NYC’s longest running “Feel Good Music” party going eight years strong!
Afro-beat, Latin, Jazz, Soulful House, Raw Funk 7”s, Remixes, Nu-Jazz, Breakbeats, Progressive Hip Hop, Sweet Soul, Roots, Ballads
Monday, August 31, 2009 Last Monday of Every Month 10:00 PM - 3:30 AM 21+ cover: $7.00
APT 419 W. 13th Street
4pm - 8pm. FREE! All Ages. All star producers and rare record collectors spin their funkiest 45s and more!
Every Tuesday in August at St. Nicholas Park Plaza @ 135th & St. Nicholas Ave, Harlem NYC. B or C train to W. 135th or try hopstop.com for directions. Held in association with The Friends of St. Nicholas Park: stnicholaspark.org
The annual Black August Concert to fundraise for political exiles was last night, at BB Kings. It was truly an amazing show with greats such as Sadat X from Brand Nubian, new artists Blitz the Ambassador and Rebel Diaz and many many more. The concert has been going on for about 12 years now, but there is also a rich vast history of Black August that precedes the concerts. Here is some info on the History of Black August itself. It is important that we use hip-hop to support such causes as political exiles who have worked so hard to provide a more free world for all of us.
Black August originated in the concentration camps of California to honor fallen Freedom Fighters, Jonathan Jackson, George Jackson, William Christmas, James McClain and Khatari Gaulden. Jonathan Jackson was gunned down outside the Marin County California courthouse on August 7, 1970 as he attempted to liberate three imprisoned Black Liberation Fighters: James McClain, William Christmas and Ruchell Magee.
Ruchell Magee is the sole survivor of that armed rebellion. He is the former co-defendant of Angela Davis and has been locked down for 40 years, most of it in solitary confinement. George Jackson was assassinated by prison guards during a Black prison rebellion at San Quentin on August 21, 1971. Three prison guards were also killed during that rebellion and prison officials charged six Black and Latino prisoners with the death of those guards.
These six brothers became known as the San Quentin Six. To honor these fallen soldiers the brothers who participated in the collective founding of Black August wore black armbands on their left arm and studied revolutionary works, focusing on the works of George Jackson.
In the month of August the brothers did not listen to the radio or watch television. Additionally, they didn’t eat or drink anything from sun-up to sundown; and loud and boastful behavior was not allowed. The brothers did not support the prison’s canteen. The use of drugs and alcoholic beverages was prohibited and the brothers held daily exercises because during Black August emphasis is placed on sacrifice, fortitude and discipline. Black August is a time to embrace the principles of unity, self-sacrifice, political education, physical training and resistance.
The tradition of fasting during Black August teaches self-discipline. A conscious fast is in effect FROM SUNRISE TO SUNSET (or suggested from 6:00 am to 8:00 pm), this includes refraining from drinking water or liquids and eating food of any kind during that period. Some other personal sacrifice can be made as well. The sundown meal is traditionally shared whenever possible among comrades. On August 31, a People’s Feast is held and the fast is broken. Black August fasting should serve as a constant reminder of the conditions our people have faced and still confront. Fasting is uncomfortable at times, but it is helpful to remember all those who have come and gone before us, Ni Nkan Mase, if we stand tall, it is because we stand on the shoulders of many ancestors.
The Spread and Growth of Black August
Black August is a time to STUDY AND PRACTICE EDUCATION AND OUTREACH ABOUT OUR HISTORY AND THE CURRENT CONDITIONS OF OUR PEOPLE. In the late 1970’s Black August was moved from the yards of California’s concentration camps to New Afrikan communities throughout California and the united states empire. As the Black August practice and tradition spread, it grew to observe not only the sacrifices of the brothers in California’s concentration camps, but the sacrifices and struggles of our ancestors against white supremacy, colonialism, and imperialism.
In the late 1970’s the observance and practice of Black August left the prisons of California and began being practiced by Black/New Afrikan revolutionaries throughout the country. Members of the New Afrikan Independence Movement (NAIM) began practicing and spreading Black August during this period. The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM) inherited knowledge and practice of Black August from its parent organization, the New Afrikan People’s Organization (NAPO). MXGM through the Black August Hip Hop Project began introducing the Hip-Hop community to Black August in the late 1990’s after being inspired by New Afrikan political exile Nehanda Abiodun.
Brief Historical Outline of “Black August”
A sampling of this month of “righteous rebellion” and “racist repression” includes:
The first Afrikans were brought to Jamestown as slaves in August of 1619.
Gabriel Prosser’s slave rebellion occurred on August 30th, 1800.
The “Prophet” Nat Turner planned and executed a slave rebellion that commenced on August 21, 1831.
In 1843, Henry Highland Garnett called a general slave strike on August 22.
The Underground Railroad was started on August 2, 1850.
The March on Washington occurred in August of 1963
The Watts rebellions were in August of 1965.
On August 18, 1971 the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika (RNA) was raided by Mississippi police and FBI agents.
The MOVE family was bombed by Philadelphia police on August 8, 1978.
Further, August is a time of birth. Dr. Mutulu Shakur (New Afrikan prisoner of war), Pan-Africanist Leader Marcus Garvey, Maroon Russell Shoatz (political prisoner) and Chicago Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton were born in August. August is also a time of transition and rebirth. The great scholar and educator W.E.B. Dubois died in Ghana on August 27, 1963. So, August is a month during which New Afrikans can reflect on our current situation and our struggle for self-determination and freedom.
www.blackaugust.com
Early Sunday afternoon, the corner of Hollis Ave and 205th Street in Hollis, Queens was renamed: Run DMC JMJ Way. The event was hosted by radio personality, Ed Lover and guests included: City Councilman Leroy Comrie, Bill Adler, DJ Scratch, Kangol Kid (UTFO), and Rahiem (Furious 5). Before the sign unveiling, Jay's mom Connie Mizell, spoke on her sons legacy and the origins Run-DMC. A legend in hip-hop like Jam Master Jay deserves such an accolade, soon kids will be living on streets name after mc's in the hood, like their named after great black leaders today. Below is a video of Jam Master Jay's mom speaking before the unveiling of the street sign.
WASHINGTON — In the spring of 2003, the United States Senate was heading for a meltdown. Democrats were blocking confirmation of federal judges. Republicans were set to retaliate with a “nuclear option”: a new rule stripping senators of their right to filibuster judicial nominations.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, fearing for the future of the institution, turned to a historian for help. He invited Robert A. Caro, author of the epic Lyndon B. Johnson biography, “Master of the Senate,” to speak to lawmakers about Senate traditions, and the founding fathers’ vision of it as a place for extended debate.
To Mr. Caro, Mr. Kennedy’s own knowledge of Senate history and reverence for its ideals was yet another reminder of why his host deserved a place in the pantheon of Senate greats, alongside men like Webster and Calhoun and Clay. But it was also a reminder of how much the Senate had changed during Mr. Kennedy’s 46 years there.
“Ted Kennedy was a senator out of another, very different, Senate era: an era in which senators who believed in great causes stood at their desks, year after year and decade after decade, fighting for those causes, and educating the country about them,” Mr. Caro said.
It is a tradition, he said, “that seems all but lost today.”
From physical changes to the chamber — in 1986 the lighting was brightened for television and the slouchy overstuffed couches were cleared away — to the arrival of women, to the disappearance of the conservative Southern Democrats who used their clout to strangle civil rights legislation, the Senate of today is far different from the one Mr. Kennedy joined in November 1962.
Like the nation itself, it has become coarser, more partisan and, many scholars and politicians argue, more dysfunctional. As both parties have moved to their ideological extremes, the center is all but gone.
“When Kennedy came, both political parties in the Senate were internally divided,” said Don Ritchie, the associate Senate historian. “There were as many Eisenhower Republicans as Goldwater Republicans. There were more liberal Democrats but a sizable number of conservative Democrats. There was never a party line vote on anything. There were ideological coalitions rather than partisan coalitions.”
One measure of that partisanship is the rise of the filibuster, once a rarity that was reserved for the great legislative debates of the day. Today, rare is the bill that does not face a filibuster threat. In 1963, Mr. Kennedy’s first full year in the Senate, the leaders filed just one “cloture motion,” Senate parlance for the procedure that can end a filibuster by cutting off debate. Last year, 50 cloture motions were filed.
The Senate was then, and is now, a clubby place governed by its own peculiar rules and conventions. But with the possible exception of Senator Robert C. Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat and longest-serving senator (at 91, having served for 50 years, he is frail and in failing health) today’s senators are rarely acclaimed for eloquent discourse.
Mr. Byrd’s March 2003 speech opposing the war in Iraq, for instance, made him an octogenarian Internet sensation; until he became ill, he was known to give Senate speeches on matters as simple as the beauty of spring. But in the era of the 24-hour news cycle, the world’s greatest deliberative body is finding it harder to be, well, deliberative.
Consider the communications style of two other longtime senators, Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Democrat, and Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican. Each has served 28 years in the Senate. Not long ago, they got into a spat over health care — through their Twitter feeds.
On Wednesday, when news of Mr. Kennedy’s death was announced, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, declared that “the Kennedy family and the Senate family have together lost our patriarch.” Yet some members lament that with fund-raising pressures growing increasingly intense and members rushing home every weekend, the Senate’s family days are behind it. Friendships, an essential ingredient to passing legislation, are harder to forge today, both within parties and across party lines.
Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican and good friend of Mr. Kennedy who was defeated for re-election last year, recalls that when he joined the Senate in 1969, the Democratic leader, Mike Mansfield urged freshmen to form bipartisan dinner groups “to get to know one another on a personal basis.” He remembers carpooling to work with Senator Edmund S. Muskie, Democrat of Maine.
“There were a bunch of us who lived over the District line. We all had kids, we all had one car, we’d pair up and drive to the Senate,” Mr. Stevens said. “It was a sharing Senate at the time, without regard to politics. It was a family. It’s not a family anymore.”
It is tempting to wax nostalgic about the good old days, but some things about the Senate have inarguably changed for the better. Today’s Senate is more diverse, with women especially represented in greater numbers. There were only two women in the Senate when Mr. Kennedy joined, while today there are 17. The women of the Senate share monthly off-the-record dinners (no aides allowed), organized by Senator Barbara Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland and the longest-serving female senator.
The Senate staff is much larger and more professional today, with deep policy expertise. Mr. Kennedy’s staff was widely considered the best and the brightest, with high-powered alumni, among them a Supreme Court justice, Stephen G. Breyer. But Adam Clymer, a Kennedy biographer and former New York Times reporter, says there is a downside to specialization: today’s senators rely more on their aides than on one another.
“Kennedy told me he didn’t know from farm legislation,” Mr. Clymer said. “But he knew George McGovern and liked him, thought he was a serious fellow. So he asked McGovern how he ought to vote on farm legislation.”
Television, which arrived in 1986 when the Senate approved a C-Span camera in the chamber, was a boon for civic engagement. But it quickened the pace and coarsened the atmosphere, as Senate aides began monitoring TV screens for untoward remarks about their bosses. And with cameras inside the Senate chamber, the low lighting, “a calming influence,” in the view of Alan Simpson, the former Republican senator from Wyoming, had to go. Suddenly, some senators seemed more interested in engaging the cameras than one another.
“When they got those bright lights in, guys began to dye their hair,” Mr. Simpson said. “There was more of a peacock syndrome.”
Perhaps, 47 years from now, Americans will be wondering aloud whether there will ever be another Al Franken or Mark Udall or Kirsten Gillibrand. But as Mr. Kennedy is being lionized in death, it is difficult to envision the modern Senate’s producing another lawmaker who could amass his longevity and his record, or who could use the Senate, as he did, as a forum to educate the nation, decade in and decade out.
“There is no Kennedy of the future,” said Norm Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who studies the Senate. “You’ve got some smart diligent hardworking impressive senators. Is any of them like Kennedy? It’s like looking at a Major League Baseball game and seeing some really good players and knowing there’s no Ted Williams in that group.”
www.nytimes.com
In honor of their upcoming show at Southpaw this Saturday, I took time to recognize and reexamine Nice & Smooth and their position in hip-hop.
Discussing golden age hip-hop canons is a tricky thing. In those long-winded, heated debates among hip-hop nerds and crate diggers the world over, certain names must always be mentioned. We ask whether Big Daddy Kane’s legacy is diminished by his lack of longevity, why Masta Ace is so underrated, or whether Tribe or De La should be more exalted. We debate whether Audio Two deserves such recognition, or we pour over lines from Rakim, deciphering meaning among intricately constructed internal rhymes and extended metaphors. We debate a thousand other things and mention a thousand other names, from the obscure albums of Philly’s Hilltop Hustlers Crew to the well-known impact of Public Enemy’s searing commentary and barrage of rapid-fire sound.
But Greg Nice and Smooth B are almost always glaringly overlooked in these forums. The Bronx duo, first featured on BDK’s classic “Pimpin Ain’t Easy” in ’89, is often dismissed as a lesser EPMD, a short-lived, minor pop sensation. Their blithe, skirt-chasing humor and electronic keyboard beats woefully out of place in an era of raw lyricism, scorching vinyl beat breaks, and James Brown samples. Their contribution to hip-hop in a time laden with groundbreaking artists is often reduced to a few choice tracks. Beyond “Sometimes I Rhyme Slow,” and the classic refrain of “Hip-Hop Junky,” not much is mentioned. I have to admit I’m equally guilty of this oversight. Aside from a brief phase where “Ain’t A Damn Thing Changed” was my favorite album on constant repeat, I never gave them the respect they deserved. So I took their upcoming show at Southpaw on August 29th as an opportunity to reacquaint myself with their catalog.
What I rediscovered in this process was the incredible versatility of Nice & Smooth. With subject matter ranging from Saturday morning cartoons to somber social commentary, they possessed an inimitably eclectic style. Although they were packaged and marketed as a latter-day Audio Two, in reality they were more multifaceted. Songs like “Down the Line” and "DWYCK" with Gang Starr showed that they could hang lyrically with the underground kings of nascent New York boom-bap. Far from being one-dimensional funnymen, they were complex and skilled MCs. They created a lyrically meaningful form of hip-hop that declined to take itself too seriously. Instead of searching the crates for soul and funk, they would sample Sanford and Son or the Partridge Family. And in many ways, this endlessly random knowledge of pop culture paved the way for groups like Das Efx.
However, the question still remains why they have been so historically marginalized beyond a few major songs. For me, the answer is pretty simple. First of all, versatility has never been a particularly admired quality in hip-hop. Unfortunately, they suffered from a jack-of-all-trades syndrome. Unable to do laid-back humor like EPMD, unable to do raw lyricism like Juice Crew or Rakim, unable to do social commentary like PE or KRS. Smooth B’s player persona silky flow were definitely hot, but couldn’t compare to Kane. It was a regrettably limiting situation for two talented, creative, quirky dudes trying to resist industry pigeonholing.
But more importantly, Nice & Smooth came out in a very critical transitional period in hip-hop. From ‘89-92, hip-hop was undeniably changing. The upbeat, lighthearted stories and cold lyricism of the 80s were being replaced vivid street stories, 90 bpm drumloops, and sparsely adorned soundscapes. The likes of Gang Starr, Organized Konfusion, Redman, Pete Rock, Diamond D, and Kool G Rap were beginning to replace the pop generation of Audio Two, LL, Rob Base, and even the whimsicality of Slick Rick. In such a climate, Nice & Smooth clung to the 80s and soon became an anachronism in the artistic flux. They didn’t really fit into either era particularly well. In 1991, the year of OK, Low End Theory, and Breaking Atoms, their flippant, out-of-tune harmonizing (“How to Flow”) seemed like a relic of the past. EPMD adapted by picking up Redman, Das Efx, and Keith Murray. But unfortunately, Nice & Smooth did not. They became inopportune victims of style, circumstance, and the changing winds of hip-hop. Regardless one thing remains certain: these classic practitioners of the carefree definitely had a funky rhyme, and a funky funky style.
I just saw this video on CNN. It discusses Cuba's shortage of toilet paper and links it to their "bizarro socialist economy." The analysis is truly warped, one sided, and extreme. It is unfortunate that when it comes to Cuba, we always fail to understand the complexities and nuisances of the country.
“Vinyl Is Forever"
SEPT. 1: SALSA HOP: DJs FABEL & more tba!
Beats, Jazz, Soul, Rock and Rare Grooves, bought to you by Qool Dj Marv!
Monday, August 31, 2009
