DV-One

From the Freestyle Session b-boy forum comes the news that DJ DV-One got beat up by the Seattle Police last Friday. Since I read everything with a critical mind, I understand (and actually hope) that you do too. But you should be aware of the following: Toby is one of the coolest, nicest, mellowest people I know, and I have no doubt whatsoever that every word of his story is true:

On September 15, 2006 at around 7:30pm I went to memorial stadium to pick up my daughter (Andrea Christian) from her high school's football game at memorial stadium. Upon my arrival I quickly located Andrea and directed her to the car so we could leave. As my daughter walked away (toward the car) I stayed behind and chatted with a friend briefly before being interrupted by one of Andrea’s friends, Adreianna Holmes.

Adreianna said "Toby, the police have Andrea!" and I should go see what was going on. As I went over to the scene I noticed Andrea being held by the police in an arm lock and being shoved repeatedly against a parked car by a police officer, while another officer stood guard. I approached the scene and was immediately stopped by the female police officer who said I couldn’t go over there with her hands outstretched blocking. I identified myself as the parent of the child being detained and the officer said "so what!"

The female officer then reached for her flashlight and pulled it out. I put my hands up, and backed off saying whoa, whoa, and she responded with "oh so you’re gonna hit me?" and immediately radio’d the all call "officer assaulted" after sending the radio to other officers she proceeded forward rushing in toward me swinging, the officer detaining my daughter pulled out his firearm as more officers swarmed in. I turned my back avoid being shot, hit, or grabbed. I was then slammed to the ground by two officers, handcuffed, kicked in the head (approx 20x), body and limbs repeatedly, berated and tazed at least twice, while already subdued on the ground.

The kicking and stomping of my head and body continued while I was being handcuffed, ridiculed, and humiliated in front of my daughter and many onlookers. Another officer grabbed my hand while I was cuffed pushing my wrist down and shoving my arms upward in some type of judo move, while telling me he would break my arm for hitting his female officer. I was then left on the ground while being searched and stood over by several police. When I was brought to my feet my shoulder felt dislocated, my face was bloody, my eyes and head extremely swollen, and body bruised from the police beating.

The officers then asked me how I liked being tazed and if it "felt good". They then told me "this is going to be another felony on your record" and "you’re going to prison now boy". After that I was rushed to a nearby police car. I was sat down to watch the officer who originally detained my 14 year old daughter proceed to grab, slam, scream and continue to berate her, blame her for what happened to her father.

The situation culminated with Andrea and Adreianna being handcuffed and taken into custody. Andrea is a honor student who recently graduated from St. Therese School, and a first week freshman at Franklin High School. She has no criminal record, respects authority, and goes to school everyday with a big pink tinkerbell backpack. Andrea is clearly not a threat to anyone’s safety, especially the police.

What happened to us that night was an obvious abuse of power. It was unjust, brutal and an easy civil rights violation. My beating and most certainly the abuse received by my daughter was unprovoked and completely unnecessary.

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More from the Freestyle Session post (in other words, I didn't write this):

Once again the Seattle Police have brutally attacked an unarmed African American male and prominent member of the Seattle music community. We need to come out and make sure this abuse gets the attention it deserves. We must demand all charges against Toby and his daughter are dropped, that the Officers who committed these acts are prosecuted, and that Toby and his daughter are compensated for the pain and suffering caused by the people who are supposedly paid to protect us.

We know DV One to be a upstanding member of our community and the music scene in general.

Here's what we learned - DV One is being prosecuted for Assault 3, a felony assault charge. His next court date is next Wednesday Sept 27th at 8:30 am at the King Country Courthouse room E1201, 516 3rd avenue, downtown Seattle. Please show up to support. We have seen this type of abuse more than too often. We need to draw the line NOW.

We have also heard that Mayor Greg Nickels has already requested an investigation of the case by the Office of Professional Accountability. This is good, but it will go nowhere unless we demand action.

Please write the following people demanding justice for Toby and his daughter. Send email to: King County Prosecutor (norm.maleng@metrokc.gov); Tom Carr (thomas.carr@seattle.gov); Asst. Chief of Police James Pugel (james.pugel@seattle.gov); David Della (David.Della@Seattle.gov); Nick Licata (Nick.Licata@Seattle.gov); Richard Conlin (conlin@speakeasy.org); Peter Steinbrueck (peter.steinbrueck@seattle.gov); Jean Godden (Jean.Godden@Seattle.gov); Jan Drago (jan.drago@seattle.gov); Richard McIver (richard.mciver@seattle.gov); Sally Clarke (Sally.Clark@seattle.gov); Mayor Greg Nickels

PLEASE FWD THIS MESSAGE TO ANYONE WHO YOU FEEL WILL SUPPORT

Thank you for your support in this action towards justice for
DV One, his family and our community at large.

Welcome to Autumn

It’s Autumnal Equinox, so get out your copy of Coltrane’s Sound and join me in listening to "Equinox" as I do every Spring & Fall.

Not really coincidentally, it’s also Rosh Hashana AND Ramadan. For my feelings on this convergence, which also happened last year, see this post, which is surprisingly entertaining for a post about sin, repentance & ethnic identity.

Which reminds me: even though George Allen turns out to technically be a member of the tribe, he is still questionable as a human being. I lived in Virginia when he was originally running for office, and my main memory of him was that in his campaign ads, he addressed his viewers in the second person as "folks" (e.g., "Folks, I'd sure appreciate your vote this November"). This was long before the whole "Macaca" thing, but I was already like, "this guy's up to something".

Pedagogical Utilizations of the Chicken Noodle Soup dance in Higher Education

1. I made my (elite private university) Introduction to Ethnomusicology class do the "Chicken Noodle Soup" dance on Wednesday (pedagogical rationale here). The weird part (OK, that is the weird part, but the other weird part…) was that out of 70 or so students only one had ever heard of it before. It’s amazing and intriguing to me that in this day and age a song can be that huge in New York and totally unknown in Boston. Maybe we don’t live in a Walmartian monoculture yet after all…Any theories, Jay Smooth?

2. I did appreciate Masta Ace and the "off-beat, on-beat" style he was rocking in the early nineties, and I did like his song on Heavy Rhyme Experience (an album that everyone loved at the time, but no one seems to remember now…). But I have to admit, I didn’t really dig him until the song "Saturday Night Live" (1993), which featured a nice Ramsey Lewis sample and the following angrily-delivered lines:

I got a mad knife
and I’m mad mean
I kill mad crews
I read mad magazine

"Now there’s a dude that doesn’t take himself too seriously," I thought. It was a quality that was already slipping away from hip-hop even then, and now, in 2006, it’s hard to remember it was ever there at all. But even Rakim had jokes, though he brought new meaning to the word "deadpan": "I’m the R to the A to the K-I-M / if wasn’t, why would I say I am?" You have to admit, that’s funny.

Masta Ace was also (along with Lord Finesse, of course) one of the innovators of compound rhyme in hip-hop, something that, unlike certain other MCs, Eminem has taken pains to give him credit for. Anyway, I always checked for him.

Since he’s a real MC, Ace’s lyrics have continued to evolve to represent his changing life experiences, which now means the life experience of a moderately successful hip-hop artist in his thirties. In the late nineties, he popped up on a mixtape I was listening to with a cut called "Last Breath", which contained the following lines:

I’m a sad soul
Probably rap ‘til I’m mad old
And sound like the D.O.C. with a bad cold
I’ll show a young whippersnapper rapper I’m greater
Then have to rest later
On a respirator, yo.

For you young’uns, the D.O.C. was an excellent MC out of Texas, who moved to Los Angeles, wrote lyrics for NWA, put out one totally underrated album (No One Can Do It Better (1989); "Whirlwind Pyramid" was my jam), then got his laryx crushed in a car accident, which pretty much ended his career as a performer. So this punchline is both totally offensive and also kind of bittersweet in that it does call to mind the way some of hip-hop’s best artists have been screwed by destiny and forgotten. The second part is even more poignant, in the vision that it presents. What does happen to old MC’s? The older I get, the more I appreciate the image he creates of a cranky old man with a husky, whispery voice, basically climbing out of a hospital bed to roast some cocky young MC, then getting back into bed and going to sleep. "Young whippersnapper rapper", indeed.

So anyway, I’d been meaning to buy his latest album, A Long Hot Summer, since it came out last year, but something had always held me back. Then I heard an interview with him last week on The Sound of Young America*, and took it as a sign. Good move on my part – it’s a great album. Basically it’s about being in your thirties and not really having achieved what you think you should have achieved by now. Not being despondent or bitter, necessarily, but still waiting. As Lord Finesse once put it: "I’m on that ‘get rich’ list – they just didn’t call my name yet." Many of us can relate.

On "Da Grind", Ace rhymes:

Now if you call me and I'm not around
I'm probably putting my grind down
Doing shows out of town
I be the manager, road manager, and call handler
Booking agent, choreographer and tour planner
I be the V.P. of marketing and promotions
Producer and arranger, with a range of emotions.
And after it all, I still gotta perform
At three o'clock in the morn', when half the fans are gone
But it's fine…
(adapted from www.ohhla.com)

I guarantee you that that rhyme – not the videos you see on BET, not MTV Cribs - represents the real life of the overwhelming majority of professional hip-hop artists. But who else is talking about it? Who else is being honest? How the hell did hip-hop get to the point where we even need to ask?

* The Sound of Young America describes itself as "A Radio Show About Things That Are Awesome". You should be listening to it for the following reasons:

1. It consists of interviews with comics that I like, musicians that I like and other cool people.

2.The host, Jesse Thorn is extremely knowledgeable about pretty much everything, but in a way that is sympathetic, rather than show-offy. I'll put it like this: I’ve heard him interview both the fifties comic Shelly Berman and Houston Rapper Devin the Dude in such a way as to suggest that he had known and loved both of their work for years.

3. It’s free. You can sign up for the podcast or download it at maximumfun.org

4. A lot of people, when they interview professional comedians, try to riff with them and end up getting in way over their heads. Others just play it totally straight, leaving the comic sounding completely out of their element. Jesse Thorn riffs exactly the right amount. This is an extremely subtle art, and it makes it possible to listen to the show without cringing.

Do I really need another reason to love my neighborhood?

Time: 3:30 AM this morning
Place: Flatbush Avenue
Thang: J'Ouvert (pronounced JOO-vay), the traditional opening parade/ritual/crazy street party of the West Indian Day Carnival...Non-gentrified Brooklyn represent!