There Are 5,000 Janitors

in the U.S. with PhDs

 

BY KYLE VANHEMERT       OCT 22, 2010

There are 18,000 parking lot attendants in the U.S. with college degrees. There are 5,000 janitors in the U.S. with PhDs. In all, some 17 million college-educated Americans have jobs that don't require their level of education. Why?

The data comes from a the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and can be seen here in handy, depressing chart form:

 

At the Chronicle, where the above chart was posted, Richard Vedder argues that maybe we place too much importance on higher education, citing a new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research:

 

This week an extraordinarily interesting new study was posted on the Web site of America's most prestigious economic-research organization, the National Bureau of Economic Research. Three highly regarded economists (one of whom has won the Nobel Prize in Economic Science) have produced "Estimating Marginal Returns in Education," Working Paper 16474 of the NBER. After very sophisticated and elaborate analysis, the authors conclude "In general, marginal and average returns to college are not the same." (p. 28)

In other words, even if on average, an investment in higher education yields a good, say 10 percent, rate of return, it does not follow that adding to existing investments will yield that return, partly for reasons outlined above.

Whatever some eggheads work out "college" to mean for people on paper can't really take into account the experience of going to college, but the numbers are pretty surprising nonetheless. So next time you see a custodian scribbling the proof to some unsolvable math problem on a chalkboard after hours, well, you know. [Chronicle via Nick Bilton]

JUST DON'T CALL HER CHE

By WILLIAM MOSS WILSON

Published: January 28, 2012

 

 

Victor Ruiz Caballero for The New York Times

Camila Vallejo, vice president of the Student Federation of the University of Chile.

 

 

Santiago, Chile

LATE last month the British newspaper The Guardian asked readers to vote for its person of the year. The candidates included household names like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Egyptian techno-revolutionary Wael Ghonim and the Burmese pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. All placed far behind a striking, nose-ringed student from Chile named Camila Vallejo.

Though far from a familiar face in the United States, the 23-year-old Ms. Vallejo has gained rock-star status among the global activist class. Since June she has led regular street marches of up to 200,000 people through Santiago’s broad avenues — the largest demonstrations since the waning days of the Pinochet regime in the late 1980s. Under her leadership, the mobilization, known as the Chilean Winter, has gained nationwide support; one of its slogans, “We are the 90 percent,” referred to its approval rating in late September.

Ms. Vallejo’s charismatic leadership has led commentators to make the obligatory comparisons to other Latin American leftist icons like Subcomandante Marcos and Che Guevara. Yet “Commander Camila,” as her followers call her, has become a personality in her own regard. She skewers senators in prime-time TV debates and stays on message with daytime talk-show hosts hungry for lurid details about her personal life, while her eloquence gives her a preternatural ability to connect with an audience far beyond her left-wing base.

In perhaps the most poignant set piece in the year of the protester, Ms. Vallejo addressed a dense ring of photographers and reporters in August while kneeling within a peace sign made of spent tear-gas shells, where she calmly mused about how many educational improvements could have been bought with the $100,000 worth of munitions at her feet.

Ms. Vallejo, like many of her fellow student leaders, is an avowed communist. But while she has publicly commended other regional leftists like Presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia and Rafael Correa of Ecuador, she and her generation have little in common with the older left of Fidel Castro or Hugo Chávez. They are less ideological purists than change-seeking pragmatists, even if that means working within the existing political order.

Still, there’s no question that the movement is upending Chilean society. True, it is centered on a policy question, namely reforming an educational system that disproportionally favors the children of wealthy families. But the earth-shaking Paris protests in 1968 also began with calls for university reform — before spiraling into street battles between radicalized students and truncheon-wielding gendarmes, opposing symbols in the culture war between old and new France.

The same process is under way in Chile. As the protests increasingly devolve into rock and tear-gas exchanges between students and the police, it’s becoming clear that more than education policy is at stake: a nonviolent social revolution in which disaffected, politically savvy youth are trying to overthrow the mores of an older generation, one they feel is still tainted by the legacy of Pinochet. It is not just about policy reform, but also about changing the underlying timbers of Chilean society.

It’s no surprise that the movement should be led by someone as charismatic as Ms. Vallejo. Paris 1968 had its celebrity protesters, handsome faces that brought hundreds of thousands into the streets, photogenic young men like Jacques Sauvageot and Daniel Cohn-Bendit. Chile has Ms. Vallejo.

Chile is perhaps Latin America’s greatest success story. After decades of authoritarian rule, it has spent the last 20 years building a thriving economy with a renewed democratic culture and a booming, educated middle class. But it is also confronting a dangerous imbalance: While the liberalization of higher education has led to improvements in access, tuition has consistently outpaced inflation and now represents 40 percent of the average household’s income.

At the same time, protesters say that wealthy students from private and expensive, co-pay charter schools have unfair access to elite universities, while the rest struggle to meet entrance standards at under-financed public institutions.

Criticism of the university system has been growing for years, but it was only in April that, energized by protests against a dam in Patagonia, students finally took to the streets. The protests grew over the winter; by the first press conference held by the national confederation of student unions, known as the Confech, Ms. Vallejo had emerged as its leader.

Echoing 1960s street activism, the Chilean Winter dabbled in the absurd, but with a high-tech, social-media twist. Thousands gathered in front of the presidential palace in June dressed as zombies, then broke into a choreographed dance to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” In July, students again gathered in front of the palace for a huge “kiss-in.”

Though the ideas came, said Giorgio Jackson, former student president of Chile’s Catholic University, from “everywhere, absolutely every local space,” the movement’s success hinged on the leadership’s ability to channel such creativity while maintaining a unified front to government and the media. The organization used a Web site to gather ideas and disseminate content for placards and posters. And it has used Ms. Vallejo’s 300,000-plus Twitter followers to quickly initiate huge “cacerolazos,” a form of dictatorship-era protest where people walk the streets banging on pots and pans.

While they vow to continue until all their lofty demands are met, the students have already scored some political victories. The government’s proposed 2012 budget has a $350 million increase for higher education, with promises to finance scholarships for qualifying students from families up to the 60th percentile in household income. Meanwhile, the year began with the naming of Chile’s third education minister in six months.

It was only a matter of time, perhaps, before the movement’s focus on education began to broaden. As more support for the movement came from outside the universities, its interests changed accordingly. “This year we have already started talking about political reforms and tax reforms, and we think the students and youth in general play an important role in profound reforms in the country,” said Noam Titelman, the new student president at Catholic University.

Tax reform is, not coincidentally, now at the top of the government’s agenda. And rightly so: though it has one of the wealthiest economies in Latin America, Chile is the 13th most unequal country in the world.

“Something very powerful that has come out of the heart of this movement is that people are really questioning the economic policies of the country,” Ms. Vallejo said. “People are not tolerating the way a small number of economic groups benefit from the system. Having a market economy is really different from having a market society. What we are asking for, via education reform, is that the state take on a different role.”

The movement has also begun to spread regionally. Ms. Vallejo lent her star power to Brazilian student protests in August, while in November students demonstrated in France, Germany and several other countries in support of Confech’s Latin American March for Education.

“The student movement here is permanently connected to other student movements, principally in Latin America, but also in the world,” Ms. Vallejo said. “We believe this reveals something fundamental: that there is a global demand for the recovery and defense of the right to education.”

But the students clearly have a lot to learn about real-world politics. Ms. Vallejo and other student leaders spent weeks lobbying in Parliament, only to be left out of the final budget negotiations.

Frustration with Ms. Vallejo’s strategy propelled a rival leftist, Gabriel Boric, to challenge her in the latest round of student-government elections. On Dec. 7, national TV news crews lingered past 5 a.m. outside the University of Chile to cover a stunning defeat for the world’s most famous student leader.

Yet even in her early-morning concession speech, Ms. Vallejo claimed victory, recognizing that the movement was greater than any one figure. Indeed, her rise has barely broken stride. She just left for a speaking tour in Europe, while her first book, a collection of her speeches and essays from the last year, is rising through the best-seller ranks. And she is being heavily courted by the Communist Party to run at the top of its list for the Chilean Congress in the 2013 elections.

For all its recent stumbles, the movement’s prospects of getting a woman under 26 elected to Congress would help fulfill one of its underlying aims, to kindle young people’s interest in traditional politics. This may be Ms. Vallejo’s greatest contribution: to restore faith in a discredited system by showing a new generation that politics can be responsive to the people’s demands.

 

William Moss Wilson is a freelance journalist based in Chile.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 5, 2012

 

An earlier version of this article attributed an erroneous distinction to the Chilean economy. Though it is one of the wealthiest in Latin America, it is not nearly the largest; Brazil’s is.

Larger than life

and twice as grand:

Paul Robeson

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Annie Paul

I first heard about Paul Robeson in the mid 1980s when I acquired a copy of his autobiographical book Here I Stand. Reading this first person account from a veritable giant of a man filled me with awe; I was living in the United States then, actually on the campus of Rutgers University, the very university that he had won a scholarship to attend in 1915. Rutgers had only had two black students before Robeson.

At Rutgers Robeson became a national football superstar, and later, with his powerful baritone, an internationally renowned concert singer and actor perhaps best known for the song Old Man River. He was also an indomitable champion of equal rights for African-Americans as well as the oppressed anywhere, everywhere. Regularly invited to sing in different countries Robeson was the original citizen of the world, spending a lot of time in Europe, particularly in London and the former Soviet Union, a country he admired because it was a place “where coloured people waked secure and free as equals.”

Robeson would pay dearly for this during the McCarthy Era of the fifties when he was dragged before a congressional committee that grilled him about his ‘communist sympathies’. When the committee demanded to know why he had spent so much time in the Soviet Union Robeson retorted that it was because, “in Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being—no colour prejudice like in Mississippi, no colour prejudice like in Washington.“ Then why hadn’t he remained in Russia, why had he returned to the United States demanded a committee member.

Robeson’s answer was swift and impassioned.

Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay right here and have a part of it, just like you. And no fascist minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear?

Robeson’s defiance and refusal to bow earned him the revocation of his passport in 1950. Hard to believe that a mere 60 years ago such undemocratic behaviour was possible in the very United States that today champions human rights left, right and centre exporting so-called democracy worldwide at the tip of heat-seeking missiles if need be.  Not only were Robeson’s wings clipped, the powers that be also subjected him to slander campaigns and vicious disinformation so that his power to earn from concerts diminished and he became virtually invisible.

Lloyd L. Brown who wrote the preface to Here I Stand, ended by making the following observation:

…In Robeson’s case there can be no doubt that the ‘fascist-minded people’ whom he challenged did all they could to obscure the man and his message.

It can be expected, however, that the inquiring minds of the new generation will break through to the truth about him. Inevitably, like a mountain peak that becomes visible as the mist is blown away, the towering figure of Paul Robeson will emerge as the thick white fog of lies and slanders is dispelled. Then he will be recognized and honoured here in his homeland, as he is throughout the world, as Robeson, the Great Forerunner.

Remarkably that time seems to have come. As a recent press release from the US Embassy in Kingston, Jamaica detailed:

In early 2011, the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy in Kingston launched an essay competition among high school students to name the embassy’s Information Resource Center (IRC), in observance of Black History Month.  The aim of this competition was to have the IRC named after the historical figure selected in the winning essay.  The legendary Paul Robeson was the character highlighted in the winning essay which was entitled “The Soul of a Continent.”  The writer was Kathy Smith, then a Grade 13 student at Manchester High School in Mandeville, Manchester.  Ms. Smith is presently a first-year law student at the University of the West Indies.

On the morning of January 23, Ambassador Pamela Bridgewater, along with State Minister of Tourism and Entertainment Damion Crawford, Kathy Smith and Susan Robeson, unveiled at the entrance to the IRC, a plaque that bears the name “Paul Robeson Information Resource Center.  This was followed by a ceremony in the embassy atrium to officially name the IRC in honor of Paul Robeson.  The date for this event was set for January 23 because it coincided with the 36th anniversary of his death.  The occasion was also used as one of the many cultural activities to celebrate Jamaica’s 50th anniversary of independence.

The guest speaker was the award-winning U.S. documentary filmmaker and Chair of the Paul Robeson Foundation, Susan Robeson.  Ms. Robeson is granddaughter of the African American singer, actor, athlete and civil rights activist Paul Robeson.

Interestingly Paul Robeson actually gave a concert in Kingston on 19 November 1948. Unfortunately the sound system failed and the concert turned out to be a disaster with the stage collapsing from the crush of people who turned out to hear him and a few children getting killed in the melee. The occasion was documented by Edna Manley in her diaries:

Last night we went to hear Robson sing at the racecourse—the largest crowd we had ever seen. The sound system was hopelessly bad, and one could hear the words but the tone was hopelessly distorted—thousands of people heard nothing at all. The crowd was around seventy thousand. We were wading through the crowd to a spot where we could hear better, and the crowd around us, quite a small part of it, began to snowball behind us—so Norman stood still. It was terribly disappointing not to hear, and to feel the disappointment.

…went to the airbase to see Robeson go—he was in a terrible mood—savage over the failure of the ‘sound system’ and deeply hurt over the death of the child and injuries to the others. So typical of the Gleaner to headline the accident and give the type of presentation that almost made Robeson responsible for the tragedy.

Edna went on to note that Robeson subsequently phoned from New York asking Norman to contact the parents of the children who were killed and injured so that he could cover their hospital and funeral expenses.

Centre: Tayo Aluko with Barbara Gloudon, after performance of Call Mr. Robeson, Feb 4, 2012, Kingston

 

In celebration of Black History Month the US Embassy in Kingston put on two performances of “Call Mr. Robeson: A Life With Songs,” a one-man show written and performed by U.S. actor and singer Tayo Aluko.” I was privileged to attend the Saturday performance, last weekend, which was an intense and riveting enactment of one of the most extraordinary lives of the twentieth century.

The Paul Robeson Information Resource Centre has the most comprehensive collection of materials on Robeson in the Caribbean, along with many other valuable documentary resources, and is freely available to the public.

José James:

Unlocking the Code

He’s the man with the Glenlivet baritone; a refreshingly cold-to-the-touch vocal delivery that warms and inebriates each of his listeners and onlookers.  José James has known rivers, allowing his muse to guide him from his native Minneapolis, to Seattle, over to London, and has now found himself in Brooklyn. His albums, The Dreamer (2008), BlackMagic (2010) and For All We Know (2010) have been explorations in jazz, hip-hop and electronica, within all of which you can pinpoint his inspirations, which are about as varied as they might seem: John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, Ice Cube, J Dilla, Michael Jackson, Bobby McFerrin. He treats his albums like a child treats a shiny new Christmas gift, embracing, playing and mastering it until it’s time conquer the next toy, without so much as a backward glance. His forthcoming release, No Beginning No End, an exploration of soul, is just another block he walks in his metropolis of genre-shattering self-discovery.

Photo by Seher Sikandar

 

Your father was a multi-instrumentalist.  Did he have a hand in encouraging you to become an artist?

Not at all.  He really discouraged me from doing music because it’s such a hard profession.  I wanted to be a writer first; I didn’t get into music until I was 17.  The first big book I got into was “Dracula” by Bram Stoker.  Then it was James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, those kinds of authors.  I think their perspective of African-American culture and how music fits into that is really important.

Tell me about the music you grew up listening to as a kid.

My mom’s a big hippie so I heard Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell…I liked everything as a kid. I thought everything was good. But then I started getting into my own stuff, like Prince, and of course, Michael Jackson – Off The Wall, Bad and Thriller; those were the records that I bought, my vinyl.  And then CDs came in, in high school – I moved to Seattle for a while too – so Nirvana and the whole grunge thing was just popping off and that was cool. And then hip-hop just exploded; Cube’s The Predator; Beastie Boys’ Ill Communication, De La Soul is Dead and Buhloone Mindstate, A Tribe Called Quest, Rakim and Pharcyde, the Geto Boys, Cypress Hills and Digable Planets.  It was a great two year period for music back then.

That’s quite an eclectic array of music you came up on, but I couldn’t help but notice that you didn’t mention any jazz artists. When did jazz become part of your life?

It came later. I got introduced to Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker and Thelonius Monk later in high school. I think I heard some samples of Tribe’s stuff, and I was looking at [album] credits and checking out these names I never heard of. I didn’t know a lot about jazz. I just knew, like most people, the big names like Billie [Holiday], Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker. So I started with those people, not even albums, but samplers.

Most artists recall that 1^st jazz album they hear as being the spark for their musical ambitions. What was that record for you?

It wasn’t any one record, it was the whole thing. It was like walking into this room with all these superheroes, because everybody’s amazing. Everybody’s so killin’ on their instrument and all the sidemen and everything… I would go down the line and look who played piano on this. Ok, Sonny Clarke and then he’s got a whole wealth of material as a leader, and it just goes on and on and on. Max Roach, same thing.  It wasn’t really an album, it was more of the realization that there’s this whole world of music, and musicians and this treasure trove of art. Although I will say that Eric Dolphy’s Out to Lunch was a huge record for me. Coltrane had a huge impression on me as well.

When did you make the decision that music would in fact be your career choice?

I think I just wasn’t good at anything else [laughs]. I couldn’t play basketball; I wasn’t tall enough. There was nothing else I wanted to do really. So I started getting gigs and opportunities. I said “I really like this. Let me try it out.” Minneapolis is a really easy town.  It’s pretty cheap, the rent is cheap, it’s a good standard of living so it’s easy to be an artist there. So I just spent the next few years gigging, trying a lot of experimental stuff: theater, music, poetry, blending it all together. I did some solo shows because I was really influenced by Bobby McFerrin, who was living there too. He was the Artistic Director of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. I did a whole series of duo shows; me with a soprano sax, me with a piano, me with another singer, me with a drummer. And then I had my own band, it was a quintet.

 

 

How active were you in trying to obtain a record deal while you were in Minnesota?

I wasn’t really at the time. I was just enjoying the music. Really, I just wanted to buy more records [laughs]. I think it’s just different with jazz. Once you decide you’re going to do jazz, you realize it’s going to take you your whole life to do anything original and to get to a level that’s anywhere close to Ella, or Miles or any of these people, stylistically. I think anybody who thinks they’re, like, soaking in right away, is just not going to last long in jazz. It’s a whole different mindset.  I wasn’t thinking about making a record, because I didn’t have anything original to say. I just wanted to learn the standards, and that takes years of practice and jam sessions and buying real books and trying to figure out what people are doing. It’s like trying to unlock a code.

What motivated you to eventually pursue a recording contract?  Who were the people that made you feel you could succeed in that regard?

I think the signings that were happening in the ‘90s made it seem that there was more of a scene. All of the ‘young lions’ were going to sign; Roy [Hargrove], Christian McBride, and singers, you had Kurt Elling and Cassandra Wilson. Those were the two singers I followed in the ‘90s who were really out there, on Blue Note, doing some progressive work as singers; I thought it was pretty cool. I didn’t really want to be like them musically, but they were the two biggest examples of [jazz] singers in the ‘90s.

Is that why you came to New York to enroll in the New School For Jazz & Contemporary Music?

That’s where all the connections are basically. College is the only way to get into it if you don’t know anyone in New York. I didn’t really want to go to school, per se, and I only stayed a year. But I think you have to go to New York. That’s where all the musicians are. It’s better in Minneapolis, in terms of creativity; that’s really rewarded with tons of grants and funding, but in terms of having a career – getting any type of press, a label deal – you have to come to New York.

So how did your first recording deal finally happen?

I went to London for the 2006 International Vocal Competition, and I was one out of 10 singers, I think. I recorded an EP right before I went, which included “The Dreamer,” some other original stuff, some Coltrane pieces and I just gave it to a lot of people. I spent a whole week in London, met a whole bunch of people, and Gilles Peterson got a copy. He told me he was starting a new label, Brownswood, and asked would I want to sign. I was the third artist on that label.  I made The Dreamer [LP] saying that if I only make one record in my lifetime, I want to be able to stand by it for the rest of my life. That was my statement on jazz and music, and I think it’s my best record so far. It’s definitely my most complete statement on a personal artistic level.

 

 

The music on The Dreamer is very subdued and sensual in terms of both its music and your vocals.  Is sensuality a natural part of your artistry?

In terms of sensuality, I love Billie Holiday and Marvin Gaye. They were very “close-mic” singers, kind of whispering almost. The microphone is an instrument, and singers more than anybody use it in a different way. Billie Holiday couldn’t have existed as a singer in the jazz field without a microphone. Before her, everybody just sang with these huge voices and they didn’t need a mic.

After the all-out jazz recording of The Dreamer, you collaborated with Flying Lotus on Blackmagic.  What was it like being produced by him?

It was just natural.  I think his EP was out, Reset, and that was the first thing I heard and I loved the whole thing. He was in London and Gilles said ‘do you want to meet him’ and I said yeah. A couple days later, we just met and had a drink. I said I like your work, but I wasn’t thinking about working with him. I was cutting down tracks to get the 10 tracks that became The Dreamer. I had about 28 tracks that were done. I gave him all the tracks just to see what he thinks, and he really liked it and he said, “we should do something.”  Then, he was working on his Los Angeles album.  He wanted me to do this track called “Visions of Violet.”  That was our first connection.  He decided not to use it for the album and we just put it out on vinyl.  Actually, it was the B-side to “Park Bench People,” and people were like, ‘Yo, this is really dope.’  And we started making a lot of tracks for fun, basically.  After a couple, I realized, ‘this is a really interesting direction for me, and maybe this is what I should do for the next project.’  I knew I wasn’t going to do another jazz kind of album, so he just came at the right time.

You mentioned “Park Bench People.”  You transcribed that from Freestyle Fellowship’s rap lyrics over Freddie Hubbard’s “Red Clay.”  You also wrote lyrics to Coltrane’s “Equinox.”  How did this skill enter you repertoire?

John Hendricks is the guy who really perfected that as an art form.  You’re just trying to tell a story and trying to find a word that sounds like what they’re playing.  When I sing that solo (“Equinox”) I want it to sound as close as possible to that solo, and sometimes a word in a story that would work better just doesn’t sound right, so you have to find the vowel or consonant that makes it work.  I’d never do it now, because it’s too difficult.  I did that when I was 17 and I had all the time in the world.  It’s a real challenge and working with a great band really helps make it alive, instead of a recreation.  I feel like now it’s gotten to the point when it feels like we’re playing “Equinox.”

Blackmagic had a lot electronic inflections on it.  Why did you go so left of The Dreamer?

I knew after [The Dreamer] was done and after I’d toured it for a good couple years, I knew I couldn’t make another statement in that way.  I didn’t know what it was going to be, but I knew I just couldn’t do exactly that.  Just like now, I know I can never make another record like Blackmagic.  A lot of people want me to work with Lotus again, but I can’t. You can’t repeat yourself. I want go back to working with musicians. That’s where my heart is.

You’ve recently been singing with McCoy Tyner on tour. How did this tremendous opportunity come your way?

This is the 50^th anniversary of Impulse [Records], and so, they wanted to do the Johnny Hartman/John Coltrane record.  At the time I had gotten those three nights that I did at Lincoln Center, the Rose Theater, with Wynton [Marsalis] and Billy Strayhorn.  We did “Lush Life” which is also on that record.  So, either they heard that, or they knew about that, and they said, “yeah, this is gonna be a good fit.” That’s a dream come true, working with people who are masters at what they do, working at [Tyner’s]  level, you learn so much.  I learned more in a day working with McCoy than I learned in a year with my peers.  He’s got a wealth of information.  There’s a kind of communication and information in their music that’s just not present in anybody else in my generation.  It’s not about chops, it’s about experience.  I like to work with older people: Junior Mance, Chico Hamilton, McCoy. To me, that’s the real connection to black music, and then there’s their connection to people like Dexter Gordon, Coltrane, Louis Armstrong. That’s what it’s all about.

During your live performances, you have a tendency to really stretch out your voice and show your range, rather than remaining laid back like on the records.  Why don’t you belt it out more on wax?

I don’t perform my songs before I record them. I record everything first.  That becomes the definitive version and then I perform them.  So by the time you saw me do these songs, like “Park Bench People,” I’ve now been performing that for three years, so it’s changed a lot.  It’s more of an evolution of the song through performance, really.  I think if you listen to a version of Kind of Blue that they play live, they’re very different, they’re faster.  I don’t really want to do an album that sounds like a live performance.  Most people write songs and they tour those songs to get them ready, and then they go to the studio when they’re ready.  But for me, I write the song, and usually the first performance, and the first time the musicians see the music is in the studio.  It’s more like a natural progression of the song as a performance.

During your first NYC Jazz club performance this year at the Jazz Standard, a number of audience members were surprised you were wearing a fitted cap, leather jacket and sneakers.  Is your wardrobe a conscious decision or more of an afterthought?

It’s definitely conscious.  What we’re trying to do is present jazz-based music or music that has a high degree of improvisation, in a new, younger context.  I think there’s a whole movement that we’ve been talking about, of people who grew up with hip-hop; it’s a natural language for them.  And there’s a younger audience that wants this new music, but they don’t necessarily want to call it jazz and I don’t want to call it jazz, which is a reason I don’t usually play jazz clubs. I just think anything that would limit our audience, and we’re trying to avoid that. When I sing with McCoy, I’m wearing a suit and we’re all looking clean, but if I want to send my music for people who are 35 and under, that’s not how they dress. Cats want to come, they wear a fitted and some Jordans or whatever, so I think it’s about making them comfortable, too, creating a space for the audience to feel like “Ok, this is something I can bring my lady to.”

You once stated of your new single, “Trouble,” it’s like your Marvin Gaye-type song, but there’s also that D’Angelo “Brown Sugar” vibe.  Are you going in that Soulquarian direction with the new album?

Yes and no. Obviously Pino Pallidino is on the album, so that’s the reference – and Russ Elevado did a lot of the tracking for the record too.  But beyond that, I’m more interested in the group interplay and the rhythmic things that they did, based on J Dilla’s stuff, like on Voodoo. I’m not so much interesting in the song form or the kind of writing style, but the way that they played, I’m interested in that. The instrumental part of it; bringing hip-hop, R&B and doing complex harmonic things on top of that. That’s why I look to a Marvin Gaye, an Al Green, a Donny Hathaway, Quincy Jones, who are more harmonically driven in their writing.  I would hesitate to say, yes, it’s the Soulquarian thing, because to me, that happened a long time ago. I definitely wouldn’t want to recreate that, but I think there was a lot of valid musical advancements that haven’t really been explore, to be honest.  I lot of the groups and artists that I thought was going to be around for a long time aren’t doing music anymore.

 

 

Expounding on that point a little more, we’re witnessing a transformation of jazz with the infusion of multiple contemporary genres.  Do you see yourself as a leader in this movement?

I just think it’s in the air.  Now, it’s like Ben Williams, or myself, or [Robert] Glasper, we love hip-hop, it’s what we grew up on and it’s like a natural expression, it’s just a musical expression for us. It’s not a big statement. It’s like an extension of what The Roots did, in my opinion. I don’t know if we’re all thinking about it so much. I think it’s just natural for us to do. I think we’ve reached the point where now younger people have to say what they’re about. The internet and downloading, it kind of just changed the whole game, so all you have left to sing is this is who I am, whatever that is. I think there’s something in the air that’s moving towards it. Instrumentalists like Takuya Kuroda, Corey King or Ben Williams, the younger generation of New York based jazz musicians, are collaborating more, using hip-hop or soul or R&B changes. There’s a lot of overlapping circles.

Your forthcoming CD No Beginning No End includes some pretty heavy musicians like Glasper, Saul Williams, Amp Fiddler, etc.  What’s your impression of it at this point?

It’s pretty dope, man. We’re excited about it.  Me and Takuya have been working on just the arrangements for months. I’ve done it session by session, so we’ve had a chance to listen to the music and really orchestrate it. I think it’s really rare to have so much time to work on a record so by the time it’s done, I think all the time and expertise that we were able to bring will really show.  Working with that level of people – Chris Dave and Glasper, cats from the U.K. – there’s a lot of attention to detail, which is what I wanted to do. A lot people just feel like jazz things are just thrown together and you just have a session, but this is really an album; carefully crafted, well thought out, every step, every song, arrangement. It’s a different side of me and I’m writing in a different direction, but it’s definitely gonna be the most cohesive statement of my musical concept. I don’t think of it as one genre; it’s all mixed together – R&B and jazz.

This has all the makings of possible crossover exposure.  Would you be open to becoming a so-called “mainstream” artist?

If it happened naturally, if it was a natural progression, if the music was embraced.  I’m not sitting down, writing and producing trying to get to that. I don’t think D’Angelo was either, per se. I think he was just making music and it caught on. At the time, Brown Sugar sounded totally different from all the other male R&B stuff. And Voodoo again. I’m not shooting for that, but I wouldn’t say no to it. Whenever you try to plan where music is going to go, that’s a problem.

Although the album is still being finished, have you given any thought of what type of project you might do after the No Beginning No End phase is completed?

I’ve planned for the next three albums, at this point. Obviously it changes, but I have a pretty clear idea of a seven album arc from The Dreamer to that record of what I want to do. The music tells you what it wants. I think it’s like once you’ve fully gone into something like I did with The Dreamer or Blackmagic or For All We Know, those are just statements of a certain style and there’s nothing else I can do with that style, so you have to move on to the next one. So once I do this, there’ll be nothing else left of that. So I know there certain things I want to do. One of the main projects is gonna be a Coltrane project, for sure. It’s more like things that I’ve worked on through the years. Maybe a certain kind of song that was maybe more singer/songwriter but it didn’t fit on anything, so I put it to the side. Maybe that concept will be a whole album. The Coltrane stuff will be a whole album, maybe like a bluesy thing, maybe that will be a whole album.

Interview by Matthew Allen

Esperanza Spalding

– I Can’t Help It

(Michael Jackson Cover)

By DJRahdu

– February 6, 2012

To be honest, I’ve never checked for Esperanza Spalding before. I’ve seen her performances and know her accolades and accomplishments, but I’ve always been “meh’ about getting familiar with her content. I know, right. I began to hear buzz about her new album and the album cover struck me so I figured I’d let this new album be my introduction and go back and do the research if impressed. Needless to say, I’ll be visiting the record store today and purchasing Radio Music Society Mar 20, 2012. Oh BTW, Michael would be proud

2011-2012 Snowbound Chapbook Award Guidelines

December 1, 2011 – February 29, 2012
(postmark or online submission-date)
 

Final Judge: Christopher Buckley
$1,000 Prize

The Snowbound Chapbook Award includes a cash award of $1,000 and 50 copies of the book, in addition to publication by Tupelo Press, a book launch, and national distribution with energetic publicity and promotion. Manuscripts are judged anonymously. All finalists will also be considered for publication. This competition is open to any poet writing in English. Previously published poems with proper acknowledgment are acceptable. Translations are not eligible, nor are previously self-published books. Employees of Tupelo Press and authors previously published by Tupelo Press are not eligible.

Manuscript Requirements:

Submit 20 to 36 pages (of poems) plus SASE and a $23 reading fee. Manuscripts should be on good quality white paper, paginated consecutively, with a table of contents and acknowledgments, and bound with a clip. Include two cover pages, one with only the title of the manuscript and a second with your name, address, telephone number(s), email address, and title of the manuscript. The author’s name should not appear elsewhere on the manuscript. Please retain a copy for your records.

• The Snowbound Chapbook Award is open to anyone writing in English, whether living in the United States or abroad. Translations are not eligible for this prize.
• Individual poems in a contest manuscript may have been previously published in magazines, print or web journals, or anthologies, but the work as a whole must be unpublished (this includes previously self-published books).
• Simultaneous submissions to other publishers or contests are permitted, as long as you notify Tupelo Press promptly if your manuscript is accepted elsewhere.
• Before you submit a manuscript to a Tupelo Press competition, please consider exploring the work of the poets we have published.
• Tupelo Press endorses and abides by the Ethical Guidelines of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP), which can be reviewed here, along with more about Tupelo Press’s ethical considerations for literary contests.

Entries must be postmarked or uploaded to the online Submission Manager (see below) between December 1, 2011 and February 29, 2012.

Terms:

A reading fee of $23 (US) by check or Pay Pal must accompany each submission. If sending a check, please make this payable to Tupelo Press, Inc. Multiple submissions are accepted, so long as each submission is accompanied by a separate $23 reading fee.

Why a reading fee? We are an independent, nonprofit literary press. Reading fees help defray, though they don’t fully cover, the cost of reviewing manuscripts and publishing the many books we select through our competitions.

Notification:

If mailing your submission, you may include a stamped, self-addressed postcard for confirmation of your manuscript’s receipt. The online Submissions Manager (see below) automatically confirms receipt.

If you like, enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope (SASE) for notification of the winner. An email announcement will also be sent to all entrants. Do not enclose a SASE for return of manuscript; all manuscripts will be recycled at the conclusion of the competition, except those under consideration for future publication.

Kindly refrain from requesting an individual response to confirm our receipt of your manuscript and/or payment. Both the electronic submission manager and the PayPal system offer automated confirmations. For those wishing acknowledgment of a paper manuscript, your self-addressed stamped postcard will serve this purpose. We receive thousands of manuscripts each year and cannot offer individual acknowledgments beyond these. Thank you for your understanding.

Results will be announced in late spring 2012.

Online Submission

Click here to submit electronically. The online submission system will be accepting Snowbound Chapbook Award manuscripts between December 1, 2011 and February 29, 2012.

Online PayPal Payment

Click below to pay the reading fee for online or postal mail submissions:

 

Submission via Postal Mail

We also accept manuscripts via postal mail. Please include a check or money-order for the $23 reading fee, payable to Tupelo Press, or utilize our online PayPal option and enclose a copy of the receipt with your printed submission. 

You may also include a self-addressed postcard for acknowledgment of receipt of your manuscript and a SASE for notification of the winner, who will also be announced by email. 

Mail your submission (and check or PayPal receipt) to: 
Tupelo Press Snowbound Chapbook Award 
Tupelo Press 
PO Box 1767 
North Adams, MA 01247 

International submissions only: 
Tupelo Press Snowbound Chapbook Award 
243 Union Street, Eclipse Mill #305 
North Adams MA 01247 USA 

All Snowbound entries must be postmarked or certified by our online Submissions Manager between December 1, 2011 and February 29, 2012.

 

 

 

 

“Text as Memoir:

Tales of Travel, Immigration, and Exile

in the Writings of Langston Hughes”

(November 9-12, 2012)

full name / name of organization: 

The Langston Hughes Society (Special Session at South Atlantic Modern Language Associaton Convention-Durham, NC)

contact email: 

sharon.jones@wright.edu

 

The Langston Hughes Society welcomes papers for a special session on “Text as Memoir: Tales of Travel, Immigration, and Exile in the Writings of Langston Hughes.” We are seeking papers that examine Langston Hughes’s writings within the context of the special session topic. Please email a one page typed abstract, a biographical profile, and contact information to Dr. Sharon Lynette Jones at sharon.jones@wright.edu by June 1, 2012. Any accepted presenter must join the South Atlantic Modern Language Association and The Langston Hughes Society. Accepted presenters will be notified of the deadline for joining SAMLA and the Langston Hughes Society.

Recent Work on Women's Captivity

and Slave Narratives

full name / name of organization: 

Christine Danelski / SCSSAWW for the American Literature Assoc.

contact email: 

Christine.Danelski4@calstatela.edu

CFP: Recent Work on Women's Captivity and Slave Narratives (ALA: San Francisco, CA; May 24-27, 2012 Deadline: January 30, 2012).

SCSSAWW seeks recent work on women's captivity and slave narratives to explore connections and fissures between these two uniquely American narratives for a panel at the 2012 American Literature Association Conference.

Proposals of 300-500 words should be submitted to
Christine.Danelski4@calstatela.edu by January 30, 2011. Please include your email and a brief bio with the proposal. (Apologies for the short notice.)

This 2012 American Literature Association Conference will take place at the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero. Please see the ALA website for specific details regarding the rest of the conference program.

Remember HIV/AIDS?

It’s Still Raging in the U.S.

 

Illustration: Hatty Lee

 

by Kai Wright, Hatty Lee 

Tuesday, February 7 2012

 

We have been told for decades that HIV/AIDS has no bias, and that much is true. The virus could care less about racial, sexual or gender identity. But sadly, American society very much has bias, and as a consequence HIV/AIDS is quite a bit more of a threat to some than it is to others. So it is that black Americans account for nearly half of all people living with the virus in the U.S. Nearly half. It’s such a striking stat that it overwhelms. Still, here’s another one along those lines: If black America were its own country, our HIV epidemic would rank 16th in the world.

But even among black folks, there’s bias, too. And so it is that black gay and bisexual men—or, men who have sex with men in public health parlance—are today at the center of a surging epidemic. 

The question, of course, is why? The answers are manifold, but I’ve always used this shorthand: HIV infection rates are an excellent measure for who societies don’t give a damn about. Worldwide, go looking for the worst epidemic and you’ll find the group of people who are hardest hit by a whole host of other bad things, too. But for a more sophisticated explanation, check out The Body’s excellent slideshow, in which several smart folks offer short, succinct explanations of key factors. 

Today is National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. It’s an annual ritual that we perhaps need more than ever. As individuals and as communities, we’ve only got so much bandwidth. And from recession to war to political upheavals worldwide, much of our mental and emotional space has been fully occupied in recent years. It’s easy for things like health, wellness and sexuality to get shoved to the back burner, put off as luxurious problems. We all know what happens when we do that in our personal lives—that health issue we say we’ll deal with when there’s more time inevitably grows worse, until it intrudes on its own terms. The process is no different for communities, cities and countries.

This summer, Washington, D.C., will host the International AIDS Conference, in which tens of thousands of scientists, treatment providers, advocates and policy makers come together to share strategies and experiences confronting the epidemic globally. It’s the first time the event will be in the U.S. since the early 1990s; it’s able to come here now because President Obama finally lifted the longstanding ban on visas for people living with HIV. The event will likely generate a rare, if brief national focus on the epidemic. Many are hoping something meaningful can come from that.

For now, Colorlines.com’s Hatty Lee offers a graphic primary for why that focus is so desperately needed right now.

—Kai Wright 

Full Trailer For

"Mighty Jerome"

(From

"Nurse.Fighter.Boy"

Director) +

Celebrating

Black History Month

In Montreal

News by Tambay | February 3, 2012

A project we first alerted you early last year when it was announced that it would screen at the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto... Nurse.Fighter.Boy director Charles Officer's follow-up to that film, a feature-length documentary titled Mighty Jerome.

Mighty Jerome documents the rise, fall and redemption of Harry Jerome - the Canadia track and field star and one of that country's greatest athletes.

This production utilizes monochrome film imagery, interviews and rare archival footage to tell the compelling story of what Jerome’s coach, the legendary Bill Bowerman, called "the greatest comeback in track and field history."

The film is produced by Selwyn Jacob, supported by the National Film Board of Canada.

Mighty Jerome also features an Original Soundtrack by composer Schaun Tozer.

I just learned that it screened last night in Montreal, kicking off a month-long program titled FADE TO BLACK, in celebration of Black History Month, in collaboration with the International Black Film Festival of Montreal.

Other films in the lineup include titles we've covered on S&A like the slavery time travel comedy Case Départ, Desert Flower (on the life of Somalian model Waris Dirie), and ski comedy La Première Étoile (a film that if I recall correctly, Chris Rock optioned the American remake rights to).

Screenings are taking place at NFB Cinema (1564 St-Denis, Montreal).

For the rest of the story click HERE.

Check out the trailer for Mighty Jerome below: