The Bombing

- The Very Best Of

Bost & Bim Reggae Remixes

(Beats Mob Records - 2009)

If you like reggae remixes, here are the masters of the game, French Bost & Bim, even better than Taggy Matcher, Mato or Grant Phabao. Their mixtapes serie, Yankees A Yard is already a must have. But The Bombing, their compilation of their best pop ans soul classics reggae remixes, is a pure killer. They took absolute masterpieces (Let's Get It On, Superfreak, I Want You Back, Ain't No Mountain High Enough and so on...) and succeed to remix them without sounding corny. Play any one of those tracks and you'll make any dancefloor going crazy. I just wonder where they found the acapellas to make all their remixes...

Tracklisting:

1- Marvin Star - Let's Get It On
2- Supa James - Superfreak
3- Little Stevie - For Your Love
4- Diana Supreme: My World Is Empty
5- Fabulous Five - I Want You Back
6- Little Stevie - Uptight
7- Marvin & Tammi - Ain't No Mountain High Enough
8- The Thieves - Message In A Bottle
9- John & Paul - Girl
10- Smokey Miracle - Tracks Of My Tears
11- Sista Janis - Mercedes Benz
12- Marvin Star - Sexual Healing
13- Diana Supreme - Baby Love
14- John & Paul feat. Ras Pidow - Because

__________________________

"Our meetings with foundation artists like Alton Ellis and Leroy Sibbles have helped us to understand a lot about the music"

Applications Open:

18th annual Minority Writers Seminar

(fully funded | US)

Deadline: 15 March 2013

March 15 is the deadline to apply for the 18th annual Minority Writers Seminar May 2-5 in Nashville.

"Experienced minority journalists receive intense training for writing opinion in a ‘boot-camp’ environment and hear presentations from nationally known speakers," said program director Tommy Denton, retired editorial page editor and past president of the Association of Opinion Journalists Foundation.

AOJ Foundation sponsors the highly successful seminar in partnership with the Freedom Forum Diversity Institute at Vanderbilt University.

Enrollment is limited to 12 minority journalists, including those who have been writing opinion less than two years. AOJ Foundation pays for lodging and food at the Seminar and reimburses up to $200 for transportation to and from Nashville.

Denton said the program’s purpose is to give minority journalists an opportunity to explore the nuts-and-bolts of opinion writing by attending simulated editorial board meetings and writing two opinion pieces that are critiqued by veteran opinion journalists on the faculty.

Andre Jackson, editorial editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who will join the faculty this year, said of his participation in the Seminar in 2008, “I will always be grateful to the Minority Writers Seminar for helping me quickly break through the mental challenge I faced as a newcomer to opinion writing — which was the need to actually insert opinions into my work. As the AJC’s Jay Bookman told me shortly after signing on, ‘You’re exercising a muscle you’ve never had to use before.’ ’’

FACULTY:

• Vanessa Gallman: Editorial page editor, Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky, former Seminar director, past president of AOJ and AOJ Foundation

• Andre Jackson: Editorial editor, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and AJC.com

• Chuck Stokes: Editorial/public affairs director for WXYZ-TV/Channel 7 in Detroit, past president of AOJ and AOJ Foundation

SPEAKERS:

• Dr. Sybril Bennett: Associate professor of journalism, Belmont University, two-time Emmy winning multimedia journalist

• Val Hoeppner: Manager of multimedia education, Freedom Forum Diversity Institute

• Rick Horowitz: Founder and “Wordsmith in Chief” of Prime Prose, Emmy-winning commentator for Milwaukee Public TV, former syndicated columnist

• Gene Policinski: Vice president/executive director, First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University, AOJ Foundation board member

• John Seigenthaler: Chair emeritus, The Tennessean, founder of First Amendment Center

CONTACT INFORMATION:

For queries: Joan Armour at joan@armour-armour.com

For submissions: via the online application form

Website: http://www.minoritywritersseminar.org/

 

CFP: Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies, “Under Fire” section

By Katie Reid on 26 February , 2013 

Critical Arts: south-north cultural and media studies
CALL for UNDER FIRE ARTICLES

The post-millennium world has seen a rapid escalation of violent conflicts in the Middle East, West, Central and some areas of Southern Africa, and ongoing civil wars and human rights abuses in a variety of other regions across the world. As a means to engage these developments, Critical Arts instituted a new Section, “Under Fire”.This is in keeping with its interpretation of cultural studies as a form of praxis, of experience, and of strategic intervention, in which individuals find themselves caught up in broader process over which they may have little or no control.

The aim of this section is to invite short (anything up to 2000 words) theorised autobiographies, authoethnographies, and dramatic narratives of what it is like living under fire, of the relevance of cultural studies in such circumstances, and how it could be deployed to challenge such conditions. The original Call emanated from a number of unsolicited submissions we had been receiving from colleagues in Palestine and Zimbabwe, letters from friends in Israel, and marginalised groups in South Africa, and from academics whose research and work is pilloried by hostile authorities. The exigencies of being under fire make it hard to find the discursive space in which participants can catch enough breath to speak the truths of their own participation:

·         When does a culture of resistance lose focus, becoming a culture of violence as an end in itself?
·         At what point can one recognize when legitimate defence against violence has suddenly become indistinguishable from the Warsaw Ghetto?
·         How can we turn war-talk into justice-talk, without provoking war-mongers to renewed efforts?
·         In a world with a global view of even the most local eruption of violence, how can those under fire on opposite sides of the street, the valley, the river, the sand dune find enough space to escape the solidarities of occupation, of resistance, and develop a language of restitution, restoration, Reformation, in the face of corporate and state reaction?
·         Closer to our sites of research, when does academic managerialism and bureaucratisation of research become offensive, anti-humanist and self-destructive? The academic enterprise is under fire itself, as are many employed within it.

“Under Fire” hopes to become such a space, and we do not expect to define what will make submissions acceptable or not. The object is for those who have had enough, to speak in the ways they believe those across the camp or the river might attend to them. The “Under Fire” submissions should reflect not just the pressures of a personal involvement within a context of oppression, occupation, or resistance; it should carry a clear indication of just how this involvement tests the cultural studies tradition. In this “test” the writers’ experience must draw not only on the cultural studies method of examining texts and contexts, but should also use the writer’s own context as the critical touchstone for pushing the cultural studies envelope.

Submission Guidelines:

Submissions should be made online via ScholarOne Manuscripts at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rcrc (in cases where internet connectivity is not conducive to a ScholarOne submission, we will still accept manuscripts submitted via email to the Critical Arts office. Send to Kieran Tavener-Smith at criticalarts@ukzn.ac.za and/or editor-in-chief, Keyan Tomaselli, at tomasell@ukzn.ac.za ).

Submissions should be original works not simultaneously submitted elsewhere, if up to 2000 words in length including any references. Referencing should be done according to the Chicago manual of style.

Critical Arts URLs:
Author Services:
http://journalauthors.tandf.co.uk/

Critical Arts Home Page:
http://ccms.ukzn.ac.za/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=151&Itemid=87

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/rcrcauth.asp

eJournals Archive (1980-1992):
http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/africanjournals/

Deadline: 10 March 2013

Woman Scream International Poetry Festival is part of the social mission of the Woman Poets International who also works towards the recognition of unknown talented women poets through their various activities, joint projects, and social networks. The MPI has the support of several cultural and literary institutions of importance that are partners of the events in various countries and cities.

Woman Scream includes activities such as conferences, exhibitions, outdoor activities, poetry readings, contests, and more. The various activities will involve men and women poets’ good-will ambassadors of the MPI movement in different countries and the collaboration of institutions, cultural groups, musicians, and artists who support this beautiful solidary work.

In 2013,Woman Scream is in its third year. Lesotho joined this global event in 2012 by organising a one day event, debate session and online publication of Woman Scream poems.

The festival happens through out the month of March in all participating countries and blogs. The focus of the festival is to celebrate women and castigate gender-based violence. Poems and other material submitted should be centered around both themes,that is they can be written around one theme or both.

In the case that an event can’t be organised Woman Poets International has given the administrators of Poetry Farm permission to publish poems and other material to continue the initiative online.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

Poems, tracks, essays, articles and othe material submitted should be

• Original work

• Aligned with the theme(s)

• Of any length

• Sent via mail to sechabalb@gmail.com

• Bear details of the author; full names and one social network username (if available) or blog/website address, download link (incase of tracks)

• Composed in Sesotho or English (or both)

CONTACT INFORMATION:

For queries/ submissions: sechabalb@gmail.com

Website: http://sechabalb.wordpress.com, http://www.womanscream.blogspot.com/

 

New Hip Hop Song

feat AshEl & Sticman

of dead prez

Smashes the Food Industry

I love when Hip Hop artists do songs like this.. The beat is hitting. The lyrics are on point.. The concept is scorching.. What a great way to talk about the evils of the Food Industry.. This song called ‘Food Fight‘ comes courtesy of Oakland artist AshEl “Seasunz” Eldridge of Earth Amplified and Sticman of dead prez/RBG..I like how these cats flip the script and make u wanna put down any and all junk food with this song.. There hasn’t been a food justice song this good since ‘Beef’ by KRS-One.. and dead prez‘s Be healthy

Maybe our good friends at the NAACP who went out and supported Monsanto when Prop 37 came up on the Cali ballot which would require food companies to label all GMO foods, should see this video.. Mad Props

 

 

KRS-One Beef

 

Dead prez Be healthy

 

Melissa Jeltsen 

melissa.jeltsen@huffingtonpost.com

 

 

HUFFPOST REPORTS

-->

Mona Eltahawy,

Egyptian-American Activist,

On The Power Of Protest

Posted: 02/16/2013

 

Egyptian-American journalist and activist Mona Eltahawy.

Mona Eltahawy meets me in Harlem at one of her favorite bars, the place she goes to watch and enthusiastically live-tweet soccer matches. We sit outside and keep our jackets on. Hers is a bright coral pink, as is her hair. The Egyptian-American writer tells me it’s a deliberate choice. “My nieces love pink and they're both fierce girls, so I love the idea of co-opting pink from princesses to protests,” she says.

In the U.S., Eltahawy is currently one of the most prominent female voices speaking out on the contemporary Muslim world. She juggles many titles: Feminist. Award-winning writer. Media personality. And a new label she’s only recently felt comfortable adopting -- activist.

Not surprisingly given her high profile, she’s become a polarizing figure among foreign policy wonks and journalists. Some are uncomfortable with the self-given authority with which she speaks on the subject of Muslim women. Former Bush administration speech-writer Joshua Treviño has called her “not that bright.” Or the classic putdown for outspoken women -- she’s crazy. Another knock on her: She never shuts up. As journalist Jeremy Scahill memorably tweeted: "I think Mandela talked less about his 27 years in prison than @monaeltahawy has about her 22 hours in a holding cell."

In her most recent exploit to upset the Twitterati, Eltahawy was arrested last September for vandalizing an anti-Islam subway sign in New York City that compared Muslims to “savages.” Critics on the left and right pounced, chiding her for breaking the law and disrespecting the First Amendment. A month later, when asked about the incident, Eltahawy sighs.

“Hate crimes against Muslims have tripled since 2010, and we on the left are sitting here arguing over vandalism,” she says, shaking her pink curls. (Eltahawy is 45, but looks about a decade younger. She credits her Egyptian blood.) “This idea that’s there’s only one way to protest inequality is just ridiculous. There’s a spectrum of protest. People have to protest in the best way that suits their conscience and principles.”

Days after her arrest, the very real consequences of anti-Muslim sentiment were brought violently home: Eltahawy’s brother’s local mosque in Toledo, Ohio, was set ablaze. According to the FBI press release, the man muttered “[expletive] those Muslims,” while he was being booked.

“If you don’t connect the dots between hate speech and hate crimes, like that mosque burning, nothing will change,” Eltahawy says. “Right now, it’s socially unacceptable to be overtly racist against blacks unless it happens to be against the president, but it remains socially acceptable to be racist and bigoted against those who are Muslim or who look like Muslims, which are basically brown people.”

She admits that the haters, especially on Twitter, sometimes get to her. “When you need to go out there and fix shit in the world, Twitter can be awful,” she says. “There’s so much bullying. The whole point of Twitter is to give everyone a voice.”

* * * * *

Eltahawy, who was born in Egypt, began her career as a traditional news reporter in the Middle East, writing for Reuters, The Guardian and the International Herald-Tribune. In 2000, she moved to the United States and became a naturalized citizen.

But her career path changed direction after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Confronted with a country suddenly hostile to Muslims, Eltahawy quit reporting to become an opinion writer. Freelancing for The Washington Post, she drew attention to the post-9/11 treatment of Muslim-Americans, including her brother, a cardiologist living in Michigan who was subjected to special registration as part of the Patriot Act. “9/11 killed objectivity for me,” she says.

When I met Eltahawy, she was readying to move back to Egypt, now in the process of building a democracy after the ouster of long-time dictator Hosni Mubarak.

“It was something I dreamed of all my life,” she says. “I had to go.”

Eltahawy rolls up her sleeves so I can see her forearms.

In November of 2011, months after Mubarak was removed from power, she traveled to Egypt and was on the front lines of the clashes between protesters and the military. The country was again embroiled in protests to ensure the demands of the revolution -- economic justice and civil and political rights for Egyptians -- were fulfilled. Infuriated by the army's attempts to delay the political transition to civilian rule, protesters re-occupied Tahrir Square. Dozens were killed in a bloody crackdown.

On Mohamed Mahmoud Street in Cairo, Eltahawy was arrested. She was beaten and sexually assaulted by riot police, and her arm and wrist were broken.

After three hours in detention, she was able to surreptitiously borrow a phone and tweet what had happened: "Beaten arrested in interior ministry." Within an hour, her tweet reverberated around the world. #Freemona trended. The U.S. State Department got involved and after 12 hours of detainment, Eltahawy was let go -- battered, broken and utterly defiant.

“Something snapped in me then,” Eltahawy says. “Looking back now, especially at what’s happened over the past year, the writing just became not enough.”

After her arms healed, she got a tattoo of Sekhmet, the fierce ancient Egyptian goddess of retribution on one forearm. With the head of a lion, “she’s not a bullshit goddess,” Eltahawy says. She plans to get the name of the street she was attacked on and the words for freedom in Arabic tattooed on the other arm.

“I’m not emotionally healed from what happened to me,” she says.

Since the assault, Eltahawy has acquired a new interest: poetry. She reaches into her bag and pulls out The Captain's Verses, a collection of poems by Pablo Neruda. Flipping through the pages, she points out some of her favorite poems. “Pablo Neruda, he was political and personal. He was very much of the revolution,” she says.

This is new for her, reading poetry. Nowadays she doesn’t leave the house without it.

“I need joy in my life. I’ve been through a difficult time,” Eltahawy says. “The revolution has to be about joy, otherwise it’s not a revolution worth having.”

Eltahawy’s first big article after the attack, provocatively titled "Why Do They Hate Us?" was a brutal indictment of misogyny in the Middle East and ran on the cover of Foreign Policy’s "Sex" issue.

In it, she railed against a culture of discrimination against women in many Arab countries, citing female genital mutilation, so-called "virginity tests," child marriage, sexual harassment, domestic violence and the inability of many women to dress, travel, marry or divorce freely.

Framed as “men vs. women” the piece ignited a firestorm of criticism. Eltahawy welcomed the backlash. “I wrote that piece very angrily because it was the first one I wrote with all 10 fingers and it hurt like hell,” she says. “I was in a lot of pain. And a lot of anger. And a lot of emotional trauma. It was very personal and political. And I wrote it to provoke.”

The sensational artwork accompanying the story didn’t help. An image of a naked woman slathered in black paint, invoking a burka, graced the cover.

Some critics worried that Eltahawy minimized a complex issue by writing in such broad strokes. “Eltahawy entirely neglects the socioeconomic roots of gender inequality, the rise of authoritarian regimes in a post-colonialist context, the remnants of dehumanization and oppression from colonialism, the systematic exclusion of women from the political system or those who are used as convenient tools for the regime,” opined Moroccan-American writer Samia Errazzouki on Al-monitor.com. “There is more to gender inequality than just ‘hate.’”

American essayist Katha Pollitt defended Eltahawy for her blunt tone in an email. “The great feminists of history have not been reluctant to call men out—Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Cady Stanton,” Pollit wrote. “There is a place for a firebrand, for someone who just cuts to the chase and says the way women are forced to live in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen is crap. It's refreshing to read an article that doesn't make all the nods in every direction to ward off accusations from nationalists, religious, other activists, etc.”

She commended Eltahawy for asking why men were so stuck on controlling women, especially women’s sexuality. “I actually thought Mona's question was a good one: 'Why Do They Hate Us?' Unfortunately, she didn't answer it.”

Eltahawy is telling me about her plan to turn her Foreign Policy essay into a book when she’s interrupted, mid-sentence, by a young man who has come off the street. “Are you Mona?” he asks shyly. “I’m a huge fan of yours.” Reshwan, 24, a Pakistani living in Harlem, thanks her profusely for her work standing up for women’s rights. “I really appreciate what you do,” he says. “Really. Thank you.”

He ambles off down the street and Eltahawy looks a bit startled.

“This is why I’m going,” she says. “The fight for women’s rights, secularism, sexual freedom, individual freedom, that’s the fight that people are fighting bravely that I want to join.”

Since the revolution, women’s rights in Egypt have not improved, she says.

Egypt's constitution, roundly criticized for excluding women’s rights, was signed into law by President Mohamed Morsi in late December.

“We have a president from an ideological background that doesn’t believe in equality for women," she says.

“But what has changed is women’s ideas and society-at-large ideas about what women can achieve,” she says. “You can’t undo the sight of millions of women in the street as part of the revolution, you can’t forget that, you can’t tell women that you weren’t a part of this.”

* * * * *

Since our meeting, Eltahawy has traveled to Egypt twice. Her last visit coincided with the second anniversary of the uprising that ousted Mubarak, and was marred with reports of rampant sexual assaults on female protesters.

In an email, Eltahawy wrote that the assaults were obvious attempts to terrorize women out of participating in protests.

She lamented the lack of public outrage over the attacks. "A 19-year old was raped with a blade, for f***'s sake! What will it take to tip Egypt over that edge of enough?! We're not yet at the Delhi moment where we saw thousands upon thousands protesting that horrific gang rape."

Still, Eltahawy said she was encouraged to see grassroots groups fighting on the ground to keep women safe.

"It's a confusing and depressing time in Egypt right now but I can't imagine it being anything but confusing and depressing just two years into it," she wrote. "I'm struggling to stay optimistic -- and I heard many of my friends there say the same -- but it would be the ultimate betrayal of Egypt and the revolution to give that optimism up.

"Here's to rage and disobedience on a mass scale."

__________________________

The enduring controversy around

Egyptian-American activist

Mona Eltahawy

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o Unbowed

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o /Photo©GARY CALTON

A scathing critic of Kenya's post-independence political elite, author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o was imprisoned for his views. Four decades later and on the eve of Kenyan elections, Ngũgĩ talks to The Africa Report about politics, democracy and his life's work.

In 1968, the British charity Save the Children commissioned film-maker Ken Loach to make a documentary on its work in Kenya.

But Loach, already making a name for himself as a leftist film-maker, turned the project into a sharp critique of capitalism, neocolonialism and the darker side of philanthropy.

imagination is not only possible through English, French or European languages

It featured commentaries from young Kenyans including writer James Ngũgĩ and his university colleague Ben Kantai, who pointed out the contradictions of white capitalist privilege in a country happy to open its doors to Western investment even as its working classes remained mired in colonial-era squalor.

The film was eventually canned and remained on the shelves of the British Film Institute for the next 43 years until it was at last shown in 2011.

Ngũgĩ, who later changed his name as a rejection of colonialism, appeared determined to profane the official narrative of newly independent Kenya, a country that opted to go West in its search for development, disregarding the brutal liberation war that had raged barely a decade before.

In 1968, Ngũgĩ had just published A Grain of Wheat, his searing critique on the betrayal of the independence struggle by the elites around founding-president Jomo Kenyatta.

He was, going by the running commentary on Kenya in the Loach documentary, already organising the ideas that would lead him to Petals of Blood (1977), and detention soon after it was published.

To assess the import of the commentary in the Loach film, one must appreciate the youthful courage it took to confront the Kenyatta dictatorship, where a surveillance state would use detention by decree, assassinations, disappearances, financial inducements and personal economic sanctions to silence dissenting voices.

Unable to silence Ngũgĩ, the Kenyan dictatorship would then run him into exile in Europe and the United States from the early 1980s.

Unbowed, Ngũgĩ has, over the intervening decades, widened his critique of the post-colonial situation, seeing it as a condition from which the oppressed can only achieve liberation by taking control of their own narrative.

In 1983, his breakthrough book-length essay Decolonising the Mind advocated the rejection of colonial languages as a means to freedom.

Panned at home by the middle-class elite – the products of the West's economic engineering project – Decolonising the Mind nevertheless gained cult-like status abroad.

From South Africa to Scotland, among the Maori in New Zealand and beyond, the prospect of the post-colony writing to and about itself in its own tongues fired the imaginations of writers, students and activists.

Now 74 and living in California, Ngũgĩ stands at some remove from the Kenya he has prophesied about during his 50-year literary career.

The 1960s critique has held true: the Western-backed project to create a middle class, while celebrated by the neo-liberals, exists alongside an ever-widening gulf between rich and poor.

Ngũgĩ's endorsement of Mwai Kibaki in 2007 surprised many, as it appeared to have been motivated by ethnic concerns, with Ngũgĩ seeming to have strayed markedly from the left-nationalist championing that had defined his writings.

Five years later and on the eve of an election as potentially disruptive as the last, Ngũgĩ now seems to have become more circumspect.

What are your own hopes and expectations for the March election?

NGŨGĨ WA THIONG'O: I hope that it will be peaceful. I'm not worried that there are many views in a country or political parties. I have no problem with that. As long as the process of voting and counting votes is open. Let people choose in a manner that is apparent.

Would it be fair to say that strengthening the Independent Electoral Commission would be key to strengthening Kenyan democracy?

We could strengthen the commission but we also need to enrich the culture. Not just democracy but the culture of democracy has to be part of our system. Government and power comes from the people and should be used for the people. Power is not there for the leaders. That notion could be very, very important when it becomes ingrained in the minds of African people.

There have been many developments in Kenyan democracy in recent years. There has been a new constitution for example. Is that something you are satisfied with?

The new constitution is the right thing, but it's only a beginning. It's a protection of very important words. But the life contained in those words has to be lived, the constitution has to be a living document. If we see it as just a beginning, we shall be all right. But if we see it as the end, then it's useless and it won't solve our problems.

You've been described as a pioneer of indigenous African literature. How do you feel about that?

I'm not really a pioneer, I'm part of the process. The debate between writing in European languages or writing in African languages goes way back to South Africa in the 1930s and 1920s. There was a lot of debate already then about writing in African languages. One of the most important African scientists and historians, Cheikh Anta Diop, talks quite strongly about the need for intellectual production in African languages. So you could argue that I was only taking up the baton in a race that was already on the road long before I came into it.

Rabindranath Tagore said of Bengali: "The language wasn't there, I had to invent it." Was this the same for you in Gikuyu?

Writing for me has been a kind of adventure: it has been discovering my language again and discovering its possibilities and its limitations. Some of its limitations are that the Gikuyu language has not always been in use. I have problems when discussing scientific matters such as astronomy or exploration of the moon. This is where the issue of coinage and borrowing comes in. If you find that you don't have, for example, a word for a newly discovered star, you find you utilise a word that is used in English or any other language. You wrestle with words and ideas, and wrestling with words and concepts is good for the language.

There seems to be an inherent contradiction in the way that Western institutions approach African literature, a colonial vanity whereby English, French and Portuguese publishing houses opt mainly for authors writing in European languages while preaching that they want to promote indigenous literature. Should African studies departments change their approach to how they understand African literature?

Obviously. The colonial powers ruled through French, English and Portuguese, and they've continued that after independence. We didn't question the fundamentals of the colonial policy, we simply nationalised them – we called them African overnight. They were suddenly really African languages. What we really need is an alliance between good government policy, writers taking the pen and writing in African languages and publishers willing to publish African languages. The institutions that say they support African literature must stop saying that imagination is only possible through English, French or European languages.

You've faced many well-documented security issues. Do you continue to face security threats?

It's just part of the occupational hazard, it's not a particular African problem. Throughout history writers have been burned on the stake. Even in the Old Testament, many of the prophets got into problems because of words. Many had to flee. Why? Because of words. I want the word to be respected and be given the freedom of operation●

‘Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.’ ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

__________________________

>via: http://cartoonpolitics.tumblr.com/post/43725860992

Donald Byrd, Live at Montreux July 5, 1973

 

February 25 2013

As a special tribute to this Jazz Immortal and as a gift to the legions of aficionados who, like all of us at Blue Note Records, treasure the music he's left behind, we are honored to present - for the first time - Donald Byrd, Live at Montreux from July 5, 1973.

As teenagers in Detroit during the 1960s, my friends and I regarded Donald Byrd with the same lofty respect reserved for other hometown musical heroes like Smokey Robinson, The MC5, Elvin Jones, Mitch Ryder, Aretha Franklin and John Lee Hooker....they were all amazing artists who were changing the face of music by exporting the sounds of our city to the rest of the world. The music of Donald Byrd was ubiquitous back then...cats like the legendary Motor City jazz disc jockey, Ed Love, would hit tracks like "Nai Nai" from "Free Form" and "Christo Redentor" from "A New Perspective" on a nightly basis...Later on, in the 1970s, Mr. Byrd started adding a healthy dose of Detroit-style funk to his records and his innovative music could be heard blasting out of dashboard mounted 8 track players and back seat subwoofers all over town...He was a Motor City Trumpet Revolutionary and his timeless music will never be forgotten.

Shortly after Mr. Byrd's passing on February 4th, we got an email from the noted British music icon, Gilles Petersen, inquiring about a legendary performance from 1973's Montreux Jazz Festival. Blue Note's Curator-In-Chief, Michael Cuscuna, told us that it had, indeed, been recorded and subsequently mixed for release by Bob Belden in 1999. Inexplicably, it has remained hidden in the Blue Note vaults - until now. The tapes are wonderful and reveal a far more raw and gritty side to Donald Byrd's 70's music than his studio recordings might suggest....

As a special tribute to this Jazz Immortal and as a gift to the legions of aficionados who, like all of us at Blue Note Records, treasure the music he's left behind, we are honored to present - for the first time - Donald Byrd, Live at Montreux from July 5, 1973.

 

—Don Was
President, Blue Note Records

Personnel:
Donald Byrd, Trumpet, Fluegelhorn, Vocals; Fonce Mizell, Trumpet, Vocals; Allan Barnes, Tenor Sax, Flute; Nathan Davis, Tenor Sax, Soprano Sax; Kevin Toney, Electric Piano; Larry Mizell, Synthesizer; Barney Perry, Electric Guitar; Henry Franklin, Electric Bass; Keith Killgo, Drums, Vocals; Ray Armando, Conga, Percussion.

 

__________________________

Donald Byrd/Nathan Davis

in Montreux (1973)