Verner D. Mitchell - Encyclopedia of the Black Arts Movement

Encyclopedia of the Black Arts Movement

Encyclopedia of the Black Arts Movement

Edited by

Verner D. Mitchell

Cynthia Davis

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham Boulder New York London

Published by Rowman & Littlefield

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Copyright 2019 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Mitchell, Verner D., 1957 author. | Davis, Cynthia, 1946 author.

Title: Encyclopedia of the Black Arts Movement / Verner D. Mitchell, Cynthia Davis.

Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018053986 (print) | LCCN 2018058007 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538101469 (electronic) | ISBN 9781538101452 | ISBN 9781538101452 (cloth : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Black Arts movementEncyclopedias.

Classification: LCC NX512.3.A35 (ebook) | LCC NX512.3.A35 M58 2019 (print) | DDC 700.89/96073dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018053986

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

To the memory of our dear colleague

Dr. Reginald Martin

Contents

Foreword: Keep the Lamp Burning

The Longest Shortest Artistic Movement

It is time to reevaluate the Black Arts Movement. Over the past four decades, the academic discourse surrounding the Black Power Movement (BPM) and its artistic arm, the Black Arts Movement (BAM), has flattened into a dismissive clich: it was the shortest literary movement in African American literature, dogged by misogyny and homophobia, and brought to a righteous end by a feminist backlash of the 1980s.

Yet the BPM and the BAM remain a source of fascination and inspiration for African American popular culture. On the date of Malcolm Xs birth in 1968, a group of oral poetry performers from New York who called themselves the Last Poets came together and began performing. With drums added for emphasis to the words, their style of musicwith the human voice becoming the main focal pointbecame known as Rhythm and Poetry or what is commonly called RAP. The Last Poets were featured on a song by current rapper Common called The Corner, performing a slam piece for that song. Today, rap music and its culture, hip hop, has become youth culture the world over. There is rap music in almost every major language, including Mandarin. In addition, there are slam poetry venues in every major city with a sizeable black population, and black college students still continue to host these events. In spite of the watering down of mainstream rap as a poetic art form, within respective African American communities, the best rappers are always those who can be considered poets. For example, the world knows TuPac as a rapper, but many African Americans consume his poetry, which is available in print form. The rapper Common was invited to the Obama White House as a poet, not a rapper, and in 2002, rapper Mos Def launched a show in conjunction with Russell Simmons that hearkened back to the BAM roots of rap, Def Poetry Jam , on HBO. It ran for five seasons. Many African Americans also see the best rappers as poets of the underground (those rappers who do not receive much radio play and who may not necessarily want it) who can still tell stories, such as Jean Grae. Their styles and the impetus to address people at the grassroots level, come directly from the BAM, particularly from poets like Sonia Sanchez, Jayne Cortez, Nikki Giovanni, and Wanda Coleman. Coleman, though nationally recognized as a poet, electrified audiences with her performances at jazz cafes until her untimely death from breast cancer in 2013.

Then, there is that strain of rap music that manifested an undeniable influence of the BPM, the Nation of Islam (NOI), and more specifically, Malcolm X. Like their BAM predecessors, many rappers are heavily influenced by the speeches of Malcolm X, even though he was assassinated before many of them were born. His speeches are still widely available through online music services like Spotify and Tidal, and some entertainers even imitate his style of rimless glasses. Some rappers have simply taken speeches of Malcolm X and mixed his voice into a beat. Ice Cube, in his album Predator , which followed the 1992 Los Angeles riots, inserted an excerpt from one of Malcolms speeches, warning American black people about the governments lip service to democracy and its failure to enforce its own laws. Ironically, the insert is simply called Integration. In 1988, the rap group Boogie Down Productions released its album, By All Means Necessary . Of course, the title is an allusion to the famous Malcolm X quote by any means necessary, which was popularized by a poster in the 1960s. The album cover features the groups leader, KRS-One, replicating in hip hop clothing the famous picture of Malcolm X holding a gun and protectively watching the street through a window. Other rappers such as the Brand Nubians featured NOI speakers on their albums. Still others professed to be Five Percenters, a sect of Islam founded in Harlem by former NOI member Clarence 13X.

When worldwide recording sensation Beyonc Knowles stepped onto the stage for her Super Bowl halftime performance in February 2016, she wore a suit that paid homage to the Black Panther Party, and so did her backup dancers. It caused a firestorm of backlash from much of white America and a great deal of confusion from younger African Americans who, long removed from the moment and certainly not exposed to their own histories in standardized test-driven public school districts, did not understand what the performers outfit signified. That year marked the fiftieth anniversary of the partys formation, and Knowles wanted to pay homage in her way. Following that performance, she and her husband, rapper Shawn Carter (Jay-Z), established a scholarship for students wanting to major in African American studies, history, or literature. In addition, Beyoncs sister, Solange Knowles, released A Seat at the Table later that year; it became a number one album on the Billboard 200 list. It features themes of social and racial justice in its lyrics and interludes, with members of Knowless family and rapper Master P discussing their experiences with white hatred and civil rights and their awakening to black consciousness. The album became Solanges first Grammy nomination and win.

The fascination with BPM/BAM is still winning Grammy nominations and causing national sensations for African American artists, and it is imperative that academia review, reassess, and respect both the BPM and BAM with the same kind of rigorous scholarship given to other eras. With rap music officially being around for fifty years, it is now qualified as a senior citizen art form, complete with generational tensions, regional variations, and internal strife! There are now high art forms of rap and low art, but it all began with the BAM. If rap is a musical branch of the BPM/BAM tree, it suffices to say that there needs to be more study of the root system, which is often more complex and runs deeper than what is apparent above ground. In his study of the BAM, The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s , James Smethurst asks, What was the Black Arts movement? What were its sources? What were its regional variations and commonalities (67). As mentioned, critics have accused the Black Arts Movement of homophobia and misogyny, and black feminists have lambasted the movement. To that end, Smethurst asks: Who says so? And why do they say it (7). Then, there are questions about the date affixed to the Black Arts Movement in most literary anthologies: 19601969 or 19601975. Some critics say Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones) affixed this date when he declared the movement too parochial in scope and insisted that African Americans see their struggle as part of a worldwide, anticolonial battle. But had not Malcolm X said that several times before his death? Did not Paul Robeson write a letter to the United Nations in 1951? If the BAM began in the 1960s, what is to be done with Langston Hughess encouragement of younger artists and his international involvement with Black Power writers elsewhere in the African Diaspora? What do we do with Lorraine Hansberry?