The journal Social Text just released an issue called Diaspora and Localities of Race 98 (27/1) introduced by Minkah Makalani (2009). She discusses how blackness must be negotiated and has competing conceptions within the African diaspora (6). We compete over discourses of blackness, the production and markers of difference, even how we engage in the exchanges and prooessses of “racemaking.” How we “see” (or perceive) race is an opportunity, says Makalani, to “untangle our implicit understandings of what constitutes membership and belonging” (ibid.). The question at St. Nick’s Pub or Harlem is membership and belonging in what? Racism at the local level in Harlem and for whom? Citizens? Immigrants? At the global level (exploitation of black world musics; visa problems getting into U.S., Islamaphobia)? The lack of facilitation of these issues by academics like me, the role we could play but generally don’t, could be critical to the survival of the informal sectors that make not only St. Nick’s Pub possible but African night at St Nick’s possible. What has it not be my duty to create such translations? What has it be my duty?
About 7 weeks ago, I discovered the BBC Documentary RACISM-A HISTORY on Google Video. BBC-4 documentary is just 3-1 hour segments (First segment: COLOUR OF MONEY). I was left stunned. It was all I’d learned here & there about global racism in one authoritative narrative. I was angry again. Pissed to the point of paralysis again. This was in background while working on my St Nick’s Pub piece (Africans & African Americans in NYC). Then 3 weeks ago, RuthAnn Harnisch sent me Traces of Trade. It was a salve; the thing I had longed for — whites confronting their own guilt. Thank you Katrina Browne.
“ With her deep, earthy voice, commanding stage presence…she took what was deepest and strongest in her culture and made it vividly real and relevant to listeners in her modern times.” - Banning Eyre about Coumba Sidibé (RIP)
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Thursday, May 14 2009 @ 06:29 AM EDT
Contributed by:
WMC_News_Dept
After teaching ethnomusicology since 1996 as a professor and longer since grad school, I still have lots of questions about how scholars and our society treat Africans and their musics. What social structures are keeping certain conversations, certain discourse in place, while other hidden discourses remain…well.. hidden from public view, off-limits as conversation?
This blog is a space to contemplate our roots, the roots of discourses, and the root of a kind of evil that seems opposed to our very democratic values.
Speaking of Roots.
Alex Haley’s book was discredited in a plagiarism suit. it was confirmed that Haley lifted the plot, main character and significant passages from The African, a 1967 novel by notable folklorist Harold Courlander, who is white. See http://www.martinlutherking.org/roots.html. http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A17283
A 1997 BBC documentary exposing Haley’s work was banned by U.S. television networks - even PBS. I am out to get a hold of this documentary. What if all the things black Americans hold dear abt being black in America (Toby n Kizzie n Behold the only thing greater than you) & abt being African were primarily myth and lies?
Heard Béla Fleck and his brother Sascha Paladino on BBC talking about their film THROW DOWN YOUR HEART - Béla Fleck Brings the Banjo Back to Africa Tues Apr 21 and went to show at IFC Ctr where they attended Apr 24th. The BBC audio slideshow I overheard is here. Great piece!
Met Béla and Sascha that night. Lovely film with my fav Oumou Sangare. Asked two questions.
1. Will the film be shown to black audiences?
I am collaborating with Sascha to make this happen. S. told me Wynton said black folks don’t watch this kind of stuff. I’ll see about that! Got programming skills?
2. What was difference between playing with black musicians here (in the States) and playing with African musicians there?
Béla responded with a comment about how we always felt guilty here and not there. Béla’s straightforwardness made his brother a little uncomfortable. But I appreciated it! I can agree to be offended and stay in that conversation. More on that to come.
