Wednesday, September 7 2011
In Appreciation of Nick Ashford: Love Songs, Unsung
Nikolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson stood for all that was true and eternal and clear-eyed about adult love and relationships. Romance resounded in every note.
Tuesday, June 28 2011
On Losing Superman: Gil Scott-Heron’s Rise, Fall, and All-Too-Brief Second Act
We thought Gil Scott-Heron was bulletproof. He wasn’t. We thought he’d know better. He didn’t. He was human. And I‘m New Here, not his greatest work, is his most human work.
Thursday, February 24 2011
Duke Ellington Is Heard Loud and Clear on Old 78s, Across Decades of Time
From dusty old 78s placed tenderly on the console to reissue CDs spinning easily on the latest-model boom box, Duke Ellington's music spans generations of technology and memory, as told here by the son of a 90-year-old man who loved the Duke.
Friday, January 14 2011
Lil’ Pookie’s America: Some Big Shoes to Fill
How can a kid from the 'hood today measure up to the likes of Duke Ellington? or Hank Aaron? A mythical boy from the 'hood meets these major black American figures through three recent books: 'Duke Ellington's America', 'The Last Hero' and 'Willie Mays'.
Friday, November 12 2010
Jimi Hendrix, the Patron Saint of Alt-Blackness
Forty years after his death, Jimi Hendrix looms larger - and deeper - than ever within the black cultural pantheon. Even though he wasn't really 'black'.
Friday, July 16 2010
It Was Only Yesterday L.A. Went Up in Flames
Langston Hughes’ proverbial California raisin in the sun exploded to a funky beat. I stared blankly past the familiar storefronts, into a world I could barely grasp. How civil a society was it that my daughter was about to join?
Friday, May 28 2010
Race in America, Race in Music: Different Trains, Same Two Tracks
It's an American pop music creation myth: that blues and folk music developed along two distinct tracks, with their own distinct traditions, divided along racial lines. The truth is, of course, far more slippery and complicated.
Friday, March 19 2010
Six Years in the Life of Post-Blackness (Or Not)
If the 'black' in 'post-black' means “the last 40 years or so”, black folks are clearly moving beyond that; but to the extent that 'black' means “having to deal with the same-old same-old when it comes to racial attitudes,” then we ain’t post-nuthin’.
Friday, January 15 2010
Obsessing About Black Beauty Never Goes Out of Fashion
The year 2009 saw no shortage of jumping-off points for wrestling with how black folks regard their visages, how everyone else regards black visages, and how we all negotiate the distance between the two.
Monday, November 23 2009
The Death and Rebirth of Black Glossies
Much as Ebony and Vibe crackled with the sense of discovery in their heydays, Arise feels like the magazine that’s got its finger on the pulse of today’s black pop.
Friday, September 4 2009
Ride This Time Machine Down a Road Less Traveled
Jump into that ’59 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz with the maxed-out tailfins, contemplate what an original Barbie doll could fetch on eBay, and enjoy this roll call of Reasons Why Everything Changed in 1959.
Friday, July 17 2009
The Audacity of Certain Black Ballers
The distance we’ve come from Jackie Robinson hawking Chock Full o’Nuts coffee in the ‘50s, and black A-list jocks hawking virtually anything under the sun today, is astounding.
Friday, February 27 2009
Herb Kent: Another Reason Why Black History Month is Still Relevant
Throughout the late ‘50s and ‘60s, every city with a significant black population turned to a black-formatted radio station for the hottest sounds and pulse of the street.
Tuesday, January 13 2009
Three Icons and the Worlds They Left Behind
Miriam Makeba, Odetta and Eartha Kitt both fully represented and completely transcended their moments in time
Friday, December 12 2008
The Politics Inside Black Pop
Will black pop artists still see themselves as outsiders now that a black person is President? Will they use their cultural platform to criticize him if need be, just as they did to help elect him?
Tuesday, November 4 2008
The Limits of Celebrity
Even Oscar-winning worldwide superstars such as Jennifer Hudson aren’t immune from sh*t jumping off in the ‘hood, where jobs disappeared long ago, and warzones are populated by local gangs -- not Al-Qaeda wannabes.
Wednesday, October 1 2008
Retelling the Story of Black Music: When Black Pop Blew Up the First Time
Black cultural activity exploded during the 1920s. By the end of that decade, modern black pop had established itself as a cornerstone of American culture.
Thursday, September 25 2008
Retelling the Story of Black Music: Bert Williams, Godfather of the Black Stage & Studio
Bert Williams in blackface started a conversation about representing blackness within a mainstream context that has continued through virtually every crossover moment in black American life.
Friday, August 8 2008
Retelling the History of Black Music: The Beautiful Music All Around John Work III
Work recorded the soundtrack of people’s lives, and captured the earliest stirrings of much of the music we’ve enjoyed since World War II.
Thursday, July 3 2008
Retelling the History of Black Music: Everything You Know about the Blues Is Wrong
For the most part, blacks were not involved in the heroic work of rescuing the black acoustic blues legacy from the passage of time.
Friday, March 7 2008
Retelling the History of Black Music: Adventures in Retro-ism
Rightly or wrongly, black audiences have always tended to chase musical innovation, not musical reverence.
Friday, January 11 2008
Ask an African
Africa will play an increasingly pivotal role in world affairs this year, and not just because a guy whose dad was Kenyan is running for President of the United States.
Monday, October 29 2007
Deconstructing the False Good Rapper/ Bad Rapper Dichotomy
In this corner: Common, in that: 50 Cent. In this corner: Dr. Martin Luther King, in that: Malcolm X. In this corner: W.E.B. DuBois, in that: Booker T. Washington. Standing outside of the ring: Dilated Peoples.
Monday, July 30 2007
The NAACP’s Mock Burial of Its Relevance
Our enemy is not the "N-word" itself; it’s whatever propels people to use it. We need healers, not language nannies.
Thursday, April 12 2007
Is Obama the Last in a Long Line of Firsts?
It doesn’t even matter if your achievement isn’t something a lot of people might want to emulate; you’ll go to your grave eulogized as the “first black (fill-in-the-blank)”, and every Black History Month someone will remember your name.
Monday, March 5 2007
Vibe: Hard to Let it Go
Vibe once nailed down the sweet spot between hip-hop swagger and Madison Avenue polish. But no longer needing to prove hip-hop’s worth to the broader audience, it morphed into a gooey valentine to hip-hop’s ghetto fabulousness.
Monday, January 29 2007
Standing in the Shadows of Dreamgirls
Entrepreneurs of color owe an enormous debt to Berry Gordy, whose path from hit-chasing songwriter to world-renown business mogul is, as much as if not more than those beautiful ladies on the movie screen, the stuff of dreams.
Monday, January 15 2007
Re-Seizing the Time
For all the gains we’ve made in electoral politics and community leadership, there has yet to be a successor to the Black Panther Party as a nationally organized, politically oriented body speaking out and working on the vanguard in the name of black progress, directly confronting and challenging the powers-that-be.
Monday, December 4 2006
Gerald Levert and the Black Pop Nobody Knows, but Should
To paraphrase the dead prez: Black pop is way, way bigger than Oprah, or Cosby, or LeBron James. Why, black pop is even bigger than hip-hop.
Wednesday, November 22 2006
Looking for the Perfect Off-Beat
This one is for the Afro-punks and black rockers and everyone else who doesn't see their hearts and minds reflected in what passes for mainstream black music nowadays.
Wednesday, October 11 2006
Walking Away From It All: The New Great American Fantasy
Walking away from it all to pursue a quieter, less complicated life is an oft-recurring theme in American culture, from Henry David Thoreau's 1854 Walden to the 1932 Scarface and countless other sagas of the underworld – right up to the present day's Dave Chappelle and Aaron McGruder.
Thursday, September 14 2006
If You Love Tupac, Help Find His Killer
Because Tupac and Biggie were -- and are -- so famous, a massive cry for breaks in the cases would signal to the world that the Hip-Hop Nation, that amorphous band of young people blamed for all the ills of urban life from drugs in the streets to questionable taste in fashion, does in fact care about something bigger than bling.
Monday, June 5 2006
Coming Out of the Hazy Past
Even as black America continues to battle crime, violence, and death from within and hostile political and economic policy from beyond, it can be useful to occasionally look back through the haze and marvel at the richness of our individual stories. Two such stories: Floyd Patterson and Fats Domino.
Friday, March 10 2006
Modern Day Hottietots
There is much to be made of / on / about a black woman's backside.
Thursday, February 16 2006
Martin and Coretta are Both Gone Now. It Is Not Their Battle No More
With the passing of another leader from the civil rights era, it's up to us, whose songs of freedom come with a hip-hop beat, whose advocates preach online instead of on street corners, who live in a world multicolored beyond just black and white, to assume our awesome legacy and move the mountain some more.
Monday, January 9 2006
In the Time of B.K. (Before Kobe)
They didn't command big bucks and they'd never know the level of celebrity of today's counterparts, but the early black players transcended the sport and were vital to creating this legendary black cultural institution; otherwise known as basketball.
Thursday, December 8 2005
Good Night, Annie Lee Moss, and Good Luck
She knew the community and she knew the dynamics of life and activism in those perilous, McCarthy-era, pre-Rosa Parks days. What else did Annie Lee Moss know?
Thursday, November 17 2005
The Holy Grails of Jazz
With reissues of music past, so much of history lives on to be rediscovered, over and over again. Yet one can't help but wonder how much has been forever lost.
Monday, October 17 2005
Today the Hill District, Tomorrow the World: August Wilson
August Wilson now takes his place in the pantheon of black arts and letters for the dignity he gave the blues singers, mill workers, rooming house owners, ex-cons, neighborhood eccentrics, and 300-year-old matriarchs among us.
Thursday, September 1 2005
Ebony Then, Now and Later
With its founder, John H. Johnson passed, can Ebony adapt to the new era of black publications -- and live on?
Thursday, July 14 2005
Cleaning Up After the Train Wreck
When (witting and unwitting) celebrities make train wrecks of their lives, the crowd will be sure to be there to cheer them on. But in the aftermath, they're alone with nothing but a broom and one helluva mess.
Monday, June 6 2005
I’m Not a Social Policy Expert, But I Play One on TV
When all the righteous Cosby-induced bluster has blown, all that's left the poor is caught up in tree branches and clogging the gutters, same as before.
Thursday, May 12 2005
One Diaspora Under a Groove
At an African concert set in Philadelphia, Reynolds experienced the rare feeling of being a distinct minority in a virtually all-black setting in America. He considers the divide between Africans in America, and African-Americans.
Wednesday, April 13 2005
Diary of a Mad White Film Critic
In defense of Roger Ebert, Reynolds notes that it's not at all necessarily racist to say that a black film isn't very good. Earnestness, sensitivity to a community's culture, and good intentions don't automatically make a solid work of art.
Wednesday, March 9 2005
Ossie Davis, A Celebrity of the People
Davis' true art was in his representation of all that was noble and heroic about being a black man. He gave dignity to our workaday struggles, and ceremony to our highest joys.
Wednesday, February 2 2005
10 Good Reasons to Celebrate Black History Month
Black History Month is subject to a lot of commercial hype, trotted out once a year, as it is. February alone cannot contain such history. But 2005's Black History Month is a good opportunity to look at the history lessons brought to us in just the past year.
Wednesday, December 22 2004
Let the Good Times Roll… Again
Up in the Pop Culture Attic, where all those wonderful things that get trampled by the new and exciting eventually end up, radio DJs worthy of their stuff pull out and dust off some '50s R&B for the holiday season and for the joie de vivre this music brings.
Wednesday, December 8 2004
Barack Obama, the Great Fill-in-the-Blank Hope
Everywhere Barack Obama went, people flocked to get a glimpse of the politician who stole their hearts with just one speech.
Wednesday, November 3 2004
Will the Real Harlem Please Stand Up?
Harlem's current renaissance has less to do with the art and culture that flowed freely during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, and more to do with good old-fashioned commerce. The new gentry went looking for a new ground floor, and found it right in their own mythic backyard.
Wednesday, October 20 2004
The High and Low of Black Literature
What's happening now in black literature is similar to the smooth jazz/serious jazz dichotomy; urban fiction is getting more 'play' to the public, and fine literature is experienced only by the cognoscenti.
Wednesday, September 29 2004
Role Model at Bat?
It's not that a black child can't appreciate the talents of a white baseball star; it's just that a black athlete's accomplishments mean more to that child because the athlete looks like him/her, and therefore, that black athlete is a role model.
Thursday, August 12 2004
Back Down the Chisholm Trail
Before Michael Moore, there was Shirley Chisholm.
Wednesday, July 7 2004
Fighting the Power For Real
At the first US hip-hop political convention, generations of black activists struggle with translating good ideas into real activism.
Wednesday, June 2 2004
Whatever Happened to Mumia Abu-Jamal?
One could argue that, until the current Bush administration and the Iraq war, Mumia Abu-Jamal was the only thing that came remotely close to galvanizing the far left and its myriad individual causes, from Puerto Rican independence to anti-imperialism. Such is the state of the left in America that for years, Abu-Jamal's case was the only thing that aroused unanimous passion.
Wednesday, April 21 2004
TV, Validation, and the Three Sistas
Somewhere in the country, a Black woman who has no use whatsoever for the Bush administration's approach to global politics watched Rice on the witness stand and chanted, 'You go, girl.' Political and economic progress be damned, we still live vicariously through our celebrities.
Sunday, January 1 1995
Modern Day Hottietots
There is much to be made of / on / about a black woman's backside.
