Gayl Jones, Kool Herc, Nikki Giovanni, Planetary Consciousness
She Changed Black Literature Forever. Then She Disappeared.
Imani Perry | Princeton University | September 17, 2021 | No paywall
In 1998 Gayl Jones, “one of the most versatile and transformative writers of the 20th century” disappeared from public life. Now, over 20 years later, she’s released a new novel. Imani Perry, a writer influenced by Jones’s work, seeks to know Jones through her writing.
“She is a woman whose image was distorted by the publishing industry and critics that first lauded her. She nevertheless remained fiercely committed to her craft, irrespective of the tragedies life handed her. Fidelity to her story requires attentiveness to the work she was doing, both in and out of view."
Imani writes, "The truth of Jones, as a person and as a writer, is this: She is a prolific writer whose work is grounded in Black American language and community, as well as a diligent study of the Americas. The mythology that she ‘came from nowhere’ is both a fairly common diminution of Black Southern cultures and a reminder that the price of a certain sort of recognition is often too high. The lore of being ‘discovered’ is often insulting to those of us who are not white. That’s not an original statement, but it bears repeating. Jones’s journey as a writer has been, in part, about the stakes of writing; about her refusal to let the meanings placed upon her body overdetermine her craft, even as she understands how critical her embodiment is; and about the mountain that stands before a Black woman’s art. Palmares gives us an opportunity to reflect on Jones’s storied career, and her efforts to scale that mountain.” (5,660 words)
Order Gayl Jones’s new novel, Palmares, here.*
*if you purchase a book via this link, I receive a small commission while supporting independent bookstores.
The Birth of Hip Hop
Narrated by Henry Louis Gates Jr. | Black History in Two Minutes (or so) | November 6, 2020 | No paywall
“In 1973, DJ Kool Herc set up his turntables and introduced a technique at a South Bronx house party that would change music as many people knew it. His ability to switch from record to record — as well as isolate and repeat music breaks — led to the discovery of the hip hop genre.”
(3:16 min)
Mr. Green & Kool Herc 'Last of the Classic Beats' Project
Patrick Montes | Hypebeast | May 12, 2019 | No paywall
Mr. Green + Kool Herc for the Last of the Classics Beats album.
“For years, the New Jersey native has been releasing chapters in his Classic Beats instrumental series, which has included tracks later utilized by artists like Jedi Mind Tricks, Matisyahu, Travie McCoy, and members of The Roots,” reads an official statement from Nature Sounds.
“Now, a decade after the series began, Mr. Green is ending it in style with Last Of The Classic Beats, the fifth and final edition narrated by legendary hip-hop founder DJ Kool Herc. It’s the first album Herc has been involved with in several years, and a rare chance to hear directly from the ‘Father Of Hip-Hop’ himself. Last Of The Classic Beats is not only a brand new instrumental album from Mr. Green, but also features a collection of the most popular drum breaks of all time, assembled by Product Of Tha 90s. Now available on vinyl, the project is perfect for MCs, DJs, producers, and all-around music lovers.”
— Patrick Montes for Hypebeast
BLK History Month, a poem
Nikki Giovanni | Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea | HarperCollins 2002
BLK History Month, a poem by Nikki Giovanni, of America’s preeminent poets.
“Writing is ... what I do to justify the air I breathe,” Giovanni once wrote in Contemporary Authors. “I have been considered a writer who writes from rage and it confuses me. What else do writers write from? A poem has to say something. It has to make some sort of sense; be lyrical; to the point; and still able to be read by whatever reader is kind enough to pick up the book.”
How To Develop A Planetary Consciousness
Achille Mbembe | Nils Gilman | Jonathan Blake | Noema Magazine | January 11, 2022
Nils Gilman, VP of programs at the Berggruen Institute and deputy editor of Noema Magazine, and Jonathan S. Blake, a Berggruen Institute fellow, interview philosopher and political theorist Achille Mbembe about reinventing democracy in an age of planetary crisis.
“To some extent, the market has become a totality, or in any case our core moral experience. But so has technology. Both the market and technology now set the rules and procedures according to which we are obliged to live together as a connective body within new planetary limits….Now the key question is, to what extent can we rely on these infrastructures as parts of the Earth become inhospitable to life in the near future. Can we rely on infrastructures that have, to some extent, contributed to turning the world into a burning house? Can we rely on them to learn how to inhabit the planet anew, how to share it as equitably as possible?"
“There’s no longer a social history separate from natural history. Human history and Earth history are now indivisible." (3,368 words)
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