I’ve heard rumors –which I’m not going to spread here– and I’ve loyally closed my ears to them. She performed here in Oakland at the Paramount Theater, and the reviews were merciless.

In this interview, she’s doesn’t seem “present,” but she does have some deep insight into the current state of hip-hop. Whatever the issues are, everyone please send your love and good vibes to elevate this sister back to her rightful place on the throne of hip-hop!

Check out the interview below:

(Doh! The interview got gaffled…but wait! There’s plenty of photos!)

Richard Howard, then poetry editor of the Paris Review, was claiming that the best writers rise to the top of the literary world naturally, and Gilb disagreed, saying no way. It’s the best-connected writers from the right backgrounds who rose to the top. Gilb’s PEN/Hemingway Award-winning story collection, “The Magic of Blood,” for instance, wasn’t published by a New York publishing house with untold millions of dollars at their disposal, but by the University of New Mexico Press.

–Eric Miles Williamson, “A good label for Dagoberto Gilb? Try good,” SF Chronicle: Insight, Sunday, March 2, 2008

Eric Miles Williamson wrote a fantastic essay on how the literary world (and society, in general) dispute the impact of an Ivy League degree on whether or not you’re recognized as an author. He goes even deeper to discuss how writers from communities-of-color are often relegated to a sub-class of writers, and never given credit for just being a good writer… He uses his insightful discussion with Dagoberto Gilb as a catalyst for further observation on the topic.

Rap and hip-hop are arguably another set of musical expressions and culture created, pushed, and developed by Blacks and Latinos in the United States. It took over 20 years for many in the music industry to even acknowledge rap’s and hip-hop’s impact on music, let alone to make some positive declaration about the people and cultures that created it. It wasn’t until rap acts like LL Cool J and Young MC were able to package the music to a larger audience, that chattel rap became labeled into the narrow stricture of commercial music that we know today. It’s taken ‘hood moguls like Sean Combs and Russell Simmons to diversify rap music into a product that can transcend culture and creativity, and spill into the aisles of Nordstrom, boutiques, and the beaches of St. Tropez. Is that a good thing? Well, we’re finding out now…

I’ve become one of those old, rickety –nee, crotchety– adults who looks back nostalgically, and thinks, “I remember when…” I’ve all but resigned myself to listening to nothing but LPs, and dumping my CDs (and digital files), for the sake of “old school.” However, I’m realizing that I’m not alone, and it’s not just nostalgia for “the way it used to be.”

There was a certain level of regulation that rap music and hip-hop culture retained. That was to keep it pure; less of an old school, than a pure school. The gramophone was invented in 1887, and we started scratching the hell out of it ninety years later…coincidentally in a year

ending in seven. (Oooh, that’s deep, but for another posting.) In between those years, Blacks in particular, had learned some pretty nasty lessons about the music industry, publishing rights, and “artistic license.” The djs had more power to regulate than b-girls and b-boys, and more pull than rappers. Producers were barely imagined when rap started. It was pure school theater: dj, emcees, dancers and artists.The true and pure school of rap was about the machine of movement and funk. Your crew provided the cogs, and oil and the dj was the wheel. Everyone in your crew was true to you and your sound: that was the only reason they were there. They believed in the vision and talent, and everyone was headed in the same direction.All of that reminiscing also made me long for the power of the dj. The mechanic, the ghost in the machine and the mover and shaker. The one who made the crew pop.There’s such a disrespect, reinterpreting, and dissecting of the rap machine, that now were just left with a hoopty running on recycled parts, rusty engines and recalled wheels.

It’s up to the communities that create and develop it. Most cultures are so true to their cultural expressions that they refuse to let it die in corporate hands. They create institutions to preserve it. They make their expressions a family event, and pass it on –in it’s true form– to their children. They enliven the spirit of the expression in rites so that no one forgets it. They write, sing, play and document the purpose and players in their cultural expression. They create myths, legends and books to make sure that they are never forgotten.We can’t get to this point until the soul is returned to rap and hip-hop. Change happens, but surgical enhancements are deliberate. For the past couple of weeks I’ve been pulling out my LPs, and listening to the mistresses and masters of dj-ing: the turntablists. I’ve also downloaded some old reliables like the late dj J Dilla’s Donuts album, the musical magician Danger Mouse’s album The Mouse and the Mask, and throwing in some obscure folk songs like Nick Drake’s “Fly” and “Pink Moon,” the Runaway’s salacious “Cherry Bomb,” Donny Hathaways gut wrenching but optimistic “Love, Love, Love,” and a little De la Soul, KRS-ONE’s “My 9 MM Goes Bang,” Rita Marley’s “One Draw”, and Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” just for the heck of it.

That’s the spirit of the dj –the draw of music to move the body and soul, and mashed-up to make it pleasing to the ear’s of the primal woman and man. You just can’t do that with mush-mouthed rapping of some crap that’s coming out nowadays.

It’s going to take a belly busting exorcism to filter the whack out of hip-hop. So ya’ll, let’s purify ourselves in the waters of Lake Minnetonka and exorcise the “suck” out of hip-hop, and bring back the soul! To quote Chef’s mother Nelly while she performed her own version of an exorcism, “Lord, Thomas…don’t let it get on the curtains!”

Resources (I’ll be adding more, so stay tuned!):

DJS
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• Grandmaster Flash
• J Dilla

EMCEES
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• Human Beatboxing

GRAFFITI ARTISTS + ART
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• B-Girl Be – Intermedia Arts
• B-Girl Manifesto

PRESERVING HIP-HOP CULTURE
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• True Skool
• B-Girl Manifesto
• The Zulu Nation
• The Electric Boogaloos

KINDRED SPIRITS
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• “Return return of the DJ”, Billy Jam, SF Bay Guardian, February 13, 2008

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RightsAgent Verification
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I work right across the street from the Rite-Aid drugstore on Market Street in San Francisco, California. Apparently, I’ve underestimated this store’s reputation as a hub of socio-economic diversity and varying levels of mental health services. When I worked blocks away from the store, it was rare that I went in, except for the occassional packet of Eclipse gum. Now that I’m smack dab across from Rite-Aid, I CAN’T STAY OUT OF IT! Like a beacon to a ship in a sea of fog of rain, Rite-Aid beckons to me. Oh no! I forgot to wear socks …just go to Rite-Aid. From electric toothbrushes to curling irons to gum to Pop Tarts, there sits Rit-Aid. Now with all of these fancy things in their inventory, it appears that Rite-Aid is just as attractive to me as it is to San Francisco’s various SRO populations –not that that’s a “bad thing,” it’s just a “contemplating thing.”

Depending on which day of the month I go for a new pair of socks, I can personally witness the after effects of (pick one) meth, crack, heroin or vicodine. Some days are just EXTRA loud. In their quest to be heard above the other loud conversations, shoppers regularly hold conversations ten decibels louder than the normal range. If you stand in line long enough, you’re bound to experience the performance art of catching a shoplifter and then physically interacting with the melee that ensues at the front door when the shoplifter argues with the security guard. (Has anyone else noticed that today’s security guards are adept at ESCALATING a confrontation, as opposed to de-escalating it?) So why does this weekly ritual make me love San Francisco? Well, where else can you stand in line and witness a shoplifter getting caught while the store’s audio plays Beck’s “Where It’s At?” Do drugstores in the mid-west play Godsmack? Does your Rite-Aid sell pantyhose long enough for the trannie population? I surmise they do not!

San Francisco isn’t a freak show, but we’re not freaked out by freaks. Of course as newer populations move in from less tolerant areas, this part of San Francisco culture is quickly changing, but until then –we got Rite-Aid on Market Street!

So the next time you stumble into a drugstore anywhere outside of San Francisco, and you’re relaxed and dreaming about how calm and happy your drugstore appears to be, just go check out the inventory and see who’s more on the ball when your condom selection is less than adequate. Yup, that’s when you’ll be yearning for a drugstore in The City.

When Bob Marley sang, “When music hits you, you feel no pain,” he probably didn’t know the back story of musician and Afro beat originator Fela Kuti. Born to Nigerian middle-class, educated parents, Fela shocked much of the world during the late-60′s and early-70′s with his in-your-face sexuality, driving traditional African beats, and funk laden spirit.

If you were around and coherent anytime during the 1970′s, you knew political climate of the United States, and the world. The stale smell of embers from the Vietnam War, urban rioting, protests and anti-war movement were still lingering, and people were worn out and tired. The civil rights and anti-war movements were limping along still trying to recover from calculated attacks on their ideals and themselves.

Fela Kuti was a touchstone for the Black Power movement. His music bridged the chasm between African Americans and the African continent. Opening up the globe to African Americans was pioneered by such musicians as Hugh Masekela and Miriam Makeba. Fela’s music lured African Americans in with funky extended tracks and by singing in English. He “de-exoticized” African music by using traditional Nigerian syncopation that funked and thumped with James Brown infused beats. Fela was the originator of Afro beat music: Not the sunshiny, happy dance lyrics that we hear today in the “world beat” clubs, but a darker, more ominous prophetic music with danceable overtones –the most dangerous music around.

Anyone who’s listened to bubble gum Top 40 music stations have experienced how radio-friendly beats with heavy bass can fool us into dancing to lyrics that regularly call women bitches and ho’s. You can imagine what was happening with Fela’s music, except he was calling for African unity, against colonialism, against military rule, and for a fresh embrace of Africa in its true raw self, to heal itself on its own terms.

Fela was a maverick with a controversial edge that confused and infuriated many, especially in his home country of Nigeria in West Africa. In 1977, Fela and his music group Africa ’70 composed and performed his most famous song “Zombie,” a scathing indictment against the military-led Nigerian government. Like the title of the song, “Zombie” exhibited how those in power are only followers, waiting from instructions. If you go deeper into the song, you begin to ask yourself, “Who’s giving the orders?” For Fela, the government at the time didn’t want too many people asking that question. For a growing country fresh from colonial rule, it was a question best left unasked.

As the song –and the album– grew in popularity, the government responded by raiding his music compound Kalakuta Republic, and beat him mercilessly as they threw his 78-year old activist, feminist mother Funmilayo out of a second story window, eventually leading to her death shortly thereafter.Fela didn’t stop recording controversial songs with political overtones. He followed up with such albums as Expensive Shit, which he documented how the government frequently raided his home and compound looking for marijuana, even in his feces.He was a prophet, musician, revolutionary and, most importantly, he described himself in African pidgin, “I be great obeah black powah man!” Unfortunately, he regularly demonstrated his moniker, and at the time of his death, had 27 wives, one of which could have easily transmitted HIV to him which result in his death August 2, 1997. Personally, I grew up with Fela’s music, political ideology and expressions of post-colonial Africanism. My friends and I frequently listened to his music, and every great thinker in my group had a least one original Fela album in their collection, whether inherited from their parent, picked up at a recycled record store, and trading their Rob Bass album for someone else’s Fela album. As an African American woman, I had many concerns about his reputation as a polygamist and supposed chauvinist, stating such quotes as “…women are mattresses.” Now whether he meant this as alongside such statements as Kwame Ture’s quote that the only position of women in the revolution is “prone,” or as a remark on women as deliverers of comfort is arguable. In either circumstance, it’s an underlying problem within the African American political community, i.e., relegating women to peripheral objects without context or purpose outside of providing sexual satisfaction to a man, or any man, for that matter, without consideration to her goals, intelligence or purpose. It’s short-sighted, harmful and laughable –especially in the 21st century.

While I grappled with his views on women, it took an amazing article written by Nigerian writer Gbemi Olujobi who described Fela’s views from a non-Western perspective, and wrote:

“Fela lived in a patriarchal society that glorifies maleness and worships manhood; where a woman is nothing without a man; where a woman must be married to be considered a real woman. Such a society actively encourages women to give up everything for the ‘fulfillment’ of male affection, defines a woman by her marital status and questions, in the most cruel way, her essence as a woman if she is not married… He sought to give them the respectability only marriage could confer upon them, in this society that insists that marriage is the ultimate, by marrying all 27 of them. He married all of them on the same day so that they would all be equal. In that way, there would be no senior or first wife to lord it over everyone else.” (“Far from home, a Nigerian journalist finds Fela’s legacy alive and well in art,” SFGATE, May 4, 2004, Gbemi Olujobi)

With all things great and small considered, Fela’s legacy is that of an orisha: Live a life, and serve as an example of what not to do and what to do. Your character decides which is greatest.

Links:

+ “Far from home, a Nigerian journalist finds Fela’s legacy alive and well in art,” SFGATE.com, May 4, 2004, Gbemi Olujobi

+ The Fela Kuti Project

+ The Shrine