When discussing the annals of American cultural history it seems that conversation tends to move right over the Black Arts Movement. In terms of a collective and conscious set of artistic and political ideals, its almost like it never happened. Despite the enduring influence many literal and ideological members of the movement still hold unto today, nostalgia for collective Black American cultural movements skips from the Harlem Renaissance to the opening stages of Hip Hop. But how many people have been directly impacted by Ntozaghe Shange, Amiri Baraka, Don Lee and the legion of poets, artists, musicians, dramatists, novelists and cultural thinkers of the mid 60’s to mid 70’s? A great deal I would guess. In fact, some would say that the energy that drove the Black Arts Movement is the foundation for today’s dominant form of cultural expression. And this is what makes the lack of recognition and respect for such an important cultural phenomenon odd indeed.

Mwalim (Morgan James Peters, I), the award-winning performing artist, writer, filmmaker, and Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth weighed in on the subject. And through his good graces, Nat Creole offers his essay Urban Expressionism: The Roots and Influences of Modern Urban Rituals in a two part series. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

Part I. The Black Arts Movement: The underpinnings of Urban Expressionism

It was November of 2001 at an artist’s round-table at the Afrikan Poetry Theatre in Queens, NY that I heard poet/ author/ vocalist/ organizer/ educator, Ola Jendai describes the work of this generation of conscious Black artists as ‘Modern Urban Rituals.’ It is the common aesthetic properties of this loosely associated school of contemporary, socially conscious Black spoken-word artists and dramatists (including Latino and Native American people of African ancestry) that I began referring to as Urban Expressionism in 1997. While critics treat the works of this era as if they are a disconnected, phenomenon of the hip-hop generation, it can be seen that Urban Expressionisms cultural ideologies, practices and socio-political philosophies are rooted in those of the Black Arts Movement (BAM).

In an article “Black Creativity: On the Cutting Edge” (Time October 1974) Henry Louis Gates dismissed BAM as the “shortest and least successful” movement in Black American cultural history. However, it can be demonstrated that Urban Expressionism is not only an expansion of the BAM, but dramatists and spoken-word artists of the Urban Expressionist School are in fact a new generation of BAM artists, with the aesthetic, cultural and ideological principles passed directly from one generation to the next.

BAM, which was primarily rooted in the Black communities of New York City, was the aesthetic companion to the Black Power Movement of the mid 1960s, where poetry, drama, music and visual arts were used to propagate the movement’s nationalistic social, political and economic agenda. According to Harold Cruse in The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, the Black Arts Movement distinguished itself from previous eras and movements in the arts of Black people in America, the Black Arts Movement came with a social agenda.

The new mission of Black theatre came with three basic objectives: 1) Creating institutions within the Black community, for the development and presentation of theatre artists as well as works in drama and literature, by, for, and about Black people. 2) Creating a composite cultural language, rooted in an Afrocentric perspective (i.e., the Black Aesthetic) of Black people in America, speaking to the social and political realities of Black people in America, as opposed to creating works according to the Eurocentric values as with previous movements and eras. 3) Creating works that would impact the social and political perspectives of future generations of Black people in America.

While the movement itself only lasted from 1965 to 1975, the influence of the agenda articulated within this movement on subsequent artistic movements within the tradition of Black Theatre and oral traditions is apparent and indelible.

Although BAM involved a canon of middle-class, mostly male, English speaking African American artists and intellectuals based in New York City, and Urban Expressionism encompasses a wider representation of post African Diaspora cultures, languages and dialects based in several cities throughout the USA, much of the common ideological, stylistic and thematic structure and content of Urban Expressionism has evolved from those identified by such Black Arts Movement scholars and critics as Kalamu ya Salaam, Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal and Askia Muhammad Touré. The Black Arts Movement in particular was the era of “A New Breed” (Neal, “Visions”, p. 20) of Black artists, who rejected European American standards and aesthetic values in favor of a more Afrocentric celebration of their African heritage and Black American experiences and culture.

Previous to the BAM, most theatre in the Black community consisted of white plays with all Black casts, or plays about Black people written for white audiences, produced under the auspices of white patrons. As a grass-roots movement, BAM artists were behind the continuation of existing Black theatres and institutions in the Black community, such as the Hadley Players in New York and the Karamu Theatre in Cincinnati; as well as the formation of many new organizations, such as the National Black Theatre, Negro Ensemble Company, Frank Silvera Writer’s Workshop and New Federal Theatre in New York, New African Company in Boston, Kuntu Repertory Theatre in Pittsburgh, and the Arena Players in Washington DC.

Whereas the average life of a theatre company is three years, over 30 years later, all of the aforementioned organizations and institutions still exist, and are responsible for the initial training and professional experiences of approximately 80% of the Black theatre, television and film artists in the industry today, including the writers of the Urban Expressionist’ school. Hence, BAM’s first objective was met.

While some critics have dismissed the work of dramatists and spoken-word artists as ‘Agit Prop’ (agitation propaganda), closer examination reveals that dramatists, poets and theater artists of the BAM began experimenting with rituals, festivals, languages, clothing, music, social customs, and approaches from various African cultures, combining them with Black American folk traditions and eastern European influences, created a new paradigm. Through allegory, metaphor and African influenced performance-rituals, Black dramatists and spoken-word artists explore and support the social, political, economic, and cultural experiences and ideologies of their times.

It can be seen that those movements are more empirical outgrowths of previous landmark eras. African ritual, folklore and storytelling styles are also staples in the cultural language of Urban Expressionism. Terms, concepts and traditions used today in Black theatre and literature, such as griot, Kwanzaa, the Nguzo Saba, the invoking of ancestors and pouring libations at the opening of a show, the inclusion of African-influenced dance, music, and rituals in plays that are not musicals were all introduced during BAM. Thus, the second objective was reached.

As BAM artists moved out of New York and settled in other urban areas around the country, the new breed that Neal speaks of are the present day elders, teachers, legends and influences of this generation. BAM artists and intellectuals became the faculty of Black Studies programs throughout the country, directors, artists and instructors in their own arts institutions. BAM artists also allied themselves with socially conscious dramatists and poets of Africa, the Caribbean and South America as well, deepening the Pan African link. It was the BAM era that gave the arts and literature of Black people in America an otherwise nonexistent legitimacy among Black artists and intellectuals of other countries. As a result, the philosophies, and practices of BAM artists were passed on to a new generation, including Black people of other countries and cultures, thus reaching the movement’s third objective.

The post BAM, multi-award-winning dramatist August Wilson, co-founder of the Kuntu Writer’s Workshop, has consistently exemplified answering these objectives in the development of his plays, providing opportunities for many black theatre professionals, as well as his late 1990s proposal for an African Grove Theatre Institute, dedicated to the preservation, continuation, development and presentation of the Black Theatre tradition. His detailing of this agenda included the aforementioned objectives. This initiative on Wilson’s part was mainstream Black artist’s demonstrated commitment to the BAM agenda.

Nuspirit Helsinki
Nuspirit Helsinki
2002 Guidance Recordings

Alice Coltrane
Journey in Satchidananda
1970 GRP

Long before the Jungle Brother were housin' folks, the architects of what was to become known around the world as House music (or Garage for you non-septics) were deep in the lab retooling a dying Disco sound into a deeply danceable groove that would outlive its previous form. Sean Bidder, musicologist extradinaire , took it all in and put it down on paper. The result was Pump Up the Volume: A History of House Music, a loving retelling of how music becomes a phenomenon.

The roots to 1985

Like it or not, House was first and foremost a direct descendant of Disco. Disco had already been going for ten years when the first electronic drum tracks began to appear out of Chicago, and in that time it had already suffered the slings and arrows of merciless commercial exploitation, dilution and racial and sexual prejudice which culminated in the 'Disco Sucks' campaign. In one bizarrely extreme incident, people attending a baseball game in Chicago's Comiskey Park were invited to bring all their unwanted Disco records and after the game they were tossed onto a massive bonfire. Disco eventually collapsed under a heaving weight of crass disco versions of pop records and an ever-increasing volume of records that were simply no good. But the underground scene had already stepped off and was beginning to develop a new style that was deeper, rawer and more designed to make people dance. Disco had already produced the first records to be aimed specifically at DJs with extended 12" versions that included long percussion breaks for mixing purposes and the early eighties proved a vital turning point. Sinnamon's 'Thanks To You', D-Train's 'You're The One For Me' and The Peech Boys' 'Don't Make Me Wait', a record that's been continually sampled over the last decade, took things in a different direction with their sparse, synthesized sounds that introduced dub effects and drop-outs that had never been heard before.

But it wasn't just American music laying the groundwork for house. European music, spanning English electronic pop like Depeche Mode and Soft Cell and the earlier, more disco based sounds of Giorgio Moroder, Klein & MBO and a thousand Italian productions were immensely popular in urban areas like New York and Chicago. One of the reasons for their popularity was two clubs that had simultaneously broken the barriers of race and sexual preference, two clubs that were to pass on into dance music legend - Chicago's Warehouse and New York's Paradise Garage. Up until then, and after, the norm was for Black, Hispanic, White, straight and gay to segregate themselves, but with the Warehouse, opened in 1977 and presided over by Frankie Knuckles and the Garage where Larry Levan spun, the emphasis was on the music. (Ironically, Levan was first choice for the Warehouse, but he didn't want to leave New York). And the music was as varied as the clienteles – R&B based Black dance music and disco peppered with things as diverse as The Clash's 'Magnificent Seven'. For most people, these were the places that acted as breeding grounds for the music that eventually came to be known after the clubs - House and Garage.

Right from the start there was a difference in approach between New York and Chicago. "All of the records coming out of New York had been either mid or down tempo, and the kids in Chicago wouldn't do that all night long, they needed more energy" commented Frankie Knuckles after his move to Chicago. The Windy City was seduced to a far greater extent by the European sound and when the records started to come, it showed. Whereas garage in New York evolved more smoothly from First Choice and the labels Salsoul, West End and Prelude, there was no such evolution in Chicago. Opinions still differ as to what the first house record was, but it was certainly made by Jessie Saunders and it was on the Mitchball label - probably Z Factor's 'Fantasy', but there was also another Z Factor tune which went by the name of 'I Like To Do It In Fast Cars'. 'Fantasy' sounds extremely dated now but years ago it was like a sound from another planet, with echoes of Kraftwerk's heavily synthesized string sounds, a Eurobeat bassline and a simple, insistent drum machine pattern. Suffice to say, the record remained obscure outside the close-knit urban Chicago scene.

"Those records didn't really motivate people" says Adonis, one of the early producers on the Chicago scene. "The first was Jamie Principle's 'Waiting On Your Angel'. See, before there were records there were cassettes, and that was the hottest thing in Chicago. It was so hot Jessie Saunders went in and recorded that track word for word, note for note, and put it out on Larry Sherman's label Precision. It was so influential that four or five records came out that took its sounds. "Within a year though, others were fast joining. Saunders, who by then had come out with his Jes-Say label, with Farley Keith (or Farley 'Jackmaster' Funk) getting in on the act. Frankie Knuckles, who had already done some remixes for Salsoul was also beginning to work on his own productions. By 1985 it was clear that something big was beginning to stir. Ron Hardy, who was to become the backbone of the Chicago club scene by consistently breaking the new records, began playing at The Music Box around the same time Frankie Knuckles left The Warehouse, and other DJs like Farley and the Hot Mix 5 who threw down the mix shows on the radio station WBMX were making names for themselves. But making a record wasn't the priority for most of the DJs at the time - they were making music specifically to play at the clubs and the parties that were beginning to spring up in the city. Larry Heard and Robert Owens, later to be known as Fingers Inc, and Steve Hurley were all experimenting with basic rhythm tracks long before they made the jump to vinyl.

"I started dabbling in making my own music." says Hurley. "Just making tracks to play as a DJ, not really thinking as far as producing - more to do with just having something to play that nobody else had. And one of these tracks, 'Music Is The Key', got such a good response that I decided to borrow some money and go in with another guy, who happened to be Rocky Jones, and put the record out."

That momentous occasion was the beginning of DJ International Records, one of the two labels that was to give all the aspiring producers in the city a chance to get their music on to vinyl. The other, Larry Sherman's Trax Records was already up and running, though to begin with Sherman was attempting to break into a more commercial market with Precision. 'Music Is The Key' (the first house record to include a rap, incidentally) took house on a step by incorporating more musical elements and a vocal, and by the time Chip E's 'Like This', also on DJ International, appeared house had discovered real vocals and the sampled stutter technique that's such an integral part of dub remixes today. "It took a little while for the sound to develop" remembers London DJ Jazzy M, who worked in a record shop at the time and was one of the very first to get house on the radio in Britain with his immensely popular Jackin' Zone show on London pirate station LWR. "When 'Like This' and Adonis' 'No Way Back' came out, that's when it picked up. At first it was just drum machine programs and they were called trax, like there was Chip E Trax and Kenny Jason Trax and that's what house was, with maybe a few dodgy samples. I can remember talking to Colin Faver, who was one of the first DJs here to get into it, about 'Like This' and we were both really excited by it."

Meanwhile, things were gathering pace over in New York though the development was a lot slower. Mixers like Larry Levan, Tony Humphries, Timmy Regisford and Boyd Jarvis, who came straight after Shep Pettibone and Jellybean Benitez were making ground as remixers, and fired by the raw club sound of Colonel Abrams, the deep, soulful club sound that became known as garage was taking shape with early releases on the Supertonics, Easy Street and Ace Beat labels. Paul Scott was one of the first with 'Off The Wall' in 1985 but before that there was Serious Intention's deep dub classic 'You Don't Know' and even before that was World Premiere's 'Share The Night'.

to be continued...

For more on a history of House. Check out Sean Bidder at sean.bidder@vinylfactory.co.uk or, better yet, buy the book. House music all night long.

If Beale Street Could
Talk
James Baldwin
ISBN: 0-307-27592-0

the imazighen: the indigenous people of northern africa
farid abdi. images
c. nelson abdi. text

The following five photos were taken in 2006 in Morocco by Farid Abdi. They are part of a larger collection of the photographer’s work documenting the indigenous people of Northern Africa, called the Imazighen.

The Imazighen (translated as “free people”) live throughout North Africa, including the countries of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Mali, Mauritania and Libya. They speak a language called Tamazight but are distinguished by different customary dress, dialects and traditions. The Imazighen have struggled within the modern political contexts of colonialism and Arabization. In particular, the suppression of their native language by many of the governments within North Africa has reunited the Imazighen people to fight for recognition of their human rights.

The first photo, Third Eye, depicts a young boy in the town of Ouarzazate discovering the world of photography with one of Farid’s cameras.

The second photo was taken in the mountains of a young girl passing the day with her siblings and enjoying the interaction with people passing by in their cars on the small road in front of her home.