Just Looking ...

I am writing this blog as I sit in a quiet spot on campus, studying for tomorrows final. I have pondered many things in Kalmar's course but The last few lectures have been particularly fascinating to me. While ruminating over notions of race and cultural identity i began to think of the lecture in which we talked about Fanon's book Black Skin White Masks - I personally enjoyed his work Wretched of the Earth. While thinking about this while studying I also perused pages of lecture notes on Orientalism and began to ruminate about that. What i think i am getting at is the way the west has dominated the discourse on how these two groups (albeit not homogenous though in the popular imagination probably) identify themselves and how they view others. It's funny that no one ever links the fact that during the civil rights movement in the US - many jews fought along side with blacks - the eventually relationship grew tense though.

A good book to look into this is Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America

I also thought of a Billie Holiday song that I adore called STRANGE FRUIT by Abel Meeropol ( A jewish school teacher from the bronx)



The Lyrics are

Strange Fruit

(as sung by Billie Holiday)
Southern trees bear a strange fruit,

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,

Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze,

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant South,

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,

Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,

Then the sudden smell of burning flesh!
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,

For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,

Here is a strange and bitter crop.



and here is a link to a video of Billie Holiday singing it on YOUtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs

and for more info on the song and it's composer http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/strangefruit/film.html

Anyways enjoy the summer...

Hey back in the day, who couldn’t respect Lauyrn Hill with her unique perspective, or keep to the beat of social justice corralling by Talib Kwali. Yes in the era of Jay- Z shoes and P.Diddy cologne - Nas correctly stated Hip-Hop is dead. However, with that said perhaps we shouldn’t be too critical of Hip-Hop artists today, I mean many of them grew up disenfranchised youth, trying to make a dollar or two to survive.
Instead of completely writing off value of this commercial age of Hip-Hop perhaps we should look at the positionality and context those artists are in. I truly believe Hip-Hop today is unique because it is an art form imbedded in challenging norms, yet has been incorporated by the mainstream as a tool to sell product. In turn, it is actually those voices that were once disadvantaged that now have the economic means to bring about real change; as the saying goes use the masters tools to bring down his house.

I think in-lieu of just writing off Hip-Hop as a culture that is celebratory of misogyny, drugs, and cash money, we should further look at the institutions at play. Perhaps Hip-hop is Black America’s interpretation/ articulation of the American Dream? Maybe, while we are enjoying ourselves watching Shawty get low or doing the Superman, we should ask ourselves why platinum fronts are celebrated- it would give us greater perspective of what our cosmology is.