The new racism

The Middle Passage

Women who had mulatto babies as a result of being raped by the captain and the crew members left their afterbirth decaying among them in the cargo slave quarters, the blood and the stench in their bedding compartments which was the same area where they ate and defecated, and where they slept was atrocious, the diseases that stem from this condition was inexplicable. Under these bad conditions we could understand how many of the slaves were immersed in a mountain of insects, lying next to a two week old corpse who's dead body was being eaten by ants, flies, worms, rats or worse. Suddenly we have a clue to the time it took for the slave ships to reach shore, as it took a woman nine months to have a baby on board, but just a few minutes for the crew members to toss it over board. Sharks followed the boat's shadow that it cast in the water or the stench that generally trailed the slave ships knowing that a human slave would be thrown overboard, because of sickness, diseases, as a punishment for disobedience, or to instill fear in the remaining slaves, sometimes babies were cast aside by the crew members for mere fun and entertainment (merely to pass the time). Babies that were stripped from their mothers arms died horrifically as their mothers melted emotionally from the sight of their babies being thrown over board, to be abruptly devoured by the sharks.

After slavery was abolished the slave ships continued to actively transport slaves around the world, it was when a British or international policing ship was in sight that the captain of these illegal slave ships would then order the complete eradication of all the slaves on board, so they threw over board the big ball and chain which then pulled all of the slaves that was chained to that ball into the ocean to drown or to be eaten by the sharks.

http://www1.somerset.gov.uk/archives/Images/EducImages/SLAVERY1.gif

There was no governable system which accounted for the millions of persons that died as a result of these factors, although some captains maintained records of their human cargo many were afraid of arrest after slavery was legally banded, so they never kept records that would suffice as a tool for their own imprisonment.

“Another inhuman practice of the crews of the slave ships was that of "bedwarming". In this custom a member of the crew, or sometimes even the captain, would take a slave women out from the 'tween decks during the night. The woman would be taken back to either the captain's chamber or the crew's living quarters and be beaten and physically forced to have sexual relations with the crew member. This practice demonstrated the complete rape of the African-American culture by the slave traders of the Middle Passage, both figuratively and literally.......

Solidarity Video - CLC One Minute Message What the unions can do for you..

ASK A SLAVE Ep 1: Meet Lizzie Mae

Actress and comedian Azie Mira Dungey used to work as a historical re-enactor at Mount Vernon. And 1- because George Washington's old stomping grounds are staffed with people acting out roles they might have had during the George Washington days and 2- Dungey is black, she played the role of a slave named Lizzy Mae. Now, she's made her experiences fielding actual stupid questions from actual stupid tourists into a video series that not only invites laughter, it encourages people to think a little harder about how we lionize the Founding Fathers as paragons of morality.

Some of the questions Dungey's character responds to in the video are obtuse, others frustrating ("But what if Martha Washington NEEDS something in the middle of the night?!"), but all of them are entertaining.

On the project's website, Dungey writes of her experiences as a fledgling actor in the DC-Virginia-Maryland area shortly after Obama was elected President.

...Emails were forwarded proclaiming that this was the beginning of a race war and the end of the country as we know it. People bought guns. (A lot of guns.) A scientist reported the evolutionary explanation as to why black women were the least attractive of all the races. The Oprah Show ended. It was mass chaos.
And in the midst of all this, I was playing a slave. Everyday, I was literally playing a slave. I mean, I was getting paid well for it, don’t get me wrong, and we all need a day job. But all the same, I was having all these experiences, and emotions. Talking to 100s of people a day about what it was like to be black in 18th Century America. And then returning to the 21st Century and reflecting on what had and had not changed.

So far, there are only two videos in the series, but they're both worth a watch.

[Ask a Slave]

Tea Party Groups In Tennessee Demand Textbooks Overlook U.S. Founder's Slave-Owning History

A little more than a year after the conservative-led state board of education in Texas approved massive changes to its school textbooks to put slavery in a more positive light, a group of Tea Party activists in Tennessee has renewed its push to whitewash school textbooks. The group is seeking to remove references to slavery and mentions of the country's founders being slave owners.

According to reports, Hal Rounds, the Fayette County attorney and spokesman for the group, said during a recent news conference that there has been "an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another."

"The thing we need to focus on about the founders is that, given the social structure of their time, they were revolutionaries who brought liberty into a world where it hadn't existed, to everybody -- not all equally instantly -- and it was their progress that we need to look at," Rounds said, according to The Commercial Appeal.

During the news conference more than two dozen Tea Party activists handed out material that said, "Neglect and outright ill will have distorted the teaching of the history and character of the United States. We seek to compel the teaching of students in Tennessee the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government."

And that further teaching would also include that "the Constitution created a Republic, not a Democracy."

The group demanded, as they had in January of last year, that Tennessee lawmakers change state laws governing school curricula. The group called for textbook selection criteria to include: "No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership."

The latest push comes a year after the Texas Board of Education approved revisions to its social studies curriculum that would put a conservative twist on history through revised textbooks and teaching standards.

The Texas revisions include the exploration of the positive aspects of American slavery, lifting the stature of Jefferson S. Davis to that of Abraham Lincoln, and amendments to teach the value of the separation of church and state were voted down by the conservative cadre. Among other controversial amendments that have been approved is the study of the "unintended consequences" of affirmative action.

The board approved more than 100 amendments affecting social studies, economics and history classes for Texas's 4.8 million students.

The influence of the amended textbooks will likely reach far beyond the state of Texas. The state is one of the largest purchasers of textbooks, and many other states adopt Texas's books and standards.

The curriculum changes were pushed through by a majority bloc of conservative Republicans on the Texas school board, who have said the changes were made to add balance to what they believe was a left-leaning and already-skewed reflection of American history.

"There is some method to the madness besides vindicating white privilege and making white students feel as though they are superior and privileged and that that it is the natural order of things," Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas State NAACP, told The Crisis magazine last year about this time. "The agenda being pushed and the ultimate impact intended is to make young people automatically identify with one political party."

A number of groups, including the NAACP, the Texas League of United Latin American Citizens and the Texas Association of Black Personnel in Higher Education have joined forces to beat back the measures, which they said would have a negative impact on minority children.

The groups sought a federal review of the state's public education and have raised claims that the Texas State Board of Education has violated federal civil rights laws. In a formal complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Education, the groups charge that the new curriculum was devised to "discriminate."

The measures went as far as to replace instances of the trans-Atlantic slave trade with "Atlantic triangular trade."

"It is going to be extremely psychologically harmful to African-American young people because they are marginalized in the curriculum," Bledsoe said. "It will require them to be taught things such as the benevolence of slavery and the problems with affirmative action rather than the good and the bad."

"They voted down a motion that requires students to be taught about the terrorism brought about by the Ku Klux Klan and what they did to ethnic and racial minorities, but they turn around and pass a provision that requires the teaching of the violence of the Black Panther Party."

Playing “jazz” is a crime in North Korea By Geoffrey Cain

 

Kim Cheol Woong was the country's star pianist before his musical taste landed him in trouble... SEOUL, South Korea — Kim Cheol Woong belonged to North Korea’s coddled elite. Then in 2001 he was accused of treachery.  His crime: playing a Richard Clayderman piece on his piano. Scion of a privileged political family in the reclusive state, Kim was a star pianist in North Korea’s state symphony. He grew up memorizing garish children’s songs like “Revolutionary Army Game” — part of the nation’s required piano curriculum. 

One day, alone in a room, he practiced the “capitalist” piano piece. He was hoping it would help him woo a woman he loved. Outside, a snitch heard the saccharin melody, and then reported the instrumentalist to authorities. The piece in question was Richard Clayderman’s classic, “’L’ for Love,” an elevator standard that Kim first heard while studying at the prestigious Moscow Conservatory. Clayderman is a French pianist known for his pop ballads and easy listening style. Some Westerners may wish Clayderman’s sleepy banquet-hall melodies would be banned. But regardless of where you stand, in reclusive North Korea the “crime” reflects the regime’s stark morals.

The government accused Kim of playing “jazz,” a blanket label for depraved Western music not sanctioned by the state. Police made him write a 10-page self-criticism over and over. Humiliated and angry, he fled his fatherland.

“Even if you are the greatest pianist in the world, you cannot play piano if you do not show sufficient loyalty to Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung,” said 39-year-old Kim, referring to the two former dictators of North Korea.

After a secret trek across the border to China, the performer realized that his comfortable life was finished.

In China, “people called North Koreans beggars and bastards,” he said at a July 13 concert. “I was ignored and humiliated by other people.”

Kim worked at a logging camp and then as a house servant. He eventually found a job as a church pianist and converted to Christianity.

After three unlucky arrests, however, Chinese police put Kim on a list for repatriation to North Korea. He narrowly escaped detention both times.

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China sends home North Koreans because it considers them economic migrants and not political refugees protected under international law. But once in North Korean hands, returnees can expect months or years of beatings and hard labor.

With the help of a missionary network, Kim finally caught an airplane to Seoul in 2003.
Today he continues to raise awareness through his concerts, and has even performed at esteemed venues like Carnegie Hall in New York. In mid-July, he played piano in Seoul on behalf of the Citizens’ Alliance for North Korean Human Rights (NKHR).
Such performances wouldn’t fly in Pyongyang.
North Korea’s broad use of the word “jazz” to vilify foreign music dates back to the 1950s and 1960s, when genres like bebop, post-bop, and cool jazz were trendy in North America and Europe.
Communist regimes associated the American art with drugs, beatnik culture, and the vanities of so-called capitalist life.
“It generally follows the Soviet idea that jazz was basically bad — even though in the USSR it was also emphasized that in some cases it might be good as a ‘progressive Negro music,’” said Andrei Lankov, a Russian historian of North Korea.
Saxophonists like John Coltrane and Archie Shepp put their tunes toward social and spiritual advancement. But the musical egalitarianism never played into North Korea’s thinking, Lankov said.
The regime continues to denigrate many foreign genres. The ruling party mouthpiece, the Rodong Shinmun, pens the occasional editorial criticizing ex-communist states for their love of jazz and rock.
Western, non-revolutionary music contributed to ideological decay during the Cold War, while the North Korean regime stayed put and resisted evil influences, the newspaper opines.
But those strict social mores are changing. Today, North Koreans can buy bootlegged South Korean and American DVDs and CDs. The items make their way across the Chinese border and onto the black market, where they’re sometimes sold out in the open.
The foreign media has become so prevalent — at least since a famine broke down total state control in the 1990s — that even the police and soldiers watch them together, one former North Korean police commander told GlobalPost.
Yet the state still regards it as “enemy propaganda” and prohibits viewing it, at least on paper. It’s also illegal to own a radio or television that can be tuned to unapproved broadcasts, although Samsung televisions are sold on the black market, too.

Michael Moore's A Brief History of United States of America

"Do You Have A Personal Problem With White People?"

The Technique is Not the Music, Has Jazz Lost Its African-American Core?

The Technique is Not the Music

Has Jazz Lost Its African-American Core?

 by GEORGE DUKE

OK, I have something I want to talk about.

Over the past five or six years, I’ve noticed a marked change of direction in many young jazz pianists. Please keep in mind that for the purposes of this article, I’m only referring to jazz pianists, but in many ways it includes other instruments as well.

I guess the place for me to begin is to define the word "jazz"–well, I’m not going to tackle that one just yet.

You see, there seems to be a moving away from swing and spontaneous improvisation. I recently spoke with Billy Childs about the issue and he feels, as I do, that it is a musical movement of players leaning towards European elements and not traditional African American elements.

It seems that the feeling of the blues has been diminished and many of these young players in reality sound more like classical players. In listening to various solo piano performances, this is quite apparent.

Now don’t get me wrong, I LOVE classical music. But when it comes to jazz, it seems to me that somewhere in a performance one needs to acknowledge it’s heritage either directly or indirectly.

Now jazz at it’s core is a brothel music, it was born in the whore houses of New Orleans. The music was upbeat, fun, danceable and at the same time technically challenging, but most importantly it was born of a free spirit!

Now this is important, because many young jazz pianists sound like they have rehearsed everything down to the last sixteenth note. And even if they haven’t, it feels that way. Most of the playing I’ve heard is virtually mistake free.

But something is missing! I have to look hard to find that free expression of emotion, living on a tight rope, experimenting, trying difficult passages and maybe not totally executing it correctly but making the attempt.

I’ve always felt that Miles Davis’ blown notes were part of his musical canvas. If he played all the notes spot on, would his music have felt the same–I doubt it!

And if that’s true, then perfection must be overrated, at least as far as jazz is concerned.

Yeah I know, I can hear it now–"the pursuit of perfection is a noble quest for any artist." That’s true –but when technique becomes more important than telling a musical story or surfing the wave of spontaneous thought, then I believe it is a misguided quest.

Technique is and always will be a means to an end and not an end in itself! Technique is important in allowing an artist to more easily express ideas, giving flexibility of thought and the freedom to execute more difficult and complex passages. BUT THE TECHNIQUE IS NOT THE MUSIC!

So, it’s a long way to come from playing in an early, raw New Orleans environment to Carnegie Hall –and jazz being recognized in that way is a great achievement. But back in the day, even at Carnegie Hall, the players did not forget where they came from and were not afraid to keep it real and pay respect to the blues.

Now I’m not saying that this trend towards Europeanism (is that a word?) is necessarily wrong, I’m just making an observation and wondering why?

I realize that trends in jazz will change –that’s the essence of what jazz is, and change and inclusion are what a creative musician uses to create an environment. But why the move away from traditional African American musical values?

Now at times I’ve heard some of these players play the blues, and it’s quite apparent that they don’t have a clue how to do it. The blues is a feeling and attitude. In my playing it is at the core of everything I do, so when young players abandon that, it’s almost like they are abandoning a large part of what I love about jazz.

I guess it’s where I personally would like to see the music go or not go. To move more towards European Classical elements, while a noble endeavor, leaves me feeling that jazz may go the way of Classical music and only be heard in symphony halls or used as elevator music or melodies in pop tracks or only heard and loved by a small group of admirers.

The blues at its’ best (like gospel) is raw and free, and mad technical expertise has little to do with it! On the other hand there is nothing I love more than a beautiful melody played very eloquently, but somewhere that rawness, or as Quincy Jones calls it–those grits (that hot sauce–that bacon grease) –have to make an appearance on the stove.

This year I toured mostly with Stanley Clarke. Every night we ended the show with a blues. The blues is important! Along with its’ counterparts work songs, gospel and spirituals, the blues is what got black people through a horrific time in history.

You know maybe that’s it. Even though I didn’t experience slavery, my mom and dad did, so I had that direct connection to the gut feeling of the blues and its’ musical predecessors–in reality it is a direct connection to the past through a musical tradition. For me, that feeling tells the story and displays the soul of my people.

On the other hand, I don’t believe one necessarily needs to personally experience the American black scenario in order to enjoy, understand or play the blues! One just needs the interest, gift and effort put forth to learn what makes it work. I’ve seen BB King play in Europe to an all white audience and believe me, they eat it up! I’ve also seen white players from Holland play the bottom out of a blues. There is a huge audience for the blues in Europe–now did they experience slavery?

I guess what I’m saying is I’m feeling a historical disconnect between these new crop of young jazz players and their predecessors. Maybe I’m just getting old and beginning to sound like the older musicians I encountered when I was a pup.

But still in the end, it’s up to the individual jazz musician –there just doesn’t seem to be the interest in that type of feeling anymore or they would learn how to play it and include it in their arsenal. Maybe they feel that it is too simplistic or commercial. But to the contrary, that tradition is FAR from commercial, in fact it is the exact opposite.

What makes and made jazz was the combination of African American and European elements. To me the music works best when it contains both. In affect it is integration. When the elements are segregated, neither work as well under the umbrella and definition of Jazz.

So now, what is Jazz?

Stanley Clarke and I had a talk about this. As Stanley sees it, jazz is an undefined term. It was fairly definable early on, but has since become whatever the musician, listener, concert or radio programmer defines it to be.

I personally subscribe to the Duke Ellington philosophy, "It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing." As far reaching as Duke’s music was, he loved the blues and understood its’ importance to jazz. Keep in mind that when I say "the blues" I’m not referring to a song form, I’m referring to a long succession of musical feelings and ideas dating back to Africa.

So again, what is Jazz–I know what it ain’t!

I do know that jazz is an attitude that has the blues at it’s core. It is at it’s best mostly spontaneous. That is what separates it from other music. Jazz musicians are spontaneous composers versed in the art of theme and variations, counterpoint wizards, rhythmic voodoo doctors, melodic swans, harmonic oceans, creating what has yet to be created, constantly searching, assimilating and birthing a new music child.

So, in the end whether these young players are really playing jazz based on this definition is debatable. Whether they are good players is undeniable. Whether it matters is also a point for discussion.

Now I’ve been accused many times of not playing jazz and that’s probably true from a narrow traditional standpoint –I’ve been dismissed as a player by many major jazz publications and critics for this very thing. However, compared to these new breed of "classical/jazz" players, I don’t know about that!

Whether I play straight ahead, funk, r&b, latin, pop or gospel–styles are irrelevant–the majority of my music has jazz elements: spontaneous, mostly improvised, and has the blues and gospel at its’ core. On that level, I’m more of a jazz player than many I hear today!

In case you think I’m being too hard on these guys, let me tell you that I’ve heard some incredible young jazz pianists who really know how to play and are doing it, what I feel, is the right way.

And I’m not trying to control jazz, the mere idea is a ridiculous notion. Jazz was born of a free mind and hopefully will remain that way!

And in the end that is my main concern–keeping the freedom in the music!! The real musician needs to be free to create what needs creating.

I could care less what this critic or that critic says, what this publication or that publication says. Though I believe that many want to, they don’t control the music, the musician does!

There are too many non-musicians deciding what musicians should do. In a nutshell that’s what’s wrong with the business! And even worse, these musicians are listening to these folk.

In many ways, I think this is what’s happened to many of these young pianists –they’ve been influenced by non-musicians. Now it’s OK for these business people to offer an opinion, but it seems to me, especially in jazz, that the musician must be given the final right of refusal.

But, as fate would have it, the musician has given up too much power and as result there is too much music being made today that is contrived and totally controlled. The internet has become a great equalizer in this fight.

The Lady Who Shot Lee Morgan

By Larry Reni Thomas

Lee Morgan, the fiery-hot, extremely talented jazz trumpet player, died much too soon. His skyrocketing career was cut short, at age 33, one cold February night in 1972, at a Manhattan club called Slug’s when he was shot to death by his 46-year-old common law wife Helen. At the time, Morgan was experiencing a comeback of sorts. He had been battling a serious heroin addiction for years and by most accounts, was drug free.

His gig at Slug’s was the talk of the jazz world and was a must-see for all of those in the know. There was always a packed house during his engagements at Slug’s. He looked good, sounded great and seemed destined for a fantastic future. Then the unthinkable happened.

How could it be? Why would Helen Morgan, whom almost everyone figured loved Lee more than she loved herself, kill her constant companion? What happened in their decade long relationship that would cause her to do something that devastating to Lee and herself and to Lee Morgan’s legion of fellow musicians, friends and fans who adored him?

The only person who could answer such questions is Helen Morgan (aka Helen More). She was arrested that day, February 9, 1972, served time in prison, released and paroled. She lived in the Bronx, Mount Vernon, and Yonkers, New York, until 1978, when she moved back to her hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina to be near her sick mother who passed in 1980. Helen became heavily involved in the Methodist Church, spent time with her grandchildren, took classes at a local college and received a degree.

No one knew about her past other than her family. She almost never talked about it. Yet, she still had friends in New York, like the late vocalist Etta Jones, whom she would telephone frequently to talk about old times. But almost no one, especially in the jazz scene, knew where she was, or for that matter, cared. Most of them expressed disdain for her, some were quick to call her a cold-blooded murderer.

But how cold-blooded was she? How did she feel about the tragic event? What was her life all about? What caused her to commit a crime that she had to live with most of her life? How did a country girl from rural North Carolina end up in the fast lane?

She talked about her life with Lee Morgan in a rare and exclusive interview in February 1996, about a month before she passed away of heart problems in a Wilmington, North Carolina hospital. Her health had been in decline for years, and she explained that she wanted to do her one and only interview because she wanted to tell her side of the story. She was tired, she said, and knew she didn’t have long to live.

Helen Morgan was born in 1926 in Brunswick County, North Carolina on a farm near a town called Shallotte, about 50 miles across the Cape Fear River, from the coastal city of Wilmington. By the time she was 13, the shapely, attractive, talkative, bronze-colored skin, girl had her first child. A year later, she had another child. Both of her children were raised by her grandparents. She left them and moved to Wilmington at age 15 to live with her mother. She said, at that point, she became “disillusioned with men” and was a virgin for a period after moving to Wilmington. When she was 17-years-old, she started dating a local bootlegger who was 39-years-old.

One night she accidentally walked in on him while he was counting money. “It was the most money that I had ever seen in my life,” she said, smiling. “He took a liking to me, and I took a liking to the money.”

A few months later, they were married. Two years later, her husband drowned and she became a 19-year-old widow. Her late spouse was a New Yorker. When his relatives came down to take care of the funeral, they took her back to New York, when they finished with their business. She arrived in New York, in 1945, with the intention of staying two weeks.

“I found out I couldn’t live with his family. They were living downtown in the 50s, on 52nd Street between 9th and 10th. I learned my way around and got a job. And then I began to meet other people, and started going uptown to the clubs. First club was the Blue Rhythm up on 145th Street on Sugar Hill. Little three-piece band–the drummer, singer and organ player. Della, I can’t think of her last name. Let’s see, Etta Jones.

I began to meet all these people. You know I could always fit in. Because I was a talker. And I must say myself, I was not bad looking, and I used to fit in very nicely with them. And I would be invited to the afterhours joints. But after the clubs would close, that’s when you really heard the music. The jam sessions, you know. They would come uptown and really play.

“But, you know, it’s funny,” she continued, “I met most of the jazz musicians through people who weren’t in the jazz world, but was in the dope world. Now, see me–I was a “hip square.’ That’s what they called me. Yeah. You see. I didn’t use no heroin. Because that was the thing. They called it “horse’. You know. I knew the people. The people I met were the dope dealers. I would carry it for them because they knew I didn’t use it. I met the dope dealers by going to the afterhours spots.”

It was at the afterhours spots that she got the chance to meet and listen to the conversations of some of the jazz musicians. She heard them talk about their lives and their frustrations. Helen was convinced that they used drugs to forget about how the white club owners were using them, especially the ones who made them enter through the back door and the ones who would not allow blacks in the audience. She saw how that affected them and how when they were high off of heroin, situated in the safety of the afterhours spots they voiced their displeasures and problems in a way that they would never do to the outside world.

Helen said that she thought they carried on very “sensible” talks about world affairs and what was happening to blacks at that time. She was impressed with their intellectualism, yet saddened at the same time, because she was convinced that they were all “hurting inside.” She said that she felt sorry for them because on stage and in public they were putting on a front or an act that everything was fine when it was obvious that this was not the case.

Helen explained that the musicians talked about how the whites were stealing their music, paying them next to nothing and how the whites were bringing all the heroin to Harlem. It was a sad situation that was an illusion to people on the outside who didn’t know any better.

Ms. Morgan, however, saw right through it. “It was like you (the musicians) were living this life. But you really not, you know. You’re just going through the motions. You singing. and the only time you are really yourself is when you are playing, singing and then you forget about everything. You go and play. It would be such mournful sounds. You could hear the sorrow in the music. If you listen hard enough you can hear it.”

Helen gained great respect for the musicians after her visits to the after hour spots. So much so that she invited them all to her apartment, on 53rd Street, between 8th and 9th Avenues, not too far from Birdland. “Helen’s place,” she said, “became a location where they could get a good hot meal.” She did not allow any drug use. It was a refuge and a safe haven from the hardships of a jazz musician’s life. It was there in her midtown Manhattan apartment, during the early 1960s, where she met the very young Lee Morgan.

“I met Morgan through Benny Green, the trombone player, who I was messing with at that time. Benny brought him around there. And I met him and we talked. And I looked at him and for some kind of reason my heart just went out to him. I said to myself “this little boy, you know.”

And I looked at him and he didn’t have a coat. I asked him why didn’t he have a coat. He just had a jacket. I said, “child, it’s zero degrees out there and all you have on is a jacket. Where is your coat?” And he told me he didn’t have a coat “cause it was in the pawn shop.” He had pawned his coat for some drugs. I told him, “Well, come on, I am going to go get your coat!” He said, “You’re going to get my coat?”

And I said, “Yeah, and I’m not going to give you the money! Because you might spend it on drugs. We are going to go and get it!’”

She said it was too cold for anybody to be outside without a coat. When she asked Lee where was his trumpet (“his axe”) he told her it was in the pawn shop too. Helen asked him how was he going to work if he didn’t have an instrument.

“How is a carpenter going work without tools?” she asked him and every other jazz musician she saw in that sad shape. But because she said she felt sorry for Lee Morgan, Helen went and got his trumpet and coat out of the pawn shop. After that, she said, Lee Morgan “hung on to me.”

Lee moved in with her and she “took over total control of Morgan.” She fed him, nursed and pampered him, and started to get his show business career back in order. Helen began to try to book him gigs again. She found out that he really wasn’t working a great deal because most people knew about his chronic no-shows and his drug habit. He was not working much except for the Jazzmobile on some summer Saturdays, Blue Note studio recording sessions and other assorted functions.

She recalled the time when a well known jazz musician passed and he was asked to play at the funeral. Lee told her that he could not do it because he did not have any shoes. All he had was bedroom slippers. They laughed when he told her that one of his fellow musicians told him, “Damn, Morgan, all God’s children got shoes!”

It’s not that he couldn’t get a gig. Everybody wanted to hire him. They were just worried that he might not show up. Helen became a stabilizing force for Lee, according to her, but she couldn’t completely stop him from using drugs. When Lee moved in, he brought a non-musician friend, Gary, with him. She called Gary a “parasite.” Ms. Morgan claimed he could not stand her and that he did everything to “make something come between me and Morgan.”

She found out that keeping hustlers, hanger-ons, fans, dead-beats and junkies away from Lee Morgan would be something that she would have to deal with for the rest of their lives. She eventually left the apartment and moved into another place. It was around then that her phone calls and her persistence began to pay off. Lee started getting a band together and getting ready to work again. Helen said that most of the club owners said they couldn’t depend on him. Some of them had been burned in the past when Lee Morgan was advertised all week to come to their establishment and he didn’t show up.

“If he did not have money to get high with then he did not even show up,” she said. “Ain’t nothing else was on his mind but getting high. Getting high made him normal. He told me that once. He said that Art Blakey was the one who turned him on. Art turned a lot of them on. Lee told me he asked Art how long would the high last? He said Art told him–forever! I am not saying that Art made them use it. I’m just saying that he was the influence. It’s making you feel so good. You know. I never thought much of Art because he turned so many of them on to heroin. All of them (the jazz musicians) were on it.

They were raggedy and pitiful. Real pitiful! Pitiful! Oh! But they came to my house and they were made welcome. Unless they were really doggish. I would let them in because they were people and one thing they were a mystery to me because I could never figure out how anything could make you in the dead winter time, zero weather, take off your coat and sell it. One time Gary and I was talking and he asked me why hadn’t I ever tried heroin.”

He said “Well, you missed the essence.”

I said “No Honey, I ain’t miss no essence. Looking at you’all I see the essence. Looking at you’all is a enough essence for me to not to want it! And looked at me and said ‘I guess you right. I guess you right.’”

According to Helen, Lee was a full-fledged junkie at that time, during the early 1960s, he had had his teeth knocked out and had broken some braces that had been in his mouth for years. She told him to clean up so she could try to get him some gigs. She convinced him that he could play again if he quit using so much heroin. Lee Morgan turned himself in to a hospital in the Bronx to beat his heroin habit. That meant that there was no more Gary. She never saw Gary again.

Ms. Morgan found a new apartment in the in the Bronx where Lee moved in to when he came out of drug rehabilitation. It was there in their apartment in the Bronx that she was able to help Lee Morgan get back on his feet. Helen was able to convince most of the club owners that she would personally make sure that Lee would make his engagements. She was extremely proud that she had, in her words, brought him back from near death.

“I’ll never forget,” she said, “the DJ for the black program was Ed Williams and Ed Williams was in my corner. He did the eulogy for Morgan. And people told me that he mentioned me. He said, “Regardless to what happened, we can not leave Helen out of this.”

He said, “Because Morgan was dead to us before she came on the scene. And she brought him back to us 5, 6, 7, 8 years, you know. She brought him back alive to us.”

Mrs. Morgan got him to start dressing neatly again and cleaning himself up. Whenever they would go out or go on the road, she went with him. Lee liked to wear a shirt and a tie and keep his shoes shined, So she made sure all of that was done before he went out for a gig. Helen would iron his shirts for him because she said that he didn’t like what they did to them at the laundry. They were seen together a great deal and were often out at other jazz and social events. It was backstage after one of those affairs that she first met the legendary trumpeter Miles Davis, who was an old friend of Lee’s. Helen said he was a “nasty.”

“When I met him,” she recalled, “he said, ‘Hello.’” I said, ‘Hello.’ And he said, “and who are you supposed to be?’ I said, ‘I’m suppose to be…I am ..I am not supposed to be…I am Helen Morgan!”

“Oh you Lee Morgan’s woman, huh?”

And I said, “yes!”

And he said, “I guess you know who I am?’ I said, I don’t have to know who you are! And he laughed, you know. He say, “I see you got a quick mouth.’ And the words he said was like this, “I don’t mess around with bitches with big mouths.’ That was one of his favorite words. And I said, well I don’t consider myself that. But, you know, we ain’t got nothing to say to each other anyway because I don’t play the trumpet, so I sure can’t talk about no music with you, you know.”

Lee Morgan’s first band, according to Helen, after he got out of rehab, was a very young and highly impressive quintet, one that was exciting live and at the forefront, on the cutting edge of the post-bop, funky soul jazz scene of the late 1960s and the early 1970s. It was known as an adventurous group that went out sometimes and took a few avant garde excursions, but always stayed in that soulful, funky, swinging pocket. His working band consisted of Lee on trumpet, Harold Mabern on piano, Jyme Merritt on bass, and Billy Higgins, drums. The substitutes, whenever there were adjustments to be made, were Cedar Walton, piano and Herbie Lewis on bass.

There was also a young reedman named Frank Mitchell, who Mrs. Morgan said they found in the Hudson River. She was sure that somebody killed him but she didn’t say why she thought that way. Frank wrote the tune “Expoobient” from the hit album of the same name. Helen managed Lee’s band business and kept them touring on a regular basis to places like California for a month, with two weeks in Los Angeles at Redondo Beach and two weeks in San Francisco.

The band was also booked in Chicago for two weeks and Detroit for two weeks, on their way back to the East Coast where she had work arranged at most of the major clubs in New York and other cities. She also set up an engagement on the Caribbean island of Antigua that went very well. From roughly 1965 to 1970, Helen was Lee’s true and trusted confidant, manager, and spokesperson. If anyone called their apartment and asked him about work, he handed the phone to her. She did the negotiating with the employers, the arranging of airline flights and transportation needs and Mrs. Morgan was the one who made sure they had hotel rooms.

Meanwhile, Lee concentrated on practicing with his band and recording. He let her handle the business end. No doubt he loved and respected her, so much so, he wrote a composition called “Helen’s Ritual,” which was inspired by Lee watching her take hours getting ready to go out and rubbing generous portions of lotion on her legs and the rest of her body in the process. She was not only the band’s manager, she was their cook, coach, cheerleader and probably their best critic.

Her favorite phrase when the band was really playing well was “Go head Morgan! Go head Morgan!” She said Lee would laugh and the people, including the band members would laugh at her, too. Helen didn’t care. She kept on saying “Go head Morgan! Go head Morgan!” because it made the band members feel good to know someone was listening and, most importantly because it made her feel good. There was one summer engagement in Rhode Island at the ritzy Newport Jazz festival when the music didn’t feel so fine.

“We was at Newport. And they were drinking. All this drinking. I said, you’all ain’t doing nothing out there. All you sound like little children up there. And I…..And they used to say if I didn’t say nothing they knew they wasn’t doing nothing. And I was just sitting right there looking at them. I said, all you’all sound like little children up there. And then Miles told them and Morgan said, “Yeah, that’s what my wife just told me–that I sound like a little child and that we sound like little children.” Miles said, “Well, she told you right!’”

The good years for the Morgans were when Lee was working and on methadone. Helen was meeting and greeting people who were mostly high-profile, show business personalities who she and Lee would sometimes entertained at their Bronx apartment. They both enjoyed a good party. It was at one of their early morning after-the-set parties that she met an interesting guest. She met the baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, a tall, crew-cut, white boy sitting on a pillow in her living room amid a sea of black faces.

Given the time and the place, the late 1960s, during the latter stages of the non-violent civil rights movement and the start of the violent end of the movement, Mulligan was more than a bold white boy. He was out of his mind and out of his place. Especially to Helen Morgan, a fast-talking, former farm girl from North Carolina who was definitely at that time, when she and Lee were doing well, living large and in a very fast lane.

“I’ll never forget I had a party and Gerry Mulligan came to my house. I didn’t know who he was. I didn’t know nothing about no Gerry Mulligan, you know. And he was sitting out there….And I seen this white boy sitting out there in the corner. And you know, we have a habit, you know how we say, ‘Nigger!’ You know how we call each other Nigger, you know. (Laughs) In a minute, you know. And think nothing about it “cause it was love with us! So I didn’t even know when he came in there. But somebody said something and I said, Nigger is you crazy? And I turned around and looked in this white guy’s face. And I cut me off. And I said, “Well, I done said it now. I said, Well, who are you? And somebody said, “That’s Gerry Mulligan.’ And I said, So! (Laughs). And then Morgan came over there and said,”

This is my wife Helen.’ I was not one of nicest persons either. I will not sit here and tell you that I was so nice because I was not. I was one who will cut you. I was sharp. I had to be. I had to be sharp. And Gerry Mulligan sat over there and I said well make yourself at home, you know. And he sat over there because in my front room I didn’t have no chairs. You sat on pillows and things like that. And he sat and had food. I always had plenty food. You served yourself because I partied too. I was no waiting on nobody. I cooked the food, you know. But it wasn’t no waiting on nobody.” “One time, a trick I pulled,” she continued. “I got some snuff (Laughs) and it was some kind of snuff. And I had this party. (Laughs) and I told them that it was Nigerian coke. They lied and said that they were high.

And it would burn them. I said, hold your head back. Aw, they would jump on it. And it was brown–Nigerian coke. Nigerian coke. And I laughed. Me and my friend did this. And I’d catch them. And they’d never been– because some people had never been in my house before and they had been coming… I remember seeing two of the people. I didn’t even remember them. They remembered me and how much of a good time they had at my house and had I gotten anymore of that coke? And I said, what coke? coke? They said, “that Nigerian coke, you had.’ I said, Oh no. (Laughs). I say, now you see how people’s minds. They weren’t high. You know. We had wine. They was high off the wine and smoking reefer.

And we had some coke before, but I wasn’t giving them all my coke and they didn’t have any.” Helen laughed when she talked about the happy times when Morgan was making a little money. He made money from the hit LP Sidewinder, but she insisted that he wasted it all on drugs. Mrs. Morgan contended that during that period (roughly 1965 to 1970), Lee was shooting “tremendous” amounts of cocaine. He had taken the usual path of some former heroin addicts, who when placed on methadone, shot cocaine instead because they figured it wouldn’t hurt since the white powder was not heroin.

Most of the time it turned out to be like jumping from a boiling pot to a frying pan or exchanging one bad habit for another. In the case of Lee Morgan, it turned out to be, according to her, exactly that and much, much more. He started to run the streets a great deal and sometimes he wouldn’t come back to their Bronx apartment for days. She began to wonder if their wonderful, fun-filled fast times were about to end. It was around that time that Helen began to ask herself : “Did I love him (Lee)? Or did I think he was my possession? And I think part of that might have been my fault because I might have stopped being..I might have started being too possessive or too much like a mother to him.

I was much older than Morgan because he was in his thirties when he died and I was in my forties or late forties. I thought about it because it was like to me, I thought about it. Like I made him. You know. I brought you back. You belong to me. And you are not supposed to go out there and do this. He started seeing this girl and as I understand it now. See I was on him about using so much cocaine. She was using cocaine with him. She was shooting cocaine with him. And you know how long that is. That’s pop, pop, pop! with that because it ain’t going to last you but a hot minute snorting it and less than that when you shoot it.

So I knew that because he’d be there with me when he’d get it. And I said, You using, you shooting, you using too much cocaine, you know. You using too much. You not eating, you know. And your nerves, you using. And I guess I was beginning to sound like a mother. And this girl, she had been after him for a long time. But when he was out there strung out she wasn’t. But once he got himself straight she wanted him. And then they were hanging out, you know. He had somebody (his age) to play with.

I saw her hanging around and I’d go to the bathroom and they would be there, you know. And I said, You better be careful, girl, you know. And I told her, You better be careful, you know.” Shortly afterwards, Helen stopped going to the clubs to see Morgan perform. She was still handling his business and they were still living together.

They were still going out together in public and when he was invited to be on several TV specials she accompanied him, not his new girlfriend. This situation perplexed Mrs. Morgan so much that she tried to commit suicide by swallowing poison. Lee was home the evening it happened. He called a cab and took her to the hospital to get her stomach pumped. Once she completely recovered from that ordeal, she sat down to have a heart-to-heart talk with Lee about their shaky future. “The thing we need to do is separate,” she told him. “You go ahead and be with her and I’ll still do your business.

But what you are doing is not right. I’m not one of those woman that can talk about I’m the main woman and you got somebody else out there. I’m not built that way. That’s not me. I’m no main woman if you leaving me here every night by myself and you out there with somebody else!” Mrs. Morgan said she asked Lee to leave and he wouldn’t. He was not secure enough to go and live with his new girlfriend, Helen contended, because he had sense enough to know that what he was doing with her would do nothing but bring him down. She was convinced that she brought him his much sought after stability. She told him that if he wouldn’t go then she would and that she was going to Chicago to visit some old friends.

Helen also informed Lee that she didn’t know when she was coming back and that maybe when she came back he would “have his act together.” “I even sat down and talked to the girl at the club,” she explained. “I said, I don’t want you to think that..I don’t know what he is telling you. But you sitting here and I’m telling him to go with you. I’m not keeping him. Begging him to stay. I’m telling him that it’s best for everybody around because I feel like something bad is going to happen out of this. And that Sunday he begged me not to go. He said, “Helen, don’t go. Don’t go to Chicago. I don’t want you to go. I don’t want you to leave me.

I said, we can’t live like this. It’s not me. And I didn’t go to Chicago. And I told him, you know, Morgan, I’m making the biggest mistake of my life.” That turned out to be a profound and a prophetic statement because it would lead to her making an uncharacteristically dumb move for a lady who had been doing the right things up until that point. She continued to stay at home and Lee even came home a night or two after their discussion. But that didn’t last long. Before the weekend, he was back in the streets, hanging out with his friend and shooting cocaine until the wee hours of the morning. He was working at Slug’s, a downtown club she had booked him in all week that second week in February 1972.

She had promised the club owner, like she had done many times in the past, that he would be there and Lee was there, with his quintet. sounding good and making the news as the act to catch, oblivious to what was about transpire, unaware that this much-heralded, routine gig at Slug’s would be his last. “On that Saturday, I don’t know what possessed me. I said, I’m going to Slug’s.

He was working down there that whole week. I hadn’t been down there that whole week. And I had a gun. He was the one who bought me the gun because he said he don’t be home and he wanted me to protect myself. And I put the gun in my bag. And a fellow was staying with me named Ed, Ed was gay. And Ed knew all the musicians and everything you know. And I said, Ed come on and go with me and Ed said no. He said, “Don’t go, Don’t go down there.’ I said, no I’m going down there. He said, “I just don’t want you to go!’ I said, I’m going to stop in Slug’s and say hello and then I’m going over to the Vanguard and hear Freddie.

I got a cab and went down there and went in Slug’s. And Morgan came around there where I was and we was talking and the girl walked up and she said, ” I thought you wasn’t supposed to be with her anymore.’ And he said, “I’m not with this bitch, I’m just telling her to leave me alone.’ And about that time I hit him. And when I hit him I didn’t have on my coat or nothing but I had my bag. He threw me out the club. Wintertime. “And the gun fell out the bag,” she continued. “And I looked at it. I got up. I went to the door.
I guess he had told the bouncer that I couldn’t come back in. The bouncer said to me, “Miss Morgan I hate to tell you this but Lee don’t want me to let you in.’ And I said, Oh, I’m coming in! I guess the bouncer saw the gun because I had the gun in my hand. He said, “Yes you are.’ And I saw Morgan rushing over there to me and all I saw in his eyes was rage.” It was at that point that Mrs. Morgan shot Lee and her whole world changed the moment that shot went off. She said she became extremely panicky and threw the gun on the counter on the bar. Pure pandemonium broke out and the bar’s occupants fled.

The police and an ambulance arrived on the scene. Helen sat there in the middle of all this in a complete daze, wondering if this was a dream, or was it a nightmare? “I ran over there and said I was sorry. And he said to me, he said, “Helen, I know you didn’t mean to do this. I’m sorry too.’” “I can remember the cops throwing me out. I went into hysterics and I don’t know. It seem to me like everybody must have left. And I don’t know where the girl went.

I ain’t never seen that girl since. I think she thought she was next. But she never entered my mind. You know, it’s a funny thing, she didn’t enter my mind. When that gun went off it snapped me back to reality to what I had done. I didn’t have a coat. I didn’t have a bag. I didn’t have nothing. I was just sitting there, you know. Seemed like it hadn’t registered. I said, I couldn’t have did this. I couldn’t have did this. This must be a dream and I’ll wake up. I couldn’t be sitting here. And then I just went to jail and sat there. “And the next morning I had to go to court. My kids was upset. They don’t know what to think. But the musicians were there. They were there. Everybody kept saying, “Don’t worry. Don’t worry. Don’t worry. We behind you. Don’t worry. We’ll get you a lawyer. Don’t worry.’

I was just going back. Worry about what? And the lawyer told me do not plead guilty. Plead not guilty. I didn’t understand that, I said, “Well I killed him. I’m guilty, you know.”

So I did what he said–not guilty. And then I went on back. And when they had the hearing, my mother came up. Then that was another…She was in trauma because she couldn’t believe it. This is my daughter!

I said, “well, Helen, you got to get yourself together. It’s done. You done put yourself in it now. So, you got to get yourself together. You got to get your mind together. You got to get yourself together mentally to accept what you have done.”

Helen said she spent several weeks on Riker’s Island in jail before she realized no one was going to help her except herself. She fired her lawyer after he paid her only one visit and failed to say anything to her after their initial meeting. Her supporters had dwindled down to family members and close friends who stuck with her in and out of prison.

It wasn’t until she had been out of New York for almost 20 years, in failing health, back down south in North Carolina near where her life began, that she decided to grant an interview and talk about the sad, tragic event that had shaped her fall from being “Lee Morgan’s woman,” a possessive lady in the fast lane, to the devoted, loving, church-going mother and grandmother known as Ms. Morgan. Less than a month after she gave this interview in February 1996, Helen’s song came to its coda, its final note, when her weak heart gave out and she died at a hospital in Wilmington, North Carolina, surrounded by her loved ones.

The Death of Black Radio with Bob Law & Vy " Mama I wanna Sing " Higgensen

Why Doesn’t Hip Hop Respect Its Elders?

Contributor Lauren Carter

Most cultures hold their elders in high regard. It’s safe to say that hip hop in its current form is not one of them.

In today’s hip hop landscape, pioneers are typically dismissed and marginalized by the mainstream, trotted out once a year during VH1’s “Hip Hop Honors” and then conveniently forgotten.

There is a sense that aging rap artists need to “move out of the way” or “stay in their lane” to make way for new artists, as if classic rappers could be any further out of the way than they already are and new artists are actually worth getting out of the way for.

One has to wonder why rock artists are revered well into old age while their rap counterparts are generally ignored and then branded “angry and bitter” when they object to being tossed aside like yesterday’s garbage.

Rockers aren’t told to move aside and make way for the next generation. They’re regarded with a level of respect and awe that often borders on hero worship, because listeners understand that people age and styles change, but quality music is timeless.

It’s well known that The Rolling Stones still sell out stadiums, acts such as Steve Miller Band, Allman Brothers Band and Fleetwood Mac can still pack arenas and amphitheaters, and their shows attract multiple generations of fans — something I can attest to personally after seeing these groups several times. Classic rock and adult contemporary stations keep the catalogues of “old” rockers in heavy rotation, and artists like Bob Dylan and Tom Petty still land on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.

The nationally televised 12-12-12 fundraising concert for Hurricane Sandy victims proved yet again that rock artists with AARP cards remain relevant; the lineup was stacked with classic acts like Eric Clapton, Billy Joel, The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, The Who and Paul McCartney.

No, hip hop and rock are not the same, and there’s no attempt here to equate the two. Although they’re both young genres with roots in rebellion and angst, they’re also different styles of music that appeal to fan bases of different sizes. Most rap artists will never claim the number or breadth of fans that major rock acts like the Rolling Stones do. But a rock-to-rap comparison isn’t exactly to “apples and oranges” either. While the size and makeup of rock and rap fan bases differ, it stands to reason that if quality artists in one genre can still garner radio play, media coverage and respect well into old age, then quality artists in another genre should receive similar treatment.

And yet classic rap artists are typically treated like they don’t exist. There are few, if any, terrestrial classic hip hop stations; the most we can get for throwback music in Boston, for example, is a half hour of hits from the ‘90s and early 2000s at lunchtime, or whatever might play on college radio. The Hip Hop Gods tour that Public Enemy headlined late last year was universally ignored by major media outlets, even though Chuck D is as important to hip hop as someone like Bob Dylan is to folk and rock, and Public Enemy is one of the most groundbreaking groups in all of music.

Local rap radio stations will proudly promote live shows for 2 Chainz and Trinidad James, but barely mention tours by rap legends like Slick Rick and Big Daddy Kane, who helped to create the genre these stations are busy milking for its last dollar.

Artists like Jay-Z, Kanye West and Eminem have managed to maintain superstardom well into their 30s, but they are the exception and not the rule. Most aging hip hop artists — Ice Cube, LL Cool J and Queen Latifah, for example — have chosen to branch off into other endeavors like film and product endorsement to stay relevant. It’s nice that Chuck D and LL got to close out this year’s Grammy Awards, but considering how infrequently hip hop pioneers play on a national stage, it was baffling to see them perform an unfamiliar new song rather than a medley of their classic hits.

Which begs the question of why hip hop legends who helped to create this now-global culture are seldom given the respect or platform they deserve.

It’s true that hip hop is youth-oriented and built around battling and besting the next man, and that’s not necessarily a mindset that breeds respect. And as The Guardian noted in its music blog, the urban family structure may influence hip hop’s treatment of its elders:

“Culturally, the lack of a father figure in a majority of ghetto homes also plays a role. Hip-hop manifests this as an obsession with one’s immediate peer group and a dismissal of elders. Knowledge isn’t handed down; what little knowledge there is gets shared by peers. People raised in ‘the streets’ know nothing but ‘the streets.’ The codes and the rules of the streets don’t necessarily allow reverence for elders.”

True enough, but there’s a larger factor in the equation that no one is talking about, and that’s the influence of corporations.

It’s no secret that corporations now control mainstream hip hop culture — if it can even be called a culture anymore.

One company — Viacom — owns BET and MTV. One company — Clear Channel — owns the majority of radio stations in the country. One company — Live Nation — produces most of the concerts in the U.S. And since 1988, the major labels have been reduced from six to three. So the result is a consolidation of control over our music, and a very small number of people deciding what a large number of people will see and hear.

Corporations now determine who gets signed, who gets radio spins, who gets national tours and who appears on “106 & Park.” And this, in turn, determines who gets covered by your favorite magazines and blogs, because at this point, hip hop journalism has degenerated from actual reporting and analysis to blindly promoting “hot” artists in an effort to draw readers and boost pageviews.

Even “indie” promotional outlets like social media and YouTube are heavily influenced by corporations; try watching any video without seeing an ad for Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, 2 Chainz, et al.

The result of corporations controlling hip hop is the total degradation of our music and culture. What began as a tool for black progress and a movement with the power to pick up where Civil Rights left off has become a weapon against the very community that created it, with a barrage of images and messages that promote the destruction of self, family and community.

Hip hop’s original tenets of peace, love, unity, fun and knowledge of self are glaringly absent from the corporate rap paradigm, which caters to a young, mostly white audience that would rather see caricatures of black life than hear about the violence exploding in Chicago, or the number of blacks in prison, or the quality of our school systems.

That’s not to say that old school artists were universally positive and new school artists are universally negative. There are still bright spots in the current commercial landscape, like Kanye West and Jay-Z’s “Murder to Excellence,” and classic rap wasn’t all flowers and unicorns. Not every old school song depicted inner-city life as vividly as Grandmaster Flash’s “The Message,” nor did every song advocate for female empowerment like Queen Latifah’s “U.N.I.T.Y.” or denounce drug use like MC Lyte’s “Cappucino.” But even when N.W.A. breathed fire on “Fuck tha Police,” they were protesting oppressive conditions in their community, not advocating for them as so much modern-day rap does. And there was a sense of diversity and authenticity in hip hop before the mid-to-late ‘90s corporate takeover. From Rakim to KRS-One to Ice-T to A Tribe Called Quest, rappers came off as real people expressing real feelings, not studio thugs or characters created in some corporate conference room.

Now, rap has been reduced to mass-produced ignorance. Most artists sound the same, and every mainstream rap song revolves around some combination of drugs, alcohol, violence, crime, misogyny and materialism. You will not hear about the black unemployment rate, but you will hear French Montana and friends rapping about bitches tiptoeing on Italian marble floors.

So it makes sense that old school rappers have no place in the new school corporate paradigm, because these two schools are two worlds at odds, with clashing messages and goals. One promoted survival; the other celebrates death.

Of course many older artists are going to fade in popularity. Of course styles change and new trends take hold. Not every artist can claim the fan base they once had, not every artist will maintain their skill level and not every artist wants to be a part of hip hop well into middle age; some will simply outgrow the culture and move on to other things. But the virtual erasure of old school hip hop figures from the new school landscape is not about rusty rappers or fading popularity and new trends. It is a calculated move by corporations that are busy selling ignorance and silencing sources of enlightenment. The corporate rap paradigm profits off of black dysfunction, and old school hip hop artists merely represent a dent in their profit margin.

Lauren Carter is a writer and editor, music junkie, hip hop head and healthy living enthusiast based in Boston. Connect with her on Twitter @ByLaurenCarter or visit her blog at www.bylaurencarter.com. 

Tags: black radio, hip hop, Lauren Carter, music industry, music news, rap, RapRehab

How Female Hip Hop Committed Suicide

Final Cause Of Death: Female Hip Hop Committed Suicide

It was 1990 when I realized that Hip Hop was my music drug of choice.

There were MC Lytes, Yo-Yos, Queen Latifahs and Lauryn Hills. Women were very present in hip hop, when I was coming up. You couldn’t remix a track without allowing Da Brat to grace a track, or a Fugee performance wasn’t the same without Lauryn Hill jumping out on stage with her vintage hat of choice, swayed to one side. Females in hip hop were very relevant and promininent. I mean I remember gaining my first since of “Respect My Womanhood” from Queen Latifah’s “U.N.I.T.Y.”

Had a boy called me out of my name, he would have been suckerpunched if not told from his head to his toes. Why? Because back then the female rap game was all about promoting “respect for women”, and I couldn’t be a fan of rappers like Lauryn Hill and not love myself, or check the most disrespectful boy for calling me out of my name. I often raise my brows and wonder what happened to that? I remember watching award shows and feeling honored that women were receiving awards in the same categories as a men would.

Watching a women do the same things a man could do; even better, gave me a lot of inspiration as a child. I felt unstoppable watching these powerful female MC’s perform. They kept the real female hip hop fan base satisfied. After all, in the nineties it wasn’t about “selling sex” for these females. It was more about demanding respect for the female gender, and letting other people know “Listen, we’re not putting up with any sh*t”.

I needed that. Then something happened. It seemed to me that rap labels dominated by men started to push something much more distracting into the presence of female hip hop fanbases; SEX. And I mean, why NOT have a female rapper who can rap and also show her ass for entertainment? The easiest thing right? An influx of more feminine artists began to peak. There were the Lil Kims, Foxy Browns, who began to surface. Screaming “UNITY” amongst other females was beginning to wipe away slowly. All of the attention placed on “giving women respect” was masked by a sudden wave of “chocolate skin, bare assets, and speaking on situations like sex just like a male would”, in their hip hop projects. Hell, it was a little too contradicting to talk about “respecting women”, with your vagina print showing on an album cover. So with the introduction of certain female artists the final cause of death; Female Hip Hop Murdered Female Hip Hop.

Yep, we did it to ourselves. Once again, this situation proved that women follow the wants and desires of men way too much. We want to be sexy yet bad in their eyes, even if it means ruling out some of our own self respect in the midst of it. You think not? Sure look at the timeline of events. I was growing up in an era at 12 and 13 years old, wanting to be the great writer and artist people like Lauryn Hill was. Nowadays the same age group are destined to be like Nicki Minaj, a self proclaimed plastic surgery made female who claims to be bi-sexual. Where is the “strength” in that?

Female Hip Hop killed itself because the fan base became distracted and more focused on what the male population in hip hop wanted, instead of what WE as women wanted. Rappers influenced by true icons like MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, etc did not just die off on their own. They lacked support. They lost fan base to the needs of men. Women who were too naive to understand that we were playing into a man’s game. They died off because no longer did women want to listen to “being empowered and standing for respect”, but “sucking d*ck and being the freakiest b*tch in the bedroom for good for nothing materialistic men”. That’s why.

Female hip hop committed suicide because labels agreed to unleash females with one common thing on their mind; selling sex. We sold out. We as a female race in hip hop sold out, at something that to do nothing but produce sexual desire for the male fanbase of hip hop. Why put all this time in effort into my actual lyrics when I can get a record deal from having a fat ass, freaky lyrics, and a pretty face? This became the common thought across the board in upcoming female artists. Not to mention the many different men, pumping Koolaid into the hearts of goregous women with Senior Citizen weak bars, by telling them that their looks will make them go far. Instead, short lived rap careers became prominent for females. A few labels picked them up and used them for a short while, then gone. Amil vanished just like she never appeared. Lil Kim’s fan base continuously depletes because the fans have nothing left to grasp for. We’ve seen both tits. I think.

2 shots and we were down for the count. Trying desperately to pump the life back into our sector. I’ll tell you what. It’s going to take a woman with the courage of a giant to resuscitate female hip hop back to its respectable state. I pray one day she arrives.

Female Hip Hop Committed Suicide.

-Chakara

Tags: African American, chakara, featured, Female Hip hop, hip hop, rap, raprehab.com

How to derail an argument about racism

                                If you are a white person arguing about racism with a black person here is how to derail the argument:

The main thing is to turn the tables by getting your opponent angry. Once he is  then you can say that it is pointless to continue. You “win” and  never had to address the substance of his argument!

It is easy to get blacks upset about race because they take the whole race thing way too personally – because, unlike you, it affects them, well, personally! And, if you act in a racist manner in a debate about racism, all the while saying that racism is all in their heads, that will drive them nuts!

The trick is to never take what they say seriously. Instead belittle it. So when they talk about their experience of racism, tell them they see racism everywhere, that they are imagining it. After all, a  friend of yours is black (make it up if you have to) and he does not agree. So how can they speak for all black people!? Demand facts and figures, studies and surveys that back up what they say. You need evidence! You need proof!

Tell them how you, as a white person, have had the same experiences too: You were stopped by the police too (when you ran a red light). People touch your daughter’s hair too (she is three). It will make them look like complainers. That you missed the point of their examples will get them upset – just what you want!

If their English is bad, jump on that. If their English is too good then they probably have a good education, so what are they complaining about?

That is the general idea. It is taken from a website, Derailing for Dummies, which explains how racists, sexists, homophobes and others favoured by society - the privileged – derail or throw off the arguments made by the marginalized – like blacks, women and gays. Although it is written tongue-in-cheek, it is dead serious: the author has seen it too many times.

The website tells you how to use each of these derailing arguments:

1. If You Won’t Educate Me How Can I Learn
2. If You Cared About These Matters You’d Be Willing To Educate Me
3. You’re Being Hostile.
4. But That Happens To Me Too!
5. You’re Being Overemotional
6. You’re Taking Things Too Personally
7. You’re Not Being Intellectual Enough/You’re Being Overly Intellectual
8. You’re Arguing With Opinions Not Fact
9. Your Experience Is Not Representative Of Everyone
10. Unless You Can Prove Your Experience Is Widespread I Won’t Believe It
11. I Don’t Think You’re As Marginalized As You Claim
12. Well I Know Another Person From Your Group Who Disagrees!
13. A In B Situation Is Not Equivalent To X In Y Situation
14. Who Wins Gold in the Oppression Olympics?
15. You Have A False Consciousness
16. You’re Not Being A Team Player
17. You’ve Lost Your Temper So I Don’t Have To Listen To You Anymore
18. You Are Damaging Your Cause By Being Angry
19. Surprise! I Was Playing “Devil’s Advocate” All Along!

 by abagond

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