onlineJournal | The Liberator Magazine

Machetero & Puerto Rico / "Colonialism is a fire that burns uncontrollably consuming life and devouring law ... and will eventually destroy everything in its path."

2013-06-17T05:30:00.000-04:00

{liberatormagazine.com exclusive feature}

New Sons of Puerto Rico Make Songs and Slingshots in New Film
by Frederick B. Hudson (Guest Contributor)

In a world where the dominant form of arithmetic is subtraction--where the worker studies his or her paycheck to see how much has been deducted; where the employer analyzes spreadsheets to see how many workers' hours or entire positions can be eliminated comes a new character--Machetero.

Puerto Rican by heritage, United States by upbringing, he brings a new calculus of concerns: the perceived exploitation of his native island by a government, which does not offer human experience of culture.

A forty-four year-old New York writer and director who refers to himself with the one word appellation, Vagabond ("Nat Turner: Instrument of God's Vengence". The Last Generation Of Black People: The Liberator Magazine #26, 2012.), has surmounted boulders of obstacles to screen a movie whose chief visual trope is a young boy alternatively staring at the Puerto Rican beach, then returning to the waves to refresh his memories of the womb fluid that blessed him.

Although the film, named after the central character, has won awards in six countries, ranging from South Africa to Ireland to Thailand, the tale has only achieved its first theatrical release in the United States this week with a one-week engagement at Kabavito's Theatre in New York City. The reason is obvious--it absorbs the vapors and fluids of the Puerto Rican liberation struggle--not just as history but also even in its casting. A former Puerto Rican prisoner of war who spent 20 years in federal prisons for sedition plays the role of mentor to the young revolutionary.

The main character is even given the name of Pedro in memory of Don Pedro Abizu Campos, the Harvard Law graduate who spent many years himself in U.S. prisons for his violent advocacy of liberation of his island. Campos himself was a controversial figure who only chose violent tactics after innocent demonstrators were killed after a historic march in the city of Ponce. After Campos death in his supporters were able to refute the denial of Campos claim that he had be radiated in prison by presenting witnesses who testified that they had seen the Geiger counter needle go to the extreme number when brought near the man' body.

Therefore, there is a history to this musical drama, which uses the rap idiom to elucidate the protagonist's angst and redemption. Machetero chooses to have the character compose and simultaneously the sins of his people's past with lyrics:

Colonialism is a fire

that burns uncontrollably

consuming life and devouring law.

It turns bone to ember

and flesh to ash

and will eventually destroy

everything in its path

The inevitable rational analysis of the tiny island pitted again the armies of the most powerful military complex in the world are handled with reference to the Christian Biblical tales of David:

the exile with a sling, a stone, and a plan

Then the exile like Kafka's bug takes form as a roach which "retreats , disappears, then still there overruns the masters' house."

Winning and losing aside, Machetero, is a direct descendent of the philosophical stance taken by the late Hebert Marcuse whose One-Dimensional Man was one of the instructional text s for activist Angela Davis. Marcuse spoke of the difficulty of media to portray the struggles in Machetero when he noted in One Dimensional Man "while the people can support the continuous creation of nuclear weapons, readioactive fallout, they cannot tolerate being deprived of the entertainment and education, which make them capable of reproducing the arrangements for their defense and/or destruction."

It is ironic that the film's website hosts an interview with writer Sam Greenlee whose famous work describing how a black man who used his C.I.A. training to train ghetto youths to defend themselves and their community. Greenlee's film, The Spook Who Sat By the Door was forced by government officials to be taken out of theatres and almost all the prints were destroyed. Let us hope Machetero has a better fate.

"Born out of the failure of the liberal dream ... politicians now promise to protect us from nightmares" / Leo Strauss and Sayyid Qutb: The Power of Nightmares & the Rise of Fear

2013-06-17T05:00:00.000-04:00

The Power of Nightmares, subtitled The Rise of the Politics of Fear, is a BBC documentary film series, written and produced by Adam Curtis. Its three one-hour parts consist mostly of a montage of archive footage with Curtis' narration. The series was first broadcast in the United Kingdom in late 2004 and has subsequently been broadcast in multiple countries and shown in several film festivals, including the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. This film explores the origins in the 1940s and 50s of Islamic Fundamentalism in the Middle East, and Neoconservatism in America, parallels between these movements, and their effect on the world today.

Creative statement: "In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares. The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares. In a new series, the Power of Nightmares explores how the idea that we are threatened by a hidden and organised terrorist network is an illusion. It is a myth that has spread unquestioned through politics, the security services and the international media. At the heart of the story are two groups: the American neo-conservatives and the radical Islamists. Both were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world. These two groups have changed the world but not in the way either intended. Together they created today's nightmare vision of an organised terror network. A fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. Those with the darkest fears became the most powerful."

Part One: Baby it's Cold Outside
Part Two: The Phantom Victory
Part Three: The Shadows in the Cave

Originally Posted 4/26/2011

Ishmael Reed: On Henry Louis Gates

2013-06-17T02:00:00.000-04:00

WHY?: This incident is being run into the ground on CNN, but I thought this essay by Oakland writer Ishmael Reed was worth sharing. He asks some good questions about the role the media plays in annointing "black leaders", the gaps that exists between classes in the black community and relationships between black male leaders and feminism.

{image via Flickr}

(SOURCE: Counterpunch) Now that Henry Louis Gates’ Jr. has gotten a tiny taste of what “the underclass” undergo each day, do you think that he will go easier on them? Lighten up on the tough love lectures? Even during his encounter with the police, he was given some slack. If a black man in an inner city neighborhood had hesitated to identify himself, or given the police some lip, the police would have called SWAT. When Oscar Grant, an apprentice butcher, talked back to a BART policeman in Oakland, he was shot!

Given the position that Gates has pronounced since the late eighties, if I had been the arresting officer and post-race spokesperson Gates accused me of racism, I would have given him a sample of his own medicine. I would have replied that “race is a social construct”--the line that he and his friends have been pushing over the last couple of decades.

After this experience, will Gates stop attributing the problems of those inner city dwellers to the behavior of “thirty five-year-old grandmothers living in the projects?” (Gates says that when he became a tough lover he was following the example of his mentor Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka as though his and Soyinka’s situations were the same. As a result of Soyinka’s criticisms of a Nigerian dictator, he was jailed and his life constantly threatened.)

Prior to the late eighties, Gates’ tough love exhortations were aimed at racism in the halls of academe, but then he signed on to downtown feminist reasoning that racism was a black male problem. Karen Durbin, who hired him to write for The Village Voice, takes credit for inventing him as a “public intellectual.” He was then assigned by Rebecca Penny Sinkler, former editor of The New York Times Book Review, to do a snuff job on black male writers. In an extraordinary review, he seemed to conclude that black women writers were good, not because of their merit, but because black male writers were bad. This was a response to an article by Mel Watkins, a former book review editor, who on his way out warned of a growing trend that was exciting the publisher’s cash registers. Books that I would describe as high Harlequin romances, melodramas in which saintly women were besieged by cruel black male oppressors, the kind of image of the brothers promoted by confederate novelists Thomas Nelson Page and Thomas Dixon.

Gates dismissed a number of black writers as misogynists, including me, whom he smeared throughout the United States and Europe, but when Bill Clinton was caught exploiting a young woman, sexually, he told the Times that he would “go to the wall for this president.” Feminists like Gloria Steinem defended the president as well, even though for years they’d been writing about women as victims of male chauvinists with power, the kind of guys who used to bankroll Ms. magazine.

Not to say that portraits of black men should be uniformly positive--I’ve certainly introduced some creeps in my own work--but most of the white screenwriters, directors and producers who film this material--and the professors and critics who promote it-- are silent about the abuses against women belonging to their own ethnic groups. Moreover, Alice Walker, Tina Turner and bell hooks have complained that in the hands of white script writers, directors and producers, the black males become more sinister straw men than they appear in the original texts.

There are big bucks to be made in promoting this culture. Two studios are currently fighting over the rights to a movie called “Push” about a black father who impregnates his illiterate Harlem daughter. A representative of one, according to the Times, said that the movie would provide both with “a gold mine of opportunity.”

As an example of the double standard by which blacks and whites are treated in American society, at about the same time that the Gate’s article on black misogyny was printed, there appeared a piece about Jewish American writers. Very few women were mentioned.

Gates was also under pressure for making himself the head black feminist in the words of feminist Michele Wallace as a result of his profiting from black feminist studies sales because, as she put it in the Voice, he had unresolved issues with his late mother, who was, according to Gates, a black nationalist. The black feminists wanted in. As a result, Gates invited them to join his Norton anthology project. The result was the Norton Anthology of African American Literature. One of the editors was the late feminist scholar Dr. Barbara Christian. She complained to me almost to the day that she died that she and the late Nellie Y. McKay, another editor, did all of the work while Gates took the credit. This seems to be Gates’ pattern. Getting others to do his work. Mother Jones magazine accused him of exploiting those writers who helped to assemble his Encarta Africana, of running an academic sweat shop and even avoiding affirmative action goals by not hiring blacks. Julian Brookes of Mother Jones wrote:

“Henry Louis Gates Jr. has never been shy about speaking up for affirmative action. Indeed, the prominent Harvard professor insists that he wouldn't be where he is today without it. Odd, then, that when it came to assembling a staff to compile an encyclopedia of black history, Gates hired a group that was almost exclusively white. Of the up to 40 full-time writers and editors who worked to produce Encarta Africana only three were black. What's more, Gates and co-editor K. Anthony Appiah rejected several requests from white staffers to hire more black writers. Mother Jones turned to Gates for an explanation of this apparent inconsistency.

“Did the staff members who expressed concern that the Africana team was too white have a point?”

Gates responded:

“It's a disgusting notion that white people can't write on black history--some of the best scholars of Africa are white. People should feel free to criticize the quality of the encyclopedia, but I will not yield one millimeter[to people who criticize the makeup of the staff]. It's wrongheaded. Would I have liked there to be more African Americans in the pool? Sure. But we did the best we could given the time limits and budget.”

While his alliance with feminists gave Gates’ career a powerful boost, it was his Op ed for the Times blaming continued anti-Semitism on African Americans that brought the public intellectual uptown. It was then that Gates was ordained as the pre-eminent African American scholar when, if one polled African-American scholars throughout the nation, Gates would not have ranked among the top twenty five. It would have to be done by secret ballot given the power that Gates’ sponsors have given him to make or break academic careers. As Quincy Troupe, editor of Black Renaissance Noire would say, Gates is among those leaders who were “given to us,” not only by the white mainstream but also by white progressives. Amy Goodman carries on about Gates and Cornel West like the old Bobby Soxers used to swoon over Sinatra. Last week Rachel Maddow called Gates “the nation’s leading black intellectual.” Who pray tell is the nation’s leading white intellectual, Rachel? How come we can only have one? Some would argue that Gates hasn’t written a first rate scholarly work since 1989.

CNN gave Gates’ accusation against blacks as anti-Semites a worldwide audience and so when I traveled to Israel for the first time in the year, 2000, Israeli intellectuals asked me why American blacks hated Jews so. In print, I challenged Gate’s libeling of blacks as a group in my book, Another Day at the Front, because at the time of his Op-ed, the Anti-Defamation League issued a report that showed the decline of anti-Semitism among black Americans. I cited this report to Gates. He said that the Times promised that there would be a follow up Op-ed about racism among American Jews. It never appeared. Barry Glassner was correct when he wrote in his “The Culture of Fear” that the whole Gates-generated black Jewish feud was hyped.

Under Tina Brown’s editorship at The New Yorker, Gates was hired to do hatchet jobs on Minister Louis Farrakhan and the late playwright August Wilson.

The piece on Wilson appeared after a debate between Robert Brustein and Wilson about Wilson’s proposal for a black nationalist theater. Gates took Brustein’s side of the argument. Shortly afterward, Brustein and Gates were awarded a million dollar grant from the Ford Foundation for the purpose of holding theatrical Talented Tenth dinner parties at Harvard at a time when regional black theater was heading toward extinction. Tina Brown, a one-time Gates sponsor, is a post-racer like Gates. Like Andrew Sullivan, a Charles Murray supporter, she gets away with the most fatuous comments as a result of Americans being enthralled by a London accent. On the Bill Maher show, she said that issues of race were passé because the country has elected a black president. This woman lives in a city from which blacks and Latinos have been ethnically cleansed as a result the policies of Mayor Giuliani, a man who gets his talking points from The Manhattan Institute. Thousands of black and Hispanic New Yorkers have been stopped and frisked without a peep from Gates and his Harvard circle of post-racers such as Orlando Patterson.

Even the Bush administration admitted to the existence of racial profiling, yet Gates says that only after his arrest did he understand the extent of racial profiling, a problem for over two hundred years. Why wasn’t “the nation’s leading black intellectual” aware of the problem? His exact words following his arrest were “What it made me realize was how vulnerable all black men are, how vulnerable are all poor people to capricious forces like a rogue policemen.” Amazing! Shouldn’t “the nation’s leading black intellectual” be aware of writer Charles Chesnutt who wrote about racial profiling in 1905!

The Village Voice recently exposed the brutality meted out to black and Hispanic prisoners at New York’s Riker’s Island and medical experiments that have damaged black children living in the city. Yet Maureen Dowd agrees with Tina Brown, her fellow New Yorker, that because the president and his attorney general are black--in terms of racism--it’s mission accomplished. Makes you understand how the German citizens of Munich could go about their business while people were being gassed a few miles away. You can almost forgive Marie Antoinette. She was a young woman in her thirties with not a single face lift operation.

What is it with this post-race Harvard elite? I got to see Dick Gregory and Mort Sahl perform in San Francisco the other night, the last of the great sixties comedians. During his routine, Gregory said that he’s sending his grand kids to black historical colleges because even though he lives near Harvard and can afford to send them there, he wouldn’t “send his dog to Harvard.” Maybe he is on to something.

When Queer Power became the vogue, Gates latched on to that movement, too. In an introduction to an anthology of Gay writings, Gates argued that Gays face more discrimination than blacks, which is disputed even by Charles Blow, Times statistician, who like Harvard’s Patterson and Gates, makes tough love to blacks exclusively. Recently, he reported that the typical target of a hate crime is black, but failed to identify the typical perpetrator of a hate crime as a young white male.

Moreover, what’s the percentage of Gays on death row? The percentage of blacks? Which group is more likely to be redlined by banks, a practice that has cost blacks billions of dollars in equity? Would Cambridge police have given two white Gays the problems that they gave Gates? Why no discussion of charges of Gay racism made by Marlon Riggs, Barbara Smith and Audre Lorde? How many unarmed white Gays have been murdered by the police? How many blacks? Undoubtedly, there are pockets of homophobia among blacks but not as much as that among other ethnic communities that I could cite. The best thing for blacks would be for Gays to get married and blacks should help in this effort, otherwise all of the oxygen on the left will continue to be soaked up by this issue.

For white Gays and Lesbians to compare their struggle to that of the Civil Rights movement is like Gates comparing his situation with that of Wole Soyinka’s. Moreover, Barbara Smith says that when she tried to join the Gay Millennial March on Washington, the leaders told her to get lost. They said they were intent upon convincing white Heterosexual America that “We’re just like you.”

Will the pre-late-80s Gates be resurrected as a result of what MSNBC and CNN commentator Touré calls Gates’ wake up call? (This is the same Toure, a brilliant fiction writer, who just about wrote a post-race manifesto for The New York Times Book Review, during which he dismissed an older generation of black activists as a bunch of “Jesses”.)

Will Gates let up on what Kofi Natambu the young editor of the Panopticon Review calls his “opportunism.” Will he re-think remarks like the one he made after the election of his friend, the tough love president Barack Obama? Gates said that he doubted that the election would end black substance abuse and unmarried motherhood?

Is it possible that things are more complicated than tough love sound bites which are designed to solicit more patronage? Will he reconsider the post-race neocon line of his blog, TheRoot.com, bankrolled by The Washington Post? Will he invite writers Carl Dix and Askia Toure, who represent other African American constituencies, as much as he prints the views of far right Manhattan Institute spokesperson and racial profiling denier, John McWhorter.

Will he continue to advertise shoddy blame-the-victim and black pathology sideshows like CNN’s “Black In America,” and “The Wire?” (Predictably CNN’s Anderson Cooper turned Gates’ controversy into a carnival act. The story was followed by one about Michael Jackson’s doctors. CNN is making so much money and raising its ratings so rapidly from black pathology stories that it’s beginning to give Black Entertainment Network a run for its money, so to speak.)

Predictably, the segregated media--the spare all white jury dominating the conversation about race as usual--gave the Cambridge cop the benefit of the doubt and the police unions backed him up. The police unions always back up their fellow officers even when they shoot unarmed black suspects in the back or, in the case of Papa Charlie James, an elderly San Francisco black man, while he was laying in bed. They back each other up and “testilie” all of the time.

Will Gates listen to his critics from whom he has been protected by powerful moneyed forces, which have given him the ability to make or break academic careers, preside over the decision-making of patronage and grant-awarding institutions. Houston A. Baker Jr.’s Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned The Ideals Of The Civil Rights Era offers mild criticisms of Gates, West and other black public intellectuals, who, according to him, are “embraced by virtue of their race transcendent ideology.” His book went from the warehouse to the remainder shelves. The Village Voice promised two installments of courageous muckraking pieces about Gates written by novelist, playwright and poet Thulani Davis; part two never appeared. Letters challenging Gates by one of Gates’ main critics at Harvard, Dr. Martin Kilson, have been censored. Kilson refers to Gates as “the master of the intellectual dodge.” And even when Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell at The Nation’s blog defied the 24-hour news cycle that has depicted Gates, a black nationalist critic, as an overnight black nationalist-- she calls him “apolitical”--she had to pull her punches. As an intellectual, she has more depth than all of the white mainstream and white progressive media’s selected “leaders of black intellection,” among whom are post-modernist preachers who can spew rhetoric faster than the speed of light.

It remains to be seen whether Gates, who calls himself an intellectual entrepreneur, will now use his “wake up call” to lead a movement that will challenge racial disparities in the criminal justice system. A system that is rotten to the core, where whites commit the overwhelming majority of the crimes, while blacks and Hispanics do the time. A prison system where torture and rape are regular occurrences and where in some states the conditions are worse than at Gitmo. California prisons hospitals are so bad that they have been declared unconstitutional and a form of torture, over the objections of Attorney General Jerry Brown and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who leased his face to the rich and was on television the other day talking about how rough they have it. A man who is channeling his hero the late Kurt Waldheim’s attitudes toward the poor and disabled.

Gates can help lead the fight so that there will be mutual respect between law enforcement and minorities instead of their calling us niggers all the time and being Marvin Gaye’s “trigger happy” policemen. Not all of them but quite a few. Or Gates can coast along. Continue to maintain that black personal behavior, like not turning off the TV at night, is at the root of the barriers facing millions of black Americans. Will return to the intellectual rigor espoused by his hero W.E.B Dubois or will he continue to act as a sort of black intellectual Charles Van Doren? An entertainer. (An insider at PBS told me that the network is demanding that Gates back up his claims about the ancestry of celebrities with more solid proofs.)

Gates has discussed doing a documentary about racial profiling. I invite him to cover a meeting residents of my Oakland ghetto neighborhood have with the police each month. (Most of our problems incidentally are caused by the off-springs of two family households. Suburban gun dealers who arm gang leaders. The gang leader on our block isn’t black! An absentee landlord who owns a house where crack operations take place.) He can bring Bill Cosby with him. He’ll find that the problems of inner citizens are more complex than “thirty five year-old grandmothers living in the projects” and rappers not pulling up their pants and that racism remains in the words of the great novelist John A. Williams, “an inexorable force.”

Finally, in his 2002 Jefferson lecture, delivered at the Library of Congress, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., during remarks about the 18th-Century poet Phillis Wheatley in which he excoriated the attitudes of her critics in the Black Arts movement, one more time, ended his lecture with: “We can finally say: Welcome home, Phillis; welcome home.”

If Gate’s ceases his role as just another tough lover and an “intellectual entrepreneur,” and takes a role in ending racial traffic and retail profiling, and police home invasions, issues that have lingered since even more Chesnutt’s time, we can say, “Welcome home, Skip; welcome home.” (source)

Originally Posted 7/28/2009

The Spook Who Sat By The Door

2013-06-17T01:00:00.000-04:00

Sam Greenlee's classic novel adapted for film.

Originally Posted 8/13/2007

James Baldwin on Cheikh Anta Diop

2013-06-17T00:10:00.000-04:00

{liberatormagazine.com feature}

WHY?: One reason The Liberator exists is to create spaces where dialogue, that may otherwise not take place, can take place. Our challenge to ourselves and readers is often, simply, to read. This is a re-post from Kintespace where the author, after reading the cover story from Liberator 8.1, took it upon himself to dig in his home library for some information on James Baldwin and Cheikh Anta Diop that serves as a valuable supplement to our published piece, revealing some fascinating context.

(SOURCE: Kintespace) The only game in many, many towns is Liberator Magazine. I ordered my copy of Liberator 8.1 because of the thought-provoking article “Past Afrocentricity” by my new Facebook friend, Lafayette Gaston. This article has two issues that jumped out at me:

* One: Diop felt that his work never received “proper feedback” (during his lifetime)—from his would-be African-centered colleagues.

* Two: “At La Sorbonne, Diop’s first doctorate theses [about the African origin of the ancient Egyptians]…were not actually refused. The professors informed Diop that if he wanted to complete his dissertation, he would have to choose another topic. Thus, Diop’s theses were never even defended.”

Both of these statements lead to yet another precedent that proves yet again nothing is new under the sun. Diop was caught in the middle of two large camps: the political, emotional, non-scientific Blacks and Negroes who could only wave at Diop from a distance with “duao” or “right-on brother” and, of course, the white-power establishment of all skin colors denying his existence. I am no C.A. Diop but let me tell you: being caught in such a no-man’s land (actually more of a no-woman’s land) is the essence of hell.

So let me drop the bombshell: I was under the impression that Diop was allowed to defend his first doctorate theses at La Sorbonne. It definitely follows that I rushed toward the footnotes of this Lafayette Gaston article, looking for the details. There are two sources cited: one in French not in my possession and another in my collection—the 1986 James G. Spady article “The Changing Perception of C.A. Diop and His Work: the Preeminence of a Scientific Spirit” in Great African Thinkers: Cheikh Anta Diop. Until I get my hands on the French source, I can definitely say I have no explicit reference to the details. However, the Spady article has a quote from James Baldwin about Diop that is astonishing:

/////"The evening session began with a film, which I missed, and was followed by a speech from Cheikh Anta Diop, which, in sum, claimed the ancient Egyptian empire as part of the Negro past. I can only say that this question has never greatly exercised my mind, nor did M. Diop succeed in doing so—at least not in the direction he intended. He quite refused to remain within the twenty-minute limit, and while his claims of the dishonesty of all Egyptian scholars [sic] may be quite well founded for all I know, I cannot say that he convinced me."/////

So this missionary position taken by Baldwin surprised me at first. (And, yes, you may ask, “How could a book in his collection surprise him? Isn’t the great Bryan reading his books?”) But then it began to make sense: how can James Baldwin return to Giovanni’s Room and accept Diop at the same time? Certainly, such a split would be schizoid. You see, kids, some people just grow up watching American Idol and others have to build a sophisticated intellectual framework to actually decide to watch American Idol—and James Baldwin clearly would be one of those intellectual people.

Let’s try another approach: when bell hook’s allegedly said (somewhere in the 1980s–90s) that Oprah Winfrey sucks white dick—I assumed such an aggressive, non-Buddha-like statement was symbolic, referring to a way of thinking. In the case of James Baldwin, the shit is fucking literal. It is common sense to not want to lose your real and present social life over some “black dogma”—James Baldwin was tossing salad of some real shit and would have to live his life as a chaste priest after failing to get his “friends” to go along with Diop’s news—after realizing what his “friends” really think about him (slave ship cabin boy) after trying to “share” Diop’s news.

But don’t diagnose my homophobia as paraplegic. First of all, when visualize homophobia—I don’t see the genius of, say, Keith Haring being tragically ignored because he is “gay”—I see a prison gang rape by crazed body builders—grown men attacking a juvenile—this is the imagery of homophobia for me. Secondly, even after finding this new shit out about James Baldwin I will still cite his series of black-and-white-television interviews about racism as the benchmark for all Black celebrities. James Baldwin’s celebrity is galactic units ahead of anything coming out as “talking about race” in media today…

There are 21st-century, young, self-described “black” people who still think that “all we need to do” is open a “public dialog on race” and the world will change. These kids definitely have not seen James Baldwin on national television over 40 years ago doing this exact thing. And now that I am a little older I accuse the bleeding-heart liberals that put him on television as being slightly attracted to Baldwin for less than idealistic reasons. There are few white things more delicious than knowing that the “black man” you are talking to about the freedom of what we assume to be straight Black men (statistically speaking) literally sucks white dick. Kids, there is a sense of white, upper-class humor you know little about… (source)

Originally Posted 10/13/2009

The Genius, Audacity, and Struggle of Kanye Omari West

2013-06-14T13:00:00.000-04:00

{liberatormagazine.com exclusive feature}

"You know how the game be/ I can’t let em change me/ Cause on Judgment Day, you gon blame me/ Look God, it’s the same me"
(-Kanye West: "Two Words")

Kanye is dropping what might be his most provocative musical work, in what might be one of his darkest personal periods. All while society is in one of the most politically, economically, and socially-charged times in recent history.

Is 808s and Heartbreak Kanye’s official “Declaration of Independence?” Or is it a living testimony of his personal anguish?

Is this new found sound still Hip-Hop? And can the Hip-Hop community handle this “New Wave Hip-Hop?”

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts”
(-William Shakespeare: ”As You Like It”)

The idea of Kanye West being a “genius” is not a new story. It is almost apart of every article or interview covering him; and he reminds us nearly every time he speaks about himself.

But the coverage surrounding his newest project, 808s and Heartbreak, and recent events in his life are not quite in this mold. What seems to be at the center of attention this time is not Kanye’s narcissistic, self indulgent diatribes–he should of won this award; or we don’t recognize how dope this is; and the proverbial not enough praise, not enough coverage, not enough recognition for something he created—a wide-spread celebration, critical acclaim of his artistic creativity is what he expects. However this time the story seems to be: What is this?

Fans don’t know what to do with it, and neither do journalists.

Part seems to appreciate the audacity of the album, due to Ye’s full out performance with the Auto-Tunes sound. Experimentation with the Auto-Tune/vocoder has been prevalent in Hip-Hop recently. It is a sound made notable lately by the success it has provided R&B artist T-Pain, and the popularity its garnered from one of Rap’s current superstars: Lil’ Wayne. 808’s and Heartbreak takes it to another level, “a whole album of vocoder” level. For the most part, Kanye’s venture marks the first time a Rap artist—and definitely a first for a Hip-Hop superstar with Pop culture crossover success— makes a complete album featuring the device.

In this way it is standard West’s: daring, different, and challenging the norm. It encompasses a certain boldness that has allowed him to create a sound, a mind frame, and fans that appreciate the artistic quality of his music. Keys, notes, kickdrums, cords, arrangements: the attention to these details, and the willingness to take these things to places others could not think of (or would not try too) is the trademark of the Kanye West sound.

But the vocoder is different. Hip-Hop has a love/hate relationship with it. It certainly has produced a sound embraced by many fans, and more readily used now by artist. But many Hip-Hop heads, critics, and listeners have no love for it. It has been labeled artificial, annoying, and cheap. Thus the sound and the music it produces has been subject to popular conversation throughout Hip-Hop over the past several month: Is it hot, or annoying?

Better put: is Hip-Hop ready for it?

It is not surprising that Common (another artist who in the past has faced intense scrutiny for doing something outside the Hip-Hop norm—see Electric Circus) seems to think so.

At an exclusive session session for his new album Universal Mind Control, Common shared with Real Talk NY and the audience how he felt Hip-Hop was ready to move into different sounds, different styles, and different places. About his own new project he said, “I just wanna make some music and have some fun…make you feel good. Take the music to the future…do something progressive.” He explained how the influence of groups like N.E.R.D. and Gnarls Barkley; producers like The Neptunes; and the success of artist like Andre 3000, have created more room to be different—to take the music to another place.

With the mix of retro-styled groups like The Cool Kids; skateboarders in the mold of Lupe; and new artists like Kid Cudi, Jay Electronica, and Blu (and many, many more) complicating what we typically think Hip-Hop should look like and sound like, maybe we are expanding. Perhaps the horizon is broadening.

But a large part of the intrigue around Kanye’s new album has nothing to do with this new sound. Much of it is surrounded around the rapper’s seemingly turbulent, erratic emotional state.

Over the past year he has had a range of devastating, personal, and volatile incidents: the calling off of his engagement with Alexis Phifer; the death of his mother Donna West; and now recently several violent, widely reported run-in with paparazzi. Ye has been open about how these events how deeply affected him—and led to the “Heartbreak” aspect of the new album. And the album cuts that have been released and leaked clearly speak about feelings of pain, depression, and loneliness.

Kanye has always been explicitly open about his emotions and life experiences in his music. “Through The Wire,” “Jesus Walks,” “Diamonds From Sierra Leon,” “Hey Mama”—all these songs deal with West giving us a piece of himself; sharing with us unabatedly his view on all aspects of life.

But 808’s and Heartbreak is without a doubt different. A large part of the subject matter stings with hurt.

In the lyrics of joints like “Welcome to Heartbreak,” “Love Lockdown,” “Heartless,” and “The Coldest Winter Ever” we see here how strong his pain is. And through the many entries of his popular blog we read through his fluctuating, conflicting, tumultuous emotions of frustration, introspection, and reflection. We get “twelve minute misery freestyles,” and messages of recovery, inspiration, and creativity (see Kanye’s blog from yesterday here).

Kanye West expresses a quality that we see in Hip-Hop when it is at its best: sincerity, vulnerability, and openness. The danger is... well as Ye’ put, we see “The Good, The Bad, The Ugly:” cocky, egotistically, and at times petty actions. But its strength is its testimonial power: less of a marketing scheme; less fabrication; more life experiences--from the personal truth, to the creative expression of reality.

It is the genius of Kanye West to have the audacity to let us into his struggle.

But is Hip-Hop ready for this? That is the impending question.

Can our hyper-masculinity, homophobic, thug-constructed self-consciousness allow us to listen to more sensitivity? Can our self-interested/industry-cultivated taste for music with a dance and a catch phase allow us to become in tune with our other emotions for a moment?

Can we learn to balance the party and the work; to be “wavy” and be socially-aware; to be strong, yet to be vulnerable?

And can we sound different—completely different? Can we handle mash-ups with Coldplay, infusions of trip-hop, and engagement with sounds not normal to the Hip-Hop feel?

Or will we just call it wack?

808’s and Heartbreak is the beginning of the challenge to conventional Hip-Hop, with more and more fellow provocateurs coming.

Hopefully Mr. West’s pain and genius can inspire; and does not break and martyr himself and the audacity to be different.

Originally Posted 11/24/2008

She Who Struggles: Nikki Giovanni

2013-06-12T13:05:00.000-04:00

{liberatormagazine.com exclusive feature}

She Who Struggles: Nikki Giovanni
by Asha Taylor (The Liberator Magazine 3.1 #5)

"If I could come back as anything--I'd be a bird, first, but definitely the command key is my second choice."
-Nikki Giovanni

A tribute to one who has done a lot for others is always expected and justified, but it’s rare to be able to pay tribute to a person for focusing on her own growth. Nikki has grown to acknowledge that focusing on personal growth and development is the only way to truly make a difference in the world. In “Revolutionary Dreams” she says:

i used to dream militant/ dreams of taking/ over america to show/ these white folks how it should be done/ i used to dream radical dreams/ of blowing everyone away with my perceptive powers/ of correct analysis/ i even used to think i'd be the one/ to stop the riot and negotiate the peace/ then i awoke and dug/ that if i dreamed natural/ dreams of being a natural/ woman doing what a woman/ does when she's natural/ i would have a revolution.

Eloquence, style, attitude, realness, and honesty are all incorporated in the words of this artist. As a woman she demonstrates and proudly paints her strengths and weaknesses, triumphs and failures, progress and regress. As a poet she “puts it down” in a way that keeps her readers grounded and reminded that she’s human also. Nikki-Rosa (a childhood nickname and title of one of her poems) speaks for women, for poets, for those that struggle, and for those that love hard. Among the names of black female poets you may hear her grouped with the rest: Maya Angelou, Sonia Sanchez, Gwendolyn Brooks, Margaret Walker Alexander, Rita Dove, and NIKKI GIOVANNI. However, the realness captured in this woman’s work is unlike any pain, anger, growth, peace, sexuality, and naturalness placed on paper. Her work defies categorization. Instead of noticing the similarities between her writing style and topics and those of other black female poets of her time period, one can’t help but to also notice the magnetic pull and envelopment that s/he feels towards her work; this is because it reflects those elements within our own lives...and we begin to notice that in this very basic, human sense, Nikki Giovanni is a reflection of us.

“Nikki” Giovanni was born Yolande Cornelia Giovanni in Knoxville, Tennessee, on June 7, 1943, and raised in the Lincoln Heights area of Cincinnati, Ohio. When she attended Fisk University, she began taking an interest in writing and became active in the Civil Rights Movement. She became extensively involved in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee on campus and the Writers Workshop. The collaboration of literature and politics became her forte in her prime years of becoming a well-known poet. In 1967 she became involved in the Black Arts Movement which was geared towards supporting the struggle for racial equality through the radical artistic expression of black intellectuals. She also organized the first Cincinnati Black Arts Festival. She came to the forefront of literature with her bold, radical, and honest expressions in her books Black Feeling, Black Talk (1968), Black Judgment (1968) and Re: Creation (1970). The anger, pain, and frustration identified with the struggle placed her on the forefront of the movement and in the American literary world. However, as a balanced and healthy individual she realized that change is necessary for growth and then was enabled to be aware of social conditions without being consumed by them. Understanding how and why America is the way that it is, enabled her to demonstrate more wisdom and maturity in her future writings. She grows. It’s evident because she’s a bearer of fruit: poetry.

In addition to the Civil Rights Movement, her entrance into motherhood also played a huge role in her life, her writing, and the way she viewed the world. When Thomas Watson Giovanni was born in 1967, she began to change holistically. Spin a Soft Black Song (1971), Ego-Tripping (1973), and Vacation Time (1980) were books of children’s poems. At this time, she began to embrace the human experience… loneliness, thwarted hopes, rejection, and family affection. Around this time she began to speak at various venues, schools, forums, and events earning her more respect, not only as a poet, but a speaker and person as well. Her outspoken persona, raw honesty, and fluency with which she presented and continues to present herself and her viewpoints have earned her the admiration of many.

So how does Nikki qualify as one who struggles? One possible reason that Nikki’s work is so relatable to her audience is because it expresses her internal struggles and frustrations that many can identify with. Her story’s not the typical “I was raised in the hood in a one room shack with rats and roaches story,” but a story of one has had the human experience of fear, trust, thanksgiving, humiliation, lust, denial, loneliness, failure, misunderstanding, joy, pain and love. The struggles of being kicked out of Fisk University for rebelling against the social rules (paternalistic characteristics of historically black colleges during that era), being a single mother, a black person in America, and a lung cancer survivor enable a wide range of persons to identify with her work. Women of all backgrounds understand her pieces on love, need for fulfillment, confusion, loneliness, and denial. Black people understand her anger with racism and the process of growing and turning from that anger. Writers understand the struggle of articulating feelings and thoughts into words. All artists, lovers of art, readers, and persons who respect and appreciate truthful words can truly admit that not only has she struggled, but she has overcome these struggles: evident in her fluid dance on paper with words. Besides being a poet, essayist, speaker, mother, activist, and English professor at Virginia Tech, she is a womb-an. Embracing all aspects of her naturally feminine and human nature, she paints her perception of poetry:

poetry is motion graceful/ as a fawn/ gentle as a teardrop/ strong like the eye/ finding peace in a crowded room/ we poets tend to think/ our words are golden/ though emotion speaks too/ loudly to be defined/ by silence/ sometimes after midnight or just before/ the dawn/ we sit typewriter in hand/ pulling loneliness around us/ forgetting our lovers or children/ who are sleeping/ ignoring the weary wariness/ of our own logic/ to compose a poem/ no one understands it/ it never says "love me" for poets are/ beyond love/ it never says "accept me" for poems seek not/ acceptance but controversy/ it only says "i am" and therefore/ i concede that you are too/ a poem is pure energy/ horizontally contained/ between the mind/ of the poet and the ear of the reader/ if it does not sing discard the ear/ for poetry is song/ if it does not delight discard/ the heart for poetry is joy/ if it does not inform then close/ off the brain for it is dead/ if it cannot heed the insistent message/ that life is precious/ which is all we poets/ wrapped in our loneliness/ are trying to say.

Asé

Key passages from "Behind Kanye’s Mask", interview with NYTimes

2013-06-12T03:55:00.000-04:00

"This is just the beginning of an entire new mentality about how to make music ... If you ever see anyone standing next to me, know that they're better than me at something."
-Kanye West, at listening party for Yeezus

Behind Kanye’s Mask
(NY Times)

[...] And you know you hit your shots.

Yeah — you put me on the team. So I’m going to use my platform to tell people that they’re not being fair. Anytime I’ve had a big thing that’s ever pierced and cut across the Internet, it was a fight for justice. Justice. And when you say justice, it doesn’t have to be war. Justice could just be clearing a path for people to dream properly. It could be clearing a path to make it fair within the arena that I play. You know, if Michael Jordan can scream at the refs, me as Kanye West, as the Michael Jordan of music, can go and say, “This is wrong.”

[...]

But that is something that you apologized for. [Taylor Swift]

Yeah, I think that I have like, faltered, you know, as a human. My message isn’t perfectly defined. I have, as a human being, fallen to peer pressure.

So that was a situation in which you gave in to peer pressure to apologize?

Yeah.

So if you had a choice between taking back the original action or taking back the apology, you’d take back the apology?

You know what? I can answer that, but I’m — I’m just — not afraid, but I know that would be such a distraction. It’s such a strong thing, and people have such a strong feeling about it. “Dark Fantasy” was my long, backhanded apology. You know how people give a backhanded compliment? It was a backhanded apology. It was like, all these raps, all these sonic acrobatics. I was like: “Let me show you guys what I can do, and please accept me back. You want to have me on your shelves.”

The Albums

That’s fascinating, to look at that record through that lens.

I don’t have some type of romantic relationship with the public. I’m like, the anti-celebrity, and my music comes from a place of being anti. That was the album where I gave people what they wanted. I don’t think that at that point, with my relationship with the public and with skeptical buyers, that I could’ve done “Black Skinhead” [from “Yeezus]

[...]

Do you feel like “808s” is the album of yours that has had the most impact?

There are people who have figured out the exact, you know, Kanye West formula, the mix between “Graduation” and “808s,” and were able to become more successful at it. “Stronger” was the first, like, dance-rap song that resonated to that level, and then “808s” was the first album of that kind, you know? It was the first, like, black new wave album. I didn’t realize I was new wave until this project. Thus my connection with [the graphic designer] Peter Saville, with Raf Simons, with high-end fashion, with minor chords. I hadn’t heard new wave! But I am a black new wave artist.

[...]

But producing happened for you first, especially after Jay-Z used you so heavily on “The Blueprint.”

I used to have tracks that sounded like Timbaland; I had tracks that sounded like [DJ Premier]. But Jay-Z was an amazing communicator that made the soul sound extremely popular. And because I could make the soul sound in my sleep, it finally gave me a platform to put the message that my parents put inside of me and that Dead Prez helped to get out of me and Mos Def and [Talib] Kweli, they helped to get out of me: I was able to put it, sloppily rap it, on top of the platform that Jay-Z had created for me.

Before, when I wanted to rap, my raps sounded like a bit like Cam’ron; they sounded a bit like Mase; they sounded a bit like Jay-Z or whoever. And it wasn’t until I hung out with Dead Prez and understood how to make, you know, raps with a message sound cool that I was able to just write “All Falls Down” in 15 minutes.

Is that true?

Yeah, that’s how I discovered my style. I was just hanging out with them all the time in New York. I would produce for them. You know, I was able to slip past everything with a pink polo, but I am Dead Prez. And now, because I was able to slip past, I have a responsibility at all times.

[...]

I wonder if you see things in a more race-aware way now, later in your career, than you did then. The intensity of the feelings on “Watch the Throne” is much sharper.

No, it’s just being able to articulate yourself better. “All Falls Down” is the same [stuff]. I mean, I am my father’s son. I’m my mother’s child. That’s how I was raised. I am in the lineage of Gil Scott-Heron, great activist-type artists. But I’m also in the lineage of a Miles Davis — you know, that liked nice things also.

[...]

Did you think differently about family after your mother passed?

Yeah, because my mother was — you know, I have family, but I was with my mother 80 percent of the time. My mom was basically — [pause]

Was your family.

Yeah, that’s all I have to say about that.

What thoughts do you have about parenthood?

That is a really interesting, powerful question. One of the things was just to be protective, that I would do anything to protect my child or my child’s mother. As simple as that.

Have you ever felt as fiercely protective over anything as you are feeling now about those things?

I don’t want to explain too much into what my thoughts on, you know, fatherhood are, because I’ve not fully developed those thoughts yet. I don’t have a kid yet.

You haven’t experienced it yet.

Yeah. Well, I just don’t want to talk to America about my family. Like, this is my baby. This isn’t America’s baby.

[...]

His records did used to say “reduced by Rick Rubin.”

For him, it’s really just inside of him. I’m still just a kid learning about minimalism, and he’s a master of it. It’s just really such a blessing, to be able to work with him. I want to say that after working with Rick, it humbled me to realize why I hadn’t — even though I produced “Watch the Throne”; even though I produced “Dark Fantasy” — why I hadn’t won Album of the Year yet.

This album is moments that I haven’t done before, like just my voice and drums. What people call a rant — but put it next to just a drumbeat, and it cuts to the level of, like, Run-D.M.C. or KRS-One. The last record I can remember — and I’m going to name records that you’ll think are cheesy — but like, J-Kwon, “Tipsy.” People would think that’s like a lower-quality, less intellectual form of hip-hop, but that’s always my No. 1. There’s no opera sounds on this new album, you know what I mean? It’s just like, super low-bit. I’m still, like, slightly a snob, but I completely removed my snob heaven songs; I just removed them altogether.

On this album, the way that it emphasizes bass and texture, you’re privileging the body, and that’s not snobby.

Yeah, it’s like trap and drill and house. I knew that I wanted to have a deep Chicago influence on this album, and I would listen to like, old Chicago house. I think that even “Black Skinhead” could border on house, “On Sight” sounds like acid house, and then “I Am a God” obviously sounds, like, super house.

Visceral.

Yeah, visceral, tribal. I’m just trying to cut away all the — you know, it’s even like what we talk about with clothing and fashion, that sometimes all that gets in the way. You even see the way I dress now is so super straight.

[...]

One of the things that you’ve thrived on over the years is sort of a self-conception as an outsider, that you’re fighting your way in. Do you still, in this moment, feel like that?

No, I don’t think I feel like that anymore. I feel like I don’t want to be inside anymore. Like, I uninvited myself.

What changed?

I think just more actual self-realization and self-belief. The longer your ‘gevity is, the more confidence you build. The idea of Kanye and vanity are like, synonymous. But I’ve put myself in a lot of places where a vain person wouldn’t put themselves in. Like what’s vanity about wearing a kilt?

But there’s vanity in fashion. You make clothes, but some people think it’s a vanity project, that you don’t take it seriously.

But the passion is for humanity. The passion is for people. The passion is for the 18-year-old version of myself. The passion is for the kids at my shows. I need to do more. I need to be able to give people more of what they want that currently is behind a glass. I don’t believe that it’s luxury to go into a store and not be able to afford something. I believe luxury is to be able to go into a store and be able to afford something.

I sat down with a clothing guy that I won’t mention, but hopefully if he reads this article, he knows it’s him and knows that out of respect, I didn’t mention his name: this guy, he questioned me before I left his office:, “If you’ve done this, this, and this, why haven’t you gone further in fashion?” And I say, “I’m learning.” But ultimately, this guy that was talking to me doesn’t make Christmas presents, meaning that nobody was asking for his [stuff] as a Christmas present. If you don’t make Christmas presents, meaning making something that’s so emotionally connected to people, don’t talk to me.

[...]

Respect my trendsetting.

Yeah, respect my trendsetting abilities. Once that happens, everyone wins. The world wins; fresh kids win; creatives win; the company wins.

I think what Kanye West is going to mean is something similar to what Steve Jobs means. I am undoubtedly, you know, Steve of Internet, downtown, fashion, culture. Period. By a long jump. I honestly feel that because Steve has passed, you know, it’s like when Biggie passed and Jay-Z was allowed to become Jay-Z.

I’ve been connected to the most culturally important albums of the past four years, the most influential artists of the past ten years. You have like, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, Nicolas Ghesquière, Anna Wintour, David Stern.

I think that’s a responsibility that I have, to push possibilities, to show people: “This is the level that things could be at.” So when you get something that has the name Kanye West on it, it’s supposed to be pushing the furthest possibilities. I will be the leader of a company that ends up being worth billions of dollars, because I got the answers. I understand culture. I am the nucleus. (source)

Fatherless Woman Syndrome

2013-06-09T23:48:00.000-04:00

{liberatormagazine.com exclusive feature}

Fatherless Woman Syndrome
by Terrica Taylor (The Liberator Magazine 2.1 #4)
{image by Olukemi Kamson}

“Fatherless-ness” is an issue that needs to be discussed. Many times women don’t understand why they have the issues they do, but it’s only because they haven’t been able to put a name to their struggle. My philosophy is, “if you can name it you can change it.” The name is the Fatherless Women’s Syndrome; it’s a syndrome that affects many women. Webster’s Dictionary defines syndrome as “a group of signs and symptoms that occur together and characterize a particular abnormality.” Within the Fatherless Women’s Syndrome, there are some very distinct symptoms that have an abnormal effect on our emotions. When a woman is left without her father, she has emptiness inside, she struggles with abandonment issues, and she may even feel unloved or unwanted. Some ladies without fathers in their lives may disagree with this diagnosis and may feel that their fathers’ absence has no affect or control over their lives but, even if it’s subconscious, it does have and affect and if we would be honest with ourselves, we would see that the syndrome shows its ugly head in all of our relationships.

I’m not just speaking from a theoretical point of view; I’m speaking as a sista who has experienced it first hand. I know what it’s like to be a five-year old child with tears running down her face, crying out to her mother saying, “I miss my daddy.” I know what it’s like to have a pain so indescribable inside of you that all you can do is go to the refrigerator and try to “numb” yourself with food or try to get sexual gratification to make the pain go away. But after trying to numb yourself with food, sex, or drugs, the emptiness and pain is still there.

Webster’s Dictionary goes on to define a syndrome as a set of "concurrent things—as emotions—or actions that form an identifiable pattern.” LADIES! We have to look at our patterns in our relationships—especially with men.

You thought Mike was the one—Mike isn’t there.
You thought Tim was the one and Tim is no longer in your life.
And you just knew that Robert was a sure thing, but Robert disappeared also.

All of these failed relationships have set a pattern, and until we are willing to recognize that there is something seriously screwed up about this, the dysfunctional cycle will continue and the syndrome will continue to control your life. The question we should ask ourselves is why these relationships failed one after the other. Usually what happens with the woman who has Fatherless Women’s Syndrome is that she becomes either too clingy or too defensive and afraid of commitment.

The woman who is too clingy holds on to a man for dear life in fear that he will reject her and leave her like the first man in her life—her dad. The man who she is clinging to perceives her as being too much of a responsibility, so he leaves.

The woman who is afraid of commitment is very defensive and guards her heart—she doesn’t let herself get too close. This woman usually calls herself the “independent woman.” The title is something she believes will shield her from dealing with a greater reality, the reality of having the “syndrome.” She may believe that being in a relationship with a man is a sign of weakness—not realizing that it can be a sign of strength, because that mate is there to compliment the person she is. Men want nothing more then to feel wanted by their woman. It makes a man feel good to be our “knights in shining armor,” so if he feels unappreciated he will eventually get tired of it, and leave.
In both instances, it leaves a woman in precisely the predicament she fears—alone.

Fatherless women have to be more conscious in their actions while in a relationship. Many times, we feel as if we are at war trying to fight off the symptoms of the syndrome in order to have a healthy relationship. Most will agree that it’s not fair the way the cards have been dealt but we have to play them the best way we know how and that’s in seeking guidance from our higher power. The question might arise in your heart; the damage has already been done, are there any possible solutions? The answer to that question is yes. Any woman that has been left without her father knows the pain that it entails. Sometimes it feels like the anguish will never end but for all the ladies out there struggling with the syndrome, I’m here to tell you to reach deep down inside yourself, accept the loss and reclaim that part of you that has been damaged. We have to determine within ourselves that, although our father’s absence has left an emptiness inside of us that cannot be filled with anything else, we will not let it affect who we are and the women we are becoming.

We will not let it affect the way we feel about ourselves. We will not let it affect our future relationships with men. We will own our own thoughts and feelings in our own relationships. We will reclaim our bodies and our femininity. We will not loose ourselves in a relationship because of fear of not feeling wanted and feeling that submission is the only way in which to keep our relationship. We will not continue to give our bodies in sexual acts just because we believe that’s the only thing we have to give or because we believe it’s the closest we can get to experiencing true femininity.

There is something about the father daughter relationship that is so special and unique; it’s where a woman recognizes her role and where she learns about a man’s role. This is why when a woman is left fatherless, something is lost; she doesn’t truly understand who she is as woman or the right things to look for when choosing a mate. Even though we may lack knowledge of ourselves as women, we must recognize that we are always women, and we are always worthy of love, even if our past experiences contradict that truth. We have to be willing to step up and be the diva’s God created us to be. And with some serious prayer and a love for ourselves, the wounds can finally be healed and the syndrome broken. I encourage women who know this struggle to let God begin a new work in you and let him be the potter in your life to remold your heart that you may be able to live in an abundance of happiness and prosperity, able to lean towards more fulfilling relationships and most importantly that you may be able to forgive.

Special Note: I give thanks to my dear lord and savior Jesus Christ, my mother (who has been a strong example of a true woman) and a book (that I suggest to all women who want to learn about the healing process of their father’s absence) called “Whatever Happened to Daddy’s little Girl” by Jonetta Rose Barras.

Thinking of Assata

2013-06-09T12:50:00.001-04:00

{liberatormagazine.com exclusive feature}

Thinking of Assata
by Laura Wise (Guest Contributor)
{image via Omiroo Gallery: Oakland, CA}

A few years ago, unbeknownst to me at the time, I was at a major turning point in my life. I had been laid off from what I thought was my dream job. Everything that I thought I wanted out of life was being challenged. So in the midst of my newfound, unwanted, freedom I took on greater responsibility in my local church to keep me busy and my mind occupied. As a result, a few months later, this revived passion for stewardship in the church (which was honestly brought on by unemployment) provided a life changing opportunity.

I was invited to attend a conference in Greensboro, North Carolina concerning the growing prison industrial complex in the United States, specifically concerning Black’s and Latino’s. Having been working in the fashion industry for the previous 2 years, this concept was foreign to me. Thinking back, it shouldn’t have been but that’s water under the bridge at this point. In those 4 days of the conference I was thrown head first (no safety net) into a world of the radical injustices, past and present, occurring in our country.

I wasn’t completely naïve of course; I know my history. I watch the news. My problem was that I wasn’t connecting these issues to my own life. Seeing that I’m a black woman living in America, how could I not see that because black men are the largest group of incarcerated people in this country that yes, it does affect me? My eyes were closed. I was failing to realize that all social problems in America, in the world, are my problems too. It is personal; It does affect me.

Fast forward... The conference is coming to a close. There was another young adult there who I had been wanting to speak to, but up until this point, time didn’t allow it. I found myself caught up in a rush of emotions that were new to me. I wanted to get another young adults perspective on why this work mattered to him - mattered at all. He told me his story. He told me that he read a book that changed everything when he started his own journey down the road to working for justice. He told me he had an extra copy of the book and would run home to get it for me. I was amazed at how open he was, not to mention his generosity and willingness to let a relatively complete stranger have such a prized possession. At this point I was on pins and needles. The conference had wrapped up and I would be heading to the airport soon. I thought, would he forget about the book he promised me? Would he make it back in time? He did in fact make it back in time, just before my group headed for the airport. He handed me the book – “Assata: An Autobiography”. I knew the story, but admittedly only through song; Common’s A Song for Assata from his fourth studio album released in 2000, Like Water for Chocolate.

I graciously accepted the book and promised I would return it one day, and I fully plan on keeping that promise. I only met him that one time, but I vividly remember our conversation. I consider him one of the many angels God has sent to me throughout my lifetime. He shared a story with me that changed his life, which in turn changed mine. It was the force that started the motion within my own journey to fighting injustice.

I reflect on this now because of the recent resurfacing of Assata Shakur’s case in the media. The FBI has recently placed her on the list of most wanted terrorists. Ms. Shakur is the first woman to ever appear on this list. I only wonder why? Why after 40 years, after Ms. Shakur has been living under political asylum in Cuba since 1984. The bounty on Ms. Shakur’s head has been doubled. Why now has the government decided that this case is again high priority?

Shakur’s story came to me when I needed it, and now it means something to me. It is synonymous with my personal understanding of the fight for justice – in the US and around the world. Her story taught me more about my own history as a black person in the United States through the lens of her affiliation and fight for true freedom with the Black Panther Party. Whether she committed the crime she is accused of committing or not is not the point of this reflection. It’s about what her story represents to me; struggle. The broad struggle - of race, gender, socioeconomics, marriage equality, etc. As well as the struggles of understanding privilege dynamics, understanding that we all are our sister’s keeper... the list goes on.

Those things that once upon a time I didn’t pay attention to, I now do. This is not a story about taking a side, merely an explanation of one girls journey to living in this wonderfully created world with her eyes wide open.

James Brown x MJ x Prince

2013-06-07T15:06:00.001-04:00

Prince on self-determination and sovereignty / "I knew I was right..."

2013-06-07T05:00:00.000-04:00

Price is one of the masters of this music thing. (see this short bio by Ray Winbush)

He hasn't always been so. My dad worked with him early in his career and pops often showed us yungins his copy of Prince's first contract with Warner Bros. The document was a damn bible of text! No wonder artists don't read their contracts. But, still, he's grown into it -- and better late than never. Recently anyone watching his moves has seen that he's refused to adjust his own valuing of music to the industry's or the market's valuing of it. And because his valuing is based not just on economics, but also on a larger understanding of preserving the quality of organic art, Prince has actually been able to make his form of resistance WORK, taking it out of the theoretical-argument-zone and into the real world where it touches real people. He's sacrificed the constant lime light of pop culture for a sustainable community of listeners that support his art for art's sake. That community of believers is what enables him to make sustainable, organic music in an industry increasingly turning to artificial chord tuners, and all sorts of other digital substitutions. My brother Kadiri broke it down in an email he sent me on this, saying: "Each contested terrain... casts a vote on what 'reality' we are willing to exist in." (we still gotta deal the question of how younger artists are to replicate what Prince has done without the benefit of the "mistake" he made by being a slave but also getting world wide distribution from Warner early in his career... talk about the twoness of maroonage -- link) Matter of fact, I have to provide you guys with his entire response: "Informative interview. Tavis drops the ball on a number of occasions with his inability to ask a decent follow-up conversation and coax out more "jewels" from Prince. He comes off to me as the dude who over thought a first date, peppers her with questions drawn up the night before, and completely misses moments for deeper probing (particularly when "she" reveals something significant about herself), consumed with sequentially ordered topics to avoid silent awkward moments. One segment that caught my attention was Prince's ability to seamlessly weave the ownership battles of artistic production in the industry to the larger battle of biological/sociological ownership (i.e., ownership of one's literal biology (DNA) with the looming human genome project/and the "classic" battle of ownership over one's labor). It reinforced in my imagination the essential truth that every space is relevant to the struggle. Each contested terrain, despite how seemingly mundane and/or distant, implicates wider world ordering and casts a vote (depending on the spirit in which it was waged and the outcome of that struggle) on what 'reality' we are willing to exist in. Prince captures this convoluted thought much more succinctly: "I knew I was right... it's obvious now that artists are supposed to own their master recordings. I mean in the future, it'll be unconscionable to even think you can take somebody's creation and claim ownership of it. See unfortunately, this discussion is going to start to barrel into a discussion about the human genome and the DNA and all the rest of it. When it gets there, then we're going to be in deep water. See so, it's better to start the conversation now before we get into god talk."
Originally Posted 7/22/2009

Prince x Larry Graham & Grand Central Station @ BB Kings NYC

2013-06-07T02:00:00.000-04:00

Stevie Wonder x Prince x Yolanda Adams / Tribute to Chaka Khan

2013-06-07T01:30:00.000-04:00

Prince hops on stage with Q-Tip

2013-06-07T01:00:00.000-04:00

Has everyone seen this?

Originally Posted 12/8/2008

The Ricky Rossian American Dream / "Oil Money Gang" f. Jadakiss

2013-06-05T16:19:00.001-04:00

{liberatormagazine.com exclusive feature}

Rick Ross completely ignores all recent criticism and stays consistent to his brand. This past week Maybach Music Group dropped a three-tiered same-day release featuring Ross' "Oil Money" with Jadakiss (composed by J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League) for the Lucid Dream rap market; Wale's "Poor Decisions" with himself and Lupe Fiasco (composed by Jake One) to the mid-tier semi-conscious market (with a remix of a song released last week, now featuring Rhianna); and Rockie Fresh's "God Is Great" (composed by Boi-1da) to the young popular underground. It's problematic and tempting to say that there's some Booker T. Washington in here, if we allow for liberalism. What can you say anyway? It's worth noting, however, in spite of those who advocate ignore tactics, because marketing increasingly becomes the only universal language of the new age under this kind of mainstream. Certainly the Trojan horse in global capitalism is the global extension of language creation and resurrection, but we are very early in the new millennium still. As a consciousness present amidst this global aesthetic war front, one thing is certain, for better or for worse, Black Africanas continue to enjoy nice dreams and things through and through.

[Intro: Rick Ross]
Uh, Mastermind
It's going further my nigga
It ain't even about being a dope boy my nigga
We talking oil money, oil money, yeah

[Verse 1: Rick Ross]
It's amazing to be alive when niggas wants you to die
Mad at every check you deposit, I see it all in their eyes
I'mma stunt harder, I'mma shop more
Black bell boy, Persian rugs at the door
Giving niggas jobs, living like the mob
A scotch in the soda anastasia.com
People talking 'bout me, say I got a body
Or are they mad at me that the house got a lobby?
Big four-fifths spliffs at the boat split
Tip toein' through the city, Alvin Ailey with a brick
Settin' new milestones, gettin my style on
Down in Coconut Grove where niggas don't smile long
City full of barbarians, wet you like an aquarius
Only beautiful bitches, they tell me the more the merrier
Fascinatin' faces, now it's top jewelers
Pina colada daiquiris Fontainebleau on a Tuesday
Got the Desert Eagle up in Fred Segal
Only fat nigga in vintage Moschino
Attempted murder, I refuse to exile
So it's club LIV til I'm exed out
A gold casket my final request
Bangin' at em like my child they want molest
Therefore I pray I live a hundred years
Be a crutch for my kids all through their wonder years
Oil money fuck up a hundred mill
That's just a yacht and a crib, nigga dying to live
Champagne, spillin' the opulence
Side bitches remain anonymous
Got a condo on Collins, another on Sunny Isle
Makin sure you get around cause these niggas will gun you down
Got my daughter a Fendi purse then I took her to Disney World
All I give her is game, digesting my every word
Tired and chartered a plane, oil money the game
Classics stay on my feet, Double M on my chain
All I think is about oil money
These niggas barely gettin' tour money

[Interlude: Jadakiss]
It's gonna be aight, it's gonna be aight
Don't even worry 'bout nothing
Gon' talk that shit for a minute
Put the dutch out, light a cuban up
Dime the lights if you want, cause we already shinin'
You know? yeah

[Verse 2: Jadakiss]
Tryna get a grip, but you just can't clutch it
When the money is in the circle, the squares can't touch it
Reaping the benefits from the years that we suffered
If they dont know nothin' else they know I'm not to be fucked with
Chillin' on the deck, brainstorming on the check
You don't see the bigger picture, you just see the silhouette
Keep your ho still 'fore I nail her
Money on my mind while I hold still for the tailor
Three man weave, I dump it off to the trailer
If the pack too loud, dump it off with the sealer
We pop bottles, have the shots of the tequila
Might see me in something you can't cop from the dealer
Probably gon' rang, Gareth Pugh and Belstaff
Work coming in, I sit on some and sell half
Made it to the top over night, that's why you fell fast
Best head I got in my life, for a Chanel bag
This is heaven on earth shit, give me my hell pass
Niggas tryna copy my style, but they don't sell swag
Nah, vacationing on in the Maldives
Room service come to you on a boat, child please
Don't get me confused though, cause I'll squeeze
Niggas know I get huge dough and wild k's
I will forever cash in
Oil money mean the wealth's everlasting
What?

Josephine Baker / "The First Black Superstar" & "Final TV Interview"

2013-06-03T16:55:00.000-04:00

"It's like phalluses stimulated by female agency. You can look at it from the outside and think, oh this is just a shake dancer. But from the inside, it's this incredible female personality that is in possession of the male."

"In a way, Josephine Baker was the black woman every white guy could fantasize about sleeping with. She certainly had that function in France, for French men. Because this image of the available, smiling, not-menacing, not-dangerous, not-voodoo practicing black woman had been present in French literature for some time, because it went with French colonialism."

"She exported the Harlem Renaissance to Europe."

Description: "Classic video clips of Josephine Baker with compelling commentary on her life and career."

Description: "The last television interview with Baker (1975). She discusses her revue at the Bobino & her family. She passed a few days after this."

Aretha Franklin on Curtis Mayfield

2013-06-03T16:28:00.000-04:00

"He truly was the voice of a nation. And still is... We do revere him."
-Aretha Franklin

"The Republic of Helmin Wiels" / A Socio-Political Awareness Rebellion

2013-05-27T23:30:00.000-04:00

{liberatormagazine.com exclusive feature}

Editor's Note: On May 5, 2013 the iconic Helmin Wiels, a "Yu di Korsou" and the most influential social justice leader in the history of Curaçao, was assassinated. The island has lamented the slain independentista on its continuing quest for liberated cultural preservation and national identity construction.

"The Republic of Helmin Wiels" / A Socio-Political Awareness Rebellion in Curaçao
by Jermain Ostiana (Guest Contributor)

{Image by Yomini Godfried / Caption: "At Marie Pompoen, the place where Helmin Wiels passed. Admirers and supporters set up a little altar."}

Historical Contextualization: With the installation of the new Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in 1999 carried by a strong radical social change mandate and his Bolivarian revolution, the U.S.--out of fear for loss of power in the South--reacted via the diplomatic corridors in The Hague and introduced Curaçao to the infamous "War against drugs and human trafficking" spook. A 10-year contract signed in March 2000, and ratified by the Dutch Parliament, initiated the construction of the Forward Operation Location base (FOL): A geo-political tool to control, as State Department coined the Dutch islands, their "Third Frontier"--U.S. military aircraft exercising counter-narcotics detection and monitor flights based out of Hato airport. It was a thorn in the eye of Chavez, who was vocally backed up by the critically-opinionated Wiels who considered it a violation to Curaçao's autonomy, endangering its relationship with Venezuela, whose Petroleum of Venezuela leases the island's oil refinery. The idea that Curaçao couldn't combat the drug plague suggests that the Dutch billion-euro military industry complex is incapable of instructing Dutch marine and coastguard to intervene cocaine-crumb movements via small planes and go-fast boats or intercept bulk narcotics-container transports. History teaches us that drug economies have long-reaching tentacles as far as Washington, D.C. and The Hague.

Mi ke kanta mi pais unda Tula, Brion, Piar a hunga huntu.
(I want to sing my country where Tula, Brion, Piar played together)
Mi ta kanta mi pais
Mi kadaver ku mi tumba.
(I sing my country.
My cadaver and my Tumba)
-Ced Ride (singer-songwriter)

The vile assassination of Helmin Wiels--leader of the largest political party advocating independence 'Pueblo Soberano' (Souvereign People)--on May 5 must be seen as an attempt to muzzle the voice of the voiceless as pastor Curtis Meris indicated at his funeral on May 14: "Wiels was the voice of the poor, a voice of the hungry, of those with a clamor for social justice. That voice passed trough the streets of Curaçao and whether you agreed with him or not, rich or poor, black or white, today you just had to give him his respect."

Strategically, Helmin Wiels chose not to become the prime minister after winning the last October 2012 elections. Curaçao's first ever political execution of the most power wielding coalition leader has thrown a young nation that recently in 2010 went through a painful series of Dutch neo Colonial imposed constitutional reform and a two year period of governmental turbulence into a state of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Investigations will have to reveal who ordered the professional hit on Wiels in broad daylight. Bullets could have been sprayed from the Dutch government backed by the United States or Dutch and Creole power elite, mafia dons, lottery baron(s) fearing income loss or a combination of all the above and then some to safeguard their economic interests. That's how capitalism has cruelly ruled the Caribbean since 1499. Even though Wiels did commit ideological missteps and after elections crossed over from a pseudo-socialist front to form a surrogate neo-liberal coalition with superficial social tendencies it remains undisputed that his socially-transformative visions with corruption-reducing tactics and anti-colonial, anti-imperialist stance still were a menace to the establishment and outside interests.

Sociologist Dr. Alejandro "Jandi" Paula explains in his study, "From Objective to Subjective Social Barriers: A Historico-philosophical Analysis of Certain Negative Attitudes Among the Negroid Population of Curaçao"

"Only historical analysis can be the reliable background against which we can understand the existing characteristics of a society. Which means that our consideration of the present day negative socio-psychological phenomena of Curaçao necessarily presupposes a link with the past."

These inherited societal ills Wiels would try to combat by aiming at the root of the problem. A fierce and fearless black leadership is something that for decades had never been in this nation's socio-political landscape. This changed at the dawn of the new century/millennium when Wiels arrived on the scene as a social worker who assisted the people in the neighbourhoods of the underprivileged and working class. He understood that for a socio-economic change to erupt and improve their impoverished situation you would need a collective political, historical, cultural, socio-economical upgrade. His unique common folk orating style combined with academic vocab attracted people to sit down to look and listen to his Konsenshi Sivil (Civil Conscious) programs on the radio, television, and internet. Reinventing the Vito magazine period of the late 60s that helped to inform, encourage the low income and working class to question, stand up and ultimately take action against the social-labor, racial injustices that ignited the revolution of 1969 (May 30).

Some polemic Dutch media opinion-makers like the racist multi-millionaire Jacob Gelt Dekker and Antilliaans Dagblad parliamentary correspondent Rene Zwart tag teamed up to depict Wiels as a racial-cleansing racist, a divisive and slandering Stalinist-type fascist that never could be venerated or compared to, say, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. according to their constructed criteria. Zwart, a journalist based in The Hague, Netherlands took it to a level of self-ridicule when he criticized Wiels for consistently and consciously boycotting the Dutch racist Blackface Zwarte Piet (Black Peter) tradition on an island where 90-95 percent of the population is of African descent.

This type of colonial-minded middle- and upper-class ignorance has ruled Curaçao for decades and scandalously does not cease, even though this past year on July 1st we commemorate 150 years since the abolition of Dutch slavery. Opinion-makers, corporate journalists, and other prominent figures of the corporate sector that never lived among the underclass, barely studied or understood the struggles of the working class, always end up drawing the wrong conclusions. Falsely criticizing a man who--as a partial "product" of Dutch colonization and Creole capitalism--tried to make a difference after his death, is tasteless but reconfirms the gallons of Black self-hate we as a people have poured over ourselves to the degree we are almost drowning in it. Misplaced arrogance, wannabe messiah, homophobia, ego-tripdom, oppressive democracy antics, demagoguery--Wiels had all these cloudy moments from time to time trying to survive in a political matrix layered with slavery and colonial behavior patterns (or Colonial Mentality, according to Fela Kuti)--but despite all of that it still is not enough to distort and de-legitimize his 10 year-span legacy. Take a deep look at the shining parts of his daily teachings reaching thousands of people from Monday to Saturday, at least two to three hours per day, in the evening on the radio, and the countless media appearances during the day. Breaking down constitutional reports, public debt studies, analyzing kingdom charter and kingdom 'concensus' laws undermining national autonomy. Health talks and tips, Black history month, labor rights, the history of our neighbourhoods and the Dutch Shell oil refinery that birthed them. Simple but effective things, like explaining the meaning of a Human Development Index, income inequalities and Gini coefficient, GDP (Gross Domestic Product), International treaties like the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; self-determination; UN decolonization; communal councils; frequently book reviews and recommendations; reparations; Rerum Novarum, and the alternative constitution that Pueblo Soberano created to accompany the newly gained autonomous status gained at 10-10-10. These are all exceptional teachings that no politician, mainstream media, union, or religious leader has ever dared or even contemplated discussing consistently with the people for the last 13 years.

Helmin Wiels was a great communicative political monarch giving the people that necessary daily high-dosage of anti-ruling elite rebellion. Blowing life back into political activism, mobilization, especially during the days of the constitutional restructuring when the Dutch government dictated finessed recolonization via supervision on the justice and finance sector. Labeled by adversaries as a black radical extremist because he agitated, made low income and working class aware of their rights and the exploitation of the power elite, government, trade unions, corporate and religious lords. Exposing institutionalized racism and the discriminatory second class citizenship within the Dutch kingdom when almost everybody tip-toed around it, too afraid to seek the unavoidable confrontation once a nation decides to wake up and demands what is rightfully theirs.

A catalyst with the stature like the leader of Pueblo Soberano was responsible for the public opinion boom of the last decade, common people started more and more to pay attention to politics and voice and shape their visions about socio-political issues that hindered Curaçao to grow. A peoples champ, catch him in the supermarket talking with cashiers, at construction sites, the market place, chat with welfare recipients, motivate prisoners, students, inspire single mothers but also switch to upper echelons and sit with offshore industry captains, bankers, and Dutch ministers.

Unfortunately, Curaçao never prepared itself for a post-Wiels era. Many have always thought he would be the general, commander in chief, the battering ram, breaking down the doors of the fort of the inventors of poverty and inequality, screaming, shouting, denouncing injustices. We needed someone like him to make up our mind and form an identity, a maroonage politician showing us how to escape from the mindstate that the late Black feminist and independentista Joceline Clemencia testified of in "Language is More Than Language in the Development of Curaçao":

"We have not studied our rulers well enough, otherwise we would have known that we were programmed to think that we are not programmed; that if we looked the other way long enough and denied the existence of colonialism it would automatically disappear. We forgot that we were trained not to see colonialism as colonialism. The Curaçaoan poet and senior ethnologist, Elis Juliana, asked himself once how come we accept that only--if it is even possible to speak of "only" in this horrible respect--5 years of Nazi domination could leave scars that deep and still felt in Holland’s skin, and deny the effects of 365 years of colonization in us? We thought it was not necessary to define ourselves because the good old motherland would solve all of our problems. We defined neither our culture or language. That is why we opposed independence so strongly and fiercely. We regarded it as threat to the "peace" and "wealth" we enjoyed."

His plans to polish and structuralize the free education policy for secondary schools, increasing the scholarships for students to study in the region and combat brain-drain migration, repatriate the diaspora from the Netherlands, should continue by any means. The peoples low-cost supermarket, revitalization of neglected neighbourhoods, attract foreign and local investors that come with their own money and no tax holiday. No governmental guarantees, walking a route towards economic decolonization.

We are at the crossroads, Wiels, the Papa Leba of the political spheres, is no longer here in the flesh but the guardian, transformer of opportunities is felt in the spirit and he left a manual to detect, unmask and eradicate political and socio-economic oppression. He showed us exactly how to visualize a Curaçao with critical thinking and acting citizens free from the bondage of power hierarchies, redistributing the wealth, transforming to a more socialized and better world, just like his colleague Hugo Chavez tried, who departed his beloved Venezuela exactly two months before Wiels' death, on March 5.

While many still are mourning in pain, disoriented, fearing his legacy of restistance will perish, there is no other way but to pay him tribute by speaking truth to power and keep emboldening yourself and your community. Pay him homage by internalizing his socio-political prowess. Get active, read, debate, use and reform the media to your benefit, organize, stand up for your rights. Get familiar with your region, build, connect, agitate against neo Colonization--untame your heart from it.

Wiels did not let his/our ancestors down, he fulfilled his mission, now we have to rise up and pick up that torch and keep the flame burning. No bullets, gunmen, capitalist, or imperialistic murder plot can ever stop us. Like his son Helmin Jr. said during the public funeral co-signed by daughter Savannah, "We owe Helmin..."

Music & Capoeira / Elements for understanding the importance of musicality in Capoeira Angola

2013-05-27T18:39:00.000-04:00

{liberatormagazine.com exclusive feature}

ENGLISH VERSION FOLLOWS Portuguese Version

Special thanks to Fabio Nascimento-Mandingo of Salvador, Bahia (Brazil) who shared this amazing piece with us. And much appreciation to Pedro Sobrinho of KMT for bringing this piece to Liberator Magazine, for facilitating communication, and for translating. The English version has been edited (somewhat) to reflect the flow of English-speakers. At the same time, we've worked to maintain the authenticity of Brazilian Portuguese in regard to word order and word choice, as best as possible. Tamjunto! [We are together!] #PanAfricana

Música e Capoeira: Elementos para a compreensão da importância da musicalidade na Capoeira Angola

By Fábio Nascimento-Mandingo

Palavras-chave: Música, Capoeira, cultura africana, instrumentos africanos, musicalidade.

Resumo: O texto trata da importância da música para a prática da Capoeira Angola, contextualizando essa importância no ambiente material-ritualístico da roda de Capoeira, conforme sua prática atual, traçando ainda um pequeno histórico da Capoeira.

O tratar de qualquer assunto relativo a aspectos contidos no universo da capoeira, ou da Capoeiragem, como preferem autores como Frederico Abreu, nos obriga a traçarmos ao menos, um breve histórico referente à nobre arte da Capoeira, essa dança – luta, que vem, ao longo dos anos, se espalhando por todos os cantos do planeta, envolvendo cada vez mais praticantes das mais diversas origens nacionais, culturais e étnicas.

Muito se tem discutido no âmbito acadêmico, em relação às origens da Capoeira, no entanto, a escassez de fontes documentais que possam nos oferecer uma percepção mais próxima do mundo do negro escravizado no Brasil nos primeiros séculos da colonização, dificulta tal tarefa, mais ainda se atentarmos para o fato de que, a pouca documentação existente, foi escrita do branco “sobre” o negro, e não partindo deste para outro receptor. Mais ainda, faz-se necessário ressaltar, que no próprio contexto filosófico da Capoeira, o “esconder”, “fingir”, “ludibriar” e “ disfarçar” a sua prática, são objetivos previstos em suas metodologias comunitárias. Portanto, as primeiras informações que temos sobre a Capoeira, são oriundas do momento em que o branco começa a “perceber” a sua existência, enquanto expressão diferenciada. Desse modo, a maior parte das obras parecem tender para a indefinição, referendando sem dúvida, a sua matriz africana, e discordando em graus variados, quanto à importância das contribuições indígenas portuguesas. Mesmo quanto à palavra Capoeira, encontramos discordância se a sua origem vem do Tupi “ KAA-Pu-Ê-Ra, que significa mato rasteiro recém cortado, ou da sacola de carregar galos, que segundo alguns autores, teria o nome português de capoeira, referente à sua utilidade de carregar os capões.

Como entendemos a escrita da história em sua dimensão política, e a política em sua dimensão racial, não podemos deixar de perceber, a presença de sutis antagonismos ideológicos presentes nesta discussão, e assim, não nos excusamos ideologicamente de apresentar a nossa opinião, de que, como o Candomblé, da forma em que hoje é cultuado, é o resultado da integração, no Brasil, de diversos modelos de cultos religiosos africanos, aproximados artificialmente no contexto da escravidão, a Capoeira seria também uma fusão dinâmica e interétnica de diversas lutas marciais rituais africanas, integradas no mundo diaspórico brasileiro. A presença de lutas como a Ladja, da Martinica, e do Moringue, da Ilha de Reunion, Madagascar, entre outras expressões marciais que possuem alguns golpes similares aos da Capoeira, e que são também realizados tendo a música como base, parece confirmar a nossa percepção, de que a Capoeira, é uma expressão Africana, mas do contexto exclusivo do Brasil ( em que não negamos a influência Indígena e mesmo portuguesa).

A partir do século XIX, entretanto, a documentação que dispomos sobre a Capoeira, é majoritariamente, advinda de registros policiais referentes à perseguição da sua prática, principalmente a partir da segunda metade deste século, quando a sua penalização é prevista no Código Penal (1890), com punições que vão de seis meses a seis anos, com degredo para Fernando de Noronha. Nesse sentido, destaca-se a farta documentação carioca, que deve-se ao fato de no Rio de Janeiro, a prática da Capoeiragem e consequentemente a sua perseguição, terem tomado proporções de grande polêmica social, com prisões em massa, artigos de jornais, determinações oficiais, entre outras coisas. Na Capital do Império e da República, a Capoeira se organizava nas famigeradas Maltas, grupos formados por dezenas de capoeiristas de bairros determinados, que entravam periodicamente em conflito corporal com as maltas inimigas, gerando o pânico da população e principalmente da aristocracia local, que se escandalizava com a petulância dos arruaceiros que chegavam mesmo a marcar antecipadamente, com panfletagem pública, data, local e horário do próximo embate.

As Maltas mais importantes, os Nagôas e os Gaiamuns, eram notáveis por suas vestimentas características, com cores definidas e territórios demarcados com sangue, de modo muito parecido aos atuais embates cariocas entre morros e facções rivais.

Foi na Bahia, no entanto, que a Capoeira se delineou enquanto prática ritualizada, contextualizada no ambiente determinado da “roda de Capoeira”, e embora, como podemos ver na Gravura de Rugendas ( danse de la guerre, 1835) , os primeiros registros pictóricos desta, já se dão associando-a à música, foi somente na Bahia do século XX, que essa associação se consolidou enquanto forma, e esse ritual se estabeleceu como tradição, dando conformidade aos modelos ulteriores da prática da Capoeira.

Em 1930, o Mestre Bimba, exímio Capoeirista baiano, filho de um negro campeão de Batuque, cria a Luta Física Regional Baiana, que posteriormente seria Conhecida como a Capoeira Regional. Incorporando golpes de outras lutas na Capoeira, tornando-a mais objetiva, o Mestre Bimba buscava a ampliação do apelo da Capoeira para as classes médias e posteriormente, com o apoio do então Governador Juracy Magalhães, consegue a autorização para que a Capoeira pudesse ser praticada, conquanto que em recinto fechado e devidamente registrada na delegacia de jogos e costumes do município.

A Criação da Regional pelo mestre Bimba, marca a divisão da Capoeira, entre a sua Capoeira Regional, e a Capoeira Angola, ou Capoeira Tradicional, termo que passou a ser usado para referir-se á capoeira antiga, praticada pelas camadas populares da Bahia, que teve no Mestre Pastinha, o seu Mestre mais destacado. Poeta, pintor, filósofo popular, o Mestre Pastinha foi, historicamente, um dos principais responsáveis pela permanência da Capoeira Angola até os dias atuais, no antagonismo da proeminência comercial da Capoeira Regional, e do refortalecimento da Angola, a partir dos anos oitenta. É no contexto dessa divisão, que partimos com a nossa análise sobre a musicalidade e a importância da música na Capoeira Angola.

A Roda da Capoeira: Ambiente Musical

Conquanto não pretendamos aqui, nos aprofundar nas diferenças existentes entre a Capoeira Regional e a Angola, devemos citar, para um melhor entendimento do tema aqui trabalhado, uma concepção básica dessa diferença: enquanto a Capoeira regional, se pretende esportiva(no contexto competitivo-desportivo), objetiva, e (a partir dos anos 70, influenciada pela Capoeira Regional adaptada no Rio de Janeiro), acrobática, a Capoeira Angola se pretende Expressão Cultural, jogo, e nesse sentido, lúdica, dialógica, envolvente e não competitiva, e essas diferenças são as que permeiam ambos os discursos sociais, seja dos assim chamados angoleiros, ou dos regionais.

Na Capoeira Angola, o espaço de sua execução, é a Roda. É na roda em que se pratica a Capoeira treinada nas academias de Capoeira Angola, é na roda que se vivencia essa Capoeira, como prática vívida da cultura, como experiência coletiva e interativa, e a música, é o elo principal de ligação entre todos os presentes na Roda. E o que é a roda, senão o círculo de pessoas que se forma ao redor dos jogadores que pelejam ao som e ao ritmo dos instrumentos? Na Capoeira Angola, é a Música quem inicia o jogo. Temos a Bateria da capoeira Angola: Três Berimbaus, um ou dois pandeiros, um reco-reco, um agogô, um Atabaque.

O Berimbau, é instrumento trazido pelos negros angolanos ao Brasil, utilizado tradicionalmente em rituais religiosos, na África, por vendedores ambulantes como forma de chamar clientes e incorporado à Capoeira no Brasil, “m´birimbau”, do Quimbundo, instrumento percussivo formado por uma vara de Biriba à qual está amarrada uma Cabaça que atua como caixa de reverberação, presa a um arame de aço na qual uma baqueta é percutida. São três os berimbaus: o Gunga, que tem a sonoridade mais grave, uma espécie de contra-baixo da Capoeira, que pontua e comanda a Roda, dando o seu ritmo. È o Gunga quem abre a Roda e quem a termina, seguido pelo berimbau Médio, de som menos grave e que reforça o Gunga, e finalmente o Viola, ou Violinha, que é o Berimbau solo, que faz as viradas e os improvisos característicos. Cada berimbau toca um toque diferente, que se interpenetram e se complementam, formando um quadro harmônico perfeito. O Gunga toca o Toque de Angola, o Médio toca o São bento pequeno, o Viola toca o São Bento Grande, estando, no entanto, livre para os improvisos possíveis e infinitamente variados.

Os pandeiros marcam o ritmo do Ijexá, podendo realizar algumas viradas e improvisos, sem no entanto poder ultrapassar a altura ou destaque dos berimbaus. Reputasse ao pandeiro uma origem árabe, a partir da qual teria sido trazido ao Brasil pelos Portugueses. No entanto, se considerarmos que eram africanos do norte, os muçulmanos que ocuparam por vários séculos a península Ibérica, fundamentando uma inestimável contribuição científica e cultural aos povos latinos, podemos questionar essa origem, que no entanto, não pode ainda ser determinada. O Reco-Reco, e o agogô, assim como o atabaque, são instrumentos posteriormente incorporados à Capoeira, já no contexto das academias, e têm todos origens africanas claramente reconhecidas, por sua importância e presença em praticamente todas as manifestações musicais do continente. Na Capoeira, entretanto, estão sujeitos à predominância do berimbau, que exerce a mesma função sonora, que o atabaque exerce no Candomblé.

A Música começa antes que o jogo. A roda é aberta pelo Gunga, seguido sucessivamente pelos demais instrumentos. A Roda de capoeira é um pequeno mundo, no qual se reflete o mundo grande, nela se aprende a viver, se apreendem os códigos da comunidade e se pratica uma vivência que é antes de tudo, conflituosa, mas também flexível, passível de ser flexibilizada, pelo exercício do Axé, que é a força vital, fluente na Roda, dos instrumentos pra os jogadores, dos jogadores para o público, do público para a roda, fechando-se um círculo energético conduzido pela música.

Segue-se o ritual: com os instrumentos tocando lentamente, o Tocador do Gunga, ao grito de Iê!, começa uma Ladainha, que é como uma pequena história, uma oração, uma fábula, uma lenda, ou mesmo um desafio, seja de auto-promoção, ou de escárnio aos demais ou a alguém especificamente:

“ Iê!,

Maior é Deus,

Pequeno Sou Eu,

O que Eu tenho,

Foi Deus quem me deu,

Na roda da Capoeira,

Grande e pequeno sou Eu,

Camaradinho...”

( Do Mestre Pastinha, devoção e reconhecimento)

Ou fato Histórico, como a chegada de um navio Carioca no cais da Bahia na década de 10 do século XX, narrando as confusões conseqüentes:

“Iê!

Torpedeiro encouraçado,

Novidade na Bahia,

Marinheiro absoluto, chegou pintando arrelia,

Prenderam Pedro Mineiro,

Dentro da Secretaria,

Para dar depoimento, daquilo que não sabia,

Se eu fosse governador, manobrasse a Bahia,

Isso que tu ta fazendo, comigo tu não fazia,

Camaradinho...”

Ou maldizer de amor:

“ Iê!

Ela tem dente de ouro, fui eu quem mandei botar,

Vou jogar nela uma praga,

Pra esse dente se quebrar...”

Ou de rebeldia:

“ A Marinha é de guerra,

O exército é de campanha,

O bombeiro apaga o fogo,

E a polícia é quem apanha,

Camaradinho...”

Entre outras ladainhas, exprimem o cotidiano dos capoeiristas, homens negros empregados da estiva, trapicheiros, marceneiros, guardas-civis, carroceiros, calafates, entre tantas outras sub-profissões que proliferavam na Bahia da época.

Prosseguindo a roda, entram as louvações, que é a série de vivas dadas pelo cantador, respondido em coro pelo público e pelos jogadores, que nesse momento se benzem, marcam no chão os seus símbolos de proteção, fazem suas rezas e se preparam para o jogo, sempre de olho no outro Capoeirista que está à sua frente.:

“Iê, viva meu Deus!

Iê viva meu Mestre,

Iê, viva a Bahia,

Iê, faca de Ponta,

Iê, água de lavar,

Ìê, vamos embora,

Iê, Volta do mundo,

Iê, é hora é hora...”

Posteriormente, o cantador inicia o canto de um corrido, que são as músicas de repetição coral, na qual, ele canta um trecho referencial, ou um improviso, e a platéia responde o mesmo monótono coro, dando a estrutura musical da roda, e somente então, é que os jogadores começam a jogar, com toda a roda integrada, e o jogo corporal de perguntas e respostas dos capoeiristas, é como o jogo do cantador e do público:

“ Camungerê, como vai como está? ( Cantador)

Camungerê! (Público)

Eu Vou bem de saúde!

Camungerê!

Para mim é um prazer!

Camungerê!

Como vai Como está?”

Que é um corrido de boas vindas, boa recepção para os amigos, ou para alguém que há muito não se via. Canta-se ainda ao se chegar em roda de outros Capoeiristas que não se é de costume visitar.

Os corridos carregam significados excusos, dúbios, avisos, provocações e armadilhas, os quais somente o iniciado pode subentender, corridos aparentemente inocentes, podem significar o apelo do tocador à agressão física:

“ A Canoa virou, marinheiro, no fundo do mar, tem dinheiro, (cantador)

A Canoa virou, a canoa virou, marinheiro ( Público)

A Canoa virou, marinheiro, no fundo do mar o angoleiro,

A Canoa Virou, a canoa virou, marinheiro...”

Outros podem mesmo trazer referências históricas da violência:

“ quebra micomugê! ( Cantador)

Ê Macá! ( Público)

Quebra gêcomumi,

Ê Macá,

Quebra micomugê!”

Canção de trabalho dos antigos escravos, que ao pilar o milho para o cuzcuz, disfarçavam na música, o ódio aos opressores: ( quebra gente como milho, macaco, quebra milho como gente!). Outras, não tão disfarçadas, podem no entanto confundir os desavisados:

“ Meu facão bateu embaixo!(Cantador)

A Bananeira Caiu! (Público)

Meu facão bateu embaixo!

A Bananeira Caiu!

Cai, cai, cai bananeira,

A Bananeira Caiu!”

Os corridos podem trazer em seus improvisos também, provocações, como frases soltas aparentemente insignificantes, como: “quando eu saio você entra, quando eu entro você sai!”, ou: “ vou dizer pra sua mulher, Capoeira te venceu, Paraná!”.

O fato, é que nada na música da roda da capoeira, pode passar despercebido ao jogador, e têm-se por bom Capoeirista, aquele que consegue realizar um bom jogo, ao mesmo tempo em que percebe todas as mensagens e ordens contidas nas músicas, o Capoeirista que joga no ritmo proposto pelo berimbau, sem se acelerar demasiadamente ou precipitar-se. Alguns toques do berimbau, podem também representar mensagens, como toque chamado: “ apanha laranja no chão tico-tico”, que propõe um jogo mais baixo, no chão, no qual os dois jogadores disputam o dinheiro jogado pelo público, que, enrolado em um lenço, somente pode ser pego com a boca, sem a utilização das mãos, e sem que o jogo se interrompa, o Jogo de Dentro, que propõe um jogo mais próximo, onde os capoeiristas quase se encostam, ou o toque de cavalaria, que era o toque usado nos tempos das perseguições à capoeira, onde o berimbau avisava aos capoeristas da aproximação da polícia, ou de inimigos.

Conclusão- música integral, o paradigma capoeirístico.

A leveza do jogo da Capoeira Angola, o seu não tocar constante, sua circularidade contínua, o jogo incessante de perguntas e respostas, que nos remete à idéia de homens e mulheres sem ossos e sem articulações, de tão flexíveis, o riso, a brincadeira, a molecagem, que parecem nos remeter a um mundo puramente lúdico, onde as regras não existem, escondem, como podemos ver, todo um mundo de disciplina e de significados latentes, que somente ao capoeirista bem treinado compete perceber. À leveza e à liberdade, precede a disciplina do treino, o amor pela técnica, ou no mínimo, a sistematização da brincadeira, estando sempre presente nesse contexto, o fundo etno-social do qual a Capoeira é oriunda, o contexto afro-brasileiro-escravagista-quilombola.

Desse contexto, o nosso artigo se propôs a traduzir, de forma introdutória, alguns elementos para a compreensão da importância da música na Roda de Capoeira Angola, enquanto expressão integral e interartística, que agrega expressões e capacidades diversas, que não podem ser apreendidos, quando desambientalizadas, e cuja percepção, em nome de uma verdade artística e cultural eurocêntrica monolítica, são despercebidos de sua importância e de sua complexidade, bem como do seu potencial educativo e formativo.

Por fim, é claro, uma ladainha:

Iê!

Não estudei pra ser jurista,

Não estudei pra ser doutor,

Estudei a Capoeira,

Pra bater no inspetor, camaradinha

Viva, meu Deus...

Bibliografia

Galo já cantou
Autor: Nestor Capoeira Arte hoje editora -1985
Capoeira Angola
Autor: Mestre Pastinha Fundação Cultural da Bahia -1998
Capoeira - Angola - Ensaio Sócio - Etno Gráfico
Autor: Waldoloir Rego Editora Itapuã - Coleção Baiana -1968
A negrada instituição - Os capoeira no Rio de Janeiro
Autor: Carlos Eugênio Líbano Soares Editora: Access -1994
Bimba é Bamba (A capoeira no ringue)
Autor: Frederico José de Abreu P e A Gráfica e Editora Salvador / Bahia -1999 Instituto Jair Moura

The Music of Capoeira- InglêsMusic and Capoeira - elements for understanding the importance of musicality in

Capoeira Angola

Fabio Mandingo

Keywords: Music, Capoeira, African culture, African instruments, musicianship.

Abstract: This paper covers the importance of music to the practice of Capoeira Angola, contextualizing this important ritual in the material environment of Capoeira´s Roda (circle where the capoeirists sings and plays), as its current practice, tracing a brief history of Capoeira.

To deal with any subject relating to matters contained in the universe of capoeira (or capoeirage, as prefer authors like Frederick Abreu) forces us to draw at least a brief history of the noble art of Capoeira, the dance-fight which, over the years, has begun to spread to all corners of the globe: involving more practitioners from different national origins, as well as cultural and ethnic backgrounds.

Much has been discussed in the Academy in relation to the origins of Capoeira; however, the scarcity of documented sources that could offer us a closer perception of the black enslaved world in Brazil in the early centuries of colonization, complicates this task even more, especially if we look at the fact that there is little existing documentation written by whites about blacks. Moreover, it is necessary to emphasize that in the inner philosophical context of Capoeira, to "hide", "pretend", "cheat" and "disguise" its practices are goals settled within Capoeira’s own communal methodologies. Therefore, the earliest information that we have about Capoeira comes from the time when whites begin to "see” its existence as a different expression.

Thus, most of the works have the tendency of being uncertain, endorsing undoubtedly its African roots, and disagreeing in varying degrees, on the importance of indigenous and Portuguese contributions. Even about the word Capoeira, we find disagreement as to whether or not the origin comes from the Tupi word "KAA-Pu-Ê-Ra, meaning brushwood freshly cut, or if it refers to a tote bag to carry roosters which, according to some authors, would lead to the portuguese name of capoeira, a bag used to carry capons (roosters).

As we understand the writing of history in its political dimension and politics in its racial dimension, we cannot help but notice the presence of subtle ideological antagonisms present in this discussion. Therefore, we do not deny ourselves ideologically, and we present our opinion. Candomble, the way in which it is worshiped today, is the result of integration in Brazil, of several models of African religious beliefs artificially approximated in the context of slavery. Thus, Capoeira would also be a dynamic and inter-ethnic fusion of several martial arts rituals from the Congo-Angola region integrated in the African –Diasporic Brazilian world.

The presence of different styles of Afrikan martial arts, such as Ladja from Martinique, and Moringue from Reunion Island in Madagascar as well as other martial expressions that have some movements similar to Capoeira and have music as the base, seems to confirm our perception that Capoeira is an African expression, but from the unique context of Brazil (where we do not deny the possible influence of Indian and even Portuguese elements).

The documents we have about Capoeira (from the 19th Century) are mostly police records relating to the persecution of the practice. Especially during the second half of the century, there are penalties issued through the Penal Code (1890 ), with punishments ranging from six months to six years in exile in Fernando de Noronha. In this sense, there is ample documentation to prove the fact that in Rio de Janeiro, the practice of Capoeira and consequently the persecution of capoeiristas haa taken larger proportions of social controversy, with mass arrests, newspaper articles, and official determinations among other things. In the capital of the Empire and Republic, Capoeira was organized in notorious Maltas (gangs), groups formed by dozens of capoeiristas from certain neighborhoods. These Maltas often came into physical conflict with enemy gangs, causing panic among the population and especially in the local aristocracy, who felt offended by the arrogance of the same troublemakers. Some Maltas even spread leaflets determining the date, place, and time of the next fight.
The major (Maltas) gangs, the Nagôas and Gaiamuns, were notable for their characteristic clothing, defining colors, and established territories marked with blood, much like the current clashes between slums and rival factions.

It was in Bahia, however, that Capoeira is outlined as a ritualized practice, contextualized in the given environment of "Capoeira roda.” Although, as we see in the Rugendas picture (Danse de la Guerre, 1835), Capoeira´s first pictorial registration associating it with music, it was only in 20th Century Bahia that this association has been consolidated as a form, and this ritual was established as a tradition.

In 1930, Mestre Bimba, an expert Capoeirista from Bahia, was the son of a Batuques ( another martial art form practiced during slavery), and a black champion. He created the Baian Regional Physical Fight, later known as Capoeira Regional. Incorporating other fighting movements in Capoeira and making it more objective, Mestre Bimba sought to broaden the appeal of Capoeira for the middle classes and later with the support of the then Governor Juracy Magalhães, Mestre Bimba became the authority on how Capoeira could be practiced, since these sessions were indoor and registration took place at the city police station .

The Creation of Regional by Mestre Bimba, marks the division between their Capoeira Regional and Capoeira Angola or Traditional Capoeira. Capoeira Angola or Traditional Capoeira is the term now used to refer to the old style of capoeira practiced by the lower classes of Bahia, which had Master Pastinha as its most prominent Master. A poet, painter, and popular philosopher, Master Pastinha has been a major contributor to the historical permanence of Capoeira Angola until the present day, and in the antagonism of the commercial prominence of Capoeira Regional. He has also worked to strengthen Angola since the 1980s. It is within this division, that we start with our analysis of the music, and the importance of music in Capoeira Angola.
-The Roda of Capoeira: Musical Environment

Although the intention here is not to delve into the differences between Capoeira Regional and Angola, we quote, for a better understanding of the theme explored here, the basic conception of this difference. Capoeira Regional defines itself as a sport (in the context of competitive sports), as objective, and (from the 1970s, influenced by Capoeira Regional adapted in Rio de Janeiro) as acrobatics. Capoeira Angola is intended as a Cultural Expression, game, and in that sense, playful, dialogic, engaging and non-competitive. These differences are those that present themselves in both social discourses, whether so-called angoleiros, or regional capoeiristas.

In Capoeira Angola, the area of its operation, is the Roda ( Circle) . It is in the Roda that Capoeira trained in the academies of Capoeira Angola is practiced. It is in the Roda that one can experience the Capoeira, as vivid cultural pratice, as a collective and interactive experience, and music. This is the main link connecting all of those inside the Roda. And what is the Roda, but the circle of people formed around the players who are fighting to sound and to the rhythm of the instruments? In Capoeira Angola, what is the music that starts the game? We have a Capoeira Angola orchestra: three berimbau, one or two pandeiros, a reco-reco, an agogo, an Atabaque.

The berimbau is an instrument brought to Brazil by Angolan blacks, traditionally used in religious rituals in Africa, by street vendors as a way to draw customers and incorporated into the Capoeira of Brazil. "M'birimbau," the Quimbundo percussive instrument, consists of a Tootles rod to which is tied a gourd that acts as a reverb box, attached to a steel wire in which a stick is struck. There are three berimbaus: The Gunga, which has a more serious tone (a kind of bass of Capoeira) scores and commands the Roda, and gives it its rhythm. It is the Gunga who opens the Roda and who ends, followed by the Middle berimbau sound (less serious) which reinforces the Gunga. Finally, the Viola, or Violinha, which is the Berimbau soil, makes the changes and characteristic improvisations. Each berimbau plays a different tone, which interpenetrate and complement one another, forming a picture perfectly harmonical. The Gunga plays the rhythm called Angola, the Middle touches the rhythm called “São Bento Pequeno”, the viola plays the “São Bento Grande”, being, however, free for improvisation and infinite variations.

The pandeiros mark the rhythm of Ijexá, and present some twists and improvisations, but are not allowed to exceed the height or prominence of the berimbaus. Some believe the pandeiro is of Arab origin, and was brought to Brazil by the Portuguese. However, considering that the Muslims, who for centuries occupied the Iberian Peninsula, were North African, we are basing an invaluable contribution to the scientific and cultural development of Latin peoples on an origin that has yet to be determined. The Reco-reco and agogo, like the conga, instruments are subsequently incorporated into Capoeira, in the context of the academies, and all have African origins clearly recognized for their importance and presence in virtually every musical manifestation of the continent. In Capoeira, however, there is the predominance of the berimbau, which serves the same function as the Atabaque plays in Candomblé.

The music starts before the game. The Roda is opened by Gunga, followed successively by other instruments. The Roda of capoeira is a small world, which is reflected in the big world. In it one learns to live, and can absorb the codes of practice and a community experience which is, above all, conflict, but also flexible, able to be relaxed by the exercise of the Axe, which is the lifeblood, flowing in the Roda, from the instruments towards the players, the players to the audience, form the audience to the Roda, closing a circle of energy-driven music.

The ritual follows with the instruments playing slowly, the Player of the Gunga, after the cry of “Iê!, Get a Litany,” which is like a short story, a prayer, a fable, a legend, or even a challenge, whether self-promotion, or derision to others or someone specifically:

"Ie!,
God is greater,
Small Am I
What I have,
It was God who gave me
In the roda of Capoeira
I'm big and small,
Camaradinho ... "
(“ Iê!,
Maior é Deus,
Pequeno Sou Eu,
O que Eu tenho,
Foi Deus quem me deu,
Na roda da Capoeira,
Grande e pequeno sou Eu,
Camaradinho...”)

(By Master Pastinha, meaning devotion and recognition)

Or, as a historic fact, the arrival of a ship from Rio de Janeiro at the Bahia pier in the first decade of the 20th Century resulted in a narration of the subsequent confusion:

"Ie!
Battleship,
New in Bahia,
An arrogant sailor arrived teasing,
They arrested Peter Mineiro,
Within the Secretariat,
To give testimony, About what he did not know,
If I were governor, maneuver Bahia,
This you are doing, to me you would not do,
Camaradinho ... "
(“Iê!
Torpedeiro encouraçado,
Novidade na Bahia,
Marinheiro absoluto, chegou pintando arrelia,
Prenderam Pedro Mineiro,
Dentro da Secretaria,
Para dar depoimento, daquilo que não sabia,
Se eu fosse governador, manobrasse a Bahia,
Isso que tu ta fazendo, comigo tu não fazia,
Camaradinho...”)

Or course, of love:

"Ie!
She has a gold tooth, was I who sent throw,
I'll put a spell on her,
To break this tooth ... "

(“ Iê!
Ela tem dente de ouro, fui eu quem mandei botar,
Vou jogar nela uma praga,
Pra esse dente se quebrar...”)
Or rebellion:

"The Navy is of war,
The army's campaign,
The firemen put out the fire,
And the police is who is beaten,
Camaradinho ... "

“ A Marinha é de guerra,
O exército é de campanha,
O bombeiro apaga o fogo,
E a polícia é quem apanha,
Camaradinho...”

Among other litanies there are those which express the daily life of the capoeiristas, black men employed in the píers, trapicheiros, carpenters, civil guards, teamsters, caulkers, among many other sub-occupations that proliferated in Bahia at the time.
Continuing the Roda, there enters the praise that is given by the singer, responded in chorus by the audience and players, who at this moment bless themselves, they mark down their symbols of protection, make their prayers and preparing for game, keep looking on the other Capoeirista that lies ahead.:

"Ie, praised be God!
Ie praised be my Master,
Ie, praised be Bahia,
Ie, knife tip,
Ie, water washing,
Ie, let's go,
Ie, Round the world
Ie, the time has come ... "
“Iê, viva meu Deus!
Iê viva meu Mestre,
Iê, viva a Bahia,
Iê, faca de Ponta,
Iê, água de lavar,
Ìê, vamos embora,
Iê, Volta do mundo,
Iê, é hora é hora...”

Later, the singer starts singing a corrido, which are the songs of repeated chorus, in which he sings a snippet reference, or an improvisation, and the audience responds the same monotonous chorus, giving the musical structure of Roda, and only then , is when the players starts playing with all the integrated Roda, the body game of questions and answers of Capoeira . It is like a game between the singer and the audience:

"Camungerê, how are you how are you? (Singer)
Camungerê! (Audience)
I I'm in good health!
Camungerê!
For me it's a pleasure!
Camungerê!
How will you How are you? "
(“ Camungerê, como vai como está? ( Cantador)
Camungerê! (Público)
Eu Vou bem de saúde!
Camungerê!
Para mim é um prazer!
Camungerê!
Como vai Como está?”)

This is a chant of welcome, good reception for friends, or someone who has not been seen in a long time. The chant is still used in a circle of other capoeiristas that are not usual visitors.
The Corrido carry meanings, dubious, warnings, and provocations or traps, which only the initiated can understand. Corridos seemingly innocent, can mean the player's appeal to physical aggression:

"The boat sank, sailor . On the sea, have money, (singer)
The boat sank, the boat sank, sailor (audience)
The boat sank, sailor, on the sea the angoleiro,
The canoe turned the canoe sank, sailor ... "
“ A Canoa virou, marinheiro, no fundo do mar, tem dinheiro, (cantador)
A Canoa virou, a canoa virou, marinheiro ( Público)
A Canoa virou, marinheiro, no fundo do mar o angoleiro,
A Canoa Virou, a canoa virou, marinheiro...”

Others may even bring historical references of violence:

" Breaks micomugê! (Cantador)
Ê Macá! (Audience)
Breaking gê comumi,
Ê Macá,
Breaks Micomugê! "
“ quebra micomugê! ( Cantador)
Ê Macá! ( Público)
Quebra gêcomumi,
Ê Macá,
Quebra micomugê!”

Work songs of former slaves, while cracking the corn to make the porridge, hide in music the hatred towards the oppressors: (“Cracking people like corn, monkey! Cracking corn like people!”).
Others, are not so hidden, but can confuse the unaware:

"My machete bend down! (Cantador)
The Banana Fallen! (Audience)
My machete hit the bottom!
The Banana Fallen!
Falls, falls, banana,
The Banana fell! "

The Corrido can also bring in their improvisations, provocations, such as loose seemingly insignificant phrases like: "when I enter you leave, when I leave you enter," or "I'll tell your wife that Capoeira beat you !!" .

The fact is that nothing in the music of capoeira Roda can go unnoticed to the player, and a good Capoeirista, one who can make a good game, will realize all messages and orders contained in the songs. The Capoeirista plays in the rhythm proposed by the berimbau. Some rythms of the berimbau, may also represent messages, such as a ringing call: "picking oranges on the floor jigsaw" ( Apanha laranja no chão Tico-Tico), which proposes a set lower to the ground, in which two players compete for the money played by the audience, who, wrapped in a tissue, can only be caught with his mouth, without the use of hands, and without that the game being interrupted. The “inside game” ( jogo de dentro) proposes a closer game where capoeiristas are nearly about, and the rhythm of chivalry ( Cavalaria), was used in the past times of persecution to capoeira, where capoeristas warned through the rhythm about the approach of police or enemies.

Conclusion: Full-music, the Capoeiristic Paradigm.

The softness of the game of Capoeira Angola, its constant non-touch, continuing its circularity, the incessant play of questions and answers, leads us to the idea of men and women without bones and joints who are flexible. The laughter, playing the prank, which seem to point us to a world purely playful where rules do not exist hide, as we see, a whole world of discipline and latent meanings, that only a well trained capoeirista can realize. In the softness and freedom, precedes the discipline of training. A love of art, or at least, the systematization of the game, is always present in this context. The ethnic and social background which comes from Capoeira, in the Brazilian context, is the African-enslaved-Maroon.

In this context, our article proposes to translate, in an introductory way, some elements for understanding the importance of music in Capoeira Angola, an interartistic and integral expression, that joins together several capabilities that cannot be understood when out of its context, and whose perception, on behalf of a Eurocentric monolithic cultural and artistic truth, are overlooked in its importance and complexity and in its potential for education and training.

Finally, of course, a litany:

Iê!
I have not studied to be a lawyer,
I have not studied to be a doctor,
I studied capoeira
To beat the inspector, buddy
Viva, my God ...

Iê!
Não estudei pra ser jurista,
Não estudei pra ser doutor,
Estudei a Capoeira,
Pra bater no inspetor, camaradinha
Viva, meu Deus...

Bibliography
• Galo já cantou
Autor: Nestor Capoeira Arte hoje editora -1985
• Capoeira Angola
Autor: Mestre Pastinha Fundação Cultural da Bahia -1998
• Capoeira - Angola - Ensaio Sócio - Etno Gráfico
Autor: Waldeloir Rego Editora Itapuã - Coleção Baiana -1968
• A negrada instituição - Os capoeira no Rio de Janeiro
Autor: Carlos Eugênio Líbano Soares Editora: Access -1994
• Bimba é Bamba (A capoeira no ringue)
Autor: Frederico José de Abreu ; Gráfica e Editora Salvador / Bahia -1999 Instituto Jair Moura