Cody Chesnutt • Till I Met Thee
Short film for Cody Chesnutt's Album Landing on 100
written and directed by Terence Nance
shot by Shawn Peters
produced by Brendon Ellington
shot on location at Soul Fire Farms Upstate, NY
Call for Proposals: Tulane University’s Richard E. Greenleaf Library
Tulane University recently announced the call for proposals for the Richard E.Greenleaf Library Fellowships at its Latin American Library,for researchers from Latin America and the Caribbean, for 2013-2014. The deadline for proposals 2013-2014 is April 30, 2013.
Their purpose is to offer researchers who permanently reside in any country of Latin America or the Caribbean short-term residential fellowships to use the resources of the Latin American Library at Tulane to conduct research in any field of the humanities or social sciences.
Up to two fellowships will be granted every year. Each fellowship will cover the full cost of round-trip airfare as well as housing expenses and a monthly stipend to cover living expenses for a period of one to three months, as well as full library privileges at Tulane University. Fellowships are available to any qualified scholar – including independent researchers – who resides permanently in any country in Latin America or the Caribbean (including Puerto Rico). Applications from scholars of any nationality who are permanent residents of any country in the region will be considered, but preference will be given to citizens of Latin American or Caribbean nations, including Puerto Rico. Citizens of Latin American/Caribbean countries currently living outside the region and Puerto Ricans residing outside the island are not eligible.
Fellows are expected to reside in New Orleans, to conduct research at the library for the term of the award, and to deliver a public presentation of their work-in-progress during their stay. Fellowships will be awarded on the basis of the applicant’s scholarly qualifications, the merits and significance of the project, and the relevance of the Latin American Library’s collections to the development of the project.
Inquiries and documents regarding the Greenleaf Fellowships may be addressed to Hortensia Calvo, Doris Stone Director. Materials may be submitted to GLfellows@tulane.edu
For more information on the research fellowship information and forms, see
http://lal.tulane.edu/programs/greenleaf
Random House - Sony Young Movellist
of the Year (worldwide)
Deadline: 14 April 2013
(To clarify, if you live outside the UK/ Ireland, you are only eligible to win books and a Sony Reader. But if you happen to live in the UK/ Ireland - we're sure some of you do - you are eligible for the top prize of £2,000 advance and a publishing contract with Random House. Entrants should be 13-19 years old. Good luck!)
Movellas, Random House, the Sony Reader Store and The Reading Agency have joined forces to find the best young writing superstar. The icing on the cake? Malorie Blackman will be picking the overall winner!
Are you the next J.K. Rowling, Michael Morpurgo or Malorie Blackman? Is there half a novel hidden in your desk or in a computer folder that could be the next Hunger Games? Or maybe you have an idea and just needed that little bit of inspiration to get writing...
You could be the Sony Young Movellist of the Year!
Free to enter and open to writers aged between 13 and 19 years, this competition will see one young superstar receive an exclusive publishing contract with Random House.
Judging the competition is young adult and children’s author, Malorie Blackman OBE, who will be selecting the final winner from ten shortlisted authors.
But with the winner set for announcement on the 15th of July 2013 at a glamorous awards ceremony sponsored by Sony Reader Store, the challenge is most definitely on, and like Katniss Everdeen only the strongest and most committed young writers will survive.
Never fear though, as supporting partner The Reading Agency will be on hand to help you through the Reading Activists programme, providing top tips and literary guidance as well as hosting ‘write-in’ events with local communities across the country.
“I'm so thrilled to be involved in the new Movellas award for young writers. What a wonderful opportunity for young people to have their stories read and their voices heard. I just wish something like this had been around when I was a teenager.
“If you have a story you want to share, what are you waiting for?! Good luck." - Malorie Blackman
HERE'S HOW TO ENTER:
AND THEN?
- Sign up or sign in to Movellas, create your profile and explore the site.
- When you are ready, create a new movella and upload the first three chapters of your novel (no more than three at this point!). Click the BIG GREEN BUTTON in the corner to enter the movella into the contest.
- If you want to enter a movella you’ve already created on the site, that’s fine! You just need to remove it from the site, then re-upload the first three chapters only.
- Don’t forget to check out tips and literary advice from Reading Activists to help make your entry a winner.
- NOW THE IMPORTANT PART: those first three chapters are great for feedback and seeing what the Movellas community think of your idea, but once you have summed up the courage, email your full length novel (40,000 + words) to movellist@movellas.com to be in with a chance of being the Sony Young Movellist of the Year.
THE PRIZES:
- Movellas and the Reading Agency will spend a manic few weeks reading all of the entries, from which there will be created a shortlist of 10 novels.
- These 10 novels will be delivered to the expert hands of Random House and Malorie Blackman (yes, Malorie Blackman of Noughts & Crosses fame!), who together will whittle it down to just three: two runners-up, and one overall winner!
If you’re under 18, you’ll need to have parental consent before we’re able to pick your entry for our shortlist of ten – so be ready to ask them! Before entering please read our full terms and conditions here.
- The overall winner will be offered the opportunity to sign a publishing contract with Random House, including a £2,000 advance! They will also receive a Sony Reader.
- The two runners-up will receive Malorie Blackman’s entire teen backlist, published by Random House, and a Sony Reader.
- The overall winner and the two runners-up will be invited to afternoon tea with Malorie Blackman, and will be able to bring a parent, guardian or friend each.
- An international winner (selected by the Movellas team) will receive Malorie Blackman’s entire teen backlist, published by Random House, and a Sony Reader. Two runners-up will also receive Malorie's backlist.
- One winner (selected by the Reading Agency and Movellas community) who ONLY submitted the first three chapters of a novel (i.e. did not follow up with a full length novel - but why would you do that!?) will receive a mentoring session with a professional writer.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS:
1) By submitting an entry to this competition, you agree to accept and be bound by these rules and any other instructions the promoter gives you on how to enter.
2) To submit an entry you must:
Please note that if you enter this competition and live in the UK or Republic of Ireland, you will be entered for the main prize and runner-up prizes, but not the international prize. If you do not live in the UK or Republic of Ireland and choose to enter this competition you will be entered only for the international prize.
- be aged between thirteen and nineteen years old on Monday 18th February 2013;
- have your parent or guardian’s consent to enter; and
- must not be employed by the promoter or related to one of the promoter’s employees (the promoter is Movellas or Random House Children’s Publishers, a division of The Random House Group Limited).
3) To submit an entry you must upload no more than three chapters of your story, together with the country in which you live, onto the Movellas website (www.movellas.com) between Monday 18th February 2013 and midnight on Sunday 14th April 2013 and send the full length novel to movellist@movellas.com as a word document along with your full name, date of birth, address, telephone number, email address and parent or guardian’s full name, telephone number and email address. The total word count for your story must be between 40,000 and 60,000 words, including the initial three chapters. The promoter will contact each selected entrant’s parent or guardian to request that they guarantee the entrant’s adherence to these terms. For your entry to be valid, it must have been written by you, must be a work of fiction original to you, and must not have been previously published, self-published or posted online other than on the Movellas website. If your story has previously been shared on the Movellas website and you would like to submit it as an entry, you must take your story down from the Movellas website fully before re-posting the first three chapters.
4) Entrants grant to the promoter a worldwide, exclusive (save in relation to display by Movellas via the Movellas service), royalty free license from the date of entry to 21st April 2013 to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute the entry and/or any derivation of it. An entrant entering into a publishing agreement other than with the promoter or otherwise publishing or making available an entry will constitute a breach of this clause and will result in the entrant becoming ineligible for the main prize and runner-up prizes. The promoter will not exercise its rights to publish, display or distribute under this licence unless and until it has entered into a standard publishing agreement with the relevant entrant.
5) Entrants grant to the promoter, on submission of their full story as above, a worldwide, exclusive (save in relation to display of the initial entry by Movellas via the Movellas service), royalty free license from the date of submission to 15th July 2013 to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute the submission and/or any derivation of it. An entrant entering into a publishing agreement other than with the promoter or otherwise publishing or making available a submission will constitute a breach of this clause by that entrant and will result in the entrant becoming ineligible for the main prize and runner-up prizes. The promoter will not exercise its rights to publish, display or distribute under this licence unless and until it has entered into a standard publishing agreement with the relevant entrant.
JUDGING AND PRIZES:
6) On Monday 15th April 2013, the promoter will choose and contact the winner of the international prize from among the entries validly submitted by entrants not resident in the UK or Republic of Ireland. The winner of the international prize will win a selection of books by Malorie Blackman, signed by the author. To claim the prize, the winner must provide their name and delivery address to the promoter within 14 days of the promoter’s notification that they have won. Failure to claim the international prize within this time will entitle the promoter to withdraw the prize and award it to a different winner.
7) The winners of the main prize and runners-up prizes will be chosen and notified on 31st May 2013 but must keep this information confidential until announced by the promoter on the Movellas website on 15th July 2013 (but this date may be subject to change). The two winners of runners-up prizes will each receive an invitation for them and a friend, parent or guardian to afternoon tea with Malorie Blackman in July or August 2013 (exact date to be confirmed with the runners-up based on their availability). This will include reasonable travel and accommodation expenses.
8) The winner of the main prize will be offered the opportunity to enter into a standard publishing agreement with the promoter (including, on signature of the agreement including parental or guardian’s guarantee, a £2,000 advance) for publication of their story in eBook format on 15th July 2013 (and other formats at the promoter’s discretion). Should the winner decline to enter into that agreement, or should their parent or guardian fail to guarantee the winner’s adherence to the agreement, by 14th June 2013, the promoter reserves the right to withdraw the main prize and select a new winner. Please be aware that entering into a standard publishing agreement will mean that you may be required to work with Random House editors and potentially edit or revise parts of your story and must be available to do so, if required, between 1st June and 15th July.
CONTACT INFORMATION:
For queries/ submissions: movellist@movellas.com
Website: http://www.movellas.com/
Call for Articles/ Essays for Anthology - The Plight of Students of Color at PWIs: A Critical Reader
Deadline: 28 March 2013
Ray Von Robertson, Ph.D., is currently compiling articles/essays for an anthology titled The Plight of Students of Color at Predominantly White Institutions: A Critical Reader.
Submissions are needed in the following areas:
The reader will be published and professionally edited by Kendall Hunt Publishing. Included articles will go through a peer-review and editing process and there is no guarantee that submitted works will be published. The reader will be published in the fall of 2013. Contributors will receive a free copy of the book and it will be available for classroom adoption in standard or eBook form.
- African American students at PWIs;
- Latina/o American students at PWIs;
- Native American students at PWIs; and
- Asian Pacific American students at PWIs.
If you are interested in submitting a piece for consideration, please feel free to submit your manuscript to rvrobertson@my.lamar.edu. The submission deadline is March 28, 2013. Please keep all submissions less than twenty five pages (including references) and in APA (American Psychological Association) citation style.
Include with your submission the following: your university affiliation; contact information; area(s) of intellectual concentration; position and rank; and brief bio. Unused manuscripts will be returned to the author(s). Please do not submit works that are already under consideration for publication or that have been previously published.
CONTACT INFORMATION:
For queries/ submissions: rvrobertson@my.lamar.edu
George Lewis Interview
Simon Rentner: I’m here with George E. Lewis, the author of the book A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. First of all, why did you name your book A Power Stronger Than Itself?George Lewis: The AACM was formed in 1965 in Chicago by a group of working-class musicians who were interested in promoting themselves in new ways. “Power Stronger Than Itself” was an early AACM promotional slogan. I don’t know if it was Lester Bowie or Leo Smith who created it, but suddenly these bumper stickers began to appear around the South Side of Chicago that said “AACM: A Power Stronger Than Itself” in big black letters backed by Day-Glo orange.
Simon: Now you’re using the word “power” in this era. Probably somebody will immediately think about Black Power. Was that in the minds of the people when they chose that slogan?
George: No one who was really conscious in the African American community at the time could fail to be aware of Black Power. But of course that could take many forms. I guess they could have called it AACM – Black Musical Power.
In fact, the second slogan that arose, which not everyone by the way was necessarily as equally invested in, was ‘AACM: Great Black Music,” which in retrospect seemed to have even stronger legs and somehow appears more emblematic of a certain view of the collective.
In fact, Black Power had certainly been on the agenda, notions of self-determination. But it seemed to me that the slogan itself seemed to refer to a kind of recursion, that is to say a power stronger than itself. It feeds back on itself. That’s a potentially limitless power.
That seems to be, in a way, a more important notion of power and a more hopeful notion of power than any you might have. Although, certainly the connection with the conventional mode of thinking about Black Power was certainly there.
Simon: A sum greater than its parts basically?
George: Well, maybe even a stronger significance if you think about a kind of infinite feedback. The thing about infinite feedback is it’s difficult to control. So you’re actually telling people in a very subtle way that you’re not going to be controlled and that you will be heard.
Simon: Let’s also look at the AACM. You can’t help but think of the NAACP too, at least in the way that abbreviation is structured. Was that thought through, like the choosing of the word advancement? Instead of Colored, it’s Creative. Was that the mindset too?
George: Well, if you think about it, ‘Association for the Advancement of’ is certainly a gloss on the NAACP. I don’t have any evidence that people were really thinking about that, but it’s a reasonable assumption.
In one debate I did have access to, through listening to the tapes of the early meetings, one of the discussions was whether the name would be “Association For the Advancement of Creative… “ Then someone said, “Musicians or Music?” There seemed to be arguments on both sides. So one person – I think it was Phil Cohran, who was one of the founders, a trumpeter in Chicago, said that basically we were here to advance the creative musicians because the music had been advanced for a long time but nobody was advancing us.
That seemed to make a lot of sense because it was basically referring to that history of exploitation of black music, which advanced the music to be sure, but the musicians were kind of left behind.
Simon: Muhal Richard Abrams – do you think the AACM would exist if Muhal Richard Abrams didn’t exist?
George: Well, you know, the easy answer is, “Of course not.” The one that Muhal might subscribe to himself is that he was one of four cofounders. The others were Steve McCall, the drummer, Phil Cohran, the trumpeter and Jodie Christian, the pianist. Three of them are still alive today. Steve McCall passed away in 1989.
So in fact, it seems to me that what needed to exist for the AACM to exist was a notion of collectivity and collaboration rather than a concentration on a heroic individual. Muhal has always resisted this notion of himself as a father figure and he has resisted that kind of heroism right along.
So when you see the nature of the collective as a whole, which was one of many collectives that were formed at that time – you think about the Black Panther Party as being a collective–there were so many moments at which people felt that individual strategies for success weren’t working and people had to come together in groups.
So the AACM was emblematic of that period, an artifact of that period. So you see that notion of collectivity starting right at the beginning.
Simon: Muhal probably did take on more of a leadership role, having all of the sessions with musicians, late at night, working out compositional strategies, original approaches, being the first president, etc.
George: There is no question that Muhal is a very dynamic individual, but he was there with a lot of other dynamic individuals who were also holding late-night sessions and workshops and inspiring people to study and grow and do these things.
A lot of people gravitated to Muhal because he was an open-minded person. He avoided critique in favor of collaboration. He refused the role of a conventional teacher. In fact, the AACM School of Music was his idea, the school that still exists today, providing free instruction in music to people of all ages – young people, but also people of my age and much older than me went to the school.
His initial idea was that in order to teach, they had to first learn to teach. So they got together a group of people to teach each other how to teach. There were these very practical strategies, these homegrown strategies for learning.
You see, a lot of the older strategies had broken down. If you can imagine the learning of advanced music, how many African-Americans had music composition degrees? How many were sitting on the graduate composition faculties of major or even minor universities? Well, the number at that time was very close to zero.
So if you’re going to get that kind of information, you’re going to have to do it in an autodidact way. You’re going to have to take it upon yourself. Communities are going to have to take it upon themselves to build the structures that they’re going to build.
Again, this is very resonant with what was going on in the period – this kind of intensive focus on communitarianism, the intense focus on the thing you would see in those Elijah Muhammad papers in Chicago – “DO FOR SELF” – in giant letters. People would just quote that to each other – “Well, you know brother, you’ve got to do for self.”
Simon: The frequency with which you use that word “autodidact” in your book – you could almost put that word in the title. What is the evolution of that approach in the African-American community?
George: Well, if you want to take it as far back as it really needs to go, you could imagine slave communities needing to adopt autodidact strategies to advance, for protection, at a period when knowledge was denied, suppressed, refused. People who wanted to gain knowledge were routinely suppressed, often violently. So people had to teach each other as a matter of survival.
Now, you start to find those strategies in people like J.A. Rogers, or what Jacob Carruthers, I think, called that first generation of the “old scrapper” African-American historians. These were often self-taught in the methods of history. So they went into libraries for themselves. They did their own research.
So by the time people like Muhal came along, or even before that – you look at Sun Ra and these people, there are all those books that are coming out now detailing all of his personal research – there are all kinds of people doing this. It’s the dominant mode, not least because of the refusal of many traditional institutions to educate – or if they did educate, they educated in ways that really denied African-American or African histories.
At that time the idea was that there was no African history so you didn’t need to study it. So there were communities of resistance to that. Look at Carter G. Woodson, John G. Jackson, Willis Huggins, people of this sort – the people who started things like Negro History Week, later Black History Month.
At that point you weren’t really expecting to be taught from the outside. You were expecting to have to get a lot of it yourself. Indeed, Muhal is kind of an example. He basically leaves the academic institution to embark upon a lifetime of self-study.
Simon: Definitely there is a cultural divide. The way I grew up, I would think it would be remarkable that somebody would teach themselves how to play the piano. Whereas Muhal Richard Abrams thinks about it that there is nothing remarkable about that whatsoever. That’s just survival.
George: Well, it’s not like people didn’t have models in the black community for teaching themselves. If you think about jazz and blues, these are autodidact musics. People didn’t go to blues school, or if they went to blues or jazz school it was in a club or it was on the street or it was in somebody’s house. That was the blues school. So it was only later that these things started, like jazz school with degrees and all that.
It’s a crucial mode of self-determination, in response to social change. Eddie Harris, the saxophonist, talked about it in terms of how the institutions that musicians were involved with, that helped them to learn how to do traditional musical skills, were dying out. Things like big bands – there weren’t any big bands anymore to play in.
Also, a lot of the music people were playing in big bands wasn’t the sort of thing these younger people were interested in. They seemed to be more interested in more experimental things and there wasn’t any way to do that unless you organized in groups to do it yourself.
Look, communities do this all the time. Take Schoenberg’s Society for Private Music Performance as an example. People got together because they wanted to get their own music played and to establish ways to think about it and talk about it. It’s as natural as breathing and I think that’s why Muhal looks at it that way. It certainly seems to be congruent with experience.
Simon: So when they were first talking about forming the AACM in the meetings, Muhal Richard Abrams was really interested in the mission, the objective. For Muhal, performing original music was of foremost importance, perhaps more so than other people in the collective. Why?
George: Well, original music is a sign of self-determination. So you’re going to be betting on yourself. You’re going to be promoting your own ideas. You’re going to really depend upon your own ideas instead of playing the music of others, and certainly the kind of music that people were being forced to perform in various ways for so-called survival. At one point the joke or at least the pun was, “Well, what about the old standards?” Then someone would say, “Well, whose standards are we talking about?”
They were talking about setting new standards and potentially taking all the risks that this entails. It’s an assumption of responsibility. In a way it’s like growing up. These were young people who wanted to grow up, I think. You have to remember, these people were all in their 20s and 30s at the time. At the time of the AACM, Muhal is one of the oldest people. But a lot of those people, Jarman and the others, were in their 20s.
Simon: So they weren’t even going to touch, say, “I Got Rhythm” or any variation of “rhythm changes.”
George: Well, some people did that in their professional lives as artists for hire. But the AACM was a composer’s organization. People were there to compose their own music and they could do whatever else they wanted in other places.
I think eventually the people who weren’t that interested in composition, who weren’t that interested in personal modes of expression, found less and less reason to be there. The others who were found more and more reason to be there.
Simon: Do you also think this creating original music also goes hand in hand with African-Americans trying to get their equal rights, to be completely free in America?
George: If you don’t feel free to express yourself, then you are definitely not free. In this sense, personal expression is kind of a human right. No one could say that Charlie Parker wasn’t expressing himself by playing “Out of Nowhere” or whatever. But you have to remember that even there, they would take these old tunes and put new melodies on them. They would change the music around, create new harmonies or extend the harmonies that were already there. They were already putting their stamp on the music. So they weren’t just accepting it as received wisdom, as young people are told they must do today.
So this is a time when musical self-determination and political self-determination were being conflated, and productively so, I think.
Simon: So would you consider the AACM to be a political organization in some way, especially in its inception?
George: Certainly a form of cultural politics, which has a huge impact on the way we conceive ourselves and how we live our lives. To place new cultural views before the public can be a political act.
Simon: As a political organization, you would probably obviously say it was pretty progressive in nature? It has even been called radical at times. Would you call the AACM radical?
George: Well, it could be radical, but “radical” isn’t always the next step beyond “progressive.” In the book I recount some instances in which there are some significant dislocations in terms of gender with specific AACM people, whose views in that area seemed radically different, but really not very progressive, at least as the women who experienced the issues saw things. Then as now, the connection between gender and race was very fraught. There were groups of people, devotees of a certain strain of black cultural nationalism, who felt that women’s natural place was somehow behind their man. In a way it was very much a reproduction of certain kinds of patriarchy in the white community – that patriarchy that we now see in, I don’t know, the Tea Party or something.
So in that sense you can’t say that there was this monolithic leftism in the AACM. You’d have to say that the viewpoints were very diverse. It’s hard to say there is a simplistic left position in which we can place the organization.
Simon: Do you think that the gender issue had more to do with other systems, say in Africa or in Islam, and those kinds of things reinforced those gender issues?
George: I would say that there was a lot of personal research into cultural systems in Africa. For example, a lot of those early books were passed around as a kind of samizdat. You had books like Cheikh Anta Diop’s African Civilization – Myth or Reality? You had Chancellor Williams’ The Destruction of Black Civilization. You had the stuff that Neely Fuller was putting out. You had the Frances Cress Welsing color theories.
There was so much going on, so much stuff that you could read. People were researching ancient Egypt. They were researching Islam, several different strains of Islam. As people know, there was the Ahmadiyya movement in the ’50s. But I think that a lot of the variations were kind of home-grown in the community.
That’s very American, you know, to reassemble tradition to meet the needs of any given community. Maybe it’s not exclusively American. There are various syncretisms in the Caribbean or elsewhere. But it seems to me the American variant of that has much more to do with an image of what Africa might have been like or an image of what people wanted Africa to be like.
This is how cultural change occurs. People re-read or misread the so-called originals to create something new. I think this even goes on in the Islamic countries, where we start to hear that a lot of the so-called gender dynamics don’t seem to be supported by what we read in the Koran, but would seem to be somehow connected with local conditions or local interpretations of the Koran.
Not having that background, I couldn’t really comment further. But one could certainly notice that people often interpreted histories to meet their own personal, political, economic, and cultural needs[GL1] .
Simon: Did you ever think about changing your name to reflect your African ancestry?
George: No, I didn’t want to get involved in all that, it never appealed to me. That was interesting because some people did and some people didn’t. If you think about that whole name-changing thing, lots of people would put an African or Arabic name in front of their family name, because people wanted to have both. Maybe they didn’t want to disrespect their families by changing their name, their family name. You became a Muhal Richard Abrams or an Amina Claudine Myers, a Hamid Drake or a Kelan Phil Cohran. So you had both things there.
Simon: The same thing was happening earlier too with Art Blakey.
George: What happened is that a lot of these names became Africanized through their association with African-Americans. For example, everyone named Washington is presumed to be African-American in this country, except for George Washington. He’s the only one. The others, you know, that’s an Africanized European name. So it seems to me that a lot of that process was already going on. There were people who felt they needed to go further.
But there is a whole section in the book that discusses the people who used naming to effect a greater identification with Africa. One of the interesting people in this regard was Ajaramu, the drummer, an early AACM member, who actually changed his name several times. We found out in fact that after he died the name he died under was not the name he had lived under.
So at a certain point Ajaramu starts to think, “Well, people are saying if you don’t change your name then people will think you are European.” Then he goes on to conclude, “Well, you know, that may not be so important in the long run, really. Maybe they’ll know you by what you did rather than what your name was.”
Simon: Could you go over quickly the variety of reasons a musician might be inclined to change their name?
George: One reason might be to somehow connect with Africa. Now the funny thing about it was that a lot of the people who connected with Africa in this way never actually visited Africa. For example, I don’t think Muhal has ever been to Africa, and it’s not even clear that “Muhal” is either an African or an Arabic name. So in a way the invention or construction of Africa becomes as important as what the “Real Africa” is.
So naming might be a way of having one’s own Africa, to establish some connection with Africa. But that didn’t mean that if you didn’t change your name you didn’t want to be connected with Africa. After all, even various African people seem to have their colonial names – Nelson Mandela – things of that sort. So it’s all very complicated, I imagine, on both sides of the Atlantic. People have multiple overlapping identities.
Simon: Very interesting indeed. Now, another thing that is very particular to Muhal Richard Abrams, and maybe particular to the AACM, probably one of the biggest misconceptions of the AACM would probably be that it is a jazz club. Like a Jazz Association. It’s devoted to jazz and they are a band that plays jazz.
George: I don’t think there are any people involved in the beginnings of the AACM whose primary formation was in anything other than jazz, so that jazz is certainly the starting point. But jazz is a contested image at this time, and what sometimes happens in the world of jazz is that there is an emphasis on genre immobility, sort of like I think what Michel de Certeau called peasant immobility, the idea that nothing ever changes in these kinds of communities. People don’t leave certain things. If they are born that way, it’s the way they stay all their lives.
So it seemed to me that, had they wished to be named jazz, they could have just called it the “Association for the Advancement of Jazz Musicians.” So why didn’t they do that? Why did they make up this thing called “Creative Musicians”?
Well, it was clearly to win some space for a new conception of themselves. It wasn’t as simple as a denial of jazz, because people felt that jazz was creative music, and after all it was our music. Our people created it, so it’s ours and it’s creative–our creative music.
So you think, well, what does it mean to be a creative musician? It doesn’t say you have to be allied with this or that genre. It mainly means you have to be creative. So the open field, the possibility for mobility seemed to animate the choice. So I wouldn’t say that the idea of the AACM as a “jazz club” is a misconception. I would say it’s more of a diminution. It’s an immobilizing trope for people who sought freedom.
Simon: Muhal Richard Abrams hates to talk about the music, jazz music in categorical terms.
George: He doesn’t want to talk about any music in categorical terms (laugh) He’s not the categorical type of individual. People found that very liberating about him. But nobody likes categories. There’s that wonderful quote that the historian Eric Porter identified, where Duke Ellington goes to Dizzy Gillespie and says, or Dizzy Gillespie remembers that Duke Ellington told him: “Dizzy, you should’ve never let them call your music be-bop, because when they name something, it becomes dated.”
Because the minute they did that, they – meaning whoever was in the power position – they were taking power by means of discourse. It’s just straight up Michel Foucault. So you can place a name on someone or place someone in a genre or a space, and from that moment they are stuck.
So you have to be a trickster to evade all that, again as a matter of survival.
Simon: But a lot of people don’t know that Muhal Richard Abrams has also devoted a lot of time and attention to classical structures. More people probably know him through his improvisation and more, shall I say, “jazz” sounding compositions.
George: I don’t know. I think that depends on who you’re talking to. I haven’t done any surveys, so I have no idea how Muhal’s work is considered. I just look at how he looks at himself. He seems to be looking at himself as a creative, multi-voiced artist. Once you accept that, then you can go anywhere Muhal wants you to go and you can go anywhere you want to go too.
I guess the other option is you can imagine a segment of the public that believes anything and then you can go in that direction. But it might be better, in encountering anyone’s music, just to use your own ears. Asking people to use their own ears is once again a sign of asking people to take up the symbol of self-determination that the music itself presents. In other words, the music was born in an atmosphere of self-determination. So it invites you to self-determine as well, and to self-realize.
Simon: If I wanted to join the AACM, could I?
George: Probably not (laugh). That’s another part that was very interesting in the book, as it happened. In the last part of the book, where people are discussing the past, present and future of the AACM in this virtual colloquy, I’m taking bits from the interviews and staging them and saying, well here’s everyone who talked about this topic.
They talked about race and they talked about the very difficult incident in which the sole ‘white’ member of the AACM, who didn’t think of himself as white at all, was ousted in the paroxysm of 1960s interest in what it meant to be culturally black.
At the time the idea of having an all-black organization was very difficult to digest. But in the wake of these kinds of organizations, now we find that there are single so-called race or ethnicity organizations of all kinds. So that seems to have receded as a concern. It seems to be accepted now that sometimes it’s best to address issues of race by somehow adopting strategies that foreground or privilege notions of race. I think that was clear because of the perceived failure of multicultural coalitions to achieve success.
The idea comes in the wake of Black Power also, as you can imagine. If you read the text of Carmichael and Hamilton you start to see that Carmichael is challenging white people, “Instead of wanting to be members of ‘our organizations,’ go into your communities and agitate for a while. Why don’t you do that?” Many people did.
That seemed to be something that seemed to militate against the kind of naïve form of proto-multiculturalism that had been on offer, avant la lettre–there was no such word as multiculturalism at the time. But multiracial coalitions seemed to many not to be doing the job, while being easily destabilized through appeals to white privilege. So you see that in the writings of the leftist groups of the period, the SDS for example, who adopt these points of view.
Simon: Does the AACM employ the One-Drop Rule when it comes to race?George: I think that jazz itself employs a One-Drop Rule–the idea that if one drop of what you do is jazz, then everything you do is jazz. That only seems to apply to African-Americans. Everyone else can be mobile, and jazz can be a part of the network. You can be a jazz musician today. You can be a classical musician tomorrow. You can be some other variant the next day.
I point out the difference between, let’s say, how an Anthony Braxton is considered and how someone else is considered, the idea that you could suddenly become that sort of protean individual. So I think that what’s going to happen with the AACM is that some variant of it is going to decide that the old rules don’t apply anymore. I have no idea when that’s going to happen–probably around the time that other variants of the One-Drop Rule also disappear. A lot of the power structures are based on that, and around the time those disappear, people will feel more comfortable about taking a less vigilant stance on these matters. Right now, though, race has not gone away or disappeared as a factor. It’s unfortunate, but that’s how it is.
Simon: People in the media are obviously willing to point out the One-Drop Rule in very subtle and disturbing ways.
George: Oh, I don’t know. I think the One-Drop Rule is not as important as the No-Drop Rule as far as I see. That’s been the dominant rule as long as I can remember. Let’s not have any African-Americans. One drop? That’s already too much. It’s not that it’s too little.
Simon: A big point of creating the AACM is to workshop, and embedded in that language, means improvement, or an approach to improving your work. Muhal Richard Abrams talks about personal growth and people growing in the workshop environment.
But, he is extremely careful with putting any kind of value judgment on the work itself. He is very sensitive to saying a piece of art is a success or a failure. Can you break that down for me?
George: I’m not sure. It kind of reminds me of my dad (laugh). That’s what he did. You learned not to say things were good or bad around him. That was the moment for a philosophical discussion and if you didn’t want to have a philosophical discussion, you just avoided those terms.
Simon: Well, I’ve listened to a lot of Muhal’s records and sometimes I don’t get it at all. I can’t relate to it. Were you ever in a position where you are creating experimental music and you are like, “No, I don’t really care for this very much. It was interesting that we tried it. It was a nice experiment.” But experiments are not always a success, right? At the end of the day you are searching for growth and you are searching for improvement.
When I asked Muhal about it, he said didn’t look at it that way. He said, “It’s like cooking an egg. You can cook an egg in a microwave. You can cook an egg on a stove or you can cook an egg on the sidewalk under the sun. They are all valid.” But if I had a follow-up, I would be like, “But you really wouldn’t want to eat that egg if it was cooked on the sidewalk, would you?”
George: I guess I take a little different viewpoint, not speaking about eggs–but you see it all the time. My son has a book called “Good Luck, Bad Luck.” OK, bad luck, he missed the plane. Good luck, the plane crashed and he wasn’t killed with it, and so on.
So the lesson, even for kids, is that time and life are sort of indeterminate, and rather than passing a momentary judgment, we could live in a state of continuous awareness. If we can do that, then we can see how much better it could be to learn from the total range of experience. Once we dismiss some aspect of the experience, once we commit the final judgment, then that aspect of experience is inaccessible to us. That’s how I interpret his ideas. So if you don’t understand or appreciate some piece of music, you just try again, and in doing that you learn, about yourself at least.
You were never told in the AACM that your concept was not good. You were always told that it was good. As an academic, I can tell you that this seems totally alien to the notion of academic critique, where someone would come to you and say, “Well, you have to be told the ‘truth’ about your work.”
I think Muhal felt deep down that most people already knew the truth about their work and there was no need for him to say anything to them, and that if he did, it might interfere with the learning process, which they had to go through on their own, to come to their own terms about what they were doing and then to learn what they could from their own work.
The learning process seemed more important than a judgment that led to the reification of a perspective. Instead, we say, “That was a nice experiment. Great. It was wonderful.”
See, the thing is that he’s not just saying, or I’m not just saying, that you want to avoid saying mean things about other people’s work. You also want to avoid a categorical judgment. Once you decide that it’s great then you have no further claim on it. You can’t learn anything else from it. So your continuous awareness has been broken at that point. It’s a mistake. You have to keep things fluid and mobile.
Simon: Can you talk about the pieces of music that immediately come to mind for you that directly reflect historical incidents that were happening during the time, perhaps like when John Coltrane died or the Chicago Riots of 1968 or anything historically going on?
George: Boy, it’s funny because I’m not trained in that way. I come from the post-Cage period. Anything goes with anything. To find some musical essentialism, I just can’t do it, which is why I would be a terrible film composer. I collaborated with Lev Manovich on “Soft Cinema.” There were 400 video clips that were deployed randomly and the music was deployed randomly. It looked fine to me.
Simon: But you do say that clearly the music that is being played is not created in this vacuum. The black avant-garde musicians are much more connected to what’s going on around them and that’s reflected in their music.
George: No, I’m not saying that in the book. What I guess I’m saying is that there were areas of experience with which the white experimental avant-garde seemed unwilling to connect. But their work certainly seemed reflective of their own experiences. That is certainly what connected them.
Now, when it starts to become complicated is when you have a multicultural experimental avant-garde, where everyone has to connect with all kinds of experiences. That is closer to what we have today. We’re not quite there, but it’s coming closer, at least in the U.S., which seems to be the place where these kinds of weird hybrids get started.
But see, it’s sort of a funny thing. You have Charles Ives, a lot of the American tradition is based on depicting things. Copland – even though the piece wasn’t originally called “Appalachian Spring,” somehow naming it that seemed to work. Somehow it seemed to be something that made sense to them. But I haven’t been a big depicter of things. So I guess I’m not sure I actually believe or even said that somehow one could draw a direct analogy between the music and the situation of the time.
Let me give you a simple example of how that fails. When John Coltrane was being asked by critics if he was angry, there are two answers you could give to that. One is, “Yes, the music expresses anger because I’m really angry.”
That would have been a very bad answer because the first thing that people want to know in that situation is “Well, why are you so angry?” The tenor of the times would be, “You have no right to be angry–hasn’t America been good to you?”
Of course, the answer is, “Well, not really. You just bombed a church with four children in it. What are you talking about? That’s why I wrote this piece called Alabama.”
So at a certain point Coltrane says, “Well no, I just want to acquaint people with the many wonderful things there are to experience in the universe,” which I think is true. But it is also a diversion because people like him had every right to be angry.
Now the thing is that when some people decided that this was the voice of anger and anguish and all of that, it didn’t seem to match up with the experiences of the musicians, who weren’t particularly angry when they were doing the music.
Those kinds of really simplistic tropes that match up the music with a certain emotion or something have always been really difficult for me to understand. Because what you really want is for music to be not reflective or depictive but evocative. In other words, if it is stuck in a certain period, then it stays in that period. But if it speaks to a contemporary experience, then it seems to be something that doesn’t get stuck.
But we do have to look at the historical conditions. We have to look at the social conditions, the class conditions, the gender conditions, the racial mixtures and everything. Even then it becomes very unclear. I haven’t been able to draw that one-to-one correspondence.
So yeah, it’s very difficult for me. I don’t think I can do it.
Simon: What about more explicit ways that some artists in the AACM used, like visual iconography, like dressing up in African wardrobe like the Art Ensemble of Chicago and using face paint and things like that?
George: Jarman talked about that in their book, their big Art Ensemble book. He talked about the iconography and what it represented. Lester Bowie was supposed to represent the experimentalist impulse. Roscoe Mitchell was supposed to represent the street hipster; generally you didn’t see him with face paint. Jarman was the pan-Asian person. Malachi (Favors) was supposed to represent the Egyptian mysteries and (Famoudou Don) Moye was supposed to represent a pan-African sensibility.
So what does all that add up to? Well, five different evocations of what it meant to be an African-American, and the clear implication was that there were more besides those. What they are depicting is a kind of fluidity and mobility of identity. They are not depicting “here’s what it means to be African,” unless they are saying that being African is as mobile as anything else. Because if it isn’t, then change can’t happen.
Simon: We haven’t talked about it and we should just because it’s important: Great Black Music.
George: Great Black Music was a very contested slogan. When it came out certain people didn’t like it. Muhal didn’t like it, for example. Other people thought it was very appropriate. The definition and the commentary that I found in interviews by people like Bowie and others indicated that it was by no means limited to people who were black.
In other words, Stan Kenton could be making Great Black Music or La Monte Young could be making Great Black Music. It all depended upon what you were doing musically. It didn’t depend on what your ethnicity was or what your race was or anything like that.
At the time there was a notion that the idea of Great Black Music had to be racist because you were admitting only a certain ethnicity or a certain race. The analogy was, well, what about “great other kind of music,” like some other ethnicity or some other race? What about “great that kind of music”?
Their answer would be “Go right ahead and do it.” I think Roscoe Mitchell said it best. They asked him why he made up the term Great Black Music. He said, “Well, because nobody was calling the music great,” which was a great answer. Back then, if you were going to go to “great performances” that meant going to Symphony Hall or somewhere. That didn’t mean going to hear some African Americans, doing creative music or any other kind of music.
So for them to reframe themselves as great – they were already black, so renaming themselves as “Great Black” meant that they could suddenly tap into another set of associations. They were great because they came from this legendary tradition of great musicians.
You see, in a way it was just as conservative a notion of promulgating a canon of greatness as what we found later in the ’80s. In fact, there are sociologists like Herman Gray, who make exactly that point, that what happened in the ’80s with the Jazz at Lincoln Center people and this unitary canon of greatness had already been anticipated by what these other people were doing.
In fact, they actually had the canon in common, except for the part about stretching back to Africa. I don’t think the ’80s jazz people were into that as much. But no one, as far as I know, regardless of whether they liked the term Great Black Music or not, seriously questioned the idea that this music had roots in Africa. It seemed really obvious because the people had roots in Africa. So the music that came out of it was presumed to have those roots.
Let me go a little bit further with this. This is in the center of what we might want to think about.
Everyone had their own way of thinking about that. Some people did it through depiction in the manner of the Art Ensemble. They would have drums going and they would adopt certain rhythms or certain ways of doing things that would be evocative of Africa or pay homage to Africa or draw sustenance from African sonic tropes. That was one way to do it.
Another way to do it would be more like what I do in computer music, which is having things be very multiple. You embody rather than depict. I think that at the time of people like Jeff Donaldson and the AfriCOBRA art movement, you had lots of colors in avant-garde African American art. They were responding to these countries in Africa where everybody would have these very vibrant colors. There was none of this washed out color field stuff. Everybody was bright and vibrant.
We are getting closer to the sense of what happens here – and this is not limited to the AACM, but it’s right across the board – well not starting with Louis Armstrong, but having that as being an important touchstone–a very vibrant, non-classical, open, sharp, bright trumpet sound.
So with the saxophonists Fred Anderson or Roscoe Mitchell, the sound was on the verge of breaking up. It’s got all these overtones. It’s very bright. It’s very intense. So that bright, intense multiple sound ideal was something that is characteristic of the period. People linked that, at the time, synaesthetically, with the colors that they expected to find in Africa, and Africa being this huge construction.
I think that when people look for connections with Africa, they are expressing continuity. But then they reserve the right to have rupture, which is also very important. That’s how you get revolutions and things like that.
Simon: Talk to me about this idea of silence and silences, creating silences. What do you mean by that?
George: It seemed to me the major thing that was important about jazz was that it was an outgrowth of a condition of silence. That is to say the thing that I found remarkable about slavery was the degree to which people were enforcing silence. People were afraid of slave music. They didn’t know what it represented. They wanted those slaves to be quiet.
You had the laws against making drums or drumming or whatever – you didn’t want that. Then of course, the silence of terror, where you didn’t know what was going to happen to you or your family, where really speaking out could be a death sentence. Even acting out, expression itself, could be easily misinterpreted.
So the best thing to do was to be as quiet as possible or to go along. Now, when all that starts to end, at least for a brief period, or even while it was going on, ring shouts become a form of slavery participation performance, or post slavery participation performance, in which everyone gets their opportunity to speak.
Everyone is moving back and forth in a circle, and someone does some incredible thing, some star turn, and then they go back to the circle. The next person goes out and does something else. Whether they are trying to top each other, whether it’s competition or cooperation or whatever, the point is people are getting a chance to speak.
So the idea that people should speak and that they have something personal to say, unique to say, gets retained in African American music. I think that accounts for its power really, the fact that it survived things like the McCarthy Period. Periodically, silence becomes the order of the day. The culture survived many years of terror in the southern United States and also in the north with all the race riots. It survived all those things basically through a reasserting and insisting on speaking.
While it seems important in another branch of the avant-garde to have conceptual silences, that is three- or four-minute voluntary silences, it’s not something that a post-slavery person would choose, to feel that a voluntary silence would be evocative of their situation, because they had already had the involuntary silence. They might be much more likely to want to speak out.
Simon: Is there a piece of music where the use of silence is deafening? The silence is used in such a way that makes a poignant statement, by an AACM composer?
George: Leo Smith and Roscoe Mitchell became associated with very quiet spaces, things that presaged the arrival of the so-called reductionist improvisers. They would have long stretches where no one would apparently be doing anything. There would be these long silences with groups like the Leo Smith-Anthony Braxton-Leroy Jenkins Trio.
I remember Leo telling me that at the beginning they did these pieces in all kinds of space, including traditional jazz clubs. They would do these silent pieces, and at some point somebody just said, “Play something or get off the stage!”
Now that’s a voluntary silence that’s deafening, if you want to look at it that way. The person just couldn’t take it. What did it mean to engage in that kind of supposed self-abnegation? Or is it that we are asking people to listen to their own inner voices and juxtapose that, blend that with the noises they hear all around?
Of course there is a blending with the so-called ultimate silence piece, which is 4’33,” which shows you once again that –
Simon: The John Cage piece?George: Yeah. 4’33″ gets syncretized with the African-American experience. You’ve got these very interesting hybrids that you wouldn’t get from either one alone.
Simon: Talk to me about Chicago. Tell me about the segregation of the North and South side and just the feeling. Can you paint a picture?
George: Of course I can’t paint the same picture that the people who lived through the worst parts of it could do.
The AACM is a product of the Great Migration, really one of the largest, if not the largest internal migrations in the history of the US, if not the world. The Great Migration lasted from about 1915 to, let’s say, the late 1960s. African-Americans left the rural South in large numbers to migrate to Northern, urban spaces – Harlem, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, not so much to the West, but mainly to the Midwest and East. Chicago got the nod because of the railroads and, and then you have the New Orleans-to-Chicago route that jazz supposedly followed, and so on. But when people got to Chicago, they found that it wasn’t like the Chicago Defender said, you know, this land of milk and honey.
Sure you found a job maybe, but you lived in often very squalid conditions. There were lots of fires. There was endemic segregation. It was an incredibly, incredibly crowded tiny space in which the African-Americans were basically being herded like cattle. People were living in one-bedroom apartments with five or six people in them. There was a lack of amenities, running water, heat, all these kinds of things – coal-fired stoves in the middle of the room. It was ridiculous.
So this is the environment of many of the AACM people, the earliest generation. This is what they grew up in. It’s not how I grew up. But it was close to how I grew up. I was just a few years removed from that because I do remember the coal stove.
When I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s, the South Side of Chicago was one of those places where, except for Hyde Park, you really didn’t see very many white people, or anybody else except for blacks everywhere. In spite of that it was a very mobile space. When you have that many people crammed together in one space and they all know each other very well, you get a community that’s in some ways very insular, in some ways very open and outward looking. A crucible.
The 60s were a period in which the intensification of a kind of endemic depression of the area increased markedly. The classic novel on that is The Spook Who Sat By the Door, which is an amazing book by Sam Greenlee.
Simon: Do you think the AACM – Great Black Music – was nationalistic? Do you think because Chicago was so fiercely segregated and probably rougher than other urban areas around the United States — did that somehow condition the AACM in a particular way?
George: I don’t see the AACM as terribly nationalistic, Great Black Music notwithstanding, because as I said, a lot of people didn’t accept that. People were free to call their music whatever they liked. Just as long as you don’t call my music Great Black Music, you can call your music whatever you like.
So no, I don’t see the AACM as an artifact of that sort of very narrow brand of black cultural nationalism, even though cultural nationalism in the more open sense was a strong influence. But I could certainly see that the AACM is an obvious product of the South Side of Chicago because it responded to the conditions of extreme segregation, or what the urban studies people called hyper-segregation.
It was a community of African-Americans who were thrown upon their own resources to create, living in a very circumscribed environment and looking for ways out of that circumscribed environment. Of course what happens is, by the time 1969 rolls around, a lot of them – well, not a lot of them, just a few – leave.
But they don’t go to New York. This isn’t the standard sort of Chicago-to-New York jazz narrative. Instead, they do something kind of unprecedented for the black urban class. They go to Paris.
Now the black middle class had been going there and becoming expatriates for quite a while, but now you had the working class people – Frank Wright, people like this. That was a totally different environment–the boys who had grown up in the cut-and-shoot stuff. They went to Paris and transformed their lives there.
But we were talking really, I guess about Chicago.There were very nationalist organizations in Chicago. After Phil Cohran left the AACM, he started the Affro-Arts Theater and[GL2] he started his own workshops. They brought in wonderful people. They brought in Amiri Baraka, who was already lionized in almost all segments of the black community. They brought in the then-named Stokely Carmichael. They connected things up with – Phil was always very interested in the “classical” aspects of African American tradition, particularly gospel music. So he had people doing that.
It was a staging ground for The Pharaohs and for the people who would later form the band Earth Wind & Fire. It all came out of that era in Chicago, and crossed over with the AACM people in a lot of different respects.
Obviously the Nation of Islam, also Chicago-based, was involved in that. You had so many organizations – OBAC – the Organization of Black American Culture, the artists who created the Wall of Respect street mural. Later you had the Kuumba Dance Workshop–all these cultural groups dedicated to various kinds of black cultural nationalism or pan-African cultural nationalism.
I’d say the AACM was one of those. But I would also say that there was always a part of it that resisted anyone who came with a dogma. People didn’t buy it. There was always somebody there to ask a question or to say, “Well, I don’t know if I believe that,” or to avoid it or something like that. People weren’t true believers, except in the power of their own music, and that was sometimes very difficult.
We’ve mainly been talking about the first generation of the AACM, but the AACM lasted. It’s been going on for 46 years. There are whole generations of AACM people who came later who have a rather different set of viewpoints.. The AACM musicians of the 80s and 90s in Chicago totally embraced the concept of Great Black Music.
They took that slogan as a legacy for themselves and some were surprised to find, I think, when they read the book, that it wasn’t considered universal, wasn’t universally admired.
But that was the purpose of the book, to speak across the generations.
Simon: Thank you for speaking with me, George.
George: My pleasure.
Teju Behun: Drawing From The City
Indian folk artist Teju Behun's
visual autobiography
is a real treat
We don’t feature too much creative work from India but we were absolutely blown away by this sumptuous book Drawing From The City. It’s a visual autobiography of Teju Behun, a folk artist and performer whose gorgeous, intricate illustrations chart her journey from her childhood, through her marriage and life as a wandering musician to meditations on cars, planes and bicycles. Silkscreen printed by hand, the sheer quality of the book as an object means you want to pore over each page for hours, submitting to the skilful worlds she creates which soar above the simple, poetic prose.
The next time I hear a cocksure “print is dead” peddler I am going to track them down and make them read this book, which creates the kind of experience a Kindle can only dream of.
Teju Behun: Drawing From The City
Teju Behun: Drawing From The City
Teju Behun: Drawing From The City
Teju Behun: Drawing From The City
Teju Behun at work
Further reading:
I love JaNY is a portrait of Jany Tomba, the artistʼs aunt, who at an early age, in the 1960s, experienced what it is like to emigrate with her family from the dictatorship in Haiti to New York. Becoming a successful, ʻearly-generationʼ black fashion model, spending over 25 years with the Ford modeling agency.
More info: sashahuber.com/?cat=29⟨=fi&mstr=4__________________________Written by Kat FeaturedFeb82012Jany Remponeau Tomba:
The Untold Story of
One of the World’s
First Black Supermodels
In the 1960s, the 1970s, black models shined, and very, very few shined as lustrously as Jany Remponeau Tomba, who became one of the USA’s very first black supermodels. Her modeling career spanned three decades, with her face appearing on the cover of American Girl, Woman’s Day, Mademoiselle, Essence, not to mention groundbreaking ads for Coke, Maxi, Johnson and Johnson products, Clairol, and other famous brands. Tomba’s journey as a model started with her arrival as a young immigrant in New York in the mid-1960s.
A stunningly beautiful girl, she had a dimpled smile, shapely legs, high cheek bones, and a remarkable face that could have given any onlooker the impression that she she had had angels in her parental lineage. Not too long after Tomba’s arrival in the United States, she caught the eye of a photographer who asked permission to take her photo. Tomba refused outright.
Her next encounter with the fashion world would occur not long after—this time she was approached by a woman who told the young Tomba that she was from the publishing conglomerate Conde Nast. The woman was at the time the beauty editor at Glamour magazine, and Tomba, blessed with good sense accepted her invitation into the upscale offices of magazine. From there, Tomba was groomed; sent to a beauty shop for a hair makeover, and assigned to a fashion photographer, and thus begun her ascent in the world of high fashion. The little girl from Port-au-Prince, who had originally had her mind set on a medical career, signed to Ford, one of Fashion Land’s most prestigious modeling agencies then and now. She was in high demand everywhere, strutted her stuff at casting auditions, dimpled for photographers, and landed in the pages of the fashion world’s most popular magazines, including Time.
She shared her reminisces about her modeling career and her life after.
(Right): Tomba as a little girl in Haiti, posing for her first communion photo
Q&A
What kind of childhood did you have?
I was born in Haiti of a family where my father was an artist. We lived in Port-au-Prince in a neighborhood which then seemed country. At that time there might have been no more than ten houses around. Today, it is sadly an overbuilt and crowded commercial strip. When on a recent visit I drove by the old house among the small houses squeezing her in, she stood freshly painted, behind tall brick walls. I was happy to see the trees were still there and almost could feel the spirit of my grandmother who lived with us. I had a wonderful childhood filled with joy, artistic activities and mango trees. I love to climb the trees where I found my solitude. I was the fourth child of a family of 6. My mother helped my father run his studio where I was fortunate to meet many prominent artists. I enjoyed the gallery openings, the production of carnival floats, and Christmas time was also a time of involvement as all the kids hand painted Christmas cards. During the summer my Father took us fishing. Although my family was Catholic we and extended members also visited yearly the wonderful waterfall of Saut d’Eau. It was a day of joy and the spiritual element was palpable even though I did not understand any of it then. I went to Catholic school which I did not like because the nuns were oppressive. Later on I went to a boy girl school where I blossomed as an adolescent. In 1965, my family left the native land and settled in New York City.
Why did they choose the USA as opposed to France, since France was usually the destination of the professional class?
Usually in migration patterns people follow the earlier migrants. People go where there is connection and opportunities. In my case my Father had moved to New York in 1964 so the rest of the family joined him. My Father had traveled a lot. Before that, he had studied at Hampton Institute in the South and he had worked in Ghana and had been to New York where he had family and friends. Although he had been to France, we did not have family there. Many families had moved to many places at that time. I would say my parents chose to leave. I was not asked where I wanted to go. We packed and left. The situation in Haiti at that time was very oppressive and not conducive to the growth of young individuals.As one of the first black supermodels of the world, what obstacles did you find yourself facing?
It was 1969. The Black Power movement had just settled and the African-American consumers were being courted. There was a need to satisfy the Black consumer. However it was not an easy transition. To see a Black girl next to the White girls was to be a challenge. It was okay to show a Black model but often she would not be photographed single. It was rare to have a cover. It was customary to photograph a Black girl with a Blonde and a Brunette. Some photographers then told me they had a difficult time to light the three together so I was perfect with my tan look not too dark not too light. Plus I had the bright energetic smile that made people feel comfortable or should I say not feel threatened? It was not long after the Civil Right movement.You’ve discussed modeling in the 1960s, but what did it feel like to be a new immigrant in the mid-1960s…the transition from Haiti to New York?
As difficult as it was to leave my homeland I welcomed the new adventure. I did miss my grandmother and my friends, but I loved being in New York. It was a very cold day in March. It had been snowing and the ground was covered. Everything was new. I was so young and as long as I had my family I felt secure. We lived in upper Manhattan in a very nice building and I loved the elevator! I was fascinated by the constant lights in the city. I remember thinking there are no trees, the streets seemed so sterile! I missed the crawling lizards. The transition was pretty smooth and in the summer I discovered Central Park, Coney Island and the Museums and Greenwich Village, where an abundance of art made up for my green land.
Collage via: Divalocity
A lot of wisdom comes with time. What do you wish you had known when you first started out as a model?
What I wish I had known then as young starting model? I am glad I had not known so much that I do today. My path was guided by intuition and a result of my upbringing. I was confident without arrogance, and had I known what I know today I mean my political placement in that industry I would have been hindered because the fashion industry likes the girls to be young of mind and body. I did not analyze the why and the how of modeling; it just happened to me as if I had been chosen. The only effort on my part was to show up on time ready and respectful. I think my natural comfort with myself helped sell my image.What were some of the best moments of your modeling career?
I learned very early on to enjoy all my assignments. The best moment was, when I went on a go-see at Mademoiselle Magazine and in the waiting room were several other young Black models; an editor came out and loudly announced to me that I was their January 1970 cover girl. Another great moment was when I got a call for a national commercial for Coca-Cola and I had gone the week before to an audition for another product which I did not land but the same director chose me for the “Have a Coke and a smile commercial” [campaign], which ran during superbowl. There were many good moments like going on trips to the Caribbean in the middle of the winter. Working with the great Irving Penn or landing an Essence spread with the famous photographer Francesco Scavullo. Most of those moments had to do with prestige, landing a good campaign because after all it is a very competitive business. It is a business that can build your self-esteem or take it away over night!What do you feel is the biggest misconception about models?
Modeling has a lot to do with identity and I was lucky to have kept my roots. Unlike the information in the media where girls are shown behind the scene hanging out together this profession can be very isolating. Girls stick together excluding others ; models come from different social backgrounds, many from small towns, so at times clans are formed: the models and the photographers gathered at night. The only things we had in common were the clients and the desire to reach the top.So many models from the 1970s and 1980s ended up getting wasted and getting burnt at an early age.
I don’t know that many models in the 1970s-1980s got burned or wasted. Of course people rejoice in the fall of perfection. I am not saying that models are perfect, but during the day we sell the image of perfection and some might have partied too much and got burned. It was a time past the Woodstock era and the time of free sexuality, the pre-AIDS era and it was the disco time. People partied like in many other industries, the difference was that at a models’ party, a club would be filled with beautiful people and the promoters excluded others waiting behind the velvet rope! Having a strong self-esteem, clear eyes, a healthy skin and showing up on time was what helped to maintain and lengthen one’s career.
For each model, there is an ending point. What was your life like after modeling?
My career lasted from 1969 till 1998 when I landed my last cover for an Essence publication with my then teen daughter. While I was modeling I continued to show up for casting calls and I busied myself doing small parts and extra work in movies around New York City. I was always busy.What are you up to these days?
In 1988—still at the top of my career—I started to attend art school in NYC, the Sculpture Center and also to paint. So while modeling I was doing art and exhibiting my work. My identity was shifting from Cover girl to Artist. I remember when I first showed my sculpture at the gallery my family attended and I felt I had come full circle reminiscing on my Father’s gallery openings back in Haiti. So it was not an abrupt cut off of my activities. A few years later I stopped modeling, went back to school and graduated at Hunter College where I became a special correspondent for The Word their online newspaper. I took classes at CUNY Grad Center, where I researched early Haitian Kreyòl linguistic and published a paper in the Linguistic American Society.My heart has always been with my roots. I recently returned from a trip to my native land and this visit reinforces my love for Haiti. Today I am busy being a caring mother and daughter my dad is now 95 years old and my daughter and her husband gifted the family with two children. I continue doing my artwork, I think of ways I can involve myself in the reconstruction of the image of Haiti, pride of Haiti is in the main focus of my thoughts. I attend lectures and cultural events related to Haiti around New York City and network and have fun. My life is where it should be with much more to come.
You’re involved in activities involving Haiti. Have you done anything in particular to keep your culture vibrant in your children?
My Father Geo Remponeau is a legendary Haitian artist, so it was quite easy for me to keep my daughter in an environment that recalls Haiti. My parents spoke Kreyòl in the home and Haitian music was often part of the background in our home. We went to visit Haitian friends we stayed close to my parents and siblings. I took my child when she was quite young to visit Haiti. I have only one daughter and I made sure she ate Haitian food, learned Kreyòl and participated in family gathering so that she would be aware of her roots. When she married I gave her the present of a root dance performance by the fabulous Haitian dancer Mikerline, her dancers and her drummers. Today to my daughter’s three year old child I teach words of Kreyòl, and when we part, he says: “Mwen renmen-w”!
Jany Tomba today, posing with her niece Sasha Huber. Photo: Kirsi MckenzieWhat would you say has been your greatest regret?
I have learned to live and accept my life as my destiny had it written. I continue to show up and do the right thing: love of my brothers and sisters. Compassion is the key to happiness. I have no regrets.Main Photo: Rolf Bruderer
MOTHERLANDDOCUMENTARY: Enat Hager (Motherland): Part 1
Motherland (Enat Hager) is a bold, epic journey through Africa with a authentic African voice. Fusing history, culture, politics, and contemporary issues, Motherland sweeps across Africa to tell a new story of a dynamic continent. From the glory and majesty of Africa’s past through its complex and present history. Motherland looks unflinchingly toward a positive Pan-African future.
With breathtaking cinematography and a fluid soundtrack sculpted by Sona Jobarteh, Motherland is a beautiful illustration of global African diversity and unity. From the acclaimed producers of the multi-award winning 500 Years Later, Motherland is Directed by Owen ‘Alik Shahadah and produced by M.K. Asante, Jr.
