Spiced Tea & Letters

Current Information

2011-02-12T20:36:00.001-05:00

Please visit the link below for current images and information on Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, thank you!

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn Photography

Obama Show!

2008-09-19T09:38:00.001-04:00

Kindred Cool WEBSITE!

2008-07-10T22:07:00.001-04:00

Visit us at

www.KindredCool.org

My next exhibition - Kindred Cool opening August 3

2008-07-02T22:36:00.003-04:00

Save the date!

Kindred Cool
Portraits inspired by the jazz friendship of Ralph Ellison, Albert Murray and Romare Bearden

Photography by Laylah Amatullah Barrayn

Opening Reception: August 3, 2008
Exhibition Dates: August 3 - September 14, 2008

The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts
Foyer Gallery
80 Hanson Place
(at South Portland Avenue, around the corner from Brooklyn Academy of Music)
Brooklyn, New York 11217

2, 3, 4, B, Q, D, N, R, M trains to Atlantic Avenue
C train to Lafayette Avenue
G train to Fulton Street
Buses B25, B26, B52, B38

www.MoCADA.org

The Kindred Cool exhibition seeks to pays homage to the jazz friendship of Romare Bearden, Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray. Each photograph is composed of three individuals, trios, who are bonded by jazz.

The subjects of Kindred Cool are a motley crew of jazz educators, vocal and instrumental musicians, visual artists, journalists, publicists, band leaders and institution heads. Some participants to be photographed for the Kindred Cool exhibition are drummer, Jason Marsalis; MC and producer, Ladybug Mecca; trombonist, Dick Griffin; professor and historian, Robin Kelley; producer and musician, DJ Spooky; pianist, Vijay Iyer; vocalist and actress, Rhonda Ross; writer and musician, Greg Tate; musician, Brian Jackson; professor Farah Jasmine Griffin; photographer Gerald Cyrus; percussionist, Will Calhoun; pianist, Geri Allen, among many constituents of the 'jazz society.'

The Kindred Cool exhibition is inspired by the friendship of three of America's most prolific culture shapers: Ralph Ellison, Albert Murray and painter Romare Bearden. Individually, these three intellectuals have influenced the zeitgeist of their respected disciplines - visual art, literary fiction and the art of the essay. Their major bond was American classical music: jazz. Bearden, Ellison and Murray were certified jazzmen, riffing off one another's ideas of Americaness, Blackness and what constitutes quality writing. The values associated with jazz were manifested in their art, philosophy and modus operandi. Bearden's affinity for the music was internalized and manifested through masterfully crafted paintings and collages. The cadence of Ellison's and Murray's sentences loudly echoes the sensibilities of thoughtfully arranged chords. Bearden, Ellison and Murray possessed an important friendship that was well documented in scholarly writings, essay collections and witnessed throughout fine art circles.

My New Show!

2007-08-19T10:35:00.001-04:00

I'm curating a new show, opening September 9th at The Gallery at Harriet's Alter Ego.

For more information click here.

Wish Lists?

2007-07-28T17:32:00.000-04:00

Has anyone ever brought anything for you from your wish lists? I have one wish list on Target and one on Amazon.com. I think I'm going to start directing folks to my wish lists. I don't mind a surprise gift at all, lol!

Minneapolis, here I come!!!

2007-06-24T00:56:00.001-04:00

THE ART OF T&A...TRUTH AND ACTIVISM
Opening, Thursday, June 28 @ Intermedia Arts Center, 6-9pm
Featuring the works of some really, really fly chicks, including moi, Laylah Amatullah Barrayn!

Be there, or you know what...

(more for your mind www.intermediaarts.org)

When are we going back to Dizzy's Club?

2007-06-17T00:51:00.000-04:00

I'm saying, when are you taking me back to Jazz at Lincoln Center?

Laylah in the background...

2007-05-27T23:09:00.000-04:00

Thank you Terrance for the picture. I had no idea that you were taking a picture of Tariq and had me in the background. I would have loved to take a picture WITH Tariq...but maybe nextime...

I'm in a new exhibition!! The Art of Truth and Activism...

2007-05-18T00:09:00.000-04:00

If you're in Minneapolis, come check out me and my photography on June 28, 6pm @ Intermedia Arts!

"The Art of T&A… Truth and Activism"
A multi-disciplinary, cutting edge international group exhibition that highlights women's visual voice through the aesthetic lens of Hip-Hop culture.
Curated by DeAnna Cummings and Assistant Curator Michelle Spaise

Exhibit Dates: June 21 - September 9, 2007
Opening Reception: Thursday, June 28, 2007, 6 - 9:30pm

Intermedia Arts
Main Gallery
2822 Lyndale Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55408
(612) 871-4444 - http://www.intermediaarts.org

Featuring installations by Joy E. A. Spika (Chicago) and Lady Pink (New York)

...and featuring visual art by

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn (Brooklyn, New York) - that's me!!!
B Fresh (Minneapolis),
B-Girl Yoda (Kahuku, Hawaii),
Keina Davis Elswick (San Francisco),
Erotica 67 (New York),
Faith47 (Capetown, South Africa),
Femme9 (Kansas City),
Krista Franklin (Chicago),
Gitana (Puerto Rico),
Julie Graves (Minneapolis),
INDIE 184 (New York),
Indigo (Minneapolis),
Monica R. Kelly (Savannah, Georgia),
Lauri Lyons (Harlem, New York),
Diana McClure (New York),
Alice Mizrachi (New York),
motel7 (Capetown, South Africa),
Niz (Florida),
Jill Rothenberger (Minneapolis),
Rukus (Minneapolis),
smirk (Gallen, Switzerland),
Stacey Flyjawn Wilson (Philadelphia),
Stef Skills (Chicago),
Toofly (New York),
Sarah White (Minneapolis),
Keegan Xavi (Los Angeles)

Intermedia Arts is a multidisciplinary arts center, a gathering place where we can share stories through visual arts, theater, dance, music, literature--from folk arts to hip-hop culture.

"The Art of T&A… Truth and Activism" is being held in conjunction with the 3rd Annual B-Girl Be: A Celebration of Women in Hip-Hop, a multimedia festival encompassing the four elements of hip-hop: MCing, DJing, breakdancing, graffiti—and more. The mission of B-Girl Be is to influence and inspire leadership to change the perceptions and roles of women in hip-hop for current and future generations. This annual event is a place to make connections, build confidence, sharpen skills and gain access to the tools to create music, film, poetry, rap, aerosol art and dance. For more information please visit http://www.intermediaarts.org/Pages/Programs/b-girl_be/

Generous funding provided by The Ford Foundation, The Mall of America Foundation, Fredrikson & Byron, National Performance Network, Red Bull and Sun Country Airlines. This project is made possible in part by a grant from the National Performance Network’s Performance Residency Program. Major contributors of the National Performance Network include the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency), Altria and the Nathan Cummings Foundation.
For more information: www.npnweb.org.

Where's the party at?

2007-05-04T15:28:00.000-04:00

So, I have returned to school (gasp!), I'm only taking two classes this semester, one an expository writing class and another a new media class. I'm bored. Who would have known? Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to be back in school, supposed to be graduating next year, yay, but I'm just so bored. Every time I look in the sky and see a plane, I wish that I was on it. I wish I was walking down some bumpy, cobblestone street eating some frtiz and mayo in Amsterdam. I wish I was in Chinatown in Malaysia or eating creamy vanilla ice cream in Bo Kaap in Cape Town or chilling with the fortune tellers in Marrakech. I'm so bored!!!! NYC is supposed to be the jumpoff (it is, no doubt) but I feel so landlocked! I need to be abroad.....

Two Quickies...

2007-03-17T00:52:00.000-04:00

A nearly orgasmic keytar solo by Kamal (I wish I had the whole solo, it's hot. Heck, The Roots Game Theory tour is just bananas! I'm going to put up the Roxanne remake, straight fiyah!

&

A hella crazy story by Kamal

I am Malcolm X.

2007-02-22T23:46:00.001-05:00

Some Pics from Egypt

2007-02-14T20:05:00.001-05:00

Just a few pics from Egypt. I took these pics playing around with the camera on my Macbook, the real pics were taken with film, which is probably being dunked and dipped in some chemicals as we speak. Stay tuned!

Me at JFK Airport (Formerly Idlewild Airport, did u know that?) I was eating pizaa from Sabarro, fyi, lol!

Gettin ready to go!

Royal Jordanian gettin ready to go...

Also, getting ready to go...

That's my whip!!!! That's my ride! What do you think? Outta sight!

Just landed at Cairo International Airport...Nosey, all in the camera!!!

Cairo at night...

My hotel, fresh fruits on the table...

the most comfortable bed in the world.

My bubble bath, filled with Cristal. Just kidding...

Cairo by day...

Egyptian Silver is pretty, purchased at the Khan el Khalilli market

The Nile river, view from my room...

Faloos...Let me know if you need a loan...I got 5 Egyptian pounds, aight! Balllin...

Off to Abu Simbel (where I would eventually be stranded cause the plan broke...)

Lake Nasser. Such a calming body of water..

Lake Nasser is so BEAUTIFUL....I cannot express the tranquility of sitting on this lake...

Don't I look calm?

Ah, I love lake Nasser...

Me in front of the Temple of Ramses the 2nd...

Me in front of the Temple of Nefertari

The temple of Ramses the 2nd

My room on my cruise ship, I took a 3 day cruise on the Nile..Abercrombie & Kent is the bomb..

Nile view from my room on the boat....

My hotel at Hurghada, the lobby...

Okay, I'm done for now, more later, peace.

I miss Egypt

2007-02-09T14:03:00.000-05:00

The Temple of Ramsees at Abu Simbel, taken with the Macbook.

Self Portrait

2006-12-20T19:20:00.000-05:00

Mademoiselle D'Gascony

2006-11-20T21:47:00.000-05:00

Do you know how much I love Wynton Marsalis' Mademoiselle D'Gascony? When I think of how it would be if this song did not exist in my life and I get moody. Grrrr. I remember exactly when we met. It was 2001, I went to Ernie Pannicioli's photo studio in midtown and he'd just finished a shoot. We were waiting for a few other folks so we can leave and finish working on the hip hop photo anthology. So, he took some CDs and put Wynton on the CD player. At first I didn't pay any attention, but he gave me the CD to take home. I got home a listened to the entire thing. Of course, I fell in love with Sunflowers. In the next few days I discovered the track, Mademoiselle D'Gascony. It's a tangled web for 4 notes, played over and over in a game of mathematic probability. It's a sonic love potion as well as a lullaby. Gosh, I love this song, it does it for me every time.

Check out Wynton in 1982, yall don't know how fly he is...

2006-10-26T11:31:00.000-04:00

Whenever you need these things, they hide from you! I just need to print one frame and I canno t, for the life of me, find this one particular strip of negative. It's insane I tell you. I mean, I've been looking all night, I even came across negatives I haven't seen in years! I need to find my negatives!

powerHouse Gallery

2006-10-13T12:50:00.000-04:00

powerHouse had a GREAT opening reception for the No Sleep Till Brooklyn exhibition. DJ Red Alert on the 1s and 2s, legendary graf writers, bgirls and bboys in the house and just cool people. not to mention, my homie Delphine Fawundu-Buford had 4 pieces in the show. I had a ball...now for tonight: 3rd Wave: The Planet of Brooklyn Transitions @ the BAC Gallery, see u there?

(pic by Prof Joe Schloss)

John Legend

2006-10-12T08:04:00.000-04:00

Do you like John Legend's new song and video?

Donny and Roberta

2006-10-12T00:16:00.000-04:00

Donny and Roberta in the kitchem making some soul food...

Calalloo

2006-10-10T05:37:00.000-04:00

Where can I get a copy of Calalloo nowadayz, anywayz?

It's only the longest running Black literary journal in the USA...so, why is it MIA?

Crazy Dream!

2006-09-26T17:41:00.000-04:00

Okay, rarely do I share my dreams. Here is a crazy one.

I was on my way to the beauty salon to get my new growth twisted. So, I get there, sit in the chair and this West African dude comes out the back and begins to do my hair. There are no mirrors around so I dont see what he is doing. he finishes my hair and hands me a mirror. I look in the mirror and what do I see? He has combled all of my locs loose! My hair was bone straight. I was like, dude, why did you comb my locs out? I worked so hard to loc my hair, wassup?!?! And he simply said, I didnt like the way dreadlocs look on you. I was so heated that he combed my locs out, I began to beat him up. I got on my cell and called by my boys from the block so they can beat him up even more. I was so pissesd and sad. I tried to go to the party that I was planning to go to that night but I didnt want to show up with my hair loose and straight. I jumped in a cab and we drove across the Manhattan bridge and the driver let me off in Chinatown. Then I woke up. Strange.

Top 10 Ipod tunes

2006-09-25T11:45:00.000-04:00

Here is my itunes ballad playlist top ten as of a few days ago - pre-ramadhan.

1. Je Vous Aime (I Love You) - Donny Hathaway
This song is amazing! I've been playing it over and over and over and over

2. Love Ballad - Jeffrey Osborne & L.T.D.
This is the epitome of a love song. I love his voice it is so robust and earnest. The guitar is just so right.

3. All For Love - Bilal
Bilal, please come back to SOBs and sing this song! Stared at the sun till it burned out m eyesight...

4. Baby Come to Me - Regina Belle
Sung like a women serious about lovin her man...great, great voice

5. Baby Come to Me - James Ingram and Patti Austin
Here is a duet that will stand the test of time. James Ingram is another king of the love song. Wouldn't you want him to sing to you?

6. Can't Let Go - Anthony Hamilton
Love the dude. This song is a healthy 'not letting go song', I can dig it

7. Can't Let Go - Mariah Carey
This song is very sad. But it has it's place. Don't listen to it when your down, it might make you do something real crazy... It's not like Anthony Hamilton's at all.

8. Holding Back The Years - Angie Stone
Angie stole the song, for real! A great remake. She broke...move over Mr. Simply Red...

9. Hypnotized - Linda Jones
Okay, I love love love 60s love ballads. Listen to this song, find it on Itunes or whatever. Listen to it day and night and tell me she isn't talking about the real deal

10. The Love We Had (Stays On My Mind) - The Dells
Another beautiful, sad, love song. Love it...

Passed Away

2006-09-22T11:27:00.000-04:00

So, my friend passed away. 25 years old.

Eureka passed away Sept 6. One of my last memories of her was when we were at BranchBrook skating ring in Newark and I asked her if she was going to skate. Underneath it all, she was truly humble. That is the truth. A good heart.

My cousin passed on a few weeks ago. Last memories, eating french fries in the rain cause we didn't have the key to Ameenah's house and she wasn't home to let us in.

South Africa's got that swing...

2006-09-16T20:23:00.000-04:00

Seriously. I have heard jazz from all over the world: Sweeden, Hong Kong, Barbados, France but I am telling you that South Africa has got that swing! Brazilian samba and more recently bassa nova has a swing but it's a Brasilian swing, kinda like you have to educate yourself in their swing to fully understand it. It's beautiful when you hear it (João Donato & Deodato, etc...), it prompts you to do some research in order to fully understand, which is a good thing. What Fela was doing def has a swing, but, again it's an amalgamation of all these other things and if you want to understand it in deeper way, you need to educate yourself. But South Africa's swing, it's the most Black american swing I've heard outside of America. I was listening to my Sheer Sounds compilation CD and every song kicks ass! It just brought me back to Cape Town during the jazz festival when it seemed like all the buildings were swaying from side to side (like the Floetry music video) jazz does something to a city! But, still the South African's got that swing down pat, its like something in the water over there. Like the spirit of New Orleans has somehow rooted itself in the land. I don't know a South African jazz musician that I dont LOVE (RIP Moses Khumalo (suicide @ 26, whoa), I love u to death - bumping your music on the nano, you really represented for us 20 somethings carrying the torch of jazz) Even Marcus Wyatt is the man, him and his white chocolate trumpet playin self. I am dying to go back to Cape Town and Durban to check out some live shows, that was just amazing. Anyway, I'm just really appreciating South African jazz at the moment...

Tupac RIP

2006-09-13T11:09:00.000-04:00

Could you believe that Tupac was just 25 when he passed? 25. When he was alive he seemed ageless, there was something out of this realm about him, hard to describe, like he was otherwordly as a living being...

DVD addiction

2006-09-12T12:36:00.000-04:00

Ever since I got this computer I've been watching DVDs. I love it. DVD's have been all i shop for lately. I order all the movies that I never got a chance to see and watch them over and over. My favorite so far is Shaft with Sam Jackson, what a GREAT movie. Everyone in that flick is great, It was cool to see Ruben Santiago play a bad guy, Busta is CRAZY and Peoples just stole movie.

So, I got Oceans 11 and Shaft in Africa for 98 cents on Amazon.com marketplace...watched Shaft in Africa and I have no words, I'm still processining some parts of that movie..Roll bounce should arrive soon and Devil in a Blue dress is next on my list.

I did a Netflix account but the only thing with that is I dont want to send the movies back! I want to keep them. I can watch a movie over and over and so far all the movies I've purchased were good. BUt, there are some flicks I might have to preview via netflix before i actually buy them.

I hate AIDS...

2006-09-11T16:21:00.000-04:00

I don't know if I'm coming or going right now. I have been watching my friend slowly succumb to AIDS this entire summer. My old school friend, like from back in the day, like playing skully in the middle of the street and free lunch and sour power candy, dang. Earlier this summer, like in June he was mad sick, I begged him to go to the hospital to see wassup. So, in June he went to the doctor and the doc said he had FULL BLOWN AIDS, I''m like what?!??! I'm like, we gonna get thru this, nevertheless

July, he got sicker. August, got sicker. And, now it's Sept and I pay a recent visit to him, and you know what he tells me on his death bead, with all these tubes hooked up to him: he says he's known he was HIV POSITIVE for 6 years!!!! I'm like speachless, like a current thru my body.. I sware I did know what to say. i wanted to hug and strangle him at the same time.

I have seen 3 people die from AIDS, I have friends who are HIV + but they are fighing like hell, taking that medicine like it aint funny.

Part of me is so upset that he knew and did nothing to treat it, for SIX years. he's lied to himself, his fam and to me. My god, each time I visit, the docs are like start making arrangments, I'm like he's not f*cking dead yet.

he has requested that he is NOT put on life support...no words...

I went over there to the hospital this weekend and what does he tell me: he has cancer! I almost fainted. Said the cancer has spread to most of his body...

AIDS - i hate it, it is a thorough killer. What kinda disease is it? It makes SURE that you have no weapons at all to fight back. None...It's like when you have aids you can die from a cold..

I wish AIDS was a being, or something tangible so I can kill it, or destroy it, something. They should call it the hate disease, because I am sure sure sure that that is its origin: HATE.

God, I can't contain this. I can't loose another person to this thing...I want to live....

Mos Def Katrina Clap show and arrest

2006-09-07T13:04:00.000-04:00

a break

2006-09-07T00:40:00.000-04:00

no more blogging for a minute. Speaking to folks, communicating face to face, spoken word. It's the best thing.

Common in the Gap Ad

2006-08-28T00:56:00.000-04:00

Nice. Very Nice.

Happy Birthday to MOI!!!

2006-08-04T19:33:00.000-04:00

I'm really feeling my brithday this year. Great things are happening back to back, Alhumdulillah!!! Keep 'em coming!!!

She Shootin'!

2006-07-31T06:27:00.000-04:00

She Shootin'!

I need a break.

2006-07-30T03:54:00.000-04:00

Sunday morning, 3:50am and I am sweating to death. It's way too hot for my taste. The eve of my 27th birthday. How do I feel? I keep forgetting cause I'm so busy with all these other things. Maybe Ill have a small gathering somewhere. Something special. Gotta get to sleep cause tomorrow I have to hang my show. And I need the mental juice to prepare for the next four shows I have coming up. I'm tired, need to sleep...

Attention Photographers!!!

2006-04-27T21:21:00.000-04:00

Greetings,

This is a revised call for submissions for a anthology of Black women photographers now underway. We, the editors, have decided to open the call up for Black women photographers of all ages. This project would be more efficient if it came from an intergenerational approach. We invite you to contribute work to this collection of work.

______________________

We are pleased to extend an invitation to submit work for an upcoming anthology on Black women photographers.

These are dynamic women who have an evident freedom in their vision. Their work aims at expanding the conversation on the medium of photography. This book will also explore the images created by Black women. This collective of photographers can be called the aesthetic daughters of Dr. Deborah Willis, Carrie Mae Weems, Coreen Simpson, Lorna Simpson, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, et al. – photographers who have secured a foundation for future generations to compose boundlessly. Please join us in contributing to this spirited movement in photography.

Submitting your work:

The editors requests samples of your strongest/signature work that reflects your mission as a photographer. There is no limit to subject matter; it should be broad in range. Emerging photographers are encouraged to submit work.

We invite you to submit 10 to 20 images.

CD Submissions:
Images should not exceed 300 dpi.

Email Submissions:
Send small .jpgs
Email: blacklightanthology@gmail.com

We will also accept laser copies. Please do not send originals, as they will not be returned.

Along with your images, please send an artist statement (two paragraphs), image descriptions and bio (two paragraphs). Please indicate if you have series within your submission.

To submit via mail:
Say It Loud/BlackLight
P.O. Box 26272
Brooklyn, N.Y. 11202-6272

Deadline: Please send samples of your work as soon as possible. Contact the editors via email with questions or concerns.

About the Editors:

Delphine Fawundu-Buford has over ten years of experience as a photographer. She has been featured in the photography anthologies Black: A Celebration of a Culture and Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers from 1840 - Present by Deborah Willis. Her most notable photograph graced the cover of the companion book to the Brooklyn Museum of Art exhibition Committed to The Image: Contemporary Black Photographers. She has also contributed to magazines such as Vibe, The Source, Essence and Honey. Her works were also featured in the critically acclaimed exhibitions Only Skin Deep at the International Center of Photography and Open: Artist Working in Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Of Sierra Leone and Guinea, West African parentage, she was born and raised in Brooklyn where she resides with her husband and three sons.

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn is a writer and photographer. As a journalist she has been on assignment in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. Her writing has appeared in Vibe, Complex, The Source and America. She is an Atkins Fellow with the Jazz Journalism Association. Her essay was recently included in the award winning anthology, My Soul to His Spirit. As a photographer, her work has been exhibited nationally in galleries and non-traditional spaces. Her photography has been included in Black: A Celebration of a Culture and the forthcoming Saturday Night, Sunday Morning both edited by Deborah Willis.

You are invited to the DIVA Exhibition

2006-04-12T21:55:00.000-04:00

Click here for your invitation

Locs...

2006-03-29T22:07:00.000-05:00

So, apparently, it's going to take a year for my hair to lock. According to this book I'm reading, I don't have it in front of me so I can't tell you the title, but the author is saying that my braids are going to remain braids for the next 12 months! Hum...that give me enough time to decide if I really want to lock my hair: I do!
At least I have this piece of information because I've been sitting here for the past 2 months wondering exactly why my hair isn't locking.

Trader Joe's

2006-03-25T09:31:00.000-05:00

So, I finally got a chance to stop by the new Trader Joe's on 14th. Funny how it's right in the lobby of NYU's palladium dorm. Anyway, people have been talking about the coming of this store and how great, cheap and innovative the products are. I arrived there pretty late, like 8:30pm, and there was a line. I wondered if I really need some Trader right at this moment, and if it was that serious. It was, lol! I need to save money and if they have cheap stuff, I'm there! After a 2 minute wait I get in. First thing I evaluate, the produce: nothing new here. Just as expensive as Whole Foods and Food Emporium, etc. But, the one thing that nearly had me jumping for joy was the bagged salads! 2 bucks! Get out! Do you know how much Spring Mix salad cost at Pathmark and Pioneer? 3.99. Threw some salad in my little basket. Next deserts and snacks: 8 dollas for some nuts! Them fools is nuts! No snacks for moi, Ill save that for Walgreens. Next up, frozen prepared foods: great, stuff, 3.99 for Chinese vegetable fried rice, Chicken curry, Orange chicken, Mexican foods. That section gets a thumbs up. Moving right along. Soy milk and such. They didn't even have the price on the milk, man. wassup with that? I know it ain't free. I didn't bother to ask because I was getting annoyed at the crowd and I needed to begin wrapping up this Trader Joe's experience. Coming in the morning when no one was around seemed to be much better. anyway, I had just gotten some Silk soy milk earlier that from MET- 3.99, too damn much. But, no Cholesterol, priceless! Speaking of cholesterol, I approach the cheese section and to my delight, what do I see for 1.99? My favorite salad and pizza garnish: Goat's Cheese, and it was crumbled! 1.99 for a good sized tub of crumbled goat's cheese, couldn't beat it with a stick. This, my friends, had made my trip to Trader Joe's worthwhile. Now, I had to get the heck out of there , I had enough.

Whole Foods and Trader Joe's and stores like that probably function differently in other states, but here it seems to have become a status thing. It's not that big of a deal, folks just want to spend their tons of money. It's just a exclusive supermarket with overpriced mechandise. And?

I Love Cooking!

2006-03-21T08:45:00.000-05:00

My favorite store has become the supermarket, especially Pathmark. It's open 24 hours and has special music nights, R&B, Hip Hop, Soul, 80s. It's great! I just love cooking, trying out new dishes with new spices and ingredients, again, it's great!

Tonight, I think I'll cook a Salmon fillet glazed with Dijon mustard and apricots. Creamed corn with peanut sauce and a nice spring mix salad (with extra spinach) sprinkled with goat's cheese, raisins and almonds. And, for my beverage, Mango juice.

T-Shirts

2006-03-11T17:29:00.000-05:00

LIVING IT TO THE FULLEST

2006-03-10T17:42:00.000-05:00

(Suzanne Plunkett/Associated Press)

I'm just just still speechless. Been thinking about him, his life and art, all week. He just lived, and did it to the fullest. I've never known a life as complete and fulfilled. This is the way we gotta do it folks...

Rest In Peace - Gordon Parks

2006-03-08T13:19:00.000-05:00

I'm still in shock. RIP.

The Soundtrack!

2006-03-06T11:45:00.000-05:00

I was really on the hunt for the Dave Chapelle Block Party movie soundtrack. I was up in Virgin, FYI, Sound Factory only to discover that it comes out March 14. Ah, a sista can't wait that long, man...

Jay Dee is gone.

2006-02-26T17:09:00.000-05:00

It hit me hard at Spinna's party last night. Jay Dee is gone. It just hit me. I miss him, his work, energy, hunger and mostly his genius. I miss you Jay Dee. May you rest in peace.

Real Men Can Cook!

2006-02-25T15:49:00.000-05:00

Hahahahahahahaha! This is what my belly is saying right now. So, I know dudes can cook, many can even throw down. There are tons of male chefs, etc…I know. But, I’m so used to having my Grandma’s delicious food that having a male-made dish isn’t an everyday thing for me. But, today I had the most wonderful breakfast: all prepared by a talented dude and his magical culinary hands, lol! It was the most flavorful omelet I’ve ever tasted with spinach and all these types of greens and cream cheese, and African Gari grits! The grits were creamy with vibrant seasonings and bell peppers. I’m still sucking on my tongue. I’m so satisfied right now, I’m gonna take a nap…

(oh, I’m so mad that I missed the sale at Duane Reede, they had Banana Nut Crunch cereal for 2 for $5….)

Laylah in the news

2006-02-24T12:18:00.000-05:00

I didn't even know that there was a review of my show in Caribbean Life! The weekly newspaper did a review/profile on me in this weeks issue. Heloise told me a few days ago and I just got a copy. The pics of me are a nice, I have on my beautiful glass beads and I'm holding my favorite book:

The Mac Store

2006-02-17T13:29:00.000-05:00

(always runs out of the recievers for the Ipods)

But, did you know that you can walk in, blog and check your email on one of their Powerbook G4's and no one says anything to u, lol!

I know I'm mad late on this one...

Feed me, Seymore!

2006-02-16T18:12:00.000-05:00

My Ipod is real anemic right now, need more tunes! Feed me!

Decorating the new spot

2006-02-10T19:06:00.000-05:00

I think I pretty much have everything I need for the new spot. The living room is coming along. The bathroom is cool, just need a nice shelf. I love my new bed, it's so comfy and big. My bedroom has a Asian feel, who knew? I basically decorated it with the things I brought back from Asia. What will make me really happy if I had one of these:

Stefon Harris

2006-02-04T11:52:00.000-05:00

You really are not ready for Stefon Harris. I wasn't ready. I saw Stefon and his band Blackout a few weeks ago at a 12:30am show and I was blown away. Before then, I didn't even know who dude was. I was trying to plan my weekend, calling my friends to what they were doing and everyone was heading to see Stefon. My peeps from Philly even came to NYC, so I figured Stefon must be official. So, I walk into the show and it was just straight fire. They were cooking! Crazy off kilter, but soulful cord changes, ambitious solos. Who knew Jazz vibes could sound so insane? Folks was jumping up and down like they had to pee 'n stuff. Thigh slappin, foot stomping. This guy behind me was damn near crying. I have never seen a crowd in such ecstasy. I was like, I hope dude got his album for sale at this show cause I'm going to holla. This is why you have to see live jazz, it's electric. Couple that with the energy from the audience, these shows are often once in a life time experiences, and if its not recorded, gone forever. So, after the show, there were albums for sale but they sold out like in 15 minutes. It was like a riot. I didn't even get to get my album. But I picked it up a few days later. Bad thing is that my CD ROM is acting up, so I didn't get a chance to put it on my Ipod. So, the moral of the story is to check out Stefon Harris, capice?! Gotta run...

2006-01-27T16:13:00.000-05:00

Hey! I haven't been spending as much time over here cause I've been hanging out over HERE!

Seydou Keita

2006-01-21T11:41:00.000-05:00

SEYDOU KEITA: THE IMAGE KING OF AFRICA
January 15 - March 4, 2006, Reception, Jan 27, 6pm
@ Sean Kelly Gallery, NYC
Peace!

Idlewild - The New OutKast Movie!

2006-01-18T12:03:00.000-05:00

I'll check it out, even just to hear new music from OutKast (and to see Andre...)

Anyway, check out the trailer here!
All star cast including Patti Labelle, Terrance Howard, Malinda Williams, Ben Vereen, Cisely Tyson, Macy Gray (just got me thinking of Training Day and Scary Movie, lol, she's nutz)

The Brew

2006-01-16T04:57:00.000-05:00

You are invited.

2006-01-10T08:38:00.000-05:00

Comfort Woman

2006-01-08T04:43:00.000-05:00

Meshell Ndegeocello: Sista outsider finds Comfort
by Laylah Amatullah Barrayn

November 06, 2003 (from NYU's Brownstone magazine)

The B.B. King Blues Club & Grill VIP section is full of journalists, record label personnel, publicists and other people who don't regularly deal with the public. They're all well-acquainted, huddled in the comforts of the semi-circled booths. Egos are hoisted in the air along with platters of $20 buffalo wings en route from an invisible kitchen. On the bill tonight, Meshell Ndegeocello and Soul Live. A man holding a guitar is introduced as K'Alyn. He plants himself on a stool, center-stage. K'Alyn's voice is like silk: smooth and beautiful - although he spoils all of this with a song of heartbreak.

The room grows silent as he sings and strums. A tiny Meshell rises into view of the now-trembling audience. The motley crew is in awe of the impossibly underrated singer-bassist. They have soldiered through the opening act. A hearty applause sprinkled with whistles and throaty "I love yous" is offered. Bass in hand, hat generously tipped over her eyes, Ndegeocello begins to strum alongside the chords of fellow bandmates. Bob Marley is in the air. They open with the reggae-tinged "Love Song # 1." Meshell finally approaches the mic more than 10 minutes into the intro. "I can only give you what you give me," she explains and rips back into the groove. Turns her back toward the crowd and jams.

Three songs into the set, she sings, "Take me down to your river/I wanna get free with you." Now we're in the mood. Her voice is husky, sexy. It reminds you of that night. Embarrassed, you look around; fondling your ear, hoping no one notices your thoughts.

Pause here.

This is not exactly what is expected of a Meshell Ndegeocello live show. She is known for the seriousness of slaying contradiction with the groove in her bass, putting hypocrites on the spot. Tonight, carefree sensuality is heavy in order. Why? The mood of her latest album, Comfort Woman, says so. Where 2002's Cookie: the Anthropological Mixtape was unapologetically brash and earnest, Comfort Woman lets love rule.

Meshell emerged in 1993 in a Generation X-constructed state of black music. The airwaves were owned by Arrested Development, Das EFX and SWV, which were soon to be taken over by Wu Tang and Biggie Smalls with their reports from the live wire: New York City's rough spots they called home (Park Hill and Bed Stuy, respectively). Ndegeocello's first offering was the controversial "If That's Your Boyfriend (He Wasn't Last Night)" from her first album, Plantation Lullabies. She then made a little more noise with the remake of "Who Is He And What Is He To You" from Peace Beyond Passion. With that, she got complex on us and began to explore uncharted themes in R&B, such as biblical contradiction and homosexuality. Layer that with an early VIBE magazine interview in which she purportedly converted to Islam while championing her identity as a lesbian. Whoa.

Backtrack.

Meshell Ndegeocello, aka Suhaila Bashir, was born Michelle Johnson in Berlin in 1969. Her religious mother and strict military father relocated her family to Virginia in the early '70s. As a young woman, she took on her new name: Ndegeocello means "free as a bird" in Swahili. Meshell proceeded with music as per the influences of her jazz saxophonist father, first studying at The Duke Ellington School of the Arts and later at Howard University. After the birth of her son, Askia Ndegeocello in 1988, she relocated to New York City.

The rest is history. Signed to Madonna's Maverick Records, Ndegeocello eked out a cerebral body of work. She received critical acclaim, Grammy nominations and hellish album sales. Undaunted, Meshell arrives at her fifth album, Comfort Woman, musing on life's driving force: love. An evocation of vulnerability, a masterwork of warmth, "I wrote [the album] for someone I love very much," she said. "I wanted to offer love as the comforting salve." Can it be at all that simple?

One question: How can one bad sista, who effortlessly charters new musical ground with every album release, be so slept on? Redefining the bass line in the process, she's the scion of any and every kickass bass player. She does see the light of mainstream from time to time. For instance, she paired up with John Cougar Mellencamp on a cover of Van Morrison's "Wild Night" for Mellencamp's 1994 release, Dance Naked. Also a soundtrack queen, we caught glimpses of her on "Fool Of Me" from the "Love and Basketball" soundtrack and "Rush Over" on the "Love Jones" soundtrack. She has lent her virtuosity to albums by artists from Chaka Khan to Alanis Morissette to Roy Hargrove.

When conceptualizing Cookie, her label wanted guest appearances, rappers and well-known R&B singers. In the tradition of jazz musician Archie Shepp, who intertwined Malcolm X and Amiri Baraka into his work, she incorporated speeches of bantam figures like Angela Davis and Gil Scott Heron in her songs. Cookie was heralded as her artistic climax.

When the crowd at B. B. King's recognized the intro as "Dead Niggaa Blvd (Part 1)," they went into hysterics and began singing along to the lyrics: "You try to hold on to some Africa of the past/One must remember it's other Africans that helped enslave your ass." Indeed.

"You're put into a demographic that's made for you based on generalizations and you think you're better off, you think you're free because you got black this, black radio or that, you're just marginalizing yourself," she told Mark Anthony Neal, professor of American studies at the University of Texas at Austin, in a recent interview. Cookie and Comfort are in fact two different albums. This time around, it's safe to say Ndegeocello constructed a portrait of love, offering herself as a comfort woman. Always changing her groove, she'll record an Afro-punk record for British label BBE after her jazz album, Dance Of The Infidels, drops in January.

Dreamy excursions describe the feeling of the show's remainder. Most of it is Ndegeocello and her band improvising one, long jam session. Meshell wanders the stage. She does not walk so much as glide, seemingly meditating on the solos. Harsh politics hardly share space on this stage. This is a love story.

The Edification of Weldon Irvine

2006-01-02T10:06:00.000-05:00

The Edification of Weldon Irvine

By Laylah Amatullah Barrayn

Brooklyn’s Sisters Place Café hosted the first public screening of "The Edification of Weldon Irvine" last Friday. Filmmaker Collis H. Davis, Jr. who was a long-time friend of the late jazz musician shot the film over 20 years ago as his thesis film while a graduate film student at New York University.

"I decided to shoot Weldon as a subject for my film because at the time he had gained some sort of notoriety as musician and recording artist with MCA records." Explains Davis, who is currently a professor living in the Philippines.

Weldon Irvine committed suicide April 9, 2002, he was 59. It is interesting to note that Irvine’s mother also committed suicide.

The documentary opens up in 1974 with Irvine speaking with Davis about seclusion and isolation. Weldon explained the need to create two identities in order to remain self- possessed; one identity for public consumption and the other his own true personal persona.

Throughout the film Irvine delves into the his own personal philosophy concerning the struggle to attain peace of mind amidst a troubled family background and the music industry. Beautifully shot and edited, it pans from Irvine in performance at the Village Gate with his then band, The Kats, to him in martial arts class, to Irvine on location in his hometown of Hampton, Virginia. The documentary also gives an in-depth interview with his grandmother who raised him after his parents divorced.

Irvine was pianist, playwright and composer of over 500 works and is well known for his work with Nina Simone. As her artistic director in the early seventies, Weldon penned the lyrics for the song "Young, Gifted and Black."

"Nina needed an organist to embellish her sound," Weldon explains of Nina Simone recruiting him to her band. "She was a gifted poet, prophet and a perfectionist, which is why we worked together well." Weldon went on to work with Simone for several years as her musical director.

Irvine’s work is also sampled by many hip hop artists. A Tribe Called Quest’s “Electric Relaxation” is derived from Irvine’s “We Getting Down”, for example. Talib Kweli “Where do we go” from his latest album Quality, is a dedication to Irvine who was a close friend and a musical collaborator. Irvine has worked with many artists from different genres from Miles Davis to Big Daddy Kane to Talib Kewli to poet MuMs the Schemer.

Weldon had much faith in hip hop and was very supportive of the MCs who used the art form to offer commentary and invoke change. You may remember Irvine in the background rapper/actor Mos Def's "Umi Says" video. In 1999 he teamed up many well known MCs, who affectionately dubbed him Master Wel, to create the Amadou Project. Although never officially released, the Amadou Project celebrates the life of murdered West African vendor Amadou Diallo, shot 41 times in 1999, and it also give harsh commentary on police brutality.

Many of the questions asked during the Q&A by audience members, most of whom were close associates of Irvine, surrounded the nature of his death. Many speculated about his decision to take his life in the parking lot of EAB Bank, some made suggestions that it symbolized his rumored struggles with the IRS.

"We must show greater support and surround our artist and activist and those who go out on behalf of the greater community," says screening attendee Lisa Muhammad, activist and poet. “We had Weldon to turn to but he may not have had anyone to turn to himself.”

Happy New Year!

2006-01-01T13:00:00.000-05:00

True talk: bringing in the New Year with Abiodun of the Last Poets always gives me the feeling that this year will be chock full of art. Last time I rang in the New Year with them, I had an amazing artistic year. This man can throw a party, Abiodun's New Years jam has been going on for 27 years! As soon as you walk in the door, he's there greeting people, telling folks to help themselves to food (peas and rice is on the menu, of course!) and insisting that you make yourself at home. At this party we're counting down on the Djembe drum, we're reciting poetry and of course, we are dancing under the requisite blue light. He lives on Morningside Heights, so the view from his home is spectacular: you can see all of Harlem! There's beautiful of art hanging from the walls. And, people are wearing art: everyone's decked out. And, I'm not going to talk about the brothers at the party, lets just say they're a work of art, too!

Create art, love and live!

Happy New Year!

A Love Supreme

2005-12-29T18:35:00.000-05:00

John Coltrane and Alice Coltrane
photography by Chuck Stewart

Life and Afterlife In Benin

2005-12-25T09:51:00.000-05:00

Photography by Okwui Enwezor

To the east.

2005-12-21T19:53:00.000-05:00

Syreeta sung so graciously with Stevie Wonder back in the early 70s. She sung the lyrics, I can see the sun in late December. Well, I can't see the sun in New York City. Where is it? I want to feel the sun, I'd like turn into crimson and purple and orange, absorbing the rays as the sun sets. Maybe If I were in the Sahel I could once again feel the dry air graze my arms and back and through my hair; My feet wants to be planted on wet rocks on a beach. We need sand, saltwater and heat. I want to eat a plate of food that was cooked for hours in a pot by an old woman. I need space. It would be nice to have some city dweller smile at me or even kiss me. I looked for the sun today, but since there is a strike, the subway stations are closed and I couldn't climb up to the platform and see the sun and the emerging moon. They were hidden behind buildings. Everything is so flat; walking down the street I cannot see what's ahead of me or behind me, there are no mountains and hills like in San Francisco where you can feel on top of the world, depending where you are, Lombard street or Twin Peaks. I need to get to Mombasa and Zanzibar, quick.

2005-12-19T16:24:00.000-05:00

Exhausted!

2005-12-15T22:02:00.000-05:00

Have you ever been so tired you want to cry? This is how I feel right now. I am depleted of energy. Word up. Things have been going well for my photography. I have a solo show in Jan, I am exhibiting in a group show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Washington, DC. I am awaiting a decision for two other shows I have submitted work to. I am also finishing up two essays for a two new anthologies. I've been working and trying to find a new job and apartment. Plus, I have a heart full of love and I've been looking for someone who wants to revel in it.

Evidence of Africa

2005-12-10T19:12:00.000-05:00

I've been secrectly overwhelmed this week by a new discovery. I'm an African.

You think I'm kidding, but no. I am African-American, yes, obviously. Yes, African, but from where? I have traveled to the continent several times and each country I land in, I wonder, am I from this particular land?

I really wanted to know from where. Which languague did we speak? My Africaness was just a general notion, which didn't make me feel as secure. When Alex Haley traced his family back to the Gambia, I was envious.

My family isn't big on family trees and genealogy, so there's not many records of who were were. I felt bad. Especially when my friends could point on a map of Africa and say this is where my family is from. I also felt bad when friends of mine could atleast trace their family down to great great grands, or when heirlooms such as quilts and lockets were still in their possession. I felt like an isolated African being. Nothing to point to, nothing I could hold in my hands. Until now.

My discovery isn't anything tangible but it is evidence. It is something that made me feel whole .

I overheard my grandmother talking to my mother. Out of the blue, my grandmother says, you know what your great grandfather's name was? My mother says, no. My grandmother says, your great grandfather name was Kwaku! Then the doubles over with laughter. She comes up for a breath and says, isn't that an ugly name?

My mother says, it's an interesting name. Grandma says, I think it's an African name, Kwaku!

I just listen in amazement. Kwaku. Evidence of Africa. Kwaku is a name from Ghana, a real place. Kwaku means a male child was born on Wednesday. I had a grip on my identity. My notion of Africa, a huge landmass, had been narrowed down. My family might be from Ghana. There was peace in my mind for one moment.

Another Star

2005-12-05T23:05:00.000-05:00

Jazz Throwback

2005-11-29T01:17:00.000-05:00

Oh, so handsome. Photography by FireFish

In the meatime, as we wait for Mr. Hargrove's new record, due out in February, I offer you a throwback review of Hard Groove. Peace.

Roy Hargrove Presents The RH Factor: Hard Groove

By: Laylah Amatullah Barrayn
Vibe Online
July 25, 2003

There’s something steely about Hard Groove. It’s not the usual high brow, hard-bop offering. No, this is “the funk” as filtered through Roy Anthony Hargrove’s jazz mind. Backtrack to when Miles Davis dropped the very funky and electronic In A Silent Way. It was a wrap for his acoustic sound and style. Jazz fundamentalists be forewarned, this could be déja vu looming.

Recorded at Jimi Hendrix's Electric Lady Studios in New York, Hard Groove was mixed down in analog to simulate the live show ambiance of a juke joint, tavern, or even a South African shebeen-right in your home. The album opens up with "Hardgroove," a bass-driven, midtempo song that actually lays down the mood trajectory of the album's overall soundscape, and that is definitely "the funk."

To paraphrase jazz master Duke Ellington, the jazz musician is the freest person in the world, with freedom being the very essence of jazz. Roy Hargrove exemplifies that free spirit to the fullest. Although this trumpet and flugelhorn player is a former protege of Wynton Marsalis, and by extension an aesthetic grandson of Ralph Ellison, chronologically Hargrove is one of us - a straight-up hip hop head. The 33-year-old Dallas native, rocking locks and dirty denims has created a hub for jazz, R&B, hip hop, and funk on Hard Groove, representing an expanded musical sensibility of a much-underestimated generation.

Head here to finish reading this review.

LOVE

2005-11-28T23:21:00.000-05:00

People say: Laylah, I love you. And I think to myself: Really?

If you did love me, then I wouldn't be so suprised to hear you say the words.

Your love would have been something I knew already. I would have felt it from miles away.

Love transcends the means we can manipulate and it has no shame and fear.

You don't love me.

Jazz Soul

2005-11-25T09:19:00.000-05:00

Oh yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. George Benson. With the 1976 release Breezin’ GB sought to catch folks off guard, so he slipped a vocal on the remake of ‘This Masquerade’ and permanently tilted the trajectory of his already well-groovin’ jazz career. Breezin’ went multiple times platinum. Jazz fans enjoyed the sparkle of pride in there eyes for his mainstream success but also became possessive because their jazz guitarist had acquired admirers other than listeners who appreciated the fundamentals of swing.

I hate to imagine if he decided to keep his deliciously homegrown voice to himself. By now we’d still have a legendary guitarist, which is fine. But, how fly is it to vocalize alongside your guitar chords? His way of paralleling the two has decidedly become his tradmark– this is what we expect from George Benson, this is how we know it’s a GB track. (Although it took me a minute to realize that the song 'Inside Love/So personal' was George Benson – I didn’t know, I had it on a mix tape for years! Plus, I was like 6 years-old when it dropped.)

And, even though the 80s pulled George Benson further into the R&B world (with production work by Kashif) his singing voice, chocked full of over-enunciations, could still be identified as jazz vocal styling. Even uber-producer Qunicy Jones was caught up in the R&B rapture. From Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall, to his own dance machine record The Dude, you weren’t sure if Qunicy and partner in crime, songwriter Rod Temperton, gave jazz a rest permanently. 'Give Me The Night', a QJ production, is one of those tracks DJs slip into the gettin’ down medley of Chaka Khan’s 'I Know You, I Live You'; Frankie Beverly and Maze’s 'Before I Let You Go'; James D-Train Williams 'You’re The One For Me', etcetera.

If George Benson ever comes to BB Kings, I will be there a day early. I’ve never seen him perform. Sad, sad, sad. And, on top of that, he was at all the major jazz festivals this year (which I missed. Not trying to be a junketeering additct like ole boy from John Henry Days). And, anyway, I might hurt myself at his show, cause I’d be up there in the front row going bananas. They might have to put me on stage alongside the vocal accompaniment, for real. Believe it or not, this is on my to-do list for 2006. Okay, I have a separate to-do list, one for serious life decisions and the other is for live shows. Some folks who are scratched off: Roy Ayers, Stevie Wonder, Earth, Wind and Fire, seen ‘em. Folks who still remain: Al Jareaux, Santana, Patti Labelle and GB.

And I heard Them Say

2005-11-23T23:35:00.000-05:00

I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him. ~Booker T. Washington

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain. ~James Baldwin

Giving up doesn't always mean you are weak; sometimes it means that you are strong enough to let go. ~Author Unknown

When love is lost, do not bow your head in sadness; instead keep your head up high and gaze into heaven for that is where your broken heart has been sent to heal. ~Author Unknown

I never knew until that moment how bad it could hurt to lose something you never really had. ~From the television show The Wonder Years

Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. ~Malachy McCourt

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you. ~Lewis B. Smedes

He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass. ~George Herbert

Optimists are nostalgic about the future. ~Chicago Tribune

You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them. ~Michael Jordan

When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you. ~African Proverb

It's pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness. Poverty and wealth have both failed. ~Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard

Many people are extremely happy, but are absolutely worthless to society. ~Charles Gow

just some general quotes from folks...

Feel No Pain

2005-11-22T22:31:00.000-05:00

I am crying. I hate this.

New Orleans cultural ambassador and trumpeter Irvin Mayfield's father, missing until two days ago:

"PERSONAL MESSAGE FROM MARK SAMUELS, PRESIDENT, BASIN STREET RECORDS
On behalf of my family and my company, I wish to send our condolences to Irvin Mayfield and his family. Irvin Mayfield, Sr. (Irvin's father) was identified this past weekend at the morgue and he appears to have drowned. A private ceremony will be held after Thanksgiving. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra at www.thenojo.com. The money will be spent on youth education."

It makes no sense.

RIP.

Candid Jazz

2005-11-21T14:23:00.000-05:00

Wynton Marsalis talking with his younger brother, jazz drummer Jason Marsalis at their parents' home in New Orleans. By Nubar Alexanian

Cashmere Scarf

2005-11-20T17:41:00.000-05:00

I've been obsessed with buying a cashmere scarf. Not because Cashmere is luxurious but because I'm freezing! I will have in my arsenal all the elements used to kick the winters azz: leather, cotton, wool, long johns, suede, down/feathers and cashmere...am I missing anything?

The Holy Grails of Jazz

2005-11-17T15:54:00.000-05:00

Photo credit: William Gottlieb, photographer.
"Portrait of Dizzy Gillespie, New York, N.Y., ca. May 1947 (playing his horn)," 1947.
William P. Gottlieb - Photographs from the Golden Age of Jazz, Library of Congress.

NEGRITUDE 2.0: The Holy Grails of Jazz

By Mark Reynolds (taken from PopMatters.com)

It's been my experience that when they go, they don't come back. People depart this mortal coil, we cry and mourn their departure, and we try to laugh and console ourselves with the memories and reminders of what they left behind. That is the pattern, irrevocable and unwavering. So it is when relatives pass, when friends move on, and when cultural icons die as well.

The difference is that what our icons leave behind is often for public consumption, not a private experience or a personal anecdote. Our icons leave bodies of work, historic achievements, and lessons in textbooks. We tell ourselves that they are gone but their example remains, and as long as we continue to use the example of their lives for inspiration in ours, those beloved icons will never really be away from us completely. And as we've done this year with the passing of Ossie Davis, John H. Johnson, August Wilson, and Rosa Parks, we also say that someone else must now pick up where they left off.

But every now and then, we're afforded a chance to learn something new about those who've passed, something that may not have been part of the remembrance when they passed. A new piece of scholarship, some sort of buried treasure, or a crucial link in the life's chain emerges, and our knowledge and appreciation broadens just a bit more. There's no better place to observe that phenomenon than the world of jazz, and the jazz record business in particular, a field where the past is not only prologue: it's also a profit center.

To continue reading The Holy Grails of Jazz, click here.

Bathing in Luxury

2005-11-13T21:02:00.000-05:00

Four Seasons, Langkawi, Malaysia

For a week of my life, I bathed in this tub and took a shower outside in a garden of flowers. That was the life.

Dreaming of Jazz

2005-11-12T10:31:00.000-05:00

Someone please tell me why this man was in my dreams? I shouldn't share my dreams with you, but this one was plesantly unexpected. I dreamed that I married Jason Marsalis. Random dude, right? I'm probably listening to much to Los Hombres Calientes Vol I.

Usually my dreams are remnants of recent experiences. Well, I haven't seen Jason since January when we were in Barbados, he was touring with his father. So in the dream, all of which I don't remember, I believe we are in a theater, he's says lets get married and I'm like no, man. Then he gives me this serious look, the one he always has, and brings me close to him like he's going to kiss me. Jason is very, very tall (and handsome) in real life but in the dream he's a bit shorter. He asks me again and I say okay. So we get married and I am strangely happy with him, a drummer. (Percussionists are fly, don't get me wrong; I'm just really a woodwind/brass woman, maybe even a keyplayer's girl) So, when I wake up this morning, I look around for Jason and he's not there. I sigh with disappointment.

Maybe I should pick up his record today.

The Truth

2005-11-10T09:51:00.000-05:00

As much as the truth may hurt some people, I find it liberating as a mug; especially when it's what you've been searching for. I'm always striving to stand on the side of truth even if it's against myself. Sometimes that is difficult, but it is necessary because truth will always be the victor.

So, if you are passing through, please post something that is true.

That's all I have to say for now.

Cooling Tea

2005-11-08T00:05:00.000-05:00

Cooling Tea (c) Laylah Amatullah Barrayn

Le Marché Sandaga, Ville Dakar, Senegal. 2000

I want to jump into this picture and drink the tea she is cooling.

Jazz Contest for HBCU Students

2005-11-04T09:04:00.000-05:00

Let folks know about this contest! Copy and Paste, forward, post, spread the word!

'Jazz Up Your Campus' contest

What: Jazz Alliance International, Inc. (JAI) launches www.gotjazz.info and the "Jazz Up Your Campus" contest for students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU)

Contest Deadline - November 30, 2005

Who: Jazz Alliance International, Inc. (JAI)

Enter to Win!!

Jazz up your campus and WIN a trip to New York City to take part in the largest annual gathering of the global jazz community.

Mos Def, John Coltrane, Outkast, Miles Davis...got jazz? Jazz is a culture of freedom, expression, and innovation. It is the source influencing today's contemporary sound and lifestyle. JAI is looking for creative, culturally aware students to contribute to a nationwide music promotion... bringing jazz music and culture to HBCU's.

Submit an original proposal connecting jazz to HBCU campuses for review by JAI panelists. Selected submissions will receive round-trip airfare plus hotel accommodations in New York City, to participate in the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE) 33rd Annual International Jazz Conference January 11-14, 2006. The grand prize includes a one year paid internship with JAI to implement the winner's proposal.

Visit www. gotjazz.info for contest information and to discover more about jazz culture.

www.gotjazz.info is a program of Jazz Alliance International (JAI) and is supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (NABOB), the Urban League and Howard University's Jazz and Theatre Departments.

Jazz Alliance International, Inc. is a subsidiary of the International Association for Jazz Education, (IAJE) and is dedicated to expanding the audience and visibility of jazz and, through education, leadership and advocacy, seeks to raise the profile of the jazz art form and foster better working relationships within the global jazz community.

For more information about JAI go to http://www.jazzai.org/

For more information about IAJE go to http://www.iaje.org/

For more information: http://www. gotjazz.info/

Jazz @ Lincoln Center

2005-11-01T07:27:00.000-05:00

The Allen Room, Jazz at Lincoln Center, NYC

I am enchanted by this new space built specifically to hear acoustic jazz. It is so wonderfully constructed, with three venues in JALC: Dizzy's Club, Rose Hall and The Allen Room. I am at once happy to see such a elegant jazz space in such an important hub for media and communications, Time Warners world headquarters at 59th street Columbus Circle, but then again it seems so removed from the people - unless you go looking for it and once you find it, do you have the money to get in?

Jazz Cafe on Lewis Avenue in Bed-Stuy is a store front venue but is just as elegant and aptly placed. I doubt that Jazz @ Lincoln Center will replace my love for Iridium and Jazz Standard. There are some places that have my love forever: SOBs, Knitting Factory, BB Kings, etc. So, on top of my love for jazz and now JALC, is my decade long love with Wynton Marsalis, who is creative director. I know, don't bother to message me or email me - or direct me to a Buckshot LeFonque link/CD, the love ain't shifting anytime soon.

I remember my former boss asking me of my preference: Mr. Wynton or Mr. Brandford. Wynton. I just know more about him, I know his stee. Back in high school, I saw him on the regular playing ball or just chilling around Lincoln Center. Then I began to learn about his philosophy on life and jazz. Plus his full grown artistry is just so attractive as well as his confidence. I like Wynton, leave me alone...

(For the record: folks always try to hip me to the jazz pantheon: Miles, Jordan, Duke, Carter, Torme, Armstrong, Roach, 'Trane, Johnson, Vaughn, et, al...I know and love them. I just like talking about the contemporary musicians also. They deserve the energy, too, ya know.)

Anyway, back to Jazz at Lincoln Center. I paid a little visit to Dizzy's Club on Sunday night, on a (semi) date, no less, with Mr. CelebrityJazzDude. I know I said I would keep my distance, but he's an artist as his apex, with tons of confidence to match; I like the company, plus I should draw my inspiration from many sources nowadays. It was an interesting evening, indeed. Try walking in the door of a jazz venue on the arm of a well known jazz musician, people automatically want to know who you are - this, however, is another story.

Randy Weston and his African Spirits were playing, this time with a 5-piece band as opposed to just the three I saw last time at TriBeCa performing Arts Center. Mr. Weston, who has worked with the Gnawa of Morocco for many years, is an excellent pianist and bandleader. He gives his personnel such creative room to solo and they take full advantage of the gesture; I can't see how or what his bandmembers are incited by exactly, maybe it's internal among their collective, or Mr. Westons' genius in general, but they play at their zenith it seems. And this is what jazz/artistry is about: going all the way till you cant go any further; establishing your comfort zone then getting the hell out of it, quick. Mr. Westons drummer and bassist are lively players, I love them.

I'd tell you more but I gotta get my day on. I have to assemble yet another photo portfolio. I ain't mad at that, lol!

Black journalism in the pages of the 'Voice'

2005-10-28T11:50:00.000-04:00

(there was a point in time where I wanted to wed Mr. Greg Tate, lol, until I met his daughter and she was my age!)

License to Ill
Black journalism in the pages of the 'Voice'
by Greg Tate

I began reading the Voice because of Stanley Crouch, who in 1977 was the epicenter of frontline jazz criticism in America at the most auspicious moment in the music's progression since the early 1960s. That period saw the communal clustering in New York of the music's last generation of rebellious, high-concept pioneers and Crouch pretty much kept those of us interested parties in the hinterlands up on what they were doing night to night in various lofts, dives, and haunts. Besides his wartime dispatches on the '70s avant-garde, though, Crouch also produced long-form gems like "Bringing Atlantis to the Top," his epic essay on the promising way newjacks like Olu Dara, David Murray, Henry Threadgill, and Julius Hemphill were commingling funk, avant-garde, and other Afro-diasporic forms. "Atlantis" was as significant a thesis on the topic as had been written since Amiri Baraka's "The Changing Same (R&B and the New Music)"—and one that only would have appeared in the Voice.

Having been inducted into the ranks of Voice readers by Crouch, I also got to read the first major piece on hiphop and dance when Sally Banes's breakthrough article on breakdancing was published here in 1981. Being down with the VV in those years also meant reading the scant but intimate work on the 'hood and its tragedies by an amazing and forgotten sister named Ianthe Thomas, Clayton Riley's innovative and comparative analysis of improvisatory technique in basketball and bebop, and a Thulani Davis screed on James Brown—all of which said to me that the Voice was where it was at for an intellectually curious young Negro like myself.

It was largely due to Thulani Davis's encouragement that I sent my first demos in 1981 to Robert Christgau, whose response was, "The more writing like this I get in this paper the more I'll like it." Talk about a license to ill. Christgau became a one-man affirmative action committee in the 1980s, largely responsible for the paper recruiting and employing not only moi but Nelson George, Barry Michael Cooper, Thulani Davis, Carol Cooper, Pablo Yoruba Guzman, and Enrique Fernandez. His roster also included those impressive Negro sympathizers Gary Giddins and Chip Stern—all because he believed Afro-diasporic musics should on occasion be covered by people who weren't strangers to those communities.

When Lisa Jones joined the paper in 1984 she became a one-woman Ivy League affirmative action conduit for a whole generation of predominantly Yale graduate African Americans who gradually invaded the paper as copy editors, writers, and editors—these notably including Lisa Kennedy, Ben Mapp, and Donald Suggs. (The Yale mafia also included Voice luminaries Joe Wood, Erik Davis, Joe Levy, and Julian Dibbell.) The twentysomething group also came to include James Hannaham, Scott Poulson-Bryant, and Public Enemy's media assassin Harry Allen. The Voice's coverage of Black culture and politics became the most trenchant and erudite to be found anywhere in the country, thanks to the aforementioned and to the arrival of Peter Noel and his exceptional coverage of the grassroots Black politics that dominated New York progressive politics in the late '80s and early '90s. So when hiphop and the new Black nationalism were transforming the zeitgeist, the Voice's incredible cadre of young African American writers were thinking deeply about the meaning of Black identity, culture, and politics as emerging figures like Cornel West, Henry Louis Gates, bell hooks, Tricia Rose, and Michele Wallace were bringing their brio to a resurrected Black Identity debate, and as equally dynamic figures from Black bohemia like Spike Lee, errant

Voice contributor Vernon Reid, Tracy Chapman, Chuck D, Trey Ellis, the Hudlin Brothers—all of whom were prominently covered in the paper before and after they became household names—began to make work that helped elucidate and complicate that same debate.

The attrition of that corral of talent was to some degree inevitable. People like Lisa Jones and Barry Michael Cooper became players in the film industry; Nelson George focused on film and book projects; others departed because of burnout. Vibe and The Source emerged to become the more logical choices for the next generation of hiphop writer-activists like dream hampton, Karen Good, Robert Marriott, and Paul Miller, who all the same helped keep the paper's hiphop coverage vital and informative.

The Voice never stopped featuring hiphop, but as it became a more dominant staple of American popular culture and developed its own reportorial outlets, the paper's coverage became less central to the discussion—certainly far less than it had been in the early '80s when George and Cooper pretty much single-handedly invented hiphop journalism, and I became, by default, the crackpot inventor of hiphop semiotics (there being few Black writers around at the time who gave much of a damn about either deconstruction or theories of boom-bap-itude).

When I moved to New York in 1982 I got a call from Crouch, who pointedly asked me, what did I see myself as trying to do in New York? I puckishly replied that my intention was to be a moving target. The nature of the Voice easily made that radical pipe dream of a career plan a reality. I can't think of anywhere else my impudent ass would have been able to do the history of Harlem one week, George Clinton and hermeneutics the next, or routinely be encouraged to dispense my arcane opinions on Bootsy Collins, King Sunny Ade, Cecil Taylor, and the Bad Brains, or be given major space to theorize on the trial of eight Black revolutionaries whose sympathies lay with members of the Black Liberation Army and the Weather Underground.

This doesn't even begin to talk about the utterly outrageous liberties I got to take with the English language high and low here because, as was explained to me—by that amazing staff of editors who midwifed and made the paper sing in the '80s: Christgau, M. Mark, Kit Rachlis, Vince Aletti, Ross Wetzsteon, et. al—the Voice was a writer's paper, where editors were encouraged to help you say what you wanted to say in the way you wanted to say it and stay vaguely consistent with the style manual. The degree to which I and others were able to take this notion and run buck wild with it was confirmed for me years later when Vernon Reid told me that upon first encountering my early work here, he didn't know what the hell I was talking about but he knew I had to be a brother. Point being that for myself and Nelson, Stanley, Barry, Lisa, Thulani, and others, the Voice was once upon a time a place where you could actually get published (and get paid) to think long and hard about the meaning of being Black in a style and form that was racially motivated, and maybe even racially overdetermined for some overwhelmed readers' tastes, but never dull, if only because of how furiously we were all riding our own prose dilznicks and cliznits. We were the sheet, knew it was our time, and let the record show, we all wrote as if we knew it.

Casanova Brown

2005-10-26T16:22:00.000-04:00

Teena Marie's Casanova Brown
(a great breakup song, by the way)

My baby's fine
He always keeps me guessing
But never keeps me guessing about his love
He's had more girls than Howard Hughes had money
and you may think it funny when I say he loves me only
and who are you to say what he did when I was not around
just because I fell in love with Casanova Brown
Act 2 scene 5 is my command performance
my name is clairvoyance and it's all too clear
I was the one
who said tune in tomorrow
I think about tomorrow, even when I am asleep and
who are you to say
what I did when you weren't around
just because I fell in love with you
Casanova Brown
standing room only, the concerts so loud
everyone's there for the party
the hush turns to a shout
everyone's got a piece
of the pie
of you and I
but nobody knows when the lights go down
that the tears fall harder than the whole dam crowd
throw it down my love
is just about all I can do
wasn't I the one who said
I'll have my cake and eat it to
just couldn't wait any longer
you pushed till I was through
I love you so
It hurt me but I had to let,
let you go
Did you hear me crying, baby
It sounded a little bit like this
You didn't have to make me cry
tell me again and I'll tell you why, It's over.
It's over
It's over
Over before the love turns to hate
let's let it end and let's still be friends
oohhh ,oohhh, oohhh.

Fine Art and Fine Men

2005-10-18T15:39:00.000-04:00

Aight! Whoo! Been soo busy! But, guess who came to my photo exhibit yesterday?

Yup, Mr. Boris Kodjoe himself. This is the actual picture from the event, taken by Mr. Ray Tamarra. Boris is soooo tall. Like a tree or totem poll. He just showed up out of no where. Of course his wife, Nicole Ari Parker and their child came along too. Actually, I saw her first, but I couldn't believe one of the Soul Food stars would show up. So, of course I'm like, yo!!! That's Boris. I just said hi and thanks for coming. The gallery was too crowded, to capacity, to say anything else. All the media was there, NY Times, Vibe, Vixen, King, Essence, etc. At one point they stopped letting people in, hundreds of people was there already. All in all, I must say it was a great show. And, my piece sold too!

Judgment

2005-10-12T07:26:00.000-04:00

I've been so tied up that I haven't blogged in a week. This morning I received an email from someone literally on the other side of the earth who gave me a job as a babysitter when I was 18 years old. I was so offended by her email. And, when my anger went down, I felt my heart breaking. I felt judged. I hate to feel judged by those who you consider your friends, sisters and brothers. I had a conversation the other day with someone who I am trying not to love as much. He asked me something that I took with great offence because I felt he was judging me. I didn't let him know because I didn't want to seem silly or confrontational, plus it was probably all in my mind, but my hurt feelings were real and brought forth real tears.

Passing him by

2005-10-04T13:55:00.000-04:00

I remember the first time he asked me out. I was living on campus, it was spring 2002. We just met one day, he seemed like a cool dude. But, I was so shy, I turned him down. Second time was during that winter: still shy and I lost a little interest. Plus someone else was on my mind. The third time he asked me out I was running to the subway. I was on my way to cover a Roy Hargrove show. We rode the subway together and this is when I learned about his immense knowledge of jazz. But, I was so broke and self-concious, I wasn't in the mood for dating of any kind. I passed on his offer.

I didn't see him for months to follow. Then I saw him again in 2004, he asked I wanted to go the Blue Note, I forgot who was playing but he proposed a very nice evening. I couldn't go, I was leaving for the Gullah Islands and then Morocco and I had crazy things to take care of, including finding a place to stay in Fez - I didn't want to be homeless in another country!

Earlier this year he caught me right after I came from Los Angeles. Asked me out again. I was getting to know someone at the time and I don't juggle men. I had to turn him down.

Today, coming from the printer I see him. I tell him about the new Coltrane and Monk CD. He's like, what are you doing Saturday? Delfeayo Marsalis Quintet at Jazz @ Lincoln Center. I know. But, Ramadhan is starting this week and I'll be engaged with that; I don't want to do so much extra stuff.

The look on his face.

I'm sorry!!!

What can I do? What a wack feeling...

Young Kanye & Photography

2005-10-03T21:05:00.000-04:00

Before he became a monster! What a mookie! He's so cute!

I'm looking for the negatives for this one particular picture. This always happens before a show. The negatives conspire against me and hide. I have to get it re-printed, on better, nice archival paper, plus I have to lighten up a particular area on the print. I'm not going to do all that dodging and whatnot, I'll let these folks do it.

I gotta come correct cause the next exhibit will include giants in photography like Gordon Parks, Renee Cox, Deborah Willis, Barron Claiborne, Delphine Fawundu Buford, etc in the show. It's gonna be over 60 photographers, I don't even know the other people. I know it's gonna be mad people from this photo-anthology my stuff was featured in (by the way, thank you for that) So, I gotta step my photo game up. I gotta step my game up anyway, I'd like to do important things with my photography in the near future so I gotta start now. No more running to Adorama - well, maybe. I gotta find that darn loupe, too. I think I was drinking espresso out of it...

Aight, poof, I'm gone...

The weekend.

2005-09-30T08:31:00.000-04:00

I'm walking out the door. I'd like to tell you about the closing reception but I gotta get my Friday on. The event was hella cool. Wonderful crowd, food and live music. More later.

My feet are cold, I need some shoes! And, socks! What happened to summer, y'all? Maybe I should retire my sandals(*weeping*), with it being like 55 degrees and all. So, I guess this weekend will be shopping, banking, printing and framing. (And, first Saturdays @ the Brooklyn Museum of Art AND a nice dinner somewhere and the SPA, SPA, SPA, well, maybe.) I am really going to holla at some long johns. I might pick up a NANO, too, I'm not sure. I'm afriad of the screen breaking. Maybe an IRiver maybe one of the cute Sony MP3 players - they have the pink ones exclusively at Target. I'll find the right MP3 player soon enough. No rush.

The pic is of my girl Busi Mlongo. Yup, she's real fly, kinda like Patti LaBelle, Chaka Khan and Earth Wind & Fire rolled up in one, South African style, of course. I saw Ms. Lady in Cape Town in 2003 and she tore the house down, I didn't know what she was saying but I was doing the Electric Slide, Kid'N Play, Running Man, Humpty Dance, Cabbage Patch, Crip Walk, the Wop, the butt, etc, throughout the whole show. Sam Jackson was standing right next to me, he wasn't dancing, though. He gotta be cool, like Shaft and sh*t. I really miss South Africa. I need to check it out again. It's such a haunting and beautiful place. Ah, soon enough...

In the meantime I'm visiting some cool peeps, you should too: BomaniBabatunde, Akintoye, Jimi Izreal, Scott - Mr. Hung, Hassan Le French, Renee Dupree Goddess, Nappy Diatribe, The Foxy Brown Show!, Chrome (Mr. GetttingMeInTrouble@work), Mr. Poet/Jazzman - the lovers' Lover.

More visits later. My Turtle Nut Iced Latte is calling. Shop shop!

SPA WEEK!

2005-09-29T17:14:00.000-04:00

Oh my goodness, National Spa Week is approaching us! October 17- 23, 2005, Spa Treatments are only 50 dollars! Click here to locate a spa to indulge yourself in.

A Request

2005-09-28T18:16:00.000-04:00

Si vous pouvez obtenir cette chanson à moi je vous aimerai à jamais. J'ai besoin de visiter la spa. Je suis accablé avec le travail. Mes besoins français travaillent, je sais. mais je dois pratiquer parfois autrement je le perdrai complètement.

Come check moi out.

2005-09-28T08:25:00.000-04:00

Okay, people. The closing reception of the MX80 Exhibit is tomorrow and I want to see you there!

(Stay tuned for my next exhibit at the Latin Collector Gallery, next month, I'll keep you posted.)

MX80: a fine arts contemplation of the life & legacy of Malcolm X
September 8-29,2005
Exhibition & Benefit Auction
www.malcolmx80.com

You are cordially invited:

Closing Reception & Final Auction
Thursday Sept 29th, 6-9pm

Featured Artists:

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, Anthony Bonair, Miles Bumbray, Wesley Clarck, Nigel Clarke, William Cordova,Jimmy James Greene, Leslie Hewitt, William Jones, Eric Mack, Githinji Wa Mbire, Eesuu Odundide, Marc Andre Robinson, Hank Willis Thomas, Amanda Williams

Plus...

A reading by celebrated author Asha Bandele from her new book, "The Subtle Art of Breathing".

Live jazz band featuring Djibril Toure (Bass), Ramsey Jones (Drums), Kwame Coleman (Piano) & Khahil Murray (Flute).

BRECHT FORUM GALLERY
451 West St. (between Bethune & Bank)
Below 12th St. along the westside highway
A,C,L,1,2,3 trains to 14th St.

rsvp_mx80@yahoo.com

*All tax-deductible proceeds from auction sales support the Malcolm X Grassroots Movements programs. These include the Grassroots Movement Katrina Relief Effort, The
people's self-defense campaign against police brutality (Cop Watch), after-school programming in Brooklyn Public Schools, a community library, and free legal aid clinics.

Tagged.

2005-09-27T17:54:00.000-04:00

Aight, Chrome tagged me! Here are my answers:

WHAT ARE YOUR FAVORITE ARTICLES OF CLOTHING?
My brown scarf and my navy denim skirt

THE LAST CD YOU BOUGHT?
Brand New Heavies - very, very old school

WHAT TIME DO YOU WAKE UP IN THE MORNING?
5:30

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE KITCHEN APPLIANCE?
My waffle baker

IF YOU COULD PLAY AN INSTRUMENT, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
I'd be on the bass real quick!

FAVORITE COLOR?
Brown

FAVORITE CHILDREN’S BOOK?
Honey I Love

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SEASON?
Hot fun in the Summer time!

IF YOU HAVE A TATTOO, WHAT IS IT?
No tattoo on the browness, sorry!

IF YOU COULD HAVE ONE SUPERPOWER, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
to stop bad things from happening before they happen

ONE PERSON/PEOPLE FROM YOUR PAST YOU WISH YOU COULD GO BACK AND TALK TO:
my greatgrands

WHAT IS UNDER YOUR BED?
Negatives, shoes, luggage, books

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE DAY?
Friday. Jummah, man...

WHICH DO YOU PREFER, SUSHI OR HAMBURGER?
Sushi? I'll put the sushi on the hamburger!

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE FLOWER?
Gardenias, they smell so good!

DO YOU LIKE YOUR JOB?
I like my job, i'd like it even better if everyone there quit!

WHAT IS YOUR DREAM JOB?
Traveling the world and writing and photographing my journey

THREE THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
My smile, my hair and my heart

THREE THINGS YOU HATE/DISLIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
my fear, when I hold grudges, my insomnia

THREE OF YOUR EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS:
Prayer, music and Dunkin Donuts Turtle Nut Iced Latte

THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW:
Old Navy denim mini skirt (only in the crib), a choli, and brass ankle bracelets (on both ankles)

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE BANDS/ARTISTS (AT THE MOMENT):
Los Hombres Calientes, Marvin Gaye, Monk!

THREE NEW THINGS YOU WANT TO TRY IN THE NEXT 12 MONTHS:
Sky diving, checking out Berlin and Amsterdam, a solo photo show

THREE THINGS YOU WANT IN A RELATIONSHIP (LOVE IS A GIVEN):
honesty/comfort/reciprocity/tons of passion/freedom/longevity!

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS ABOUT THE OPPOSITE SEX THAT APPEAL TO YOU:
height, eyes, arms

THREE THINGS YOU JUST CAN'T DO
give up, sleep (sometimes), revenge

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE HOBBIES:
photography, writing, traveling, taking long walks

I am taggingMarcus, Jalylah, Akin, Reneeand Hassan! Man, I'm tagging everyone!

Brooklyn, Stand Up!

2005-09-27T05:15:00.000-04:00

Big Daddy Kane ripped it, killed it, tore it apart last night on VH1 Hip Hop Honors! What!? It may not have started with Kane but he definitely brought the finesse into the game. Reppin' the hood, where Brooklyn at, baby?

Common, Black Thought,TI...going at it HARD! Man, I almost had a attack...

Ah!

2005-09-26T21:30:00.000-04:00

How delicious?
(back foto by Mr. Ray Tamarra)

Dinner with a Celebrity

2005-09-24T22:40:00.000-04:00

I've never been out on the town with a celebrity. Until now. I won't call it a date, cause really, we were just chillin like two villains. And, I can't tell you who dude is, but he is a rather well known jazz musician - and that is all I will disclose - I'm not trying to be like 'oh, I went on a date with suchandsuch - I'm not the bragging type! (AND, for those with the active imaginations, its not Mr. Man or anyone from his band. Although Mr. Willie Jones is hella cool, we hung in L.A.)

Okay, so Mr. Hep Cat and I decided to take in a fading summer evening downtown. We had dinner at Kin Khao, a restaurant I've heard great things about but never got around to checking out. Kin Khao is this hip little Thai joint with lots of young and trendy folks, nice decor and cool vibes, etc. I got on my Enzo Angliolini's so I'm pretty fly myself, lol! We sit and eat. He looked so handsome. Dressed for the oassion, he wore a suit and a hat for goodness sake, y'all. Ladies, you know. Folks are looking our way, no, excuse me, his way. One middle aged man comes over and gives my dude a pat on the back and a nice to meet you. I'm surprised.

I'm in awe with Mr. Jazzman, anyway. I'm always quick to admire someone. (Maybe I shouldn't let him know, guys seem to be turned off when you are actually feeling them, but that's another story.) He reminds me of my good friend Rahsaan from the Jazz Institute of Chicago. Mr. Jazzman is so young. He's just a few years older than I and has internalized this immense knowledge of jazz and black music. He is such the jazz musician in that his his thoughts are filtered through jazz theories on America, Blackness and preservation. I feel proud of him. Our conversations make me feel well traveled. I didn'ttell him that I just got his second album (my favorite) this summer at Amoeba Records in San Francisco.

Jazzman questions me all night. He is so interested in what I think about music. He's such the jazz musician that he wants to hear me describe the sonic landscape of the music I love. I told him about the multilayered stages of my love for Ramsey Lewis' Sun goddess. I told him about Miles Davis' All Blues and how it makes me feel. What John Coltrane's A Love Supreme means to me Islamically. I told him that Roy Hargrove's Liquid Streets sounds like a silk gown slipping off my dewy skin. I told him that what Fela was doing was jazz uninterrupted. The Qunicy Jones and Rod Temperton partnership; Wynton Marsalis' Mademoiselle d'Gascony and Sunflowers; George Benson; Culture Club. There was so much to describe. It took me back in time to the 80s. I remember dancing to D Train and Change when Luther Vandross sang lead.

I ask him to take me to his city of birth, meaning tell me about it. The Big Easy. He wanted to know about New York. I have to admit that after all the years as a dancer, I am still in transition in knowing New York as a writer, seeing it as a literary city. For many years the streets of Manhattan represented the stepping stones of Ailey and Forces of Nature, Limon and Dunham. I understood Times Square as a center for performance art. For me, West 66th street still sounds like Babatunde Olatunji and Irving Berlin. Everyday as I entered my high school I was reminded of Donny Hathaway and his suicide, his building was always in view. I was used to seeing Judith Jamison on Amsterdam Avenue. Gary Deloatch and Ulysses Dove still hold tremendous spaces in my heart. I demanded that he find a way to see Bill T. Jones Fever Swamp, a f*cking amazing piece!

Oh, my phone is ringing...Be right back!

The Lost Recordings

2005-09-21T10:33:00.000-04:00

Monk and Trane, y'all!

The lost recordings of Monk and Trane are here. Ever since they were found in February, we kept hearing about these tapes that were packed up in an old box at the Library of Congress. The recordings are of a concert held at Carnegie Hall in 1957 of the Thelonius Monk Quartet with John Coltrane (along with Ahmed Abdul-Malik and Shadow Wilson). The show was a benefit for the Morningside Heights Community Centerin Harlem. Now this execellent record is available to the public. I've been listening to my copy non-stop, it really is a beautiful piece of work. Pick it up when it drops on 26 Sept and stop by Vibe.com tomorrow to check my article on this wonderful discovery.

Orange Moon

2005-09-20T21:10:00.000-04:00

First, I'd like to *hug* my fellow bloggers. Thank you for the posts and emails. My blueness has faded away.

Sometimes the most simplistic things are slow to realize, they take much time to discover. While I feel so far away from my traveling friend, I realize the distance is not so great. Last night, from Brooklyn, I marveled at the moon and watched it meander across the sky. My friend also, stationed home, across the Atlantic, watched the trajectory of the moon, gashing through the sky, prancing through the navy blue marsh space to finally exit gracefully for the arrival of the sun. Same moon, we watched. Not at the same time, but it was the same moon. What unity. What connectedness. That thought was so filling for me. All day I thought of this very simple notion of concord and harmony. Reminded me of Surah Rahman where we are asked which favor of our Lord will we deny? None.

Kind of Blue

2005-09-18T12:33:00.000-04:00

Kind of blue. Kinda blue. Hanging on to the last remnants of summer. On my mind is love, and the decision to leave its fold. There is so much to say. But, it's a beautiful Sunday afternoon, so I am going outside to enjoy.

The Blues Manifested

2005-09-10T23:59:00.000-04:00

Jazzman by Charles Bibbs

"What we're about to see is what's gonna happen when people take the blues and turn it into what happens when you play the blues."

-Wynton Marsalis speaking on the Tavis Smiley show regarding the aptitude of the New Orleans people.

Beauty by Asha Bandele

2005-09-10T16:33:00.000-04:00

Beauty by asha bandele
from Essence, September 2001

Fom the beginning he has told me I am beautiful. I no longer argue with him, no longer direct his attention to the series of flaws I have somehow learned to see as the whole of myself. I smile at him, and say thank you, and try to see what he sees. I want to know the beauty he sees in me. I want to embrace it, to relax in it, to hold it close and feel protected by it on the days I feel myself shattering, getting lost in the ugly I have known. But this has yet to happen for me. This amazes him.

He asks me: Don't you see the way people look at you on the street? Don't you get a whole lot of attention from men? Look at yourself. He nearly demands this. The color of your eyes, your pretty hair, your smile, your figure. What's there that's not beautiful?

Nothing, I tell him, nothing at all. I say to him he's right, because to argue about beauty means I have to go all the way back, all the way into the places I keep trying to leave behind. So instead I agree with him, and quietly acknowledge that the special treatment I sometimes receive in restaurants and stores is probably based on my appearance. I acknowledge to him that there is this outside thing, this face, this body that is generally greeted by the world with the particular sort of kindness, the particular sort of favoritism that is granted to women and men who are deemed attractive.

What I do not acknowledge, what I do not say to him, is that however grateful I may be for what he sees on the outside, I have never been able to carry that same beauty on the inside. Beauty, the idea and space of it, is buried so far down in me, shoved down into a crevice by the memory of the teacher who molested me when I was a child, only 7 years old. Or later, when I was 14 and working in a movie theater, there was the 30-year-old who beat me up when I refused to have sex with him. Was I seen as beautiful when these and other incidents like them occurred? Can I be beautiful now as they still haunt me, still sneak up behind me and drag me back into the horror and ugliness of those days?

To continue reading Beauty go here

Come see me, tomorrow!

2005-09-07T01:50:00.000-04:00

Greetings, dear readers. Just back from Chicagoland. Had an wonderful trip. Had some rough spots, but everything came out wonderful. I'm trying not to let my sadness overcome me, the New Orleans situation is just so unbelieveable. My heart is broken. I am going to try to reroute that energy into Katrina relief efforts, school and art. In the meantime, come peep me tomorrow at the MX80 Exhibit @ 7pm, aight.

MX80: a fine arts contemplation of the life & legacy of Malcolm X

Exhibition & Auction www.malcolmx80.com

September 8-29,2005

Thursday Sept 8th, 2005 7-10pm

OPENING RECEPTION

Sounds curated by Lumumba aka DJ Revolution

Featured Artists:

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, Anthony Bonair, Miles Bumbray, Wesley Clarck, Nigel Clarke, William Cordova, Jimmy James Greene, Leslie Hewitt, William Jones, Eric Mack, Githinji Wa Mbire, Eesuu Odundide, Marc Andre Robinson, Hank Willis Thomas, Amanda Williams

BRECHT FORUM GALLERY

451 West St. (between Bethune & Bank)

Below 12th St. along Westside Highway

A,C,L,1,2,3 trains to 14th St.

Events:

Thursday Sept 15th 7pm

ARTIST TALK

Moderated by Rashida Bumbray of the Studio Museum in Harlem

Thursday Sept 22nd 6:30pm

FILM SCREENING

Curated by Listen Up! & National Black Planning Consortium

Thursday Sept 29th 7-10pm

CLOSING RECEPTION & FINAL AUCTION

Reading by Asha Bendele from her new book, "The Subtle Art of Breathing"

*All events also at the Brecht Forum

A Project of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement