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Entry for August 08, 2007
On the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: A Reply to Marvin X By J. Vern Cromartie Once again, you have demonstrated great insight about a crucial problem which has plagued Black social movements since the days of Marcus Garvey, namely brothers killing brothers over disagreements. History indicates that Noble Drew Ali, a leader of the MoorishAmerican Temple was killed by brothers; James W. H. Eason, a former leader of the UNIA, was killed by brothers; and Malcolm X, a former leader of the Nation of Islam, was killed by brothers. We also know that the infamous split in the Black Panther Party led to Samuel Napier and Robert Webb being killed by brothers. As you have said, the time has come for brothers with opposing points of view and from opposing parties to sit down to reason together and not let things get out of hand and break down into Black-on-Black violence. It is clear that Black men and Black women with social consciousness must practice nonviolence with each other and one another as we interact and address the issues of the day. As Black men and Black women, we must learn to agree to disagree on some issues and not want to kill each other and one another over a disagreement. To do otherwise is to continue to perpetuate the slave mentality which reduced proud African people into self-hating caricatures who believed the folk saying that, "A N--- ain't s---." Clearly, we must learn from the mistakes of the past and build a new future forour people that will allow the descendants of ChaunceyBailey and the descendants of Yusef Bey to be able tohave a viable future inside the belly of Amerikkka. © J.V. Cromartie 08/2007
Spoken Words Greetings Marvin and Vern, this is my response to your essays. I didn’t hate Yusef Bey and certainly not the members of that community even though I was raised in the Nation of Islam—Temple 26 in San Francisco. I didn’t understand all the guns and bravado and threats and exhorting, but I had a few friends who were members and former members of Your Black Muslim Bakery. One brother I knew graduated from law school but couldn’t pass the bar. He’d been put through school by Dr. Bey. A sister friend had a child with him. He liked “high yella women”, and she fit the bill. I also had a student one summer in an English class who was best friends with Bey’s son who’d been shot and was suffering a slow death in a hospital bed. Back home after being away at college, she spoke about cheering her friend up who was threatening to take his life.
When a friend told me about clients she’d had who’d “been raped by Dr. Bey” and the threats that met their parents’ attempts to report the crimes, I stopped shopping at his bakery for years. My brother said Bey might be a criminal, but most of the people we transact business with [in our daily lives] probably were also. So after a few years, I began to buy fish sandwiches again. I still wondered, when he ran for mayor of Oakland, why the black clergy embraced him? How could an [alleged] child molester and rapist possibly be good for the City of Oakland? The man’s empire reminded me of Jim Jones’ “Peoples Temple” and Charles "Chuck" Dederich Sr.’s “Synanon”. All three of these organizations had charismatic leaders with noble aspirations. But as they say, absolute power corrupts absolutely. The organizational structures which they founded did much good, especially for young men and women and single female heads of household who needed help raising their children. A former member of the Peoples Temple who escaped the murders in Jonestown, said the community Jones’ founded was wonderful. It was the man who was mad. Perhaps it was the same with Dr. Bey. Perhaps madness is a causality of power—look at George W. Bush. Perhaps it’s as Marvin X suggests errors of youth. Peter Pan’s trouble in “Neverland”, as leader of the Lost Boys was that he was too young. He had no guidance. No matter how much children protest and act as if they know how to run things, even their lives—clearly such is not the case [Editors note: Perhaps this mirrors the case of Yusuf Bey IV who said he was "inexperienced in the business world," and had "received advice and consultation from those who had proven to me they did not have my best interests at heart."]. The demise of the Your Black Muslim Dynasty is the result of a lack in institutional vision and guidance; the kind of vision that comes with maturity. However maturity is not intelligence. Maturity denotes an ability to weigh options against one’s experiences and another’s experiences. To develop a problem solving mechanism that doesn’t always dictate action. Energy at rest is still energy. By this I mean, inaction is action. Sometimes, when one is angry or frustrated, inaction—a pause until clear thought is possible— is the best response, rather than an action which might destroy equilibrium.Words are powerful and just like bullets words are not retractable once they are spoken or written. Words can kill. I think of Edsel Matthews’ heart attack when he found out he was losing Koncept’s Cultural Gallery and was being evicted. However, unlike bullets, one can negotiate words when fired off tongues, leave lips, fly off the edges of keypads or Internet signals in cyberspace. Unlike bullets words contain buffers. But like bullets they can be random, so the specificity of the language allows one to address another person directly alleviating the possibility of mistakes. Even when the person in question is one whom the first person might see as antagonist or enemy, with knowledge and reason the battle is waged and the best argument wins out when all is equal; when all is fair. The difference between bullets and conversation is that a killing thought is happening only in the antagonist’s head. The target might be aware of the danger, but you can bet that if any of the nine persons shot between August 2 and August 5 in Oakland knew they were the object of scorn, they would have taken the opportunity to address the murderous thoughts in the minds of the shooters, whether those hurting thoughts for the victims were either earned or misguided.
Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Bayard Rustin, Marcus Garvey—all possessed the word power to make even the most violent men stay their hands. True that, when the battle moved from the theoretical to the actionable they were killed. But this shows that their weapon of choice—words, were just as provocative as the bullet. Remember when war was dirty, a soldier actually could and did get bloody? Now the battle is sterile. Murderers often don’t even touch the person killed—the gun an extension of their hand. It’s a wildcard—the bullets are free agents without allegiance. Bullets don’t love anyone. Bullets honor no one. So we see the analogy between bullets and words. Language is personal. Words bring the combatants face to face. The goal - if not the victory - is understanding. In the case of violence the goal is to vanquish. But in terms of black on black violence, African people must understand that we have the same enemy, and the feud predates all of us now living. Many wars are lost from the inside out. Must we be our own worst enemies?
The best marksman is nothing compared to the most articulate orator. Look at Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglas, Boukman and Fatiman, James Baldwin, Ida B. Wells, Fanny Lou Hammer,
It’s scary talking. Many people, especially young people, are so choked up they no longer speak, they grunt like animals. The easier response to terror or insulted valor is violence. Violence is the non-thinking response. Violence is the default act. Violence has become like breathing! One doesn’t have to think to breath. The autonomous nervous system keeps the systems functioning for the health and well-being of the body like any well made program. So what about an autonomous system where violence is breath? When it’s connected to the lymphatic system and circulatory system – the beating heart and the immune system? What has essentially happened is a conditioning process whereby the body is conditioned to act without thought. We don’t talk because we’re afraid. We’re afraid we’re being punked out. That somehow if we humble ourselves, compromise or give the benefit of the doubt this otherwise compassionate response signifies weakness.
If thoughts were a part of the schema then violence would be replaced with words, the actual tool or weapon of choice for those who think. Blacks need to recognize and accept that we are a nation within a nation. Bush doesn’t ask permission from other countries to make the decisions that effect the well being of the United States. Each and every African in America has the responsibility to communicate with each other about each other and we have a duty to seek the wisdom of those who know more than we do. I wonder how many black youth know this? I was listening to Democracy Now on KPFA this morning and they were playing work from the archives dating back 50 years. This morning Paul Robeson was speaking about how he ended up in Britain, and how it was a different kind of racial violence there. Then, James Baldwin spoke about how people live up to one’s expectations of them, especially if one respects the other’s opinion of oneself. Thursday’s murder of Chauncey Bailey and the other less famous youth killed in the subsequent days over that same weekend, (seven in total) is a trend we need to halt before anymore people are killed. If Baldwin was right, who’s expectations were these murderers living up to?
“Without Sanctuary” is a catalog of photographs of lynchings in America. I am developing a course on the Poetics of Rap and looking at Tupac Shakur’s body of work and the politics or aesthetics of the genre. By genre I mean the stylistic discourse used by his segment of our community and the language of such discourse. Is what’s going on in Oakland a reflection of this discourse or is the violence simply a form of language, more like a symptom of the mis-education of black youth forced to “create” a culture where children no longer have words at their disposal? When did we start lynching each other? Baba Hugh Masekela spoke about the war in Dafur yesterday at a free concert at Stern Grove in San Francisco. He said Dafur is a global catastrophe. Kids are getting killed on the streets of Soweto and Johannesburg everyday also. After the wonderful concert, people mingled and were feeling hopeful and powerful and joyous. I saw many old friends, among them Greg Bridges who asked me if I’d heard about Sister Ayanna’s sons, who’d been shot the night before and of whom one was killed. I hadn’t heard about this tradgedy but I was aware that Sister Ayanna and Brother Shaka had already lost one of their sons less than two years ago. And now two more shot and one dead? Khatari Gant was sitting with his brother and friend in a van near his house when someone shot 16 bullets into the driver’s side of the vehicle killing him and wounding the others. His parents are former members of the Black Panther Party and the Republic of New Afrika, so I know Khatari led an articulate life. Given the chance, he might have been able to resolve the conflict. But for some words are too risky—after all change takes diligence and not much real thought goes into cowardice. One word could change one’s life. It could change the direction of one’s life and for many, this is scary. This may be the reason why the language of bullets has taken the place of words as tools for liberation. -- By Wanda Sabir © 08/2007
The Muze “Jazz Fans Decry Exclusion” Two key events in mid-2007 caused a storm of controversy in the Bay Area jazz community: the under-representation of African American musicians in the compilation of artists for the Yoshi’s 10th Anniversary CD, and the under-representation of African American musicians in the artist line-up for the City of Berkeley and Berkeley Jazzschool-sponsored 2007 Downtown Berkeley Jazz Festival. We remain troubled by these events and their aftermath, and by the persistent misperceptions about the motivations of those from our community who initially responded to these events. We The Undersigned… We, the undersigned, have come together to address what we see as a general lack of presence of African Americans in Bay Area institutional, commercial and media jazz programming. We see this lack of African American presence as explicit and implicit exclusion of our artistic and cultural contributions to music created and developed in our community, and this state of affairs has very real economic and artistic impacts on us. In order to better support those institutions and venues that truly reflect a commitment to this music, we feel the public should be aware of what we set out below. Comprised of a collaborative of Bay Area African American musicians and supporters of considerable artistic strength and integrity, and mindful of our fundamental responsibilities to the music and our cultural heritage, we seek to clarify the issues. This document forms part of our response. Response to the Events In this response, we lift the public discussion of these issues above the level of accusations of “decrying” the current state of affairs, of “playing the race card,” and above innuendo about African American musicians seeking preferential treatment in hiring. Instead, we focus on certain majority culture assumptions about the music and its roots that pervade the issues before us. We remain critical for very important reasons. We do not wish to see the Downtown Berkeley Jazz Festival (“DBJF”), the Jazz School, or Yoshi’s “close down.” We want to see these notable Bay Area organizations and other institutions continue and expand their promotions, taking into account and addressing the concerns we express here. First, the issues we are addressing are much larger than the particular issues brought forth by the above-referenced institutions and we incorporate by reference other, equally important and related concerns expressed by members of the Bay Area African American musical community. Readers of this response who are aware of what has transpired might dismiss the omissions by each of these notable Bay Area jazz institutions as “oversights” and “mistakes.” We see these “oversights” and “mistakes” as indicative of underlying majority culture myopia, and perhaps arrogance, that results, for example, in skewing and distorting public perceptions about the role that African American musicians play in the history and performance of the music. The DBJF, Yoshi’s and others may consider a simple realignment of musicians a satisfactory remedy to the broad criticism they themselves have engendered. We feel that merely “changing the numbers” in the artist line-ups will not solve the underlying problems. Numbers alone aren’t as effective as they are in conjunction with creative awareness and honest policy changes. Jazz And Its Participants Jazz is a positive, forward-looking expression and an African American cultural treasure. Indeed, the 100th Congress of the United States passed H.Con.Res. 57, introduced by the Honorable John Conyers Jr., which designated jazz “as a rare and valuable national American treasure”. Jazz affirms the expansiveness and the diversity of the human spirit by creating an artistic and cultural environment that promotes awareness, cooperation, diligence, creative intimacy, discipline, cross-cultural exchange and improvisational mastery. It is a dynamic music that offers much to all of its serious participants. For African American musicians, this music conveys cultural identity, legacy and history. This is our baseline “stake” in the music. Jazz history tracks, and is embedded in, African American history. Dedicated non-African American musicians here, as well as musicians from all over the world, recognize the spiritually powerful and musically liberating qualities in jazz; they seek to acknowledge its source, adapt it to their particular contexts, play the music and master it. However, their cultural identity stake in the music will not be threatened when the music is marginalized and devalued. African Americans are being systematically excluded from local jazz performance institutions and venues and thereby erased from the public’s consciousness. Music Business Practices Some of the greatest African American jazz artists, canonized by these same institutions, endured tremendous social and musical opposition; many died poor, ill-regarded or penniless. Their masterworks are often controlled by usurious or sometimes simply cynically motivated corporations and entities who feel free to “own” and dispense the “product” without regard to the fact that these cold practices, continuing today throughout all levels of the business of music, incalculably harm the legacy of all musicians. Having such control of these historical contributions and artistic output of African Americans allows these entities to, in Orwellian fashion, re-write the legacy of the music and its African American progenitors in the name of economic license. What is unabashedly valued by the multi-billion dollar music industry is the bottom line, and not creative, enduring music. This suppresses the dissemination of creative music and blunts the public’s taste for it. We live in a time that insists on the “wisdom of the market,” in a time when most all of our personal, social and cultural interactions are measured by the dollar. It is axiomatic that the market is not inclined to address African American concerns regarding issues of representation and fairness. For instance, jazz is by no means a “popular,” money-making, music, and therefore the market deems it, and its constituency, insignificant. Yet people who measure the value of jazz solely in terms of unit sales and economic metrics are casualties of these same “free market,” consumerist philosophies poisoning how we determine and nurture what is significant in our lives. In these terms, jazz has been “dead” for a long time, but it also flows from this corporate approach that music that is most popular and economically lucrative is most valuable and most important. Can anyone argue that this truly is the case? We see national and local jazz media and public media outlets ignore their responsibility to competently disseminate what is exciting, challenging, aesthetically stimulating and culturally significant about the music. Jazz radio and television, at the forefront of providing the public with “the sound of surprise,” seldom rises above the level of tepid programming and promotion of undeserving imitators over the African Americans who are front and center to the music. When moved to cover the music, Bay Area print media publish perfunctory articles written predominantly by non-African Americans who know next to nothing about jazz and its cultural value. The media remain a powerful engine of distortion, and collude with “market forces” and others to marginalize who we are and what we have done. The circumstance of public and commercial institutions like nightclubs involved with jazz programming implicitly or explicitly excluding African American musicians, and at the same time de-linking African American cultural aesthetics from the music's genesis and development, is an old and dismal story. Music Education Institutions We see the national and local education establishment abetting this systemic exclusion of African Americans in two key areas: teaching practices and educational hiring practices. The same majority culture assumptions that harm us in the market place, harm us in the classroom. The institutions of learning that offer, for instance, jazz courses without a discussion of the continuing social context of the music are doing a disservice to their students, the public, and to the music they purport to teach. More tragically, there is hardly an acknowledgment that such “deeper” teaching of jazz is even necessary. How can students fully understand the musical and cultural impact of a Duke Ellington or a Sun Ra without knowing anything of what it meant to survive as an African American musician back then? And, absent this contextual knowledge, how are students to understand these musical and cultural impacts in terms of what the African American musician faces today? The dearth of African American music professors, teachers and related curricula at schools and universities feeds the majority culture assumptions that 1) African Americans are not qualified to teach this music, 2) African Americans are not needed to teach this music, and 3) African American history is not a central component of this music. Are African American musicians today, for whom this particular and on-going history resonates, relegated to being mere bystanders in the development of the music because that history is deemed no longer important? Even on purely foundational and pedagogical levels it should be the challenge of every student of jazz to understand how this history--those who made it and those who continue to Given the above harmful educational practices, it is no wonder that some of these assumptions go so far as to imply that jazz and blues, and indeed much of African American “art,” came about and can be adequately described solely as a reaction to an oppressive dominant culture (e.g., the “peculiar institution” and its successors), rather than as a positive cultural transmission of African legacy. In this enlightened, so-called “post-racial” age, now that America seems convinced it no longer “oppresses” its minority populations, jazz no longer needs be African American because its assumed African American raison d’etre (racial oppression) has been extinguished. Confronting these closed-circuit majority culture assumptions inevitably results in questions like the exasperated “What are they ‘decrying’ now?” or “Why does this always have to be about race?” In Conclusion We are determined to move forward, collectively and individually, with strategies to bolster those institutions and venues that present the music truthfully, create new institutions and organizations to counter the inadequate venues available to us presently, and to effect change in that which harms our artistic, economic, and cultural direction. We applaud those who can reach outside of their cultural, racial, gendered roots to see what others see. This sort of empathy and intelligence is absolutely imperative if all of us, together, are to successfully navigate the hazards of intercultural blind spots like those highlighted by these recent events. It is disheartening to encounter people and institutions who, against all reason and concept of cultural respect, continue to devalue and marginalize African Americans by dismissing our contributions and our concerns as, respectively, trivial and temporary. Finally, jazz has been and continues to be open to all who have the willingness to hear it, the willingness to humble themselves to the task of apprehending it, the willingness to export its aesthetic benefits, and the willingness to honestly acknowledge the centrality of the African American identity in its creation and evolution. Those who do not rob, each of us of our cultural history, our musical legacy, our indisputable artistic contributions, and our means of economic survival. RESOLUTION
WHEREAS current events have made it eminently clear that there is a lack of understanding, willingness and commitment to employing the artistic talents and services of African-American musicians; and
WHEREAS blues, jazz, gospel, pop music and other related musical forms were created by African-Americans; and
WHEREAS the exclusion of African-Americans in performance and educational opportunities is totally unjust and compromises the integrity of the music; and
WHEREAS, we feel that open dialogue will serve the purpose of expanding the minds of employers (club owners, festival committees, show producers, etc.) to a broader understanding and sense of fairness in hiring policy and practice. We strongly believe that this dialogue will create an atmosphere in which a more equitable balance in employment for all musicians can be reached. NOW THEREFORE we, a group of diverse artists and supporters, resolve that it is now our responsibility to put in place a system whereby dialogue is used to correct these areas of gross injustice. ©8/6/07 2007-08-08 13:30:57 GMT
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