Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category
Summer Art Festivals
July 14, 2010
Installation #4
June 2, 2010My father has many sayings. For example, when my siblings and I were growing up, he rarely allowed us to watch TV, but when he caught us watching something he would always say the same thing:
“Why are you watching the TV? Instead of watching the TV, you should go to your room and study so you that one day you can be on TV, so that others can watch you.”
The more I think about it, the more it seems that my life is merely a constellation of his eccentric little sayings. Another of his favorite sayings was “second place is first loser.” He often said this whenever I came home with a second place trophy, or if I told him that another student had performed better than me on a spelling test. At the time I thought he was cruel – I, like all of my peers, had been raised in a culture that attempted to emulate the narrative arcs of our favorite sitcoms. My father was supposed to hug us after our failures; he was supposed to assure us that all would be ok as the credits rolled. We had no such luck. In retrospect, however, it was all for the best.
My father is a hard working man. He had two primary jobs when I was young: in the winter he cleaned trailers and during the summer he sold ice cream from decommissioned postal service trucks that he had purchased from the government. He expected us to accompany him to each of these jobs, so we spent the winter picking up the refuse that he blew out of the trailers with his leaf blower, and we spent the long summer months presenting him with cool little packages of ice cream as our customers demanded creamsicles and ice cream sandwiches. We worked in shifts, but we never had an opportunity to play. In the winter we read in the car as our father drove us to the trailer depot, and he made us return to the car so we could read even more while he waited for the trailers to unload their goods. In the summer he converted the back of each ice cream truck into a mobile bedroom. There was an old beat up mattress we would recline on between shifts, and a stack of books by the freezer. My father expected that we would each finish a book by the end of the day.
I learned how to be an American from my immigrant father. I still remember one of the proudest moments of his life – the day he became an American citizen. We spent the morning reviewing the pledge of allegiance together, and the preamble to the constitution. After the ceremony, he showed me his certificate with tears in his eyes and said “you must work hard to deserve this.”
I’ve been working hard ever since.
Tope Folarin is the 2010 Carol Jean and Edward F. Newman Fellow. He comes to IPS from Google, where he managed public affairs and public relations in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Tope holds a Master’s in African Studies and another Master’s in Comparative Social Policy from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He graduated from Morehouse College in 2004 with a BA in Political Science.
Installation #3
May 23, 2010
Photographer Leslie Sinclair watching his daughter Marion ride a tricycle. This is Marian’s first trip to her father’s homeland, Havana Cuba. Sinclair and his family now reside in Geneva. He’s one of my favorite photographers living.
Fatherhood
May 15, 2010
Almost two years ago, I wrote an essay for The Root about my twin struggle to be both an artist and a good “single” father. This may well be one of my most celebrated pieces. I got invited on NPR with Mark Anthony Neal to discuss my experience. So, now I thought that for Words Matter, I’d create a space, leading up to Father’s Day, for anyone to join the conversation about fatherhood in all of its many textures and colors and arrangements. This is something new for Words Matter, doing a series.
Erykah Badu’s New AmErykah
April 14, 2010
With New Amerykah Part Two: The Return of the Ankh, Erykah Badu has secured her status as the bonafide Afro-Hippie of the neo-soul generation. Five albums into the music game, her work is still fresh, and gives listeners an occasional throwback to jazz artists like Miles Davis (who reinvented himself countless times) and Billie Holiday, who created a signature style.
Return of the Ankh differs in cohesion alone from World War 4, part one of her NewAmerykah trilogy. The melodies complement each other; she creates a thread that ties all the songs together. Ever the consummate artist, Badu shows her versatility as a contemporary artist by mixing styles and aesthetics on this album. She gives a nod to Biggie’s Junior Mafia in “Turn Me Away (Get Munny);” she represents her R&B following beautifully in “Umm Hmm;” and she doesn’t skimp on her love for hip-hop in her collaboration with Lil Wayne and Bilal on “Jump Up in the Air and Stay There.” She pays homage to Billie Holiday in the song “Out My Mind (Just in Time).” She sings: “I’m a recovering, undercover over lover/ recovering from a love I can’t get over/ And now my common law lover thinks he wants another.”
Of late, it seems Badu has become a victim of her success. In doing something different, she’s become self-indulgent. She’s stitched a career around a persona that once was shy and is now outsized and rebellious. Recently, we’ve witnessed less of the colorfully wrapped Erykah and more of a new Badu that’s free-loving, who changes wigs with each song, is more costume-conscious, more mutable. It’s not that this is a bad thing, as artists should evolve but the thing is–evolutions are slow changes.
Read more on TheRoot.
Thirteen Years Later and Still Got the Jones
February 14, 2010This was the film where I first saw myself on screen. This was the film where everything was jazz, cool, yet real. This was the film that showed relationships as I came to witness and experience them.
I just wrote an essay for TheRoot about why this film has endured for so long. And how black writers and filmmakers must re-commit themselves to telling our stories on this level.
Take a look.
Remembering the Children of Haiti
January 19, 2010
Patrick Harrel, staff photographer for the Miami Herald, won the Pulitizer prize his photographic stills of storm-torn Haiti (circa 2009). What’s striking about this photo is the subject’s eyes. I wonder how the children of Haiti view the International community? Do they feel loved by us? Invisible? As one of God’s creations?
Art has that unique ability of asking so many questions all at once. Words Matter gives a huge shout out to the photographer of this photo and so many more, Patrick Harrel.
Haiti On My Mind. . .
January 15, 2010
Mud Mothers
the children of haiti
are not mythological
we are starving
or eating salty cakes
made of clay
because in 1804 we felled
our former slave captors
the graceless losers sunk
vindictive yellow
teeth into our forests
what was green is now
dust & everyone knows
trees unleash oxygen
(another humble word
for life)
they took off
with our torn branches
beheaded our future
stuck our breath up on pikes
for all the world to see
we are a living dead example
of what happens to warriors who―
in lieu of fighting for white men’s countries―
dare to fight
for their own lives
during carnival
we could care less
about our bloated empty bellies
where there are voices
we are dancing
where there is vodou
we are horses
where there are drums
we are possessed
with joy & stubborn jamboree
but when the makeshift
trumpet player
runs out of rhythmic breath
the only sound left is guts
grumbling
& we sigh
to remember
that food
& freedom
are not free
is haiti really free
if our babies die starving?
if we cannot write our names
read our rights keep
our leaders in their seats?
can we be free
really? if our mothers are mud? if dead
columbus keeps cursing us
& nothing changes
when we curse back
we are a proud resilient people
though we return to dust daily
salt gray clay with hot black tears
savor snot cakes
over suicide
we are hungry
creative people
sip bits of laughter
when we are thirsty
dance despite
this asthma
called debt
congesting
legendarily liberated
lungs
- Lenelle Moïse
Lenelle Moïse hailed “a masterful performer” by GetUnderground.com, is an award-winning “culturally hyphenated pomosexual” poet, playwright and performance artist. She creates jazz-infused, hip-hop bred, politicized texts about Haitian-American identity and the intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality, spirituality and resistance. In addition to featured performances in venues as diverse as the Louisiana Superdome, the United Nations General Assembly Hall and a number of theatres, bookstores, cafes and activist conferences, Lenelle regularly performs her acclaimed autobiographical one-woman show WOMB-WORDS, THIRSTING at colleges across the United States.
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Moïse will be featured at Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness, March 10-13, 2010, in Washington, DC. The festival will present readings, workshops, panel discussions, youth programming, film, activism – four days of creative transformation as we imagine a way forward, hone our community and activist skills, and celebrate the many ways that poetry can act as an agent for social change. For more information: info@splitthisrock.org.
Please feel free to forward Split This Rock Poem-of-the-Week widely. We just ask you to include all of the information in this email, including this request. Thanks!
This poem is reprinted from Split This Rock’s blog–where you can find other great poems and poetry news <http://blogthisrock.blogspot.com>
Framing 2009, Envisioning 2010
December 29, 2009Tzyna Pynchback, one of my good writer-friends and I decided to have a conversation about 2009 in all of its beauty and ugliness. We examine the personal and the public and what I think this blog is all about–interrogating culture. What it all means and what can we gather from the music, films, and books that build our cultural lives. This will be the last post for 2009.
abdul ali: Tzyna, thanks so much for talking to me about 2009. We’re less than three days out of this year….decade!
Tzynya: and i want to say good riddance, but with love and respect for all the decade has taught us
aa: what are some of those things this almost decade have taught you? I’ve learned so much about faith–not so much in an institution but in the divine and how we’re a part of that spirit world. We have the power to manifest our visions
t: this decade has been one of personal transformation. i think it’s important for individuals and for artists to be aware of their ability and need to be a changeling, and to embrace reinvention.
aa: can you speak more on the idea of changeling?
t: at the start of this decade I was a messy twenty-something– half wife, half mother, leftover daughter–even worse, I was a messy writer without focus.
aa: I always feel like a messy writer without focus
t: at the end of this decade, I am a better writer because I better understand who I am and who I am not.
aa: that’s awesome…
t: tell me, do you feel 2009 was a profound ending to this decade or just more of the same?
aa: hmm…well as my friend says, 2010 is the actual bookend to the decade but I think there’s always the changing same. There was so much hope and excitement around Obama and it’s difficult to see so much of that waiver. But, I’ve always felt that New Years offers a sense of possibility
t: I think 2010 will be the birth of some collective awareness for people globally (and now I sound like a new age wanna-be guru). I started to feel this way at the year’s half way mark. 2009 was ripe with tumult: hope riding shotgun with fear, despair, and longing.
aa: I suppose it’s what we make it (or don’t make it) i the end. But, you have to admit there were so serious things that happened this year. Michael Jackson’s passing was huge and it was interesting to reflect on why it was so huge.
t: his death came around the time I reconnected with my first love from high school. I learned of MJ’s death via txt message sent from a friend in St. Louis, just as I had been found by a former lover on Facebook. That first night of his death, I sat up most of the night singing all the songs from his Thriller album with my brother.
t: I remembered sitting in the living room of my parents house waiting for the world premier of the music viedo
Thriller, I remembered my brothers, my excitement at being the only family on the block to record that video on VHS.
aa: What does his songs mean/represent to you? For me, they signal the slow co-option of black culture by cultural forces. That’s what his life reminds me of. But his music celebrates life. I really enjoyed it. Still do. He was a genius.
t: MJ’s songs were the soundtrack of my tweens–that wonderful time when you just aware of everything around you and everything is still beautiful. MJ reminds me of being 12 years old and having a crush on the boy across the street and daydreaming of my first kiss, before I understood this world is not safe.
aa: I remember black and white. Thriller was played on TV when music videos began to take off but what I recall most was how lavish his lifesyle was. He seemed bigger than anyone, even himself. I wonder was that the media’s doing or his own orchestration?
t: Maybe both? There has to be a comfort hiding behind spectacle.
aa: ha ha. MJ reminds us of the images of black people on and off the camere.I continue to be unimpressed with what’s happening with Black Cinema, at least as far as American black movies go. Skin was an indie film about a South African situation that was compelling.
t: Recently I saw the film Yesterday, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film (note: i will check the exact award title) amazing story of a woman in a small African village living with AIDS and trying to get her young daughter into school.
aa: Why is it films about black folks in other spaces seem more compelling than what’s happening here in the states?
t: I am underwhelmed by what passes as Black Cinema in this country.
aa: Absolutely, by why is this? Black Americans are a dynamic people. Why isn’t our film showing this?
t: I watched The Jefferson’s the other night on television, and George replied to another character, “Nigga please!”, I was shocked, and then suddenly I was not. So much of what is on television, in fiction, on film today is a high-tech rehash of the same outcry from three decades ago.
aa: I’m not so bothered by “Nigga please! I am, however, disturbed to see improvements in so many aspects of black American living but with our art it seems as it it’s frozen, stuck in a time machine. I rarely see myself reflected in film. In fact, I see more of myself in the films like “Revolutionary Road” and “The Reader” that have no black people in the film. This is painful to admit.
t: I look at performers like George Lopez and consider the arc of his comedic career and what that reflects for Mexican-Amercians. Lopez’s new late night show is the spin on the Arsenio Hall show from the 90′s, almost twenty years later how far has Black entertainment evolved?
We talk about film often, the two of us, and so often the films we discuss, we love, are not Black films.
aa: Not very much. There’s been a paradigm shift. You cannot assume that just because you throw a script together with some black actors that ALL black people will love it.
We’ve become more sophisticated as an audience. I wonder if black writers and directors should eventually stop writing “black” stories as they’re so ridiculous.
t: Yes!
aa: and just write good stories. which will mean we need more visionary casting directors so that a black actor can get casted in a script that calls for an actor not black person necessarily
t: one of my favorite films this decade was “Closer” with Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, Judd Law. The dialogue is sexy and the characters and their relationships and interactions with one another are loving, and wretched, and loathsome–real. I am so immersed in the film, and the characters, the fact they are not black is of no concern or consideration. I see the faces of my friends, of myself in these characters and situations.
Often when I am watching a black American film, their blackness never leaves me, it’s always worn on the top layer of skin. Publisher’s Weekly recently had an article that speaks to that in publishing.
aa: do you mean that their humanity dosn’t show—only their blackness?
t: I think the writing formula for too long has been: 1)black; 2)woman/man/child/
aa: So, after all is said and don what do you think as writers can do in our small way to contribute to the change we want to see?
t: There are too many stories on screen, on page where the emphasis is how, why, when this black man/woman responds to a particular catalyst.
Tell the stories we want to read.
aa: or maybe we should write the stories we want to read and see to quote Toni Morrison.
t: yes, you know i stole that quote from ms. Morrison lol exactly
Publishers Weekly printed a great article on AA Books in Today’s Marketplace. http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6711430.html
t: Highlighting what some refer to as the ghetto of publishing: major publishing houses with black imprints. books by, for, and about black people.
t: I do think it comes down to change, reinvention. Black art is ready, dying for reinvention.
aa: I wonder if it needs to die in order to have a rebirth or renaissance…
t: a little death is not always a bad thing. it has not gone gentle into that good night, lol
