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I respectfully disagree. Like I said, music does not arise out of a vacuum. If it did, why didn't continental Africans create Opera, a musical form that arose out of the foppishness and sterility of European court life that the Italians got sick of so made a lush, romantic and bodacious art form called, well, Opera. Your remarks about James Brown are my own, namely, that the movement came first, THEN the music which reflected the sentiments of that movement. As for sista Reagon, I agree when she says there is no movement without the music. Why? Because out of struggle black people make music. We do not make music first, THEN decide to create a mass movement around it. Kinda like a poet writing about something s/he has NEVER experienced, then the people saying "oh, wow. We should organize around the sentiments in that poem." Makes no sense. I disagree with Stanley Crouch. I would ask either he or you to explain a causal relationship between jazz and the CRM. And not only jazz but R & B artists "took up the cause, using their celebrity and their music to promote racial equality and social justice." I've already mentioned James Brown and his reflection of the mood of the late 60's & early 70's black community with 'Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud.' Perhaps you can, but I can't think of one jazz recording that in any way impacted the CRM. Thus, IMO, it is not dangerous, just wrong to place music at the forefront of our people's struggle rather than the struggle. You can sing until the cows come home, but unless you go out and kill that steer, or buy that steak at a grocery story, you WILL go hungry. First get the meat, THEN sing praises to how you got it. Artists are important, but it is the foot soldier who does the grunt work that will free us NOT the guy blowing the bugle. No, it has not. Black people have decided on a course of action to take to alleviate an injustice and THEN made music about it. Thank you for making my case. Unless the PEOPLE move, decide on a course of action to alleviate a problem, artists create no music celebrating it. Thus, no music that celebrates, inspires, empowers black people since the music of the Civil Rights Movement era. I disagree. Until the Black Lives Matter movement has a, or even moves in a concrete way toward a real and lasting victory, there will be no music to celebrate/inspire/empower it. Again, first the movement, THEN the music.

Interesting conversation by obviously erudite and well-versed people. With the quoted remark, however, I differ. It is not "as the music goes, so do the people," rather "as the people go, so does the music." Music is an adjunct to black movements, not the purveyor. The classic example is James Brown's "Say it loud - I'm black and I'm proud!" This song came at the tail end of the Civil Rights Movement and the beginning of the Black Nationalist Movement. Through struggle and Dr. King's assassination, African-Americans had sluffed off the racial label of "Negro" and proclaimed them/ourselves "black," a label that a decade previous was utterly despised and could earn the caller a knifing. As such, "I'm black and I'm proud" was art imitating life in the late 1960s, not vice versa. Artists don't create out of a vacuum. Music is a reflection of the artist's life and environment, not just his or her imagination.

I loved the movie. I guess my attachment to the series is one of the main reasons. It just felt good seeing the old players back on the stage and the introduction of new characters. Was the plot thin? Yes, but I saw this as a way to get more people interested in what was to come. I thought it was entertaining and I thought time zipped by. I didn't even realize we had been at the theater for over two hours when it ended. For our family the cost was about 90.00 with popcorn, but just to have Star Wars back again was worth it to me. I'm usually critical of movies, but this wasn't a film that I had any interest in criticizing. I only wanted to escape to my childhood for a while. My wife enjoyed it, my son and his friend enjoyed it, but my daughter was with you... she barely looked at the screen, lol.

If music is a reflection of the life and environment then how is it that the drum was the connective tissue of the African? The Atumpan was a talking drum that allowed communication, a non-verbal communication for the African. This is why the slave owners took the drum away. As many of the tribes where slaves came from in West Africa utilized the drum the varying languages didn't matter. Slaves could organize to the drum so it was removed as a form of control. No drum, no religious practice, no language. I state all of this to get to this point, through song the African was able to both congregate without the masters knowledge and plan escapes. So I have to ask again what came first the music or the movement? It was the music that allowed the movement because the slave learned coordinates through the music. Now if we fast forward to the Harlem Renaissance, what came first the Harlem Renaissance Movement or the music? Any educator or person informed about that time period will tell you that it was the Jazz artists who generated that foundation of art in the Harlem Renaissance. The art, poetry and creativity of that era was based in the music of the people. Granted that you had writers and poets who were the unofficial legislators of the Black movement of empowerment, but music was at the forefront of the Harlem Renaissance. I would challenge you to look up a sister named Bernice Reagon and her most known writing, "Black Music In Our Hands". She states explicitly that there is no movement without the music. I tend to side with her and state that as the music and art goes, so do the people. There is no other explanation for how Black people are in a degrading station although we have more access than we did at any other time in history today. James Brown picked up on the Black Power Movement, he was not the initiator so he followed suit as the Civil Rights movement continued to progress. “Jazz,” Stanley Crouch writes, “predicted the civil rights movement more than any other art in America.” Not only was jazz structured similarly to ideals of the civil rights movement. Jazz musicians took up the cause, using their celebrity and their music to promote racial equality and social justice. I place this quote here to show you that this is not an idea that I am discussing without serious consideration and knowledge. When you begin to explain that as the people go, it only perpetuates the idea that the importance of music in Black America is only a response and this is a dangerous, very dangerous position for those who are sharing ideas to state because it allows the music to not have any bearing or ability to create the change that it always has in our community. Filed songs led to movement. Gospel and Blues led to organization and empowerment. Jazz inspired and actually generated more opportunities in America almost as much as any philosophy espoused by Frederick Douglass, BTW and WEB. Once again if you stopped to look up Bernice Reagon (If not here is the article http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai3/protest/text3/inourhands.pdf, I'm positive you will reconsider music and its influence in the Black community after reading it,) you will see that as the music has moved, so have Black people. I leave you with this one thought. We have seen the rise of death of Blacks by cops and by each other in the last 40 years. Can you name the forms of music that has done anything to offset or empower the people? No. Not until the last year or so have you seen a movement Black Lives Matter which started unofficially in 2013 actually started years earlier in response to the Fruitvale Station murder http://grist.org/politics/stopping-a-bart-train-in-michael-browns-name/. What's interesting here is that even in this case, although it's not mentioned in the article Davey D had already been bringing this to the forefront of the conscious community of Hip-Hop. In Oakland where the Black Lives Matter movement was birth, people like Boots Riley of The Coup (Hip-Hop) had long been carrying the banner of Black empowerment in that area. I'm not giving all of Black empowerment to music, but I am laying a lot at the feet of the lack of empowering Black music in the last 40 years. I promise you if the music begins to speak towards empowerment ala Kendrick Lamar's "Alright" or D'Angelo's "The Charade" what you will begin to see in America is a real shift that empowers the people and a new movement that sustains and changes things. Until then we will just twerk and Nae Nae ourselves to death.

Shared the letter this morning! Thanks for all of your work Troy!

HOW THE TRUMP STOLE CHRISTMAS http://pollardpost.blogspot.com/2015/12/how-trump-stole-christmas.html