Authentic Soul: Erykah Badu & Jill Scott

Erykah Badu - Soldier (LIVE @ VH1 Soul Stage)
Uploaded by leatik

..the whole set on VH1 Soul Stage was OUTSTANDING! Listen to the lyrics and hypnotic bass riffs on the cut "Me"--Solid performance:

http://www.vh1.com/video/play.jhtml?id=1582333&vid=212499

Nightmare Overhanging Darkly

• The United States has 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's incarcerated population. It ranks first in the world in locking up its fellow citizens
• The U.S now imprisons more people for drug law violations than all of western Europe, with a much larger population, incarcerates for all offences 
• The U.S sends more people to prison, for more different offences, for longer periods of time than anybody else
• The U.S. incarceration rate of 737 per 100,000 people is the highest, followed by 611 in Russia
• A U.S. Justice Department report showed that a record 7 million people -- or one in every 32 American adults -- were behind bars, on probation or on parole. Of the total, 2.2 million were in prison or jail.
• US Government figures show that overall black people account for 46% of prisoners in America, compared to 36% who are white.
• More than 60% of the people in prison are now racial and ethnic minorities. For Black males in their twenties, 1 in every 8 is in prison or jail on any given day. These trends have been intensified by the disproportionate impact of the "war on drugs," in which three-fourths of all persons in prison for drug offenses are people of color.
• Two-thirds of the prison population are incarcerated for nonviolent offenses, representing the first time in American history that more people are confined for crimes involving no violence.

These are such sad, dismal facts but what is even sadder is the lack of political will & a louder public outcry to confront the root causes of crime such as educational & economic inequities and the  overwhelming media focus on the crimes of non-whites which feeds on the larger social tragedy of a criminal justice system that favors whites over black&brown people (especially so in crack-cocaine sentencing vs powder cocaine & in the coverage of black entertainers/sports figures vs white entertainers/sports figures). Soon, 1 out of 3 black males will be in prison if this trend continues. I'm no conspiracy-theorist, but this seems so systematic, so viciously Orwellian in its execution of social domination & control. Indeed, the mass media & the educational/legal/political/economic/socio-cultural infrastructure seem so well-oiled& calibrated so as to produce the desired outcomes. You now have some black and brown people even believing a lot of nonsense passing as the truth about themselves & their prospects--Self-fulfilling prophecies in the flesh.

We have to end this.

Dwele hints at an answer in a laid-back, jazz-infused piece, "My People": "There's never been a worse time to be young & black.....Tonight my eyes will burn in prayer that we will learn to love our people...(Still)I feel the good will outweigh the bad.."


Stay Alive!

:::MixMasterE:::

....oh hum de dum....

(Where does he get his information from? A fortune cookie?)

Bill Maher Discusses Race, Elitism, Barack, the Pope...

I thoroughly enjoyed Bill Maher's show on Friday. His kick-ass, no-nonsense style is a breath of fresh air in an era of media consolidation & the intolerance of alternative viewpoints(thanks to the FCC). Although there were a lot of factual errors in the show (like the claims of the Pope being a Nazi sympathizer and that Iran has nuclear weapons), it was otherwise quite thought-provoking and funny as hell. Any true democracy requires an informed public and Bill Maher's show is really one of the few remaining that informs and entertains at the same time.

Batten Down The Hatches!!

Oil at $110/barrel and more than $3.35 at the pump...My grocery bill looks like a damn mortgage and lots of folks are catching hell...Yet still I read that CEO pay is increasing, even for failing companies? I think we're all getting punk'd....

..down the roller-coaster we gooooo............


Peace (..watch your pennies..)

:::MixMasterE:::

Underground Soul Commune

I ran across this great website that highlights some incredible soul music,vintage videos & interviews. Check this site out when time permits: http://soulcommune.ning.com. Below is a playlist I created on this site which boasts a number of established & up & coming R&B artists as members (Eric Roberson, Kem, Mint Condition, Trina Brossard, to name a few)

An Unbearable Lightness Of Being: James Baldwin's Existential Blues

Ever since I read my first book by James Baldwin, namely, "No Name In The Street", I was transformed. Something shifted within me & the way I viewed the world would never be the same. Oh, there were other books I read at that time that shook the ground beneath my feet like, "Breaking Bread-Insurgent Black Intellectual Life" by Cornel West & Bell Hooks, "Necessay Illusions-Thought Control In Democratic Societies" by Noam Chomsky & "Inventing Reality: the Politics of News Media" by Michael Parenti to name a few, but it was Baldwin's book that had the most impact.

"No Name In The Street" is a deeply personal, reflective piece of the rage,fury & despair of the sixties and seventies that turned Baldwin's world upside down. In vivid yet painful detail he reflects on his upbringing in Harlem that shaped his early consciousness & the later events that impacted him deeply-—the murders of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, his experiences in Europe and Hollywood and his return to the American South to confront a violent America face-to-face.

I wrote copious notes along the margins of the book which I personally baptized as holy text--hahaa. Here are some of quotes from the book which are as relevant today as they were decades ago. Unafraid to wield his pen as a sword, he sliced through hypocrisy, ignorance, conformity, all the enemies of art and enlightenment, with his Third Eye ablaze :

The administration of justice in the U.S is a wicked farce--it has no love for justice or any concept of it.

Ignorance allied with power is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

Power is dependent on human energy, on the wills & desires of human beings. When power translates itself into tyranny, it means that the principles on which that power depended, and which were its justification, are bankrupt. When this happens, power can only be defended by thugs and mediocrities--and seas of blood.

Many white people appear to live in a state of carefully repressed terror in relation to black people.

All men are primitive, but not in the same way, for in that absolutely unassailable privacy of the soul, they do not worship the same gods.

The paradox of education is precisely this - that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.

It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be.

Brilliance without passion is nothing more than sterility.

One can learn from one's errors. What one cannot survive is allowing other people to make your errors for you, discarding your own vision--in which, at least, you believe--for someone else's vision, in which you do not believe.

On racist terror:It was as though he were wrestling with the mighty fact that the danger in which he stood was as nothing compared to the spiritual horror which drove those who were trying to destroy him---they endangered him....but they doomed themselves


To learn more about one of America's greatest novelist/essayist, check out these resources:

American Masters

Life Of James Baldwin




Stay open....

One Love

:::MixMasterE:::

Forgotten Angels

Poverty is the worst form of violence.
-Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)




Imagine yourself so poor & hungry that your only way to feed yourself outside of begging is to eat dirt? Many of you may have read of Haiti's poor having to resort to
eating mud cookies made of butter, salt, water and dirt to stave off hunger. 80 percent of Haiti's eight million citizens live on less than a dollar a day. 85 percent are illiterate. Most children suffer from malnutrition. Life expectancy is under 50. How did such a thing happen to a place, once the most prosperous island in the Antilles and the first in the Americas after the United States to gain independence?

The answer is as old and sad and pathetic as empire itself.

In a nutshell, during the 1600s and 1700s the French plantation owners brought in black slaves & brutally enslaved them to turn sugar into profit. From 1791 to 1804, the proud and resilient Haitians held Destiny in their tight, calloused hands & fought courageously against the French (British & Spanish as well) until they finally got the upper hand with a dazzling display of strategic planning & ferocious fighting under the brilliant leadership of Toussaint Louverture & Jean Jacques Dessalines. Napoleon was sent packing and the first black independent nation was born.

But no Empire just folds its' arms and walks away. The French felt insulted by this monumental defeat of their colonial forces & thus devised a counter-attack: Britain, France, Spain and the US, all rivals but united in exploitation and dehumanization, imposed an economic naval blockade from the moment of its independence for about 60 years. Without the ships of these countries and their traders, the plantations of Haiti could not sell any of the sugarcane, tobacco, cotton or coffee. This led increasing desperation and poverty for the vast majority of the population. What finally bought Haiti to its' knees was when they were forced to pay compensation (an equivalent of $21 billion) to France for taking over the slave plantations during the revolution. The familiar cycle of poverty, indebtedness and political instability was established and continues to this day (aided and abetted by numerous U.S military invasions and political meddling to keep things "in order").This is how the promise of their inspired revolution ('a beacon for freedom in the Western Hemisphere') was killed and with wave after wave of brutal dictatorships (except for Jean-Bertrand Aristide who was politically assassinated), Haiti is today one of the world's poorest countries.

For information on what you can do to help and to learn more about what is happening in Haiti, check out these resources:

Food For The Poor
Jubilee2000
Institute For Justice & Democracy In Haiti

OneLove

::MixMastere::

Of Fools & Legends

The Thinking Man's Dictionary

I ran across this rather mischievously irreverent site after searching diligently for a term that could best match my angst towards a certain type of individual, that being an educated fool. I know what one is--a person who fetishizes & wears his/her academic credentials like a blazing, unassailable seal of superiority and enlightenment yet possessing, in reality, the deepest, most stubborn ignorance & impoverished vision that not even the light of one simple truth can dare enter. We all know who they are--many of them work with us, some are members of our own family & quite a number reach the highest echelons of power and priveledge (G.W is the Mad Magazinesque Poster boy). Truly, I am sick of educated fools who, if one must be brutally honest, are the greatest purveyors of barbarism, corruption, falsehoods, cowardice and laziness-posing-as-delegation-of-tasks-to-the-less-thans. Maya Angelou once said that, "some people unable to go to school were more educated and even more intelligent than college professors.” I'm sure most folks can identify with this salient observation. Bob Marley mirrored this wisdom in many of his songs like, "Stiff-necked Fools", "Crazy Baldheads" and "Time will Reveal". He quipped in one interview, "If I was educated, I'd be a damn fool.”

I am not against education-- I am against those who believe education is simply the collection of certificates in the quest to be top dog in their narrow field of endeavor. Why does humility have to wither? Why must people be trivialized and disrespected in the pursuit of titles and fat pay checks? Why must education itself be nothing more than a market-driven tragedy of creating a minority of a priveledged few sitting on top of a vast majority of "less-thans"? How schools are financed, how teachers are trained, how school districts select textbooks, how certain groups are low-balled and tracked to failure, federal/state budget priorities, what constitutes "knowledge" and how certain facts are priveledged over others and a whole host of other forces play into this farce and spectacle termed "education".

So, to all the educated fools out there who think that your shit smells like sweet mocha chocolate with a dash of cinnamon, be careful of those who can truly see you for what you are. Hopefully, one day you'll allow some light into your dark, musty quarters and gradually, if not fully, embrace what an educated, selfless mind can do to uplift the least amongst us.

One Love

::MixMasterE::

Rumi's Vision

The Alchemy of Love

You come to us
from another world

From beyond the stars
and void of space.
Transcendent, Pure,
Of unimaginable beauty,
Bringing with you
the essence of love.

You transform all
who are touched by you.
Mundane concerns,
troubles, and sorrows
dissolve in your presence,
Bringing joy
to ruler and ruled
To peasant and King.

You bewilder us
with your grace.
All evils
transform into
goodness.

You are the master alchemist.

You light the fire of love
in earth and sky
in heart and soul
of every being.

Through your loving
existence and nonexistence merge
All opposites unite.
All that is profane
becomes sacred again.

- Rumi

Winter In The Heart

Delusion: noun:the act of deluding; deception by creating illusory ideas;
noun:(psychology) an erroneous belief that is held in the face of evidence to the contrary.



The first time any country gets real power,it is abused. Like Rome, China, Mongolia, Britain, France, Germany, and Russia, so with the United States. Empires rise, empires fall. And the United States appears to be on a downward spiral. Perhaps my assessment is wrong about the U.S empire's current decline, however, at some point, like all empires that preceded it, it will run out of gas and another power will rise to continue this sickening cycle of power, wealth, wars, corruption and an assortment of grand delusions to mask it all/fool us all.

Why are human societies so tragically flawed? Why haven't our so-called leaders learned anything from the past? In the 30,000 years or so since the blossoming of modern human beings, we've been at each other's throats for one reason or another (land, water, oil, women, geopolitics, religion,.....). And of course, everyone/every nation (in the modern era) feels justified/finds justification in this blood-letting by mouthing off a plethora of diversionary yet stunning array of high-sounding principles (regurgitations)--"national security", "protection of the homeland", "survival/self-preservation", "protection of our interests", "high values", "civilization at stake", and, the supreme principle, "peace" . George Orwell's dystopic term, "double-speak" comes to mind here.

If we dissect the tragedies that have been carried out in our names, we may be able to get a glimpse of some essential truths underlying the forces that feed this drive to conquer and, perhaps, if one must hope, make this Earth a safer home for our children in the long run. George Orwell once wrote, " War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. " We have to see through the blindfolds, re-examine what undergirds our patriotism and reclaim our rights to be fully informed & engaged citizens of our global community (by implication, challenging nationalism/nation-state which I will take up at a later time). Must we be forever slaves to our drives and to the dictates of our leaders who claim to have our best interests at heart?

Check out this Flash Presentation: Hope & Memory

To all the warmongers in our midst, from Bush to Mugabe to Hu Jintao: Hell hath no fury like a non-combatant (a C.L. Montague quote). Indeed, enemies will multiply if we continue to be this way as darkness cannot be fought with darkness--only the light of love and understanding can do that.

peace

::MixMasterE::

The Question Of....you

Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life you're living? -Bob Marley

One of the most enigmatic figures I have come across in my continuing search for answers to the ageless question of, "Why Are We here?"(besides "Jesus Christ" - "Yeshua" being the original Aramaic proper name for Jesus the Nazarene) & Prophet Muhammed) is the man known as The Buddha. I have been studying his words for years and have found profound synchronicities between his precepts and my experiences. Like a monk says in the brief but riveting documentary below, if his teachings can somehow be summed up in two words, it would be, "Live mindfully". I am no expert in Buddhist philosophy & practices, but it really does appear to me that Siddharta Gotama who became known as The Buddha (the 'enlightened one') revealed something timeless & universal enough to penetrate all religions without diminishing them in any way (the Four Noble Truths & The Eightfold Path are simply luminescent).

Check out this BBC documentary:-

Keep Searchin'!

:::MixMasterE:::