hoodooencoding

Geisterbahn Incident (The Conclusion)

  Since I've been stuck in this hospital ward for the past three weeks, I haven't bothered to tell anyone what happened until now. After all, who would believe me; I'm niemand.

  

  Doctors told me this morning I’ll be able to go home soon, maybe in a week.  Along with two broken ribs, second and third degree burns on my arms and a huge hematoma on my left leg, the headaches I’ve had since the accident are the real reason I won’t be going back to work anytime soon. I do know I won’t be going back to clean U-Bahn stations anymore. I’m having dizzy spells and that kind of work requires too much standing and bending over.  Strangely, people have started to treat me differently because other than the dog, I was the only survivor pulled out of the wreckage.

  Another strange thing I’ve noticed is that all the television, radio and newspaper reports about what happened in the subway station have been not only wrong, they’ve been lies.

  First, the official BVG subway administration explanation came out. They said the cause of the explosion was  “faulty maintenance or tampering” in one of the tunnel’s big electric generators. Then, a BVG spokesperson announced on tv last night that the subway will be shut down for an “indeterminate amount of time until necessary repairs and improvements” can be completed.  I’ll be damned if I know what they think they’re going to improve.

  Today, The Berliner Allgemeine newspaper said that an initial Berlin police investigation revealed links to “terrorist organizations probably responsible” for setting off explosions in the station, although none of the groups they suspect have claimed any responsibility for the so-called “terrorist bombing”.

  I feel so sorry for the poor Berliner Kriminalpolizei: they can’t even afford enough typewriters and now, the German Federal Service for Protection of the Constitution (BfV) has officially taken over the case, which means all the foreign intelligence agencies and Interpol are falling all over themselves to come up with an explanation.

  Since Berlin is a worldwide wrestling headquarter for spooks and spies, disgruntled ex-Stasi informants and foreign diplomats, the internet is getting crammed with all kinds of theories because all the foreigners are getting into the act.

  The Chinese government has offered to provide their full cooperation; China’s MSS announced they suspect narcoterrorists are to blame. 

  

  Russia’s FSB thinks Uzbekistan’s IMU sent suicide bombers. The British MI6 claim it was either The Fake IRA or the Real IRA. The French DGSE believe a bomb was set off by radical environmentalists and the Italian AISE are 99% sure anarcho-communists were involved. Israel's MOSSAD suspects The Orange Volunteers. The Polish AW and Swiss DAP agree that it had to have been right-wing radicals. But Canada’s CSIS and Spain’s CNI insists left-wing radicals are responsible.

  Even countries who haven’t been asked are trying to get piece of the action; since it means overtime pay for them, they’re happy to oblige. Turkey’s MiT have a hunch that the Communist Party of the Philippines was involved. Pakistan’s ISI, Albania’s SHISH, The Saudi GIP and the Vatican’s DISIP all maintain that the National Democratic Front of Bodoland are to blame. 

  

  Meanwhile, the Jamaican Defence Force Intelligence Unit are hot on the trail of scientologists.

  With so many theories, who can you believe?

  Damn foreigners. I know they won’t catch anybody because I know what really happened. I was there and I saw it all.

  But do you know what? It doesn’t really matter to me if anyone believes me or not. As far as I’m concerned, you can take care of your own trash from now on: I’m finished with the whole damn business.

  

  I quit and this is my Kündingung.

 

"Geisterbahn Incident" (part 4)

  The explosion that followed them knocked the subway station off its foundation and hurled cinderblocks down around me that shattered at my feet and exploded in my face. 

 

  Scrambling back to the wall, I scurried a few meters over broken brick to a high-backed bench. An escalator was nearby, I knew, but I didn't know if I could see it in the swelling smoke. Believing I might bump into it, I kept moving forward. Finding a corner near the end of the wall, I twisted my body left and found the first step, then the second.  A heavy haze of ash whirled over my head, circling up the frozen escalator steps into the main station hall. As I started my climb a pair of high top shoes, empty of laces, stopped me cold: two steps above me, a young woman in her late teens stood cloaked in an over-large, raggedy man’s overcoat.

  Her gaunt face, spotted with mud, was framed by the uneven stubble on her scalp. Her slight chest heaved under the coat as she caught her breath. Staring me down, she held a small bundle wrapped in blood-flecked newspaper. 

  

  Before I could speak to her, I noticed a tiny arm hanging underneath the paper.

  Her defeated eyes glared through mine to a place beyond where I cowered at her feet. She seemed transfixed by an approaching threat like a deer caught in the headlamps of a truck.

  Slowly she turned, facing the escalator’s burnt rubber railing, tightly clutching her dead baby. Gazing at me once more, she stepped forward and calmly disappeared into the wall.

  No longer able to control my bladder, warm water trickled down my thighs, soothing my aching leg. I shivered and crawled up the burning hot metal steps, away from the leaping flames.

  The dog barked over a wail of distant sirens. As I reached the top step, giant grey plumes of smoke gathered to greet gaping holes in the rooftop. The main hall of the subway station looked as if it had been turned completely inside out, its kiosks reduced to piles of smoldering rubble. Scorched advertisement posters on its walls continued smoking as ruptured water pipes, bubbling like miniature fountains, formed muddy pools where the Blumen Rasch and Mini-Bistro once stood.

  The floor was carpeted with thousands of charred flowers and dead bodies. Mountain of bodies were piled high at the heavy wooden doors; all the exits had sealed themselves under the weight of the panicked mob.

  My stomach boiled over and I retched until I could manage only dry heaves. Staggering along, I reached for a ticket stamping post and steadied myself against it.  At the top of the post, an out-of-date, handwritten sign read defekt.

  My mind wandered aimlessly while I wondered if the Ka De We department store across the street was still there. The dog barked furiously over and over again.  Looking for an exit, I saw a fat, mangy Spitz growling angrily at a woodpile where a kiosk used to be.  It hadn’t noticed me, probably distracted by its master’s sudden absence, probably the poor soul lying crushed underneath the pile of rubble.

  Suddenly the rubble rumbled.

  A large wooden board careened off to one side, rattling and bouncing loudly down the heap, clapping onto the floor.  The dog pounced on the board, sniffed it once, barked and growled. It began a mournful whine and then a howl so sharp, it hurt my ears.

  Too tired to move, I sat down next to the post and leaned back against it. Wanting sleep, I dozed as gunshots crackled and split the air; jolting me awake, the sound chased the dog away.

  Inspecting me, a hulking figure rounded the dusky mound holding a rifle with bayonet drawn. Silhouetted by lurching flames, the soldier crouched and crept, ready to strike in the flickering light, his intent clear and deadly. For him, the war was far from over. He was imprisoned in time, still defending a long ago surrendered place and now, he was determined to terminate me.

  Gasping for breath, I watched him raise his bayonet high, charging to run me through.

  As he neared, I could see he wasn’t a soldier at all. He was but a boy, no more than twelve or thirteen years old. His scrawny frame was sheathed in tatters; his blond hair was matted underneath a helmet two sizes too big for his head. Standing over me, his alabaster face was twisted in blind hatred; his mouth was open wide in soundless rage.  His eyes, no longer in their sockets, pierced me before his bayonet blade reached me: where his eyes should have been, there were only bottomless black holes, two open caves, as dark and infinite as night.

  I surrendered all.

  Raising my arms to protect my head, he brought the rifle down hard to strike me and a bomb went off in my mind. I heard a loud pop and the numbing dimness was redemption and relief.

                          ###

 

Geisterbahn Incident (Part 3)

   Writhing snake-like in mid-air, the subway train banged against the tunnel walls, tossing helpless pieces of human flesh inside itself, flailing repeatedly against the ceiling and metal rails below.  Through flickering window light, I could see an orgy of arms, legs and torsos sailing weightless into unforgiving metal doors, basting the train’s insides in a juicy paste of blood, beer and hair.

   I heard myself scream.

   In panic, I leapt to my feet and began to run towards the stairway. Unaware of the dangling electric cables that had twisted free and were now spitting sparks, I ran towards the stairs, stepping on one.

   Instantly, the living brightness of 220 volts punched me; it kicked me hard in my stomach and before I could feel my body flying backwards, the back of my head struck unmoving, cold stone and everything dissolved into darkness.

                             ###

   I woke up to the sound of a barking dog.

   But where was it and where was I?  

   Wiping away a film of silt from my face, I brushed away the dust stinging my eyes, coughing, hurting my head.  As thick smoke noosed around my neck, I felt a sharp pain piercing my right armpit; perhaps a broken rib?

   Craning in darkness toward flickering lights, I could see small fires burning in the cavernous tunnel and through heavy haze, I suddenly remembered where I was.

   The dog barked again in the distance. Trying to locate my legs to stand, a jolt of liquid pain scalded the back of my left knee.  Instead of moaning, I could only cough, my head pounding in unbearable anguish.  Wanting to holler, my throat, raw from dust, rebelled.  Warm tears silently crawled over my cheeks, dripping down cold onto my neck and I thought, “So this is how I die. Scheisse!”

   Slowly tilting towards the tiled surface at my back, I realized I had been sitting next to an announcement cubicle in the middle of the station.  I remembered there was an escalator nearby. I decided even if I couldn’t walk, I could drag myself along the platform to reach it. Pushing away from the cracked, brittle tiles, I reached for the wall which would lead me to the escalator.

   I found it quickly. Pausing to catch my breath, I heard a muffled whimper to my right, coming from inside the train. Survivors!!  Perhaps someone had actually managed to make it through...what?...just what was that?  What had happened??  I shut my eyes, remembering how the train had swung itself angrily in the air, up against ceiling beams, crashing over and over again deep in the tunnel’s bowels and I shook my head in disbelief: there was no way it could have happened.

   Its cars crouched, lying sideways in silvery shards, resting between what was left of the tracks like a silent, slain dragon.  Twisted sheets of metal bearing razor sharp edges rested at odd angles against bent metal railings.  Smoke poured through

shattered windows.  The train’s outer shell was covered in clumps of glass, mortar and slick, dark oil. Blood. Closing my eyes, I shook my head again and the back of my skull protested from the pain brazed to my brain.

   The shuffling sound of feet crunching gravel rang out as I peered into a dark door of the train and heard what was definitely a human moan.  Crawling forward about a meter from the track, I heard another crackling sound, followed by the echo of a dull thud.

   Frozen at the edge of the platform and squinting in the darkness, I saw them.

   What I had mistaken for wisps of smoke only seconds before had become translucent, human shapes, shuffling past me along the tunnel floor. The dreary procession was a death march of doomed souls, chained together, half-dressed in rags, carrying shovels and picks. Soldiers unmercifully shoved prisoners along an invisible beaten path.  The sound of clinking iron links made my skin itch and I saw one frail figure fall to the ground, struck repeatedly by a large brute: the cracking sound I heard earlier was bone breaking against wood, each blow delivered by the handle of an axe.  The prisoner on the ground had defecated on himself.  The soldier, gesturing wildly above him, forced the helpless man lying on the ground to pick up his own faeces and smear it into his own face.  The soldier in uniform made him eat it.

    Turning away in revulsion, I gagged and stumbled back towards the wall, cutting my hands and knees on glass splinters.  When I looked again, they were gone.

 

Geisterbahn Incident (Part 2)

    I’m sure of this because until last week, I was in the Bahnhofs cleaning up after it.

    Oh, I’m not talking about ghosts walking around haunting toilets or kiosks, although they do sometimes.

    Zum beispiel, there have been times when I’ve worked on a subway platform mopping up a pool of vomit some homeless wino left for me and I’d feel a chilly breeze rush over my body, although there was no approaching train in the tunnel to push along the wind.

    Or, there have been times when I would finish for the day and come back later, only to find a broken flower pot on the floor or magazine stand tipped over and there was no one in the subway station but me.  Stuff like that never bothered me much.

    But I can say it gets strange when dead folk show up on a train without a ticket to ride.

    Once I saw the ticket checkers armed with their tired, old german shepherds, trying to pull a dead guy off of a train to give him a fine.  They should have known better; the barking dogs were going crazy and as soon as they caught the guy and took him off the train, he disappeared in the middle of the station, standing right next to them.

    Mostly, it’s the living people using the subways who upset the dead and provoke them to act out. The grumpy commuters, loud teenagers and arrogant tourists, especially the aggressive ones, make this happen all the time.

    Last weekend, I was working the Wittenbergplatz station when there was a fussball game going on in town, a match between Hertha Berlin and Schalke 04.  Thousands of hooligans from Pankow, Marzahn and Königswusterhausen descended upon the city, stuffing the trains to the brim, wearing stupid on their chests like badges of honor. Eventually, all hell broke loose.

    The beer in their stomachs must have floated up inside their brains, forcing all the good sense out of their ears because they whooped and they hollered. They jumped up and down inside the trains trying to make the cars jump off the rails acting like they had lost their minds, shouting around, chanting drunken cheers, smashing beer bottles, molesting women and children and peeing all over the place.

    Apparently at some point, things must have gotten out of hand.

    I had just finished emptying all the trash cans on Track No. 2 and as I paused to watch the chaos in the trains, I felt something move under my feet as the platform began to tremble. It felt like the tremor of a distant earthquake, as if a heavy tractor trailer truck was about to roar past.

    The floor quivered and protested the same way the ground above the subway vibrates when trains run underground, only this time, there was no train moving. 

    Fine silt from the crumbling ceiling cracks began to sprinkle down, raining silently on my forehead.  It was as if the station and all of its bricks and walls, support columns and beams, floors and stairways, even the tracks themselves, began to revolt and say "nie wieder".

    That’s when I got scared.

    Trying not to panic, I turned to walk towards the stairs, thinking "Scheisse! I’ve never seen THAT before!" and the fluorescent lights over my head exploded, sending thick clouds of acrid smoke dancing across the ceiling.  Blinking in sudden darkness, the smoke reached me, closing my throat, making me gag.  As I coughed, a second explosion roared through the station, rocking the air and I stumbled to my knees.

    Blaring alarm sirens wailed and instantly, the station was jammed with panicked people. I could see the elevator doors at the end of the subway hall open and shut too quickly, its glass and metal walls rattling to pieces.

    Hisses and pops banged behind the elevator shaft and I knew something was terribly wrong inside the electric generators.  The slate grey transformer boxes bent themselves over, illuminated by hot white flames sputtering and darting through the heavy support columns between the tracks.

    The horrible screams inside the train cars hurt my ears as I quickly crawled along the floor, inching towards the stairwell wall until my eyes were seized by an unholy sight: a Bombardier Transportation subway train, which had paused packed with people, was convulsing, having a seizure and lifting itself up off the tracks.

 

First look: "Geisterbahn Incident"

From time to time, my friends have asked me to publish some of my short stories. Since they are somewhat long, I’ll be publishing them in parts.

I wrote this first story, “Geisterbahn Incident”, here in Berlin in 2003. It’s a work of speculative fiction, a dark, ghostly tale based on a horrifying  era of the city’s history.

I’d like to rework this narrative into a screenplay and film it :-) If I’m successful, you dear reader will be able to follow significant parts of my creative process right here.

I feel that this is important because so few writers allow audiences to follow their entire creative process. Although, I won’t be able to document all of my process (for example, you can’t actually follow me through a train station when I’m doing research, like I did for this story), I can do this much.

So without further ado, I hope you enjoy this first excerpt of “Geisterbahn Incident”. Please feel free to give me your feedback. As always, thanks for reading.

                                                 +++                              

                   GEISTERBAHN INCIDENT (Part One)

                           By Kevin.M. Booker

To be brutally honest, I think most of you are just plain stupid.

I’ve never been able to deal with ignorant people; Lord knows, I have truly tried.  But since most of you don’t see me anyway - or care what I think - it doesn’t matter. I’m just a janitor, a clean up man, nobody. Niemand.

Nonetheless, would you believe most of you are too dumb to flush a toilet behind you when you finish??  Or that some of you would look at a toilet bowl in a restroom, see it stuffed with mountains of wet toilet paper and feces and use it anyway.  Unglaublich!

    Ich meine, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know when you flush it, the paper and muddy water flows from the toilet to the floor and everyone who comes in marches through the pee-pee-water, wading in water and stomping on half-used rolls of toilet paper, spreading cesspool stink around for all to enjoy.

    I’m that guy who cleans up the Scheisse you leave behind, the one you never see.

    I clean up after you and in all the places you tear up: your schools and churches, your stores and shopping centers, construction sites, bars and restaurants, hospitals and offices, airports and bus stations.  

    I used to specialize in public toilets, male and female, so I can tell you a little trade secret: the women really are worse than the men. Sad but truly true: even though most men are filthy, stupid, raunchy cretins, women can still amaze me with the sheer variety of mess they leave behind in public.  I’ve seen whole toilet walls smeared with lipstick and freshly used menstrual napkins, as if somebody was trying to write Latin graffiti for me to translate. I honestly don’t know why anyone would do something like this. 

    However, I do have a theory.

    I believe women are so fed up, frustrated and pissed off with men they’ve got to get the anger out, take it out on something, anything, once in awhile. Why not a wall in a public toilet? Since it always means overtime pay for me, I never complain.

    In my 25 years on the job I’ve seen just about everything humans can leave behind in public, even after they’re dead.  And oh yeah, I realize that most of you don’t believe when you die you leave anything behind.

    But most of you are just plain stupid and you do leave things after you all the time. I know because I’ve cleaned up your mess too many times to count.

                   ***

    

    Berlin is a big old grimy city and in spite of all the new construction, not much has really changed here since the 20’s. People here are mostly mean, ugly and stressed out most of the time.  Also, it’s no secret that in a city of cramped apartment buildings, you can live right next door to someone for years and years but if they passed you on the street, you wouldn’t even recognize them. 

    Even after two world wars, many of these old buildings are hundreds of years old and stuffed with memories of generations of cranky, anonymous voyeurs: if anything, Berliners love to watch.  

    Some of the old factories and U-Bahn stations I’ve cleaned up have seen a lot. There are times when I truly believe the walls of the buildings and train stations remember all the things that people have forgotten, like the things that happened during the last war.

    I guess if I were a train station built in 1902, like the one on Wittenbergplatz, sixty-something years ago might seem like yesterday to me too. 

    Frankly, I think the stations get frustrated and confused sometimes, just like the people who use the trains everyday, losing their sense of time and space.  Imagine all those years of being used up by grumpy, stupid people, all that stress from decades of panic, anger and hurt.  After years of non-stop chaos, I can imagine how some of these old places, by now, would be plain worn out.

    My Oma once told me when the Russians invaded in the last days of the last war, thousands of women were tortured, abused and murdered.  She said the Russians were merciless, that countless rapes took place in the underground train stations and the bunkers beneath where women and children tried to hide.  She said it didn’t matter if the women were fifty, sixty, seventy or eighty years old, the Russian troops went crazy and you know, sometimes I think these underground places still remember.

    She said after that a lot of folk lost their minds, wandering around in the shadows of the parks every night, women hungry for comfort, men buying sex for the price of a pack of cigarettes, venereal diseases taking over their bodies, unrelenting loneliness and blood-lust driving people mad. 

    Even if most folk don’t remember this stuff anymore, I figure some of the places keep the memories somewhere, perhaps in the wetness of the underground walls and tunnels, or the canals below.

    The vast water table underneath Berlin has remained because the city was built on top of a swamp and I’m sure the sewers and gutters saved the smell of this misery.  Anyone who knows about The National Socialists - the slave labour they used to dig the tunnels, the suffering, the pain, the agony, the castrations, the torture, the suicides - can smell those leftovers sometimes.  This smell endures in each damp, dank cranny of every bunker and crawl space.  All the stains of bloodshed serenaded by suffering moans, the putrid stench of hatred and the stammering of bombs layer those tunnel walls like moldy old cigarette smoke. This collective terror, I am sure, still wades in those waters.

                   ###

This is my favorite vid clip so far...

I love the sound of the crickets chirping at the beginning (although I've never heard crickets chirping in Berlin)...I think the wolves baying in the distance really set the mood.

And just think: the fireworks will probably be more impressive this year...

The Time Out and All In Social Club is in Full Effect!

I was once told that the purpose of capitalism is to make a profit. Perhaps this is why I love seeing a brother running his own business. My new friend Joel Sanders in Berlin has run several. His latest venture is an excellent event location, "The Time Out and All In Social Club".

This clip is from a Halloween Party he organized last month. The food and atmosphere was superb. I can hardly wait to see what he's planning for New Years Eve.

One of the things I love about the clip is that it shows how near his place is to the Tegel airport; the plane you see at the beginning of the footage had just landed on the airstrip located not too far from his front door. Surreal.

We plan to have a "Time Out and All In" facebook fan site, so you'll be able to check out more pics and updates about the club's activities in the near future.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the footage of the party; believe me, a high time was had by all.

BTW, this is the first time I've had a chance to use some of my original music for a video clip, ever.

Reverend Boogaloo would be proud :-)

Elizabeth's Endurance: interview

This is an interview I did recently with Elizabeth Adekunle, co-founder of the African Women and Youth Organization e.V. (AWYO) in Berlin Germany. Elizabeth started her non-profit, community advocacy project in 2006 to assist African women and their families gain access family counseling services in areas of education, legal advice and intercultural communication challenges. She has worked tirelessly as a community activist to support Africans in the diaspora throughout Germany.

You can find out how you can support Elizabeth and the AWYO project by visiting http://www.awyo.de/

As I mentioned in my last blog entry, I'm still learning how to edit on-the-fly. The biggest mistake I made this time (and learned from) was my failure to eliminate background noise in the room: I forgot to turn off all the computers in the room when I started the interview, hence, I discovered the whir of the computer fans in the background only after I was done shooting. You can also hear other people in the room moving glasses and plates on tables around the halfway mark. 

Now I understand why assistant directors yell "ALL QUIET ON THE SET!!" before the cameras start rolling when shooting a feature film. DUH.

Live and learn.

I'm think I'm gonna enjoy yelling "QUIET!!...Dog-bite-your-time!!..." the next time I do this.

In the meantime, here's the director's cut of my original interview with Elizabeth Adekunle...I thought that what she had to say was interesting, timely and compelling.

I wonder what you think...

The Emergency Hoodoo Broadcasting Call-and-Response Service

Call and response.

One of the things I love about the internet is that it gives ordinary people like you and me a chance to have some say, start a debate or engage a larger discourse. This video is a kind of new beginning for me in this regard.

In the many decades I've observed media originating from North America, I've noticed how more often than not the images, stories and myths that are distributed on television, in movies, in magazines and on the net are either incomplete, distorted or motivated by hostility.

I have complained for many years that most of the time you see anything about black people in media, the image is either sad, horrifying, tragic or relates to some manifestation of sociocultural dysfunction: somebody robbed a store, somebody committed a crime, somebody lost their mind, someone got killed or raped or beat down oder so.

While I have no doubt that these things do indeed take place everyday somewhere, I've often wondered about where all the other stuff I've witnessed went: when somebody started a business, somebody built something good, somebody helped, saved, encouraged or inspired somebody else. I seldom see images representing the healers, teachers, organizers, mentors or entrepreneurs like the people in my family. While I do recognize that life is hard and poverty is mean, I also recognize that there are decent people doing beautiful things every single day somewhere.

I imagine I'm interested in a more balanced view now, a kind of call-and-response, something approaching equilibrium, that yin and yang thang; this vid clip is my response to imbalanced image representation, kind of like me clearing my throat before I talk.

Today I present a rough, rub-a-dub-stylee-cut of a documentary film that I am making about immigrants (not all of whom are black people btw) who are currently living in Berlin Germany. All the people in the film I'm making are doing interesting things that have nothing to do with raping, robbing, shooting and stealing but building, helping, saving and serving. And they come from more than 200 different countries.

I've leaving all my mistakes in these video clips because I'm documenting my learning process; I learn best by doing and making mistakes.

These videos are also a bit like love letters to my people, who are in fact, all people. In this example, I've created a homage to Grace Jones and Barbara Saltmann, two people who I deeply love and respect, who have encouraged and inspired me on my journey.

Feel free to tell me what you like or don't like. Since I'm doing this for love (and not money), I'm completely open to any constructive criticism on how I can improve what I'm doing. Please do let me know; I eagerly await your response.

yours truly,

Reverend Boogaloo

Rev. Boogaloo's Blog Roundup

Since I'll be on hiatus for the next two weeks, I've gotta make this quick...'cause I gotta pack my bags tonight!

The following are highlights from some of my favorite blogs; do check out these peeps when you get a chance!

   The Mad Bull has posted up the pics of Usain Bolt’s win here in Berlin this past week @

http://www.madbull4.net/wordpress/2009/08/im-so-excited/

Since I’m leaving town tomorrow morning, I’ll miss both victory parties this weekend with Bruva Bolt and the whole Jamaican team (dang!) at both Barbara’s restaurant AND at Dennis’s restaurant! Oh well...can’t make ‘em all...

   Rob Fields @ Bold as Love turned me on to Stew wayyy before this movie...so happy to see this happen & I can’t wait to see the film. http://www.boldaslove.us/2009/08/passing-strange-film-trailer-a-spi.html

   My heart goes out to my brother, the brilliant Prof. Mark Anthony Neal: he lost both his parents within a little over a year. He reviews the brilliant new doc “Say My Name” @

http://newblackman.blogspot.com/2009/08/say-my-name-women-in-hip-hop.html

   Pink Tentacle has a link to the mysterious Junsui Project @

http://www.pinktentacle.com/2009/08/the-junsui-project/ 

The cool thing about the link to the website is that it appears you can only view the website once! Marketing ploy or video art project? You decide.

   Afro-Punk posted these cool posters by Jermanine Rogers @

http://afropunk.ning.com/profiles/blogs/own-a-piece-of-the-2009

I want the Malcolm X one on a t-shirt :-)

   Steven Barnes weighs in on the brilliant film “District 9” and the Universal Health Care Debate @ http://darkush.blogspot.com/2009/08/district-9-and-uhc.html

   My friend DeWayne Wickham must have said something to awaken the testy trolls again :-) Although considered by many to be one of the more moderate voices in journalism, it seems he can’t help but raise a ruckus whenever he posts @ http://dewaynewickham.blogspot.com/ 

   And Ta-Nehsi Coates interesting series on Virginia history is worth reading @

http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/08/virginia_1.php Since I’m headed there this weekend, I’ll get to see it all up-close-and-personal once again.

While I'm away, may the Stankitity stick to you until we meet again!

Rev. Boogaloo Approved // A Playful Bookerman Book Review of: “52 Activities for Improving Cross-Cultural Communication” by Donna M. Stringer and Patricia A. Cassiday

    As I’m sure you all know, Shakespeare once wrote “The play’s the thing”, The Spinners once sang “Games People Play” and Stanley Clarke once played “Life is Just a Game”.

    

    Well if you don't know, now you know.

    It seems that since time immemorial, mankind has consistently developed and enjoyed game play.

    Over the centuries, thinkers, philosophers and scientists have thought a great deal about game theory. In modern times, social scientists and technology creators have theorized about the impact of game play and knowledge transfer, the difference between strong games and weak games and why we play games at all.

    Just between you and me, I think we like playful activities because they are just plain fun.

    But I think also that playful activities, exercises and role playing games can be used to teach us about ourselves and one another. 

    If Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences is correct, playful activities can help us to develop the capacity to solve problems and create products and solutions that are valued in more than one cultural setting. Garder lists seven aspects of cognitive skill required for learning and problem solving:

Linguistic intelligence - sensitivity to spoken and written language

Logical-mathematical intelligence - the ability to detect patterns, reason deductively and think logically

Musical intelligence - the capacity to recognize and organize pitch, rhythm and tone

Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence - the mental ability to coordinate bodily movement

Spacial intelligence - the potential to recognize and use patterns of wide space and more confined areas.

Interpersonal intelligence - the ability to understand intentions, motivations and desires of others.

Intrapersonal intelligence - the capacity to understand oneself and appreciate one’s fears, feelings and motivations.

   

    It is easy to see how playful activities, exercises and games help us to practice and develop multiple intelligences. Dr. Stuart Brown at the National Institute for Play goes even further to describe how playful exercises, activities and games provide opportunities to unlock human potential and problem solving abilities.

    Brown describes patterns of playful activity as attunement play, movement play, object play, social play, imaginative play, storytelling play and transformative-integrative play. Understanding these kinds of behavior help us to make sense of the world, transcend our everyday experiences, understand body language symbols, develop our curiosity of others and create new ideas in teams.

    Thankfully, Donna M. Stringer and Patricia A. Cassiday really explain how all this works in their excellent new book “52 Activities for Improving Cross-Cultural Communication” (Intercultural Press 2009, ISBN: 978-1-931930-83-3). 

   They describe cross cultural communication as what takes place when we try to communicate with someone whose cultural perspective is different from our own. Sometimes the difference is age or gender, language history, profession or educational background, nationality or regional orientation. Trying to communicate effectively across these cultural barriers often requires extra effort and practice. In an increasingly networked, global society, this is a timely reality: in businesses, organizations and institutions, the ability to navigate communication styles affects productivity, employee satisfaction, teamwork and ultimately, the bottom line.

    Stringer and Cassiday have succeeded in creating a fun, easy to use, common sense guide to cross-cultural and intercultural activity play which can be used by teachers, human resource educators, institution administrators and students of culture to understand, identify, recognize, experience and describe:

- how we can use different communication styles, patterns and approaches

- how communication patterns can change when cultural differences are introduced into a group

- how status influences the way we communicate 

- how communication styles can affect workplace productivity 

- how nonverbal communication affects the way we understand what we are saying and what others are saying to us

- how communicative vocabularies can be expanded and developed

- how cultural values influence the way we perceive others

- how creating more effective dialog in diverse groups is possible 

- how to leverage diversity for creative and effective problem solving

   

    To overcome these challenges to communication and practice the skills to understand them, Stringer and Cassiday explain some of the core reasons for most cross-cultural misunderstanding; for example:

- the tendency to judge or evaluate messages we receive as good or bad, right or wrong

- the inability to cope with ambiguity and the anxiety it creates in us

- the projection of oversimplified stereotypes onto groups of people or individuals we associate with those groups

- making judgements based on assumptions that others are similar to us when they are not

   

    In this visionary new volume, Stringer and Cassiday offer 52 in-depth descriptions of activities and exercises that can be used to practice verbal and nonverbal communication, conflict resolution, decision making, negotiation and team building processes. Each exercise presented describes the activity goal, the activity process and the materials necessary along with guides for follow-up discussion and de-briefing, sample handouts and narratives.

    One of the keys to effective intercultural and cross-cultural training is flexibility. Stringer and Cassiday have chosen activities that are adaptable and in most cases can be used in any country or culture. They have paid precise detail to designing activities geared towards different audiences; some of the exercises are experiential in nature, others are more hands on and others take a more reflective approach. In other words, there are a variety of learning approaches presented in this book which can be used effectively to meet learning style needs across cultures.

    In addition, an ample appendix and bibliography are included which makes this volume a valuable asset for human resource specialists, social scientists and training professionals who develop lesson plans and training programs in industry and academia.

    The manual’s forte is that it was developed by Stringer and Cassiday in collaboration with education professionals, social scientists and human resource specialists who have accumulated decades of practical experience around the world.

    Dr. Donna M. Stringer’s pioneering work as a social psychologist, researcher, educator, writer and president of Executive Diversity Services, Inc. has raised the bar for diversity training, organization development, multicultural training and gender differences in universities, corporations and institutions for almost three decades. She continues to develop training curricula and provide mentorship for diversity trainers and facilitators across the globe.

    Dr. Patricia A. Cassiday is an educator and consultant on topics such as expatriate leadership development, third culture kids, conflict resolution and education reform. Dr. Cassiday’s counseling experience around the world for the past two decades has been documented in her published works on expatriate leadership and as president of Collaborative Connection, a consultancy specializing in transition counseling services for expatriates, their families and their organizations.

    Stringer and Cassiday’s passion and enthusiasm clearly soak through the pages of this book; although it is designed as a serious training manual for human resource educators, one cannot mistake the glee and delight with which they present each exercise description: they successfully encourage and emphasize a spirit of play throughout each chapter.

    Their enthusiasm for cross-cultural communication is apparent also in the caliber of their collaborators; their contributors are a Who’s Who in the community of international, intercultural communication experts : Sivasailam Thiagarajan (aka Thiagi), Dianne Hofner Saphiere, Andy Reynolds, Elmer Dixon, Peter Isackson, Basma Ibrahim DeVries, Barbara Kappler Mikk, Karen Rolston and many, many others.

     This excellent volume of activities will be extremely useful to facilitators, educators, trainers, coaches and teachers interested in serving institutions of higher learning, multinational business corporations, the communications and marketing industry, government agencies, health care facilities, the technological research and development industry and public safety officials.

     Act like you know: you can pre-order the book here!

   

     (Editors note*) As a matter of fact, I would be amiss if I didn’t mention that as I was reading this book, this mess was going down. I couldn’t help thinking that if Barack, Joe, Henry and James had called Donna and Patricia (and Elmer and Andy and them) over to the People's Crib for a cup of coffee, something actually useful might have happened instead of a bunch of Alpha males lollygagging over half-drunk beer in a yard. If they had had this book, they would have at least been able to play the “toothpicks” game in Chapter 11.

    It would have taken less than an hour for Skippy and Jimmy to learn how non-verbal communication impacts the message received and the importance of learning the non-verbal rules of another culture. 

    Wishful thinking on my part I guess.

+++

  

“Putting Skin in the Game”: Why Investing in People Makes Sense (Part 2)

(cue theme music)

Voice of Announcer: “Good evening ladies and gentlemen; I am K. Maurice Bookerman, CEO of the Emergency Hoodoo Broadcasting Corporation and this is a special live broadcast from the Stanknasity Leadership Conference, where the Honorable Reverend Dr. Boogaloo is preaching!

Let's listen in as he continues to bring us the Funky Word!"

Rev. Boogaloo: "They say that social capital begins at home and spreads abroad. Aman and Aman-ed!

Since this might be my last time to spread something on you, I ask you: when was the last time you went to a music recital just to encourage-by-your-presence a young boy or young girl who is beginning to play piano, or trumpet or cello? They didn’t have to be your child by the way...they could have been your neighbor’s child...

Or when was the last time you went out of your way to volunteer at a summer camp to help some young kid stay out of trouble? 

Or when was the last time you simply stopped in to say hi and well done to a group of young people putting together a community theatre project in your neighborhood?

You say those kinds of things don’t happen where you live? Oh Really now? How can that be? Because if you’re able to understand what I’m saying right now, that means somebody helped you to learn english somewhere.  

Had it not been for somebody who provided you with a book or subtitles on a movie screen - the information to understand english -  you would not have been able to understand my last sentence. 

Had somebody not taken the time to teach you how to read, count for yourself and tie your shoes, you would be stumbling around today, lost, broke and trippin’ over your own two feet!  Say Aman somebody!

Everything we know we start learning from the time we are born.

From birth until around the age of 12, we gather information quickly and unconsciously, absorbing information from our social group environment. We learn to give meaning to the information we take in through symbols (such as language), our heroes & sheroes (such as our parents), and rituals (such as toilet training). This learning we do is largely unconscious or unreflected. Also, we learn to tell the difference between evil & good, dirty & clean, forbidden & permitted, ugly vs beautiful, normal & abnormal. We call this information cultural values and it is our first level of mental programming.

But from our teens on, we begin to switch from unconscious to conscious learning based on new patterns of thinking, feeling and acting:  at school and at work we learn about gender, ethnicity, social class, generational difference, regional difference and national difference. This is our second level of mental programming. Because we carry these mental programs - a set of common cultural values - with us, most of us belong to a number of different groups at the same time. 

And wouldn’t you know it, the mental programs from these various values sometimes conflict: religious values vs generational values or gender values vs organizational values, zum beispiel. These conflicting mental programs/cultural values challenge us to anticipate or understand our behavior and the behavior of others in each new situation. 

Trying to make some sense of these conflicting cultural values is what is known as understanding cultural difference.

I can see you scratching your head now trying to figure out what the hell I’m talking about.

Well, this is a micro-mini version of a long explanation why investing in people not only makes sense, but creates social capital...and no, I’m not talking about Chocolate City, I’m talking about the human resources that reside in social networks.

If you think about the value of what you know - your knowledge, skills and experience - then access to social capital depends on who you are connected to: who you know. In other words, the bigger and more diverse your social and work networks are, the more resources - knowledge, skills and experiences - you can have access to. These resources include all the information, new ideas, opportunities, influence and emotional support that you don’t have by yourself. And of course it stands to reason that understanding cultural differences goes a long way to ensure anyone’s expansion of social capital anywhere in the world.

This is why I’m so glad I don’t know everything. Happy-loo-yah to the Stank! And I’m even happier that there are people I know who know things that I don’t have a clue about. Aman-ed! For verily, verily, this is why we know the funk as a collaborative process: it capitalizes on the things we don’t know while at the same time creating something new from the things that someone else we’re connected to knows everything about!  Good-googly-woogly! I’m on fire today...

I know for sure that some of the best mental programming anybody can get is learning to play music with other people at a young age, because learning to play an actual musical instrument (nothin’ wrong with two turntables and a microphone but...) requires the mind and body to do particular things. If you learn to play the drums, or a guitar, or a clarinet, or a trombone, or a bassoon, or an oboe, or a saxophone, or a flute, or an upright bass, you learn a skill I like to call developing musical imagery - the ability to imagine sound without a direct sound source.

And if you do this with other people, say in a band or group or orchestra, you get to learn other things like concentration, coordination, patience, communication, cooperation, teamwork, self-expression, conquering fear, solving problems and taking risks.

WOOOOOO!! Look at whoever is sitting with you right now and say to them “TAKE A RISK!”  

One of the best examples of how this works I saw awhile back...a friend of mine had some tickets to a concert and they couldn’t go, and so they called me and Mrs. Boogaloo and invited us to use their tickets...

As it so happened, it was a concert by a group of singers from Venezuela...what they call a Chamber Chorus.

Now I’m ignorant about Spanish, and I never had the chance to go to Venezuela, but the tickets were free and we had time, so we decided to go...and GOOD-GAWD-IN-PEAS, them folk SANG!  I mean they really sang their hind-parts off!  In fact, after the concert, I got to talk to some of them (through a translator) and they began to tell me about the music education schools in their country.  This is how I found out about El Sistema.

See, for you to understand El Sistema, you gotta understand that they started this music education program for young people more that 35 years ago in one of the roughest, toughest places on earth.  In fact today, they say that Caracas is one of the most dangerous cities on the planet: grinding poverty, hyper-violent gang murders, drugs, name it...Caracas today makes Detroit, New Orleans or Miami-Dade look like Disneyworld.

But yet, in spite of their hardship, the people of Caracas have provided a model of success that other people all over the world - including North Americans - are using to help themselves. In fact, the El Sistema model for community participation in the arts is also a model for participative democracy. 

How did they do that there Rev. Boogaloo, I hear you ask?

By putting skin in the game: building a community based music education network.

I’m not gonna get into all the facts: how most of the families live on less than 100 dollars a month, how the kids learn to play violins on paper mache instruments for the first couple of years, learning ear training first by singing the notes - while learning finger positions and bowing - BEFORE they get a real instrument, how students learn 6 days a week 4 hours a day in 130 music centers (Núcleos) around the country, how musical perfection is not the goal but changing community life by changing the lives of families is, or how Venezuela is now producing some of the best symphonies in the world at the moment.

What I will titillate you with is this: governments will fail you.

It doesn’t matter who’s in office; administrations come and go.

Without building a community, you wont be able to sustain anything worthwhile.

How can I say this? Look at the El Sistema model: for 39 years, this program has been sustained by people power...volunteers...ordinary people not born with silver spoons in their mouths, working, sacrificing and giving past the pain, indignity, frustration, fear and anxiety of living in poverty to ensure this program’s survival, to secure their own humanity.

I wonder how much skin you are gonna put in the game today, in spite of whatever challenge you are currently up against.

Let me help you: whenever I need to do something that I don't particularly feel like doing, I start singing an old negroid spiritual and it picks me up right away! Why don't you try it??

Oh the world is funny,

have you never heard,

I have seen 'bout ev'rything to see...

But if I, if I could lift you up above the earth,

I could see your drawers over me!

Lift it up, Lift it up

Yes it seeps through eternity;

And if I, if I could lift it up, above the earth,

I could see your drawers over me!!!!"

more on the web

El Sistema wiki

tocar y luchar documentary film trailer

el sistema in nyc

to play and to fight

A model for community participation in the arts

Rafael Elster

“Putting Skin in the Game”: Why Investing in People Makes Sense (Part 1)

THIS IS RUSH TRANSCRIPT; THIS COPY IS NOT IN IT’S FINAL FORM AND COULD BE UPDATED.

(Radio signal sounds: Snap, crackle, pop...hiss...wheeze...sputter...sputter....blip...jimmy-jank...plick-up...bzzzzz....mmmmmmmmmm....fades out softly...)

Unidentified voice: “We now interrupt our regularly scheduled programing with this breakdancing news from the Emergency Hoodoo Broadcasting Corporation...This is not a Test!...we repeat....This is not a Test!!”

(theme music, cheering crowd noises)

Voice of Announcer: “Good evening ladies and gentlemen; I am K. Maurice Bookerman, CEO of the Emergency Hoodoo Broadcasting Corporation and this is a special live broadcast from the Stanknasity Leadership Conference, also known as the SNLC, where the keynote address for tonight’s proceedings is about to begin! Tonight, the Honorable Reverend Dr. Boogaloo, Pastor and General Overseer of the Happytime Tabernacle Number 2 for All People of the Earth and Every Dimension Beyond is preaching on the theme “Putting Skin in the Game: Why Investing in People Makes Sense”. I’m honored to be joined tonight by Head Overseer of the Deacon Board of the Happytime Tabernacle Number 2, Deacon J. B. Peedybuddy! Deacon Peedybuddy its great to have you here with us tonight, knowing that you have taken time out of your busy schedule...”

Peedybuddy: “Aman-ed! and Happy-loo-yah! You know I’m just so HAPPY to be here with you Bruva Boogerman because, well you know, I’ve been followin’ Rev. Boogaloo now for ‘roundabout 35 years...”

Bookerman: “Yes sir, I know I and...”

Peedybuddy: ”...and I just want to say that, along with all the deacons and officials of our magnanimous fellowship, we are GRATEFUL! for the opportunity and all the fine work that you and your peoples have done to help us bring ‘The Good News of the Blues’ to all the people out there watching and listening...”

Bookerman: (clears throat) “...yes deacon...and...”

Peedybuddy: “...over the airwaves, because you know we truly BELIEVE, and I can TESTIFY - Aman-ed!! - about how good the boogie-woogie has been to me!!!”

Bookerman: “Yes! (blink)...and soooo, since Reverend Boogaloo has begun to speak, let’s...”

Peedybuddy: “Happy-loo-jah! That man can preach!...”

Bookerman: “...yes he can...let’s tune in to what he has to say!”

Peedybuddy: (his mic begins fade out, shouting) “...Take yo’ time and PREACH Rev-un!!”

(crowd noises fade) 

Rev. Boogaloo: “...and to all the distinguished members of this congregation, I am moved and deeply honored to be here with you again to talk to you a minute about what my old friend Bob Davis at at Soul Patrol.com has so often eloquently elaborated on as “Putting Some Skin in the Game” Aman-ed!”

“But you know, I wanted to go a step further tonight and try to paint you a picture...uh-huh...of what that means on a global level...because, as the songwriter once said...”No man is an island/ No man stands alone/ Each man’s joy is joy to me/ Each man’s grief my own...”

(the crowd stirs)

Rev. Boogaloo: “...you know that’s GOOD GOOGLY-WOOGLY Gospel!! Aman-ed! And the songwriter goes on to say “I saw the people gather/ I heard the music start/ AND THE SONG!....WOOLAWD! that they were SANGIN’!! IS RINGIN’ IN MY HEART!”

(the crowd goes wild)

Rev. Boogaloo: “...but hold up! Wait a minute! I want you to get this! You see the songwriter understood that as human beings on this planet, we have always been connected to one other! Aman-ed! Even before the days of computers and the internets! Aman-ed! Even before the creation of telephones or jet airplanes...Aman-ed! We have always been CONNECTED to each other by weather, by climate, by wars and mass migration! Aman-ed! Being connected is nothing new! Huh? And nowadays, whether we wanna be or not, we are even more connected!! Aman-ed!  Let me tell you something beloved: anything we do here tonight affects somebody else, somewhere else!...whether we see it or not!...if you turn on the electric lights in this room, when you hit that light switch, you better believe that somebody, somewhere, is working to make sure that electrical connection is turned on and stays on!...Aman-ed!...and when you go home tonight and turn your water faucet on to get a drink-a-water, you best be sure that somebody, somewhere, is working to make sure that water you drink is coming outta that water pipe!  Don’t look at me funny!!...You can’t buy a car or put gas in it anymore without being connected to somebody half-way-cross the world! You’re CONNECTED to that man and that woman who put that pretty car together in Japan, everytime you drive it and to those people who got the oil outta the ground in Venezuela everytime you go to the gas pump to fill-it-up! Every time you put your bling on before you come to service...hah!...and call your friend on your cell, somebody’s hands in Africa dug up those diamonds you’ve got on your finger, and those rocks in that phone before you went to the mall to get it with a credit card made in India!! CON-EC-TE-E-E-E-ED!!! You come into this world CONNECTED to somebody else and that’s the way you’re gonna leave here!!  AMAN and AMAN-ED! Look at somebody sitting next to you and say ‘Git CONNECTED!!'

(the crowd repeats in unison) 

Rev: Boogaloo: “WOO-Lawdy! Hah! I feel like preachin’ tonight!...but let me fix this thing up for you!! Putting some skin in the game, and I know my old friend Bob agrees with me on this...also means investing, not just your money...money’s important...nowadays none of us can make it without money...but, investing your time and your energy and your talents and your know-how to create the political will to make things happen...because political will means more than money...”

(the crowd murmurs again) 

Rev. Boogaloo: “Political will is worth more than money!  Oh yes...I can see some-a-ya’ll lookin’ at me funny now! That’s alright! I can hear some-a-ya’ll thinkin’ -- ‘cause I’m an annointed prophesizer -- ‘Rev’rend what do you mean, political will is worth more than money?’ I’m gon’ break it down for you...all you gotta do is to look at the monuments that people make in the world...If you don’t believe me, go to Berlin Germany...and visit the heart of the city and you’ll see a monument in the center!...I believe they call it the Funkturm or the the Fernsehturm...it’s the tallest building in the city!...the 4th tallest freestanding structure in Europe!...took them 4 years to build it!...and its the landmark of the city, a permanent symbol of the greatness of German technological innovation and a testament to the political will of the East German people...but do you know why its so important?”

(the crowd is hushed) 

Rev. Boogaloo: “...because to this day NOBODY knows how much it cost to build it! That’s right, I said it: NOBODY, not even the German Government knows how much it cost to put it up there! And do you know why?”

(you can hear a mouse pee on cotton) 

Rev. B: "...because they didn’t care how much it cost! Money was no object to the East German government!...they put all their resources, manpower, money, talents and minds to create political will! A testament and testimony to the greatness of the East German Empire!...to prove their power to the West!!...and they didn’t care how much it cost!! It was the political will of the people in power and the people who sympathized with their cause that build that tower!! That tower got build on the strength of PEOPLE POWER!!! Aman-ed! It was political will that built that tower! Not money, POLITICAL WILL!! Say aman somebody!!"

(in unison)

Rev. B: "That’s why I know that I know that political will is worth more than money cause when enough people decide to do somethin’...when enough people decide to make somethin’ happen!...when enough people decide to make something real, no accountants, no lawyers, no stock markets, no armies, no navies, no governments can stop them from doing what they want to do!!...if you don’t believe me, just ask them folks in East Berlin...that’s what it means to put some “Skin in the Game”...and that’s why I say it makes sense to invest in people! Aman-ed! You know, I was watching a film not too long ago...It is probably one of the greatest movies ever made...Its called “Africa Open For Business” and it was made by a brilliant journalist named Carol Pineau. 

Carol Pineau knows what it means to put skin in the game because not only did she write a newspaper article called “The Africa You Never See” -- a subject, by the way, that so many writers never write about -- she even went a step further and made a whole movie about it -- so that the people she was writing about could actually tell their own stories in their own words!! And as I watched the movie, I couldn’t help but get excited because here were people, ordinary people who go to work everyday, struggling to build businesses of their own, working in un-perfect conditions, working in spite of problems, poverty, hardship, difficulties....oh help me Stankamighty!...working in spite of!!!...I wonder if anybody in here knows what it means to work in spite of?!?..."

(the crowd roars) 

Rev. B: "...putting their own skin in the game to help themselves and their families and their communities...and to tell you the truth, when I listened to these young entrepreneurs talk about their experiences, especially a young brother in Zambia, I was ready to go there myself and grab me an adventure!! Aman-ed! And get on a kite and fly to the mountain top!!! Goodness-gracious-motivacious!! When I saw that little girl playing a piano in her own house, I said to myself, ‘Boogaloo, maybe YOU need to move to Ghana, so you can get YOU a house!’ ‘Cause I don’t own a house and no bank ANYWHERE has ever lent me any money when I needed it!! GOOD-GOOGLY WOOGLY!! I mean, by the time I heard the sister in Nigeria talking about how she started her company making children’s clothes, I felt like runnin’ to the airport to catch a plane to Lagos JUST SO I COULD BUY SOME OF HER CLOTHES!! And I don’t even have any chil’ren!!

(crowd is on their feet) 

Rev. B: “And I heard the words of the Godfather of Soul, Saint James of the Brown, the original Funk Prophet say ‘I don’t want nobody, to give me nothin’, open up the door...and you can finish it...”

(someone does) 

Rev. B: “Have mercy, cause mercy suits my case!  I’m talking about puttin’ some skin the the game this evenin’! And the only way to do this is to invest in people’s lives...when you invest in people’s lives, you make an extra effort to secure, not just in their future, but YOUR FUTURE as well! Why? Because whether you like it or not, YOU’RE CONNECTED!”

“For at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter where you invest in people. Doesn’t matter where you invest as long as you invest!! Doesn’t matter who you are or where you are!!! You could invest in Asia or Latin America or the Caribbean or Eastern Europe...wherever people need jobs, wherever people are living in poverty, wherever somebody doesn’t have enough to eat or a decent place to live!...you know, a sick baby is a sick baby...comeonsomebody!!! ... doesn’t matter if that baby is black or white or blue or purple!...when a sick baby needs medicine, that baby needs medicine...it doesn’t matter who that child’s mother is or what country she lives in!!”

" Sooner or later, ya’ll gonna have to get over your "unique-ism" and begin to understand connectionism ...'cause if the only people you can invest in are people that look like you and talk like you do, how do you think you can make to tomorrow?!? OOOOHHHHHH!! SHAM-DAP-PA-LA-PA-LA-PA-BOOM-SHAKA-LAKA-LAKA-BOOM-LAKA-BOOM-BOOM!! OH I KNOW I’M PREACHIN’ NOW!! I HAVE JUST PROPHESIZED RIGHT THEN!!!”

(the crowd takes a praise break) 

Voice of announcer cuts in: “You’ve been listening to the Reverend Dr. Boogaloo preaching at the Stanknasity Leadership Conference. I’m K. Maurice Bookerman of the Emergency Hoodoo Broadcasting Network. Please stay tuned while we take a brief pause for a message from our sponsors.”

(end of transcript Part 1)

A Bridge Between The Funk Model of Personal Development and Cultural Detective

 

I swam everyday this week.

I decided to change my physical training routine this summer by working more often underwater instead of lifting weights, the latter of which I have done on average three times a week for the past decade.

Not that lifting in the gym is stale by any means: I stopped counting reps years ago and learned instead to focus on the tempo and energy of the music in my portable music player.

Since most of my workouts are between 90 minutes and 3-and-a-half hours long, I’ve learned to challenge all my muscle groups by utilizing particular songs to motivate and encourage my movement and breathing, like a dancer uses music to improvise and discover new movement.

For example, I’ve used Janet Jackson’s “If”, not only because of the superlative Jam/Lewis production values, but because the tempo of the song is perfect for ab crunches on a decline bench at various angles. When I mix in Hamilton Bohannon’s “Disco Symphony", Cameo’s “Word Up”, EWF’s “Can't Let Go”, or Lyn Collin’s “Think”, I can easily repeat 3 sets of 15, at 3 to 4 different angles, for a continuous minimum of 30 to 45 minutes.

The result of doing this for a few years is that my lower back muscles are significantly stronger than they used to be and I now possess abs of steel.

Same with the shoulder press: I use Parliament Funkadelic’s “Flashlight” for strength training, along with The Gap Band’s “Burn Rubber” or a combination of Roger Troutman’s “Do Wah Ditty” and “So Ruff So Tuff” to hit all the right spots with stanknasty funk, say 3 to 4 sets of 15 reps using 25 to 35 kilo (55 to 77 lb.) weights. Not a lot of weight, but enough strength training in my shoulder and neck muscles to do headstands without using my hands at the end of my yoga stretching routines. No brag, just fact. 

What I’ve observed is that most urban dwellers my age lack youthfulness and energy simply because they don’t workout enough to the funk.

Working out to the funk means physical movement expressed through multiple body rhythms, engaging in disciplined rehearsal of physical balance, strength, quickness, improvisation, circular movement and synchronization. When entrainment is achieved by diligent practice, funk becomes it’s own reward.

As Robert Farris Thompson has explained, the word funk is of ki-congo origin and literally means “to work out to achieve one’s aims”. This metaphor signifies an entire value system which Africans brought with them to the new world and represents the idea of achieving any goal by the use of extreme effort.

Thus understood, funk music culture is an excellent opportunity to understand a cultural value system in which highly trained cultural specialists leverage diverse ideas (obscure styles of music, varied costume designs, diverse eras in dance and movement, recombined stories and myths), distill patterns and compare archetypes while leveraging conceptual values, such as key signatures, tempos, mixtures of music theory and dynamic expression.  

In sum, to understand, appreciate and utilize funk music organizational principles, one must cultivate a high tolerance for ambiguity, the skill to use diverse concepts and exercise a life-long commitment to uncovering cultural complexity. I am convinced that the people at Cultural Detective understand this.

The Cultural Detective Method provides a language to explain the mental programming with which we perceive, learn about and understand fundamental intercultural communication principles. It provides an innovative, enjoyable, culture-specific, cultural values and real-life situation based training approach which can enable and empower anyone to better understand and work with colleagues who have cultural histories which differ from their own.

It effectively distills and teaches the three necessary intercultural abilities required for global collaboration and cooperation:

1. The ability to know and explain ourselves as individuals; this is known as subjective culture.

2. The ability to better understand the intentions of other people; this is known as cultural literacy.

3. The tools to work mindfully and consciously to leverage cultural difference, regardless of personal cultural history; this is known as cultural bridge building.

This innovative and painstakingly researched training method has been developed by the pioneering work of Dianne Hofner Saphiere and the thought leadership experience of at least 90 credible intercultural researchers, educators and specialists from all over the globe. This method has been tested, tried and proven to improve the intercultural communication abilities of co-workers from more than 96 cultures world-wide. Major corporations such as ABB, BNP Paribas Bank, Cable and Wireless, Handelsbanken, Mitubishi, Rohm and Hass, Royal Dutch/Shell Oil, Samsung and Texas Instruments have successfully used The Cultural Detective Method in Africa, The Americas, Asia, Europe and the Pacific. It is continues to be used as a highly effective method for intercultural team building, expatriate training and collaboration projects in business schools and institutions of higher learning around the world.

What I love about the Cultural Detective training method is that it uses universal teaching approaches, such as storytelling, which are quickly and easily understood by everyone on the planet.

Anybody, anywhere in the world can understand and appreciate a good story. Along with music and pictures, storytelling is the most ancient way we have to transmit and receive culture. Through stories, we pass on our values, beliefs, histories and traditions from generation to generation. This process is what general semantics specialists call time binding. 

Cultural Detective uses storytelling and small group discussion to help us understand ourselves and others within the context of the unique and multiple core cultural values which motivate our behaviors, our beliefs and perceptions of our place in the world.  This process enables us to see ourselves and others as unique individuals influenced by culture instead of one-dimensional stereotypes. Moreover, by promoting the development of common-sense strategies to improve intercultural collaboration, Cultural Detective helps us to understand cultural values as positive intention and discover new ways to resolve conflict in everyday life.

I personally believe that using the Cultural Detective training method is an excellent way for people to overcome their fear of the other, combat status anxiety and eradicate racism.

But please don’t take my word for it; try it for yourself.

In the meantime, I’m going swimming.  For me, swimming provides an effective, low impact cardiovascular work out and I have come to use it as a training metaphor for overcoming fear.

Perhaps I should explain.

As a small child, I had a deathly fear of water. I do not know where this fear came from; perhaps it was because I lived near the ocean which to my young, inexperienced eyes was a vast, violent, unpredictable and unknowable place. 

To my good fortune, my mother recognized this and helped me to overcome my fear of water by taking me to swimming classes 5 days-per-week, months at a time, every summer, 4 years in a row. Long story short, after enough training, I eventually entered a local marathon competition and at 13 years old, took first place over 40 competitors.

Of course nowadays, many years later, I no longer swim in marathon competitions, but when I do swim, I am still mindful of how much effort it actually takes to train and condition the body to use different strokes efficiently, how difficult it is to strengthen leg muscle groups for effective kicks and the amount of extra personal effort and determination it takes to build endurance.

As an intercultural education facilitator, I have come to believe that participants in human resource training programs need to understand this principle as well: it does not matter how one is led to water or how nice the pool is: if one does not make the extra effort to learn, one cannot learn to swim.

For this one lesson, I am grateful to my mother.

She was a master teacher who lived and worked as an advocate for cultural literacy for all people.

She was a lyrical soprano, accomplished pianist and an extraordinarily graceful dancer.

In her lifetime, she was able to develop a higher tolerance for ambiguity.

Every time I swim in a foreign swimming pool, be it in Aktau or Sao Paulo, Paris or London, Bucharest or Berlin or anywhere my unquenchable curiosity takes me, I think of her and am mindful of her commitment to life long learning as a method to extinguish ignorance and fear.

This is why I’m not too cool to swim.

Matter of fact, I can dance underwater and not get wet :-)

***

Discover more about Cultural Detective @ http://www.culturaldetective.com/welcome.html

Black Revolutionaries I have known: DeWayne Wickham

DeWayne Wickham waiting patiently next to

my family car while totally lost somewhere

in the Kreuzburg district of Berlin Germany.

“I wonder where we’re goin’ baby/ that is my concern

Are we really headed to the point of no return?

A place where generosity has been replaced by greed/

I’m not sure how we got here

but this is what we need:

Revolution.”

lyrics by Joseph Wooten, from his song “Revolution of the Mind”, named after a James Brown album of the same title.

Every blue moon, someone asks me a powerful question, the kind of question that gives me pause, makes me stop what I’m doing and think deeply about a particular idea, issue or current event.

Last week, my wife asked me what I was going to preach about on Sunday's sermon at the Happytime Tabernacle Temple Number Two for All People on the Earth, in the Universe and Every Dimension Beyond.

She said “Reverend Boogaloo, when are you gonna preach again and teach the people about `The Change that Can Re-Arrange´? Because some of those deacons and trustees need to check themselves-before-they-wreck-themselves!!...on change management, leveraging diversity, thinking-outside-the-box...Why last week during that building fund committee meeting, half of them were sitting up there on the rostrum sound asleep, with slobber comin’ out the side of their mouths...”

I cut her off. 

“But lamb-chop, they had just finished lunch and it was a really hot afternoon...” and I made up some excuse about how some of them are getting old and I quickly changed the subject. Later on, I began to meditate and think about change and what change agency means, what with all the big hub-bub about Mr Obama’s first 100 days and all. And suddenly, I had a vision (because I am a prophesizer) of what change would look like for black people in ‘Merica and around the world if real, substantive change in our thinking took place.

One thing it could mean would be that we would stop killing, raping and robbing each another over petty slights, imagined insults and stupid stuff.

Also, it might mean that we would believe in ourselves and each another.

I imagined us black folk speaking Portuguese, French, Spanish, German, Lendu, Lingala, Lango, Fon, Kiswahlili, Xhosa, Jamican Patois, Ebonics, Mandarin and Russian, pooling our resources to start banks, credit unions and businesses together so that no one would be unemployed and everyone would have a wholesome place to live. We would teach each other how to take care of our bodies with proper nutrition, exercise and stress management techniques so that things like kidney and heart disease, diabetes and cancer, high-blood pressure and hiv/aids would be a thing of the past.  We would heal each other with a love so strong that our surplus would spill over into the rest of the world and we would solve global problems for everybody else, being leaders instead of followers.

And then I thought to myself, “But Boogaloo, that would take a revolution” in our thinking, our values, our habits, our practices, our beliefs about ourselves and our role in the world.

rev*o*lu*tion

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English revolucioun, from Middle French revolution, from Late Latin revolution-, revolutio, from Latin revolvere to revolve

Date: 14th century

(1) a: the action by a celestial body of going round in an orbit or elliptical course; also: apparent movement of such a body round the earth; b: the time taken by a celestial body to make a complete round in its orbit, c: the rotation of a celestial body on its axis;

(2) a: sudden, radical or complete change; b: a

fundamental change in political organization; c: activity or movement designed to effect fundamental changes in the socioeconomic situation; d: a fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something - a change of paradigm.

It was then that I began to remember all the black revolutionaries I have heard about, known about or met, people like Joseph Wooten writes about who have sparked revolution not with bombs, guns or bullets, but with a revolution of New Ideas.

rev*o*lu*tion*ary (noun)

(1) one engaged in a revolution

People like Benjamin Banneker, Samuel Cornish, John Brown Russwurm, George Washington Carver, Mary McLeod Bethune, Oscar Micheaux, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Robeson, Louis Armstrong, Jesse Owens, Shirley Chisholm, Geoffrey Holder, Carmen De Lavallade, James Baldwin, Charles Hamilton Houston, Chinua Achebe, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Octavia Butler, Samuel R. Delaney, Angela Davis, Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi, Miriam Makeba, Ayi Kwei Armah and Wangari Maathai.

And then, I thought of DeWayne.

I had the good fortune to meet and spend time with DeWayne Wickham last week in Berlin when he attended the African Presidential Roundtable conference on land reform, commemorating the 125th anniversary of the Berlin Conference of 1884.

Mr. Wickham is a journalist, author, entrepreneur and educator. In a subtle and sophisticated way, he is the quintessential definition of a black revolutionary. He has used the power of his mind to influence, inform, challenge and change the opinions of millions of ordinary people every week for almost 40 years.

Overcoming tremendous challenges as an orphaned youth in Baltimore Maryland, Wickham groomed himself to self-respect studying the status signification of his white ethnic customers (and the subtle wisdom of the black caddies who showed him the ropes) while working as a caddy at an all-white golf course in the 50s. He continued his education-in-life as an Air Force Sergeant in Vietnam in the 60s. He proved his commitment to life-long learning by studying at the Community College of Baltimore and earning his B.S.J and certificate of African American Studies at the University of Maryland in 1974 and his MPA from the University of Baltimore in 1982.

Driven by his quest to become a writer, he interned at the Baltimore Evening Sun from 1972-73 and at the Richmond Times Dispatch as a copy editor in 1974. He honed his skills as a Capitol Hill reporter for U.S. News and World Report during Nixon’s Watergate hearings and as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun from 1975 to 1978.  His pioneering work as a talk-show host for Baltimore’s WBAL-TV from 1976-89 empowered him to encourage Oprah Winfrey and BET founder Robert L. Johnson at the beginning of their national careers.

In his career he has interviewed and written about many leaders of the world including Nelson Mandela, Jean Bertrand Aristide, Bill Clinton and Fidel Castro. In his spare time, he secured the fiscal health of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) as president of the organization from 1987 to 1989, founded the Trotter Group, an African American columnist think tank in 1992 and created the Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies at North Carolina A&T University in 2000.

As a matter of fact, he even found time away from his golf game to write at least five books: “Destiny 2000: The State of Black Baltimore” (1987), Fire at Will (1989), Woodholme: A Black Man’s Story of Growing Up Alone (1995), “Thinking Black: Some of the Nation’s Best Black Columnists Speak Their Mind” (1997) and “Bill Clinton and Black America” (2002).

I even know he’s currently planing several more amazing books based on Caribbean history (cause I can read his mind), but I’m not going to tell you more than that: because black revolutionaries always tell you the truth - we just don’t tell you everything we know. 

By now, I can hear you thinking (because of my hoodooistic-ueber-powers, I can read your minds too) “Rev. Boogaloo, for the-love-of-Pete, what does all this have to do with black revolutionary personality development?”

OK. I’m gonna break it down for you in a language you can all understand. In order to be a black revolutionary for the new millennium, you gotta master the basics:

1) Stay committed to owning your own business, placing a premium on intellectual property: Mr Wickham has produced media content that he owns 100%; in an information based economy, his books, articles and television products gain value with each passing year.

2) Master non-violent communication: as a journalist, Mr Wickham teaches his students to create a safe, trustworthy environment for interview partners; this human relations skill is effective not only for journalists but for marketing executives, doctors, lawyers, accountants, scientists, teachers, law enforcement officers and administrators.

3) Grow thick skin and ignore the critics: Mr Wickham never reads his critics; there will always be someone who won’t like you or what you say no matter what you do, so you might as well be honest.

4) Develop organizational skills: Mr Wickham fixed the bank balance and grew the membership of the NABJ under his leadership; if you’re going to grow your organization, lead by example - cross every “I” and dot every “T”. 

(5) Go by yourself when you have to, but take people with you when you can: unlike many high profile media figures, Mr Wickham often travels alone to new places without a big entourage, click, posse or gang. This requires bravery and risk. While he could have chosen to come to Germany by himself, he brought four of his students with him so that they could experience a life changing event.

6) Believe in yourself and develop enough self-respect and self-esteem so that you can be generous to others, teaching them to believe in themselves; this is self-explanatory.

7) Be consistently motivated, demonstrate persistence, be hard working, disciplined, analytical in thinking, self-reliant, frugal and display creativity; these traits require endurance and courage. Mr Wickham’s many accomplishments point to this fool-proof strategy: it can produce success in life for anyone, not only if you are born black and poor in Baltimore but if you are pink, blue, green, tall, squatty or pimply. 

I don’t have to pass the plates like T.D. Jakes but according to this criterion, DeWayne Wickham is a black revolutionary.

My question is: what are you?

more DeWayne Wickham on the web:

bio

http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/biography.asp?bioindex=1142

books

http://dreamwalkergroup.com/bio/d/dewayne_wickham.htm

The Trotter Group

http://www.trottergroup.org/about.htm

blog

http://dewaynewickham.blogspot.com/

Beautiful songs from the Beautiful Ones: J*DaVeY in Concert - Berlin, Germany- 12.04.09

(photo credit: liveDEMO)

Tell ya what: If you wanna be active duty enlisted in the J*DaVeY Navy, you gotta show up 4&1/2 hours before the concert to make sure you find the obscure location they will be playing; call, text message and e-mail all your peeps to be sure they know where to come and what time to be there; walk around for 3 hours in the crispy-cold Berlin night wind wringing your hands while worried not enough local hipsters will show, cause nobody’s straggling on the street but tourists; gird your loins with sushi and jasmine tea looking dressed to impress like Kayne West and walk by your car every 30 minutes, to see if it’s been towed away on a half-deserted street.

I did all this.

I was there.

I was the man.

I suffered.

But for my troubles, I was rewarded with the Bronze Medal of Fortitude in the form of an unforgettable, incredible night of performance, music and inspiration: a new-wave, hip-hop, holy-ghost revival filled with sights, sounds, souls and spirits I shall never ever forget, for J*DaVeY did indeed rock my soul on Easter Sunday night!

Coming fresh from a third-eye-opening experience in London, Jack and Brook blew in to face off a notoriously jaded Berlin audience of 500+ in a Live Demo sponsored Cookies high-mass, bringing their mind-boggling, sonic rave circus, hypnotizing the hearts and minds of an always anxious, ueber-hip, multi-cultural throng.

Taking the stage at around 2:00 a.m., Miss Jack DaVeY (Briana Cartwright) ripped into an intensive-care set from “The Beauty in Distortion: Land of the Lost” CD, featuring J*DaVey classics such as “Everybody Touch It”, “Hi Sun”, “Private Parts”, “Mr Mister”, “No More” and “Might as Well”.

Pensively approaching the mic, Jack connected immediately with the already-hype Berlin crowd, overcoming language barriers, poor sound and non-existent ventilation, working her fine, high, head-voice, facing down any doubters, non-believers or latecomers wishing to worship in her world. 

Aided and abetted by the brilliant producer Brook D’Leau, who’s chord-clusters and synth swirls presented a perfectly twisted, springtime soundtrack, J*DaVeY presented probably one of the most intense musical sets heard in a Berlin club this year. 

Favorite moments:

1: At one point, Jack twisted her neck sooooo hard when she was dancing, it made my neck hurt. She is a performer who does not coast or hold back. Since the stage was raked a tad bit too high, she couldn’t help herself: she came down into the audience dancing, singing and breaking thru the “third wall” -- achieving intimacy with the audience. Jack reveals a lot of herself during her performances non-verbally: so even for Germans who might not have understood all the words, they understood her passion.

2: Brook got rhyme skills; I knew the brother was a great keyboard player, but I didn’t know he could bust a rhyme...very nice on the mic....a really pleasant surprise to see him come out from behind the keyboard bank and dance and sing with Jack....it looked like they were both having a really good time....and the audience picked up on this. The energy in the room was electric from start to finish.

3: My good friend Mo watched the show with me; she’s a talented performer, producer & musician in her own right and didn’t know J’DaVeY’s music before Sunday night....I turned her on to it....she was blown away: it was really cool to see people like Mo hearing the music for the first time and really getting into it, rooting for Jack and Brook emotionally in a call-and-response type vibe...it just proves that if your recorded compositions are solid to start with, when you play them live, they can translate for people who are hearing them for the first time. If music is supposed to inspire, then the hard work that Jack and Brook have put in is a genuine example of this performance principle.

Now Hear This Peeps: if J*DaVeY comes anywhere nearby to your town, RUN don’t walk to see them play, because they represent the future of music.

That is all:-)

links

http://www.jdaveybaby.com/

http://www.myspace.com/jdavey

http://www.missjackdavey.com/

Why Music Matters

There are essays that I read from time to time that I wish I had written.

The article excerpts below come from a recent piece posted on April 2nd by the brilliant writer, Steven Barnes, on his blog Dar Kush. 

This essay should probably resonate with many artists around the world, regardless of discipline.

The writer (not Barnes) makes several points that I connect with on a deep emotional level (although I do not share his cultural bias); for example:

“The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us.”

While I agree with the intention of this statement, archeological evidence actually supports the fact that the first people to understand this were African, and that the next people to understand this were Asian.  The Greeks came to this understanding much later. Instead of quibbling over this minor point, I refer to Robert Farris Thompson’s documentation.

What I truly appreciated however, was the statement:

“....I have come to understand that music is not part of "arts and entertainment" as the newspaper section would have us believe. It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we cannot with our minds.”

Preach on brother! This statement gives me victory!

I suggest you do read Steven’s blog (regularly) and read the entire entry.

It will give you victory!  

The Bookerman Book Review of “Tim and Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White” by Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen with Ron Rapoport (part 2 of 2)

(Note: This book review is part two of two installments. I told you I would have this up by the weekend. With MacBook Pro, Anything is Possible:-)

(Special Update: Many thanks to my friend Nelson Davis for editing this re-published 2nd installment: not only are you a great editor Nelson, but you wear groovy hats as well :-)

     Sadly, Reid and Dreesen were wrong, eventually becoming disillusioned by the reluctance of booking agents, club owners and media outlets to hire them; their frustrations, economically and personally, began to mount.  It was as if a prophecy, made by the eminent Marvin Junior of the singing group The Mighty, Mighty Dells, had eventually come true.

     “It’s a game they play called Divide and Conquer,” Marvin Jr. told them.  The Dells had supported and befriended Reid and Dreesen in the early 70’s, when Tim and Tom were The Dells’ opening act at the 20 Grand Club in Detroit.

    “They going to come up to Tim and say, ‘You don’t need that white boy in your act.  You’re funny without him.’  And they’re going to tell Tom, ‘What are you working with that nigger for?  He holding you back.’  I’m telling you it’s going to happen.  Be ready for it,” Marvin Jr., in his wisdom, warned them.

     True enough, the cumulative effects of financial hardships, broken marriages and the reluctance of an American entertainment industry to understand and assimilate the value of their act, caused Reid and Dreesen to part ways. Ironically, it also made them become better artists; working individually, they were forced to identify their hindrances to progress, set clearer goals and determine their value as artists. 

     Rapoport’s fast-paced style as a sports journalist allows the reader to visualize Reid and Dreesen’s career arcs as a process of self-development.  He seamlessly weaves Reid and Dreesen’s stories into multiple levels and layers of narrative.

     The first layer should be required reading by would-be artists as a textbook on “How to Survive In Show Business Without Losing Your Mind.”  Reid and Dreesen cultivated mental toughness and thick skin to afford the price of success in Hollywood, enduring the everyday banality of ruthlessness to create and sustain their careers.

     On this level we experience what it means to be “less-than-a-dollar-a-day” homeless in Hollywood with Dreesen and wallow in the anguish Reid experiences in L.A.'s casting offices for “not-being-black-enough.”

     Yet, we also see the value of being prepared, as Dreesen and Reid make the most of each and every miniscule opportunity: Dreesen stepping in at the last minute to replace Bill Cosby on Sammy Davis Jr.’s television program; Reid regaining his self-confidence by honing his skills as a standup comic in topless bars, while maintaining a vow of celibacy.

     The book’s second narrative layer should be studied by interculturalists as original source documentation describing the fundamental value of leveraging diversity to eradicate racism, developing cultural humility and profiting from identity development.

     As a culture worker, Reid demonstrates how frankness often trumps cross-cultural misunderstanding when describing the behind-the-scenes impact his introduction of a Carl Carlton song, “Bad Mamma Jamma,” forced him to translate word pictures-as-foreign language to network executives of the WKRP television series who, in their ignorance, interpreted the song title as obscene.  Dreesen similarly demonstrates how to overcome status anxiety by utilizing poverty culture insight as he describes in detail the level of intimacy he cultivated with his mentors, Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra.  In spite of their status differences, they practiced deep honesty and respect for one another, onstage and off. 

     If all art is political, Reid and Dreesen’s examples reveal that all artists pay a heavy price to produce products in sociopolitical climates when political will is scant, but that investments in relationships, while remaining flexible, can empower artists during difficult economic and political times.  This is significant in a third narrative layer, for we are reminded how much America’s entertainment industry resembles gangster boogie: after all these years, we finally learn the true reason Reid’s Emmy Award-winning, critically acclaimed CBS television series, “Frank’s Place,” was cancelled (from the voice of the late CBS news anchor/godfather Walter Cronkite no less).  Yet we find it is because of such setbacks, Reid’s career blossomed as an actor, director, producer and owner of his own independent film studio, winning him recognition and respect in the global film industry.  Similarly, Dreesen speaks from the heart of a lion, breaking down the history of the casino industry and its impact on the entertainment industry: as the national market expanded to absorb places like Atlantic City, most stand-up comics lost business. Dreesen, in a Cholly Atkins-like power move, modified and expanded his repertoire to fit new audiences as a motivational speaker, toastmaster and entertainer for lucrative corporate events, working at least 20 nights a month to this day.

     The red thread Rapoport uses to hold all these narrative layers together is side-splitting humor— the incident when Tim and Tom decide to hire a songwriter to write them a theme song is worth the price of the book alone.  Moreover, their entire story reads like a “who’s who” of the past four decades of American show business, considering the diversity of cultural icons with whom they have collaborated: Carl Reiner, Johnny Carson, Don Cornelius, Merv Griffin, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Stevie Wonder, The Mighty Dells, Hugh Hefner, Della Reese, George Clinton, Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, Dianne Carrroll, Dionne Warwick, Smokey Robinson, David Letterman, Richard Pryor, Jay Leno and countless others.

     One can easily imagine that if Will Smith and Robert Downey Jr. teamed up to make a feature film based on Tim and Tom’s true story, they would break the box office open.  In the meantime, we are fortunate to have this book to savor.  It is a must-read for anyone who wishes to understand the intricacies of entertainment culture and significantly, how genuine pioneering work tastes, sounds, looks and feels.

Links

The Official Book Site

Tim Reid's Official Site

Tom Dreesen's Official Site

The Bookerman Book Review of “Tim and Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White” by Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen with Ron Rapoport (part 1 of 2)

(Note: This book review is part one of two installments.  The second part should be online by next weekend. I’m tuning it up on my new Mac. Anything is possible:-)

"You know why they call a stage `boards,´ Tommy?" he asked. "Because of the wooden boards it’s made out of. Well, you earned every single one the boards on this stage. You belong here because of what you can do. Don’t let them take that away from you."  Sammy Davis Jr. to Tom Dreesen, onstage during rehearsal at Caesar’s Palace.

On most mornings when President Obama casually strolls to his desk in the oval office of Chocolate City’s White House, he moves as a liberated person, unencumbered by imaginary burdens of race or caste, the offspring of an intercultural relationship in which his African father, not being a descendant of American chattel slavery, did not infect him with a consciousness of second-classness, and a white mother, who did not stigmatize him with mental manacles of half-castness: he is the eugenicist’s nightmare in person, that terroristic, unimaginable offspring which continues to haunt and taunt the sociocultural psychosis of the American mind. 

To see it another way, Barack Obama is free in his mind to „own the boards“ (show-biz slang for having paid your dues, having mastered your craft and selling your routine convincingly by inhabiting a performance space utilizing a high-context projection of authority).

Obama was elected, in part, because he developed his public speaking skills and demonstrated that those skills were superior to those of the competition. 

Fact: in order to compete on a global stage, one must master rhetorical skills to beat a competitor’s hind-parts in public.  This is as true on the back seats of public school buses as it is in courtrooms, in job interviews or sometimes as an performer on stage.

Remember this Virginia: if you would succeed, you must own the boards.

Don’t believe me?

Compare and contrast two of his speeches: the first in Selma Alabama on March 4, 2007 and later, on Oct. 27, 2008 in Canton Ohio. 

Did you notice how his 2007 speech was a tad bit shaky? Kinda like a neophyte black preacher giving a trial sermon to an Apollo audience? His voice is pitched way too high and he’s doing that bobble-head move like he's not sure where he is?

And in Canton? Steely eyed with vocal placement originating from the lower register, producing deeper resonance and vocal variety because he’s projecting from the diaphragm. 

As any toastmaster or opera singer could tell you, he practiced.

Case closed.

And like Sidney Poiter, Harry Belafonte, Geoffrey Holder and Colin Powell before him, he moves and grooves unencumbered without veil or mask, a liberated person speaking his mind.

A question for you dear reader: how free are you in your mind today?

Do you feel free enough to say what’s on your mind?

To walk the way you wish to walk and talk the way you wish to talk? Anywhere and everywhere in the world you happen to be?

For if you do not have this consciousness, this basic human right, you are not free at all: you will continue to be enslaved by the opinions and whims of others, always looking around for somebody to approve of you and it matters not if you are black or white, rich or poor, or anything else.

35 years ago, Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen were liberated people. As the first and only black and white comedy team in the history of the Divided States, they spoke their minds in front of American audiences, black and white, rich and poor, and everyone else.

In their book, “Tim and Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White“ by Tim Reid, Tom Dreesen and Ron Rapoport (University of Chicago Press, ISBN -10: 0226709000, ISBN-13: 978-0226709000), they reveal the price they paid for owning the boards together in the late 60’s/early 70’s, a time when American media was clueless in it’s response to intercultural discourse or inter-racial comedy.

Born two American children of post-WW2 working class culture, one Italian in south Chicago suburbs, the other black in segregated Virginia, both experienced early childhoods defined by poverty culture: family dysfunction, substance abuse, youth gangs and adult-content lifestyles. In his narrative, Ron Rapoport weaves colorful stories told through the eyes of children, the excitement of street life in bars, pool halls, bowling alleys and whorehouses. In reality, both children craved family nurture and struggled to keep fear of abandonment at bay.

 

„We were raggedy ass poor,“ recounts Dreesen as his parents, both alcoholics, often left him and his siblings to take care of one another, to learn the meaning of hunger and steal coal from a nearby rail yard for heat during bitter winters.  Reid, whose existential needs were not as severe, grew up being passed around among relatives, questioning his identity, fearing rejection in segregated Norfolk Virginia.

Ironically, both grew up separately in America living similar lives, surviving dreary existences as street youth, living by their wits, sensing early that possibility means taking risk, putting creativity to use, being careful about money, being leaders rather than joiners – all essential entrepreneurial qualities: we see Dreesen, organizing his fellow pin-boys union style, caddying at a golf course while studying his clients; Reid working at his father’s short-lived nightclub and later, as a waiter at a whites-only restaurant, making good money by playing a role and fooling an audience. Competitive by nature and craving respect, they were smart enough to use their knowledge of a hidden rule of poverty culture: one of the main values of an individual to the group is the ability to entertain. 

Unknowingly, it was in early adulthood that they both began their journey as interculturalists. Dreesen, growing up around blacks, became a cultural deviant, making friends with blacks, forming deep relationships based on trust. Reid struggled through college during the civil rights movement as a student leader and was recruited as the first black graduate of a historically black college to work for DuPont in Chicago. 

It was after Dreesen’s return home from a horizon-broadening hitch in the Navy, and finding his niche in marketing, that they discovered each other in Chicago through the local Jaycees chapter; they started a drug-prevention educational program for public schools which the Jaycees adopted nationwide.

They also discovered two things: that they were very funny yet clueless about how to create comedy for the stage. Reid admits, „We approached it as salesmen, as if we were selling a product. We did what salesmen do: gather information, decide who your audience is, try to give your customers what they want.“

Establishing a relationship based on mutual respect, they became interculturalists by proxy, painstakingly crafting comedy routines based on the irony of race as social construct, making little money and sometimes paying severely for their efforts. Rapoport says, “Back then, you couldn’t have a black man and a white man onstage without going through all these stages—physical violence to racial heckling to liberals being uncomfortable. It was too weird. Black comedians were beginning to make their mark then. Cosby and Pryor—they weren’t on television much then but they were starting to perform in clubs. But somehow, a black man and a white man added a new element that was very threatening.“

After being physically attacked at their fourth show, they developed a partnership based on deep trust for survival on the road and in the process, non-violent communication tools for facilitating intercultural dialogue between blacks and whites. They were clearly way ahead of their time; as Dreesen explained in a recent CNN interview, „"Not everything we did was racial…but the mere fact that one was black and one was white, it was, to [audiences], a discourse. ... When Tim and I did it in 1969 and '70, blacks were not talking to whites about what you think about this, whites were not talking to blacks about that, so Tim and I were that discourse.“

It would be this pioneering work that eventually led to paying gigs at Chicago clubs like Punchinello’s, Hugh Hefner’s Playboy franchise and Chicago’s 1969 Black Expo, in front of 10,000 people. Reid describes the euphoria they experienced after perfecting their routine and finally tasting their first success: „We were used to working in rooms with twenty people in them…You know those science fiction movies where the force of the surrounding field enters your body and you’re possessed by it? That’s the way it felt, like we were taking the energy from the stage off with us. We went home thinking we would have our own television show within a year.“

(to be continued)

Links

official site

http://www.timandtomcomedy.com/

book excerpt

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/709000.html

interviews

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/books/10/02/tim.and.tom/index.html

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94850365

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-xOCtTqjpA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQb-dV9jghc&NR=1

47 & Drexel comedy routine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K27f6AM2_hg&feature=related

How the Funk Can Help You (while you're taking out the trash)

In the contemporary American political episode, the Democratic party reminds me of a group of kids bad-mouthing each other on a playground: immature, unprepared, naive, purile, disconsolate due to a lack of immediate gratification. And now that it appears Senator Obama will be leading the Democrats against the party of Raygun/Bush 1/Bush 2/Cheney and Brown and Root and Blackwater, I believe this is an appropriate time to give the Democrats a piece of my mind.

Taking in the scene-with-a-gangster-lean from the Other side of the Pond, even I can see that the Democratic strategy to win this November won’t rest on Mr. Obama’s shoulders alone, but on the backsides of all who say they are tired of the current despotate and claim to crave change. My advice is simple: take out your own garbage people.

In a so-called participative democracy, every interest group involved – blacks and whites, jews and gentiles, protestants and catholics, women and straights and gays and latinos and hispanics and asians and unions and environmentalists and police and spies and oligarchs – generates garbage of its own.

And here’s some news for ya’ll: unfortunately, Bruva Obama is not the garbage man. He can’t take out your garbage for you, nor should he be expected to, because getting rid of your own garbage is your own responsibility.

Sorry to be the one to say this to you but in a democracy, you are responsible for taking out the garbage you make. Xenophobia and racist attitudes. Sexism and homophobia. Status anxiety and social ostracism as a method of systemic social control. Corruption. Cronyism. Collusion. Caste. Blind aggression in place of reason and debate. All that trash. Its yours and the longer you keep it in your house the more it will stink up where you live.

In other words, civic engagement means much more than seeing who can holler the loudest at the mic in a crowded room. Sometimes it means volunteering to work in your community to create a cleaner, safer, welcoming place for everybody to live in – not just you. Sometimes it means working for free and expecting nothing in return when helping a neighbor who can’t help themselves - or do anything for you. And of course it can mean picking up that piece of trash on the ground in front of your door and throwing it in the garbage can, even if you didn’t drop it, because you live there.

Since I lean towards the cynical, I’m not convinced that `Merica is ready to take leadership from the most famous black man-on-Earth  right now because he is a real-life lawyer and not an actor or athlete or rapper or preacher; to the vast majority he’s still pretty much like a brother from another planet.

However, I’m relieved that Bruva O will finally be able to step into the ring like Mohammed Ali and go toe-to-toe in debates with Mr. McCain, mano y mano, and get his chance to shine on TV. Since I correctly predicted the outcomes of all three Ali-Frazier fights, I predict with confidence that he will knock the taste out of McCain’s mouth before the proverbial eighth round. Cause like me and Ali, he’s pretty and overstands Aikido.

To bring the bacon all-the-way home, Senator Obama will have to do two things: 1) stop censoring himself, and 2) let the funk carry him all the way. The first one is easy but the second one will be hard to do. But like Bundini Brown, that’s why I’m here.

(Bruva O, if you’re reading this, let me say that I ain’t got nothing but love and respect for you. Damn if I would want your job. But since you’ve applied yourself and you’re qualified for it, I can tell you that personally, since 1964, I have known it is possible for black men to provide competent, responsible leadership on The Hill. Know that this was the year that me and my boys spent the day with Mr. Nix in his office on the cleanest, dark blue, wall-to-wall carpet I had ever seen, drinking free, ice-cold Pepsi. We even got free lunch at the Congressional Commissary. He was my best friend Adam’s uncle and Adam went down to the House Floor to hang with him while he got sworn in. We knew we was free and gave each other dap all day.)

By funk, I do mean cultural hybridity. Bruva O must give himself over to the force of fu-luki 3 times-a-week and let the Africa come all-the-way out of him now. Its time for him to use Funk Organizational Principles like good crypto: change that pattern/posture/motif/theme/rhythm/tempo/rhyme/style so that evil influences can’t attach themselves to it.

(For those of you who don’t know what the hell I’m even talking about, perhaps you can gain a better understanding of this if you think in terms of music or dance performance: the process of letting go and giving yourself over to a rhythm, a beat, a tempo and letting it take you along, instead of trying to control it.)

Iona could explain this to you. So could Stew. Or Ivo.

DJ Spooky could break it down for you.

And Jero could take you to school.

Because at the end of the day, the real question answered this November will not be whether `Merica is willing to take leadership from a blackman but whether she is grown-up-enough to deal with genuine cultural hybridity.

We shall see what the end will be.

We were glad when they said unto us,

"Let us go into the House of the Stanktiddy! This is the Place that Soul Music has made; we shall rejoice and be happy in it! Aman and Aman-ed!" as prophesized by Reverend Dr. Boogaloo

 Great-googa-mooga!! As the picture shows, the Happytime Tabernacle #2 for All People is alive and well! And I’m ever so happy to report that at the „Soul Signifyin’ Revival“, a high time was truly had by all!

Yes indeedy: it was a huge challenge to bring this event to the Place-that-Cannot-Be-Named. Techincal difficulties, logistics and timing proved to be bigger challenges than I had expected.  Plus, the really nice people at the Place-that-Has-No-Name are understaffed, underpaid, undermotivated and lack the neccesary resources to mount a production of the size and scale that I had planned (i.e. an overworked PR dept., not enough microphones and monitors, ect.). Although I knew all this going into the game, I was determined, by sheer force of will, to make this event happen. But occasionally, trying to make bricks without straw means that on somedays, you can’t always get what you want: this was reflected by the low turnout on Friday night and having to call off Saturday night’s show due to low ticket sales. A true Bummerama.

However, I can say that the feedback that I got from the people who came out on Friday was positive to the extreme: the set design was beautiful , the singing was brilliant, the musicianship of all the artists involved was exceptional. I would even go as far to say that pound-for-pound, this was one of the best bands I’ve heard play in town this year.

In the weeks of preparation leading up to the event, there were moments that took me back to when I was kid learning to make music, when we would be in a garage somewhere finding our parts and practicing and practicing until we got it right. This painstaking discovery process, this quest to find the deep groove, is what has kept me going all these years. 

Take for example the fact that Mike Russell is an outstanding guitar player, but to leave it at that would be a mistake: the man is a musical visionary. He hears and sees and plays things that many guitarists cannot hear and and see and therefore, simply cannot play. In fact, there were riffs and figures that he found which are probably not even in the musical vocabularies of most guitarists in the world right now. It’s true. That’s why when you call his name, you have to put „Funky“ in the beginning of it like you would call somebody Dr. or Professor or Sir. Mike Russell, I have said this to your face and I will say it to you again: How Great Thou Art!! Lawn-ham-mercy!! How GR-AATE!! THOU ART!! Woooo man!! I’m looking forward to the day when we get those huge, super-sized Marshall amps and all the tech stuff you need cause when THAT happens, and they hear you, son, you gon’ make some of those other cats retire. 

Then, there is Mr. Earl Bostic, a man who eats music theory for breakfast. As a seasoned bassist, Earl has the ability to hear ALL the parts and lock the bottom down. It is always a privilege for me to be on stage with Earl because he is an excellent musical communicator: in the brief sessions that we had leading up to the one and only rehearsal we had all together, Earl was able to describe complex musical concepts to the other players, in a timely and kindly fashion, so that everyone could stay on the same musical page. Earl Bostic proves that disciplined musicians are experts at critical analysis, abstract thinking and inter-personal communication skills. Plus, because he’s a bass player, he’s so deep, you can’t get under him. 

My grandfather was drummer and he taught me to trust my rhythmic instincts; this is why I know Dr. DiCarlo is a drum doctor. He’s a rhythm healer. He knows that a good beat can heal you! I’ve never seen him lose a case!! Aman-ed. There’s not a tempo or a groove that’s ever been too hard for him to solve!! This why he’s a funky drummer: not only does he feel the groove, he lives it everyday. He lives it everyday because he understands CHI and Feng Shui…he understands what it means to flow like water. Ham-mercy!! I believe he’s got a black belt in karate, but when he hits those skins, he plucks at them so sweet, it makes you want to get up and dance right then and there. Wooo-Lawd!! Dr. DiCarlo is an expert at percussions, paradiddles and polymetric paradigms!! I truly believe he is annointed by the African Holy Ghost and it lives in him. 

Jan Giese is my favorite piano player. Don’t get me wrong: I know there are some good piano players out there; I’ve been a good piano player myself and I’ve heard quite a few good ones in my life. But you know its not enough to play all the right notes, people. Naw its not. If you gon’ play the piano, or synth or whatever keyboard you gon’ play, you gots to play with expression sometime. Jan Giese not only plays with expression, accuracy and dynamics, he can take a melody, swing it all around and make it sang!! He’s the kind of piano player that I always wait, in anticipation, to hear solo. Cause I know that when he streches out…good-googy-woogly…its going to be something that you will never forget in your lifetime. Period. He came all the way from Munich to play with me and he played ALL the keys…. 

Long story short, the BAND. WAS. SLAMMIN. Woooooo-Lawwwd!!! 

With only ONE rehearsal all together in the same room, and NO sound check, THIS band showed ALL-THE-WAY-OFF on Friday night!!! And to the people that missed it, I can say that ya’ll missed something extremely significant. In fact, you missed out on something important in life. I say this because I’ve witnessed great concerts all over the world all my life and this one was incredible! Not because the music or the show was perfect. We made a small mistakes here and there (we did not signify or call attention to them of course) but from beginning to end, the energy, the enthusiasm, the intensity, the musicianship and WOO!! the JAM was astonishing….we made them gargle „The Wine of Astonishment“…by the time we were through with that first set, lighting into Sly’s „ I Wanna Take You Higher“, the people in that place had to go SHEEEEEE-IIIIIIITTTT!!!!! They couldn’t help but come up on the stage at the end of the show and dance with us. 

And we only played two hours: we had enough music and energy to play for at least 3 and a half. No joke. 

SO, I take my hat off to „Funky“ Mike Russell, „Cool“ Earl Bostic, The Amazing Jan Giese and the The Incredible Dr. DiCarlo for their endurance, creativity, skill and excellence. These are musicians whose experience and work ethic create unforgettable performances. This is the kind of band that I give a money-back guarantee on: if you ever come out to hear this band play and you don’t experience an original moment of musical excitement that you can’t get anywhere else, I will give you your ticket money back. THATS how good these guys are right now. 

Plus, having one of the best (if not THE best) soundmen in town, means that when the people in the audience say „The sound got better and better and better as the show went on“ in a hall that produces acoustics-from-The Abyss, you KNOW that the guy is on point. Christoph, you are the man. All the stress. Not enough time. Doing everything on the fly. I promise you that the next time we do this, we will check out the acoustics and the equipment beforehand, because the situation in the Place-that-Has-No-Name did not do you justice for the remarkable skill set that you brought to the table. I am so grateful to you for all your hard work and patience and I will strive to make it up to you in 2008. Thankyou Christoph for proping me up on every leaning side. You are the MAN!!! 

And I can say the same about Matthias. Such a huge talent. So creative. Brilliant. Determined. Working with a sense of urgency. It is so rare that I get to work with people who are willing to think WITH me. Matthias, I’m really starting to look forward to making that movie now. I believe we are going to shake some things up very soon in this town because you understand the meaning of the word „Inszenierung“. You understand and overstand what it means. I am so grateful to you for all your good faith and hard work and support during these past months. You, my bruva, will get a Christmas present from me this year. 

Furthermore, having Mfa Kera AND Errol Shaker in my corner is like having two nuclear reactors in the trunk of my car: when that thang takes off from the curb, ya’ll are like rocketships going into places where the brave dare not go. How much experience do you two have between you? Okay, I’m not going to answer that. But I will say that you two were perfect. 

Kera, all you ever have to do is just be. Just be. When you came out, it was like the turn in the narrative, like when you are in the middle of reading a good book or watching a good movie and BAM!! That suprise moment, that raises the energy and the anticipation and the excitement level…I think I should start calling you Ms. Excitement…The Hardest Working Woman in Showbusiness…my sister you are amazing…people came up to me all week and asked me „Who WAS that woman?“ I told them, „THAT was Mistress TT“. Thank you Kera for all your love, support and enthusiasm. 

And Errol Shaker: absolutely amazing. I had to really concentrate when you came out because you made me want to laugh so hard…I almost lost it man…talk about mother-wit, comic timing, improvisational skills, voice, expression…bro man, you got the whole package. I kept asking myself this week: why didn’t we try to do this sooner…like years ago? We really don’t get to work together enough on stage Errol. We must change this. Thankyou so much for all your encouragement and support. You are without a doubt one of the best thespians that I have ever been fortunate to work with. I look forward to 2008 with you. 

Some say that a man is only as rich as the quality of friends and loved ones who look out for him. In my case, this is definitely true. I have so many thank-you’s for so many people and I would be amiss if I did not thank all my peeps who attended and helped me in major ways to realize the lauching of the Happytime Tabernacle Concert Series. Therefore, I offer my truly great, big, juicy, thank-you’s to: 

Sister Barbara, Roman, Dominic, Jens, Julia and Willie, Steffi, Ute, Annette, Uwe, Sabine, Margit, Paul Alexander, Priya, Selma, Friederike, Christine, Maria, Leni, Gordon, Sarah, Manuela, Bjorn, Wolfgang, Wiebke, Beno, Martin, Suleyman, Ibrahim and Semiah, Marco and Collette, Charlotte and Phillip and lastly, but obviously not least-ly to Rita, whose love and support, good faith and judgement, encouragement and courage has carried me all the way to this current day. 

I am grateful.

An Important Update from the Stanknasity Leadership Conference (SNLC)

Well Happyloojah!

I've finally managed to update this little blog after a very long hiatus. My apologies. But I did act in five plays in German theatre this year and it was very difficult and time consuming. So perhaps you can imagine that I didn't have much time to fool around with this computer. 

However, the best news is that I'm finally launching The Happy Time Tabernacle's "Soul Signifyin' Revival" on two nights, December 7th and 8th, from 8p.m.- until, at the Saalbau Neukoelln (Karl-Marx-Str. 141, 12043 B, U-Bahn U7/Karl-Marx-Str). And what a show it will be!

4 years in the making! Featuring the live music of the Mighty Soul Sanctifiers! With special guest appearances by Mistress TT and Deacon Bruva Shaker!

The best thing about this is that I will get to sing ALL my favorite southern soul anthems with one of the smokin-est bands in town AND we will be making a short documentary film about the entire project.  Expect to see lots of video clips on YouTube around the first of next year.  And expect that a whole lot of people are going to get really tired of me talking about the power of soul music before I'm done. 

I am so looking forward to this!

Also, be sure to check out my new MySpace page; it's still in a somewhat primitive stage but there will be  links, pics, vids and music updates (along with more appropriate HTML formatting) coming soon.

So hold on to your hats and your pocketbooks! Grab your church fan! And get ready to shake what ya mama gave ya! Cause I'm rilly gettin' ready to shake mines!

Below is a brief project excerpt from the 4 years of research that I did on this project.

And may the stanktiddy stick to ya from head to toe wheresonever you go!!

***

Project Abstract excerpt from: “Reverend Boogaloo’s Soul Signifyin’ Revival”

“...performance is a means by which people reflect on their current conditions, define and/or reinvent themselves and their social world, and either re-enforce, resist, or subvert prevailing social orders. Indeed both subversion and legitimation can emerge in the same utterance or act.” --M.T. Drewal

The raw materials for this project will be extracted from various expressions of interdisciplinary performance - in music, theatre, dance, literature and visual arts - which have been developed and practiced during the past century by black church communities throughout the south-eastern region of North America.

The musical parody “Reverend Boogaloo’s Soul Signifyin’ Revival” will use the conceptual setting of high-energy, “revival meeting” culture, substituting current American Christian Nationalist symbology with an original myth, based on pan-African music iconography.

The content elements of this project will originate from many different pan-African cultural expressions including storytelling, folklore and myth making, praise speaking/singing techniques, popular soul music and lyrics, dance and mime, surrogate audience participation, costuming and body decoration, and the use of visual signs and symbols.

Purpose

The purpose of this project is four-fold:

-to demonstrate how the storytelling tradition within soul music lyricism embodies a philosophy of art, a history of performance, a way of life and can create an original mythology.

- to simulate a charismatic, church-like environment which provides a theatrical context to discuss the preacher as storyteller.

- to create original rituals, similar to those staged by institutional religious organizations in any community of interest, for the support and development of new socio-cultural events.

- to critique the socio-political impact of the Christian Nationalist philosophy on North America society.

These epistemological events should encourage cross-cultural discourse on a number of contemporary social issues and should raise such questions as:

How do myths evolve?

How are myths and rituals used in contemporary society?

How are beliefs developed?

If religion is one way of knowing the world, what is the role of the preacher as a “gatekeeper” of that knowledge?

To what extent does myth and ritual influence social programming, political discourse, societal values and public policy?

A Signifying Church for All People: 6 points

“Hallelujah!! They call me Casper! Not the friendly ghost, but the Holy Ghost!! And I’m here, to make you shout! Oh Glory Be, to the one, that know what the Funk’s about!” From “We’re Stretchin’ Out” by William “Bootsy” Collins, on the LP Bootsy’s Rubber Band, 1973

(1) For my project, I will simulate a live, church-going experience for audiences based on a significant difference: by creating an original “religious experience” using the storytelling literature, visual symbols, music and dance practices found within soul, jazz, rhythm and blues, and funk music cultures.

Through the use of elaborate set design, props and costumes, I will create “sacred” performance spaces with the intention to animate, proselytize and preach to “congregations” (audiences), in the storytelling role of the “Reverend Dr. Boogaloo, Pastor and General Overseer of the Happy Time Tabernacle, Temple Number II for All People, on the Earth, in the Universe and every Dimension beyond”.

“Church services” will be held in appropriately sized concert halls and performance spaces, and will follow the high-energy style of “tent revival meeting” culture of the past century in North America. My intention is to create a realistic and believable church-like atmosphere by employing musicians, actors and dancers to simulate healings, testimonies, miracles and the behaviour of “charismatic” or “holy-roller” church attendees. My expectation is that this dramatization will create a notable amount of public attention and controversy, because this type of activity – to make fun of the black church (or any religious experience) in public – is still considered taboo within many black communities throughout the world, especially in North America.

In the cosmology I have developed, artistic legends have been canonized; for example, James Brown will be referred to as “St. James of Brown” and his collection of lyrics within the “Book of Soul” will be referred to, chapter and verse, as “The Book of Brown.” Stevie Wonder will be referred to as “St. Stevie of Wonder”, while his lyrics will be referred to as verses from “The Book of Wonder.” The titles and themes of Rev. Boogaloo’s monologues/sermons will use texts that will describe, for example, the intricacies of “Love and Happiness,” insider knowledge of a “Psychedelic Shack,” the perils presented by “The Back Stabbers” or the world-view of a “Sex Machine.”

I am presenting the culture work of this artistic tradition as truthful, insightful, valuable and therefore “sacred.” By displaying the diversity of soul music literature and iconography in this sacralized context, this cosmology assigns a value equal to or greater than the valuations of insight, wisdom or cultural worth historically assigned to European, Asian, Middle Eastern or any other original, sacralized cultural expression.

2) A Pulpit, Robes, church programs and church fans – the majority of black churches in the Americas, the Caribbean and Africa make visual use of some or all of these four important physical symbols.

It is expected that every preacher should use a kind of stage, platform or pulpit space from which to preach and that a specialized costume must be worn – most often, a flowing, highly decorated robe or Clerical collar – when he or she is preaching and acting out stories. These kinds of visual symbols convey a clear sense of authority and spectacle to church congregations and audiences

The character of Rev. Dr. Boogaloo will be costumed appropriately in colourful and original garments that will use a combination of symbols, colours, fabrics and shapes that will instantly identify him as a “High-Priest of Stanktiddy.” By integrating fashion trends from the mid-sixties to the present, I will use extensive costuming to make a maximum visual impact on viewers.

In addition, each audience member will receive a free church program upon entering the “church service,” which will feature the order of service, special announcements, church dogma and identities of sponsors and patrons.

Also, it should be noted that in the south-eastern US, simple, inexpensive, cardboard church fans are usually distributed to congregation members free of charge, especially during warmer months. These fans are normally printed with elaborate graphics depicting a church or religious scene, along with a sponsor logo on the reverse side.

Our church fans will be no different: they will feature pictures of Rev. Dr. Boogaloo, Happy Time Tabernacle logos and slogans,and the names/logos of our sponsors. This small detail, when used, will provide an added-level of authenticity to the audience environment by providing a visual effect of congregation members, usually ladies, fanning themselves with their personal fans during concert performances.

3) The Band – in many modern black churches today, it is a requirement to have a seasoned, groove-oriented, musical ensemble that can improvise during church services. You cannot “have church” without one. A band functions, not only as entertainment, but as a “sonic response team” to the preachers “call.” The band members generally participate in the delivery of a sermon by providing a musical soundtrack to the preacher’s delivery. This symbiotic relationship creates pure excitement for audiences, even at times when they do not fully understand the sermon. The band is an integral part of creating an emotional appeal to the preacher’s message; they are his primary, musical support system for the delivery of “The Word.” Back-up singers and a choir are optional, but provide even more excitement when they are utilised.

4) The Believers – in the majority of black church congregations, there are usually a core group of “believers” who support the preacher, through the use of physical gestures and spontaneous vocal outbursts, during the service. Over the years, many preachers have made full use of pre-arranged routines with congregation and audience members to stage healings, miracles, signs and wonders, testimonies and vocal interaction, to elicit crowd responses, and to establish deep credibility with audiences.

I will make use of actors and dancers to provide vocal and physical responses during my sermons, to provide high-context gesture and dance, along with energetic vocal outbursts during performances, to signify when the “Spirit of Stank” is particularly “high.” Members of the “congregation” will be regularly called upon to offer realistic, powerful, faith-based testimony about how the power of “stank” has changed and transformed their personal lives in positive and miraculous ways.

5) The Sanctuary – in every church there are signs, icons and visual symbols to identify the site as a location of sacredness. The “Signifying Church” will be no different in this regard. I will use beamer/video-projection technology to create a visual spectacle that is lively, colourful and filled with original images that suggest and support the cosmology that I have invented.

Examples of such visual images, still and moving, would be pictures of church interiors and exteriors, Rev. Dr. Boogaloo and his congregations in revival meetings, and original artistic symbols and logos that the church will use to identify, or signify, itself. These symbols should function as visual cues for my audiences in the same way that symbols and depictions of the cross, of angels or saints, or Jesus and his disciples function in a church, tabernacle or cathedral.

 

6) A Cult-Following Philosophy – in order for a preacher to be visible in any community, the preacher must develop some level of insider or cult following. I fully intend to accomplish this by using the psychological operational practices of modern media propaganda, promotion and advertising. For example, I will distribute an original “church charter”, “Tabernacle Covenant” and statements of belief through the media, using easy to remember and specifically tailored legends, articles, stories, slogans, sayings and rhymes. These messages will be consistently repeated in radio and television appearances, newspaper and magazine interviews, pamphlets and memorabilia, and on the web so that they become associated with core cosmological principles.

In order for the persona of Rev. Dr. Boogaloo to be believable, I intend to use visual spectacle and physical stunts that will serve to suspend disbelief, in the same way David Bowie has used the mythical figure of Ziggy Stardust, the late jazz composer Sonny Blount used his character Sun Ra, or the great band leader George Clinton in his unforgettable Star Child persona. Like Santa Claus at Christmas, Mickey Mouse at Disneyland, or David Copperfield as a “magician”, the character of Rev. Boogaloo will present himself in character during every performance and promotional appearance, in every interview and media presentation, for the entire duration of this project.

I will make full use of my lifelong study and observation of preachers, evangelists, storytellers and comedians to stage well-timed sight gags. I will utilise high-context communication, such as facial expression, animated physical movement, gesture and mime. I will create and sustain direct visual and verbal communication with my audiences. In sum, I will use a situationist theatre approach, along with method acting, to plead, debate, cajole, convince and proselytize audiences with missionary zeal.

Links

Short History of American Christian Showbusiness

T.D. Jakes in Action

Jamal-Harrison Bryant in Action

Juanita Bryant in Action

Bishop Weeks in Action

Kerney Thomas in Action

12 year old Preacher in Training

Beyond All Rims: The Amazing For Real and For True Stories of Octavia E. Butler, Mike Russell, Mfa Kera, James D. Russell and Sister Caroline

People, their lives and their stories, are irreplaceable.

Today as I was walking home, I turned the corner near my house and suddenly became overwhelmed with anger about the way Octavia Butler died. Couldn’t help it.

Not so much about the fact of her death (cause when you gotta go, you gotta) but because of the possibility that her life might have been saved, had someone reached her in time.

I’ve decided to remain pissed off about this for awhile because we live in modern times, in societies in which neighbours hardly pay any attention to each other anymore, where most neighbourhoods are something between gated fortresses or lifeless ruins, where each demands their own space and privacy, and where somebody could slowly die within a few meters of where you are sitting reading this and you wouldn’t even notice.

In the cities and towns where I grew up, this would have been nearly impossible. People would actually speak to each other or say hello as they recognized one another passing on the street.

Today, we have become invisible to each other. We have become mere figments the other’s imagination, doing our level best to pretend that the Other does not exist.

I have inhaled most of Octavia Butler’s books and many of her essays at least once in my life: they get me high.

And while I know Octavia wrote Parable of the Sower as fiction, the core of that story was as real as the invisible, dog-eat-dog atmosphere inside most subway stations, companies and institutions in major western cities, as real and desperate as the day-to-day existence of people experiencing continuous invisible poverty in an eastern European metropolis, or invisible real famine + civil war in Africa, or the real terror of bombs falling on invisible people in invisible houses in Baghdad, or the chaos caused by tens of thousands of invisible people suddenly becoming real on your TV screen in New Orleans after a hurricane.

Real. Real. Chaos is real to me.

Octavia Butler died because nobody saw her laying in her front yard after she fell down.

I wonder how long it took for her to die.

I wonder how much pain she suffered.

I wonder how much she hurt.

I wonder if she tried to cry out for help and nobody heard her call.

A MacArthur Genius Grant winner. Nebula Award for Best Novel. A dozen novels translated into 10 languages. Shy but warm, a perfectionist yet incredibly generous, she treasured her solitude but was a formidable public speaker.

She was 58 years old and at least 6 feet tall.

And nobody saw her slip and fall in front of her own house.

Perhaps she had gotten used to her own invisibility.

I wonder if she knew how beautiful she was and how many people loved her.

I can only imagine that she might have thought it – her death as accident - ironic. And that she’s probably laughing at that irony right now.

Farewell dear Octavia.

Thank you for the possibilities in our future.

This is for you.

And it ain’t no fiction baby.

***

Caroline Terry was Mike Russell’s great-great grandmother.

Mike Russell and Mfa Kera are real people. They are real musicians who make real music. They are unique and irreplaceable. I’ve got proof.

You can download the interview I did with them here:Download showtwo.mp3 (54298.2K)

You can visit their website here.

And order their CD here.

James D. Russell is Mike’s Dad. He’s real too. He is one of a kind and irreplaceable.

He wrote a book that actually exists; the cover of which is at the top of this post.

You can order that book here.

Sister Caroline was real too. She actually existed. There are real pictures of her in the book. Plus, James D. and Mike are proof.

The review of the book is just below. And although I’m invisible, it is infallible proof of my existence.

***

A Book Report - Beyond the Rim: From Slavery to Redemption in Rappahannock County Virginia

by James D. Russell, 2003, ISBN 0-615-12483-6

by K. Maurice Bookerman

  Brothers and Sisters, the Universe is filled with trillions of ideas; here is just one:

  ”Be diligent as long as you live, always doing more than is commanded of you.  Do not misuse your time while following your heart, for it is offensive to the soul to waste one's time. Do not lose the daily opportunity to increase that which you have. Diligence produces gains and gains do not endure when diligence is abandoned.”(Kuumba)

  Husia, Book of Wise Instructions, Ptah-Hotep, pg. 42, #IV

  Having lived as an artist for more than a decade in one of the coldest of cities, in one of the coldest of countries, I have worked extremely hard to keep my groove on, in spite of the cold.

  When I wake most mornings, I listen loudly (with headphone discretion) to Aretha or John Lee Hooker or Salif Keita or James Brown, and take time to meditate on a message one of my ancestors tried to give me during the previous night in a virtual reality dream sequence, or on the heavy price my family has paid to live in North America during the past century, or on what the future might hold for my young, gifted and black nephews on the highways of Virginia: such thoughts (a)alternately keep me grounded, (b)remind me why I am still here, or(c) challenge my sanity.

  None of this actually wears me out: I have learned that diligence can spite difficulty.

  What wears me out however is hearing people swear on their Granny's biscuits that “paying dues” is the mortgage one pays for the privilege to stand on somebody's stage and play music for complete strangers, night after night, year after year.

  I have toured the ``chitterling circuit´´ in too many far-away places and countries to count and I must confess that there is not a week that whizzes by when I don’t think about giving it all up and getting a regular job like most people on the planet. After all, when you really think about it, who really needs music anyway?

It’s not a necessity.

You can’t eat it.

It can’t keep you warm in winter.

And it’s a helluva lotta trouble to make.

  Yes-sir-ree, after years of setting up heavy amps and drum kits before a show, singing myself hoarse for 3 or 4 or 5 hours straight and lugging the equipment back to a basement at 6:00 in the morning, after spending thousands of days and nights practicing in dank, rodent-ridden rehearsal halls and sweating through eons of playing-time in stinky dives filled with drunk people who most likely view me as a figment of their imagination, I have often considered giving up the glamorous, show-biz life.

I think about it everyday; to borrow from Baldwin, after centuries of being assailed and copied, waylaid and imitated, assassinated and stolen from, it’s a miracle that musicians all over the world still sing and play for anybody, anywhere.

  But as always, when I feel like packing up and throwing in the proverbial towel, I am granted a golden moment when I’m reminded that my struggle is a part of a continuum of struggle: that as a son of the Commonwealth State of Virginia (where the people with wealth have always been common), I exist within a context of struggle for survival, for peace, for comfort, and in spite of my own limitations, plain in spite of.

  This most recent epiphany came while reading the excellent Beyond the Rim: From Slavery to Redemption in Rappahannock County, Virginia by Mr James D. Russell of Sperryville Virginia.  Mr Russell’s narrative is based on an intimate portrait of the life and times of his great-grandmother, Caroline Terry, born a slave in Virginia in 1833.  His historical record is fully qualified: Mr Russell completed this volume at the young age of 82 years old; therefore, it is chock full of authentic Virginia history, told by a man who actually saw it happen (which is why this book should be what historians call “original source” documentation, and probably why it should be required reading in every public school and undergrad university curriculum in the state of Virginia). 

  Mr Russell’s narrative works on at least three different levels: first, as a detailed glimpse into rural life in Virginia during the periods of chattel slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction and the turn of the century and second, as a detailed family and community history of the people of Rappahannock county, describing their interpersonal relationships and careers.  In sum, it describes a detailed microcosm of the socio-political landscape of central Virginia from the early 1800’s up to the Reagan Era. 

  What makes this particular narrative compelling is the telling of Mr Russell’s personal odyssey: his growing up in the Jim Crow south, his struggle to get an education, his experiences as both a civil servant and entrepreneur, and his work as a community activist and local historian.  Elegantly and honestly, with humour and without bitterness, Mr Russell reconstructs the stories that his great-grandmother, Caroline Terry, told him.  She lived to be 108 years old, passing away in 1941 (when Mr. Russell was 20), but not before telling him everything that she could about her life and struggles during Virginia’s pre-Civil War, plantation south.  It is fortunate that Mr Russell remembered everything that she told him and that he wrote it all down.

  In his narrative, Mr Russell drops fresh bombs upon the heads of Virginia's history experts, both linguistically and factually.  For example, the title of the book “Beyond the Rim” is the term slaves used to describe the invisible borderline around plantation property which they were forbidden, by the use of random violence, torture, intimidation and state sanctioned terrorism, to cross. Along with providing free, physical labour for the production of one of Virginia's most beloved tourist attractions, Skyline Drive, according to “Sistah Cah-line”, African-Americans also buried most of the corpses of both Confederate and Union troops during the Civil War, due to massive manpower shortages.

  Contrary to Virginia history books used in public schools during the fifties, sixties and seventies (which were presented as fact), this narrative carves, whittles and sculpts the lingering psychic damage inflicted on American communities due to slavery, and the disastrous result of nurturing racist mythologies past their prime.

  By describing the human dysfunction ignited by slavery (drudgery, hunger, social death, sexual predation), the account reveals the mental toughness, intelligence and determination that African Americans like “Sistah Cah-line” were forced to cultivate to survive.

  Sold to perhaps two or three different plantations in Rappahannock and Culpeper counties, Caroline Terry stood out as a leader: smart, articulate, cunning, strong-willed and independent.  Forced into life as a concubine, her first three children were fathered as a result of sexual exploitation by one of her owners.  (Three additional children would be fathered during a dysfunctional marriage to a black man, only known as Jeffrey.)  It is interesting to note that according to Mr Russell’s narrative, two of her first three children were born after the Civil War had begun in 1861: clear evidence of the unwillingness of plantation owners to relinquish their “property”, which ironically, helped to create social conditions that gave birth to Virginia’s stringent slave codes, miscegenation laws and later, the American eugenics movement.

  However, the most moving, and worthwhile, segments of Mr Russell’s description of Caroline Terry’s life describe the intimate and complex relationships between black people who were forced to endure the inhumane conditions of plantation life.  It is here that his narrative shines: for example, a clear account of the evolution of Afro-American caste systems.  Using constructed dialog, Mr Russell takes us deep into the private conversations (and thoughts) of “Sistah Cah-line” and her peers, describing the light-skinned/dark skinned phobias which have divided (and continue to adversely affect) Pan-African communities during post-colonial times.

  Mr Russell shows us that the slaves were completely aware that plantation owners sought to exploit this constructed division between black people.  Early on, Caroline is taught about this phenomenon by older women, after a bi-racial house servant named Felicia insults her on their first meeting, referring to her in the third person as “blackberry”.  (Eventually, in the course of their affectionate relationship, Caroline would nickname Felicia “Nilla” - as in Vanilla.)

“Cah-line, that girl Felicia always kids other girls like dat.  We is all in the same boat.  Some is jus worked in different ways.”  Caroline, still fuming about the insult, shouted, “Well she’s still gotta show me what she means by blackberry patch.  Caroline returned to the laundry room and told her mother what happened...”

“...What yo has don gone thru is exactly what the folks in the Big House wants,” her mother explained.  “Effen the darkey folks is allus stirred up agin each other, den dey can’t organize, or help each other go outside de rim.” (page 5)

  The first four segments of Mr Russell’s narrative describe Caroline’s resistance to slavery, her continual quest for freedom, her life before, during and after the Civil War and Reconstruction as well as her later years as a free woman, property owner and co-founder of the Hopewell Baptist Church, which was probably one the first black churches started in the Rappahannock region in the early 1900’s.

  It should be noted that the photographs included in this section are authentic; they speak thousands of words by themselves: a photo of the Memorial Hill monument, dedicated to a burial ground of approximately 75 to 100 slaves who laboured near Sperryville between 1810 and 1865; a photo of a colt-revolver retrieved by Caroline Terry from the body of a young Union officer; a photo of Lucy Starks, a friend of Caroline Terry, shown smoking her corncob pipe while doing laundry over a washtub; a photo of Caroline at age 101, taken in 1934, sitting in front of her own home.  It is powerful photographic evidence which makes the narrative come alive, serving as forensic evidence that the events that Mr Russell describes are real, that they really happened and are not works of speculative fiction.

  Section five is remarkable in that it describes the incredible life of James Arthur Engham, Mr Russell’s grandfather, who became one of the wealthiest black men in Rappahannock County.  Born in 1858, James A. Engham, known as “J.A.”, emerged in the post-Civil War years as a shrewd real-estate investor, a jeweller, a barber and entrepreneur.  Although it is obvious in Mr Russell’s narrative that “J.A.” was his mentor, it is also obvious that Mr Russell’s grandfather was a futurist: 

a man who thought ahead of his time.

  Consider the fact that before the 1920’s, “J.A.” owned industrial property which housed a mill and a bottling company.  Or that because of his real estate acumen, many local Afro-American families became property owners, due to the liberal “lay-away” plan that Mr Engham implemented, or the fact that he owned his own power plant(!), which provided electricity to four properties he owned.

Aside from being a role model for would-be, modern day entrepreneurs, “J.A.” was a role model for Mr Russell, providing him with one of the most valuable lessons that he would learn in his youth: that integrity is really all you have in business, or in life.  Without giving away one of “J.A.’s” most memorable quotes, Mr Russell paints a loving picture of a brilliant businessman, who along with creating inherited wealth during his lifetime (he passed away in 1935), created a lasting legacy which reverberates in Rappahannock County until the present day.

  Part six is a short narrative about the intimate relationship between Mr Russell and his great uncle Theodore.  Along with a detailed narrative about their personal relationship, Mr Russell gives us a first hand look at what life was like during the depression years of 1931-33 for people living in the rural south.  He does not provide details as to whether Rappahannock was, during prohibition, a so-called “dry county”. (I suspect that it was; in Amelia County, where my father was born in the early thirties, the public sale of alcohol was banned. This led to the illegal whiskey making industry, a parallel, underground economy, along with the career of one of the most successful, Afro-American race car drivers in Virginia history: Wendell Scott of Danville Virginia. It has been documented that Scott gained his reputation and experience by transporting illegal “moonshine” from county to county, evading local, state and federal law enforcement officials.)

  What is clear from this section is that the industry was supported by, patronized by and was financially beneficial to both blacks and whites alike during difficult economic times: although nobody talked about it openly, everybody knew it. (Seems like the more things change...)

  The final section of Mr Russell’s narrative is a sweet reward in itself: he talks about his own life and experiences from the early 1920’s to the present.

  When he published this volume at 82, Mr Russell had already worked for 35 years as a civil servant and as a multiple restaurant owner; he had been a good father, a family man and had become a formidable, local historian.

  What I appreciated most about this section of the book was being reminded, through words and pictures, that it is primitive to perceive a senior citizen as just another “old person”: the person used to be young and possesses entire life-stories, full of rich and colourful details, which can be used to keep people on the edges of their seats. This is a mark of a master storyteller.

  Fact: James D. Russell is a storyteller’s storyteller.

  When he was young, they called him “Jeems” and we are illuminated by word-pictures that he shines on us: we see the young James Russell, a little black boy innocently skinny dipping with his white friends on a hot summer day, turning the bellows in a blacksmith’s shop as an eleven year old, learning to read in a one-room school house only to find out in the discarded, second-hand history books that the “slaves were happy”, questioning such a statement in his mind.

Through Mr Russell’s eyes, we see a young man come of age during the era of Jim Crow, states rights and separate and unequal government facilities.  We see him struggle to further his education and later, enter the segregated U.S. Army, serving in Europe during the second world war (and almost getting killed in the process). We see him returning to a segregated Sperryville in his combat boots, not quite sure what his white neighbors make of him, after risking life and limb for the liberation of western Europe.

  What is amazing is when he writes of the pitfalls he endured, the acts of social sabotage he absorbed and the sheer variety of personal indignities he experienced in his lifetime, it is with only the faintest wisp of indignation in his writer’s voice. Perhaps he was removed far enough from the actual events, using the distance of time to visualize them without bitterness.

  Equally stunning is when he turns his pen to the pleasant highlights of his youth (listening to Joe Louis’s victory over Max Schmeling in 1936 on one of the few radios in town, outside a country store, and having to wait until getting out of hearing distance of local whites inside before celebrating), his voice is candid yet modest.  For example, he met Eleanor Roosevelt in 1943 during her visit to Hampton Institute; he mentions this meeting in a casual, as-a-matter-of-a-fact way.

  Perhaps this speaks to the fact that Mr Russell is an authentic southern gentleman: discreet, subtle and cunning. Such a mind contains a kind of wisdom I do not yet possess, but hope to survive long enough to acquire.

Today's Meditation: Happy-loo-yah for the People!!

"Keep what’cha got till ya git what’cha need yall!

You got to give a lot jus’ta get what’cha need, sometimes yall!!

Gimme the bridge now!

I feel like bustin’ loose, bustin’ loose now!!

Bustin’ loose in the evening, bustin’ loose can be pleasing;

Talkin’ `bout bustin’ loose yall!!

Bustin’ `loose in the meantime, bustin’ loose make you feel fine!

Talkin’ `bout bustin loose girl;

Bustin’ loose to my Lovejones/ bustin’ loose to each his own!!

Talkin’ `bout bustin’ loose yall!

Gimme the bridge yall!!

Git-git-git-git-git-git on Up yawwl!!

Git-git-git-git-git-git on Down!!

Free! Freaky deek! Free! Freaky deek!

Free! Freaky deek! Free! Freaky deek! (Ah! Freak yawwl!)

What’s that new dance yall doin´?!?“

From The Everlasting Book of Soul, The Gospel of Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers, Chapter 3, verses 13-21, New Stanktified Version; Reverend Boogaloo photographed by Sebastian Rosenberg

Aman and Aman-d!

Do you know what, believer? I’ve been bustin loose for as long as I can remember.

I mean, for as long as I can recall, I have really tried to bust as-loose-as-a-goose!! Good googly-woogly!

I can remember when I was a just an it-sy-bit-sy, teeny-weeny, pre-school, Star-child-kiddy, as soon as I realized that I could feel balance in my body and discern a diddy-wah-diddy in a Ray Charles riff (Blessed be his Holy Name), from that first sublime moment I caught-a-holt-to-the Groove, heard a hook and felt a funktafied beat, I started moving and groovin’, you know, really gettin’ into it man, you know, and countin’ it off and doin’ the Do, along with the Shingaling, the Jerk, the Frog, the Swim, the Turtle, the Shimmy-Shimmy Coco Bop, the Hully-Gully, the Twist and most importantly, The James Brown.

Of course, I was not the only one. Far from it. In the beginning, there were many of us because everybody around was doing exactly the same.

"Shake that thang! 

And don’t be ashamed!

Shake that thang!

Cause your Mama did the same!“

A meditative chant from the Book of Common Stank

I remember imitating all the dance moves I saw my Aunt Ree-Ree do at home. At the time, she was practicing to be a ballerina and was a freshman at Norfolk State College. During her practice time (which was all the time), I would watch her and try to match her step-for-step. She encouraged me to express myself through gesture, mime and movement and we would dance together every day.

Plus, my grandfather was a funktafized drummer.

By the time I knew him, he had already played in Harlem in the 1920’s. Could make those drums talk and shake and rattle and roll. Louis Armstrong was his idol. He taught me how to tighten-up the skins with the key and let me sit and watch and listen after he set up his kit to play. I remember many sunny, 96 degrees-in-the-shade hot, summer afternoons when he would set it off in our backyard and begin to wail. All the children in our neighborhood would hear that Sound, stop what they were doing, run full speed for 4 or 5 blocks to ring our backyard fence and for a few, precious moments, we had an instant, on-the-One, Stanknasity, funky-good-time party, right then and there.

Didn’t need no music. All we needed was a beat.

Happy-loo-yah!! You can say Aman!!

So by the time I entered first grade at 5-and-three-quarters, I had already been reading for almost 2 years, had begun to think critically about the oral history of the Harlem Renaissance, had already perused „Crisis“ magazine, entertained my Granny with my trial sermons, started my own record collection (which included Booker T. and the MG’s "Green Onions“, The Orlons "Not Me“, LP’s by Jackie "Moms“ Mabley, and mastered the riffs on Brother Ray’s "What I Say" and Sam the Sham and the Pharaoh’s "Woolly Bully" on an ancient, upright piano in my Granny’s house that everybody could play, possessing the verbal audacity to say pretty much anything I felt to any good-looking woman (or anybody else) in the street where the people would meet!

Good golly Miss Molly!!!  It was mighty good to know the Stanktity then!!

Therefore, during my first weeks of elementary school, this cumulative preparation of body, mind, and soul revealed itself unto the People in my world, in a marvelous and magnificent way.

You see beloved, I had the Mark or the Stanktity on me even then! Happy-loo-yah!! Because I didn’t have to catch the bus to school!  Or have to walk...or use public transportation of any kind...

Those modes of transportation, you can imagine, would not be fitting for a budding funk prophet!!

Instead, I was elegantly chauffeured each and every morning to Mrs. Cuffee’s accelerated, first grade class at Crestwood Elementary School on Outlaw Street by three, gorgeous, sophisticated, older women in a huge, luxurious, shiny, bright Cadillac: by the elegant Mrs. Ruby Dupree and her two exquisite high school daughters, Gwendolyn and Saundra.

It was the year 1963 and aside from Kennedy getting himself killed, the truly-est memorable event of that year for me was the anticipation of the biggest-car-I’d-ever-seen-in-my-life pulling up to the curb every morning, packed with beautiful women, coming to pick me up!!

Aww sooky-sooky now!!

On those crisp, fall mornings, as I dressed myself with extra care, I looked forward to getting into that pretty car with those pretty women and going to that school: a treat, that made me feel so sweet, I just couldn’t be beat!! Aman!!

I would wait patiently on the sidewalk, just outside my door, for that car to pull up, knowing that no matter how cold it might be on the outside, the insides of that car would be clean and toasty warm, filled with my special friends, waiting there, all for me!

Great Day in the mornin’!! I get a little happy right now just thinking about it!!

Of course, we would chat and exchange general pleasantries and I always had the impression that we were taking a very long, luxurious, leisurely ride; in fact, the school was in another city where I did not live and I imagine that in those days, before the interstate highways systems were completed, the trip may have taken at least 35-45 minutes, one way. 

Now at this point, I do feel compelled to explain in greater detail about this transportation agreement, so that anyone reading this won’t get the wrong idea about my social status at that time.

I got the ride with Mrs. Dupree because I happened to live on her way to work.

And she happened to be one of the school teachers at that elementary school, and the high school - the fabled, Crestwood Senior High - which her daughters attended, was only a block away.

The other important thing I should mention is, I had to really bust loose to get in school that year: in other words, I entered that elementary school, on Outlaw Street, illegally.

Believer, if you've ever had to go to school on the Outlaw Streets of Life, you would know that sometimes you don’t really have a choice: you gotta bust loose every chance you get.

For you see, I was already ready, reading on a second or third grade level. And though I didn’t actually live in the city of the said location, my folk had bought property - essentially marshland that nobody else wanted – on which they were paying taxes. 

But alas, I was underage, at 5-and-three-quarters years old and The Law plainly stated that I would have to wait out another year before I could attend school. And it didn’t matter that my birthday was in September; the official rule of the segregated school system was I must be 6, or stay my tail at home.

So, I imagine My People decided that it would be better to take the risk and let me bust a move. They talked to the teachers (yes, they all knew each other), and did a deal. And since Mrs. Dupree was tight with her boss, the Principal, she smuggled me in on the down low, into Outlaw St., every morning. After all, the school was separate-and-unequal and nobody in Virginia really gave a hoot.

Still don’t.

So by the time I arrived early every morning, in that big car, I knew I was a made man.

And oh, how we would ride and laugh all the way to school everyday. Lots and lots of time to laugh and tell jokes and talk about all the teachers and classmates.

I do remember the morning when I first felt the Calling to Tell It Like It T-Eye-Is, the urge to do the do, something spontaneous, a lil' something extra, something unexpected, to shock them with delight. Give them a moment to remember me by.

I picked just the right moment in our conversation, when we were feeling all-good-like-in-the Cadillac Club and comfortable and cozy with each another, like family.

One of the lovely young ladies in the car asked me if I could dance. I don’t remember who, but I do remember that I my response was sincere. In fact, as still is my habit, I may have exaggerated slightly, just for the effect, just to test the waters. But the conversation did go something like this:

Her: "Little B, can you dance man?“

Me: (looking at her incredulously) "Oh yeah! Of course I can!“

Her: (smiling inquisitively) "No! Really? I mean can you REALLY dance?“

Me: (confidently) "Girlfrien’, don’t you know that sometimes I get to Twistin’ so hard...my little penix jumps right outta my pants!!“

Just like that.

It was the only day I remember Mrs. Dupree having to pull the car over, stopping to sit by the side of the road until she could get herself together.

Laughed so hard until tears flew and stomachs hurt.

And it was said that many ran to the bathroom to find relief after hearing that exchange, for by the end of the day, my name had been spread far and wide, like a virus, and all the teachers in my school as well as all the teachers and students in the high school heard my name and REPEATED what I had said, hollering, screaming and laughing about it, all the live long day.

Verily, verily it was the beginning of my fame and fortune.

But more importantly, the experience taught me my first lesson about what the Stanktity is and isn’t; and that is: Always trust the People, because the People always decide.

The People decide whether what you do or say is funky, or if it’s not.

Not the advertising guys, lawyers, bookkeepers or salesmen.

The People decide whether what you do is worth paying attention to or looking at or not.

The People decide whether your work is flimsy or full, juicy or dry, useful or a waste of time: interesting enough to experience more than once or a complete waste of valuable electricity.

It taught me that at the end of the day, you have to trust the judgment of the People to determine whether what you do is worth doing.

Not Billboard, Soundscan, the RIAA or ICANN. Or the FCC or MTV or Time/Warner/Sony/Universal/Vivendi music or any other intergalactic media company.

The People always decide.

It doesn’t matter how many head fakes you think you can throw or how big your propaganda budget is, or how many elections you think you can steal.

In the end, like an arrow shot into the sky which inevitably returns to the ground, the People always have the final say.

This is what I appreciate most about the blogsphere and why I decided, finally, to throw my skank into the ring. Because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter so much what I think about what I upload: I’ve learned to trust the People’s Judgment - and I can live happily with that.

Ohh Happy-loo-yah!!!

Also, this is why I chose the artists that I chose, in those miraculous, musical moments that we shared in our first Happy Time Tabernacle Broadcast: Billy Paul, Ronald Isley and Sly Stone are more than musical icons - they are like three, bustin’ loose, wise men, who learned to trust the People a long time ago.

Take Billy Paul for example. I love me some Billy Paul. My uncle Robert turned me on to Billy Paul many years ago.

One day we were talking about soul music singers and I was talking about the singers I knew and he mentioned Billy Paul. At the time, I confessed that all I knew about his work was "Me and Mrs. Jones“ and Uncle Robert, cocking his head to the side with a grimace of disbelief, said "Boy, you don’t know nuthin’ `bout Billy Paul!?! If you don’t know `bout Billy Paul, you don’t know NOTHIN’ `bout soul music OR sangin’!!!“ and proceeded to go to the turntable to put on "Feelin’ Good at the Cadillac Club“. My jaw dropped down through the floor all the way to the basement, hearing one of the greatest live albums of all time.

Changed! My! Life!

And helped me to re-imagine the wondrous possibilities of what one powerful singer can do with a microphone, with no special equipment and no special effects: that it is indeed possible to convey a genuine sense of urgency, hunger, longing, passion and zest for life, all inside the first 30 seconds of a song!

Good-googly woogly!!

The man has been sangin’ his heart out all over the world for longer than I’ve been alive. And as far as I know, he has absolutely no intention of stopping.

Not only has he "sang“ about People Power, he has actually lived it: many, many moons ago, long before Prince decided to use the independent artist bidness model, Billy Paul had been touring as an independent artist, on the strength of his recorded work, for years. As the infinitely knowlegeable peeps on the Soul Patrol mailing list once schooled me, when the American radio industry began to censor Billy Paul for being what they felt was "too pro-black and too militant“ (see War of the Gods), they attempted to stigmatize him. It was then that he decided to take matters into his own hands and ever since, has been a soul singer’s singer, performing live on stages all over the world, from London to Paris to Rio and all points in between. You can see the proof-in-the-pictures on the beautiful website that he and his lovely wife, Ms. Blanche, have put together.

And needless to say, if he comes to perform anywhere near where you live anytime soon, you ought to make it your bid-ness to see him live: tens of thousands of people all over the world already have; they know that he is the real deal and one of, as Greg Tate might put it, the last, genuine soul men standing.

Which brings me to Ronald Isley.

For the love-of-Pete I don’t really understand why the I.R.S. is trying to pimp bruva Ronald for some money now. They ought to be paying Him!! I mean, if they were really smart they would INVEST about 3 million risk-capital dollars into his company right now, making him solvent, so that he could generate perhaps 30 million, which in turn, they could collect taxes on at-a-profit, over the next ten-to-twenty-five years.

They could create their very own Ronald Isley Savings Bond program.

And sell stock market options like David Bowie. Hell, even automakers, liike the people at Infinity, know black artists are stock market worthy.

Making that kind of investment in Ronald Isley could help revive the American economy, which we are told, needs all the help it can get right-about-now.

Or maybe I should say it this way: if it weren’t for Ronald Isley and his brothers, there would never have been the creation of a multi-billion dollar "Blues Brothers“ industry, which is up-and-still-running all over the world right this minute.

Sometimes, it makes me wanna Shout!!

Its pathetic: they wait until the guy gets older and hampered by physical illness and then threaten him with a life sentence, when they could have done a deal; I mean: who in the hell made that judgment call?

But on second-line thought, I can continue to believe that some black multi-millionaire athlete, or Hollywood rapper, who’s Mama probably conceived him in a back seat, while „Don’t Say Goodnight“ was playin’-in-the-8-track tape player, will cough up the bank and hook the brother up.

After all, I have seen all the Player’s Cribs.

Snoop’s crib, Ice T’s crib, Shaq’s crib, P-Diddy’s crib and the opulent, mindless, excess bling that quite a few brothers in `merica brag about on eMpTyV reruns, damn near every week of the year.

Therefore, if Will Smith makes 20 million-a-picture, he can easily afford 3.

Better yet, perhaps some of the role models of mercy, kindness, compassion and charity should intercede in this case.

That's why I believe Bishop T.D.Jakes should step in and cough up the 3 million.  After all, he’s a personal friend of the President, does a lot of charity work all over the planet, has a lot of influence in the world of Bishophood and can easily afford it.

Same could be said of Kirbyjohn Caldwell. He could be compassionate and hook the brother up. After all, he's credible (he prayed at two Presidential Inaugurations back to back), he’s a finanacial wizard and plus, he’s slept in the Lincoln Room at the White House as the President's personal guest.

Or perhaps Creflow Dollar could be compassionate and step up to the plate right now.  He’s passed it around often enough, got a good name and the money to go with it.  Bunches of it.

I figure since these guys have benefitted hugely from post-911-world-buzz-words AND the „Faith Based“ government cheese that their buddy in the White House has made readily available for their industry, they could start re-cycling some of those government tax dollars to help that brother out.  They could rationalize it as charity begining at home.

I think it's a brilliant idea, because anything less than upper-class black folk in `merica (Tom Joyner are you listening?) rallying around Ronald Isley right now, in the winter of his life, is unacceptable.

He is a national treasure and it makes no sense to wait until the brother is dead and cooling to start talking about how great he was when he was alive.  I’m tired of that Sugar-Honey-Ice-Tea.

And if by chance someone has already come forward to do all this, by the time this post is published, please, please, please forgive my insolence.

If not, I don’t want nobody to ever raise the topic of black pride, black unity or black history month in my presence, ever, ever again...cause I will ignore it. Period.

Besides, Sly did show up at the Grammy Awards this year and as always, invited us all to bathe in the Everlasting Fount of Stanktity!!

And you know He didn’t have to, 'cause he ain’t got nothin’ to prove.

He coulda stayed at home, in his comfortable house. Or gone on a nice vacation to Brazil or Venezuela or Cuba. They woulda rolled out the red carpet for him in any of those places and treated him with great respect. Or he could have taken his sweet-as-you-please-time, riding around town on his phat motorcycle in that fly-azz outfit, his beautiful, shinning-star-bright, golden Mohawk flowin’ in the wind. Plenty of other things he could have done with his valuable time.

But he came.  He really didn’t have to, but he came.

And for a minute, he broke us off a lil’ Piece-o-Stankishness: for all the people who still love him for what-he-done.

For all the People who have been talking and mumbling and wondering aloud about Sly all these years on the telephone, in e-mail conversations, chat rooms, mailing lists, newsletters and in clubs, basement bars, juke joints and backyard bar-be-ques the world over, just wishin’...

Jus’-a-wishin’ he would jus’ show up jus’ one mo’ time and take us higher.

Come back to us and give us a moment of delight, to make us smile, make us grin, make us laugh, make us look and wonder and Stand and Dance to the Music so we can Sing a Simple Song.

I’m talking about all the People who know what it means to be the Underdog. The Everyday People. The Somebody’s Watching You while they ringin’ up cash registers for you, washing dishes in expensive cafes and cleaning up bathrooms behind you, still believin’ that You Can Make It If You Try. The Brave and Strong ones who realize Everybody is a Star. Even when they feel like Runnin’ Away sometimes, just to do the Loose Booty.

Ahhh Shadrach-Meschach-Abedego!! All praises be to the Stanknasity of Ages past; Our Funk for years to come!!

Boom-shacka-lacka-lacka-lacka-boom-lacka-boom-boom!!!

To every musician out there who might be reading this, who said that Sly should have stayed his tail at home, I defy you to create an ensemble that pushes the envelope as high, as wide, as deep and as long as Sly did at the height of his powers, in the midst of a socio-political season of American xenophobia, paranoia and cultural aggression.

And you bettah make damn sure that that in-vel-up is multi-racial, multicultural and that the women are just as much an integral part of the package as the men. Be sure to record at least one jammy confronting cross cultural communication conflict.

Don’t forget to create your very own global audience in the process.

And invent something Fresh that has enough funk-tification in it that people all over the world will wanna dance and sweat-till-they-get-wet for at least 35 years after you’ve left the studio.

I defy you.

Cause if you comin’ up short-a-that, you can keep it to yourself.

And I’m qualified to preach this because I am the one and only Reverend/Brother/Bishop Boogaloo, Pastor and General Overseer of the Happy Time Tabernacle, Temple Number 2.

Accept no substitutes. For verily, verily I’ve never met personally any of the artists that I’ve just mentioned, but I’ve spent enough time with their music in my lifetime to measure them just right.

I’ve listened carefully to their voices, their instrumentation, their compositions and performances, probably thousands of times.

Sometimes I’ve listened to them everyday. I’ve owned just about all their records. And it never mattered to me if I had to make that extra effort to catch a glimpse of them on stage, or what it cost me.

Beloved, know that the privilege, of seeing an Artist at work onstage, has always been worth it to me. And the Great Work that they do has always hit me with enough inspiration to carry on!!

Even now, when I have a chance to see truly gifted artists onstage, bustin’ loose, it always gives me Victory. For me, it’s like experiencing the Sound of Struggle: the sound of something someone has made great sacrifices to create. Something honestly worked for, something hard won...

Perhaps something sacred!! Oh Happy-loo-yah!!

Oh Beloved, don’t you know these are the people who always make a way out of no way to bring us a billion beats? Don’t you know that it is the artist that brings us great and gigantical grooves?!? That which fills up the gut-bucket with Stanknasity, which doth hump and bump and grind?? The hook to the Hip and Hop and the Be and Bop?!?

Oh yes they do! And I know you can see it!!

These brilliant artists, these spiritual ancestors of mine, have always made a way for me – Rev. Boogaloo - to pass along the true Sacrament of Soul, the true Salvation of the Sacrafism and the true Freedom of Funk, right straight to you!!

Oh Glory Be!! I feel like callin’-the-roll right now!!!  You can call it with me:

Muddy Waters, Solomon Linda, Fela Kuti, Hound Dog Taylor, Albert Collins, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Charles Brown, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Jimmy Reed, Ray Charles, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Gil Scott-Heron, Curtis Mayfield, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, Joe Tex, Allen Toussaint, Etta James, Bobby Byrd, Ruth Brown, Margie Day Walker, Sam Cooke, The Neville Brothers, Stevie Wonder, Dinah Washington, Manu Dibango, Hugh Masekela, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, The Mighty Sparrow, The Mighty, Mighty Dells, The Temptations, The Supremes, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Gladys Knight and the Pips, The Staple Singers, Millie Jackson, Betty Wright, Lyn Collins, Martha High, Lord Kitchner, Blood Hollins, Bobby Womack, Shuggie Otis, Toots and The Maytals, James Marshall Hendrix, Salif Keita, Larry Graham, Bob Marley, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, Angelo Moore and Fishbone, Miriam Makeba, Al Green, Isaac Hayes, Patti Labelle, Rick James, King Floyd, Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers, Clarence “Blowfly” Reid, Sonny “Sun Ra” Blount,

and many, many, many millions more.

Each year of my life, I’ve been inspired by the life’s work of these People. And the fact that they chose to bust loose so hard for so long - revealing so much of themselves to audiences - makes them more than musical icons: they are Saints of Stanktidy, forever cannonized in my soul and in the souls of millions of soul, jazz, blues, funk lovers – in sum - Stank Believers all around the world!

If I were to dilly-dally around a bit, I could say that these culture producers, workers and innovators are the people who actually built what we know as the modern record industry! Without the songs they made and performed, there would never have been a record industry or radio industry or frankly, media industry as we know it today!!

As a matter of fact, I would go so far as to say that in the past century, the culture products these people created – through the songs they made - have generated billions, probably trillions of dollars in profits, in businesses-within-ecomomies of countries the world over: everywhere there’s a karoke bar, in places where people sell tickets to get in a basement club or concert hall, in publishing companies, in record and sheet music sales that piano students use to study by, in the soundtracks of million dollar Hollywood movies and television commercials trying to sell soap to somebody.

Come on somebody! And say Aman!!

THIS is why I encourage YOU, believer, to bust loose every chance YOU get! You can make friends for life that way; friends that will stick with you for years to come!!

In fact, you ought to bust loose today! Right now! Right where you are!!

That’s right: if you’re on your job, or at home or on your way somewhere, you ought to take just a minute to bust-as-loose as you can, right this minute!!!

You don’t have to be afraid! You don’t have to be ashamed!

Just trust the People and the Stanktity won’t lead you astray! Aman!!

You can put on a Sly and the Family Stone record or a James Brown tape or whatever cooks your goose and bust loose right there where you are!! Just do it, do it! Do it, in the words of BT Express, till you’re satisfied!!

You ought to do it...till you’re Sassy-fied! Aman!!

And you’ll be mighty glad you did!

BTW, the next radio show will be ready soon and very soon, so please do stay tuned!!

 

The Happy Time Tabernacle Statement of Belief

Mistress TT reminded me late last night that I had forgotten to post Our Belief Statement.  Good lookin’ out Mistress....for those of you who have been asking for it, here it is:

The Happy Time Tabernacle Statement of Belief

Our Faith stands on the sacrifices made by our ingenious, culturally creative ancestors: blues shouters, jazz improvisers, groove masters, soul singers, funky dancers, writers, poets, rhyme sayers, and original signifiers.

We believe that the The Great Book of Soul, which contains the sum total of all of the rhymes, lyrics, limerics, stories, poems, toasts and boasts ever sung, shouted, hollered, scatted or stated in a blues, jazz, RnB, calypso, mambo, soul or doo-wop song, is the only infallible, authoritative Word of the Stanktidy.

We believe in Being on the One, eternally and forever revealed in the persons of The Godfather of Soul, St. George of Clinton and St. Sly of the Stone.

We believe that the hard work and sacrifices of all The Saints of Soul Music are Sacred Sacraments, in the dues that they paid, in the doors they knocked down, in the blood, sweat and tears that they shed, in spite of the hardships of humiliation that they faced, and in the Return of live music played by real living musicians to popular demand.

We believe that resuscitation by the power of the African Holy Ghost is absolutely essential for the body to move with the groove and get down and dance in a polyrhythmic trance, and that this is the Gift of the Gut Bucket.

We believe in the ministry of Funky Music which does indeed dwell within those who recognize the Stanknasity when they see it, which did cause the Bump to be, and in those Saints empowered by all things groovy.

We believe that True Evil exists in the form of media monopolies and multi-national corporate interests which seek to control the master tapes of all recording artists, in radio station franchises that play the same tired songs over and over; and that these Evil Doers will one day be defeated by independent artists who do control and distribute their own products over the internet, and that these Evil Entities will soon be cast headlong into a Mighty Big Ditch of Doo-Doo.

We believe in the spiritual unity of all believers in the Everlasting Stanktidy, which is a Force of Funkatism that does bring people together irregardless of race, gender, nationality, economic class or credit history.

We believe that the Happy Time Tabernacle, Temple Number II, is the primary instrument of the Work of the Stank in the world, but that wherever there is a good juke joint, or a funky party, a high time can be had by all.

And lest I forget, the first Happy Land Tabernacle Time Radio Broadcast is actually here: Download htpilot.mp3 (35721.6K)

A Brief Word From Rev. Boogaloo

Just a few words of explanation about our first broadcast:

Our maiden „Happy Land Tabernacle Time“ radio show is a production of the Emergency Hoodoo Broadcasting Network.  As General Overseer of the Happy Time Tabernacle, Temple Number II, I’m so pleased to be able to share, with all of you, a glimpse into our Happy Time Tabernacle fellowship, our unwavering Faith, and as well as some of the Truths surrounding the Almighty and Everlasting Stanktity.

Our Happy Time Tabernacle covenant states thusly:

"Having been led, as we believe by the Spirit of the Stanktity, to receive the Sacrifice of the Sacrafism to keep us sane, fit and able, and on the profession of our Belief in The One, having been baptized in the name of Saint Muddy of the Waters, Saint George of Clinton, and Saint Stevie of Wonder, we do now, in the presence of the Godfather of Soul, and the Funkatism of Old, most seriously and joyfully enter into covenant with one another on The One, into The Stank Nasity.

We engage, therefore, by the aid of the African Holy Ghost to party together in Polyrhythmic unison; to strive for the advancement of this Tabernacle, in funkyness, jazzyness, soulfulness  and convenience; to promote its fame and fortune; to sustain its culture, literature, music, visual arts and dance moves; to contribute cheerfully and happily to the support of this ministry with our valuable vibes and energy, for the relief of the rhythmless, and the spreading of the Stanktafizzle throughout all the nations of the earth, and the planets surrounding it.

We also engage to maintain familiar and secret codes; to religiously educate our children about the history of the blues, jazz and Pan-African cultural production in general; to walk with rhythm in the street; to be fair minded in our dealings with the tone deaf, funky in our performances, and exercise three times a week with heavy weights; to avoid all tattling, backstabbing, and excessive boredom; to abstain from the sale and use of destructive ideals such as racism and xenophobia, to run around buck-ball-naked as often as possible, and to be zealous in promoting Independent Artists and Culture Workers Around the World.

We moreover engage that when we leave this website, we will, as soon as possible, find another website that seeks to unite the peoples of the world with the Power of Stank Nasty Funky Music, where we can carry out the Spirit of this Covenant and the Principles within The Book Of Soul."

So what'cha waiting for?!?  Download the show at this link: Download htpilot.mp3 (35721.6K) and get a swivel in your hip that'll make your backbone slip!!!!

Was koennte das sein?

 

One day in B-more, where U C more.

Original image captured by Bob Houston.

Digitized by Rev. Boogaloo.

 

Head Rant # 30,872: An Exercise in Genuine Anger

This is what my pen looks like when it begins to turn into acid.  I’ve been holding this in for awhile now, so its time for me to get it off-a-my chest.

You know what? It took me about eight frickin' hours to get this frickin' post up on this frickin' blog today. Eight frickin' hours, which of course I realize, is frickin' pitiful.  And by the time I'm done editing, I'll still be pissed off at the way it looks on this frickin' monitor.

And oh yeah, I can hear you asking (cause I can read your mind) "Well, why is that Mister?"

Because for cripes sake, I'm no frickin' HTML programmer. And no, I've never been employed as a frickin' IT professional in my life.

Nope.

I’ve never made a living as a frickin' computer programmer, or a frickin' computer engineer or coder or systems administrator or bloody frickin' computer designer, or any similarly intriguing occupation.

The fact is, by modern, wealthy, resource-hoarding, western standards of civilization, I'm probably what most of the „we never think about electricity“ professionals would label as barely frickin' computer literate.

And the saddest thing about this is I've worked at computer screens, almost nonstop, for at least a frickin’ decade.

"I can't get no satisfaction
Cause I tried and I tried
And I tried and I tried...
When I'm driving in my car
And a man comes on the radio, he's telling me more and more
About some useless information supposed to fire my imagination...
When I'm watching my TV
And a man comes on that tells me how white my shirts can be
But he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me...
I can't get no
No satisfaction..."

From Satisfaction by Mick Jagger & Keith Richards

  So yes, I feel totally retarded by now.

  Because today, it finally became apparent to me that it has not mattered to computer
and software makers that I've worked in at least 5 different countries during the past 16 years of my precious life.

  Or studied foreign languages, sciences, mathematic disciplines and arcane subjects.

  Or that the cultural projects I've developed have been consistently vital, unique and potentially lucrative.

  Or that somehow, I've managed to actually cultivate a few meaningful professional and social relationships with really interesting people from all walks of life, from all over the globe for decades.

  Or that my lovely wife is content and happy with me most of the time and my family is relatively healthy.  Or created enough personal failures for my person to remain humble.  Or taken the time to do volunteer work in charity institutions in each and every community I've ever lived in, making not only a valuable contribution to the process of building sustainable communities, but a positive impact on the lives of my neighbors, mostly without having to cuss all the time, along my merry way.

  It dawned on me today that none of that stuff really matters.

  Because I realized that computer technologies, for all of their wonderful miracles, however necessary and indispensable for our personal, ethical, professional, economic, scientific, artistic, political and social needs, work way too much over the heads of jerks like me to use, without pulling all of the hair out of the head, or scratching away at the skin, or biting off the nails, or chomping away at the proverbial bits.

"In the computing metaphor, we have hardware and software; the brain is the hardware and our thoughts are the software running on it. This is a powerful metaphor and its use has enabled researchers to develop new experimental protocols and make significant discoveries. But there's a cost associated with using this metaphor: it perpetuates Cartesian duality." Karl Schroeder

"Cell phones and answering machines and digital telemarketing messages and Xerox machines and Web sites and BlackBerries - these are all representational technologies too. They all siphon your attention into unreal time. They represent what is not present and confront you with something else you have to deal with, if only to discard it."from Mediated by Thomas de Zengotita

"I'm surprised people don't have cables coming out of their asses, because that's going to be a new thing. You're just going to get it directly fed into you." Jon Stewart in Wired

Heretofore, not only have the high-priests of new technologies truly blessed us with codes and formats which are usually user-un-friendly, but with designs which are user-hostile, anti-intuitive and inflexible: engineering manuals are a reflection of the minds that create them.

  And this, Virginia, is why I am not only going bald, but blind.  Seems my long years of exposure to millirem computer monitor ionizing radiation has finally, methinks, driven me cockamamie crazy!

  And oh my goodness! What a relief it is! I feel frickin' peachy now that I’ve actually lost it, having finally teetered over the edge, spilling all my marbles, gone off my rocker and become certified, stark-raving-foaming-at-the-mouth-fallen-down-and-can't-get-up mad.

  I remembered today most people in the world have never used a telephone, let alone a computer.

  Please excuse me but, am I the only one who's noticed that these little monitor screens haven't really helped much to eliminate racism, xenophobia or caste systems? Or actually prevented wars? Or solved poverty or hunger or disease? Or desertification? Or violence? Or homelessness?

  Has the promise of technology really done any of that?

  Hell naw.

And what kind of Big-tail trouble with a capital T have we received for all our noble efforts to understand all this wonderful technology?

"Printed Circuit Boards contain heavy metals such as Antimony, Silver, Chromium, Zinc, Lead, Tin and Copper. According to some estimates there is hardly any other product for which the sum of the environmental impacts of raw material, extraction, industrial, refining and production, use and disposal is so extensive as for printed circuit boards."
- CARE conference, Vienna, 1994

"In short, the product developers of electronic products are introducing chemicals on a scale which is totally incompatible with the scant knowledge of their environmental or biological characteristics."
- Mans Lonnroth, Swedish Secretary of State , 1997

  It has finally dawned on me that most of the highly sophisticated technology and
specialized knowledge communities, created through so much hard work and investment, now serve a special segment of the world population: The TechnoWunder UeberKlass.

  The techy-mecky-ben-aflecky elite. Them who speak with coded-forked tongues. The Neo Stasi Informants of the Info Age Colonialist Patriarchy who possess the time, money and telecommunications butt-plugins to remind the rest of us untermenschen every chance they get that after all, pinging has nothing to do with table tennis and FTP isn't really an acronym for FUNKY TIME PAR-TAY.

  Ya’ll know who you are.

  Ya’ll know what you look like, talk like, walk like, think like, congregate like and stare-blankly-at-your-touch-screens for hours ohne end like.

  Soooo, ya’ll wanna know what I want ya’ll to do for me right now? Other than kiss my tail?

  I want ya’ll to make me up a big bunch of drinkable, fresh water inside your computer networks right now, jillions of gallons of it, for all the people on this planet who are sick today because they don't have enough of it to drink right this frickin' minute.

  I'm totally serious: I want ya’ll to crank up all your frickin' telecommunication cables and transformers and expensive laptops and your lord-of-the-rings-precious, wi-fi connections right now and handle that shizz-it, cause I need 'round 'bout a zillion gallons like yesterday, okay?

  What are ya’ll sitting there looking like that for? DO IT NOW dog-bite-your-time!!

  And while you're at it, hook me up with about a trillion tons of nutrients for all the poor people in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and a specific segment of the population of the southeastern US who've spent most of the last century providing cultural products to entertain your sorry hind-pots, many of whom will have empty stomachs tonight and although they don't look like the people in your frickin' neighborhood, may certainly die before your next birthday, probably while you're drinking that nice hot cup of gourmet tea, staring at your expensive computer monitor.

  I want ya’ll to hurry up and hook up your frickin' FTP connections, with your original fancy code and uberschoen templates that nobody thinks is cool but you and upload that food and water to these people right away today...and use that high speed, fiber-optic cable connection and that crypto-shizzle you nicked last week so it won't get stolen along the way...

  Oh yeah, I know ya’ll can't do stuff like that with your computers.

  Cause when Katrina actually hit New Orleans, none of that amazing technology actually worked to help the people it was designed to help.

  I thought it was kinda kinky, in a pornographic sense, to see how Anderson Cooper and CNN were able to beam live pictures around the world, money shots that looked eerily similar to war-torn Sierra Leone or Liberia, as local police bailed `cause they couldn’t get their walkie-talkies to work.  They might have tried Dixie cups and string.

  And how about that fabulous US Navy/Coast Guard/Air Force/Marines? Let’s talk about the few, the proud, the brave, the invisible, really expensive, big boats designed to float on water, with generators and desalinators on them that strangely enough, couldn’t reach a major US port by Sept. 2nd.

  And FEMA? That high-tech disaster response agency, equipped with NASA technology. The guys who can see through concrete walls. The guys with the remote control rescue robots.  The guys that can watch you wipe your crack while you’re sitting on the toilet from their satellite cameras out in deep space. The guys that only sent 7 of its 28 urban search and rescue teams to NOLA before the storm hit, and none until after Sept. 29th?  You know, I can’t help but wonder what kind of salaries these guys were pulling down while playing video-games, as innocent people in a hospital died real slow, because the doctors and nurses responsible for them got outta dodge.

  I’ve heard people talk about crime and violence in New Orleans as if it were something unique to the American Experience: that bothersome handgun violence, the pesky drug dealing, the revenge murders, as if New Orleans was any different than Atlanta, or Detroit or L.A. or Richmond Va.  I also heard rumors that Ray Nagin’s city government was absolutely corrupt, that he used to be a Republican.  And that he made stoopid money in telecommunications, cable TV to be precise.  Oh, and that that black folk watch more TV than white folk.

  But I also heard Aaron Neville recall that in 1965, then Mayor Skiro blew up the the levees with high powered explosives so that the waters would only flood the Ninth Ward.

  So at this point, I’m really trying not to imagine that Nagin would be in cahoots with local, wealthy businessmen like F. Patrick Quinn III or James Reiss, who hire private security companies (see Blackwater) to implement their urban renewal business fantasies, while they mull over the new re-location plans for the city's black neighborhoods.

  Nah.  History would never repeat itself.

  I will remember that when it came down to saving real people in New Orleans, a city that has given the world Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, Professor Longhair, Fats Domino, Dr. John, Irma Thomas, Allen Toussaint and Art Neville...a rarefied, supremely valuable community of culture workers who gave birth to jazz, the blues, soul and zydeco, a community which has produced cultural products generating billions of dollars in revenues for film companies, record companies, television companies, literature publishing companies, visual art marketeers and ticket and event promotion agencies...that when New Orleans needed people to put technology to work for them in a pinch, in the crunch, in the nick of time, when the rubber met the road, when the chit hit the fan, none of it worked at all.

  I can imagine that using technology to do something useful would actually mean genuine work, you sorry-tail Larry Mondello lookin’ cretins.

  I know: ya’ll are too busy with your frickin' conferences and network building events. Too busy with your venture capitalist connection making and scripting computer viruses to spy on other people's shizzle, to eff with that.

  Busy, busy, busy.  Ya’ll are some busy frickin’ bozos.

  Ya’ll can create chit-loads of computer viruses and make jigga-bytes of original content, but you still can't manage a cure for end-stage renal failure.
Or cancer. Or diabetes. Or AIDS. Can't even get rid of malaria, but you still walkin’ around with your chests poked out like you somethin' special.

  Eff you and your upwardly mobile connectivity.

  And while I'm at it, eff Microsoft, eff Linux, MIT, Steve Jobs, NASA, Live 8 and your damn outer limits satellite dishes.  Not only have you haven't done nothin’, but a sense of urgency to create anything that would help most of us peons have a safer, healthier future on the planet – along with yourselves - does not exist within your pig-headed, networked minds.

  The apathy you have demonstrated, in my lifetime, astonishes me.

  And since I know you don't plan to do anything about any of this, don't bother to pretend you give a damn and tell me why I’m oh-so wrong.

  Just have another coke, a smile and a nice day.

  So then, I do wish you dingy, brownish-colored cumulus clouds, flowing gently above your insular, isolated, self-absorbed cul-de-sacs.

  Thanks for everything, really. No, I really, truly, mean it. Thank you so very frickin' much.

  You really shouldn’t have.

Dear Uncle Robert,

I hope that this little package and its contents finds you and Aunty G in good spirits, good health and in a state of good cheer. I miss you both terribly. I really hope that I will get to come to B' more this year; I bought a new suit...now I gotta get the money for my ticket (-:

Uncle Robert, about this photo that you sent to me: to say that it is amazing would be the understatement of the year, perhaps the millenniums...you know, in my lifetime, I´ve seen some pretty amazing UFO photos, perhaps hundreds, taken from the 1950´s to the present, by people from all over the world. Of course being a natural skeptic (do I take some of this after my Aunty G?), the majority of the photos that I´ve personally seen have looked obviously faked.

Then of course, there have been photos that I´ve looked on with deep curiosity and scrutiny, in which the objects were either too distant or blurry for me to really draw a conclusion of any kind.

But then, there have been a few, a very small few, that I have seen and when I looked, I couldn’t really decide. These have been the photos that have filled me with wonder and glee and astonishment.

Your photo, Uncle Robert, is absolutely one of those.

Believe it or not, the night before I got this print you sent me in the mail, I was reading about a scientific study performed at the University of Colorado in 1968 (a portion of which I´ve reprinted for you so you can laugh and see how long they´ve been thinking about this stuff and what kind of answers people can come up with when they ask really stupid questions), a part of which was to determine criteria for the ``scientific´´ examination of photographs of UFOs...

There were a couple of things which struck me right away as I looked at the photo that you took. Firstly, the clarity and sharpness of the buildings in the foreground of the photo (one can clearly see the wooden or iron lattice pylons on top of the building directly under the object) show the sharpness of the entire landscape (and the steadiness of your hand) as you snapped.

(Of course, I wondered if your hand would have been as steady if you had been all excited, trying to take a picture of something like this moving real quick. LOL)

But secondly, what really struck me was what appeared to be the tremendous speed (how can you describe faster than lightning - or the speed of light??) at which this object appeared to be traveling....probably much quicker - as they say, than the ``twinkling of an eye´´ - from the right to the left of the photo (to my eye at least).

This object, to my mind at least, gave me the impression that it was really in a big hurry to get somewhere, at the end of an earth day, perhaps late for an appointment of some kind.

Absolutely astonishing. And in downtown Baltimore, of all places....with so many people around (-:

You know what Uncle Robert? I´ve read probably thousands of pages of first hand testimony from people from all over the world who have come forward with documents which described things that they have seen or experienced— strange objects, psi phenomena, mystic experiences, sudden changes in consciousness, energy fields, ect.—which would appear to not have any mathematical or accepted scientific explanation.

For example, not too long ago, I was viewing a report about a guy in Siberia who actually built a huge pyramid, out in a field somewhere, not far from an old, partly de-commissioned Russian military base. According to the report, it seems that people from all over the region come to the site to walk around and kinda hang out inside the thing, to feel, as they described it, the ``positive energy force-field vibrations´´ that this structure generates.

No sugar-honey-ice-tea.

They swear out that the fresh beef/pork/lamb meat that the man keeps in the pyramid does not age at all, but stays fresh (okay, it IS Siberia), but that also, the bottles of water that the cat keeps inside the structure don’t freeze, until they are brought outside the structure.

We’re talking about SIBERIA now, okay?...a place where a warm day in winter can be 30C degrees below freezing...where snow and ice rock the house and in some places still, there are no electric lines for little space heaters for your hind-parts, okay?!?

Better than that though, however, are those pesky radar signals (wouldn´t you know it: that old Russian military base still maintains a functioning radar system) that the radar station keeps picking up – kinda like different kinds of energy bursts, blips, bleeps and bloops – which come from this pyramid in the neighborhood.

Oh, and I forgot to mention: the thing is made completely out of PLASTIC AND FIBERGLASS.

The really cool thing about what I saw was the attitude of the people in the village. The townspeople that were interviewed....several hundred it seems....have been making regular pilgrimages to the pyramid because of the POSITIVE HEALTH BENEFITS that they have all reported. People who have suffered with bronchitis and asthma all their lives have reported definite improvement...they are breathing clearer than with Vick´s Vapor Rub or Soltice...people who have suffered from high blood pressure, migraine headaches and other symptoms of general un-wellness have all reported marked, definite IMPROVEMENTS in their physical conditions...they even say that the drinking the water the man keeps in bottles inside the thing has been proven to provide positive health benefits when sipped in moderation.

Frankly, I don't know. Like I said, I'm a born skeptic. And I never left anything in Siberia.

But you did get your masters degree in Chemistry and I did study enough physics and trig to work in engineering for a time so, you know, we both do have some respect for math and for people who work with numbers because their lives depend on it.

So what kinda made me wiggle my ears was when a retired Soviet cosmonaut, who lives in the area, spoke up.

Kinda reminded me of a Russian version of Story Musgrave....anyway, this cat had been suffering from depression in recent years, I guess he would be in his late fifties-to-early sixties. He said that regular visits to the inside of the structure has cured him of chronic depression. He spoke very movingly of how before he began to visit the pyramid, he had really suffered from what we would call clinical depression, for quite a few years; so much so, that he had lost his zest for life: he was listless, without enough energy for day-to-day living....and insisted that over a period of a few months, after visiting the structure, his mood improved considerably. In fact, he described the relief he experienced "as if the weight of the world had fallen from his shoulders"....and that, he found a whole new lease on life.

Man, this guy sounded like he was giving a real, southern-fried-Baptist-style testimony to me if I ever heard one! But since it came from a man who has actually TRAVELLED INTO OUTER SPACE in a Soviet-made rocketship, (I can imagine he was not a C student in math) let's just say he´s got a lot more CREDIBILITY than most Baptist preachers.

And so as these things go, I guess it all depends on what and who you believe, doesn´t it???

All I wanted to say to you, Uncle Robert, is that I believe in you.

Because you are one of the really BIG people who taught me to think for myself, to questions conventional wisdom and accepted authority.

You have shown me that it is possible to struggle in any place in the world that I choose to....and not sell out. You have been, and will forever be, my primary role model as an example of honesty, courage, self-respect and dignity.

You and Aunty G have continued to demonstrate to me the value of discipline and mental toughness. That integrity is my primary tool, not for success alone, but for my survival as a human being on this planet.

I am a richer person because you both have shared your lives with me, for my entire lifetime.

And I have forgotten nothing.

I hope you will be able to enjoy the little things I have sent for your comfort...I only wish I could have sent more.

In the meantime, take care of yourself and I´ll try to call you soon, okay?

Love Always,
Rev