Video for the Strange: Buju, Parliament, Miles and the gang…

Buju Banton, Wanna Be Loved

Props to the wonderfully cute and big brained Etta Strange for the inspiration. We were talking the other day and she surprised me by playing this Buju vid, hands down one of my favorite songs of all time. So in her honor, here are a few vids that I love, that she loves and that you’ll love after viewing. Enjoy.

-kwan

Parliament Funkadelic-Mothership Connection

11/18 Urban Real(i)ty Art and Poetry Show-Bring ya Asses!!!!

So I’m involved in this event so I have an admitted bias, but hell-it’s gonna be one fly ass event so I think it’s warranted, yes?

Prosody Castle and Otherside Media Present

Urban Real(i)ty

Mailer. 1923–2007. A Multimedia Tribute

One of literature’s most famous pugilist finally rests.

I never met the man and won’t claim to be the world’s greatest Mailer scholar, but I admired the hell out of his work and career.

Even if he tended to dip deep much into the art of spectacle, it was with a sheer force of personality you had to admire. Especially because the man behind the mess was full of such damned fine writing.

Like James Baldwin and Oscar Wilde, to me Mailer represents the ultimate man as artist. A champion of literature and culture-loud in life and brash in his search for truth-I admired his insistence that as writers, the work we create is necessary, even vital, in order to truly comprehend ourselves as humans.

Far better writers than I have summarized his life and death, so this will simply server as a link to some of his memorable moments-the sights, sounds and reviews. No matter if you loved or hated him, you’ve got to admit that we’ve lost one of the really important ones. We’ve got some big shoes to fill…

-kwan

Text

Norman Mailer Interview

The Naked and the Dead ebook

Mailer All Time Enemies List

Review of the Spooky Art

Synopsis of Mailer’s Films

Photos: Heavy Hitterz Street Art & Graffiti Show

Heavy Hitterz Street Art & Graffiti Show
So these Speaker Fruits cats throw a pretty damned good party. This past Friday at Age Song gallery in San Francisco, SF along with Daniel Fleres, fabric8, and Phoneticontrol brought in around 80 artists from around the world for Heavy Hitterz, one of the best graffiti/street/comic art shows I’ve been to in a minute.
Local heads like Romanowski and Mildred mixed it up with emerging artists from around the continental US, Honolulu, Hong Kong, Japan, France, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.
Brown bag 40’s were flowing, David Choong Lee blessed the spot with a live painting session and Celskiii, Deanndroid, and shredO dropped the ill soul and old school jams. Not a bad night in the city. See the pictures for more.
-kwan

More inside…

The Arkivest: Chester Himes and Black Futurism

The Arkivest: Chester Himes
-d. scot miller

When reviewing the prolific life of Chester Himes the first lesson to learn is that as Black artists, we are the world-walkers. The second is as Black writers we are the scribes of the jubilee apocalypse.

With sixteen novels covering thirty-two years of professional writing, it is amazing that so few people know of his established presence in neither American literature nor his contributions to what is now known as Black Futurism.

And how does Chester Himes relate to Black-Futurism? Though he passed away nearly 25 years ago, and many of his writings are set in the time and place he was in, Chester Himes‘ life was, the embodiment of the Black Avant Garde and, dare I say, apocalyptic sage of the Black Futurist literary tradition.

Before the redemption narratives of The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul On Ice, Himes began his writing career while serving a three-year prison bid for armed robbery by writing articles for Esquire and Harper’s.

Before Ralph Ellison addressed the perils of Black men struggling with absurd disenfranchisement in Invisible Man and Richard Wright confronted the exploitation of Black people by American Capitalism and Communism through the 40s and 50s in Native Son, Himes had nationally published two separate full-length novels- If He Hollers Let Him Go (Doubleday, 1945), and The Lonely Crusade (Knopf, 1947) – laying the groundwork for these two seminal works.

By the time James Baldwin, John A. Williams and Cecil Brown escaped this Land of the Free; Chester Himes had traveled across Europe several times and was there to greet the expatriate Black writers on Parisian shores. In the 70s, Melvin Vann Peebles stayed in Himes‘ Paris apartment while Chester, then in his late 50s, traveled through Spain in a busted Volvo, writing.

New Sharon Jones vid & old Betty, Fontella and Dinah

 

 

This is the new video from Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings song “100 Days, 100 Nights”. I’ve always been a fan and the way they shot this works perfectly with the song.

The video brings to mind a lot of old soul-that funky, moanin’,  good lovin’ that hurt so bad kinda soul, so I threw in a few Jones predecessors doing doing there thing.  A little Betty Davis, Fontella Bass and Dinah Washington.  Enjoy…

Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings-100 Days, 100 Nights :

Sage Francis will b-boy all over your ass.

In keeping with the dance theme, I offer this gem. Apparently Sage was at the Epitath Records HQ, probably drinking bub and smackin bitches-like any proper hip hop star-when somebody challenged somebody else to a dance battle.

 

This hilarious mess is the result.

 

I dug Sage Francis a lot during the spoken word years when he running around as part of the Non Prophets. He dropped an album earlier this year and this vid makes me want to see what he’s been up to. Looks like he’s still being…creative.

Do your dance dude.  Do your muthafuckin’ dance:

Chitown Footworkin’: First the Southside, then Samsung, then the world!

Anyone who knows me knows I’ve been preachin’ the relevance of regional dance music for years. From D.C. Go Go to Baltimore Club, Detroit Techno to Miami Bass each form had it’s genesis in the city’s urban core and gradually spread to a wider audience. These styles have at least some core elements of hip hop and it’s always interesting to see the ways various geographic flavors gets thrown in and effect the corresponding dance styles.

In our constant search for the next hot “it”, us media and marketing folks have given these styles some shine over the years, not always to the best ends-sometimes making the underground mainstream is a really bad idea-but it’s good to see folks getting some recognition and (ideally) eating off their craft.

Footworkin’ has been a Chicago staple since at least the late 90’s and grew out of the city’s fierce house and club scenes. The music is like House on meth:fast, neckbreaking stuff-and the footwork, well just check it:

Recently Samsung, in a move that kicked them up about 1 zillion notches on my “Marketers who are on their shit” list, rolled out the ad campaign for their new “Juke” phone, featuring real live jukin from Chicago’s FootworKINGz:

With the commercial nod, a recent article in Rolling Stone, a theater debut at this years “Hip Hop Dance Fest” and yes folks, a movie deal in consideration, looks like Footworkin’, or at least the FootworKINGz, are set to be repping the Windy city lovely for a minute. I really hope creators of these dances and musical styles have their business hats on, are smart about how much control they give away and make it a point to establish some form of ownership over their creations. I’m down for everybody groovin, but just make sure that green goes into the right hands at the end of the day.

I mean, I’m way too young for this, but I hear cats used to listen to Rock n Roll and do the Charleston in the hood. Now ain’t that some other ish…

Photos: Clarion Alley Block Party

 

San Francisco’s Clarion Alley holds a legendary space among muralists. The block long alley between Mission and Valencia has been provided a home to the cities painters since the 60’s. Every year the Clarion Alley Mural Project hosts a two day mural celebration with selected artists updating the alley on Saturday and an all out party Sunday. These were taken at this years party a few weeks ago. Dig it.

-kwan

Eulipia Performance Salon 1st Anniversary Finale Gala

Eulipia Performance Salon 1st Anniversary Finale Gala

October 2^nd, 8PM (sharp)

 

Walter Kitundu

Please join us for this night of celebration and reflection.

Since October 2006, Eulipa/Knot Frum Hear has featured some of the Bay’s innovators in the worlds of word and music and continues to explore alternative spaces through performance, sound, and vision.

Ron Dellums Endorses Clinton

Clinton: Act Like Americans

 People  |   Kwan Booth  |  October 1, 2007 at 6: 53 PM

From Novometro.com

Mayor Dellums officially endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton’s bid for president Monday afternoon and she returned the favor by naming Mr. Dellums Chair of her campaign’s National Urban Policy Committee.

The announcement was made at Laney College Student Center shortly after the two toured the campus together. Mr. Dellums said the decision to endorse Ms. Clinton was made “after an exhaustive review of everyone’s global agenda,” and that he was impressed by Ms. Clinton’s understanding of the problems facing the nation’s cities.

“Oakland is sitting on top of a 100-year-old collapsing infrastructure,” he told the crowd of hundreds of supporters and students, predicting that the public-private partnership he envisioned under Clinton’s presidency would be one of the “greatest public works projects in modern history.” 

Click to read more.

San Francisco Love Fest-the pics

There were good feelings oozing all over the streets of downtown SF Saturday. The 3rd annual San Francisco LoveFest was a feast of techy beats from local sound systems and the Bay’s most colorful, musical and naked party people. Check the pics and soak up some of that lovin’. -kwan