West Indian Day Parade

I was happy to see that not only was there an Obamamobile at the West Indian Day Parade this year, but also that Barack managed to pick up the Mighty Sparrow endorsement:

...which – as I had hoped – comes with a seven-minute Calypso about the candidate, "Barack the Magnificent".

Other noteworthy sights…

Death Takes a Holiday:

Blue Man Group A Yard:

I also went out for J’Ouvert which, in the Brooklyn context, is basically a parade/street party that starts around 3:30 AM the night before the main carnival. When the main parade began to increasingly feature flatbed trucks with sound systems and deejays and bands…

… the speakers started to drown out the steel pan groups. So the steel bands gradually moved to J’Ouvert (since it’s the middle of the night, amplification is banned). What they do is essentially tie together about seven or eight of those band risers with wheels on them, then hook that to the back of a U-Haul, put the band on top, and drive very slowly and play very loud. It’s quite funky. For some reason (possibly because it was 4 in the morning), they didn’t stop traffic on Eastern Parkway, so you had about 5,000 people in costumes jumping around in the street throwing flour on each other (did I mention that people throw flour on each other?), and a series of ill steel bands winding their way down the street, occasionally parted by a few extremely disoriented looking motorists.

I love Brooklyn.

Get Down On The Get Down

About ½ hour ago I was coming back from the bagel shop when I passed a guy in a suit and eye-patch fixing a candle* for a woman in the street. I love that my neighborhood is home to freelance, door-to-door root doctors, and I expressed that sentiment by nodding and smiling as I passed. A few seconds later, he was yelling and running after me. "This is for you," he said, and handed me a stick of incense that had been dipped in oil.

So I’m burning it now and thinking about roots and history and culture and, of course, hip-hop.

Alien Ness, my b-boy guru, once told me:

"This is the only luxury that the slaves had, was the dance and the music…That’s all we had was the song and dance. ‘Cause they stripped us of the religion. And a big part of that religion was song and dance. So the only thing that they were able to really participate in without getting whupped or killed was the dance. Because anything else would look too much like worshipping the wrong god."

This is his new video, "Rusty Shank’s Operation Get Down". Now "spirituality" may not be the first word that comes to mind when you watch it, but then again maybe you just need to broaden your definition:


As you watch him do those sweep swipes at 00:50, keep in mind that Ness is 41 years old, and consider that there may be something beyond mere physical exertion at work here.

* from Luckymojo:
‘The ambiguous verb "fix" can refer to either harmful or benign magical operations. Generally speaking, when "fix" is applied to an inanimate object -- as in "fixing up a mojo," or "he makes fixed candles," or "she fixed some baths for him" -- the intention is helpful and the word is synonymous with "prepare," anoint," or "dress."’

Now that was...something.

Last night’s free Lauryn Hill concert in Brooklyn was truly one of the strangest performances I’ve ever seen. And, judging by today’s blog response, the question of whether she’s half-crazy or half-sane will not be resolved any time soon…I guess we all see what we want to see…Here’s my view:

After digging Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz’s unfadeable crowd-stalling styles, hearing the longest and most incoherent spiritual invocation I’ve ever witnessed, hearing the staff of every Brooklyn Appleby's introduce themselves on stage for some reason, nodding through Sean Kingston rapping along to Jay-Z’s "Takeover" for some reason, and seeing one of our era’s leading young feminist intellectuals almost hit a cop, it was time to prepare for Ms. Hill’s entrance.

The band got it going. Now, people who know me know I take a hard line on band-vamping: Up to 3 minutes = excellent sense of showmanship; 3 minutes and over = artist locked in bathroom. No exceptions. OK, one exception: when I saw Willie Colon in downtown Brooklyn last summer, he drove his SUV right up to the stage and jumped out, trombone in hand, and joined the band, which had been playing for about 5 minutes. "Sorry I’m late," he explained after the song ended, "my cat fell off the couch."

Anyway, the band took solos for about ten minutes, all the while craning their necks toward stage right for any sign of L-Boogie. Eventually, Lauren hit the stage looking and acting like the love child of Liza Minelli and H.R. from Bad Brains, which is not necessarily a bad thing. They both know how to put on a show, after all.

I did not take this picture:

Basically, about seventy-five percent of her performance consisted of punk rock versions of Bob Marley songs, which would have been excellent...if that was what she intended. But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. I mean, seriously, she spent the first 30 seconds of nearly every song urging the band to speed up, which suggests that what she was going for was not so much "fast" as "faster". When the band approached the desired tempo, she would then scream the lyrics as quickly as she could, as if to get them out of the way.

This is how the crowd reacted:

People started walking out almost immediately, which I thought was strange, considering that they had just spent three hours waiting for the show to start. But Brooklyn audiences know what they want, and they know when they’re not getting it.

But here’s the weird part: at several points in the show Lauryn caught a groove, slowed down, and just completely rocked the crowd. I’ve never seen anybody gain and lose and regain and re-lose an audience like that. It was like twenty minutes of folks walking out, followed by five minutes of absolute adoration, followed by another twenty minutes of people on the verge of booing, followed by another five minutes of transcendent bliss. I have no explanation, that’s just how it was.

She left the stage for a moment (Joe Twist rule #354: Roadies not dismantling equipment = encore), and soon returned for a nine-song encore that had us sprinting toward the stage. Two identically-dressed guys were standing on chairs in front of us, and when they turned to talk to each other, I realized it was the Twins, Keith and Kevin, who are considered to be the first b-boys ever. Ever. They just happened to be standing in front of me at the Lauryn Hill show.

Analyses and a songlist can be found at sherealcool. Analyses without songlist at Conny Kate.