Wanted! Smart Negroes

From CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

Critical Noir: Wanted! Smart Negroes
By Mark Anthony Neal

Washington PostNewsweek Interactive recently launched the interactive site The Root. Ostensibly a partnership with Henry Louis "Skip" Gates to promote the latest incarnation of his black "celebrity DNA" project, the site features a virtual cavalcade (literally) of smart Negroes. We can thank our man Barack for this.

With the Illinois Senator confounding pundit expectations about the legitimacy of his candidacy and the perceived capacity for non-blacks to support his campaign, there's suddenly a need for highly articulate Negroes, who are actually armed with some quantitative and qualitative data. So unlike the Don Imus, Michael Richards or even the Jena 6 controversies--where the clear desire seemed to be to create spectacles around racist transgressions and Negroes who love to agitate--the Barack moment actually demands some sophisticated political analysis (read: Civil Rights Leaders need not apply). For example, in recent weeks political scientists such as Melissa Harris Lacewell and Paula McClain have weighed in thoughtfully on the issues of race, gender and white supremacy with regards to the barbed exchanges between the Clinton and Obama camps, in venues as diverse as Democracy Now! and CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees. Such opportunities did not consistently exist prior to the Barack moment.

Read Full Essay at CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

Notes from a Soul Jazz Summit

from Critical Noir @ Vibe.com

Notes from a Soul Jazz Summit
by Mark Anthony Neal

Historically Soul Jazz—a species of the Jazz tradition that is actively in conversation with Soul and Rhythm & Blues music—has been given short shrift by jazz traditionalists. Often thought of as the precursor to jazz fusion—and thus the end of all civilization for some—Soul Jazz and its most popular practitioners, including organists Jimmy Smith and “Big” John Patton, guitarist Grant Green, and alto saxophonist Julian "Cannonball" Adderley are rarely mentioned alongside more traditional jazz elites. Recently Duke Performances, under the direction of Aaron Greenwald, paid tribute to Soul Jazz and its legacy with A Soul Jazz Summit, featuring the Dr. Lonnie Smith Trio and saxophonists Houston Person, David “Fathead” Newman, and North Carolina native Lou Donaldson. The concert was the kick-off event for Duke Performances’ six week series Soul Power! From Gospel to the Godfather.

For some, Soul Jazz wasn’t art, but simply good time music that anybody could play. I have all too vivid a memory of a clerk at the old Lincoln Center/66th street Tower Records in NYC deriding the music of The Crusaders and Grover Washington, Jr. while giving advice to novice Jazz fans as to what “real” and “good” Jazz music was. Ironically many of the most popular Soul Jazz musicians of the late 1950s and 1960s came of age cutting their teeth playing Be-Bop—the so-called Holy Grail of all jazz genres. These musicians though, perhaps more than any other generation of jazz performers, were ever aware of the ways that the music was losing connection with the very communities that birthed it. Organ trios, like the one that Dr. Lonnie Smith led, which simply featured a drummer, guitarist and a Hammond B-3 player, were staples of black clubs in the 1950s and 1960s, if only because they demanded so little space.

But Soul Jazz was also music that was rooted in the everyday lives of black folk, particularly poor and working class folk, who wanted to spend their money, above all, to have a good time. Longtime Jazz Crusader and pianist Joe Sample (whose “In My Wildest Dreams” provides the sample for Tupac’s “Dear Momma”) once recalled the Crusaders opening for some Rhythm and Blues acts in a Texas barn during the late 1950s and customers, who had paid their “hard earned quarters” to “have a good time,” admonishing them (with threats of violence) about playing Hard Bop Jazz. And while some Jazz musicians indeed recorded some of their most popular tracks in the Soul Jazz idiom, to simply see their choices as catering to the marketplace, misses the point of it all. Additionally, this is not to say, that black audiences weren’t interested in Be-Bop or the Free Jazz of Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor or Pharaoh Sanders, but like many a “conscious” rapper will tell you, folk ain’t all that interested in “thinking” about their music, when they are trying to “escape” the world.



Read the Full Essay at CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

Hello Brooklyn! Thinking About Shirley Chisholm

from Critical Noir @ Vibe.com

What Would Shirley Chisholm Say?
by Mark Anthony Neal

“Hello Brooklyn!” I imagine that Bedford-Stuyvesant (Bed-Stuy, do or die…) native Shirley Chisholm might have said that when she addressed a crowd of hundreds, as she stood in front of a Brooklyn Church 36 years ago this January, to announce her candidacy for President of the United States. Ms. Chisholm, was the first black women elected to Congress in 1968 and a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC)—her announcement in January of 1972 was historic. That Ms. Chisholm is not more often recalled in our current political season is a reflection of a corporate media structure that possesses a criminally short memory (particularly in relation to black folk). Shirley Chisholm was a political maverick who held both the black political establishment and professional feminists accountable as she toiled on behalf of the poor, Black and Latino/a constituents that she represented for 14 years. I wonder what Ms. Chisholm, who died in 2005, would have said about the current debates about race and gender in the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama

Read the Full Essay at CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

William Jelani Cobb on Old-School Hateration

from the Washington Post

As Obama Rises, Old Guard Civil Rights Leaders Scowl
by William Jelani Cobb
Sunday, January 13, 2008; B01

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when "black president" was synonymous with "president of black America." That was the office to which Jesse Jackson appointed himself in the 1970s -- resigned to the fact that the actual presidency was out of reach. In 2003, Chris Rock wrote and directed "Head of State," a film about the first black man to win the presidency. (It was a comedy.) And in the ultimate concession, some African Americans have attempted to bestow the title of black president upon Bill Clinton -- a white man.

In the wake of his strong showing in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, Sen. Barack Obama has already permanently changed the meaning of that term. It is no longer an oxymoron or a quixotic in-joke. And this, perhaps more than anything else, explains his tortured relationship with black civil rights leaders.

The most amazing thing about the 2008 presidential race is not that a black man is a bona fide contender, but the lukewarm response he has received from the luminaries whose sacrifices made this run possible. With the notable exception of Joseph Lowry, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference veteran who gave a stirring invocation at Obama's Atlanta campaign rally in June and subsequently endorsed him, Obama has been running without much support from many of the most recognizable black figures in the political landscape.

That's because, positioned as he is between the black boomers and the hip-hop generation, Obama is indebted, but not beholden, to the civil rights gerontocracy. A successful Obama candidacy would simultaneously represent a huge leap forward for black America and the death knell for the reign of the civil rights-era leadership -- or at least the illusion of their influence.

The most recent example of the old guard's apparent aversion to Obama was Andrew Young's febrile YouTube ramblings about Bill Clinton being "every bit as black as Barack Obama" and his armchair speculation that Clinton had probably bedded more black women during his lifetime than the senator from Illinois -- as if racial identity could be transmitted like an STD. This could be dismissed as a random instance of a politician speaking out of turn were it not part of an ongoing pattern.

Last spring, Al Sharpton cautioned Obama "not to take the black vote for granted." Presumably he meant that the senator had not won over the supposed gatekeepers of the black electorate. Asked why he had not endorsed Obama, Sharpton replied that he would "not be cajoled or intimidated by any candidate." More recently Sharpton claimed on his radio show that the candidates' recent attention to issues of civil rights was a product of pressure from him.

Although Jackson is not entirely unfamiliar with the kind of thing that's happening to Obama -- Coretta Scott King endorsed Walter Mondale over him in 1984 -- he also got into the act. He criticized Obama for not championing the "Jena Six" cause -- the case of six young black men in Louisiana charged with beating a white classmate -- vigorously enough. After Obama's Iowa victory, Jackson demanded that the senator bolster "hope with substance."

Taken as a conglomerate, Jackson, Young, Sharpton and Georgia Rep. John Lewis represent a sort of civil rights old boy network -- a black boy network -- that has parlayed its dated activist credentials into cash and jobs. Jackson, a two-time presidential candidate, has become a CNN host; Young was mayor of Atlanta and sits on numerous corporate boards; and Lewis is essentially representative-for-life of the 5th Congressional District in Georgia. Sharpton is younger than the others but a peer in spirit.

To the extent that the term "leader" is applicable, these four men likely represent the interests of Democratic Party insiders more than those of the black community. Both Young and Lewis have endorsed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton; Sharpton and Jackson have acted ambivalent, alternately mouthing niceties about Obama and criticizing his stances on black issues.

Read the full article

***

William Jelani Cobb is an associate professor of history at Spelman College and the author of The Devil & Dave Chappelle and Other Essays.

Hillary vs. Barack: What's a Black (Male) Feminist to Do?

from CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

Hillary vs. Barack: What's a Black (Male) Feminist to Do?
by Mark Anthony Neal

That Ms. Clinton is still married to a man involved in the most visible sexual harassment case in American history, does little to enhance her viability as the candidate that could more adequately address gender inequality in our society. Where was Ms. Clinton when her husband rode workfare programs--the premise being that women who are home taking care of young children are not really working--to his reelection in 1996? In contrast to Senator Clinton though, what has Mr. Obama done, really, to justify the large number of women supporters that he has drawn to his campaign--other than be a tall, handsome, articulate and not particularly threatening version of black masculinity?

Read the Full Essay at CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

A Sunday Kind of Love: Romancing Barack Obama

from CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

“I want a Sunday kind of love, a love to last past Saturday night..."--"Sunday Kind of Love" (as performed by Etta James)

A Sunday King of Love: Romancing Barack Obama
by Mark Anthony Neal

When the legendary Etta James bought the music and lyrics of “Sunday Kind of Love” to life, she could have been singing to the fragile state of African-American psyches at the time. “Sunday Kind of Love” was recorded by James in 1961, at a moment that was increasingly defined by the demands for social and racial justice that were emanating from the American South. Indeed the song, which is credited Barbara Belle and Louis Prima (among others), is little more than an innocuous love song about desiring a love, that transcends a one night (or one primary) stand. For some African-Americans, such songs could mean so much more, often framing the critical issues in their live in a language that was easily understood. At the root of Etta James’s performance of “Sunday Kind of Love” were fears of rejection and betrayal, that resonated throughout black communities even as the most visible tenets of legal discrimination began to buckle. Was this an America that could offer African-Americans and others a “Sunday Kind of Love”? I thought about that question last Thursday night as Senator Barack Obama addressed supporters—and the nation—after his historic win in the Democratic Caucus in Iowa.

Read the Full Essay at CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

Debating the Great Debaters...Still.

from CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

"Debating" The Great Debaters
by Mark Anthony Neal

I recently weighed in on the significance of Denzel Washington's performances as Frank Lucas in American Gangster and Melvin B. Tolson in The Great Debaters. There are many who want to make critical distinctions between a Harlem drug lord—or dope dealer as Bomani Jones so eloquently asserts—and a celebrated modernist poet who happened to coach one of the most accomplished college debate teams in the 1930s. I argue though that both men, and the worlds they inhabited, provide a rich entrée into the nuanced and complicated lives that everyday black folk lead—lives that rarely get depicted via Hollywood Cinema. That said, The Great Debaters takes liberties with historical realities, often solely for the effect of creating a classic Hollywood tale. In this regard the film—despite the earnest intents of the director (Washington) and the film's producer Oprah Winfrey—does a disservice, by being dismissive of the real political struggles engaged by those depicted in the film.

Read the Full Essay at CRITICAL NOIR @ VIBE.COM

On-Line Dating with The Great Debaters and the Jena 6: A Bloggers' Roundtable

News & Notes, January 2, 2008 · Denzel Washington's latest movie, The Great Debaters, is stirring up controversy about how much it actually sticks to the historical record. Plus, members of the Congressional Black Caucus are seeking a pardon for the Jena 6.

Our panel of bloggers debate that and more; they include Casey Lartigue of The Casey Lartigue Show!, Jozen Cummings of Broke Thoughts, and Mark Anthony Neal of Critical Noir.

Listen Here


Also, William Jelani Cobb on Richard Pryor and Mudbone