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James Baldwin Matters

There's a reason why Ta-Nehesi Coates is often compared to James Baldwin, and there's a reason why Baldwin's work is so relevant in the age of Black Lives Matter.

                                      
Music
    
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Mark Reynolds

        23 Oct 2017
    
Music
    
        Was the Blues Born on a Vaudeville Stage?
    
Mark Reynolds

        24 Sep 2017
    
Books
    
        You May Be Black or You May Be White But in Africa You're an American First
    
Mark Reynolds

        07 Aug 2017

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There's a reason why Ta-Nehesi Coates is often compared to James Baldwin, and there's a reason why Baldwin's work is so relevant in the age of Black Lives Matter.

Sly Stone was one of the first audacious badasses of modern black pop music, a hero and then an anti-hero to millions.

Where Chance the Rapper injects spirituality into hip-hop, Muslim Cool injects hip-hop into spirituality.

History doesn't always tell us how to get it right. It sometimes warns us of the cost of getting it wrong. Art steeped in that history, like John Lewis' graphic novel trilogy, March, can remind us, if we're paying attention.

Harry Belafonte's life and work looms large over this moment, when artists of color are exercising their activist voices.

Simone Manuel’s winning a gold medal in this particular Olympic swimming event in this particular summer gave the especially besieged among us a chance to take a break from the siege.

On what would have been the groundbreaking musician's 58th birthday, a reflection on his final chord.

Charles Mingus and Kanye West represent an extreme form of the complicated-and-proud-of-it black man, within a society that prefers its black men as uncomplicated and untroubling as possible.

It's possible to trace much of 20th Century America’s history through the pages of the Defender, a local paper with a national impact.

Black music's spiritual aspect may be a given, but two new books, A City Called Heaven and Spirits Rejoice! go deep into explaining how that actually happens.

There is a large community of alt-black folks out there, and Afropunk has given them a big tent to party under.

To say that Billie Holiday's songs remain memorable because we know she lived a hard life does her artistry a most insulting disservice.

Jeff Chang's cultural history tackles how race has played out across the last 50 years, and counting, of American culture.

In the face of mounting allegations against the beloved comedian, we are left to reconsider his artistic legacy.

The majority of Glow is a blow-by-blow account of the drugs he took and the women he bedded. James either had a great memory, or he took remarkable notes.

The record industry makes huge efforts to reissue rock CDs, but nowhere near as much effort for hip-hop CDs.

What was Van Vechten really writing about during the Harlem Renaissance; black culture as it existed in its own right, or how he viewed it through his own complicated prism?

The difference between churches of service and activism is seen by the degree to which they hold to the philosophies of black theology, a school of religious thought that emerged in the wake of the racial tumult of the ‘60s.

Soul Train was more than entertainment for black America. It was inspiration and validation. Questlove gives us another ride.

Can a pioneering late-night talk show host catch lightning in a bottle 20 years later? Hmmm...

"Dancing in the Street" did not seek the kind of greatness ascribed to it -- it simply woke up one morning and found that greatness bestowed upon it.

If Disney's Song of the South is as innocuous as its adherents claim, they need to think long and hard about why it’s out of official circulation.

Black people had plenty to say about slavery -- especially slaves themselves -- and as soon as they learned to write, they did.

The biggest difference between the Black Chicago Renaissance and the Harlem Renaissance is brand awareness. The fact is, from roughly the early ‘30s to the ‘50s, Chicago was black America’s most fruitful cultural capitol.

Is black minstrelsy a celebration of noxious stereotypes or an important part of American culture? Or both?

So expressly "chocolate city", go-go is part art form, part entertainment, and part Washington, D.C. civic totem pole; heading south, bounce is a distinctly and defiantly New Orleansian spin on an established rap genre.

The sense that a cohesion of group identity was no longer a defining factor of black life had taken a firm hold in America. Then Trayvon Martin was killed.

These two books show how knotty the connections between culture, race and music have become, even though the only thing the worlds they explore share in common is that in both cases, the audiences are almost all white.

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.

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.

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.

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'.

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'.

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?

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.

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’.

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.