Thursday, December 9th, 2004

Robert Johnson, Rockism, and Hip-Hop Crate-Diggers

Let me now sing the praises of Elijah Wald, whose book Escaping The Delta (the paperback version is out next month) is just an amazing thing. Wald turns rockist history on its side–basically, his job is to take apart the making of the myth of Robert Johnson.

In doing so, he offers a really compelling read of how race and rockism (that is, before it was rockism–maybe more like folkism or blues-ism) came together to distort what we understand to be the history of the blues. At the same time, he restores the context for the way Southern black audiences appreciated the blues during Johnson’s time, overturning a lot of sacred cows and dirtying a lot of sacred texts on the way. It reads as an “alt-history”, but it feels wrong to call it that when the Richards/Clapton/McCartney version of blues history is what got canonized.

Read it yourself and holla back, but let me just drop these paragraphs on you–from the climax of the book, a chapter called “The Blues Cult: Primitive Folk Art and The Roots of Rock”–and you might see how Wald’s worldview touches on many raging questions, like:

+ Is crate-digging and funk or hip-hop nostalgia inherently conservative or progressive?

+ Just how important are packaged reissues–like, say, that wack 100%/200%/300% Dynamite series on Soul Jazz or even the brilliant Blood & Fire label–to our understanding of music?

+ How does whiteness, specifically the New York and the London versions, affect North American urban hipsterism and its aesthetic ideal of “what’s real”?

+ What the fuck was the deal with My Bloody Valentine anyway?

This chapter talks about how, during the 1950s and 1960s, blues history gets rewritten by white folks in New York and London. First some explanatory notes. The “neo-ethnic” movement was a group of white folkies led by David Van Ronk in Greenwich Village during the Beat era who started playing “country blues” in cafes. Harry Smith’s anthology is still regarded as godhead on 12 sides. John Hammond was, along with Alan Lomax, one of the brilliant white cultural progressives of his time–as an A+R he was a big Johnson supporter, and went on to champion everyone from Billie Holiday to Bob Dylan to Aretha Franklin to Bruce Springsteen. But in the book Wald argues that there was a downside to his legacy as well. Anyway, uh chekkidout:


The neo-ethnic movement was nourished by a spate of LP reissues that for the first time made it possible to find hillbilly and country blues recordings in white, middle-class, urban stores. The bible was Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music…Smith was specifically interested in the oldest and most-rural sounding styles, and set a pattern for any future folk-blues reissue projects by intentionally avoiding any artist who seemed consciously modern or commercial…

Far from balancing this taste, the other record collectors tended to be even more conservative. Much as they loved the music, they were driven by the same mania for rarity that drives collectors of old stamps or coins, and many turned up their noses at Jefferson or the Carters, since those records were common. (Ed. note: Like Rick James, bitch!) To such men, the perfect blues artist was someone like Son House or Skip James, an unrecognized genius whose 78s had sold so badly that at most one or two copies survived. Since the collectors were the only people with access to the original records or any broad knowledge of the field, they functioned to a great extent as gatekeepers of the past and had a profound influence on what the broader audience heard. (Ed. note: Like Freestyle Fellowship or Bun B, bitch!) By emphasizing obscurity as a virtue unto itself, they essentially turned the hierarchy of blues-stardom upside-down: The more records an artist had sold in 1928, the less he or she was valued in 1958.

This fit nicely with the beat aesthetic, and indeed with the whole mythology of modern art. While Shakespeare had been a favorite playwright of the Elizabethan court, and Rembrandt had been portraitist to wealthy Amsterdam, the more recent idols were celebrated for their rejections: Van Gogh had barely sold a painting in his lifetime, The Rite of Spring had caused a riot, Jack Kerouac’s On The Road had been turned down by a long string of publishers. Where jazz had once been regarded as a popular style, a new generation of fans applauded Miles Davis for turning his back on the audience and insisting that his music speak for itself, while deriding Louis Armstrong as a grinning Uncle Tom. On the folk-blues scene, Van Ronk and his peers regarded anything that smacked of showmanship as a betrayal of the true tradition, a lapse into the crowd-pleasing fakery of the Weavers and Josh White. As he would later recall with some amusement, “If you weren’t staring into the sound-hole of your instrument, we thought you should at least have the decency and self-respect to start at your shoes.”

As in John Hammond’s Carnegie Hall (Ed. note: a concert called Spirituals to Swing that packaged a grand narrative of black music), art was opposed to entertainment…

…Clapton and the Stones were the first pop stars ever to insist that they were playing blues…that was the sound they loved: no horns, no string sections, no girls going “oo-wah”–just slashing guitars and wailing harmonica.

Then the English kids flew across the Atlantic, bringing the gospel home. And they did something unprecedented: Unlike the hundres of white blues singers before them…they took it upon themselves to edcated their audience. “Our aim was to turn other people on to Muddy Waters,” Keith Richards would later say. “We were carrying flags, idealistic teenage sort of shit: There’s no way we think anybody is really going to seriously listen to us. As long as we can get a few people interested in listening to the shit we think they ought to listen to…”

In other words, my crate-digging, Wax Poetics-loving, hiphopcrit bredren, be careful what you wish for. You might actually win!

+ Gotta mention this too: Nate Patrin’s got a new blog and the most bugged out version of “Apache” ever–in video, no less!

posted by @ 9:46 am | 32 Comments

Thursday, December 9th, 2004

Soldier News: Whistle-Blower on Torture Removed From Iraq

Democracy Now reports today that a whistle-blowing sergeant was removed from Iraq after telling his superiors he witnessed torture of Iraqi detainees. He was flown to Germany and given a battery of psychological tests, but was declared perfectly sound. The Army superior then reportedly pressured the psychologist to change her diagnosis.

+ More on Rumsfeld’s accountability session in Iraq:

“We’re used to hearing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld answer questions about things that went wrong in Iraq by saying they went right. When he does that to reporters, it’s annoying. When he does it to troops risking their lives in his failed test of bargain-basement warfare, it’s outrageous.”

And here’s a blast-from-the-past editoriall from–of all people–Robert Novak with the backstory on how we got to that moment:

“On the eve of war in mid-March, Rumsfeld was ready to fire White but was dissuaded because of poor timing. The war would be short enough for him to wait.”

posted by @ 9:43 am | 1 Comment

Wednesday, December 8th, 2004

Soldier News: Troops Go After Rumsfeld + More Back Door Draft

Don Rumsfeld was questioned sharply in Iraq about the lack of safety and the extended stays troops in Iraq face. From the AP Wires:

“Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?” Wilson asked. A big cheer arose from the approximately 2,300 soldiers in the cavernous hangar who assembled to see and hear the secretary of defense.

UPDATE: Good commentary going on here.

Also, check this from Davey D:

INDUSTRY RULE 5080-THE US ARMY IS SHADY-WE MEAN REALLY SHADY

By now everyone has heard stories about a ‘Back Door’ draft. To make sure the US military is well staffed as it continues its war in Iraq, military leaders have done all sorts of shady things including; extending people’s stay of duty, refusing to let people retire, giving petty criminals a choice between jail time or joining the army and more recently calling people up and demanding they report to duty years after they’ve been honorably discharged.

In one instance, well known Hip Hop scribe Jeff Chang saw his cousin, David Miyasato who lives in Hawaii, go through an agonizing situation when the US Army attempted to force him back into service after he had been retired for 13 years. In addition, Miyasato had served a tour of duty during Desert Storm back in the early 90s.

He had served his time and was at home relaxing with his newborn child and eons away from the reality of war. However, because he was a skilled truck driver and truckers have been frequent targets by the Iraqi insurgence, the Army felt it necessary to order Miyasato back on the battle field. He report date was last month on Veteran’s Day.

For those who don’t know, if given a date to report to duty, even if a mistake is made, once you report you are at the beck and call of the military. So even if they are mistaken in calling you up to duty, once you show up it’s their ball game until things are figured out.

Miyasato was lucky to have a cousin who is well connected in the media. He was also lucky to have a good lawyer. The subsequent attention he received resulted in a quick resolution to his situation, but not everyone is so lucky.

The latest casualty of this shadiness on behalf of the US military, involves 19 year Bay Area native Jamelle Posey (spelling may be wrong). He attended the School of Social Justice in Oakland which is known for its activism. Posey comes from a background where money and resources are scarce and his neighborhood is really rough. Very few make it out, but he was one of the few who was determined.

He wanted to go to college, but like many of the folks around him, his financial situation would not allow him to do that. As a last resort he signed up for the Army after a recruiter broke it down to him about all the benefits and advantages he would have.

His classmates who are hip to the game and underhanded recruiting tactics of the military, including a close friend named Michelle, tried in vain to persuade him not to join. According to her, Jamelle really wanted to go to college and believed the promises of the military recruiters and wound up joining.

As soon as he signed the papers, the Army moved to have him graduate early and transfer out of the School of Social Justice. His friends speculate that the army did not want him to be around folks who would influence him or even use his situation to make a larger case about how those who live in poor communities are economically drafted.

It wasn’t too long after graduation that Posey was shipped off to Iraq where he served for a year. He found himself having to come back to the Bay Area because it was discovered that his mother has terminal cancer. The army gave him a few weeks to get his affairs in order. The other week his 18 month old baby brother. Note: I said 18 months not years, was tragically stabbed to death. So now Posey has a mom who is dying and suddenly had to deal with the funeral of his infant brother being killed.

One would think the army would say to 19 year old Mr. Posey ‘stay at home get yourself together and take care of your family’. Unfortunately the Army remained steadfast in its stance that Posey must continue serving and make his way back to the battle lines in Iraq.

When word got out about his situation friends from the School of Social Justice began to kick up dust and alert people. This in turn prompted army officials to raid Posey house and take away all forms of communication including cell phones and computers. He had been ordered to keep quiet about his ordeal. It appears this is the new tactic being used by the military to do their dirt while non -military folks are kept in the dark.

The other day we had two of Jamelle’s friends from the School of Social Justice, Jackie and Michele along with community activist George Galvez and former Vietnam Vet and Gang counselor Nane Alejandrez of Barrios Unidos come on our Hard Knock Radio Show to speak to this disturbing situation.

We are providing a direct link to the radio show so you can hear this unbelievable story for yourself. It will make you cry and get you pissed off as hell. People need to call their elected officials and demand that these sort of tactics being used by our military be put to an end.

On another note, my question is where are all these so called Red State voters who are in full support of the War in Iraq? Why is the army short of personel? One would think that we would have a long waiting list of folks ready to go fight and show their support for this country and our current foreign policy. I guess talk is cheap in the end. We only have one Pat Tillman and bunch of folks who like to cheer and in this case vote from the sidelines.

Here’s a link to the radio show where we talk about the shadiness of the US military and Jamelle Posey.

Here’s a link to the radio show where we covered David Miyasato’s Case.

posted by @ 10:07 am | 0 Comments

Tuesday, December 7th, 2004

Who Still Says Freestyle Is Wack?

Ciara, Nina Sky, and Destiny’s Child givin’ up the love to Full Force and the Latin Rascals and the most important, most influential of all–bet yall beatbloggers don’t know this one, not unless you were a DJ in the 80s and scratched with the breaks on Debbie Gibson remixes–The Beat Club’s “Security”. (On the real tho, Sweet Sensation kills em all.)

Meanwhile I’m So Sinsurr’s got the favela tribute to Stevie B, I meant Information Society’s “Running”. The sound of ’87 back in full effizect.

Diggers take note: Tommy Boy’s Freestyle Greatest Beats series is starting to look like Ultimate Breaks and Beats. Investors take note: hair-care products.

Quick, someone do an academic paper on the links between Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, Pilipino, and Brazilian scenes from the mid-80s to now–from the Funhouse to South Beach to City Nights to Florentine Gardens to the Funk Balls. Now how exactly did you do the Webo? Dulce Veran, holla!

posted by @ 3:42 pm | 1 Comment

Tuesday, December 7th, 2004

Soldier News: Loan Sharking GIs + More

Diana Henriques of the NY Times reports on payday loans, a form of legalized loan sharking–instant credit at rates up to 400%–whose reach has in the last few years has extended from ghetto corners to the entrances to military bases.

Hmm. Interesting connection, huh? Oceanside, CA meet Flatbush, NY. Fort Lewis, WA meet North Philly, PA.

A lot more info, especially if you’re caught up in this credit trap, here.

Meanwhile:

+ A challenge to don’t ask, don’t tell. Much more info here. Really interesting timing. Just at the moment many are demanding that the military honor its own rules and contracts, gays and lesbians are knocking on the door to be reinstated and serve proudly. If you’re familiar with the history of African Americans, Japanese Americans, and Latinos and the military, it kinda looks like World War II, doesn’t it?

+ Rummy says we’re out in 4 years. Just in time to secure his legacy, no doubt. If you believe this, I got some land in Mesopotamia to sell you.

posted by @ 9:50 am | 5 Comments

Tuesday, December 7th, 2004

Pro Homo

Check this incredibly provocative piece on DL culture by Juba Kalamka of the Deep Dickollective. It’s from another great issue–this one on Sex, Race, and Gender–from Tram and the crew at ColorLines, who scooped up mad awards this year (making me a very proud older brother figure). Recognize!

posted by @ 8:27 am | 0 Comments

Monday, December 6th, 2004

Soldier News: Fighting Stop-Loss Policy & A Victory

Monica Davey of the NY Times reports on a lawsuit filed to end the stop-loss policy. Here’s a quote from David W. Qualls, a National Guardsman who is the only man on the lawsuit using his real name–the 7 others fear retribution from the Army:

“You should know I’m not against the war. This isn’t about that. This is a matter of fairness. My job was to go over and perform my duties under the contract I signed. but my year is up and it’s been up. Now I believe that they should honor their end of the contract.”

In other news, there’s a victory in the case of five of the reservists who refused the “suicide mission”: they will not be court-martialed. The Army admits the soldiers “raised some valid concerns.” This case rang especially close to home, because the reservists duties were exactly the same as my cousin David’s–transport and supply.

posted by @ 9:55 am | 0 Comments

Sunday, December 5th, 2004

Ban The BCS and Dump The Bowls

Of course, I’m pissed about Cal not making the Rose Bowl. But every year it’s the same argument–what teams did and didn’t deserve to play, why they did, and then how do we fix this mathematical formula to get it more right. (A digression: since when should teams be punished for having the ethics and dignity not to run up the score? Cal and Auburn both could have done that last night and didn’t–and the numbers punish em for it. Don’t get me started.)

No one agrees that the system works. But all this annual outcry and subsequent “tweaking” of the system won’t help. The thing no one admits is that the BCS is a flawed system because it’s a compromise. Why not do away with the bowls and have a tournament? That would be real competition. But the reason we don’t have one and never will is that the Bowls and their corporate sponsors are the tail wagging this dog.

I bet most coaches wouldn’t mind a playoff system–certainly it could not be as big as the basketball tournament because you can’t have a football team adding 5 more games to their season–but it would be much fairer than living at the whims of 150 or so voters, ridiculously flawed algebra, a bunch of wealthy fairweather-fan bowl hustlers, and their corporate puppeteers. Sure there will be more arguing about who deserved to be in the tourney, just as there is with the basketball tourney every year, but there will be no doubt who the top team is at the end.

posted by @ 3:11 pm | 0 Comments

Sunday, December 5th, 2004

Writing The Book, Part 3 or 2.5: The Wait and The “Asian American” Question

This is the period that my editor Monique describes as “the quiet period”. As she describes it, it’s the time between the final filing of the book and the actual release when the hum of work drops to a whisper and you kind of sit on pins and needles wondering what’s gonna happen next. Like the ten minutes before a theater artist or a performer gets onstage. You kind of tighten out your tie and smooth out your shirt a few too many times, stare at the curtain and block out the audience behind it.

I’ve reacted the way I usually do to this. I either do too many things or suffer these ridiculous mood swings. If I’m not working on something, I’m thinking too hard about the book. I grab the galley and read it, trying to tell myself I’m the dopest writer in the world, can’t nobody can top my shit, moohoohoohaha! Or, much more often, I torture myself about how I could have structured a section better or fret over a sentence that wasn’t tight, and pray that, if the punditocracy even deems it worthy of comment or review, they won’t utterly destroy it and leave me to the discount bins. At the end of this exhausting cycle, I grab the Aiye-Keita album or the advance of this ridiculously hot Luaka Bop comp of West African funk, Love’s A Real Thing, and just try to clear my head.

No way is any of this rational, but welcome to The Wait.

In the meantime, I’m still learning to get used to being on the other side of mic. I’m not a stranger to being there, but I was much younger and hot-headed then, usually without sleep, with about 400 other friends chanting or chained together, and about to be arrested.

Todd was kind enough to suggest doing the Hyphen piece (that’s the part 2 of this irregular “Writing The Blog series, Part 1 is here.) as a collabo. Any chance to collab with Todd is OK in my book.

But then I’m still refining what I’m trying to say. Here’s an interview done by Sabrina Ford at Newswatch. Sabrina was a great, provocative interviewer, and I just went bananas. Sound-bitey I’m not, yet.

The interesting thing about interviews is that there are always a set of unspoken assumptions that proceed between interviewer and subject. The subject assumes the interviewer knows certain things, the interviewer assumes the subject knows certain things. This is just a fundamental truth about human interaction.

That’s why some interviewers get lots of stuff, and others get nothing. It was especially pronounced in hip-hop journalism at the beginning, where there was often a huge gap between what a mainstream news journalist might get and what a hip-hop journalist might get out of Rapper X. It’s also why the longer you’re in the interviewing game, the better you are. You begin to learn how to connect with your subject on an almost cellular level, and it shows up in everything from how you approach your subject to your body language to how and when you ask questions.

Being a journalist, your job is to tell the story to your audience. You learn to phrase questions or to poke and prod until you get the subject to say something that will be immediately transparent to your writing audience. As a subject, you never get told that this is what is going on in the interview, and in fact, the interviewer sometimes doesn’t want to let you know–for fear it will impede you from being you. I actually think this is the source of 95% of all misquotes, and the subsequent feeling of betrayal that a subject might feel. The interviewer may have a much better handle onthe assumptions you’re coming to the interview with, and if they are adept or unethical or just good (and who knows just where those boundaries fall sometimes), exploit those to the fullest.

I’m not saying Sabrina did any of that–quite the contrary, she’s already a kick-ass journalist and the world won’t be ready-and folks like me can’t wait-for her to take over!–but I realized in reading the interview back how uncomfortable the “Asian American in hip-hop” question makes me.

My stock answer is this–folks who know me, know I don’t play, and my resume proves it. It’s a real, honest, and incredibly defensive answer. I might as well be telling the interviewer, THE FUCK YOU KNOW ABOUT ME PUNK–WHAT! It’s probably right to be mad about lazy interviewers who don’t do their homework and try to drop this on me, but lots of folks I like a lot–take Todd and Sabrina–ask it, and I owe a decent answer.

So while I don’t think I’m going to come up with a good soundbite soon, here’s a shot at trying to be, uh, you know, nuanced and shit.

Politically, I’m a product of 80s anti-apartheid movement and Rainbow Coalition progressive politics. That meant that some black nationalists used to call me a Asian-white-hippie-wannabe sellout back in the day. These days I’ve been called a nationalist-wannabe sellout by some more-progressive-than-thou-type students (who should have better things to do with their time, like downloading or something), and a black-wannabe sellout by some more-Asian-than-thou activists. Funny what a difference a decade or so makes.

Those kinds of labels used to really rankle me, but in old age, I’ve gained a teflon coating. It’s best, I’ve decided, to take an independent, idiosyncratic, iconoclastic stance. Always tell the truth. Outside is a good place to be. That way you get to piss off both your foes and your friends. Eventually they all come back and want to party with you despite it all. So as opposed to remembering what you’re not supposed to say and holding your tongue, all you have to remember on any given day is who not to invite.

Back to the point, these questions about being an Asian American in hip-hop are funny to me. I can no longer relate to the fixed notions of identity that they assume. My writing in the early 90s criticized Asian Americans for being caught in old paradigms of race that prevented us from recognizing how in some blacks’ and Latinos’ eyes we had turned from ally to enemy. These days, as hip-hop has moved beyond the rhythms of the African diaspora into Asian sounds–this is why I’m so into Robin D.G. Kelley and Vijay Prashad’s idea of polyculturalism–it’s strange to me that we’d still be discussing the culture in terms of ’80s frames of identity. Multiculturalism is dead, long live multiculturalism, apparently.

This doesn’t answer the “Asian American in hip-hop” question for those concerned that hip-hop studies and new forms of scholarship around hip-hop will lead to a whitening of the story, an erasure of the African roots of the culture. In other words, is the inevitable result of hip-hop studies the access of more non-Black scholars to the culture? (For now, let’s dance around the Afro-Latino question, which actually puts a lot of this stuff to rest.) Does that mean we’ll eventually have some white, Asian, or even Latino revisionist history, a Richard Sudhalter-style take on hip-hop?

That’s the assumption of the question that makes me defensive.

And unnecessarily so. All my study of hip-hop has only led me into deeper into Afrodiasporic roots and rhythms and cultures and Black nationalist politics. And, at the same time, my study of hip-hop has only led me deeper into rejecting most fundamentalist notions about hip-hop culture as a whole. The deeper you study, the more questions you have to ask, the less certainty you have about anything, except for the beauty and survival of African cultures, the way they continue to transform and expand upon contact with non-African cultures, and the openings and transformations they create for those other cultures that come into contact with it.

That’s not a soundbite, and it still doesn’t really answer the question, and it opens up hella other questions, but it’s closer to how I feel.

posted by @ 2:04 pm | 5 Comments

Sunday, December 5th, 2004

More Reasons The Yankees Suck

“Performance-enhancing drugs are a disgrace when they don’t enhance performance.”

–Gwen Knapp in a brilliant essay on the hypocrisy of anti-Giambi Yankees. UPDATE: Murray Chass gives the sordid history, going back to Steve Howe in 1990.

posted by @ 9:44 am | 0 Comments



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