New moon diva Cassandra Wilson updates her roots-y, Africa-tinged blues with hip hop inspired cuts produced by Red Hot's T Bone Burnett. From her spring 2006 album Thunderbird:
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Technorati Tags: Cassandra Wilson - Blue Note Records - Thunderbird
In the clip below, Dr. Marc Lamont Hill discusses on Fox News Live Desk why the black leadership hasn't yet come out in full support of Barack Obama's presidential candidacy. Republican strategist Leslie Sanchez nails the fears of the established black leadership on the head when she states that "Barack Obama doesn't need a connection with African American leaders to build a connection with African American voters."
The zinger is Martha MacCallum's follow up comment: "Yeah and I don't know, David, you know, politically whether he wants to be going around the country with Al Sharpton."
Dr. Hill assures the panel that the black leadership is not against Obama per se; they just want to to see him "take a stand." A friend of mine has an interesting take on what steps the black leadership may actually take if Obama refuses to "take a stand" and tow their party line:"Obama's biggest danger may be if the civil rights establishment tries to deliberately sink him by embracing him, accusing mainstream white institutions of "anti-black racism" for campaign tactics against him. I have a feeling that that's a big part of what sunk Harold Ford, Jr., perhaps deliberately by the NAACP, when they made a lot of noise about how campaign ads against him were anti-black racism."
This recent statement may be an indication that those tactics are not so off.
Technorati Tags: Barack Obama - Al Sharpton - black leaders - Fox News - Harold Ford Jr.
Biraicial parents Remi Horder (far left) and KylieWARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS EXPLICIT MATERIAL
Okay, it's Thursday not Tuesday...and this little ditty has made its way 'round the internets already. But it's still funny!
Extra: Keith Olbermann interviews Bunny about her box.
Technorati Tags: Dick in A Box - Box in A Box - Keith Olbermann - SNL - Bunny
After a near 15-year hiatus, Senegalese African/Latin band Orchestra Baobab reunited to cut their 2002 album Specialist in All Styles.
Slipping in middle eastern music and photos of our soldiers currently abroad (look closely at the end), Alex Therrien produces a 9 minute MLK video that actually is a film against the Iraq war.
Technorati Tags: - MLK - Vietnam War - Iraq War
Yesterday, John Edwards threw down the gauntlet to the newly minted Democratic majority congress by calling for them to cut the purse strings so the US can stop the Bush "surge" in Iraq. Edwards accomplished two important political goals at this speech:
1) he positioned himself against the other Democratic presidential frontrunners - Clinton and Obama - as the anti-war candidate
2) he aligned himself with the majority of American voters who want this war to end
I predict the leftwing mainstream media will spin the crap out of the meaning of the speech. And from all accounts, they've already begun. This morning on NPR's Brian Lehrer show guest commentator Juan Williams dismissed Edwards anti-war credentials because he voted for the Iraq war resolution. Apparently, like the Bush camp, Williams believes that politicians cannot change their minds lest they be weak or opportunistic.
Both Williams and Lehrer concluded that Edwards' positioning of himself as the anti-war candidate is an appeal to the Democratic base, while Clinton's response proves that her camp is attempting to appeal to the general population. This of course is poppycock. Apparently, like the rightwing mainstream media, the American people's repudiation of the Iraq war vis a vis the Democratic sweep of the 2007 mid-term elections has gone down the Williams/Lehrer memory hole.
Interestingly, Obama's camp has not yet responded to the Edwards speech. Williams and Lehrer glossed over this fact and instead concentrated on Obama's amount of foreign policy experience, and whether or not he has made his supposedly "mainstream" position on limited support for the war clear.
The two of course could not explain why Obama hasn't yet responded to the Edwards speech because they missed the third, more subtle political goal Edwards was shooting for: positioning himself as the real "black" candidate for the 2008 presidential election.
Obama has been playing a very slick game up until this point by keeping one foot in the black camp and the other in the biracial one. He has been coding his biracial consciousness underneath his status as a 2nd generation Kenyan-American. To my knowledge no pundit has yet caught onto this game, but Stanley Crouch has come awfully close. Since Crouch's November 2006 editorial, Obama has continued, albeit cautiously, riding between America's newly resurgent black/biracial color line. That is, until Edwards' speech at Riverside Church yesterday.
The Southerner Edwards has been making subtle overtures to black America at least since Kerry's failed 2004 presidential run, where Edwards served as the Vice Presidential candidate. When it became clear that the RNC was pulling a jack move in Ohio a la Florida circa 2000, Edwards called for a full recount while Kerry basically conceded. Kerry eventually came around, but the damage was already done and the presidency went to the Bush camp.
Edwards' second significant appeal to blacks was the launch of his 2008 presidential campaign from the ruins of New Orleans, where he lauded the efforts of the black children rebuilding a flooded house directly behind him as he announced his bid. In the speech he linked New Orleans, the Iraq war, the genocide in Sudan, global warming, poverty and the need for a new energy economy.
Edwards' most clear challenge to Obama as the candidate for black America, however, is evidenced in yesterday's speech at Riverside church. Forty years earlier in an anti-war speech held at the same church, MLK called the Lyndon administration "the greatest purveryor of violence in the world today" for its prosecution of the war in Vietnam. Taken with his call for an Ohio 2004 vote recount and his campaign launch, Edwards' alignment with black America's ultimate political symbol on the eve of black America's most significant national holiday is calling Obama out on his game.
In effect, Edwards is rejecting America's two color lines and attempting to force Obama to do so as well. The more Edwards appeals (or appears to appeal) to black interests, the more Obama will be pressured to "out black" him - lest he be considered a traitor to the race and lose the support of both blacks and whites who are vested in the African American race category.
Obama's next move will be the most crucial in his political career. If he can deflect Edwards' attempt to force him onto the black side of America's color line - meaning maintaining biracial consciousness without losing the trust and support of black Americans while also keeping the support of white Americans looking to deflect responsibility for continued black American poverty - than the Jim Crow era of black/white racial endogamy may truly be over and a new three-tiered political system based on color has re-emerged.
Biracial America's Formidable Opponent
Technorati Tags: - John Edwards - Iraq war - 2008 presidential race - Barack Obama
Ojos de Brujo, or "wizard's eyes" in Spanish, is a Barcelona based group that mixes flamenco with hip hop. This track comes from their 2006 album Techarí.
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Technorati Tags: Ojos de Brujo - Techarí - flamenco - hip hop
Two different takes on the highlights of 2006...
from Miguel Cuevas:
from The Electronic Intifada:
The Brooklyn-based group Nation Beat combines two of the richest cultural syntheses of the Western hemisphere in their album Maracatuniversal. Fusing funky New Orleans second line brass with the rhythms of mangue music from Recife, Brazil, Nation Beat connects two of the more substantive variations of the New World's African/Latin (Yoruba/Catholic) amalgam. Some call it syncretism others call it transculturation. Socio-economics and politics aside, I just call it booty-shakin' fun!
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Technorati Tags: Nation Beat - mangue movement - second line - New Orleans - Recife Brazil
