Friday, June 6th, 2008

Into The Mind Of Ned Sublette


Credits:: Ned Sublette, Jennifer Kotter and Bomb Magazine

Bomb Magazine’s website features an interview with Ned Sublette by the great Jamaican-American journalist Garnette Cadogan. It’s an amazing read, offering Ned’s bracing worldview via the history of New Orleans.

It’s a taster of the complete argument he lays out in The World That Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square, a red pill of a book that reframes the entirety of American history and music. Fuck what you know about John Adams or Bob Dylan. (Understand: no disrespect intended at all, but I believe with a convert’s zeal that Ned’s works ought to be as widely known and debated as Greil Marcus’s.) In fact, forget even the notion that America is defined by what Chuck D has called the “48 state box”. Ned’s outside-the-box thinking begins with an expansive definition of “America” that points directly to a post-George W. Bush world.

Ned has been one of the most influential intellectuals on me over the past few years, transforming the way I understand hip-hop’s music, its history, and its future. If I had written CSWS after digesting Ned’s works, it likely would have been a much different book.

So devour this interview with Garnette, and then run to get his two masterpieces, Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo, and The World That Made New Orleans:

Garnette …New Orleans is both a place and idea. Moreover, as place and idea, people like to think of it as difference. You, however, insist that it’s both a peculiar and representative American spot.

Ned Not merely a peculiar spot, but the logical outcome of competing international forces.

GC Your argument, then, is that New Orleans is at the crux of America’s…

NS At the absolute crossroads of American history! Over and over again. Including now.

GC New Orleans—distinctly American and singularly un-American!

NS I use the word “American” in its larger sense, always, so I think it’s extremely American. It’s the most American city in a lot of ways.

GC Other cities can justifiably make that claim. Your fellow New Yorkers, among others, will surely take you to task. How is New Orleans the most American?

NS The most fully realized, in that it participated in all of the waves of culture that rolled across the hemisphere, practically. The French, the Spanish, the Anglo-American, each of which was associated with a different black wave: the Bambara, the Bakongo, the Baptists. From 1769 to 1803—that was a transcendental moment in history, the last third of the 18th century—Spain held Louisiana during the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, three events of maximum impact on world history, and each of which affected Louisiana vitally. During the Spanish period, New Orleans became a city. It became a port of importance. I think that there are a variety of reasons, which I discuss in the book, why the Spanish years in New Orleans have been so consistently underplayed in importance, but I see them as absolutely crucial to understanding the town.

GC And New Orleans itself is crucial to understanding America. After all, its history is replete with the perennial American themes and struggles: self-making, liberty, equality, immigration, pluralism, religion, the tension between Europe and America, the influence of the South, and so on. And, of course: frontier.

NS New Orleans was the Wild West! In many ways, it never stopped being the Wild West. A place where you might see a gunfight on a main street. You still might see that. It had that image from very early on. When Thomas Jefferson annexed it, it went from being El Norte, the northernmost edge of the Saints and Festivals Belt, to being the West. We often think of it as the South, but you have to think of the Civil War in terms of both the South and the West, because a primary determinant in forcing the issue of civil was whether or not slave traders could expand their markets into the new western territories, the ones beyond New Orleans. DeBow’s Review, the Fortune magazine of the slaveowning South, published in New Orleans, was DeBow’s Review of the South and the West. New Orleans was the South and West.

Garnette: Picking up on your idea of perception…there are few ideas as central to the American character as renewal and transformation—as Ted Widmer brilliantly shows in Ark of the Liberties: America and the World, “[W]hat idea has been more powerful in [America’s] history than the hope that something wonderful…waits over the next horizon?”—and what is New Orleans if not a place of renewal and transformation? (Though I can already hear a host of people objecting that this Babylon of a place is anything but!) In your book you emphasize how music is crucial to the city’s formation and renewal; for you, music is a skeleton key that unlocks New Orleans’s history and reveals its character.

Ned: Absolutely. I look at music as a key to understanding history. In my books I use music as a tool for reading history, and vice versa…

Read the whole interview here.

posted by @ 9:03 am | 0 Comments

Thursday, June 5th, 2008

R16 2008 Hi-Res Video Of Finals & Semis

Here’s a hi-quality video of the R16 Semis & Finals from Imeem…

For hi-res videos from the entire contest + interviews, go to the Imeem R16 homepage.

posted by @ 3:02 pm | 1 Comment

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008

Obama, The New Majority, And The Race (Card) Ahead

Last night Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination with grace and poise, a history-making achievement that neither John McCain or Hillary Clinton could bring themselves to recognize.

One hundred thirty six years after Frederick Douglass became the first African American on a presidential ticket (as vice presidential candidate for the Equal Rights Party) and 36 years after Shirley Chisholm’s path-breaking Democratic presidential run, Obama attained the necessary number of delegates to become the first African American presidential candidate for the Democratic Party.

He dedicated the night to his grandmother. He has described her as a white woman not immune to the prejudices of an earlier era but who now lives comfortably with multiracial brood in Hawai’i. Surely she would understand the historical significance of her grandson’s victory.

On the other hand, Hillary dedicated her night to her 18 million voters, many of whom chanted “Denver!” as if they wanted to fight on until the Democratic Convention in August. If Hillary’s speech was meant to be a tribute to those who helped her in a hard-fought campaign, the images of her rabidly desperate followers reduced it to something like a shocking display of vanity.

Obama won only after one of the most racially divisive election seasons in history. Despite his desire to remain Jackie Robinson-like, his opponents raised race as soon as he began to rack up a series of surprising wins.

Progressive feminists like Gloria Steinem suggested–without much evidence–that the wave of support for Obama’s candidacy was a sign that gender discrimination remained more immovable than racial discrimination.

Later, former President Bill Clinton dismissed Obama’s win in South Carolina by comparing it to failed presidential candidate Jesse Jackson’s wins in 1984 and 1988. Black voters vote for black candidates, after all, he suggested.

And in the last two months, as the contest shifted to states where Appalachian voters play a key role, Hillary Clinton suggested that she was the candidate of white working-class voters.

Newsweek’s cover story, “Memo to Senator Obama”, cites surveys showing 45% of white voters hold unfavorable views of Obama, as opposed to 35% for McCain. (Non-whites’ unfavorable numbers for Obama are half as much.)

So author Ethan Thomas gives Obama a primer on how to win back white voters. He writes that despite Internet lies–Obama is Muslim, he believes the national anthem conveys a warlike message, he’s sympathetic to terrorists, etc.–Obama should play it soft on race:

It’s hard to think of what would turn off whites quicker than playing the thin-skinned victim.

Thomas seems to have already forgotten that, in the middle of a racialized firestorm not of his own making, Obama delivered one of the most nuanced and sensible speeches on race in decades.

Thomas also urges Obama to take a position “that plays against prejudice or typecasting”: to oppose affirmative action as “a powerful signal” to white working-class voters allegedly enraged at black privilege. For his part, Obama has said he is for affirmative action, but has expressed doubts about whether his own daughters should benefit from such policies.

Thomas may be correct that white, working-class voters will remain a key battleground in the general election. Polls have shown that as much as one-third of Hillary’s base may desert Obama in the general election by voting for McCain or staying home.

But Obama may only need to win a portion of those voters, some are lost to him in any case, and it’s not clear that reversing himself on the wedge issues of the 80s and 90s gains anything for him as much it loses his base.

Much of the mainstream media’s attention has been on the “ignored” white working-class voters of the heartland. They may be the most documented “ignored” demographic in history. You might remember this media-homogenized group as the Silent Majority, the Reagan Democrats, the NASCAR electorate, the Kansas voters, etc.

But Obama’s candidacy rests on a new electoral landscape.

Obama has reaped the benefits of demographic shifts that Jackson foresaw over two decades ago in plotting his own campaign–the emergence of sizable communities of color and a progressive, multicultural generation of voters. In 2050, more than half the U.S. will be of color. But 2008 may be the year that this electorate arrives.

Urban gentrification in the West has led to an African American exodus back to the South, forming emerging majorities of long-time residents and new urban migrants. Obama’s stunning primary victories may portend part of the South’s swing back to blue.

Although Latinos voted largely for Clinton in the primaries, and Asian Americans appeared split, there are still few indications that they may shift to McCain. To his credit, McCain recognizes that we are a country that remains pro-immigrant. But after years of race-baiting campaigns, McCain’s party has thoroughly alienated Latinos and Asian Americans. At the same time, the war, the environment and the domestic politics of abandonment and containment have made young voters the most Democratic-leaning in generations.

McCain clearly faces a tougher time making his case than Obama, whose own story parallels the immigrant story and whose energy has inspired the young. With an uninspired Republican base, it seems McCain needs the race card more than Hillary ever did, yet he plays it only at his–and his party’s–future peril. Over the next four decades, the demographics are hardly with them.

As much as the Clintons depended on an old majority, Obama could be handing Democrats the new majority. But the Democrats aren’t much different than the record industry: give them a sure thing and they’ll always figure out how to screw it up.

As Marjorie Valbrun of TheRoot.com wrote in the same issue of Newsweek this week:

A woman educated at Yale and Wellesley who can afford to lend her campaign $20 million becomes the standard-bearer for working-class white people? She’s clearly not a coal miner’s daughter. So how did she do this? She appealed to their most base racial fears and resentments. It’s worth remembering that Clinton started the race with a large base of black support. Then she made it easy for black women to abandon her.

Obama is the son of a white working-class family from Kansas, and a Black farming family from Kenya. Only in America, he has said, a new America.

If the Dems don’t want to be abandoned by the new America, they would do well in the coming weeks to bring closure to the divisive primary season not by pandering to old resentments, but by waking up to the future.

Also Worth Reading:

+ John Zogby on The End of Boomerism

posted by @ 9:17 am | 1 Comment

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

R16 2008 Wrap


Top 9 Crew’s prize-winning show from night 1 of R16.

UPDATE: JUNE 5 :: Click here for the high-quality Imeem version of the Semis & Finals.

Back home from R16…

If you hadn’t heard already, here’s how it went down:

Best Show: Top 9 (Russia)
Battle Semifinal: Riverz (Korea) vs. Top 9 (Russia), Winner: Top 9

The video is here, but warning to the purists out there…it’s edited. (Not sure if it was edited for TV or by the Youtube poster.) This starts about 2-3 minutes into the battle right after Russian B-Boy Robin’s controversial chinky-eye taunt–he’s the b-boy with the cap and stripes–although it does get C-4’s response–he’s the b-boy in the black tee. The incident that preceded this included a little dustup between Korean b-boy Physics and Russian b-boy Flying Buddha. Physics entered the cypher before Flying Buddha was finished.

Battle Semifinal: Gamblerz (Korea) vs. Brasil All-Stars, Winner: Gamblerz

4th Place ($1000): Riverz
3rd Place ($4000): Brasil
(Check the battle here.)

2nd Place ($10,000): Top 9
Champs ($15,000): Gamblerz

UPDATE: JUNE 5 :: The semis and finals are here.

Gamblerz announced they will be going next to do some benefit performances in China and will be donating their winnings and a portion of their earnings this summer to the victims in Myanmar and China.

In other news, the success of Benson Lee’s indie “Planet B-Boy”–which opened last week in Canada on its continuing run–may have helped seal a $25 million Hollywood signing for the Young Films production company project, “Hype Nation”. Gamblerz, who played prominent roles in Planet B-Boy, will be featured as the chief dancefloor opponents of teen idol Omarion and his crew, B2K.

Check all the R16 video highlights here.

More soon from me in feature-length form…

posted by @ 8:59 am | 0 Comments

Saturday, May 31st, 2008

Jena 6 :: Judge Recusal Delayed

From the Chicago Tribune:

Lawyers for the five remaining defendants facing trial in the racially divisive Jena 6 incident in Louisiana presented evidence Friday of what they said was bias on the part of the judge presiding over the cases and sought his removal.

After four hours of testimony, a visiting judge appointed by the Louisiana Supreme Court to hear the recusal motion against LaSalle Parish District Judge J.P. Mauffray asked for more evidence and postponed a ruling until at least July…

Click here for the rest.

posted by @ 3:44 pm | 0 Comments

Thursday, May 29th, 2008

In Korea :: B-Boys & Beef

In the Ibis Hotel in Suwon, a suburb just south of Seoul, the lobby is alive with movement til the early hours of the morning. Hundreds of b-boys are here. They are sleepless from hours of travel from Cape Town, South Africa, or Hamburg, Germany, and dozens of other destinations around the world, but they’re afire with ideas and moves to share, classic battles to recount and re-enact. They’ve come to compete in one of the world’s biggest breaking competitions, R16, and the energy is luminescent.

Earlier this evening, at an orientation, the hotel ballroom filled nearly to capacity. One of the organizers, Queens native Charlie Shin, ran down a roll call of the countries represented–“Brazil, Netherlands, Israel, China, U.S., France, Korea…” Legendary hip-hop photographers Joe Conzo and Jamel Shabazz exhorted the b-boys and b-girls in the room to get up on stage, and the pictures they snapped were stunning: a beautiful multiculti crowd lifted straight out of an Obama speech, with t-shirts emblazoned with crew names, hot-colored sneakers, and super-mugsy attitude added on for effect.

Shin and representatives from the Korean Tourism Organization had asked the b-boys to respect each others’ space on the stage in the upcoming battles, but perhaps they needn’t have bothered. There was a lot of respect in that room already.

That afternoon, in the streets of Seoul, there had been a lot of talk about beef.

In a stunning reversal, the Korean government announced it was lifting its ban on U.S. beef. By rush hour, tens of thousands of ordinary Koreans had poured into the streets in protest–farmers, office-workers, mothers rolling their children in strollers. They brought candles and signs that signalled their fears about Mad Cow Disease.

Department stores gave out thousands of bowls of beef soup to protestors. Business-suited demonstrators appeared at Korea’s McDonald’s headquarters. Labor unions promised to put up blockades at dozens of beef distribution warehouses to peacefully stop the U.S. beef from being sent into the country. News reports made much of the fact that government officials appeared apologetic and ashamed about the decision.

Nine thousand riot police–many of them young men serving mandatory military service–were deployed in Seoul to contain the protests. The American contingent here for R16 watched as police arrested hundreds of demonstrators, and then later in amazement as tens of thousands of people raised their candles in a quiet, powerful show of solidarity.

Why all the fuss over beef? To many ordinary Koreans, the government’s reversal is a demonstration of the way the U.S. version of “free trade” has hurt their country.

Fears of Mad Cow Disease focus on the health of American imports, but they point to a greater Korean anguish over the pressures to accept expensive American imports, the destruction of local livestock farming, and displacement of Korean jobs at a moment when the national economy has been in a downward spiral.

Just yesterday the Korean government was forced to back up its currency to prevent further investment flight. President Lee Myung-bak, a conservative in the George W. Bush mold, has seen plunging approval ratings over his management of trade and the economy.

Rallies are expected to spread across the country today, and should continue to pose serious problems for President Lee and his right-wing party, the Grand National Party.

Here at R16, Americans are a decided minority, but there’s no angst about that. There’s none of the we-invented-it-so-bow-down attitude about hip-hop that Bush and his supporters in both the Democratic and Republican parties seem to take about democracy and capitalism.

Quite the opposite. Heads are here to compete intensely on the floor and leave with respect, returning to their homes with the task of continuing to build a culture that creates possibility rather than displacement.

Would that leaders were wise enough to follow their people.

posted by @ 4:02 pm | 1 Comment

Monday, May 26th, 2008

Still Awaiting Justice In Jena

Eight months after 40,000 people converged on Jena, Louisiana, justice still awaits the six young men whose cases inspired one of the biggest civil rights marches in recent history.

This Friday, special judge Thomas Yeager will consider a motion made on behalf of the Jena 6 to remove Judge J.P. Mauffray from their cases. Mauffray had previously denied motions by 5 of the defendants to recuse him from their cases. But last week, the Louisiana Third Circuit Court of Appeals appointed Yeager to preside over this unusual hearing in Mauffray’s own courtroom.

Supporters of the Jena 6 say that the motion to recuse Mauffray is part of an effort to give them a fair trial. “Judge Mauffray is the man at the center of Jena’s broken justice system and now he is forced to justify his bias in a court of law with the entire nation watching,” said James Rucker, Executive Director of Color of Change, the 400,000 member group that served as the key organizing body of last September’s protests.

Flashpoint For Racial Justice

Last summer, the Jena 6 cases became a flashpoint in the national discussion over racial justice, and more disturbingly, a catalyst for further hate incidents.

On August 31, 2006, two nooses were found on an oak tree at Jena High School, an event that polarized the student body along racial lines. The school principal recommended that the three white noose-hangers be expelled. But the LaSalle Parish School Board—advised by attorney J. Reed Walters, who as District Attorney would later prosecute the Jena 6—voted 7-1 instead to suspend the students. The only African American board member offered the dissenting vote.

After months of racial tensions, including incidents in which white Jena High student Justin Barker and others made racial insults at African American students, Barker was beaten by the boys who would become known as the “Jena 6”. (CORRECTION 5/27 : Of the Jena 6 defendants, only Mychal Bell has admitted to being involved in the beating of Justin Barker.) Barker went home hours after the fight and participated in an evening public ceremony.

But DA Walters charged the 6 African Americans with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit attempted second-degree murder. The disparity in the sentencing spurred calls for a massive September march in Jena.

In the two months following the demonstrations, at least 50 noose incidents were reported nationally, including one found on the door of a Black professor’s office at the Teacher’s College of Columbia University. New York Governor David Patterson recently signed a law making displaying a noose a felony crime.

Judicial Bias

In the first Jena 6 case to come to trial, an all-white jury convicted one of the Jena 6 defendants, Mychal Bell, in adult court. After Bell spent 10 months behind bars, an appeals court threw out the conviction saying Bell could not be tried as an adult and remanded the case to juvenile court. Bell was freed on $45,000 bail.

But just two weeks later, Judge Mauffray agreed with DA Walters’ motion to send Bell back to jail, on the grounds that Bell’s involvement in the beating of Justin Barker had violated his probation for prior convictions. Mauffray then sentenced Bell to 18 months in a juvenile facility.

Supporters of the Jena 6 say this was only one of the ways Mauffray demonstrated bias against the young Black men.

In his motion to recuse Mauffray, David Utter of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana and attorney for Jena defendant Jesse Ray Beard, outlined a pattern of judicial bias.

Before Utter took Beard’s case, he writes in his motion, Mauffray told him that white beating victim Justin Barker was lucky that he did not “bleed to death”. Mauffray also called the Jena 6 “real troublemakers”, and discussed alleged incidents involving the defendants. Utter and others later investigated the rumored incidents and found them to be false.

In March, Mauffray told Beard’s lawyers, “Does anyone know when [Jesse Ray Beard] started his career? His first participation in a crime of violence? It was December 25, 2005.” Utter writes that, in response to a discussion about potential alternatives to incarceration, Mauffray scoffed and said, “Jesse Ray needs severe consequences, short term.”

A similar motion to recuse District Attorney Reed Walters, on the grounds of racial bias and conflict of interest, is pending.

posted by @ 11:43 pm | 0 Comments

Monday, May 26th, 2008

R16 Week!

After the event with Adam Mansbach this week–check it out below!–I’ll be heading out to the second R16 contest. For the three or four of you who have no idea, it’s one of the biggest global b-boy/b-girl competitions in the world.

Sixteen crews from around the world–including Russia, Israel and Brazil–will compete on May 31st and June 1st for over $50,000 in prize money. The Korean crews are the runaway favorites, but the competition will feature many of the top crews you might know from Battle Of The Year.

It’s also a cool excuse to hang with the homies. Thanks to organizers Charlie Shin and Johnjay Chon (plus a big shout to James Kim and my girl Joy Yoon), this event will be ridiculously off the hook. Joe Conzo, Jamel Shabazz, B+, and Brent Rollins are just a handful of my non-b-boy hip-hop heroes who’ll be featured and in attendance.

Much more when I’m back, but in the meantime, I’ll continue to post through the rest of the week and, who knows, may even attempt to blog from Suwon. Tho don’t hold me to that. In the meantime, here’s all the info and def be checking Youtube for the uploads if you can’t be in Suwon and Seoul this weekend…

posted by @ 3:31 pm | 0 Comments

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

Adam Mansbach At Intersection For The Arts Tuesday Night!

Please join us Tuesday evening for an incredible event featuring Adam Mansbach at SF’s Intersection For The Arts. It’ll be an amazing event!

Here are the details:

A Reading Featuring Adam Mansbach with Jeff Chang and Dan Wolf

Tuesday May 27, 2008 at 7:30pm
$5-$15/sliding scale, general admission

Intersection for the Arts
446 Valencia Street (btwn 15/16)
Mission District SF CA 94103
(415) 626-2787

This evening features dynamic author Adam Mansbach (The End of the Jews: A Novel, Angry Black White Boy: A Novel) in conversation about hip-hop, literature and race with journalist & author Jeff Chang. Mansbach reads from his latest novel The End of the Jews: A Novel, and also features an Open Process presentation of Dan Wolf’s theatrical adaptation of Mansbach’s critically acclaimed bestseller Angry Black White Boy featuring Tommy Shepherd & Keith Pinto from the hip-hop band Felonious.

posted by @ 6:41 pm | 0 Comments

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

McCain’s Moral Compass :: America Is A Bastion Against Islam

Rev. Jeremiah Wright has nothing on Rod Parsley…for real.

BTW, unlike John Hagee, McCain’s other problematic pastor, this “spiritual guide” hasn’t apologized, and most of the media has slept on all of this.

In other news, McCain’s media advisor Mark McKinnon made good on his promise to quit the campaign if Obama were the Democratic nominee. He stepped down from the campaign yesterday.

In a 2007 interview with Cox News, McKinnon said he would vote for McCain, but “I just don’t want to work against an Obama candidacy.” He added that if Obama were to reach the White House, it “would send a great message to the country and the world.”

posted by @ 6:30 am | 1 Comment



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