52 is a New York city Jazz listening group that aims to cultivate a friendly community of open-minded Jazz fans and we are reconvening this Thursday at Nubian Heritage (cute coffee shop and book store) on 126th and 5th in Harlem. The show, a part of the Jazz Museum in Harlem's Harlem Swings series, is FREE and starts at 7pm. Drop me a line if you can make it.

Jonathan Batiste Trio
Thursday November 2nd, 2006
7:00 pm
Nubian Heritage (2037 5th Ave. at 126th St.)
FREE

Bio: Jonathan, at 20, is already considered to be one of the of the next generation of young lions who will carry on the legacy of New Orleans' composers/piano wizards such as Jelly Roll Morton, Professor Longhair, and James Booker to New Orleans and the world over. A Jazz piano student at The Juilliard School of music, he is establishing his own unique voice in the epically diverse music world. (Adapted from Batiste's website)

Grounded

Delta's on my shitlist for holing me up at JFK for half a day Friday and doing the same shit to me today at Hartsfield. JFK is so 1983. There are like three outlets and hotspots are few and far between. And I'm so cool on the birds fluttering around the concourses. I have a serious fear of being pooped on by members of the avian community. At least Hartsfield has outlets and cheap WiFi. Anyway, I'm supposed to be working but was compelled to put my Delta gripes in writing.

Me, Moya and Malika at the Young Black Feminists: Envisioning the Future panel this weekend.

Patrice, me and Moya. (Pics via Alii)

The 25th Anniversary was amazing. The panel went great. Snuck outside and tailgated for all of 15 minutes but didn't feel deprived at all. It just ain't same without Kristel. Maybe next year.

There, there...

Moya e-mailed me this article, which I saw a few days later on MAN's blog and I have not not made it more than a few lines into the first paragraph for two reasons. I'm disinterested in "when did you fall out of love with hip hop narratives" and I'm disturbed by how consistently readings of women's behavior are understood through love-romantic, maternal or familial. How many times will we read an article about a woman's change in musical taste through the metaphor of a deteriorating love affair? First encountered (by me*) in Joan Morgan's writing it was original if troubling but now it's just cliché. Maybe there is something good in this piece. I don't know and I don't care to find out unless pieces like this are framed in some more original thinking. And I suspect one of the many reasons folk invoke this tired metaphor is out of some insidious essentialist thinking about women and love, which certainly extends beyond the hip hop landscape. One thing I was trying to get at in my preliminary research on Rock "groupies" a few years back is that its not about the love or lust or earnestness (think Crowe's "Band Aids") or depravity or debauchery or drugs or even low self-esteem (maybe its a little of those things) but power and agency and access and strategy. There is an undeniable logic to the "groupie's" behavior. The "groupie" swoon is a complicated movement. I think we are too simplistic when we think about women's behavior, especially female fans, in conversations about music. And I think these simple formulations have become institutionalized. I am into metaphysics and spirit and all that warm "we are the world" shit but I hate sentimentality. That's why Brown Sugar was so annoying. Don't get me wrong it was a warm movie (literally the lighting/the celluloid palette) but dangerously mushy (to its defense it was romantic comedy and they are definitionally mushy). "When did you fall in love with hip hop?" Eck. Of course this question frames all of the female journalist's (Sanaa Lathan) interviews? Let's talk more about informed decisions not just conjured feeling.

All that said I'm not against love. But it shouldn't omnisciently narrate women's behavior.

Disclaimer: This is so not fleshed out. I'm all over the place. This is a blog.

*Someone may have used this formulation earlier. If so please advise.

next to Godliness

Jeziah Robertson, 7, and Dakotarome Paul, 6, Cousins

Do you play sports?
JEZIAH: I like to play football. The Giants are my favorite, and the Deadskins.

The Redskins?
I used to think it was called that, but it’s called the Deadskins.

Never been more delighted by New York Magazine.

Original Invincible

I don't know how to articulate Gangstarr's role in my hip hop fandom/education other than that while I'd sean/heard/done (quite poorly) hip hop before I'd ever heard their music I didn't see/hear or try and do it the same after. And this is the video* that did it :

*It's funny because radio wasn't AT ALL crucial to my musical adolescence. It was all videos and concerts. That's how I heard music.

Big City of Dreams

The other day I turned toward the subway doors at Atlantic Ave. and was met by the frightful entreat of a shrunken white women,
"I'll move when the train stops. Ok?"
"You're fine!" I smiled firmly planted quite a few feet away.
"I mean just wait for the train to stop, Ok, and I'll move."
I smiled harder, holding my unchanged position, "I didn't ask you to move."
"Don't worry. I will."

My subway buddy chalked it up to our imposing Blackness. I want to call the b#tch crazy but I know she wasn't. The scaly red creature was just afraid. Painfully so.

Then, today, while making my way from the Bergdorf side of 5th Ave. to the ABC side in the midst of the Hispanic Columbus Day Parade (which kinda jumped off) I catch a Puerto Rican tween perched on a police barricade cheesing hecka hard. Naturally my eyes are drawn to the source of his amusement, a snowy haired septuganerian (read: dirty old white man) whose subsequent overheard nasty query, "all six inches?" makes me wanna holler, throw up both my hands. Trolling parade for young Latin ass? Recalls Madonna and Mark Foley. Sometimes, I think you should be able to arrest somebody for just thinking foul sh#t.

HELP!!!

iTunes 7.0 is some BS (outlook calendar won't sync to iPod anymore. don't like the fragmentation of my library or the design. not intuitive. very confusing). I want to go back to 6.0 but I don't know.

Problem solved. Revert how to for PC's.

Somewhere to unpack

I opened up my blog/subscriptions e-mail looking for some info. and I found this. Drafted October 13, 2005, with the subject line, "I don't fill in blanks," in a folder labeled "She Real Cool." I certainly must have intended to post it here but forgot. I looked through my archives to see what triggered it. I can't remember. It's whatever.

I do know that if I had a disclaimer for this blog it would go a little something like that/this:

To those who know me, well, and those who don't:
This is not an SOS or coherence. I keep my SOS's private and let my coherency work for me. This is free.

Tuesday, while running off at the mouth to an acquaintance on the train I got as close as I can get to rage--frustration--over some unwanted closeness in my life. It's a recurring stumbling block--keeping this one at that bay and drawing this one nearer--because it requires clear communication. And when it comes to feeling and not feeling I just don't get to the point.

I have trouble maintaining distance and establishing closeness. Those who I'd wish would leave me be are all about and those who I wouldn't do without I leave be.

Iquo (who blogs over on myspace) and I were talking the other day and I came to the conclusion that as much as I love how blogging bridges gaps it can contract to the point of breathlessness as in you think you know but you have NO IDEA(R)! But I know that I know that I know that I know that I'd feel hot breath on my neck* whether I blogged or not.

I'm off. Feeling Stevie Wonderish.

*Despite what Erykah sang this is NOT hot.

Look, er, here

I was looking for "9o's girl" by BlackGirl and I found this (never even new it was them on the hook.) This used to be it.