Gotham City Soul

A Zangbeto at rest. Zangbeto are the Vodou guardians of the night among the Ogu or Egun people of Benin, Togo and Nigeria. They are charged with maintaining law and order, and keeping communities safe and secure.   In order for us to even begin to dismantle the artificial construct called race, and the racism against people of color that it serves, we need to decolonize our minds. And that begins with our origin stories. I'll let Djimon Hounsou speak in In Search of Voodoo: Roots to Heaven on YouTube movies or Amazon Prime . This is for folks who feel they'd like to begin decolonizing their minds.    Trigger Warning: There are scenes of animal sacrifice in this film. Bear in mind our own treatment of animals in the American agricultural industrial complex and how we benefit from it. Bear in mind that kosher and halal meat is prayed over by holy men to make it pure. Bear in mind that animal sacrifice is also part of the monotheistic (Judaic, Christian, Isla...

          I have been gone a long time from here, but it is time for me to come back. History can be a tool and knowledge IS power. The pen can be mightier than the sword—look how afraid some folks are of journalists and the media and education. This young man from my dad’s part of Alabama, with whom I share a last name, was also castrated, but the New York Times editors left that out. And I guess they thought they’d lighten the mood with the wacky story of the pie thief. But the assau lt, some will say. In the deep dark, waiting outside for his girlfriend to finish working as a maid for a white family in Eufaula, Ivor Peterson mistook a middle-aged white woman coming out of the house in which his girlfriend worked, and greeted her. The woman was startled, screamed like Amy Cooper in Central Park, the white men of the town chased Ivor down, and the rest is America’s unfortunate, shameful history. In 1911, Ivor Peterson—who may or may not have...

Gotta write fast because I’m traveling to Savannah tomorrow, just enough time to tell you about the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Okay, so the name could be a bit minstrel-showish if you go there, but I ain’t goin’ there. The CCDs are reviving the black string band from back in the day, fiddles, banjos an all, and just listening to a couple of tunes has got me excited. If you like old timey type music, hit their site at myspace to listen to some samples ("Viper Mad" is already something I’m loving). For the full story, including how the banjo came from Africa, and how black people used to play stuff that sounds like something from the soundtrack to Deliverance, or O Brother Where Art Thou? read "Banjos, Kazoos, and Spoons, Oh My” at MSNBC.com. You can also get deeper African banjo history here . And there’s always video For Gothamites and surrounding tri-state denizens, the Chocolate Drops will be in New York, New York at Symphony Space on November 7. ...

This is a reposting from several years ago, hence the myspace references. Since then I have seen her in concert at the Bowery Ballroom, with Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens opening—they were both pure dynamite I promised you art last week, a big promise to make, and delivered three out of five days. So I have two to make up, and I will. But I had to take a break to talk about a soul sister. I first heard of Sharon Jones when I was listening to my eagerly-awaited Oxford American ’s annual music cd, which comes with their annual Southern music issue. The song on the cd was "How Long Do I Have to Wait for You?" and it was far and away the best cut on the cd. This was in 2006. I can’t remember why the editor-in-chief Marc Smirnoff and his colleagues included her, except that she was born in Augusta, Georgia, which technically make her a southerner. She moved to New York City, I’m presuming with her family, at an early age, so that makes her a New Yorker. At any rate, ...

To Alsana’s mind the real difference between people was not color. Nor did it lie in gender, faith, their relative ability to dance to a syncopated rhythm or open their fists to reveal a handful of gold coins. The real difference was far more fundamental. It was in the earth. It was in the sky. You could divide the whole of humanity into two distinct camps, as far as she was concerned, simply by asking them to complete a very simple questionnaire, of the kind you find in Woman’s Own on a Tuesday: (a) Are the skies you sleep under likely to open up for weeks on end? (b) Is the ground you walk on likely to tremble and split? (c) Is there a chance (and please check the box, no matter how small that chance seems) that the ominous mountain casting a midday shadow over your home might one day erupt with no rhyme or reason? Because if the answer is yes to one or all of these questions, then the life you lead is a midnight thing, always a hair’s breadth from the witching hour; it is vola...

This is a reposting from 2009, but in the wake of Ferguson, we need to be reminded that if this is how a black President was and is treated, how do we expect your average black person to be treated? There are some people who don't believe that they have to account to anyone for their actions. They walk this Earth believing they are superior, and they give themselves permission to do or say whatever they please. Joe Wilson claiming that his emotions during our President's address to Congress the other night got the better of him is correct; but it wasn't about healthcare. It's the fact that a black man is standing in a place he, Wilson, a white man, will never be. A black man is in a position of power, and contrary to what he and the rest of the racists in this country would like us to believe, he is an exceptional person. He may even be a great leader if he doesn't have to pause every time an idiot like Joe Wilson opens his mouth. He acted like a left-back fifth...