Kenyon Farrow

The music industry has never really known how to promote or market Black women who do rock music. Brilliant artists like Sandra St. Victor, Dionne Farris, RES, Meshell Ndegeocello and Kina have consistently been mishandled or flat out disregarded by the industry-even sometimes by the labels who signed them in the first place. I mean, Dionne Farris had a single “I Know,” which was at the top of the pop charts for 4 weeks in 1993, and they waited nearly a year before releaseing another video, which was the monster track from Wild Seed Wild Flower, “Passion.” Most of these artists actually do more than just rock music, their music blends seamlessly from rock to funk to soul and gospel, sometimes in the same damn song (See: Me’shell Ndegeocello’s “Dead N*gga Blvd, Pt 1&2″ from the album Cookie: The Anthropological Mixtape” for clarification.)

But these women continue to rock on, and rock hard. Many of them have gone independent, and have found continued success by starting their own labels and putting out some really creative and polished records on their own. New York based artists Tamar-Kali and Imani Uzuri began and continue to be independent, all the while building a solid fan base and reputations as (in my not-so-humble opinion) two of the best live shows in New York.

Anyone who knows me, knows that my absolute favorite Black woman musician/artist/vocalist/songwriter/producer is Nashville born queen of the ATL underground, Joi (In the photo above, with one of the best background singers around, Ms. Keisha Jackson). Joi has had similar struggles with record labels while releasing four albums that are nothing short of classics, including the recent Tennessee Slim Is The Bomb. Tennessee Slim is the first record Joi completely produced and distributed on her own label, Joilicious. (Read a recent interview with Joi here. Part 1. Part 2.)

But what I love right now about Joi and Tamar in particular, is that they are lending their names and time and talent this Monday, September 25th to the Willa Mae Rock Camp for Girls, and organization cultivating the next generation of women musicians. They will be playing with some of these youngstas, while paying tribute to thier contemporaries, and those women that paved the way like Rosetta Tharpe, Big Mama Thornton, Nina Simone, Odetta, Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, Joan Armatrading, Betty Davis, Nona Hendryx, Poly Styrene, MeShell NdegeOcello, Cassandra Wilson. I just bought my tickets for this show. I hope to see you NYC folks there was well. Go here for the details.

I was sitting in front of my computer, with my back to the TV, doing schoolwork while I heard the pretty ass falsetto of R&B crooner Maxwell on VH1 Soul. It was so good to hear his voice again. I though for a sec he was licking my ear. Oh LAWD!

Anyhow, it was a song I hadn’t heard before, so minimized my Lexus-Nexus online to google to see if Maxwell had a new record out-if this record were new, or much whispered about Black Summer’s Night. This album was ALLEGEDLY shelved by Sony music because of some homoerotic references in the lyrics of one or more of the songs. But I ain’t mad, are you, boys?

As it turns out, the video I was watching was NOT a new Maxwell (it was a video from The Best Man soundtrack), I just hadn’t heard the song before now. BUT, the Lawd works in mysterious ways, cuz when my google stopped, it showed that Maxwell IS IN FACT BACK! His team is gearing up for a promo campaign (including the now obligatory MySpace page) for Black Summer’s Night. BSM will, according to the myspace site, will be the first album in a trilogy!!!

Look for some trax on the site, and the whole thang to drop on V Day!!!

Has it been a month? Well, I been busy. I just started journalism school two weeks ago. It’s really interesting and i am learning alot. I am trying to figure out what the hell I am going to do once I graduate. It seems that journalists are supposed to be objective -if such a thing exists-and I have written (and published) so much political work, unabashedly opinionated, that news organizations may take me as some crazy person, who will bring the esteemed “fourth estate” to its knees because I don’t pretend to not have an opinion about the world, and have no interest in the direction of things. Now, ahve you ever read a publication, seen a TV new program and weren’t left with some sense of that organization or reporter’s ideology?

So what’s a propagandist like me to do? I guess finish the damn degree and see what shakes out. Looks like it’ll be off to a PhD-since people with ideas like me are unfit for public consumption. LOL!!! I love pretend self-deprecation.

Any thoughts?

In the meantime, check out this really interesting piece about the closing of the Stonewall bar in NYC from John Koblin at the NY Observer.

Last night I went with my boo, my friend/former roomie, and another best friend all squeezed into a booth (and I do mean SQUEEZED!) at Joe’s Pub last night to hear what soul singer Donnie had to deliver this evening. His is on a promotional tour for his upcoming CD, The Daily News.

I first heard of Donnie back in Fall 2002 when The Colored Section, his first full legnth CD was released (the album would later be re-released by Motown in 2003, whom Donnie does not seem to be working with any longer). I was in Tower Records in Greenwich Village, when I passed the CD on a shelf. I was initially attracted to the design and colors of the CD, but also was intrigued by this deep brown-skinned bohemian looking cutie on the cover, who looked like he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders.

And I think I was correct. The Colored Section featured a classic soul music sound, with this singer who sounded like a corss between the other Donnie (Hathaway) and Stevie Wonder. He also sang with an immediacy, an intensity about everything from the state of Black America, to loving nappy hair, to 9-11. It was one of those CDs that I played for everyone I knew, who in turn played it for everyone they knew.

But last night, after nearly three years since Motown re-released his debut (and then-in my opinion- did absolutely nothing to promote it beyond his core audience, who by that time already had the CD), Donnie hit the stage at Joe’s Pub with a force only a scorpio could muster.

He was rocking charcoal grey slacks, a white oxford (untucked), and a red tie, as the 3-piece band (keys, drums, and bass guitar) and 3 background singers launched into the title track from the upcoming disc, The Daily News. His hour +2 encore set included about half new tracks, and you know they’re good when the audience is singing the chorus to songs they are hearing for the first time. New York can also be a pretty tough crowd, but Donnie had the crowd (me included) in the palm of his hands.

Vocally he was top-form. Donnie is a smart vocalist who knows he has a voice with so many textures and layers, and such interesting melodies and thoughtful lyrics that he doesn’t need to over-sing the songs, a concept which many artists in his generation with as much virtuosity (and many with much less), can’t seem to grasp.

But adding to his incredible vocals is his amazing background singers (one of whom, Rahbi, has an album currently on the shelves). I think only since Luther Vandross have I seen a male vocalist with such exquisite background vocalists - all of whom are soloists in their own right, but know how to work together to enhance the lead.

As usual, Donnie talked and sang to the audience about current issues of the day- the latest airline restrictions & the war on terror, men on the DL, AIDS and homophobia, child sexual abuse.

His set way too short, and he didn’t do Clould 9, but Joes’ Pub had booked another show, so he had to stop at two encores, and the audience was clearly pissed. How many times do you get that at a show?

I am really thrilled to hear The Daily News, which drops on September 26. Here Donnie interviews about this record.

ALSO: New Footage from the show on You TUBE:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bH4DsSa4ZM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW8Z1eZxQ0s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoFFmotZlv4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT7gQTFWUJk

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

There have long been allegations of reality shows using creative editing processes to make people into “characters” that will add the most drama and conflict to the delight of television viewers.

I think my favorite show is Project Runway. Being a flaming queen, I am of course fascinated in the series which features 16 fashion designers competing with weekly design challenges for a chance at an opening at New York’s Fashion Week.

But as a Black person, and something of a cultural critic/public intellectual (YES! Friends, I finally own it.), I am often very troubled by the portrayals of Black folks in these shows, and the way they’re treated by the other folks on the show, the media, and the general viewing public.

With last season’s Project Runway, I was a huge fan of Zulema Griffin. I thought she was really smart, gorgeous, and most of all, I was interested in her perspective, and where she was going to go from week to week. But it was clear from the beginning that she was set up to be the crazy Black “b”. She was eventually ostracized by the other cast members for doing something completely within the rules of the show-no one had done it up to that point. But when she asked for a walk-off between two models, she had every Black butch queen from here to ATL screaming, “WORK!!!”

A friend recently pointed out two things that Zulema herself has begun to point out with the show:

1. She was edited in such a way to in fact make her the Black woman villain on the show.

2. The producers intentionally edited out the fact that she was a an out lesbian. Given that the show has a large queer following, that fact would have potentially made her more sympathetic, and it would have been much harder to control the effect they wanted.

This begs the question: How much of reality TV is really reality? How do we get sucked into making assumptions about people on these shows, when things can (and are, apparently) taken completely out of context?

In two interviews, Zulema exposes all this, and also talks candidly about some things that happened to her that would have added to the juicy drama of the show, but clearly the producers protected other (white) cast members (or one in particular).

Zulema speaks to The Advocate and Papierdoll about the whole ordeal.

Someone once said that s truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. I would add that sometimes The Daily Show makes more sense of the news, than the actual press does. This segment is one such a time, where Jon Stewart walks us through the most ridiculous news coverage about the current situation between Hezbollah and Israel, as it is being interpreted by evangelical Christians as a sign of the “end of days,” better known as Armageddon. Not that it’s a story not worth exploring, because it is. But it is the context that the reporters are situating the story. If the story was raising the questions like:

“What does this mean for US Foreign policy?

“Does the religious viewpoint that we are nearing the Apolcolypse impact who supports Israel in it’s policy and military stragy against its neighbors?”

or

“What does that mean for how politicians will talk about this crisis (and what types of solutions they offer) given the upcoming mid-term elections?”

These would perhaps be somewhat meangingful to the discussion, because evangelism definitely influences the American (and moving towards global!) political landscape. But no! The kind of skepticism-or attempts to even so, or looking at several angles/arguments of an issue are completely missing from this news stories. It’s not like we’re talking about global warming, which at this point is irrefutable. We’re talking about the Book of Revelations - a religious text, mind you.

Now, the Daily Show clearly edited the stories significantly, but, I saw two of the ones they feature in their entirety, and the reporters spoke with all earnestness about the Apocalypse as if the sea were presently turning blood-red, and the Four Horseman were waving from the windows with the crowd of tourists outside their TV studios in Midtown, Manhattan.

This, is what our media is, people. Watch the clip.

Since the Israeli attack on Lebanon, people have been pointing fingers and Secretary Condoleezza Rice. I took the US 23 days of bombing-leaving 550 Lebanese and 70 Israelis dead-to backpeddle on their initial policy, delivered by Secretary Rice, that they wanted to ensure a lasting peace agreement could be reached before calling for a cease-fire. Now how in the hell are you supposed to reach a peace agreement while you’re still lobbing bombs over at each other? Does that make any kind of damn sense to anyone? And yet, I never heard any media ask that question - cuz it seems so basic to me.

But I digress. The point is, the “policy” of the US was clearly a failure when last week, Israel attacked a apartment building killing 60 some-odd civilians, people really began to wonder what Rice, as head diplomat, would be. More on that later cuz I gotta run…

Anyhow, I found this commentary by journalist Deborah Mathis really interesting.

I just finished reading James Baldwin’s Another Country. The book was published in 1962, and focused on (I think) how anti-black racism makes love (between blacks & whites, and blacks & blacks) a difficult proposition, if not impossible.

The book (basically) opens with Rufus Scott, a young black jazz musician, attempting to come to terms with what his life has become. Unable to cope, on a cold night he (in a macabre and beautifully written passage) walks to the middle of the George Washington Bridge, and plunges himself into the “black” water of the Hudson River.

This must have been an extremely scandalous thing for Baldwin to write in 1962. For their was the notion, which some of us still believe, that black people don’t commit suicide. This, in spite of the fact that Baldwin got the idea for this character, upon reading a newspaper report f a former black male lover’s suicide, executed in the same fashion. [NOTE FROM KAZEMBE: Rufus Scott's suicide in Another Country was inspired by a person that Baldwin was in love with, Eugene Rivers. Rivers committed suicide after professing a love for Baldwin. The incident haunted Baldwin for a number of years.Baldwin too attempted suicide, after being jailed in Paris for "stealing" (He took a sheet from one hostel to another) Fortunately, the rope broke.]

A week ago, black gay activist Rickey Williams jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. I didn’t know Rickey, but learned about this first from Keith Boykin’s blog. [NOTE: I have subsequently learned he was only 28, and was friends of several other brothers I love and respect-- Frank Roberts, Tim'm West, Marlon Bailey.] But I am still concerned, affected in some way, by his death. As another Black gay man, I can certainly understand the type of alienation one can feel from one’s self, one’s community, and sometimes the whole damn world. As an “activist/community organizer,” I also know that while one’s work is often trying to build a sense of community-and to attempt to inspire the conditions that create alternative ways of being in the world, new ways of relating to each other-it is often a lonely endeavor. I have often felt that many of us who do this work are often the most alienated.

But specfic to the Black LGBT community, I urge us to work hard to try to create community. I live in a neighborhood that as a Black gay man, I don’t feel particularly safe in. Whilst I am lucky that because my boyfirend has lived here for over 5 years (and has close relationships with lots of people in the community), and I have gotten to know alot of people in the community (both straight and otherwise), I see LGBT folks in the community all the time who I don’t know, and have made no attempt to get to know, and they haven’t tried to get to know me either. With all of the violence (and murder) happening to us in NYC (and dare I say, every other major city in the US), we can’t really afford to live in isolation from one another.

In my personal circles, and with my work, I continue to urge us, particularly Black gay men and transgendered women, to really interrogate the culture of shade. Where does it come from? What is the impetus to cut each other down so quickly, and with such venomous ferocity? I know we come from communities (esp African-American) with a tradition of playing the dozens, but is it more harmful for the most oppressed members of the community? Is it a form of shaming? Is it kidding? All the time? When do we get to show care for one another? Me’shell Ndegeocello, in the song Dead Nigga Blvd said “I can’t even tell my brothas and sistas that they fine/this absense of beauty in the heart and mind…”

I don’t know if any of this woud have saved Rickey. People make the choice to end their lives for all sorts of reasons. But I do know, if we took better care of one another (whether white folks, or quite frankly, the larger Black community does or does not embrace us), his time here may have been a little easier.

And so would mine.

And so would yours.

Tell me. Are you shocked?

Meanwhile, a celebrity in the hip-hop world hit on a good friend of mine in a NYC gay bar last weekend, but stormed away in a huff when my friend didn’t know who he was…hhhmmm….

Wouldn’t you like to know who that was?

Today the State of Washington ruled that the state’s “defense of marriage act” did not violate the state constitution. Many people will try to compare the ruling to the recent NY ruling, but they are really dissimilar.

The only comparisons to be made between the two is that both courts agreed that it was up to legislatures of those two states to change the laws governing marriage. But that is about the end of the

The New York State ruling was really very mean spirited. It basically statted that because heterosexual (well, at least 1man/1woman households) were in such state of disarray that the state thought to allow same-sex marriage would be to further undermine a crimbling institution, and we should be doing more to support (presumably) hetero marriages.

The state of Washington’s ruling was much more nuanced a decision. It read:

“In reaching this conclusion, we have engaged in an exhaustive constitutional inquiry and have deferred to the legislative branch as required by our tri-partite form of government. Our decision accords with the substantial weight of authority from courts considering similar constitutional claims. We see no reason, however, why the legislature or the people acting through the initiative process would be foreclosed from extending the right to marry to gay and lesbian couples in Washington.” Read the full decision here. Read the press release here.

Now many of you who have read “Is Gay Marriage Anti-Black?” are probably wondering, “Why the hell do you care about this?”

I guess that’s fair. My answer is twofold. While I personally do not care to get married, and have my own opinions about it as an institution, I do make a distinction between that and homophobic legislation. The other thing is, I am in full support of people being able to define their relationships and families for themselves, and people being able to have some sort of reciprocal benefits to determine beneficiaries, hospital visits, power-of-attorney, etc., without having to be married, or without the relationship needing to be monogamous, or even romantic or sexual.

It is for this reason last April I accepted an invitation to work with a group of LGBTQ(etc.) who had been writing, speaking, or organizing around the marriage issue (or critiquing the institution itself). We spent the weekend offering our thoughts, critiques, vision and strat and working towards a broader more inclusive vision of what work around domestic partner/civil union/reciprocal benefits/marriage work could look like that would move us toward a vision of, well, justice. The fruits of our labor have just been released into the world-with a statement of that vision, some strategy for folks in the marriage movement, and a place for individuals & organizations to sign on to that vision. The website is Beyond Marriage. I welcome your thoughts and feedback, as we see this document not as a complete, finite thing, but a living breathing document for people to use in whatever way makes sense, in whatever communities they wish to use it.

This was important for me, who people often accuse (and sometimes rightfully so) of being full of critique but offering no solutions. Sometimes I don’t think there is a solution (not an easy one, anyhow) to many of the issues I write/lecture about, but I think I can stand behind the spirit of this work.

So go read, forward it to friends, post the LINK on your blog(s), and get back to me.