Crossposting from Ile Oxumare: SNCC's Rap

This essay originally appeared on one of my music blogs.



This is a very special album I've been saving for a special occasion. It goes up with a shout-out to Reza's Flying Dutchman Discography blog, where some other great spoken-word pieces from the same period can be found.

This is an artifact of a lost time. It's not, sad to say, really a collaboration between black revolutionary H. Rap Brown and spiritual jazz vocalist Leon Thomas. It is a completely un-musical speech by Brown interspersed with brief excerpts of Thomas in concert, recorded five months apart. An excerpt from Julius Lester's original liner notes helps explain the concept:

"This record is augmented by the sound and words of Leon Thomas and what more can be said behind that? He adds another dimension to the concepts articulated by Rap, showing the roots from which we've come, and all the variations therein.... Brother Brown and Brother Thomas are saying the same thing, only with different weapons. There is no better example of a brother functioning in the struggle on the level he happens to be on than Leon Thomas. He has turned his voice into a revolutionary weapon. And, that's what it's all about."

I have waxed ecstatic elsewhere about Leon Thomas. The songs here are among the few overtly political ones he sang, Damn Nam being a direct call to resist the immorality which was US aggression on Vietnam.

I feel, on the cusp of turning a significant milestone of years in my life, privileged to have lived as witness to history: as participant in all that has happened over the years in the US in my lifetime. When I was a boy in Chicago, my fairly progressive parents exposed me to the struggles for social justice including the struggle against that horrible war. Racism was one of the evils my parents taught me, in their own ways, to fight against. Yet if my mother thought me listening to pretty, black and non-threatening women like Diana Ross and the Supremes was cute, she was somewhat horrified over me listening to raw and somehow threatening black men like James Brown and the Temptations. Such were the limits of progressive white consciousness in the sixties.

Which brings us to H. Rap Brown. My parents, like a generation of liberal white people, greatly admired the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, as well they should have. He was a true hero who gave his life for all of our freedom. But my parents drew some invisible line in their perceptions of social justice. Heroes like Malcolm X, and the younger generation that followed like Angela Davis, H. Rap Brown, the Panthers, these were somehow threatening to my parents in their militancy, their embrace of a vision not just of brotherly love but of revolution. H. Rap Brown was, to them, the "scary" African-American revolutionary, scary because he was not talking to white Americans about trying to get along, but to fellow African-Americans about how to take things into their own hands and do for themselves what needed to be done. (In the speech recorded here Brown directly addresses white people who want to know what they can do to help: he suggests they douse themselves in gasoline, light it, and jump on President Nixon. It's a laugh line, but it makes his point.) Nina Simone was perhaps more gentle in a similar vein where on one of her records she says "this song is not against white people, it simply ignores you." The whites in her audience laughed nervously.

Brown's speech here is inflammatory and revolutionary, but it's extremely thoughtful and well-reasoned. Listening to his words now one is immediately struck by the volume of water that has flowed under this bridge. It inspires in me, at least, many mixed emotions. Is his world, the world of 1969, actually gone? How much has changed and how much of what he says is still relevant? Brown gets it right when he says "everything that happens in your life is political." And he goes on to say "you have to understand the difference between concepts and individuals," meaning you can't make your political choices based on whether you like certain people but you have to listen to what they say. Surely that resonates today. His analysis of capitalism and injustice is as striking as his call to confront it. But the revolutionary movement Brown helped lead, it failed, ending in tragedy or dissipation. So many years of Reagan and Clinton and the Bushes have changed the landscape so deeply, not all of the changes bad ones. And truly, as a white person listening to his words, I hold out hope that we in fact are better off throwing our lot together and building a society that is respectful of cultural differences but merciless in its opposition to racism, injustice and inequality.

The American presidential election is at this writing in just over a week. In it an African-American Democrat (younger than me, I might point out, making him a child when this record was made) is opposed by a white conservative Republican who was a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam at the time this record was made. And so the special occasion causing me to present this record, this unique political moment in time, is actually the depth of irony. H. Rap Brown converted to Islam in the early 1970s, served time in Attica in the '70s, and is today imprisoned for allegedly shooting a policeman. Do the politics of today and the passage of time negate or prove Brown's words? Are there warnings here from a forgotten past or just a slice of oral history?

I'm hopeful that it is Barack Obama who wins our election in a few short days. He is most certainly not a revolutionary in the stride of H. Rap Brown. But at the same time I cannot but hope that the miracle of an African-American winning the highest political office in the U.S. and what I hope is the rejection of Bush's legacy brings us in some way closer to lasting fairness, justice, and peace. As Leon Thomas sings here, "No one can help you, it's all up to you."

Recommending further reading & listening:
* The Magic of Juju blog's post on this record,
* Die Nigger Die, H. Rap Brown's autobiography on the great History Is A Weapon website.
* Check out the Angela Davis, Stanley Crouch and Rosko/Pete Hammill My Lai Massacre recordings at the Flying Dutchman blog.

The original post with track details and a download link can be found here.

Crossposting from Ile Oxumare: Have a Blissful Day

This is a crossposting of an essay and compilation that originally appeared on one of my music blogs.



Perhaps because it's when I came of age, I have long been fascinated by the decade of the 1970s. Long reviled in the popular imagination, it seems to be the decade that cultural historians would like to erase. It's laughable how, for instance, the reviewers over at the All-Music Guide will tend to leave the 1970s output by many jazz musicians off their discography, and when an individual album from that time is covered, unless it happens to be a collection of standards harkening back to the classic era, it tends to get written off as "not so-and-so's best album." Disco music has come to symbolize the seventies in a sort of warped way: portrayed as the effete frivolity of coke-snorting polyester-clad airheads, its reality as a kind of ecstatic mass egalitarian communion for a new generation of proud black and gay urbanites is overlooked. The corruption of Nixon and the weakness of Ford and Carter are remembered, not the progressive community and consciousness-building organizations that flourished until repression, hard times, or eventual exhaustion laid them low. And the 1970s is most definitely remembered as the era of the religious cult, which brings us to the compilation at hand.

In those days before the megachurches of Christian fundamentalism, spirituality in America was in a vast state of flux. As the younger generation came to reject the political and cultural establishment in the 1960s, so it rejected the religious establishment. Everybody knows how the Beatles flirted with eastern religion: newly expanded higher consciousness inspired the newly aware to explore spiritual paths that would have been unimaginable to whitebread America a few years before. Astrology and numerology became mainstream; "eastern" concepts like auras and karma and reincarnation became widely accepted.

Nature abhors a vacuum. Into this wide-open spiritual openness stepped preachers and teachers and gurus and holymen, and a host of evangelical organizations, many of which eventually being accused of manipulation and mind-control. On the eastern front, gurus like Swami Satchidananda and Sri Chinmoy gained a huge number of adherents, Sri Chinmoy in particular influencing many in the music world. The Hare Krishnas, eventually the International Society for Krishna Consciousness lead by Swami Prabhupada, became ubiquitous. There were Christian-derived societies like the politically conservative Unification Church of Rev. Sun Young Moon (the so-called "Moonies") or the ill-fated left-wing People's Temple of Rev. Jim Jones; there were the Jesus Freaks and Jesus People. There was the cult of Scientology for sci-fi geeks; there were Egyptian revivalists promising health through colon cleansing; there were African cultural nationalists redefining black cultural identity. There was Transcendental Meditation; there was Nichiren Buddhism and its prosperity chanting. There was the beginnings of New Age philosophy with theories of healing and medicine outside traditional "Western" pharmacology. All these new ideas competed for the attentions of young people, especially those adrift in confusing cultural times.

The dark side of all this is undeniable. When I was in junior high school my best friend John went off on a picnic with a group--maybe they were Moonies--who offered him an afternoon of food and fraternization. We didn't see him again for six months. When he returned he wouldn't talk about what happened, but he was changed and brooding. The religious cults had a predatory aspect, requiring their devotees to change their behaviors and their lifestyles. In some cases this turned devotees into beggars, like the Hare Krishnas haunting the airports giving out "free" books and then demanding a donation. Other cults turned into tragedies, like the hundreds of poor people who moved to Guyana to build a new world with the People's Temple who ended in an orgy of mass suicide and murder.

But it wasn't all mind control: in those innocent days nobody followed an alternate spiritual path or joined a cult for negative reasons, they did so out of hope, out of the desire to be spiritually uplifted and fulfilled; out of the desire to find like-minded people with whom to share, to celebrate, to build, to learn, to teach. Which brings us to the music.

The music of this world of spiritual exploration in the 1970s is actually pretty awesome. It can be spiritually meditative or joyously upbeat. It crosses musical genres ranging from jazz to rock to folk to disco to funk. It's got a blissful positivity that I find inspiring: "free" is probably the word sung most by this diverse collection of spiritual optimists.

Several of the artists represented here might actually be considered representatives of "cults:" Ananta, Rasa and J.O.B. Orquestra were all adherents of ISKCON and their records were sold directly by Hare Krishnas. The People's Temple Choir song is from an album recorded several years before their emigration to Guyana. The bonus track recorded by George Harrison's London Ashram will be familiar to anyone who has ever seen Hare Krishna devotees chanting on the street. Some of the lyrics here are fascinating: JOB's "Dont Want That Illusion" is the most peculiar (anti) love song I've ever heard.

Other artists represented here were personal adherents of evangelical eastern religions: Turiyasangitananda Alice Coltrane, herself a swamini, or teacher, was a devotee of Swami Satchidananda (this is, by the way, one of her few recordings on fender-rhodes electric piano). Devadip Carlos Santana and Narada Michael Walden, the producer of the Don Cherry track here (himself a Buddhist), were devotees of Sri Chinmoy.

The remainder of the artists here are examples of how widespread the ideas preached by the cults became. I wasn't able to find evidence that members of Odyssey, Shanti, Seawind, Karma, etc. were actually involved in specific groups, but the content of these songs makes it clear these are all fellow travellers to this world. Perhaps the most strange of these is the track from the "mighty burner" Charles Earland which will change your opinion of him forever.

"Cult" is a word with terrible connotations. As someone who is himself a practitioner of a religion outside the mainstream, I choose to identify here with the people who are singing about their love of God, their hope for a better world, their joy at life, their mastery of the spiritual realms; and pull from these songs inspiration rather than doubt, and joy at revelation rather than fear of manipulation. Better this open celebration of life and spirit than the harsh dictates of many of today's right-wing fundamentalists. In a world of fanatical suicide bombers, communal and sectarian violence, churches mobilizing to deny rights to gays and immigrants, and self-righteous hypocrites preaching hellfire, the spirit of this "cult" music is refreshingly forward-looking and life-affirming.

I'm not gonna shave my head, renounce the world, and start chanting for money on the corner, but with music like this I'm sure gonna celebrate life a little more.

The originally posting, with track details and links to a download, can be found here.

Crossposting from Ile Oxumare: Galaxy Around Olodumare

Here's an essay, with a compilation, I posted on one of my music blogs earlier this year.



Where does it come from? What is the source of inspiration for the music we love? Those of us who speak about "spiritual jazz" or "cosmic jazz" what are we talking about: I mean if you play John Coltrane's "Ascension" backwards do you hear the Lord's Prayer or something? These are bigger questions than I can answer, but here's a contribution to the discussion.

In the traditional religion of the Yoruba peoples of West Africa, Olodumare is one of the names of God. Olodumare is found in the patterns of the natural world. By discovering these patterns, by finding one's own identity and destiny in these patterns and rhythms, adherents seek to live the best and most spiritually fulfilled life possible. Key to finding, experiencing and understanding these patterns are divination and music. Through music and divination it's seen as possible to petition the divine world for help and advice in the material world. Helping human beings along the way are the orishas, "gods" if you will, personified forces of nature and humanity that can guide, assist, and open--or close--the paths along the way. There's Obatala, the mountain orisha of wisdom and creativity. There's Yemaya, the ocean orisha of motherhood and familyhood. There's Ochun, the river orisha of love and money. There's fierce Chango, the thunder god of dance and power. There's Babalu Aiye, the orisha of sickness and health. There's Oxumare, the orisha of the rainbow. There's Elegba, the trickster orisha best invoked at the beginning of all undertakings who lives at all crossroads both real and metaphorical.

You're not interested in an obscure African religion? Well here's the thing. The religion of the Yorubas was brought to the new world in the bellies of slave ships. In some places like Cuba, like Brazil, it survived and metamorphosed into the religions of Santeria and Candomble. In Cuba, for example, the songs and rhythms of Yoruba religion gave birth to Afro-Latin jazz. It's plain to see in the instrumentation, the rhythms themselves, and in the occasional mysterious chant surfacing at some point of musical intensity. In other places, like the U.S., traditional African religion buried itself deeper in the subconscious. The Lutherans and the Episcopalians might sing some pretty hymns, but it's in the singing and footstomping and more ecstatic musicality of churches rooted in Black America that the rhythm, the divine pattern of Olodumare, survived.

One of the gifts of our current age is the accessibility of knowledge, and with this knowledge comes awareness, and with awareness comes incredible cross-polination of experience and ideas. Once upon a time--and not so long ago in a historic sense--in the US people had to play drums in secret, out in the woods, at night. No longer. Today everything is connected.

But if, in a much more secular world, the patterns are sometimes harder to see, it doesn't mean they're not there. Today we have space telescopes searching the stars for signs. And you know what they have found? The pattern. Ancient cultures revered the spiral as a mystical symbol: endowing tiny creatures like snails with spiritual meaning. Pretty interesting that those fancy telescopes show the stars themselves arranged in spiral galaxies of unconceivable enormity, eh? When you stare up at those amazing stars that sense of wonder that becomes a kind of spiritual reverence, that's the same moment that so-called spiritual jazz seeks to reproduce on a much smaller, more immediate scale.

Which brings us to this compilation.

These are songs (mostly but not entirely influenced by Latin jazz) bringing the pattern back around. The songs here all contain elements of traditional Yoruba religion--most filtered through its Cuban/American form; all are either instrumentally based in traditional sacred songs or contain vocal sections using Lukumi, the form of Yoruba language that survives in the new world.

This is not particularly roots music. These songs make use of all the evolved musical gifts: western harmonies, developed jazz rhythms and structures, and even an accessibility from funk and pop. The traditional marries the new, and the pattern survives, expanding and growing, like the spiral galaxy itself. The old deities of a traditional religion make new appearances as their names and prayers echo in a newly updated sound. This compilation is not meant to convert you to an obscure religion, but to give you a glimpse at the pattern that makes enjoyment of music a passion with an undeniably spiritual nature.

The title of this compilation takes its name from a composition (not included here) by Alice Coltrane, who spent her life looking for the pattern in her own way. The cover image is an antique wooden "Opon Ifa," or divination tray, from West Africa; the center cut away to reveal the stars.

If you like this music, click on the labels below for more compilations by me, and more music posted on this blog by some of these musicians. A majority of the songs here are taken from albums still in print, so if you like something you can also go out and buy it!

This compilation, with details of track listings and download links, can be found in its original posting here.