Tamar-Kali, our favorite hardcore warrior soul queen, puts a new twist on her excellent Psychochamber Ensemble.

From the press release:

Tamar-kali Brown curates a night of bawdy, sexy, cabaret-inspired entertainment.  Brown says she developed this show because “artists of color have largely been missing from the revival of cabaret performance” at venues like Spiegeltent and The Box.  
 
Tamar-kali and her all-female Psychochamber string ensemble headlines “Cabaret Chocolat,” which also features emcee duties by mentalist/illusionist Marco the Magician, pre-show performance by accordionist/organist Mojo Lazarus, burlesque by The Maine Attraction, and dance performance artist Monstah Black.
 
True to its sweet name, “Cabaret Chocolat” starts with an open bar happy hour serving hand-made chocolate martinis, and specialty chocolate-and-wine pairings featuring exotic organic candy from Ghana-based Divine Chocolates.  Tickets are just $15, ensuring access to a diverse crowd.  “Psychochamber Ensemble has a firm older fan base,” Brown says.  “This show is designed to attract young patrons, but it’s for anyone who digs cutting-edge art and has an appreciation for black American music and its divas like Nina Simone.”

“Mainstream African-American entertainment is pretty prescribed,” adds Brown, whose own influences run the gamut from Billie Holiday to Bad Brains. “’Cabaret Chocolat’ was inspired by my love of classical music, which developed during 13 years in Catholic school.  This showcase is my attempt to bring color to cabaret, and also trumpet pride in the historic Harlem arts and culture scene.”

Event info:

Saturday, November 21, 2009 — $15 — Harlem Stage Gatehouse

Tamar-kali’s CABARET CHOCOLAT: An Autumn Night’s Soiree

6 pm – pre-performance dialogue with Tamar-kali, Kandia Crazy Horse and Daphne Brooks.
7:30 pm – performance

Additional links:

• Harlem Stage (tickets)
• Tamar-kali

Yes, and here’s why.

It tends to be Black folks who ask me this question the most.  The follow-up is usually an attempt at refining the question: "I mean, why can’t it just be rock?"  Unpacked, this means they are exploring genres and modes of expression outside of what is typically understood to be Black music, i.e., it ain’t straight up hip hop or R&B or some combination thereof.  Since their Blackness is self-evident, they imply, there should be no reason to use what amounts to a kind of double subject. They’re Black and they "rock", both in sound and attitude.

But the "Black" in Black rock has its uses.  First, much in the way James Spooner talked about the term Afropunk, Black rock is a great banner around which likeminded folks can gather.  A beacon on a hill, if you will.  Once you find us, you can come and go as you please. 

Second, it is important for it to be political.  What I’m really interested in is challenging those African Americans who are comfortable, complacent even, in the status quo of what it means to be Black and help them out of that straitjacket.  The more of us who "get" Black rock–and attitude and aesthetic is way more important than a particular sound–the more it’s going to matter.  The more it matters, the more we can pull our culture away from the self-aggrandizing and hyper-materialistic impulses that are running rampant. 

When you say "Black rock," it fires the imagination, and that’s what I want it to do.  After all, you can’t really be sure of what you’re going to get, in the same way that you can when someone says "hip hop".  Black folks need to be clear that rock’s got everything to do with them.  Every artist that falls under this banner is drawing on a history that’s complicated, complex and rich, one that encompasses our experiences in this country, our connection to whatever motherlands we’re from, and the unique ways that we synthesize our interactions with others. These are people who are not afraid to embrace the fullness of both their humanity and their American-ness. They become examples for the rest of us.

In that regard, the black in Black rock is highly political: It’s about challenging us to embrace our cultural power and claim our humanity, and exercise our right to full participation.   Which brings me to my final point.

I’m slowly making my way through Richard Iton’s In Search of the Black Fantastic: Politics & Popular Culture in the Post-Civil Rights Era.  If it sounds like an academic treatise, that’s because it is.  There are a lot of good and thought-provoking ideas about the role of popular culture and its actors (writers, artists, filmmakers, etc.) in politics, but here’s an idea I found illuminating:

The black in black fantastic, in this context, signifies both a generic category of underdeveloped possibilities and the particular "always there" interpretations of these. . .visions and practices generated by subaltern populations.

So, for me, the black in Black rock is about the underdeveloped and, I’d say, unexplored, possibilities of our imagination, our creativity and our identity. 

Until we max out in these regards, I’m calling this music Black rock.

What do you think?

Tonight, CNN begins a two-day series that "examines the successes, struggles, and complex issues faced by black men, women, and families — 40 years after the death of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr."  I think this will be engaging.  After all, Barack’s contention for the White House has thrust race center stage, and this might help a lot of people better understand (if they don’t already) the significance of what he’s so close to achieving.  I mean, he’s touted as the "post-racial" candidate in a country that still finds it difficult to have a substantive discussion of race.  Look, all post-racial means is that Barack doesn’t make whites feel guilty about race.  Contrast that to a Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, both of whom, in a word, do. 

There’s no doubt that being Black is  complex and complicated, and I’m sure Barack, of all people, knows it.  Maybe for a non-Black audience, this series will shed some light on those complexities, and we can begin an honest dialogue.

The series airs tonight and tomorrow at 9PM Eastern.

Additional link:

• CNN Presents: Black in America

Can any of us imagine what it must’ve been like to be Black and at an Ivy League school in 1981?  The following quote is from a worthwhile read on how that experience shaped Michelle:

"Princeton was a real crossroads of identity for Michelle," said Harvard Law School professor Charles J. Ogletree, who was her law school adviser and now works with the Obama campaign. "The question was whether I retain my identity given by my African-American parents, or whether the education from an elite university has transformed me into something different than what they made me. By the time she got to Harvard she had answered the question. She could be both brilliant and black."

Follow this link for the full article.

Hat tip to Negrophile for the heads up.

God bless the New York Times.  The paper of record for the country has provided further evidence of the cultural shift taking place.  Another indication of the change in sensibilities among African Americans.  Back in May, I made note of Black skaters, but Sunday’s Style section piece takes a deeper look at the reasons why skateboarding–skating–is moving out of the ‘burbs and into the cities.

For example:

Over the last two decades, the sport shifted away from ramp-based vert skating to street skating, a variation that made use of urban structures like stairways, curbs and railings. As the importance of access to ramps dwindled, skateboarding’s fan base grew increasingly diverse.

And this is worth noting:

As the stigma against skateboarding in the black community has dissipated, hip-hop artists have become some of the sport’s most influential advocates. Instead of being called a “white boy,” black skaters are now compared to rap artists. “If you hang around your African-American friends that don’t skate, you’re going to get the nickname ‘Skateboard P’,” said Iusu Beckle, 18, another Brooklyn native who skates at the museum.

The original “Skateboard P” is Pharrell Williams, the rapper and producer.

As a group ventures into new areas, the very act of doing so shakes loose old orthodoxies.

Read the full article here.

Heading to the train tonight, I came across these two young men on the corner of Union Square West, skateboards in hand, engaged in a lively discussion.  Darrell (left) and Jason kindly agreed to pose for a photo, and we were able to talk for a few minutes about not only the challenges of being a Black skater, but also how for both of them skating is a passion.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t as quick as I should’ve been with the recording of our conversation. Did capture some of it, though.  More good news is that, like Black rock, there’s a growing community of Black youth who skate.

Yet another indication of the cultural shift taking place.

Thanks, Darrell for hipping me to Black Sheep and your fashion line, Shredding Betty (skatewear for women), which will launch in the fall.

MP3 File

Recent news about local legislation (here and here) has prompted me time to think about this over the last few days.  I’m not against the ban, but I do wonder why it’s come to this.

What we hear in the streets and in popular Black music is, unfortunately, indicative of a general coarsening of society.  Now, I understand that with changing times can come changing norms and values.  But I’m concerned that it’s only us American blacks who still hang onto the hateful word that’s been used to erase our humanity.  And, we’re the only group (tell me if I’m wrong here) that is trying to “evolve” the word. Are Jews trying to evolve “kike”?  Are Italians embracing “wop”.  I’m sure Latinos are not working to take the sting out of “wetback” and “spic.”  I mean, we’re putting a lot of effort into explaining and justifying the difference between “niggers” and “niggas”.  Unfortunately, neither occupies a linguistic space far from the other and the connotation of the latter will always be the former. 

Yes, you will find those of us on both sides of the issue, including Mos Def.  I mention him because I saw a recent episode of Def Poetry, where he was using “nigga” much more than I’d ever heard him.  It was disheartening because 1) he’d never been so casual with the word on previous seasons; and 2) he’s on HBO, which means there are a lot of people around the country/world—and not all of them Black—who heard him say it, and formed an opinion about many things, not the least of which is a conception of what it means to be authentically Black. 

Let’s face it: Naming is framing.  How we refer to ourselves defines our boundaries and it certainly impacts how others see and think about us.  If we’re serious about full embracing the things that are ours by right, we have to work harder to ensure that we’re not using language to limit ourselves or to limit others’ expectations of what or who we can be.

The system break man, child, and women into figures
Two columns for who is, and who ain’t niggaz
                –Mos Def, “Mathematics” from Black on Both Sides

The recent dustups that have swirled around him both within the Black community and outside of it highlight the prickly and complicated issue of Black authenticity.  On one hand, Senator Joseph Biden found himself with a severe case of foot-in-mouth syndrome when he referred to Obama as “clean” and “articulate”.  Separately—and actually before the Biden incident—I’d been reading several commentators–Stanley Crouch (subscription required) and Debra Dickerson, to name two–who suggested that Obama either wasn’t Black enough or that he wasn’t Black at all. 

I’m not here to debate whether or not Obama is Black or whether or not he’s “Black enough.”  For who?  For what?   Learning to recognize pathology is the first step towards healing.

My friend Leon Wynter, who recently posted a thought-provoking exploration of the idea that Obama is being placed in the “exceptional,” transracial black category, wrote:

. . .when so called exceptions thrive on white turf,  especially on white terms, they are likely to be trashed as inauthentically black. In the case of Obama, writer Debra Dickerson recently declared he was not black at all. This, of course, is the black version of whites who say, "I don’t think of (Michael Jordan, Colin Powell etc.) as black at all."

So everybody has an investment in the notion that exceptional black folks prove some kind of rule. Their investment leads them both to excuse or dismiss these  African-Americans from their blackness.

Joan Morgan declared her solidarity with Obama by writing a piece “If Barack Ain’t Black Then Neither Am I” where she beautifully lays out what it means to be an immigrant (Jamaican-born) but raised in America (the South Bronx, no less).  She says:

So let me offer some insight. When black people immigrate to America we are not at all exempt from the experience of being Black American and not only because we will inevitably be subjected to American racism. We learn your history. We absorb your culture. Some of us even acquire your accents. We do this as a matter of both acclimation and survival because we recognize the potential power we unleash by finding the distinct commonalities between our histories and our culture. Perhaps if Dickerson took a moment to do the same she would replace these limited notions of blackness and truly expand Black America into a diverse, multi-ethnic powerbase, savvy enough to elect the most viable BLACK presidential candidate America has seen in over 20 years.  [Emphasis mine]

The point of all this is that by getting into discussions of who is and who ain’t, we’re only shoring up the walls that keep us from full participation in the American culture.  By doing so, we’re giving up our claim to that which is ours.  We give up the chance to  move both the discussion and the country forward.  We’re maintaining some well-tended fences on the plantations of our minds. 

All of which is a significant part of how we got to where we are when it comes to Black rock.

So, yeah, Obama is Black rock.