Since Hova and Yeezy take the liberty of performing the track 13 times in a row, I don’t mind doing two post in quick succession to think through it. Yesterday, I did a mashup of Baldwin’s “Who’s the Nigger” over the Niggas in Paris instrumental. Today it’s a similar song.

Before the album dropped, and we unanimously turned our gaze towards the throne, I saw the track listing. Niggas in Paris. (Excuse my french, but they’re in France).

I imagined Jay and Ye’s thoughts on those imagined, in the popular consciousness, to be niggers. Those who uprooted from The States and made their homes in France. The Cullens, Bakers, Baldwins, and Robesons — whose fame and talent were more freely appreciated overseas than at home. I was amped to hear Jay and Kanye draw some parallels begin the conversations they must have in closed company and a exchanges like this one from Poitier’s Paris Blues:

The album was released. I heard the track for real. It’s an undeniable banger, barbershop to barbershop, Los Angeles, Madison, Atlanta, Heathrow Airport– everywhere I’ve been since Watch the Throne dropped — a black man has made reference to the song. No exaggeration. My younger brother, (I suspect in jest) said he wanted it to be his wedding song. I’m not going to lie — I hear the synth sound and I feel like I’m balling so hard nobody can find me.

But for something so often quoted, already so viscerally embedded in the African American consciousness, little mention is made of those treated like niggas, living in Paris. I talked to some of my students, and they were under the impression that Jay and Kanye were the only two diasporic Africans who’d ever made it to Paris. As if France were the promised land.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8TjBbnsoJ0&feature=related

I don’t intend to circumscribe pejorative or disrespectful labels around Parisian Africans, but as xenophobic/neo-racist tendencies go widely unaddressed in Paris and here in the US — I begin to ponder, who are the niggers in Paris? Who are the folks that disrupt the “traditional” French sensibilities — make polite cafe and croissants an opportunity for social introspection. Who?

A 2008 French theatrical release “The Class (Entre Les Murs)” does fairly heavy lifting around some of those questions.

So, who? The French -Algerians, -Haitians, -Senegalese? The folks from Guadelupe and Martinique, or of course, the African-American French? They Niggas in Paris? to Paris? Are they really “goin Gorillas”? Huh?

What are their coping mechanisms? What are their techniques for thriving? Are there transatlantic similarities between our existences and theirs? All questions I’d hoped to have answered by Mr. Carter and Mr. West, by the third verse at least.

No such luck. Perhaps there are answers here, in this cypher near Le Metro, where everybody seems to rep the Yankees. Pretty reflexive, considering that to two famous American rappers, NY isn’t a fantastic, idyllic destination. Paris is.

Realest bars in the song? “If you escaped what I escaped you’d be in Paris getting fucked up, too.”

Tomorrow, we go back to our general Black Future Month format. I’ll be writing about someone other than Jay and Kanye — and we’ll look towards a new day. That shit kray.

Theaster Gates is a conduit. One of those people who conducts. He carries energy most astutely, and when potential becomes kinetic, it’s best to stand back. Sorta like how it’s best to give impressionist art a few feet of distance.

Again. This time simply. Theaster Gates makes art. and science. and philosophy. and pots. Theaster Gates is a phenomenal potter. He also designs sets. And mandalas. And sings the blues. And repurposes and resources abandoned South Side Chicago properties.

When I really met him, about a year ago, in Chicago, he showed me:

a) his kitchen, living room, and music room floor — stocked from recycled bowling alley lumber.
b) the house across the street, which he was gutting, then using some of the material for visual art pieces, and some as building material — then shipping that to germany to build a gallery in a hotel. Proceeds from sales at the gallery will return to the states, and create a co-op performance venue in the original house across the street. For the community.
c) and then he showed me how he sang.

That’s as best I can do to tell you about who Theaster is, and how he operates. He’s a big brained so and so, with a penchant for using every modicum of matter (or anti-matter) as best possible, for the benefit of his people. Theaster’s a man of spirit, who injects that into all he does.

He puts it to work:
– as teaching faculty at Chicago’s Columbia College.
– as a thought leader in the “sustainable” movement
– as a man of God who sings Jesus
– as a vessel who makes vessels
– as a brother with a mean cha-cha and a whole lot of mouth piece

Theaster thinks about the future, in a way that is both tangible and ethereal. He’s a planner, quite calculated. He dreams lofty, impossible dreams, and then makes ’em happen. Over and over. He’s a behind the scenes mentor to many.

Because of how many he teaches, how tied he is to spirit, how prolific and varied are his intellectual and soulful pursuits, I couldn’t help but to link him to Howard Thurman.

Thurman’s sound byte:
– poet
– reverend
– student of and contemporary to Gandhi
– author or subject of 25 books, four published posthumously
– He was one of Dr. King’s most influential spiritual teachers.

Forgive the blasphemy, but a ‘hood analogy: Thurman was Big to King’s Jay. You can even hear Thurman’s stylistic impact as orator. See? (It’s a long clip. If you don’t have the time, listen to just a little.)

See how he sounds sorta like the Reverend Doctor and a little like TG when he sings too?

Here’s an excerpt from his Jesus and The Disinherited:

Maybe I should have just started with this quote, so that I could say: Theaster Gates writes his own working papers. And they are penned with the same fire of spirit that lived in Howard Thurman.

The real attempt of this blog series, this whole Black Future Month campaign, is to try to kick start a conversation about the usefulness of this February tradition. If Black History Month is, as it can be, treated more as a holiday and less as a time for active engagement in historical study, a good deal of its potency rubs off. We wish each other a happy Black History Month, remind ourselves of a few rote anecdotes and regret to do the intellectual work that Woodson had in mind. But it’s not as if those sorts of educational challenges aren’t right up our alley. It’s what many of us do all day, erry day, anyway.

From the kids getting their line ups deconstructing contemporary music playing “name the sample”; to the visual artists who note form, letter, context and historicity as they switch caps and do fill-ins; the dancers who extract, re-invent and innovate from the movers before; and of course the slew of PhD candidates who devote their careers to the study of African Diaspora, to the study of educational praxis, to the investigation of linguistics, to navigating the complete epistemology of the black body — we study. We like to study, we interpret and wield black history on the daily.

So, the usefulness of the tradition, then? What’s it good for? I’d like to think that, in its best incarnation, Black History Month serves as a challenge — particularly to tastemakers, artists and historians — to find new modes of communicating the black experience — present and past. I write about the future because I’m certain that when we get by, we’ll make it by. That if we do our work right, now, the youngest of us will be the best of us — will be the most adept at telling our stories, will employ the right technologies, will speak truth in the right time, and for the widest audiences.

And when I see work like what Oakland Based BUMP Records and The Factory’s youth did with their Summer ’11 video and audio project — pffft. It makes it easy to be faithful. And invest in my own diligent study. ‘Cause the youngest ones are on their game.

BUMP/The Factory Manager Jason Jakaitis wrote me few months back with a write up of their youth’s involvement with The Huey P. Newton Foundation. When I read what he wrote up, I knew it’d be a perfect fit for Black Future Month.

“For the HPN partnership, twelve youth from The Factory and BUMP Records took the Black Panther Legacy Tour with David Hilliard. The Factory filmmakers supplemented what they learned from Mr. Hillard with reading assignments from the Huey P. Newton reader and Hilliard’s biography, and then they developed a plan for the documentary project. They wrote, shot and edited the film in six weeks. It’s called History in These Streets:

Part of our summer project was also to learn web-native storytelling techniques (videos made specifically for the internet that take advantage of the web’s capacity for interactivity, engagement, immediacy, etc) and to serve as beta-testers for a new open-source software that Mozilla was developing. Thus, along with the documentary, our youth produced an interactive video that would serve the mission of our partner orgs. For HPN, the filmmakers used Mozilla’s software to devise a “virtual walking tour” that visits eight of the sites on the Black Panther Legacy Tour – they combined Hilliard’s audio interview with Google Street view, some historical images, and other online resources to create an enriching, interactive experience.”

Take the Virtual Tour by clicking here: HISTORY IN THESE STREETS TOUR . (Best viewed in Chrome or Firefox).

I think explaining to you why I think this is Black Future is pejorative. You understand that it’s important that young folks of color are beyond literate, at masterful, in the latest technologies. You feel me when I say it’s crucial that they’re employing these tech advancements to best understand the history of the physical and liminal space they occupy.

Here’s to the legacy of the Black Panther Party, and the ideals of freedom they’ve invested in Black Future. Here’s to the young filmmakers, audio technicians and musicians at BUMP and The Factory, who show us how to participate, fully, in tradition. And turn it into ritual.

This is not a comparison post. I’m wary of that.

I saw Alice Smith perform last night at Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles. The lady is a stunner. She’s poised, graceful, down home, a little bit silly: a phenomenal voice at the onset of a tremendous career. Georgia raised, Brooklyn inhabitant, Alice Smith is the real deal. She’s one album in, another’s on the way. Her first opus “For Lovers, Dreamers and Me”, stayed in heavy Nak rotation for most of 2008 and the better part of 2009. I’ve been waiting, a bit impatiently, to see what her sophomore effort would yield. I went, with a good friend, to check out her show. Hotel Cafe is an intimate venue, ’bout the size of Sutra (for the New York readership) and, hmmm, maybe the size of Vitus (for the Oakland fam). Under dim light, with spare accompaniment, the sorceress took the stage. She’s unassuming, but her voice is epic. A little sad. Fine, a lot sad. In performance, there are few who share her timbre, range, lyricism and ability to emote. But the hyper-empaths in the audience felt her for sure: tears, shouts of joy, deep sighs of release after nearly every tune. This one got me:

This one got the woman standing next to me, and her partner:

I’ve felt that same reaction to expressivity only once before, as a child, the first time I heard Phyllis Hyman. And that’s why this is not a comparison post. I’m hesitant to draw parallels to the tragedy at the end of Hyman’s life. Plus Phyllis Hyman’s impact is almost too large to speak, and Alice Smith has yet to reach such acclaim. There’s time yet.

I watched this interview of Ms. Smith with ReelBlack (after one of her shows in Philly) and then saw a much earlier interview with Ms. Hyman and Ms. Susan Taylor for Essence. I was astounded by the parity, particularly the thoughts both performers have on the music industry — I hear the vocalists, though split by 30 years or so, in conversation. Trading.

For good measure, and so you can see Phyllis as I feel her, Phyllis Hyman Live in Tokyo:

Black Future Month salutes the genius of Phyllis Hyman, and acknowledges Alice Smith, a sorceress brimming with decades of potential. Can’t wait to see her sing blues in the future. Her next effort, “The Last After” is out soon. But never soon enough.

It’s Saturday evening, and you’re ready to hit the club, aren’t you? Stop lying. You’ve got your hair all coiffed, your nails all did, and you’re sitting in your room watching Youtube videos at full MacBook volume as pregame. Am I right?

Okay, fine. Maybe you’re like me, and your club days are dwindling. Perhaps you spend your weekends… I dunno, blogging, taking in sophisticated art gallery openings, tackling chunks of your thesis or dissertation, and skyping with potential funders?

Or perhaps you toggle the line in between, cross fading between intellectual pursuits and physical.

Either way, you recall the last time you danced. The DJ had turntables and command of a crowd that longed to move. Did you watch the parquet? Did you consider the crowd? Did your mind start wheeling on the migratory patterns of movement, or did your eye simply dart to that one woman, who moved deftly between contemporary and traditional, between afro-caribbean and jooking? If she was gigging tough, and looks like she was trained, there’s a high likelihood that she was schooled in The Dunham Technique.

Katherine Dunham, perhaps the world’s best known Ethno Choreologist, was both academic and practitioner, intent on investigating, documenting, and canonizing African Diasporic movement. The Dunham Technique, among other things, is a synthesis of Afro-Caribbean movement and ballet as it is typically expressed in European and North American contexts. Dunham, a celebrated star of film and stage, a respected scholar, activist and educator passed in 2006 and is survived by her 82 year dance legacy.

Comparing Ms. Dunham to a contemporary practitioner, someone who inherited aspects of her style, is a redundant feat. I’d be hard pressed to find any black dancer that is not in some way tied to her history. Instead, I’d like to present what I’m calling The Dunham Technics — an opportunity for you, reader, to play, to act as DJ. You’ll mix between interviews Dunham gave late in life and footage of her younger days on screen, in conversation with her contemporaries as well as young, black dancers who are setting trends for the future, and whose styles exist outside of the traditional American Ballet. As I gathered the video, and began selecting, I was fascinated to notice the intersections of her words, and the bodily articulation from all over the world. In the videos below, dancers from countries like Senegal, Sweden and Haiti and cities like Oakland, New York, Memphis and Paris help to draw parallels. Shouts to YAK Films for doing the epic work of chronicling many of the dancers highlighted in these clips, and for the BFM style old-to-new dance video update you’ll see on the decks.

My hope is that before you go out tonight, you’ll take a few minutes, try your hands on the 1s and 2s, and comment below about what you noticed. It’s like the club. Sorta. A book club. For dancers. Who like video, and thinking. Like you. Here are some of my favorite mashups.

Feel free to play around, though. Wheel it back when you wanna. Just be careful not to delete any of the videos. Errybody’s sharing.

Oh, and wait til I get my money right and Thickwit steps its game up to infinite scroll. Til then, apologies to you and to my site designer, Adriel, for spinning out the margins.

I spend a lot of time writing about how dope Oakland is. Oh, Oakland, you’re so amazing. Everybody wishes they could be from you. Oh, Oakland. I love you so much. Oh, Oakland, walk me home and carry my books and whisper sweet occupy nothings in my ear. Oakland you’re the fantastic. Someone should write a song about how lovely your eyes are. And it’s true. ‘Cause you are, Oakland. And I know you know I love you enough to leave. See new things, meet new people, spend time building in other cities. Cheat on you a little. So here’s something that I don’t say very much in print, ’cause a lot of people already know.

Brooklyn is ill. [cue Brooklyn Thickwit readership licking shots, buck buck.] But BK knows, requires no affirmation. She is quite secure in herself — the outdoor concerts in the summer, the over crowded afro hangouts with patios and patois, the music, the music some more, the tight dark bodies that smell of rosemary and plum wine, the short blocks with tall brownstones, the fast talking young women pressed for time, the pressed hair, the beanies, the block, the popeyes, the park, the fridays at the museum, the sedans pushed by physicists from other countries, dollar vans, quarter waters, wrought iron fences, halal take out, cetera…

Brooklyn is full of cetera. The ephemeral, unnamed, beauty darting between trees, tragedy unspeakable, cetera. I lived there for a spell. Fell hard and fast, in love with a city not my own. Simultaneously reminded of The Town (oh, Oakland, sigh sigh, shrug) and challenged, outside of my comfort zone.

I met Terence in Brooklyn, against that backdrop, which is important. I’m folks with his folks. While taxi cabs were hailed outside his door, we caught up and discussed intellectual crushes. I’ve had a few. Him too. He told me he was working on a film about love. We swapped vimeo plays for about an hour, mutually inspired. We parted paths. I had a date. He had editing to do. That was it.

But this is Terence. And as you can see, he’s probably a genius. I mean, look at his hair. People who aren’t smart aren’t smart enough to know that hair should do that.

Terence Nance does a lot of things. He composes. He acts. He’s the lead singer in a group called Terence Etc. and The Et Cetera. He’s part of the MVMT collective. He’s also a filmmaker. Since our brief interaction, the love film he was working on, his most celebrated effort, “An Oversimplification of Her Beauty” premiered at Sundance. That’s right. One of the most important film festivals, ever. Hope you caught wind of it during the Red Tails frenzy. In case you didn’t, here’s the trailer for the flick.

I love the animation best, mostly cause it looks how Brooklyn feels to me. Gorgeous, pained, dark, sinewy, complex. The music (which Terence wrote) moves me in the same ways. I realize how much of our art is informed by place, and though this film is a black love story, it is more specifically a New York black love story, which is neccessarily different than similar films made Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles.

I was reminded of one of my favorite scenes in Charles Burnett‘s masterpiece, Killer of Sheep.

Burnett, regarded by many as a master of film, sets his graphic, beautifully shot tale in his home, Watts. This film, as much about plot as it is about place, helped to set a cinematic standard after its 1977 release. Here’s the trailer to the film, so you can see a bit more of what moves me.

I draw an instant connection between Nance and Burnett’s work, but have a hard time articulating. I spelled on both sets of images overnight and pondered how best to write about them today. Some friends and I laughed late into the evening about painting about music, or dancing about singing. Seems equally foolish to write about movies — but I try. And where I fail, spirit steps in.

I woke this morning to a new (to me) video by Shabazz Palaces. I’d never heard of them before, though a fan of the Digable alum in the group. A friend put me on in the wee hours of morning — and when I checked the video, noticed the overlap — the love thematic, the animation in the general trajectory of Nance’s, and a direct head nod to Killer of Sheep. Give thanks. The most high connects the dots, sometimes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=VMZKPaSF0GE

Oh, and the friend that puts me on lives in Oakland, so that’s nice triangulation, too. Sometimes my city is the missing link. And I’m okay writing that, lusting after Brooklyn, from my little apartment in LA.

Thickwit applauds artistic polyglots like Nance, who speaks film, music, animation, and being fly fluently. We thank Burnett, still living in Watts, for his contribution to International Film.

And I thank you reader, for stopping by. If you like what you read, let a friend know. Put ’em on this Black Future Month hype, today. Tomorrow’s arriving faster than you know.

RyanNicole is a champion. And if I end the post there, you really have all of the information you need. No hyperbole. Real spit.

Which is, perhaps, for what she’s best known. Spitting real, that is. Let’s put to the side, for a very brief moment, that Ryan is also an accomplished thespian, record setting track and field athlete, one of the youngest non-profit Executive Directors in the Bay Area and a compelling civic leader. Just put it on the back burner and consider, for a moment, her talent as a lyricist. Start here, with a clip from Thizzler on the Roof:

She’s beastly my dude — bar for bar, metaphor for metaphor, one of the most skilled rappers out. Ever. On breath control alone. But I digress. I’m not spotlighting RyanNicole simply to brag on how dope Oakland born, Montera educated, non-profit workin’, black female emcees sometimes are. I decided to feature Ryan’s talents after I saw this clip of Dinah Washington singing a Bessie Smith cover.

I considered the darting fire in Ms. Washington’s eyes, the reckless abandon of the lyrics, the rancor and ire softened to a palatable note. I knew I’d seen those characteristics on stage before, and realized Ryan Nicole employs those qualities every time she touches a mic.

I see the heritage so clearly: how Bessie’s candor influences Dinah’s phrasing. How blueprints left by these blues women affect black girls, now. I consider the lineage: what happens to emcees in the future? Who carries on their legacy, and how?

I thought about one of my favorite books, ever. (I never shoulda loaned it to that one brilliant, scholar — bring me my text back, blud). Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, a scholarly, soulful work by Angela Davis investigates the lyrics, performance and performativity of Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday. In an excerpt, below, Davis tracks the feminist traditions inherited and employed by these women.

I can’t help but to draw the parallel to the way that RyanNicole rocks; how that womanist sensibility makes its way to her portrayal of characters on stage, in her leadership in the non-profit sector, and of course as she moves crowds behind a skillfully cupped mic. Seems very Bessie-esque, don’t it?

Shouts to Ryan Nicole, who sets a standard for lyric slanging females, who’ll exist generations fro now. Thickwit honors your Black Future.

If it were 1926, and I were Carter G. Woodson, I’d be trying to convince a host of first time practitioners of the merit of Negro History Week. If it were 1976, I’d be of the first to celebrate Black History Month. It is 2012, and yes, ever important for Africans living in diaspora to probe our own histories. Perhaps, though, the best way to honor folks like Woodson — oft quoted as he expressed hope that Negro History Week would “outlive its usefulness” —  is to innovate on the idea. For the second year in succession, Thickwitness will run a blog series called Black Future Month.

Here, our task is two fold. We laud young, gifted, black futurists: those innovating in their respective fields and pushing towards the time to come. We also honor the pioneering ancestors and elders who set precedents in the arts, humanities and politics. Join us daily in February 2012 as we salute 29 tastemakers and their 29 forbearers. It’s a leap year, and in the future, the people can fly.

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I am Oaklandish // 26 // Chaya Gusfield, Rabbi

October 7th, 2011

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