On campuses around the world, a wave of occupations and militant organizing has been underway to fight undemocratic administrations that are using the economic crisis to push through racist policies that disproportionately target people of color. This has included community college students in New York, students across England and Italy.
Many of us recognize that public education in this country has long been a disservice to those of us who need it. There’s a reason why Kanye West can make hit songs that clown college degrees. But this recent round of attacks on education is about more than just classrooms and textbooks. It’s about our right as people of color to decide what kind of education we deserve, and how we want to use it .
In Louisiana, we are facing serious cutbacks. So far, we know:
- All of Louisiana's four-year universities and technical and
community colleges face an 18-30% cut
- For Delgado, this could mean cuts between $6 and $11 million affecting students, faculty and staff
- General Education will be the first area cut, which means few choices and fewer opportunities for students of color
Why is education under attack in Louisiana? What type of cuts is Delgado facing? Who will these affect? How are students of color responding at other community colleges? One thing is certain: people of color all over are making it clear that the recession is not our fault, it is the fault of the politicians, bankers, and elites. This is their crisis. Not Ours.
Join the Ella Baker Organizing Committee
Monday, March 9
in the Dolphin Den
in the Student Life Center of Delgado City Park
from 1:30-3:00pm
for an Open Discussion about the crisis in our education and what we can do about it.
The Ella Baker Organizing Committee is a campus-based organization animated by the principles of democracy and anti-racism. For more information, email us at ellabakeroc@gmail.com or join us on Facebook at “Cuts for Them, Not Us”
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Their Crisis, Not Ours.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Tech N9ne and My Tentativeness / Opportunism
Alright, so this is a little opportunistic on my part, but in my Music Appreciation class I was required to write a two-page paper on my "favorite artist." Thing is, I don't really have a favorite artist. I don't even have a favorite five or ten artists. Sure, I'll give you a short list of some very solid lyricists or producers, but that doesn't necessarily make them my favorites. My personal taste is too broad and too versatile.
Anyhow, the opportunism is due to the need to say something about Tech N9ne on this blog. Yes, long the hell overdue. But it's long overdue, for one, because he's a KC artist and I'm from KC. Two, he's one of the most elusive and complex rappers out there, both in terms of his style and his audience, and that warrants some things said.
One other thing worth mentioning. There could be some inaccuracies in terms of Tech's popularity and/or sales, general biographical information, or others. If anyone feels the need to offer corrections, by all means do so. I definitely don't want to do an injustice to the man or the genre.
Without further ado...
* * *
I wasn’t always a fan of Tech N9ne. Today still I’ve never been to a Tech show, although I have seen him freestyle at an open mic/battle and on a couple of different occasions I ran into him at random locations in Kansas City, where he is from, and where I spent a good chunk of my life.
No, when I first came into contact with Tech’s music, I had been captivated by what I’ve called a “b-boy revivalism” and Tech unfortunately fell outside of that milieu which sprang up in the early 1990s and was an attempt to emphasize the totality of the culture of hip-hop against the apparent egoism and “rappercentric” form of mainstream hip-hop then. But no matter where I was at on the broad and universal hip-hop radar, I don’t believe I ever denied Tech’s lyrical ability that easily leaves one’s mouth gaping. While there are other rappers who can be broadly compared to Tech in terms of the pace and rapidity of their flow; Twista and Bone Thugs to name a couple, none of them have the versatility, the eccentricity, or the entertaining persona of Tech N9ne.
Several attempts were made to break out of the relative obscurity in which he labored. Through a mutual producer, QD3, a son of Quincy Jones, Tech had the opportunity to collaborate on a song with 2Pac, but was forced to do the song posthumously once 2Pac was murdered. A year later, he was featured on the “Gang Related” soundtrack, a film in which 2Pac starred, with the song, “Questions” where Tech raps in his characteristically erratic style, “Can I get some, can I spit some, which one? When am I gonna get off this trip? / Can I take another pill? Why do I feel like I'm a sick individual in the room poppin’ off at the lip?”
In 1999, Tech N9ne released his debut album, “The Calm Before the Storm” with the single, “Planet Rock 2K” which was a hit on Kansas City radio. There wasn’t enough fanfare, however, for Tech to break the glass ceiling of local hip-hop and to catapult into the mainstream. This was a fate to follow him for several albums following.
Lucky for Tech and his off-the-wall personality, he managed to build up quite the cult following in other cities around the country and simultaneously elude both Kansas City skeptics and fans alike. Eventually, he found community with the “Juggalos”, a largely white, working class group of Midwest hip-hoppers, but with a growing base of people of color, that are noted for their clown make-up and apparent lyrical nihilism. It’s merely apparent, because a deeper listen will reveal a sense of alienation from the oppression and mediocrity of modern society.
The lyrics from the song “Diemothafuckadie” by notable Juggalo group, Twizted, read:
“Actin’ belligerent on a daily.
Hoping that somebody can save me, but I guess I’m dead wrong.
All by myself.
Fuck everyone else I’m in a hole.
And I can’t breath, my lungs swoll.”
The listeners and sympathizers with whom these lyrics resonate have witnessed a consistency in Tech N9ne’s own bipolar raps which has increased his popularity among them. But Tech, as a Black rapper, has also introduced a component to Juggalo hip-hop which has validated and broadened its base among people of color. In Tech’s “Riotmaker” he raps about being denied a gig in Hawaii because the concert promoter said it would incite the Samoan community there to violence. Tech lashes out at the white supremacy of the concert promoters by both validating people of color’s desire to rebel against racism and the illogic of the argument that hip-hop makes people violent.
Tech is like other mainstream rappers today in the sense that he reflects certain implicitly political but popular sentiments that are set in motion by official society and it’s calls to make sacrifices and to find happiness and mobility within a decaying system. He is not considered a political or “conscious” rapper who stands above the crowd and has to inject his or her own sectarian views into the music. Rather, Tech is like most of us who are torn between the values of the barbarism of modern society and the hope for completely new and free relations among human beings. The difference is that he has an ironic way of playing with those antagonisms and places them center stage in his music and performances. And this is why I am a fan.
"I'm a Punk Under Pressure."
So it's been kinda dead here at the D&HHP. I believe I've said this before, but LBoogie and myself aren't just bloggers, we're also organizers and are working on a project at Delgado Community College here in New Orleans around the white supremacist character of the Louisiana education cuts. The hip-hop generation, in our opinion, is the subjective force that must fight and destroy white supremacy, and in this case, the education cuts and press for democratic control of the school by the students. New Orleans, and Louisiana in general, has very unique political and cultural traditions that we draw a lot from and which has been inspiring to us.
Of the more recent of those traditions has been hip-hop culture in New Orleans. Most outside the city are quite familiar with the sounds of Master P, Mystikal, Mannie Fresh, Juvenile, and Lil Wayne, and all of those cats deserve their dues for their contributions to a New Orleans sound and style. But a lesser known aspect of NOLA hip-hop, and because it has not become generalized across the US, is Bounce.
This is not the first time we've discussed Bounce. For the litany, check out a review of the film on Bounce, "Ya Heard Me?", a note on 10th Ward Buck's upcoming book to be released next week, and a post on Alison Fensterstock's article from the Gambit Weekly on Sissy Rappers.
This music reminds one a lot of Miami Bass because of its highly repetitive and uptempo beat where the rappers are closer to hypemen than they are MCs. In Bounce, rappers are more dependent on the music whereas the standard today is quite the opposite. Bounce goes as far back as the mid 80s so it is anything but new and damn near as old as hip-hop itself. For those who want to get acquainted with it, check out a local blog NOLA BOUNCE.
Even lesser known and far more controversial (but gaining in popularity) within Bounce are the "sissy rappers." These are queer and transsexual/transgender artists who have asserted the validity of a queer identity in hip-hop long before any others have. Katey Red's "Melpomene Block Party" (after the Melpomene projects, still standing!) first debuted in the late 90s.
It isn't enough to say that sissy rappers have carved out a place in hip-hop because queer folks are also people of color and have always been hip-hop. The point and power of sissy rappers are that they have made LGBTQ identity consistent with hip-hop; that it is okay to be queer and be hip-hop, and they have undermined the prevailing white supremacist logic that hip-hop is ultra homophobic.
We've mentioned before how the "Ya Heard Me?" film and Fensterstock's article have captured the tensions within Bounce with some being okay with sissy rappers for economistic reasons--because it brings out the ladies--while others think it has made Bounce synonymous with gay music. Regardless of the reaction, the struggle against heterosexism on a cultural level is being played out in the New Orleans hip-hop generation like nowhere else. On any given night, you'll find those who may not be completely comfortable with the sissy rappers, bangin out to their music when they perform.
Last Saturday, February 14, LBoogie and myself celebrated our Valentine's Day at a Sissy Rapper show in the Quarter with Katey Red, Big Freedia, and Sissy Nobby. We weren't quite aware of the hipster dive this place was, but the good thing is some black folks eventually showed. However, this wasn't no spectator shit; these hipsters were lovin it! L claims it was the livest hip-hop show she has ever been to. While I would dispute that (one of the livest for me was Cypress Hill back in 1996), I am obligated to say that it was off the fuckin hinges. Big Freedia and Sissy Nobby especially were some of the best live entertainers I've seen.
Katey Red performed last and ended the night with her classic joint, "Punk Under Pressure." The song isn't lyrically complicated and is essentially about the struggle of being queer, of being transsexual, but its mostly an angry embrace of that identity best exemplified in the line, "[call] KATEY RED IS A...[response] DICK SUCKA!" It's blunt, it's crude, and it's every way in step with the hip-hop tradition. And I yelled it until I was hoarse.
This post is not meant to elaborate a full perspective on queer identity, but I did want to write a couple of paragraphs about it specifically. Queer identity has a revolutionary quality (and history!) in its critique of the white supremacist State. The State has created a standard in terms of what it considers a valid relationship which is white, middle class, and hetero. It defines a family as an institution that doesn't exist en masse the way more unofficial family forms exist: single parents and children, LGBTQ couples, unmarried straight couples, friends, communes, and others that are based on mutual aid and cooperation and when taken in their totality constitute the majority. Being queer is not necessarily the opposite of being straight, and in this sense, all those who aren't white, middle class, straight couples (like those unhappy crackers in Mad Men) are queer. It means I'm queer because I don't fall into that bullshit category.
There is a sexual component to queer identity and I don't want to dilute that essential aspect. But queer identity is neither purely sexual nor is it a binary thing: you aren't either gay, straight, or bisexual. Its a fluid gradation of sexuality, masculinity, and femininity. It isn't something fixed or rigid, but is as varied as are personalities.
The reality is that queer people in the strict sense are an oppressed category of people and they have a long tradition of struggle. We've seen this most recently in the passage of Prop 8 in California which denied marriage rights for same sex couples. True indeed, a lot of those in support of it were white, liberal gay couples who are trying to prove their loyalty to the white supremacist State. This privileged strata of gay folks have seized the slogan of a black tradition, "civil rights", which rightly pissed off a lot of black folks (including queer blacks) who saw that as pure opportunism. They're okay with co-opting civil rights language, but they won't compromise their loyalty to white supremacy when the police murder black youth. There is obviously a class/racial tension with the queer community at large just as there is in the community as a whole.
Wherever people fall on this, Bounce is bringing folks together that otherwise might be in opposition. This is a fly in the face to those Northern elitist progressives who look upon the South as backwards. Clearly we're doing something right down here.
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Just Another Day
I was watching this video of Queen Latifah’s “Just Another Day…” tonight and it reminded me of a conversation I had with someone a few weeks back about the decay of New Orleans before and after Katrina, and particularly the struggles in the last few years protesting the destruction of public housing here. She was shocked that anybody who has ever lived in public housing would ever want to defend it – as many did last year when the City Council was voting to demolish the majority of it. Her thinking was that the projects are so horrible, they’ve been kept in poor condition, they’re full of violence and drugs, and they’ve been made into damn near war zones the way the police inflict all means of harassment, intimidation and violence among their residents. Why would anybody want to save that?
In “Just Another Day…” Queen Latifah has a line saying she hopes there’s a hood in heaven. That line is part of the reason why I disagreed with the conversation. These weren’t just empty brick buildings that were being torn down; they had communities in them. There were families, relationships, love, strength and solidarity, living and breathing within those walls. Now, granted, the person I spoke with had a "Talented Tenth" thing going on and was looking at it like, damn we need to save our people from their own backwardness, they don't even "want" to get out of the projects. If you focus on statistics about crime rates, drug abuse, unemployment, with no context at all behind those numbers, then it’s easy to equate projects with bad, and their destruction with good. (It also helps disguise the real issues behind the attacks on infrastructure, housing, and healthcare that are going on, but I digress…)
We are not a backwards people. Our communities are not fucked up, we’re just living in a fucked up society. It’s sad that there’s even a need to say that, to defend our own humanity. The beautiful thing is that most people don’t buy the "Talented Tenth" argument that assumes an “Untalented 90th”, as my friend J likes to say. When hip-hop glorifies the “hood in heaven”, the “Thugz mansion”, etc., it’s not because people embrace poverty or the problems of public housing. It’s celebrating the mere fact that people are even building community amid the conditions that decades of cutbacks and impoverishment have forced many into. If that’s not a testament to our own strength, I don’t know what is.
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