Savion Glover & Technical Sophistication

For some time now, I’ve revered saxophonist John Coltrane as a technologist of the highest order. His knack for producing elaborate sonic ideas with an instrument, his inclination for innovation, and his habit of rewiring musical numbers are testaments of his amazing abilities to produce compositions with extraordinary levels of technical sophistication.

Given my admiration of Trane, I was especially pleased to witness the spirit of his work being invoked during a performance here at SIUE last night by the renowned tap dancer Savion Glover.

“Tap dancer” is how we commonly refer to Glover, but we could perhaps more accurately think of him as some kind of hi-tech multi-rhythmic half-man, half-motion machine. I mean seriously. The performance by Glover and his accompanying sidemen Marshall Davis Jr. and Maurice Chesnut represented a fierce, tech-savvy display of kinesthetic energy.

Glover’s performance was arranged by SIUE’s Arts and Issues. Grant Andree and the sponsors for the event really deserve a lot of credit for pulling this one off. It’s not everyday that audiences here would get an opportunity to check out an act like Glover’s “Bare Soundz” performance.

Too often, the more pervasive views of black dance in our society quickly become degrading. Rarely do we get chances to think about black dance in the context of high art with a distinct African American twist.

So Glover offered some new possibilities. And his appearance in a performance hall named after our own Katherine Dunham seemed especially fitting.

According to Sarah Kaufman who reviewed “Bare Soundz” in Washington D.C. a few weeks ago for the Washington Post, “Glover is capable of all the complexities of jazz phrasing, both bass line and melody, the wild improvisation, structure and deconstruction, departure and return.” No question.

What Glover, Davis, and Chesnut offered constituted, quite literally, a kind of jazz.

Before performing one number, Glover announced that the piece was entitled “Gigantic Steps,” a tribute to Coltrane’s groundbreaking album Giant Steps. Glover’s “Gigantic Steps” was intricate, expansive, and thrilling all in spirit of Coltrane.

But it was the piece right before that “Gigantic Steps” that really caught my attention. As the three men went through a variety of jazz-inflected movements and riffs, Glover held a microphone and occasionally hummed excerpts from Coltrane’s Afro Blue.

It was his wordless phrasings and allusions to Coltrane and his use of "afro blue" to complement the group’s steps that really had my mind running.

Over the years, I’ve heard all kinds of musical renditions of Trane’s songs, yet somehow never considered the possibilities of a dance oriented transformation of the music. But there it was, the previously unimaginable being rhythmically materialized.

Simply put, we were witnessing Glover becoming Trane.

And so like Trane, Glover seemed to shift in and out of those old school, sci-fi zones where an outstanding black performer artistically re-presents catching the holy ghost while at the same time showcasing near unbelievable technical precision.

Although Glover’s work alludes to the jazz clubs of the 1940s and 1950s, Kaufman observed, the world back then “didn't make feet like Glover's. His are strictly 21st-century neo-hoofer material, able to mix a light, clean ripple with the authoritative wham of a marching band's drum section.”

Placing Glover on the cutting-edge of the kind of movements that are yet to come is fine by me. We can certainly benefit by recognizing the convergence of cultural knowledge and technical sophistication that comprises his work.

--rambsy

Palling Around with Ex-Slaves?

So earlier, toward the end of his speech at a midnight rally in Florida with Bill Clinton, Barack Obama noted that "Power concedes nothing without a fight." Yes, that’s what he said.

I heard the line and immediately recognized it as a remix to Frederick Douglass’s statement that “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” The statement was from Douglass’s “West Indian Emancipation” speech from 1857.

For those of us interested in these modern references to the words and deeds of ex-slaves, the campaign season has given us a few notable allusions. Remember Obama’s race speech? He noted that “I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners.”

And during the Democratic National Convention, you’ll probably recall Hillary Clinton discussing Harriet Tubman. Clinton said:

By following the example of a brave New Yorker , a woman who risked her life to shepherd slaves along the Underground Railroad. And on that path to freedom, Harriett Tubman had one piece of advice. If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If they're shouting after you, keep going. Don't ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going.

As we prepare for our Underground Freedom Galleries, these allusions and references to ex-slaves by modern popular figures stand out to me. If you know of other similar references do let us know.

The Future of Black Reading

What would it be like for a group of students to read Frederick Douglass’s slave narrative using an electronic book reader? How about using an e-book reader to cover Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon? Or, what would the experience be like of receiving short poems by Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks via text message?

I began posing these kinds of questions with more interest when Amazon released its e-book reader the Kindle. The Kindle's launch a year ago generated a wide range of publicity. Some viewed the device with suspicion, but an overwhelming number of reviewers predicted that the Kindle and e-book reading devices in general would become increasingly sophisticated and eventually change the nature of reading and book publishing.

Among the dozens of reviews I covered, I was especially interested in E-Book Readers: Ready for Their Closeup? by poet, literary critic, and blogger Aldon Nielsen, whose piece pointed out pluses and minuses with the Kindle and Sony’s e-book reader. Nielsen’s review did not focus directly on e-book readers and black books.

However, he’s produced such an extensive body of work on African American literature that I was inclined to wonder more and more what these new devices might mean in regards to the digital transmission of African American literary art.

Recently, NYTimes writer Motoko Rich published two articles for a series entitled “the Future of Reading” that concentrate on how “the Internet and other technological and social forces are changing the way people read.” The tones of the comments in response to Rich’s Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading and Using Video Games as Bait to Hook Readers indicated that a wide range of readers have strong opinions about the convergence of new technologies and reading.

There’s been little discussion about what the future of African American reading practices might entail in the mainstream venues, not unless you're counting Oprah's recent endorsement of the Kindle. Still, we have to wonder, to remix the focus of that series for the NYTimes, how are technological and social forces changing the ways black people read and shaping an array of readers' encounters with African American literature?

We’ve been trying to address those kinds of questions with some of our projects such as The Interactive Reading Group and aspects of the Poetry Correspondence Program. We’re still in the early stages of researching.

If you have any thoughts or links on the future of black reading, do let us know.

The Struggle for African American Ideas

“The world has grown huge and cold. Surely this is the moment to ask questions, to theorize, to speculate, to wonder out of what materials can a human world be built." --Richard Wright

Somehow, creating public humanities projects for the critical appreciation of African American ideas is no simple task, even on a college campus.

Over the course of the academic year, African American ideas are typically presented in the contexts of performances and celebrations. Talent shows. Banquets. Open mics. Parties. These kinds of events are enjoyable and do offer useful learning experiences. However, they hardly alleviate the wide and widening disparities between black and white educational opportunities on a university campus.

Relatively few public lectures, art exhibits, symposiums, honors programs, and reading series feature African American thinkers and ideas. Sure, Black History Month programs and activities do provide an exception to the rule, but squeezing those events into a month does create some downsides.

Figuring out how to expand educational and intellectual opportunities for folks interested in African American ideas is a challenge that I’ve tried to make central to what we’re doing with Black Studies.

What barriers and opportunities exist for a better critical appreciation of African American ideas? How do we produce satisfying, stimulating programs that avoid the usual trappings of mere entertainment? In what ways can we create spaces that allow participants to engage in heavy thinking about black cultural knowledge and African American intellectualism?

I’m hoping the project planners and affiliates for the Underground Freedom Galleries—a series of exhibits that will focus on slavery and struggles for freedom—will help us address these kinds of questions.

If you have suggestions on how you’ve addressed them at your university or in your community, do let us know.

R. Wright, R. Duncanson, and T. Monk

For today’s post, our piece blends Richard Wright’s haiku with Robert Scott Duncanson’s nature paintings and Thelonious Monk's rendition of “Round about Midnight.”

Have a safe and relaxing weekend.

An Af-Am Visual Operating Sytem

“…the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world.” From W. E. B. DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folks, 1903

“There is, however, a culture of the Negro which has been addressed to him and him alone, a culture which has, for good or ill, helped to clarify his consciousness and create emotional attitudes which are conducive to action.” From Richard Wright’s “Blueprint for Negro Writing,” 1937

If you’re part of one of those African American cultural networks, then two or three folks have probably already forwarded you the above photograph of Barack Obama. It’s even possible that you’ve received the image from four or more people.

The image usually circulates with the following caption in colored lettering: “What must it feel like…To carry the hopes and dreams of an entire race of people on your shoulders?”

The juxtaposition of words with the image and their transmission along African American correspondence routes suggest that Obama is thinking about “the hopes and dreams” of black people. Of course, it’s impossible to really know.

What’s fascinating, though, relates to how the image and others like them might prompt certain lines of thinking from black audiences. Long before the rise of Obama, African Americans were being socialized to view and frame black images in particular ways.

Was there variance? Sure. However, the circulation of common ideas and values along an interconnected cultural network have served to solidify a distinct perspective, what we might also view as an African American visual operating system.

Rambsy

Blk Studies Visual Matters Campaign

This year, we’ve been implementing a kind of visual matters campaign. We’ve tried to raise awareness about black studies by making visual representations central to the transmission of ideas about race, culture, and African American knowledge.

The campaign began last year with the redesign of the SIUE Black Studies website. That effort, like the ones we’re doing now, was led by our artistic director Marci and one of our longtime generous and talented volunteers Tristan.

Often, programs and organizations invest in a visually stimulating poster or flyer to promote a specific event or activity. The posters are displayed around campus, and the flyers are circulated among students. But perhaps, we figured, some other alternatives are possible and necessary.

Since we have tried to move beyond the “one time event” approach with our major projects and activities, we’ve been envisioning ways of making visual matters integral to much of what we do.

We’ve tried fashioning presentations that convey both the linguistic and visual dimensions of our developing visions. Ultimately, we’re hoping our compositions will bring more attention to the nature and operations of black studies.

Black Studies & the Science of Networks

“African diasporic consciousness originated in the darkened abyss below the decks of European ships during the infamous middle passage of the transatlantic slave trade. Severed from the familiar terrain of their homelands and dispatched to overcrowded bowels of slave vessels, the abducted Africans forged out of necessity a virtual community of intercultural kinship structures and new languages in which to express them.” --Anna Everett

In last week’s post blogging and black studies, we posed the question: In what ways would the development of more black studies blogs benefit us?

We’re still thinking on answers, speculating actually, and will probably continue doing so well after we’ve begun to see the establishment of more black studies blogs. However, one idea that comes to mind relates to the power of networks, or better yet, the science of networks.

The creation of an interrelated group of African American or black studies blogs would possibly constitute an important system for sharing and producing knowledge.

Thanks, in part, to the popularity of facebook and myspace, the idea of social networks have gained wide visibility over the last few years. And the area of research known as network science has generated an extensive body of scholarship that illuminates, generally speaking, “how everything is connected to everything else.”

What if a couple of ethnic studies programs on the West Coast were in conversation with black studies programs in the Midwest, and all of them were exchanging ideas with African American Studies programs in the South and Northeast? Establishing firmer virtual links would be essential for expanding the vision of individual programs and shortening the distances between ethnic studies, African American studies, and black studies, for example.

As scholar Anna Everett indicates in the quotation above, the development of “virtual community” has always been central to the production of knowledge in African American history and culture. Thus, black studies might benefit by incorporating aspects of the science of networks into our modes of operation.

Southern Illinois Along the Light Rail

On August 31, when we launched the SIUE Black Studies blog, we also began our other blog project, Along the Light Rail. This blog serves as a venue for extended conversations about light rail travel in the Metro East, the region known more formally as the Illinois Section of the St. Louis Metropolitan Statistical Area.

The blog serves as an integral component to our research and humanities project, Southern Illinois along the Light Rail. Our goal with the project is to chart cultural implications of light rail travel and public transportation in the region.

Although our interests in literary representations of cityscapes led us to the light rail at a focal point, we actually found that we started our project at a crucial moment for public transportation in the area. On November 4, when citizens vote on the next president, residents of St. Louis County will also vote on a sales tax increase that would be vital for continued bus, light rail, and call-a-ride service.

For many, the value of public transit is crucial.

We’ve been following the lead-up to the transit-related vote with continued interest, as the results will certainly have important consequences on the future of light rail travel and public transportation in the region.

Similar to our other black studies projects, Southern Illinois along the Light Rail is providing us with important opportunities to merge our interests in black studies, technology, visual matters, and cultural knowledge and interactions.

When and if you get a chance, do stop by: http://alongthelightrail.blogspot.com/

Image: Train arriving at the East Riverfront station. Courtesy of H.R. for Along the Light Rail.

Blk Studies Visual Movements

Last year, as we were sketching up ideas for future movements of the SIUE Black Studies Program, visual matters were increasingly central to our discussions. And really, saying "mixed media matters" might be even more appropriate since we recognized that audio and digital factors were integral to what we wanted to do.

For today's video post, we've decided to share a mixed media composition highlighting some of our black studies design work. We've synchronized this composition with the one for our light rail project by using a common soundtrack.

Have a safe and relaxing weekend.



audio: Opening of John Coltrane's "Alabama;" excerpt from The Roots' "Clones."

Blogging and Black Studies

“… I discovered that it is not the quality of goods and utility which matter, but movement; not where you are or what you have, but where you have come from, where you are going and the rate at which you are getting there.” --C.L.R. James, Beyond a Boundary

In a way, we’re both late and early getting our black studies program into the blogosphere. A book like Matt Bai’s The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics, for example, confirms that progressives have been actively blogging for a little more than a decade.

Over the last several years, African American bloggers have been gaining more and more visibility. In fact, black bloggers played a leading role in convincing Democratic candidates to cancel a primary debate that was to appear on Fox. The Congressional Black Caucus was a co-sponsor, but “black netroots activists” took a stand against Fox and successfully organized to prevent the debate in the proposed venue.

Despite the building presence of black bloggers and the prevalence of blogs in general, few, if any, black studies programs have taken up blogging. What’s the deal? Why no university black studies blogs? Why so late to the blog party?

Of course, few academic programs (not just black studies) are aware or concerned about establishing blog projects. Perhaps, many of the black studies programs lack the resources to have a group of committed bloggers. And maybe there’s also a lack of interest.

We can tell you from experience that posting regularly can be a time-consuming process. And yet, regular posts are necessary for effective blogging.

What would lead more black studies programs to take part in this form of communication and organizing? In what ways would the development of more black studies blogs benefit us?

Give us a day or so, and we’ll list some of our responses to those questions. In the meantime, feel free to let us know what you think.

Picture by "Scott Beale / Laughing Squid" from laughingsquid.com.

The African American Health Initiative

Over the next several months, several SIUE students affiliated with the Black Studies program will participate in The African American Health Initiative. The initiative seeks to raise awareness about health issues confronting African Americans by having students participate in establishing a network of information sharing.

At the start of the program, the participants selected a group of family members and friends to receive postcards featuring health information. Each month, the participants select from one of three postcards focusing on a health issue to send to their designated recipients. The participants then have follow-up conversations to further discuss the health-related topics.

Ideally, this initiative will assist participants and recipients in becoming more knowledgeable about the health challenges facing African Americans in particular. We’re also hoping this program will assist us in gathering information on how to effectively utilize grassroots organizing to raise awareness about health concerns.

Pharmacy professor Lakesha Butler and I began envisioning and designing this initiative last spring. We had been discussing possibilities about collaborating on a project to address health needs of citizens for some time.

And so one (or maybe two, three, or more) of our brainstorming sessions gave us the foundation for what has become The African American Health Initiative. Professor Butler’s knowledge relating to a wide range of physical conditions and medical issues has already given our initiative depth and relevance.

We’re now looking forward to what our project affiliates learn as they communicate with the recipients of the health information each month.

Visit the Black Studies web-site to get a look at this month’s African American Health Initiative postcards.

R. Wright: A Mixed Media Appreciation

The novelist Richard Wright was born in 1908, so over the course of this year, groups of scholars, students, writers, and general readers have organized and participated in activities celebrating Wright's work. The events honoring Wright have taken place all across the country and in France, where Wright lived the last years of his life.

The other day, we received notice about a blog post highlighting a 1992 celebration of Wright. Check it out.

Last spring, the Black Studies program organized a small reading group for black male college students from Tougaloo College, Morehouse, and SIUE to discuss Wright's autobiography using a blog and email. The project was entitled The Wright 100 and served as a model for what we would do with the Interactive Reading Group. The Wright 100 program also led us to produce a few videos focusing on Wright, and we're sharing one of those productions for our Friday post.

So here, we're offering a short rendition based on the opening lines of Wright's 12 Million Black Voices. The photographs are from the Farm Security Administration images, the ones Wright used for his book. The accompanying music is John Coltrane's "Equinox."

Blueprints for Progess

Last spring, we implemented a project called “The Blueprints for Progress Workshop,” a reading group that studied how modern progressives were struggling to reinvigorate the Democratic Party by developing key guiding philosophies that addressed the challenges of the 21st century.

We used Matt Bai’s book The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics as the basis of our reading group. Bai’s book traced the activities of a wide range of Party insiders and outsiders such as politicians, union leaders, potential candidates, consultants, donors, and bloggers.

Our Workshop included about 10 members from 5 different colleges. We communicated with each other using email, a project blog, written letters, and a one-page newsletter. Although we learned a lot from the reading, we sometimes struggled with building participation and the challenging producing tangible results.

Our blog posts were sometimes inconsistent. We occasionally got behind on deadlines with our mailings, and we always struggled to fit the activities of the Workshop into our hectic lives and into the already-busy lives of our participants.

But we managed to make gains. We produced several posts, letters, and newsletters over the course of the project. We established important connections with participants. And, perhaps most important for our future activities, we learned important lessons about how to address challenges and how to improve the operations of our programs.

We developed an appreciation for key concepts: Consistency. Planning. Design. Building participation.

In retrospect, the Blueprints for Progress Workshop served as a kind of Blueprint for Black Studies. Our work with the Workshop’s blog, for example, really prepared us for the work we’re not doing with this blog, the Light Rail project blog, and The Interactive Reading Group.

We haven’t found full solutions for all the challenges we continue to confront when it comes to implementing various projects. However, the Workshop did give us insight on how to innovate and improve our approaches.