Intimate

     Your neighborhood should be the place where you can be you.  That’s what it was for me:  On my street, in my community. . .   With people who know me, who care for me. . .  But then again, most of the people in my neighborhood looked like me.  Their mommies look like my mommy.  Their pops look like my pop.  They all made around the same amount of  money; had cars in which cost around the same cost—most of us even hung out with each other.  We acted in a similar way and had a lot of the same types of past-times; Like heading up to Brewytown to buy imbibes, indulging while listening to baseball or watching football—which is quite understandable because we thought a lot like each other:  Regular folks with regular ideas, trying to find our place in world—and this is the place that we’d fall back to: A quite comfortable place with people who understood us; who liked us, and got to know us because of our similarities:  The ARE endeared to us.  We faced the hardest times together.  We endured the pressures of THE OUTER mainstream world, and saw we had to protect our own principles, interests and INTEGRITY.   That’s because they are the same people, with similar interests; similar likes and dislikes.  You don’t have to think too hard about “what and why,” it’s within your sphere of thinking—because it’s in your genes—because it’s in your heritage.  Culture is what a people do, and as such, it is an outgrowth of a people’s evolution.  Sly from the Family Stone once said, Stand!  In the end, you’ll still be you: One who’s done all the things you set out to do.  Only integrity would allow a man to say that.  Stand for something, or fall for anything.  Only your principles will allow you to stay that.

     I grew up on a block with nineteen guys all around the same age, and with about the same amount of females.   We rolled together.  The reason we got together was to protect ourselves from being drafted into the neighborhood gang.  We were full of people with leadership abilities, we just found their politics different from our politics and we had not get amalgamated; we had to maintain our integrity, separate from being gang affiliated.  You dig me?  Any way, we lived next to the park, and man, did we comb it!  We covered all of its square mileage of that part of the park that was near our neighborhood.  We went to the park to go swimming at the park’s playgrounds.  We played baseball together by splitting up into two opposing teams.   We looked for girls in pairs and threesomes.  We played touch football and played chess in the recreation centers, and spent a lot of our waking hours together; And through these acts we really got to know each other very closely.  We were real intimate—in that respect. . .  We got up every morning and planted ourselves on the “stoops,” like permanent fixtures, until everybody was present and accounted for—then WE decided what WE were going to do.  Bobby was the leader—but Kevin was a leader in his own right—that is, he had a little faction of his own.  Heck, I was a leader too, but would bow to superior rationale; thus concur we truly had an oligarchy—if not, REAL democracy.  And without knowing it, we were developing a culture and evolving all of its’ elements.  Culture is, simply put, what a people do—it may be broken down into several sub-categories; but this is simply what it is.

    I said that, to say this: This country masquerades as a democracy, but it is really a domain culture ruling over a multi-cultural and multi-national society:  Only on my block, we were all Black children consisting of a group of  guys who were better at leadership than others were; In America, you have a group of members, put into power by the electorate; that is, members who have a certain amount of richness and social status—belonging to the same race—who then decide what members of other races they are going to be allowed to be symbolic tokens of the power which the ruling class always retain control of.  This is known as the Electoral College and White Supremacy.  There will be no hostile take-overs or factions that will grow in population in America and eventually overthrow the government; like the Goths did to the Roman government. . .  

     You see, on my block, we were all members of the same group of people—of the same social class—poor people on the come up: In this society, the electorate are members of the same type of people—but the group they preside over is multi-cultural and multi-national (with the Latino population rapidly increasing in size).  The Electoral College are members of the same social class which rule over America—the rich, which preside over all the other social classes: This type of atmosphere is what the Electoral College is made of, and they have the dubious distinction of electing the president who will rule over the country and Senate (most Senate members are rich are part of the legislative branch makes all the laws, declares war, regulates interstate and foreign commerce and controls taxing and spending policies). 

     Most people think THE PEOPLE elect the president of the United States; this is fundamentally flawed: When you vote, you vote for members of the electoral college who say they are for that official you want for the presidency.  Those members of the Electoral College usually vote in favor of who they represent, but all electors are not under contractual agreement to do so.  Which means, this group of rich Whites decide who will be the leader of the multi-cultural and multi-racial and multi-peopled America, and that is an application of White Supremacy.  In other words, you elect a group of rich Whites who are supposedly more informed and more elite at such matters to elect your president. . .  Elections in most government offices—city, state and federal—take substantial amounts of money in order to run for the position; so must candidates solicit to the wealthy for campaign contributions.  In turn, these candidates are obligated to their contributors to return the favor, by doing things on behalf of their contributors.  This allows the wealthy to maintain a certain status quo—this allows them to maintain their supremacy; while looking multi-cultural: The ones in office is the ones who will place the game the way the rich people of the people who colonized this place want it.  So in a democratic country, when you say, rule by the people, which people are you referring too: All the people or an elite group of rich colonizers who control the whole democratic process? 

     We, as the neighborhood oligarchy, seemed more democratic than this country, because we listened to everyone and decided what was best for as much as possible.  In this country, they will say that they do what’s best for the majority; but then they also say that that the majority rules: This implies a minority as well. . .which might be misconstrued as a smaller number—but that simply is not so: Women outnumber men all around the world at a ratio of about four to one, and yet women are called a minority: Is that true? So what does this word minority mean?  If you take all the minorities in this discussion that they are talking about and line them all up—you’d come up with a group that consists of all women, immigrants, then non-European immigrants, sexual alternatives and deviants, then Black males who live in this country.  Seems to me, that the word minority is short for lesser issues or things that White males who are descendants to this colony     would rather not deal with, but will deal with in hierarchal manner—of course, with Black males at the bottom.

     I used to work in a Jewish community that was pretty well, but I noticed in their stores there were some things you could get cheaper elsewhere.  Now these people had cars to go elsewhere, but continued to buy there.  It took me years to realize that supporting a community store to them (who are stereotyped as frugal), was more important than saving a buck.  This kind of logic eludes many of us, because we fall for the sales pitch of , “Why pay more?”  But when you sum it up, by spending money in another area; by paying sales taxes in another man’s area—your money goes to build up the richness of another community and the taxes pays for better, smoother roads for you to come and give up more of  hard earned money!  Why pay more, when you can make the rich get richer!  I’m with the Jewish concept: “Why pay more?  So you can keep your money and tax dollars in your community were it belongs.”

     Alphonso owned a restaurant on the corner of my block.  He lived nearby.  He served the sandwiches that we liked to eat.  He served hoagies of almost every type, tuna hoagies, regular hoagies. . .  And Greedo El Ducchi (my hungry alter ego) frequently combed the neighborhood for soda bottles (which carried with them a deposit fee), until I had enough bottles to purchase a hoagie and a Crystal-Mint Lifesavers.  Alphonso lived near by and I’m sure his spent some of the money he made in our neighborhoods—much more than we do today.  It is said that other cultures, and peoples of those cultures, recycle their wealth within their communities several times before that wealth is released to the mainstream society at large through paying various taxes and buying various goods, products and raw materials not produced within their smaller communities.

     The above discussions I had with you concerning my neighborhood camaraderie are commonly known as cultural past-times, rituals and practices.  These things vary from neighborhood to neighborhood, and people to people  Culture breaks down in to various subjects—like arts, humanity, education, religion and philosophy—but basically culture is what a people do.  Culture can also represents the evolution of  group conscious—intellectually through our interactions with ourselves and others—and our reflections upon those experiences experienced as a people.  In essence, what I’m saying is—the way I am—is in part due to my interactions with my own people and my interactions with mainstream America.  What I’m also saying is, my interactions with other people will always be different because of the way I am cultivated by my own people, in contradistinction to other peoples and cultures.  

     There are many, many acts and artifacts that bear unique significances only to the people who produced them: Others may experience them and even related to them—but not like the people who produce them; And then again, other people may not even see the relevance of it!  What I described to you, that went on in my neighborhood, touched some of you—on some levels because they are universal—on the other hand, some the levels in which these things can be experienced or related to may be only known to my people and my people alone:  Only Jewish people can tell of what effects that the holocaust had and continue to have on Jewish people.  They have certainly made plenty of movies concerning it, have built several institutions concerning it; as well as several neuroses because of it; and though we may try to relate—there are some things that will be known only to full fledged Jews fully immersed in Jewish culture—and the same thing goes for Hebrew people (peoples whose distinctions are as subtle as the difference between Latins, Latinos, and Italians). 

    Where I grew up—and the time I grew up—there weren’t that many Black stores in the neighborhood—most of them were Jewish stores and very often you would find customers having running tabs or credit with them.  And of those customers, many would complain that the owners would say that there was more owed than the borrower recollected.  I could only look at this as a perfect example of not treating others as you want to be treated, but I surmise this goes deeper than that.  I had a Jewish dentist who cracked my tooth and tried to act like it just decayed to that point: I knew this was not true, because I received cleaning four times a year by two different offices.  There’s no way the periodontist would miss the progressive development of such huge cavity that the dentist said I had; especially since he had an angle of his own (trying to get me to do an experiment treatment that my insurance wouldn’t cover).  I also worked for Jewish people on two occasions: A short order cook, in which his wife treated me repressively, like a slave and not an employee and an apartment building, where the owner was attempting to treat me like an object and not in the same human form as he.  Overall, I would say (based upon my experiences), I wasn’t just treated different but inferiorly, not as bright, and less than them.  I find that many Jews try to play the angles on us or treat us like servants and not as employees who are the same as them.  You would think after the oppression of Jews in Europe, and three holocausts, they wouldn’t do this to Black people; but I guess they see it differently. 

     Often I see this to be the case with many Caucasian people.  On a whole, though their might be many who will take the time to explore us as a people, there are equally those who want no contact at all or don’t concern themselves with our plight.  I subscribe that the best word for this is called xenophobic: having or showing a dislike of or prejudice against people from other countries,

 cultures, or peoples. 

     This becomes a huge dilemma, because overall, we as a people, teach our children to go to school, matriculate and seek employment from other races; instead of seeking employment for Black business.  This often leaves us subject to the opinion of others, which is low—since America has a lot to do with the image the world has of us.  We even have low opinions of ourselves, based upon the images that mainstream society projects concerning our people.  Years of slavery has culturally ingrained a plethora of bad habits for Black people.   We, as a people, have been subjected to such an inferior opinion of us in mainstream society for so long, that many of us also think negatively about ourselves and those of our kind.  We often try exotically to disassociate ourselves from this negative role in American society: “I’m one half cherokee and Black—and I think I got a little Filipino in me as well.”  What we must recognize that what you call, “I hate “the N word,” is the desire to disassociate with the pain associated with being Black in a White mainstream world that has never been friendly to us. 

     We  typically do not look at the possibility that among our own peers we can regulate our own image within our community.  As you should be able to see from the experiences I shared with you, we had a very tight block and a cohesive community for a very long time; showing that these types of thing CAN HAPPEN because they happened before.  I had a lot of love in the community I grew up in; and I am a product of that love.  Our love and pride is the key ingredient to making this happen.  The surveillance crews [police] in our communities are the only obstacle to changing the status quo that is plaguing our neighborhoods; but even that can be handled if we do something constructive and stop “putting ourselves under the hammer’ through entertaining negative activities.  Our Black neighborhoods ARE indeed one of the few places where the Blackman can totally rule over HIS environment.  If we would focus our efforts to turning around our self-hatred, we could change this political chaos and create something very beneficial: Just try saying something encouraging to every person you know in your hood; just have something pleasant to say—something uplifting—and watch what happens. . .  

     It is fundamentally flawed, to believe that we can join mainstream society and have our interests looked after, when we have been looked down upon and treated inferiorly by that same society for so long.  It is equally flawed to think our lack of refinement is fundamentally our fault, when the horrors of the slave trade in America has stripped us of our cultural identity, in order to make us suitable for slave trading from 1555 to 1863.  This institution employed a nefarious, degrading and denigrating process, that still haunts Black people until this day.   We are sort of blaming the victim for his dilemma, as though he transformed himself to be other than himself.  I teach of the greatness and accomplishments of  our people and our culture, because I don’t rely on others to be concerned at all—or tell the story the way it should be—which is truthfully.  We should not expect others to do more for us than we are willing to do for ourselves; and if we continue to look for work or handouts from others, and not produce a better condition of self-reliance for our future—then don’t be surprised if we revoke your membership card. 

Thank you for your consideration,

C. Be'er la Hai-roi Myers 

Peace

  

     

 #Intimate #Belonging #Brotherhood   

High Society

#EvolutionofHip-Hop #BlackMusic #SubculturalSociety

#Be-BoptoDoo-WoptoHip-Hop #BeingHip

   Everybody who’s anybody knows about the Hip-Hop tune, Planet Rock, et hoc; But many of you don’t know Afrika Bambaataa useta’ be from a New York gang called, The Savage Skulls.  The Godfather of Hip-Hop was once gang affiliated.  The great underground group,100X's member, Lamar Supreme's father, was from Tenth and Oxford.  Now who would have thought that The Furious Five, Grandmaster Flash or the Treacherous Three, Funky Four plus One—or even Gang-Starr—got their name from gang affiliated influences?  Anyone who lived around gangs. . .  Gang members are guys are among the street-wise kats who roam the street.  As a matter of fact, hip, street and gang affiliation go hand in hand.  Despite the inauspicious beginnings, these are still men who live in our community—and don’t you forget it!

   Stop putting labels on it, and speaking about the right and wrong of things for a second, and you’d recognize the origin of the rebellion: It’s called, “Don’t put me in a box that you create.”  “Oh, you just trying to be White; No, I’m just trying to escape the pain of being Black in a White-affiliated society.”   We're all striving to make the best out of a bad situation—some better, some worst.  Yeah, it’s a multi-cultural society—but with a dominant culture theme; i.e., With one culture to rule them all—like Sauron from the Lord of the Rings with his, One ring to rule them all: But we've learn to fight back in very beautiful ways. . .

   I remember when I was young, hearing 30th & Norris Street gang doing Christmas carols and singing, I Only Have Eyes For You by the Flamingoes—which is a classic Doo-Wop record.  The Manhattans—the group who did, Let’s Just Kiss and Say Goodbye—had their start in Doo-Wop as well.  The Black Funk Super-group, Parliament/Funkadelic started out as a Doo-Wop group with a hit song called, (I Wanna) Testify.  Gladys Knight & The Pips had a Doo-Wop Song called, With Every Beat of My Heart; as did the Temptations and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.  Fact is, almost all Rhythm and Blues groups who extend back to the late fifties-early sixties, started out as Doo-Wop groups.  The audition and practice was done on street corners, in street corner harmony. . .

   There is no coincidence that the word, Hip-Hop, rhymes with Doo-Wop, or that both musics rhyme with its earlier predecessor, Be-Bop; with its style of vocalizing Jazz instrumentals called Vocalese.  The fact is, all of these forms hold “Hipness” in common.  It’s "creators" are hip to the ways of the people who created the lifestyles being spoken about.  The artist reflects the values of the element in which the style came from, and this (the song) has a certain type of “mass appeal” to the people who live that type of life.  The stories that are told, are directly effective in delivering messages to those people who live that sort of way, and are relatable—even witty—to those who hear it.  Barring those pieces which have universal appeal, these things are relatable because they hold things in common with the people they come from; Their past-times, their interests, their values.  Man is a social creature—true—but not all groups of men and women think alike; Not all groups of people embrace the same sentiments: You will find that certain values and assessments change from religion to religion, ideology to ideology, people to people, and race to race; which makes this multi-cultural society with a dominant culture theme, hard to take—because each of the other cultures are always subject to what that dominant culture thinks about them.  In a way, it is somewhat oppressive, because as a minority, you are always subject to what the dominant culture believes or the majority’s opinions and judgments. . .

   Hip-Hop, Doo-Wop, and Be-Bop are a cultural form of expression that originated—for the most part—from Black folks and indigenous people or “True Brown folks.”  These musical art forms reflect Black and Brown people’s (and any other people who could accept our creation) values, sentiments, outlooks, and way of life for the most part; which are also among America’s most oppressed peoples.  This oppression is often reflected within the music; Like NWA’s, “F*#k the Police,” for example [as a cry against subjugation], or Kool G Rap’s, “On the Run”—or Curtis Mayfield’s, “Fred is Dead,” or “The Makings of You.”

   Flash back to 1863: The Emancipation Proclamation was made, but no state assistance was given to the newly freed slaves; So most of them were in need of work to sustain their livelihoods.  The Civil War was over, but the war was fought on American soil in the South; which means that many places in the South were devastated by battle destruction to the plains.  There was commandeering, raiding, looting stealing.  Many Southern mansions and plantations were lost in battle—but more centrally, their slave labor was lost—which meant restoration would further exacerbate the situation, since they had no “free labor” to lessen the construction/labor costs.  Of course, being in slavery for 308 years, most of all of our cultural values were imitative of Western society; and when you work for someone, of course you have to do things according to their rules. . .  The South was trying to devise ways to put us back into slavery, thus they brought out the Willie Lynch Letter for inspiration and created the Black Code and Jim Crow Laws. . .

   Another way of looking at life after slavery is, in order to be amalgamated into American society, our people had to be accepted by the Whites who founded by the society—when it was members of that society which subjugated us—and other members of that same society formulated a low opinion of us from seeing us in a subservient position; so if you had to work for these people to maintain livelihood, the issue that would always plague your self-esteem would be: How much am I worth and to who?  Blacks have been in this society for 460 years, and still does not have the civil rights that an immigrant has in this country.

   As you know, according to the above statement, there are going to be those who will have employment and those who won’t: There will be those who do what it takes to conform and those who won’t; The will be those who think they are accepted by mainstream society, and those who will be humored into believing that they are; There will be those who want it so bad—they will hop to any opportunity that presents itself—and those who will have the dignity to look within themselves and forge things that represent their self-esteem, their issues, their values, the dance, their songs, their past-times, their beliefs, their outlook on God, their fun, their interests and their future.  These are some of the things that make up culture and these are our Black cultural heroes.

   America’s decision makers of how American society is going to be navigated, have always been predominately White males: We may take it through the filters of the democratic process, and use things like majority rule and minor issues—but when you end up looking at Big business in America, the following becomes obvious; There may be representatives of all social, economical, religious, and political groups in the mix, but when you look at who tallies up the sheets and make the final decisions, the above statement still remain true: It is the rich White males who control this theme—everyone else just plays their part to gain favor.  Black males are among the ones who have to deal with variant degrees of subjugation, due to the dominant culture overseeing the multi-cultural theme:  Some Blacks fit into it (to a degree), and some don’t.  In all societies, males are considered it’s leaders and heads of the family.  It has been this way, before and since the White man lived in caves. . .   Within American society, there are Blacks (both female and male) who are in leadership positions, but it is never decided in constituent consensus; ultimately there's a White male or group of White males who decide to allow it—it just looks democratic and bi-partisan. 

   Most of us seem to forget, America was initially a European colony—just like we have the tendency to forget that  a room full of White males wrote the Constitution—while enslaving and subjugating Black males and their people, while commandeering the land from the natives.  It should come as no surprise then, that Black male leadership is always monitored and regulated, just as the Hebrew Male population was regulated in Khamit (some say Kemit), so that their presence and influence would not get out of hand (over influence Khamit politics).  Throughout chronology and or history, this practice has been a quite normal political strategy.

   Now you might think I’ve become digressed or went off on a tangent, but I haven’t; I merely traveled this way to give you the fullest depth and dimensions to what I have to say about the Street Corner influence in music within the American backdrop.  Of those Black males not being used in mainstream corporate America, they did not cease being leaders; they just do not fit within the themes of mainstream America—but they have challenged it from time to time: The Don King “Afro,” Allen Iverson’s Hip-Hop appearance and braids.  But you also recognized that the NBA (rich White Billionaire owners) lassoed that situation back in by forcing it’s players to wear three piece suits.  It also shouldn’t surprise you, if this Black male elements have clashes with the law.  This is not the essence of my discussion.  There is a reason why Outkast is called Outkast; they are outcasted leaders from the mainstream of American society.  They are the “Stone that the builder refused.”  This is their story—whether we call it Be-Bop, Doo-Wop or Hip-Hop. 

   For this part, I strongly urge that you use these hyperlinks in my article, so that you can get a stronger feel for what I am sharing here—as well as understand where this element is coming from.

Man is a social creature—true—but not all groups of men and women think alike: There are those who go to school and achieve; make the grade and learn the rules of engagement.  They make good servants.  Others don’t fit for whatever reason and become resourceful.  Some positive and some negative but all very much so tied into the community.  Take a barber for instance.  Very few Black people trust their hair-styling to anyone else other than Black people.  The barbershop, the beauty salon and the Black bars are the bastions of the Black community.  The most intellectual exchanges take place in these shops.  They are literally the informational “watering holes.”  If you want to introduce yourself to an era, you should find the favorite barbershops and bars in the community and socialize there.  It is the unofficial place to sell goods.  Community interests are shared here, more than any other place.  In the White community, there were Barbershop Quartets, but in the Black community amongst Doo-Wop, Be-Bop and Hip-Hop, the street corner has always been the gathering spot.

   This is where our young leaders meet.  Within the hood, mainstream society has very little control (other than their surveillance squad aka the police).  Being blocked out of the society at large, it is in the hood (particularly on the basketball court), where Black men exerted their will over neighborhood politics.  And in my neighborhood, when we were young, it was the gangs which regulated both areas; directly or indirectly.  Even if you were not in the gang, the neighborhood gang had a lot of influence over hood politics; Toughness, attire, politics of manhood and whether or not you had heart, were all directly or indirectly influenced by the gang.  If you were street, a hustler, a thug, or a grimy—how you gain authority and power largely depended on your sense of diplomacy, i.e., how you navigated around the neighborhood gang politics.

   This is what America considers a sub-culture; but Black community politics is what comprises Black culture and Black society within America.  In our neighborhoods, we determine what is hip; and we determine the trends.  We dictate our politics and interests here.  We evolved our language and hierarchy—and create our art forms.  We evolved the dances and determined what is dope; it was our men within our community who determine the way we would govern ourselves within our community—sometimes despite mainstream politics.  So when songs are played over Black radio, if they don’t “speak our language” or show themselves to be witty or sophisticated to the ways of our people in our various communities—they are labeled garbage on the streets.  Take the Delfonics, Gladys Knight, Stylistics, the Manhattans, the Whispers, Chaka Khan, Gap Band, Charlie Wilson or Fatback band for example: They are still viable today in R&B, because they consistently speak our collective language and reflect our universal values: They consistently say the things we like to hear.  Same thing applies to Rakim, Wu Tang, Public Enemy, Biggie, Tupac, Big Pun, Naz, JayZ, Ludacris, Pharell and Snoop and others.  

   Each generation had the same type of politics and their own music selections within the neighborhoods.  We defined these things—separate from the people who refused to let us in.  We created within our own context.  The only exception is the young Y generation, because they don’t do too much mobbing in the street; they play with technology and are therefore socially maladjusted to generational politics between the Traditionalists, the three levels of Baby Boomers, and the young and old X generation and the politics of American racism—but they make their mark in cyberspace.  As said earlier, first there was Street Corner Doo-Wop and the birth of the Beatniks within the Black community.  It's artists were hip to the ways of being “down.”  Doo-Wop gave birth to the Falsettoes like Eddie Kendricks of the Temptations, The Delfonics or Prince (in the song—Adore), Little Anthony & The Imperials.  Politically, the grass root blacks, like the Bluesmen before them, influenced younger Whites to the politics of oppression—developing a generation of hip people called Beatniks; Dizzy Gillespie has a lot to do with their appearance (his goatee and his tam) .  Dizzy, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk gave birth to an intellectual “heady” music that ended Swing called Be-Bop.  Dexterity was key here, as well as its’s lyrical counter part, Vocalese. 

   

   There are hybrids and bridges all over the place to show our evolution in the music culture and various categories: Just listen to Freestyle Fellowship’s Innercity Boundries featuring Daddy-O from the Hip Hop group called
 Stetsasonic.  Compare that to Pharcyde’s Passin’ Me By.  Check out the originator of vocalese, Eddie Jefferson and sample King Pleasure’s Moody’s Mood for Love, then compare Pete Rock & CL Smooth’s They Reminisce Over You—T.R.O.Y., to Curtis Mayfield’s i Love and I Lost, Gang Starr—Mass Appear or Digable Planets—Cool like Dat; birthed in origins of Street Corner Symphonies.  Of course the list goes on and there are variations to this theme.  I used these examples to show you the links and continuity and state this is just an evolution in Black music at its finest.  Learn to appreciate your legacy.

Thank you for your consideration,

C. Be'er la Hai-roi Myers 

Peace