Tag: Bob Marley

Slavery by any other name . . .

“Freedom is a Constant Struggle” – Angela Y. Davis. We are reminded that the arms of the oppressors are long and many as racism and white supremacy murder our Black, Brown, Indigenous and poor here in the U.S., the Israeli government’s greed for land murders the people of Palestine, and Kevin Cooper calls for solidarity in the struggle with our oppressed brothers and sisters.

HOPE is the thread that tenaciously weaves its way through the chaos and darkness to infuse we humans with connection, courage and creativity to walk the storm and greet the buds emerging from twigs in spring. HOPE is the validation of our humanity.

To get the dream ball airborne, Shai Alkebu-Lan adroitly lays out an entertaining, thoughtful perspective and explicit course of action, starting with the tee from which a plan unfolds, once one has teed off.

The silver lining is always part of a disaster or tragedy – even the COVID-19 pandemic. Many have experienced this phenomenon with the emergence of innovation, new Black businesses, and new business leaders popping up as the silver lining of the 2020 shelter in place.

Sunday afternoon, Feb. 23, at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco was an opportunity to see what Black Joy looks like. While Africans in Oakland were celebrating what makes us a people, in San Francisco, artists, curators and scholars were discussing Kwame Brathwaite’s work in the “Black is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite” exhibit up through March 1. More than a tangible aesthetic enumerated, Brathwaite’s “Beautiful” is an opportunity to reflect on the many ways through the ages Blackness – while commodified – transgressed and transcended, even morphed into something completely incomprehensible (in that moment) like Charlie Parker’s “Koko“ or Dizzy Gillespie’s “Shaw ‘Nuff” or John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme.”

This poem is water It is palm wine to the ancestors Ones with heads up, lips parted Utterance stuck in throat It is fresh water with peppermint It is nommo Words into flesh Blackness Melanin A magic hue Sun kissed by time

At Dr. King’s funeral, Stevie Wonder learned of John Conyers’ bill to make his birthday a national holiday. To overcome the resistance of conservative politicians, Wonder put his career on hold, led rallies from coast to coast and galvanized millions of Americans with his passion and integrity. But it took 15 years.

In the same way that Black dollars matter, our story also matters and we are responsible for holding and sharing our stories and the stories of our ancestors. Often in public education the stories of our ancestors are left out of the curriculum with the more popularized figures crammed into the shortest month of the year. In an attempt to assist with centralizing our story on our collective consciousness I’ve worked with Sincere in Michigan’s Department of Corrections to create OurStory Calendar.

After gracing the planet for 76 years, Aretha Franklin joined the ancestors Thursday, Aug. 16, 2018. President Obama: “Aretha helped define the American experience. In her voice, we could feel our history, all of it and in every shade – our power and our pain, our darkness and our light, our quest for redemption and our hard-won respect. May the Queen of Soul rest in eternal peace.”

When you talk about grinding and hustling for your dream, Oakland’s DLabrie has rocked mics from New York to Seoul and collaborated with some of the most intellectual rappers of our generation. A few months ago he premiered the “Stay Black and Die” video, which included appearances by rappers M1, Shamako, Mac Mall and Ray Luv, at the Oakland International Film Festival. He is definitely someone who has a lot to say. Check out DLabrie in his own words.

International peace activist Cynthia McKinney brought a very important point to me recently when she asked me to think about the fact that every time Black people reach a moral high ground over the police, something tragic happens to the police. It drives home the subliminal point that other ethnicities should be sympathetic to police who are paid to control these Black animals, who, untrained or barely trained and armed, can kill multiple elite, trained officers. Consider the cases of Larry Davis in New York and Lovelle Mixon in Oakland.

Right out of the musical lineage of Parliament Funkadellic, Georgia Ann Muldrow, Dudley Perkins and the Dungeon Family steps Bay Area bred producer Oji and his crew, the Ascension Team. Oji’s music is on some futuristic other level type of space vibe. He is like an Andre 3000, on a production level conjuring sound chemistries not ever heard before in widely known rap music. Check out Oji as he talks about his craft.

The Saint John Coltrane Church is a historical fixture in the San Francisco Black community and a direct descendant of the work of the late great Marcus Mosiah Garvey and his Universal Negro Improvement Association. One reason the Coltrane Church is important is that it defines for itself who are the saints that are worthy of our praise, instead of basing its doctrine on the philosophy and understanding of god that came out of the Council of Nicea.

This article was prompted by the unrelenting campaign by friends and associates of the late Dr. Walter Rodney, to maintain the false accusation that Forbes Burnham ordered Walter Rodney’s assassination. Many of these academics and commentators are not Guyanese and do not fully understand the circumstances in 1980 that led to Walter Rodney’s demise. The adage, chanted by Bob Marley, that “half the story has never been told” is 100 percent correct.

On Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016, in Denver, at approximately 2:20 pm Houston father, activist, radio station owner and musician Zin aka Anthony Mills, 42, and Jonathan Nichols, 29, lost their lives in a four-car collision. Akua Holt, a good friend and radio comrade of Zin, worked with him on KPFT and in the community. I talked to her about the power of our productive and constructive brother who lost his life far too soon.

On Sept. 19-20, 2015, The Seventh Annual One Love One Heart Reggae Music Festival will be going down at Camp Pollock in Sacramento, featuring headliners Everton Blender, Big Mountain, Pato Baton, Sister Carol, Pablo Moses and more. This is one of my favorite Reggae festivals in Northern California, and it is organized by one of my favorite people in the Reggae community, Denise Carter.

I have known Iminah, the renaissance woman who works under the brand name “From Ghetto to Goddess,” for a few years, and I continue to be inspired by how she serves the Black community. Since moving back to Oakland from Atlanta where she went to college, Iminah has been involved with speaking to at-risk youth, writing and recording an album, and dancing in everything from plays and dance shows to music videos.

Few musicians have had such an everlasting impression on the music of the 20th century internationally as the legendary Reggae and Dub producer and vocalist Lee “Scratch” Perry. “Vision of Paradise” is a new documentary that Scratch is the subject of as well as an executive producer along with Volker Schaner, who we contacted in Germany to get this exclusive interview.

Writer, reporter and Pan Africanist Obi Egbuna, the U.S. correspondent to the Zimbabwean national newspaper The Herald, recently finished, alongside co-executive producer M1 of dead prez, the third volume of the “Battle Cry for Cuba and Zimbabwe” compilation, which is a cultural protest against how the two countries have been unfairly sanctioned by the U.S. government. Check out Obi Egbuna in his own words.