October 2007 Archives
My People
In his too-brilliant-to-be-dismissed collection of essays bloodbeats: vol. 1, Los Angeles cultural critic Ernest Hardy writes that "selling blackness is permissible in the mainstream marketplace; celebrating it is not. Few folks know the difference." The occasion for Hardy's observation was the release of the music video for Janet Jackson's "Got Till It's Gone," of which he writes that the video "not only works the artfulness and artsiness that lie at the heart of everyday blackness but envisions a world of African cool, eroticism and playfulness that is electrifying in its forthrightness." "Got Till It's Gone" was released a decade ago and Hardy's argument is no less true today. Indeed blackness seems an industry unto itself, accessible on myriad media platforms and as pervasive as the air; there's rarely a moment where one can't conceivable choke on blackness--especially as the remote surfs past another reality show under-written by the Viacom Corporation. But where does one celebrate blackness at this moment?
There's little doubt that this was a question that Edward Kennedy Ellington--The Duke--confronted most of his adult life and throughout a musical career that spanned 50 years until his death in 1974. Being "on the road" was one of the definitive metaphors of Ellington's career--he took the music to the people, often 200 nights a year. The sheer volume of the volume music Ellington produced, often with collaborators like Billy Strayhorn, suggests that he always carried the people and their blackness close to him. With songs like "Sophisticated Lady," "Mood Indigo," "Take the 'A' Train," "Satin Doll," and "Come Sunday" Duke Ellington created a space within American society to publically love black people, a fact he always reinforced during performances when he often said to the crowd "We love you madly." And while his audiences at the peak of his career were often integrated, many of his black fans intuitively understood the phrase as a gesture of love towards them.
As a black man of relative privilege who lived through the transition from Jim Crow segregation to the racial détente that was integration, Ellington was always careful to put his fame--his genius--into the broader context of black life. So with a gem like "Heritage" (subtitled, "My Mother, My Father" and featuring Jimmy McPhail on vocals) Ellington makes the emphatic point: "In me you see, the least of the family tree personality. I was raised in the palm of the hand of the very best people in the land." And Ellington extended that logic with the song "My People" which bravely made the claim that his people--black people--were the literal soul of America. In the song's spoken word introduction, Ellington states, "My people...talking about freedom. Workin'. Building America into the most powerful nation in the world. Cotton. Sugar. Indigo. Iron. Coal. Peanuts. Steel. The railroad, you name it--the foundation of the United States rests on the sweat of My People!"
Angie Stone's recent summoning of Ellington's spirit, via her own refashioning of "My People" (with help from James Ingram) brings into focus how critical Ellington's work was more than 50 years ago. Using Ellington's own introduction to introduce her version, the lyrics to Stone's "My People" traffic in tried-and-true racial uplift-isms ("my people rise, my people fight") but the song's brilliance is conveyed by the simple gesture of naming the names aloud. And when those utterances venture beyond black history month staples--often literally stapled on school bulletin boards--to include names like Vernon Johns, Dorothy Dandridge, Mahailia Jackson, Sugar Ray Robinson, Nat King Cole, Johnnie Cochran, Cuba Gooding Jr, Gregory Hines, Zadie Smith, Romare Bearden, Count Basie, Sidney Poitier, Barack Obama, Shirley Caesar, Moms Mabley, Richard Pryor, Nikki Giovanni, Biggie Smalls, Charlie Parker, Angela Davis, Dick Gregory, Langston Hughes, Charles White, Susan Taylor, Tiger Woods and even the Rutgers Women's Basketball team, one sees how expansive black culture can be and how little of it is seemingly available to us in the current marketplace formation.
Instead we're left to parse less-than-profound options like choosing between Kanye or Curtis, or street lit and Terri McMillian (who we were chastised for choosing over Gloria Naylor and Alice Walker a decade ago). Stone's "My People" is a reminder that blackness is so much larger than the marketplace will ever allow and it's with the same passion that Ellington stayed on the road celebrating the culture that we now need to seek it out.
Doubting Thomas
When Ntozake Shange and Michele Wallace published their respective manifestos for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf and Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman in the 1970s they sparked public debates about the state of relations between black men and women. Waged largely in artistic and intellectual circles--Ms. Magazine, for example published early excerpts of Wallace's book--the debates were beyond the gaze of most White Americans. Mainstream America fully confronted the gender tensions within Black America in the autumn of 1991 as Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas was accused of sexual harassment in the workplace in the midst of his confirmation hearings.
As political conservatives who were presumed marginal to the political views of large segments of Black America, Thomas and his accuser Anita Hill, were unlikely characters in the on-going dramas between black women and men. With the confirmation hearings being broadcast in real-time, the debates seemed to project stigmas of deviance on relations between black men and women as if these dynamics were unique to black people. This sense of deviance was underwritten by centuries old racist truisms about black male sexuality--Thomas's apparent sexual appetite--and black female culpability via Hill's presumed political (gold-digging) ambitions.
Thomas, sensing the new technological terrain in which the drama unfolded, famously bore witness to the uniqueness of the moment with his claim that so-called "left wing" attacks on him were representative of a high-tech lynching. While Thomas's language, with its clear reference to Jim Crow-era justice, helped congeal the now popular notion of "playing the race card," his move came at the expense of the real issues that women--and black women in particular--have faced in the workplace. Thus it is ironic that 16 years later, Thomas revisits the drama of those hearings, just as another Thomas--Isiah--is found guilty of sexual harassment of another black woman.
George H. Bush's decision to nominate Thomas--at best a second tier federal judge--as a replacement for the retired Thurgood Marshall, was one of his few moments of political brilliance. The Bush administration anticipated that race pride--or more specifically "race man" pride--would provide the political cover needed to facilitate what was clearly going to be a difficult and controversial appointment. As African American Women in Defense of Ourselves observed at the time of Thomas's confirmation hearing, there was the impression that black communities were willing to "tolerate both the dismantling of affirmative action and the evil of sexual harassment in order to have any Black man on the Supreme Court"
Thomas's invoking of a "high-tech lynching" animated, what remains the Achilles Heel of elite black leadership: when the black man is under siege, all hands on deck. All too often in the drive to close ranks around the "black man falling," it is a black woman or girl who is sacrificed at the altar of black patriarchy. Thomas's employment of what could only be called "the golden penis" clause, essentially re-enacted the silencing of and violence against Hill at the expense of a legacy of violence against of African-Africans that Thomas's own politics help to deny.
That Thomas could credibly treat Anita Hill as little more than an annoying speed-bump on his current "rehabilitate a negro" book tour, speaks to the extent that black women continue to lack real subjectivity in mainstream American society, whether their names are Anita Hill, Crystal Mangum or the woman who was brutally raped in Dunbar Village in July. As journalist Wayne Dawkins recently noted, even Thomas's sister, who the judge unfairly depicted as an example of the welfare state gone-awry, was subjected to the "violence" associated with Thomas's ascension to the high court.
16 years later the travails of black women are not taken any more seriously than they were then. Though the recent judgment against the Madison Square Garden corporation and James Dolan in the Anucha Browne Sanders sexual harassment suit suggest otherwise, the court's decision was largely related to the admission that Dolan (working on behalf of Madison Square Garden) retaliated against her in response to her accusation that Isiah Thomas sexually harassed her. In the larger picture the case does little to stem the tide of harassment and abuse of black women in the boardroom and in the larger society.
Waiting for Keyshia
It goes without saying, that the "art" of R&B singing has long become a thing of the past. For all of the real talent that figures like Mary J. Blige, Beyonce, Fantasia possess, too often their performances are marked by banal exercises in melisma--technically defined as "changing the note (pitch) of a single syllable of text while it is being sung"--or more simply "vocal runs." Whereas a singer like the tragically obscured Linda Jones often employed melisma to dramatize critical moments in a lyric, many contemporary R&B singers simply have a case of the runs. The best performances of seminal R&B singer Luther Vandross, for example, highlighted his ability and willingness to leave his audiences anxious in wait for the deep runs that he was noted for. With a flair for the dramatic, Vandross often held out those runs until the end of a song (listen to "Wait for Love" or "Anyone Who had a Heart") as a form artistic denouement--a final pronouncement, if you will--of his singular vocal genius.
Such subtleties have largely been lost on many contemporary of R&B singers, who often break into frantic and fanatic riffs and runs midway through the first verse. This should not be surprising in a moment when so much contemporary R&B (and gospel for that matter) is being driven by producers whose skill set is largely related to making beats; many young singers are simply not getting the vocal direction that they deserve. The relationship between seasoned producers and young artists is often critical to those artists finding their "voice." Patti LaBelle, who is in many ways the singular embodiment of overwrought Soul singing, for example, didn't really find her voice--and her commercial niche--until she worked with legendary producers Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff on her 1983 solo recording I'm in Love Again. The session produced one of LaBelle's most memorable songs, "If Only You Knew". As veteran producers, who had worked with LaBelle a decade earlier on Laura Nyro's Gonna Take a Miracle, Gamble and Huff knew how to reign in LaBelle's voice to produce, what remains, her most nuanced performance.
The lack of experience by producers and vocalists often adds to the dissonance that resonates in the vocal quality of figures like Mary J. Blige or Faith Evans, who have become easy targets for a generation that is regularly thought to be out of tune--musically, morally, and politically--with the Soul singers of the 1960s and 1970s. But I'd like to suggest that such dissonance is not simply the product of a generation of singers who are out of pitch--and lacking the training to know so--but a response to the ways that post-Civil Rights generations hear the world. The nostalgic harmonies of the Civil Rights Generation (and their parents, many of whom are in the 80s) strikes discord in the lives of post-Civil Rights generations, notably Generation Hip-Hop, which have never had a tangible relationship to concepts such as "freedom" and "liberation" that some in the old guard presumed was transferable. Issues like the crack cocaine epidemic, the prison industrial complex, police brutality, voter disenfranchisement (largely based on race and class), depressed wages, lack of access to quality and affordable healthcare, misogyny, the failing infrastructure of public schooling, homophobia, as well as a populism of common sense (which by definition is stridently conservative and anti-intellectual), have often left post-Civil Rights generations grasping for straws, much the way Keyshia Cole--who I offer for your consideration--seems to frantically grasp for notes in virtually every song that she sings.
In the case of Cole, her singing style really is the embodiment of her on-going desire to hold together a life that has been fragmented by an absentee-father, a drug addicted and incarcerated mother, a difficult stint in foster care and her years as a runaway. Cole's debut recording The Way It Is (2005) provides some context for her near-tragic back-story, which became the basis of a reality show which captures Cole's attempts to find some closure to her relationship with her mother and the hard-scrabble Oakland community that reared her. And though none of Cole's songs, many of which she co-wrote, speak directly to the struggles of her childhood and teenage years, those difficulties are implicit in lyrics like "I used to think that I wasn't fine enough/And I used to think that I wasn't wild enough" (from "Love") which powerfully attest to Cole's desire to be loved--by any somebody--and the desire to matter in society that has shown little love for young, poor, and homeless black girls.
"Love" from Cole's debut perhaps captures the best example of why she is important. Though Cole is not technically proficient--think how many pretty voices inspire little in their performance--so much of her value is the way she conveys the very essence of her misery in every syllable. Much of the drama in "Love" pivots on Cole's utterances of the words "found/find" throughout the song's chorus ("Love, never knew what I was missing, but I knew once we start kissing I fououououounnd, love"). In the context of the song, found is the virtual space where Cole finds some emotional and psychic grounding. But as the tortured nature of the performance suggest, this space offers little solace--if Cole relaxes one bit, the performance literally falls flat--as Cole is symbolically in constant turmoil with the melodic terrain that she is largely responsible for creating.
Unfortunately there is little of this drama found on Cole's new release Just Like You. In an industry that only wants its R&B vixens pretty and sexy (and Cole is no doubt both), there's little interest in having those women give voice to the ragged complexities of their own lives--especially a live as tragic as Cole's has been thus far. There's a look in Cole's eyes in some of the publicity photos that adorn her new disc that suggest that she is in fact somewhere else. The hope is that with maturity and the ability to surround herself with musicians and producers who'll let her be, she'll be able to finally get to that "somewhere else" and the make the great music she is so clearly destined to make. I for one think that it will be worth the wait.
Little Man Isiah
As a collegiate athlete and NBA professional, Isiah Thomas was a deft and compelling figure, proving both elusive and crafty, in a sport in which he was more often than not, the shortest figure on the court. Thomas was the quintessential "little man" in a big man's game. Thomas's "little man" aesthetic translated into two world championships for the Detroit Pistons and his elevation as one of the NBA's 50 greatest players. But in retirement Thomas reputation as the "little engine that could" has been severely challenged by difficult and at times inept performances as the coach and general manager of several NBA teams and as the one-time owner of the Continental Basketball Association (CBA). No doubt when he tried to succeed on the corporate side of the National Basketball Association, Thomas's status as an African-American complicated the "little man" issues he had faced throughout his career; Thomas simply wanted to be one of the boys. But as so many black athletes have found out--Michael Jordan's tenure as general manager of the Washington Wizards being the most visible example--no amount of celebrity and wealth, will allow them to be one of the boys; Unless of course if it is in the sharing of the everyday privilege that comes so easily at the expense of women.
Isiah Thomas's tenure as general manager and coach of the New York Knickerbockers has been marked by consistent failure as the team has underperformed on the court and more tellingly at the box office. Madison Square Garden, which was regularly sold-out during the mid-1990s and during the team's heyday in the late 1960s and early 1970s, has rarely been filled during the Thomas era. In an era when NBA teams regularly attempt to clear salary when a team underperforms, Thomas has consistently taken on the salaries of over-paid-past-their-prime players. After Larry Brown's term as coach of the Knickerbockers, in which the coach blatantly undermined Thomas's authority, Thomas had become little more than the laughing stock of the league, turning a once-proud franchise, into the league's most visible embarrassment. As such there was little chance that the accusation that Thomas had sexually harassed a black woman employee would ever illicit the kind of strong response from Thomas's boss James Dolan, the head of the Madison Square Garden corporation and CEO of Cablevision, that 4 years of losing games and money under Thomas's leadership had rarely inspired from him. Dolan's collusion with Thomas in this regard was just further proof that it is always "money over bitches"--even in corporate board rooms.
For his part Thomas proved every bit as crafty as his professional resume suggests when he tried to maneuver past charges that he referred to Anucha Browne Sanders--a highly accomplished black woman executive--as a "bitch" and a "ho," by suggesting, in part, that such language directed at a black woman was a communally understood privilege of black men and thus should be interpreted quite differently than if such language was employed across the color-line. Such a defense falls flat in the post-Imus era, though we must to be clear that any attempts to protect black women from the sexist and misogynistic language of black men has little to do with actually protecting black women--respectfully Congressman Rush, a committee hearing about the actual lived conditions of black women would have been much more effective--and everything to with attempts to undermine black male encroachment on white male economic and political privilege. And as such, black men prove unwitting collaborators in their own demise, in part, because of their refusal to address their own sexist and misogynistic behavior.
By finding Thomas guilty of sexual harassment, but relieving him of the responsibility of paying punitive damages to Sanders, for the court has decided that Isiah Thomas is no more culpable than your average around-the-way rapper, though in a world that is so clearly defined by the messy intersections of race, class, gender and sexuality, we are always gonna hold the rappers more accountable. Holding the rappers to a higher standard than we do the real men of privilege allows us as a society to consume the spectacles of sexual harassment, sexism, and misogyny, without ever having to seriously confront the fundamental ways that women are marginalized, demeaned, and harmed in everyday life--not just by mean little words--but more importantly, by the actions that give those words their context and their power. While the Madison Square Garden Corporation will pay punitive damages to Sanders, they will seamlessly transition from their guilt, much the way so many corporate entities do, because their influence is not tangible to the everyday realities that make sexism and misogyny critical issues to women of all races.
In the end, Isiah Thomas is no more than a "little man", who is like so many other little men who like to beat women over their heads with mean little words in order the manifest the privilege that the society has long granted them. In that regard he is very much one of the boys.
