Abbey Lincoln, Jazz Singer and Writer, Dies at 80

By NATE CHINEN

Published: August 14, 2010

Abbey Lincoln, a singer whose dramatic vocal command and tersely poetic songs made her a singular figure in jazz, died on Saturday in Manhattan. She was 80 and lived on the Upper West Side.

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Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Singer-composer Abbey Lincoln at her home in Manhattan in 2002.

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Ms. Lincoln in the 1968 film “For Love of Ivy.”

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Jack Vartoogian/FrontRowPhotos

Ms. Lincoln, 1991.

Her death was announced by her brother David Wooldridge.

Ms. Lincoln’s career encompassed outspoken civil rights advocacy in the 1960s and fearless introspection in more recent years, and for a time in the 1960s she acted in films, including one with Sidney Poitier.

Long recognized as one of jazz’s most arresting and uncompromising singers, Ms. Lincoln gained similar stature as a songwriter only over the last two decades. Her songs, rich in metaphor and philosophical reflection, provide the substance of “Abbey Sings Abbey,” an album released on Verve in 2007. As a body of work, the songs formed the basis of a three-concert retrospective presented by Jazz at Lincoln Center in 2002.

Her singing style was unique, a combined result of bold projection and expressive restraint. Because of her ability to inhabit the emotional dimensions of a song, she was often likened to Billie Holiday, her chief influence. But Ms. Lincoln had a deeper register and a darker tone, and her way with phrasing was more declarative.

“Her utter individuality and intensely passionate delivery can leave an audience breathless with the tension of real drama,” Peter Watrous wrote in The New York Times in 1989. “A slight, curling phrase is laden with significance, and the tone of her voice can signify hidden welts of emotion.”

She had a profound influence on other jazz vocalists, not only as a singer and composer but also as a role model. “I learned a lot about taking a different path from Abbey,” the singer Cassandra Wilson said. “Investing your lyrics with what your life is about in the moment.”

Ms. Lincoln was born Anna Marie Wooldridge in Chicago on Aug. 6, 1930, the 10th of 12 children, and raised in rural Michigan. In the early 1950s, she headed west in search of a singing career, spending two years as a nightclub attraction in Honolulu, where she met Ms. Holiday and Louis Armstrong. She then moved to Los Angeles, where she encountered the accomplished lyricist Bob Russell.

It was at the suggestion of Mr. Russell, who had become her manager, that she took the name Abbey Lincoln, a symbolic conjoining of Westminster Abbey and Abraham Lincoln. In 1956, she made her first album, “Affair ... a Story of a Girl in Love” (Liberty), and appeared in her first film, the Jayne Mansfield vehicle “The Girl Can’t Help It.” Her image in both cases was decidedly glamorous: On the album cover she was depicted in a décolleté gown, and in the movie she sported a dress once worn by Marilyn Monroe.

For her second album, “That’s Him,” released on the Riverside label in 1957, Ms. Lincoln kept the seductive pose but worked convincingly with a modern jazz ensemble that included the tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins and the drummer Max Roach. In short order she came under the influence of Mr. Roach, a bebop pioneer with an ardent interest in progressive causes. As she later recalled, she put the Monroe dress in an incinerator and followed his lead.

The most visible manifestation of their partnership was “We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite,” issued on the Candid label in 1960, with Ms. Lincoln belting Oscar Brown Jr.’s lyrics. Now hailed as an early masterwork of the civil rights movement, the album radicalized Ms. Lincoln’s reputation. One movement had her moaning in sorrow, and then hollering and shrieking in anguish — a stark evocation of struggle. A year later, after Ms. Lincoln sang her own lyrics to a song called “Retribution,” her stance prompted one prominent reviewer to deride her in print as a “professional Negro.”

Ms. Lincoln, who married Mr. Roach in 1962, was for a while more active as an actress than a singer. In 1964 she starred with Ivan Dixon in “Nothing but a Man,” a tale of the Deep South in the 1960s, and in 1968 she was the title character opposite Mr. Poitier in the romantic comedy “For Love of Ivy,” playing a white family’s maid. She also acted on television in guest-starring roles in the ’60s and ’70s.

But with the exception of “Straight Ahead” (Candid), on which “Retribution” appeared, she released no albums in the 1960s. And after her divorce from Mr. Roach in 1970, she took an apartment above a garage in Los Angeles and withdrew from the spotlight for a time. She never remarried.

In addition to Mr. Wooldridge, Ms. Lincoln is survived by another brother, Kenneth Wooldridge, and a sister, Juanita Baker.

During a visit to Africa in 1972, Ms. Lincoln received two honorary appellations from political officials: Moseka, in Zaire, and Aminata, in Guinea. (Moseka would occasionally serve as her surname.) She began to consider her calling as a storyteller and focused on writing songs.

Moving back to New York in the 1980s, Ms. Lincoln resumed performing, eventually attracting the attention of Jean-Philippe Allard, a producer and executive with PolyGram France. Ms. Lincoln’s first effort for what is now the Verve Music Group, “The World Is Falling Down” (1990), was a commercial and critical success.

Eight more albums followed in a similar vein, each produced by Mr. Allard and enlisting top-shelf jazz musicians like the tenor saxophonist Stan Getz and the vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson. In addition to elegant originals like “Throw It Away” and “When I’m Called Home,” the albums featured Ms. Lincoln’s striking interpretations of material ranging from songbook standards to Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

For “Abbey Sings Abbey” Ms. Lincoln revisited her own songbook exclusively, performing in an acoustic roots-music setting that emphasized her affinities with singer-songwriters like Mr. Dylan. Overseen by Mr. Allard and the American producer-engineer Jay Newland, the album boiled each song to its essence and found Ms. Lincoln in weathered voice but superlative form.

When the album was released in May 2007, Ms. Lincoln was recovering from open-heart surgery. In her Upper West Side apartment, surrounded by her own paintings and drawings, she reflected on her life, often quoting from her own song lyrics. After she recited a long passage from “The World Is Falling Down,” one of her more prominent later songs, her eyes flashed with pride. “I don’t know why anybody would give that up,” she said. “I wouldn’t. Makes my life worthwhile.”

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Abbey Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation

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Abbey Lincoln at Carnegie Hall in 2004.

"I HAD a chance to be myself, and I was,” Abbey Lincoln said one recent afternoon, in a corner parlor of her spacious but unassuming ground-floor apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. This 76-year-old jazz legend was summing up her new album, “Abbey Sings Abbey” (Verve), but she could have been describing the central theme of her long and colorful career. On the walls around her were dozens of artifacts — photographs of her with jazz greats, plaques from politicians and family portraits she painted — attesting to the fullness of that story. Dominating the room was a piano, the instrument with which she wrote many of her symbolically charged and self-reflective songs.

Multimedia

 Podcast: Nate Chinen Interviews Abbey Lincoln (mp3)

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Abbey Lincoln with Sidney Poitier in the 1968 film “For Love of Ivy.”

Ms. Lincoln was on the mend from recent open-heart surgery, which might nudge anyone toward rumination. But sitting on a couch in loose clothing, she was as matter-of-fact about her health as she is about her work. Long recognized as one of jazz’s most arresting and uncompromising singers, she has more recently been celebrated as a gifted lyricist and composer. She is the rare jazz singer who writes her own songs, and the rare jazz songwriter whose music conveys the lessons of her life, like, “You can never lose a thing if it belongs to you.”

“Abbey Sings Abbey,” which is out on Tuesday, captures the depth of her art with majestic serenity and bittersweet clarity. As the title suggests, it looks back on her original songs, the first time Ms. Lincoln has dedicated a full album to her own work. Another first: It surrounds her richly textured voice with acoustic and pedal steel guitars, accordion and mandolin, in an American roots-music style. “For some reason,” she said, “it’s better than anything I’ve done before.”

And Ms. Lincoln — who was born Anna Marie Wooldridge, the 10th of 12 children — has done quite a lot in her five-decade-plus career. Her songs are almost certainly her proudest achievement, an impression she reinforces by quoting them liberally, and commandingly, in conversation. “I’m a philosopher, you know,” she said, several minutes into an interview marked at first by wariness, then candor and humor. She frequently reached back into her history, reminiscing even about the things she’s glad to have left behind.

Fifty years ago Ms. Lincoln was on track to become a film and cabaret siren, appearing in the Jayne Mansfield movie “The Girl Can’t Help It,” and on the cover of her 1956 debut, “Affair ... Story of a Girl in Love,” in a décolleté dress and a come-hither pose. She had already spent two years in Honolulu as a supper-club attraction. “I was a glamour queen there too,” she said, smiling faintly. “I met Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday. I’d do my show and run to see Billie. She’d stand on the stage and never move, except for her eyes.”

Ms. Lincoln would eventually be hailed as a successor to Holiday, for her interpretive prowess as well as a slight resemblance between their grainy yet supple vocal timbres. But that accolade was well beyond the horizon when she left Hawaii for Los Angeles, where she met the lyricist Bob Russell, who became her manager. “One time he told me, ‘SinceAbraham Lincoln didn’t free the slaves, maybe you could handle it,’ ” she recalled with a laugh. “He named me Abbey Lincoln.”

Emancipation became a genuine preoccupation for Ms. Lincoln after she met Max Roach, the maverick bebop drummer she credits with “helping me find myself”; they married in 1962. In New York Mr. Roach brought her into his world of artistic experimentation and political engagement. Ms. Lincoln cut herself loose from her satiny image. She’s fond of recalling the emblematic moment when she burned the dress she sported in “The Girl Can’t Help It,” which had previously been worn by Marilyn Monroe. By 1960 she was vocalizing with a raw, spine-tingling power in Mr. Roach’s “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite,” a momentous civil-rights anthem.

In 1961 Ms. Lincoln made some early forays into lyric writing on an album called “Straight Ahead” (Candid) that sparked a public discussion about racial prejudice in jazz, after one reviewer derided Ms. Lincoln as a “professional Negro.” She seems to view those tensions now in an almost clinical light. “People remember you for what you stood for,” she said simply. “And if you didn’t stand for anything, they remember that too.”

One song Ms. Lincoln versified on “Straight Ahead” was “Blue Monk,” by the pianist Thelonious Monk, who stopped by the recording studio to bestow his blessing. “He whispered in my ear just as he was leaving, ‘Don’t be so perfect,’ ” she said. That bit of advice has stayed with her over the years. “Blue Monk” opens the new album.

It wasn’t until her 40s that Ms. Lincoln began to come into her own as a composer. After her divorce from Mr. Roach in 1970, she withdrew from the spotlight, taking an apartment above a garage in Los Angeles. She released an album after a revelatory trip to Africa in 1972, but otherwise directed most of her energies inward. Her songs reflected that spirit of introspection. “I got some people in me,” she wrote.

Moving back to New York in the 1980s she resumed performing, eventually attracting the attention of Jean-Philippe Allard, a producer and executive with Polygram France. Ms. Lincoln’s first effort for what is now the Verve Music Group, “The World Is Falling Down” in 1990, was a commercial and critical success and eight more albums followed, each involving elite jazz musicians and refined jazz arrangements.

 

The new album purposefully departs from that formula. Mr. Allard, speaking from Paris, said that he and Jay Newland, the engineer on almost all of those Verve releases, had long shared a quiet conviction. “Abbey’s songs have this folk element that is not well represented in a jazz context sometimes,” he said.

Multimedia

 Podcast: Nate Chinen Interviews Abbey Lincoln (mp3)

Mr. Newland, who produced “Abbey Sings Abbey” with Mr. Allard, traces the concept for the album back at least a decade, to a recording Ms. Lincoln made of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man.” She’s a singer-songwriter too, Mr. Newland recalled thinking at the time.

The idea was rekindled last year, when the producers worked together on an album by the Afro-European pop singer Ayo. Among the songs they recorded was Ms. Lincoln’s “And It’s Supposed to Be Love,” in a new arrangement driven by the guitarist (and as it happens, former Dylan sideman) Larry Campbell. Mr. Campbell was tasked with paring down a number of Ms. Lincoln’s other songs, in preparation for a recording session.

“I was a little skeptical,” Mr. Campbell said by cellphone, driving near Nashville. “How do you take all these really sophisticated harmonic structures and break them down to virtually folk songs?”

It turned out to be easy once he was in the studio with the versatile jazz bassist Scott Colley and the prolific rock drummer Shawn Pelton. Many of Ms. Lincoln’s songs employ a verse-chorus structure more in line with folk songs than jazz standards; some, like “The Music Is the Magic,” resemble nursery rhymes. Though the three musicians had never worked together before, they quickly devised a gently twangy atmosphere for the songs. Later the arranger Gil Goldstein fleshed out some tracks, adding his own deft accordion lines, along with parts for a cellist, Dave Eggar.

Ms. Lincoln exudes a powerful authority throughout the album, whether striking a quietly wistful note on “Should’ve Been” or appealing to a distant creator in “Down Here Below.” Her flickering alto sounds ratified by age; her phrasing is subtle and sure.

“I’ve got about 15 years on some of the songs, so it’s supposed to be a little different,” she said. “If I was imitating myself, that would be pitiful.”

Many more singers are likely to mine Ms. Lincoln’s songs, given that “Abbey Sings Abbey” presents them so clearly, and with so few adornments. Earlier this year the jazz vocalist Kendra Shank released “A Spirit Free: Abbey Lincoln Songbook” (Challenge). Her advice to any artist would be “to sing your own song,” Ms. Lincoln said. “Don’t look to me, look to yourself.” Still, she noted with evident satisfaction a report she had received: a couple of nights earlier, a singer in a club had been pressured by an audience member into singing “Throw It Away,” one of her signature songs.

The singer was Cassandra Wilson, who recorded the song on a recent album, and who has often worked with the rootsy instrumentation now being used by Ms. Lincoln. “I learned a lot about taking a different path from Abbey,” Ms. Wilson said. “Investing your lyrics with what your life is about in the moment.”

That includes the tougher moments, of which Ms. Lincoln has lately had a few. Sitting on her couch, surrounded by the totems of her life, she repeatedly admitted to a lingering fatigue. “I didn’t come here to stay forever, I know that,” she said. “So if they want to bring me home, I’ll be glad to go. It’s easy for me to say it, but I mean it too.” She has vague plans to bequeath her apartment to the community as an arts center: Moseka House, after the name she was given 35 years ago by an official in Zaire.

Of course her greatest legacy will be her music, which she isn’t ready to relinquish. “They’re my songs, and I sang ’em and I’ll sing ’em,” she said. “It’s not the last time I’ll sing ’em, either.” In August she will headline both days of the 15th Annual Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, which takes place in Harlem and the East Village.

“All along the way there were things to do/always some other someone I could be,” Ms. Lincoln said, citing lines from “Being Me,” which closes the album with a rumination on her lifelong search for an honest self. “Abbey Sings Abbey” is the manifestation of that search, a study in gravity and wisdom that could only have come, one suspects, at this point in her career.

“I should be excellent by now,” Ms. Lincoln said. “Otherwise, when is it going to be?” She drew herself up into a regal posture, grinning mischievously. “I’m baaaaaad.”

>via: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/arts/music/20chin.html?pagewanted=1&fta=y

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GO HERE FOR TERRY HOWCOTT'S ABBEY LINCOLN TRIBUTE FEATURING 26 VIDEOS!!!

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GO HERE AND HERE FOR NEO•GRIOT ABBEY LINCOLN VIDEO POSTINGS

 

 

 

Impact & CMR Introduce Level 3:16

The Impact Movement & Cross Movement Records is teaming up in a strategic partnership to launch Level 3:16, a band assembled during the Impact Music Summer Mission. Level 3:16 is a unique fusion of hip-hop and urban gospel with a twist. They are also full-time musicianaries (music missionaries) committed to raising support and focusing on the call as missionaries to serve with The Impact Movement.

Canadian Tales of the Fantastic Short Story Competition

Writers of short fiction are encouraged to enter the Red Tuque Books Short Story Competition. The total prize money to be awarded is $1,000.00. The first, second and third place stories will be selected by two accomplished writers. Eileen Kernaghan has written eight historical Fantasy novels and is a three-time winner of the Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Award. Casey Wolf is the author of numerous speculative short stories, fifteen of which can be found in a short story collection: Finding Creatures & Other Stories.

 

Canadian Tales Of The Fantastic Short Story Competition

Writers of short fiction are encouraged to enter the 2010 Canadian Tales of the Fantastic Short Story Competition. To be considered, a story must have two things. First, it must contain an element of the Fantastic; second, it must be identifiably Canadian. An element of the Fantastic is self-explanatory, but what is ‘Identifiably Canadian’? If the story is written by a Canadian, or written about Canadians, or takes place in Canada, then it meets the ‘Identifiably Canadian’ condition.

 

Prizes and Publication:

First place pays $500. Second place pays $150 and the third pays $100. Ten Honourable mention prizes of $25.00 will also be awarded. All winning entries will be published by Red Tuque Books in the upcoming anthology, ‘Canadian Tales Of The Fantastic’. Winners will receive a complementary copy of the anthology in addition to the prize money. Winners will be contacted by February 28th, 2011. Results will posted on the Red Tuque Books website in March, 2011.

 

The first, second and third place stories will be selected by two accomplished writers. Eileen Kernaghan has written eight Historical Fantasy novels and is a three-time winner of the Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Award. Casey Wolf is the author of numerous speculative short stories, fifteen of which can be found in a short story collection: Finding Creatures & Other Stories.

 

Submission requirements:

The contest closes December 31st, 2010. Entries post marked later that December 31st will not be considered. All entries will be read. Those received before October 31st, 2010, will have at least two opportunities to make the short list. Depending on the volume of entries, entries received after this date may only get one reading. The entry fee is $15 for one manuscript, $25 for two, or $30 for three. Three is the maximum number of manuscripts that can be submitted by any one author. The judging is blind, so it is possible for one author to have up to three winning entries.

 

All manuscripts must be original, unpublished fiction, typed and double-spaced, between 1,500 and 5,000 words. The authors retain their copyright, but first-print rights are granted to Red Tuque Books for the anthology. All submissions must be sent via regular mail. Email submissions will not be accepted. Simultaneous submissions are acceptable, but Red Tuque Books must be notified in writing, prior to the February announcement, if a manuscript has been accepted for publication elsewhere.

 

Entries will be judged anonymously. The author’s name should not appear anywhere in the manuscript. Each entry must be accompanied by a separate cover sheet with the author's name, complete mailing address, email address, phone number, the title of the piece, and the word count. Manuscripts will not be returned and no entry confirmation will be given unless requested. Please provide a SASE or e-mail address when requesting confirmation.

 

Entry fees must be submitted by mail with their accompanying manuscripts. Payment is in Canadian funds. Personal cheques, bank drafts, and money orders, should be drawn on a Canadian Bank. Please make payable to Red Tuque Books Inc.

 

Send manuscript(s), along with the appropriate entry fee, to:

Short Story Competition

Red Tuque Books

Unit #6, 477 Martin Street

Penticton, BC

V2A 5L2

 

Writing Contest

2010 Mangrove Review / FGCU Sanibel Island Writers Conference Writing Contest

Three awards—one each in Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction

Winners to be published and acknowledged in Mangrove Review, Spring 2011, FGCU's literary magazine, and given free admission to the 2010 FGCU Sanibel Island Writers Conference.

 

Guidelines:

Poetry:  Five poem limitation, one poem per page.

Fiction and Creative Nonfiction:  One story or essay, no more than 20 pages, one-sided, double-spaced. 

Please specify genre.  All material should be original and previously unpublished, including personal blogs, Facebook, Twitter, or whatever thing is invented between now and the end of the contest.

Include your name, poem/essay/story title, phone number and e-mail address on each page of your manuscript. 

There is a $10 reading fee per submission.  Please make the check out to Florida Gulf Coast University.

Send printed copies of all manuscripts with an SASE for notification of decision to accompany the manuscript.

 

Address the submission to:

Sanibel Island Writers Conference Contest c/o Dr. Jim Brock College of Arts and Sciences, Reed Hall Florida Gulf Coast University

10501 FGCU Blvd. S.

Fort Myers, FL 33965-6565

 

Deadline: September 1, 2010

Winners announced: October 1, 2010

 

If you have any questions that aren't answered here, please feel free to send them to jbrock@fgcu.edu.

Philip Levine Prize

Guidelines

 
Deadline: September 30, 2010. In addition to book publication by Anhinga Press, the winner will receive a $2000 honorarium.

Final Judge: TBA
1. Manuscript should be original poetry, not previously published in book form, and should be 48-80 pages.

2. Include two manuscript title pages: one with name and contact information and one with the name of the manuscript ONLY.  Manuscripts will be screened and judged anonymously.

3. All poets are eligible except: faculty, current students and  graduates of the MFA Program at California State University, Fresno and close friends, family, or recent students of the judge.

4. The entry fee is $25. Checks should be made out to "CSU Fresno Levine Prize."

5. Please bind your manuscript with a binder clip only and mail by 9/30/10 (postmark deadline), to:
Philip Levine Prize in Poetry
Department of English, Mail Stop PB98
5245 North Backer Avenue,
California State University, Fresno,
Fresno, CA  93740

More info: email connieh@csufresno.edu

Lawrence Jackson Talks About his New Book 'The Indignant Generation'

The Indignant Generation:
A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics, 1934-1960
Lawrence P. Jackson
Princeton University Press

The Indignant Generation is the first narrative history of the neglected but essential period of African American literature between the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights Era. The years between these two indispensable epochs saw the communal rise of Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, and many other influential black writers. While these individuals have been duly celebrated, little attention has been paid to the political and artistic milieu in which they produced their greatest works. With this commanding study, Lawrence Jackson recalls the lost history of a crucial era.

Looking at the tumultuous decades surrounding World War II, Jackson restores the "indignant" quality to a generation of African American writers shaped by Jim Crow segregation, the Great Depression, the growth of American Communism, and an international wave of decolonization. He also reveals how artistic collectives in New York, Chicago, and Washington fostered a sense of destiny and belonging among diverse and disenchanted peoples. As Jackson shows through contemporary documents, the years that brought us Their Eyes Were Watching God, Native Son, and Invisible Man also saw the rise of African American literary criticism--by both black and white critics.

Fully exploring the cadre of key African American writers who triumphed in spite of segregation, The Indignant Generation paints a vivid portrait of American intellectual and artistic life in the mid-twentieth century.

Lawrence P. Jackson is professor of English and African American studies at Emory University. He is the author of Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius and a forthcoming biography of Chester Himes.

Endorsements:

"Lawrence Jackson's authoritatively detailed and lively Indignant Generation is an omnium gatherum of virtually everybody of color in the mid-20th century who tried to write the Great American Novel. This excellent study should become a literary and cultural history benchmark."--David Levering Lewis, New York University and author of When Harlem Was in Vogue

"The Indignant Generation is the most comprehensive portrait of the literary history in that glorious interregnum between the Harlem Renaissance of the twenties and the Black Arts Movement of the sixties. Combining close reading with a keen sensitivity to cultural and political context, Jackson has brought this little studied period to life, and he has done so with compelling erudition. This book is a major contribution to literary scholarship. I learned quite a lot reading it, and enjoyed every minute doing so."--Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University

"This is a magisterial book. Lawrence Jackson is a first-rate historian--I salute him!"--Cornel West, Princeton University

"The Indignant Generation is a thoroughly researched, highly informative, and remarkably important African American literary study about a neglected period of black creative writing. It fills some very important holes in black literary history, and all of us who work in literature are grateful that Jackson has taken on this task and done it so well."--Gerald Early, series editor of Best African American Fiction and Best African American Essays

"This is a landmark work in the history of African American studies and American intellectual history. Writing with verve, Jackson brings to life a large cast of characters and traces an ongoing conversation among the writers and critics of this period. This book is likely to become a model for a new generation of scholars, both for the breadth of its engagement and the depth of its archival research."--Werner Sollors, Harvard University

Comedy

Paul Mooney Talks the N-Word, the Tea Party, and Why Oprah Winfrey Should Be Whipped

 

By S. Pajot, Thursday, Aug. 12 2010 @ 9:00AM

Negrodamus says: Obama's a robot.

​

Back in the '70s, Paul Mooney dug up nuggets of comedy genius as a writer for shows like The Richard Pryor Show, Sanford and Son, and Saturday Night Live. In 1987, he opened for Eddie Murphy's Raw tour. He invented In Living Color's Homey D. Clown, and played both Negrodamus and the guru from "Ask a Black Dude" on Chappelle's Show. So, why isn't every TV addict in America groveling at the man's feet? Well, like Dave Chappelle explains in the introduction to Mooney's recent memoir, Black Is the New White: "Why isn't Mooney a mainstream star? ... Paul Mooney was too black for Hollywood!"

See the cut for a conversation with Mooney about racism, The Beverly Hillbillies, and President Obama.

New Times: What does it mean to be too black for Hollywood?

Paul Mooney: That's so funny. What does it mean to be too black for Hollywood? It's self-explanatory. Hollywood has certain kinds of blacks that they like. You know better than I do. You watch TV. You know who your favorite is. I mean it's like there's a certain thing that works. And I don't fit that comfort zone. I'm too on the edge. I'm too arrogant. You know, I'm from the South ... Too uppity. You can just name the ones they're so into, from Tyler Perry to Tracy Morgan.

There are still plenty of movie people peddling black stereotypes. I guess Tyler Perry's probably the most massively successful. Have you even seen any of his movies?

Of course I've seen his movies. That Precious ... Him and Oprah both should be taken out and horsewhipped. I mean, what Christian would read that script and say, "I have to put this up on screen." That Precious was The Color Purple 2. I was offended by it. All black males are offended by it. Listen, if you have money and you have fame, but you don't have any confidence in your blackness, then it's all for nothing. You know, Hilary Clinton could say she was a woman and running for President. And Sarah Palin could say she was a woman and running for Vice-President. But Obama couldn't say, "I'm black and I'm running for President." It couldn't come out of his mouth. He couldn't say that because, if he did, he'd lose votes. Do you understand what I'm saying?

 

Paul Mooney - History

comedians.comedycentral.com

Right now, there's this popular idea that, after the election of President Obama, America's become some kind of post-racial society. You must think that's bullshit.

I have said that they killed Obama the night he won. That's an android. It's a robot.

Were you an Obama supporter in the 2008 race?

I was for Hilary. You know, it was part of my joke. I had said she'd be President for the third time. That was very funny. I couldn't lose that joke. And then I met Obama when he was running. I was in Harlem and I was across the street and he called out my name. He said, "Paul Mooney! C'mon over here!" He was with Al Sharpton and they were coming out of a soul food restaurant. So I went over and I met him. Then it all changed. I said in my book that it was déjà vu for me, because he's got that same thing -- whatever it is -- that Kennedy had.

You met John F. Kennedy, too?

Oh, yeah. When I was kid, I met him and told him that he was going to be President. He asked me, why did I think so? And I said, "Because I've never seen black people love a white man the way they love you." Kennedy looked like the Marlboro man -- the old one, not the new one. He said, "Well, I hope you're right." And I was.

Did Obama know about your comedy?

He knew all about me. He said my name!

What do you think of President Obama's work in the White House so far? Has he made any of the changes he promised? 

I think that he's pulled rabbits out of hats. He hasn't been in there not much more than a year. I think it's incredible what he's done. 

There are a lot of people who think he's failed. 

Yeah. Well, they don't like the idea of it. All these people can't be the same people who were here when Bush was running this country. They were deaf-mutes when Bush was here. They couldn't speak. I mean, it's a white establishment. And they were like those white people inThe Planet of the Apes. They couldn't talk. 

What do you think of the Tea Party movement? Recently, one of New Times' columnists,the rapper Luther Campbell, called them the KKK. 

Yeah. That's old. All you gotta do is listen to the messages. That came from The Beverly Hillbillies: "oil that is," "Texas tea." The songs always give it away. Just listen to the subliminal messages, OK? The English used to own America and what do they all say when they really want something? "I'm gonna get that, by George!" George Washington, George Bush ... Listen to their dialogue. 

Is it strange that some black people are joining the Tea Party cause? 

I don't think it's strange. Listen, you have the same circle as the '50s. In America, it's set up that way. The circle just got bigger. It's the same syndrome. It's the same brainwash. With the Republicans and the Democrats ... That's all game. It doesn't exist. It's all some sort of fantasy. Of course, I'm not surprised. You have black Anglo-Saxons. Their skin is black, but their brain is white. I call them "graham crackers." 

It's like people say, "You black people kill each other." You've heard them say that, now haven't you? "Black-on-black crime." But white people kill white people, human beings do it -- they're all predators. That's what they do. They kill each other. So I'm not shocked by it. I'm not delusional. Our blood is mixed on purpose -- mulatto. It's man-made. I don't know whether to just run away or kill 'em and run away. 

After years in the mainstream, there's been a backlash against the word "nigger." For one, Dave Chappelle started questioning his use of it. Should the N-word just die? 

Everybody uses it. That word isn't going anywhere. I can only make the decision for me. I can't make the decision for other people because I don't know their experience. Dick Gregory told me that's what they called him and Martin Luther King when they were down in the South. The sheriff told him about Kennedy: "I don't care what that nigger-lover says, you cross this line and we'll shoot your black ass." That's what they called him and he'll never stop saying it. And that's his experience, I can't condemn him for it. 

 

Liberia

I just got back from an assignment in Liberia for the African Women's Development Fund. I was expecting to see struggle but I saw more. I saw Hope in her best of moods. I wish you all the best Liberia, may your love for Liberty prevail against all the odds.

© Nana Kofi Acquah at 8/09/2010 05:55:00 PM 4 comments    

Labels: Liberia

Speaking for Human ELEVATION

Social activist, writer, director, producer and lecturer Laura Holman Rahman contributes to the stories of women and men of African descent by addressing intra-racial sexual terrorism in her film Broken Social Contracts© 2008.

The 6 sections of the film is designed to raise awareness &  
                                              consciousness.

The National College Women Sexual Victimization Study estimated that between 1 in 4 college women experience completed or attempted rape during their college years

84% of college men who committed rape said that what they did was definitely not rape.

42% of college women who are raped tell no one about their assault.

42% of the women who were raped said they had sex again with the men who assaulted them.

Nearly one third of college men said they were likely to have sex with an unwilling partner if they thought they could get away with it. *

*Statistics cited from US Department of Justice - Bureau of Justice Statistics

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I am most appreciative to everyone who helped make this film a reality. The most gratitude is given to all the participants in the film who trusted me with their words and images...I am humbly honored for each of your presence. Thank You

 Synopsis

Rahman’s film explores female and male relationships on the backdrop of two elite historically black colleges, Spelman and Morehouse (sister/brother institutions) in Atlanta, Georgia surrounding allegations of sexual assault on their campuses during the 2006 semester. Broken Social Contracts provides analyses beyond these two institutions through its interwoven poignant testimonials of activists, students, and scholars on gender roles within our society. Broken Social Contracts is a catalyst for stimulating conversation, while demonstrating how to engage in healthy relationships.

Statistics of sexual violence in our relationships are jarring and disturbing. Broken Social Contracts creates a profound opportunity of discovery and addresses the necessity for open dialogue within institutions of higher learning. The film brings voice to many of whom are often not discussed in our circles of influence.

This is a film that addresses us ALL across race, class and gender!

Part 5-6 coming soon....stay tuned!

Opportunities are washing away in Haiti

[Translate]

by Mark Schuller

Two little girls brave the rain. – Photo: © Rupert Thorpe

I just got off the phone with Leslie, a friend and leader in Asanble Vwazen Solino (the Solino Neighborhood Assembly). Knowing the answer, he asked me: “Is it raining over where you are?”

 

“Of course it is. But you know I have a house.”

“We are all wet!” he intoned. “We won’t get to sleep tonight.”

I doubt if I will either. It’s been raining – hard – since this afternoon. There’s a tropical storm brewing northeast of Hispaniola, creating a 60 percent chance of several rainy days.

Now more than six months after the earthquake, the 1.5 million homeless that it created are still waiting for change to come. True, some 28,000 people are living in 5,657 “T-shelters” (temporary shelters). But hundreds of thousands of families are at this very moment desperately trying to keep things dry: important documents, money, baby photos or babies themselves. I’ve been to camps where as many as half of the tents are now ripped.

July 12 marked the six-month point following the earthquake. At the National Palace’s remains, medals were given out to several people, including CNN journalist Anderson Cooper and actor Sean Penn, who has been managing a camp for internally displaced people. The French ambassador joked that it was important to acknowledge the powerful neighbor to the north, as no French citizen or group – or, for that matter, Cuban or Venezuelan – received a medal.

That afternoon, a rainstorm wreaked havoc on the Corail camp, held up as a model. Hundreds of tents were instantly destroyed, and a couple of thousand people rushed under the shelter of the tent donated by the Cirque du Soleil. People were moved from the camp where Penn is now working because of the “environmental” risks – to wit, flooding following a rain storm.

True, Corail boasts many services that many (if not most) other camps lack: latrines, showers, wash water stations, a medical clinic, and even a “Krik Krak” library donated by Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat. But Corail’s flooding as the Haitian government knighted foreigners is emblematic of deeper issues that require urgent and sustained attention.

First, the camp is isolated. On public transportation, it takes an hour and a half to get to town, using three or four buses, depending on routes. There are no markets, no stores, no schools, not even a church in or near the camp. It is built near Titanyen, the mass burial ground used by paramilitaries in the past and by the current government to bury the quake’s unnamed dead in unmarked graves.

Not just bereft of economic activity, the area around Corail lacks vegetation. It is a desert. The tents sit under a bare mountain. There are no trees to provide shade or to hold the soil, so gusty winds carry white dust into the tents and people’s nostrils. The white rocky ground reflects the brutal Caribbean sun.

“There really is nothing to do,” said a resident who was either afraid or tired of giving her name after scores of journalists have visited the camp. “You can’t stay in your tent because of the heat. You can’t go outside because of the dust. And you can’t leave the camp because there’s nothing to do.” What’s worse, the woman and her 7,000 new neighbors may be forced out yet again to accommodate a new industrial park, although the proposed factories are where Haitian government planners hope people will soon find work.

If a simple rain storm can cause this much misery, imagine what a hurricane would do. Haiti needs real homes now! – Photo: Ramon Espinosa, AP

Last week’s rain storm which destroyed – yet again – hundreds of people’s homes should serve as a wake-up call. According to CNN, only 2 percent of the $5.3 billion in aid that was promised for the next 18 months at the March 31 U.N. Donors Conference (see www.refondation.ht for pledges) has actually materialized. Most other reports say 10 percent – but there is not, to my knowledge or internet access, a site that details the actual disbursement of pledges. Such a site would be welcome and go far to alleviate tension and rumors.

 

France, for example, hasn’t paid up – and it vehemently denied a prank that it would pay restitution for the 90 million gold francs Haiti paid its former colonizer from 1825 to 1947 as indemnity. The U.S. has still to pay its $1.15 billion in pledged aid.

Making matters worse, the foreign-led Haiti Interim Reconstruction Commission, co-chaired by U.N. Special Envoy Bill Clinton and Haitian Prime Minister Max Bellerive, is replacing Haiti’s elected government now that Parliament has expired, and it postponed its second meeting scheduled for July 22 by a month.

Haiti had some very promising opportunities following the earthquake. First was general goodwill and unity. In the days immediately following the quake, people worked across extreme class and political divisions to survive. And they did. As the urgency wore off, the old divisions came back with a vengeance.

For example, on July 21, the Provisional Electoral Commission (CEP) reiterated its 2009 decision to exclude Fanmi Lavalas, the party of exiled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, from this year’s legislative and presidential elections postponed from Feb. 28 to Nov. 28, 2010. The U.N. has proclaimed April and June 2009 partial Senate elections, in which almost no one voted because Fanmi Lavalas was excluded, a success.

Another opportunity squandered is decentralization and rural development. Some 600,000 people like Frisline and Marie-Jeanne, two women in the documentary “Poto Mitan” (which I co-directed), left the city to go to the provinces. Haiti’s crumbling rural infrastructure could have been rebuilt by employing tens of thousands. With no jobs, no aid, no prospects of rural development, nothing to keep people in the provinces, the bulk of this reverse migration was undone, and Port-au-Prince is once again a magnet for those seeking jobs.

Hundreds of thousands of homeless are begging for $4.50-a-day (180 gourdes) cash-for-work jobs, mostly to clear the rubble with sledgehammers and wheelbarrows. This is less than the legal minimum wage of $5-a-day (200 gourdes) for non-assembly factory work. Meanwhile, Haiti’s upper class, diaspora vacationers and foreign consultants – some making as much as $1,000 per day – zoom by in new air-conditioned cars. Some foreign aid workers even stay in the Port-au-Prince harbor on two cruise ships – one dubbed the Love Boat – which the U.N. has leased at $112,500 per day, or the price of 100 “T-shelters.”

If the reconstruction aid ever arrives, much of it should go towards a real national development plan, building factories to transform and keep the value of Haitian agricultural produce in the country. For example, yesterday I bought three mangoes for 25 cents (10 gourdes). At a Whole Foods store in New York last month, these same mangoes sold for $2.50 apiece. This “value added” should stay in Haiti, in the peasant, rural sector. But the current development blueprint, the Collier Report – highlighted on the U.N. Special Envoy page – prioritizes export.

What’s a mother to do when all she has to protect her family from stormy weather are some old sheets, and any day her family and her whole camp could be evicted? – Photo: Getty Images

Finally, even bad shelter is better than none. People like Leslie and thousands of others are fighting for the right guaranteed by the United Nations and Haitian constitution to sleep on concrete blocks in wet, muddy, ripping tents. International Action Ties has released a report detailing a disturbing pattern of private land owners forcing people out of camps. Some owners have even sent armed gangs to terrorize people so they will go away. Less extreme tactics, like cutting off services so people will leave on their own, are more common. But three of eight camps that my research assistants recently visited are facing forced removal.

 

These uprootings just contribute to an already insecure existence. Frisline, who is living in her second camp since moving back to Port-au-Prince, lamented: “You never know what’s happening. One day they could ask you to leave. We never know anything. Nothing is secure.” As if to illustrate her lack of security, someone stole her bag with most of her remaining belongings on July 20. Since she lives in a tent, there’s no way to lock up anything.

The rain just stopped, three and a half hours after it began. My phone isn’t ringing. I know I will see and hear more of the damage tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I am honoring a promise to Leslie, Frisline and other people to do what I can to spread the following messages:

• Despite the dip in news – except for the coverage at the sixth-month mark – the majority of Haiti’s people are doing very badly. The situation is still quite urgent.

• The aid needs to be released. Now. The U.S. Congress should vote on this without delay.

• People need shelter. The short-term T-Shelters may do for now but people have a right to housing. They need it desperately since hurricane season continues for several more months.

• The Haitian government needs to protect the 425,000 or so families that are living in camps from forced removal. The best policy is to build permanent housing and provide jobs and services that will give people reasons to willingly leave and to create incentives for private homes to be quickly rehabilitated.

• Haiti needs fair and inclusive elections. Don’t exclude the Fanmi Lavalas and take steps to ensure that the 1.5 million homeless will have access to electoral cards.

These homeless – like Leslie – can’t afford for reconstruction to be postponed any longer.

Mark Schuller is assistant professor of African American Studies and Anthropology at York College, the City University of New York. Having researched NGOs in Haiti since 2001, he is studying the impact of aid on conditions and governance in the IDP camps this summer. He is the co-editor of “Capitalizing on Catastrophe: Neoliberal Strategies in Disaster Reconstruction.” This story originally appeared in Haiti Liberte, and another version was published on the Huffington Post.