HIPSTA SISTAS

The alternative black music radio show titled 'Is Black Music', that I present, did a one hour special focusing on black women making underground and alternative music

While compiling the tracks for the show, it made me think about where I'm from...

In Los Angeles there were many girls around. All types of girls. The neighborhood was diverse. They were all wondorous in their own way...

They wore different colours in the California sun, and when we were old enough to go out in the world, they began to become bright lights in the nightclub nights, and the days looked better when they smiled...

Conversations rarely went far enough...largely because I didn't know what to say... I was so in awe... In the end I took the Mean Mr Macho path, and they inevitably disappeared...

But I hadn't lost them forever. Because now here in London we are surrounded by people from every wondrous corner of the world. And there are some very hip sistas among them...

After I selected the songs for this ladies-only show, I was surprised to find that I had spent meaningful times with most of these artists. The tracks are all fairly recent releases (2013-14). Other than Neneh and Valerie, they are all but ignored by the media. The courage and conviction that an artist exhibits when working in such shadows is inspiring.

March 8th is International Women's Day, and I hope you enjoy listening to this radio show, and our sistas that participated...

IS BLACK MUSIC February 26, 2014
, ALTERNATIVE SISTAHOOD Playlist:

Sun Ra - I'll Wait For You

Art Terry - Hipsta Sista

Kandia Crazy Horse - California

Mantana Roberts - Responsory

Neneh Cherry - Blank Project

Renu - Midnight Radio

Radikal Queen - Shout

Vedina Mosé - Warrior

Krystal Warren - Tuesday Morning

Errollyn Wallen & Bonnie Greer - Yes

Valerie June - Tennessee Time

Miryam Solomon - Simply Beautiful

Mantana Roberts - River Ruby Dues

Listen to the show on Soundcloud

MISS THANG

For all of us who miss something...or someone that's close by, but out of reach...

This song is for all the people who want to be together but are far apart. Particularly mentally... Particularly sexually...

Though not exclusively sexually. It could be a friend or a relative. It's just someone you love dearly, want to share with passionately. But for some reason, or some reasons, that isn't always possible. No matter what you do, there is always some thang. Some thang in the way of that metaphysical connection we call relating. Love and understanding are too often two different things...

So...Happy Valentine's Day to Miss Thang, and to everyone else we are forever missing...

xxx

THE CASUAL SEX RADIO SHOW

This week on the 'Is Black Music' radio show on Resonance FM we explored the theme of Casual Sex.

Casual relationships, non-monogamous relationships, hooking-up, friends with benefits... This is rarely talked about directly, or used in art. Perhaps that's cause they're too busy doing it...?

On the show we wanted to isolate the concept of pure casual sex, and see how it works in and through black music. So songs like Marvin Gaye's 'Let's Get It On' were omitted because the characters appear to be in a pre-meditated dating situation. 'Sexual Healing' was also not chosen, because again the protagonist's relationship seemed to have a history.

The archetypal casual sex encounter is improvisational and spontaneous by nature. We chose Gaye's under-rated composition 'After The Dance' instead, because there you have a situation where the singer has clearly just met the girl for the first time at a dance.

We also omitted songs that were about infidelity, cheating or polyamory.

Casual Sex to me is when two people just have sex. That's all. That's where it begins, and that's where it ends.

Simple.

Or is it...?

Listen to the Casual Sex Show here:
http://m.soundcloud.com/resonance-fm/00-00-00-is-black-music-26

DANIEL CHAVIS & THE NY ALTERNATIVE ROCK EXPERIENCE

We play and refer to a lot of music that is from the Big Apple on our radio show.

New York has consistently been a central focus for underground and subversive art. It was where the Harlem Renaissance nurtured the undiscovered African American artists of the 1920s. It was where much of the European Avant-Garde fled to escape the rise of Nazi fascism in the 1930s & 40s, and it was where experimental musicians, writers, & visual & conceptual artists created the Downtown loft scene in the '60s.

Speaking with Daniel Chavis on last night's show helped me realise that these "scenes" in New York are often disjointedly connected.

The Chavis brothers came from North Carolina in the late '80s, to a New York City that was not sure how to relate to Black musicians performing music that was not easily recognisable as 'Black Music'.

Like many of the artist who have come looking for a home in New York, the brothers Chavis' experience was unexpected and incomparable.

Listen to our show with Daniel Chavis here:
https://soundcloud.com/resonance-fm/00-00-00-is-black-music-25?in=resonance-fm/sets/is-black-music-2014

Last Poets, Lost Prophets

For many Black Americans, it was a Where were you when you first heard the Last Poets moment… 

The Last Poets were the most militant sounding thing we had ever and never heard before. It was beyond our middle class Martin Luther King I had a dream dreams…

Abiodun Oyewole (The Last Poets)

They sounded scary! 

Our reaction was - they sounded like they wanted kill all the white people. They were talking about revolution. They were talking about bringing down the government...

And then they used the N word on record. They said it! We couldn't believe our ears! This was before Richard Pryor. We all used the word affectionately with each other in the streets. But you didn't use it around the general public. Especially you didn't spray it all over your record.

Don Babatunde (The Last Poets)

There they were, on the front of the album with their Dashikis and Afros looking fearless and dangerous. Not scared of nobody, the Government, the CIA. the police, the FBI…Yo Mama, The KKK, the president…

They would say anything on their records. And they were the first to put the lyrics on the inner sleeve. Which was weird to see. Nobody had done that before them. It was like they wanted to make sure you knew exactly what they were saying. 

Umar Bin Hussan (The Last Poets)

Hip Hop was to arrive 10 years later…

Eventually, rapping in an assertive, confident, irrepressibly aggressive manner would become the pervasive fashion. But they were there first. Their home-style recordings came out before anyone's. Gil Scott-Heron, The Watts Prophets... They stepped out first, from the corner of Harlem to your living room.

Don Babatunde, Umar Bin Hussan, Kunga Dred, Abiodun Oyewole

They were performing on the South Bank, and Kunga Dred brought them over to the Resonance studio so we could reason together…

https://soundcloud.com/resonance-fm/unknown-is-black-music-last

Art Terry, Don Babatunde, Umar Bin Hussan, Abiodun Oyewole

THE UNDERGROUND

                                       

Boy, the freaks are out tonight! 

Has it really been this long since I was in the underground? 

I forgot how freaky London can get. Maybe it's something about the heat.

But any city can get funky like that. From Madrid to New York. Here we have all kinds of folks.

When I first came to London, I was fascinated by "The Underground". The whole concept of an unseen esoteric thriving culture was so attractive to me. And to have a transport system with that same suggestive name just beckoned my imagination, when I read NME articles about all those Post-Punk bands.

So when I arrived in London from LA via NY (via Napoli, via Dusseldorf, via Paris, but that's a different blog) in 1983, I couldn't resist making The Underground my second home.

I was squatting on The Front Line in Brixton at the time, and The Underground seemed like space travel to me. We had nothing like it in LA. and it was free! In those days, none of the stations had barriers. You could just walk thru, cause they rarely checked your ticket.

Eventually I collaborated, and did sessions in London with many of the Post-Punkers whose stories and music had inspired me.

But still when I hear Iggy say "Things get too straight, I can't bear it",  I hear Russell Thompkins Jr whisper discreetly in my ear, "Go underground young man".

RICHIE HAVENS

Imagine 3 young black teenagers who are feeling restricted by conventions, sitting down in a theatre to watch this Woodstock film that we had heard of.  We expected to see a bunch of blonde hippy girls on the screen, and other people that looked nothing like us. And the first musicians we see are these totally funky brothers sitting, not standing but sitting down on the stage, blues funking some folky roots soul stuff. And seriously making it sweat! Not playing some loud guitar solo, but playing acoustically, like they are stuck inside a mobile freak-out located somewhere between Nassau and Harlem. 

If Woodstock was the landmark event of 60's culture, it was Richie Havens that announced and proclaimed the event, gave the initial spark, by being the festival's opening act. His dignity, and humility gave validity to the word 'hippy'. 

You hope when you die you go to the same place that he is.

http://m.soundcloud.com/resonance-fm/00-00-00-is-