Happy Memorial Day, you all. I also need to acknowledge the 100th anniversary of the Black Massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Last week included the 95th anniversary of the birth of Miles Davis. His hometown of East St. Louis, Missouri was the site of another race massacre in 1917.
So much has been written about Miles Davis. Including is his own autobiography. There have been documentaries long and short about him, so I won’t go on.
At over 10 hours this collection is still the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes his creative output. Miles was a giant in American music, and one of this nation’s most iconic and influential figures in music and culture.
In a career that spanned five decades, he kept at the forefront of many major stylistic developments in jazz. From being of the vanguards of bebop and blazing the trail of electric jazz.
The list of his collaborators is far too long, but here are just a few: Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Cannonball Adderley, Max Roach, Gil Evans, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, Philly Joe Jones, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, Wayne Shorter, John McLaughlin, and Joe Zawinul.
Miles Davis gave many of these now-legendary artists, who all appear on this playlist, their first break. Davis was tough as nails from all reports, though he seemed more than willing to imbue great vulnerability and tenderness in his playing.
Although May 30, 1868 is cited as the first national commemoration of Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery, events lead by African Americans in Charleston, SC to decorate the graves of fallen Civil War soldiers occurred on May 1, 1865, less than a month after the Confederacy surrendered.
Reports of this early version of Memorial Day or “Decoration Day” as it was called, were rediscovered in the Harvard University archives in the late 1990s by historian David Blight, author of the 2018 biography Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.
When Charleston fell and Confederate troops evacuated the badly damaged city, those freed from enslavement remained. One of the first things those emancipated men and women did was to give the fallen Union prisoners a proper burial. They exhumed the mass grave and reinterred the bodies in a new cemetery with a tall whitewashed fence inscribed with the words: “Martyrs of the Race Course.”
And then on May 1, 1865, something even more extraordinary happened. According to two reports that Blight found in The New York Tribune and The Charleston Courier, a crowd of 10,000 people, mostly freed slaves with some white missionaries, staged a parade around the race track. Three thousand Black schoolchildren carried bouquets of flowers and sang “John Brown’s Body.” Members of the famed 54th Massachusetts and other Black Union regiments were in attendance and performed double-time marches. Black ministers recited verses from the Bible.
Despite the size of the gathering and newspaper coverage, the memory of this event was “suppressed by white Charlestonians in favor of their own version of the day,” Blight stated in the New York Times in 2011.
On May 31, 2010, near a reflecting pool at Hampton Park, the city of Charleston reclaimed this history by installing a plaque commemorating the site as the place where Blacks held the first Memorial Day on May 1, 1865.
During the dedication of the plaque, the city’s mayor at the time, Joe Riley, was present to celebrate the historic occasion which included a brass band and a reenactment of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment.
In 2017, the City of Charleston erected yet another sign reclaiming the history and commemorating the event:
NBA champion and living legend Michael Jordan, along with Nike‘s Jordan Brand, is giving $1 million to Morehouse College to boost journalism and sports-related studies, according to espn.com.
The gift announced Friday was originally launched with a donation from director Spike Lee. The donation will help fund scholarships, technology and educational programming for students in those fields.
“These grants will be well-spent,” says Lee, film director, producer and alumni of Morehouse. “There’s going to be a rich legacy of storytellers who will be supported by these programs. Many people are influenced to think a certain way about Black folks based on what they see on television and in Hollywood. We’ve got to tell our story.”
The donation is part of a larger philanthropic donation by Jordan and Jordan Brand called the Black Community Commitment, which has directed donations to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Ida B. Wells Society, among other organizations.
“Morehouse is grateful to Michael Jordan and Jordan Brand for an investment in the education of talented men of color who will ensure there is equity, balance, and truth in the way sports stories are framed and the way the Black experience is contextualized within American history,” said Monique Dozier, vice president for institutional advancement at Morehouse.
“Education is crucial for understanding the Black experience today,” Jordan said. “We want to help people understand the truth of our past and help tell the stories that will shape our future.”
Darnella Frazier, the young woman who was 17 years old when she filmed on her cell phone Derek Chauvin and three other former Minneapolis police officers arrest and subsequently murder George Floyd, issued her first public statement about the tragic incident she witnessed on the year anniversary of Floyd’s death.
Frazier, who offered her testimony at Chauvin’s trial along with her video footage, helped lead to his conviction on all counts of second degree murder, third degree murder and second degree manslaughter, posted to her Facebook page yesterday:
In addition to expressing how witnessing such an atrocity and abuse of power has affected her, Frazier speaks on the value of George Floyd’s life, and what needs to change in policing and in society to prevent this kind of tragedy from happening again:
My video didn’t save George Floyd, but it put his murderer away and off the streets. You can view George Floyd anyway you choose to view him, despite his past, because don’t we all have one? He was a loved one, someone’s son, someone’s father, someone’s brother, and someone’s friend. We the people won’t take the blame, you won’t keep pointing fingers at us as if it’s our fault, as if we are criminals. I don’t think people understand how serious death is…that person is never coming back.
These officers shouldn’t get to decide if someone gets to live or not. It’s time these officers start getting held accountable. Murdering people and abusing your power while doing it is not doing your job. It shouldn’t have to take people to actually go through something to understand it’s not ok. It’s called having a heart and understanding right from wrong.
Continued praise and strength to this young woman who acted extraordinarily in extraordinary and horrifying circumstances.
To read her statement in its entirety, click above on the link to Frazier’s Facebook post or read it below:
Happy Monday from your friend and selector, Marlon. This collection features Calypso classics from the late 1930s to the 1960s, where this musical style reached many through the internationally popular recordings of Harry Belafonte.
I have included many of his predecessors: Attila the Hun, Roaring Lion, The Mighty Sparrow and Lord Invader to name but a few. Lord Invader’s “Rum and Coca-Cola” was covered with great success by the Andrews Sisters.
Another “Lord,” Lord Kitchener, was one of the longest-lasting calypso stars in history. He continued to release hit records until his death in 2000.
The roots of Calypso music started in 17th century Trinidad. The Africans brought to toil on sugar plantations, were stripped of all connections to their homeland and family, and not allowed to talk to each other.
They used calypso to mock the slave masters and to communicate with each other. It is characterized by highly rhythmic and harmonic vocals and is usually sung in a French creole and led by a griot.
While Calypso is most often danceable, there often much social commentary, and innuendo laced in the lyrics.
Hope you enjoy this collection of music that would go on to influence Ska, Rocksteady, and Reggae.
Have a great week! And as always stay safe, sane, and kind.
According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, high school senior Mariah Jones, who once lived with her mother and her older sisters at the Women’s Center & Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh, is now on her way to Vassar College in NY this fall on a full scholarship.
Jones, 18, is currently working with an astrophysicist at the University of Pittsburgh as a part of a project that endeavors to estimate the distance to other galaxies, an opportunity that came about when she cold-called Brett Andrews, a research assistant professor at Pitt.
“She had reached out to me and a bunch of other professors at Pitt,” Andrew said. “Her curiosity and her drive make her unique. She’s taken the initiative and reached out to people she doesn’t know to make an opportunity for herself.”
That opportunity culminated in a prestigious QuestBridge scholarship to Vassar. QuestBridge is a national nonprofit based in CA that connects exceptional, low-income youth with leading colleges and opportunities.
“I’ve always been a very aggressive, very strong-willed person and I’m very open to taking challenges head-on. I don’t let anything stop me.”
To see Jones talk about her interests and journey, click below:
Many may know Lorraine Hansberry as the award-winning playwright of the now-classic 1959 Broadway play A Raisin in The Sun, adapted into a 1961 movie starring Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee in 1961, and remade for television in 2008 starring Phylicia Rashad, Audra McDonald, Sanaa Lathan and Sean Combs.
Some may know of her family’s fight to end restrictive housing covenants in Chicago that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court (Hansberry v. Lee), or of her civil rights activism and advocacy for universal healthcare, women’s rights, and for the demise of colonialism and imperialism.
A few may even know of her embrace of her queer identity and desire to fight for gay rights at the end of her life.
I know all of these things because my personal connection to Lorraine Hansberry started when she became the first (and only) Black woman writer I got to read as a part of English curriculum in either middle school or high school in the 1980s.
We read Raisin In The Sun as a class in 11th grade AP English. So when my teacher Dr. Victor had his students spend our spring semester studying one author in depth of our own choosing, I chose Lorraine.
The fact that some of the best political and cultural commentary in the U.S. is coming out of from late-evening comedy shows (e.g. The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, The Amber Ruffin Show) instead of news or current affairs programs is a reality we’ll attempt to unpack another time.
Today, please take seven and a half minutes to watch Amber Ruffin brilliantly (and amusingly) break down in her “How Culture Wars and White Supremacy Go Together Like ‘Green Eggs and Ham'” segment why “culture wars” serve as a smokescreen for many politicians to avoid real issues and create policies to empower the few over the many in our Video of the Week:
Oh, and in case you missed it, John Oliver and his team pretty much hit it out of the park on the history of discrimination towards Black hair and hairstyles in the U.S:
Today being her birthday would have been reason enough to honor the life and career of the one and only Janet Jackson.
But in 2021, it’s also turned out to be once-in-a-lifetime event — the weekend Ms. Jackson has decided to sell over 1,000 personal and professional items viaJulien’s Auctions to fans and collectors alike — and donate a portion of the proceeds to children’s charity Compassion International.
(Sunday, May 16 is the last day to watch and/or bid during the auction. You can do so here.)
As a personal fan who lives in Los Angeles, I was able to go to the public display prior to the auction. Seeing her iconic outfits and costumes along with personal items from her childhood and homes was, in a word, mesmerizing.
If you’ve grown up with her like I and a lot of GenX has, it’s easy to take Janet’s legacy and prowess for granted. But when you look at the history, the music, the videos, her eras across the decades and the impact of them all represented in one place, you fully realize what a uniquely innovative, influential artist she has been, is, and always will be.
With producing partners Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Jackson has crafted some of the most insightful and inspirational — and hey, let’s say it, danceable — issue-oriented songs ever.
Today, we celebrate her contributions to elevating our consciousness and calling for action on topics such as discrimination, poverty, racism, illiteracy, domestic violence, depression, sexism and homophobia with the playlist “The Knowledge” – Janet Jackson Social Justice Music:
“Rhythm Nation” is not only represented on this list by its titular track, but also by “The Knowledge,” “State of the World,” “Livin’ In A World (They Didn’t Make)” and its connective tissue interludes, but also by “The Skin Game,” a track about racial discrimination from that didn’t make the album but was a B-side to its “Come Back To Me” single.
“Like so many Black people, I have my own stories of being profiled — of being stopped, searched and frisked twice in the same month by cops skeptical about a Black woman driving a fancy car. And you have to think, if the cops stop me, how much worse must it be for others?” she wrote. “Yet we go on.”
Janet recently revived “Skin Game” during at her State of the WorldTour, at the 2018 Essence Festival and during her Global Citizens performance in 2018. Check out the kick-ass opening sequence below:
On her 1993 Janet. album, Jackson offered “New Agenda” with Public Enemy’s Chuck D, “This Time” about domestic violence with opera singer Kathleen Battle.
On 1997’s The Velvet Rope, Janet tackled self-esteem and self-worth on “You,” the unhealthy reliance on connections made through the internet on “Empty,” feelings of depression and worthlessness “Special,” homophobia on “Free Xone” and overcoming racial and gender discrimination on the hidden track “Can’t Be Stopped.”
The depth and breadth of this album’s themes are discussed deftly by Ayanna Dozier in her book on The Velvet Rope from the acclaimed 33 1/3 series about music’s most impactful albums.
“Got Til It’s Gone” (seen below) and “Together Again” are also included because visually, this pair of Afrocentric videos were all about self-possession, expression and finding joy in the most difficult of circumstances — in South Africa during apartheid in “Got Til It’s Gone,” and healing oneself through the acknowledgement of the importance of lives of those who passed from AIDS and need to celebrate not stigmatize their lives in “Together Again.”
“What About” mixes the softness of her sweetest love songs with a hard rock edge reminiscent of “Black Cat” as she delivers a tour de force on domestic violence.
Jackson’s performance at the 1998 VH1 Fashion Awards was poignant, powerful and unforgettable:
Rounding out the playlist are the songs “Black Eagle” and “Shoulda Known Better” from her number-one album from 2015, Unbreakable, which acknowledge the work that still needs to be done, how difficult it is to overcome the complex issues of racism and abject poverty and how heart-breaking they are, but why it’s still worth trying.
Though not released as a single or official video, “Shoulda Known Better” was used by a fan to make a video tribute to the victims of the Orlando shooting in 2016, and Janet Jackson shares it as part of her official YouTube channel:
I hope I get to add new songs to this list later this year, if Janet resumes the Black Diamond Tour and releases the Black Diamondalbum, both postponed from 2020 due to the global pandemic.
Or even if she records an entirely new project, I have no doubt that in some form, Ms. Jackson’s outspoken caring and compassion for the world will come through once again.
