Prometheus 6

 In Purple Rain, "Nobody gets your shit except except you". The problem with Hamilin is that Perry writes threatre and movies for the average black person(ya know the one that buys tickets and sells out theatres nationwide) Just Like Oscar Micheaux did films, he knew his auidence unlike Hamlin and other actors who are embittered because those same people won't see his plays. I got into a disagreement with this sista who was a director who hated Perry for his "Coon Shows". Well like Wesley Snipes told Denzel in "Mo Betta Blues" make music that black folk like or you will have to have a mixed auidence for your work because you think you are too good for the average black person.

 

That "Mo Betta Blues" line is exactly what came to mind when reading this post:

 Bleek: But the jazz, you know if we had to dep... if we had to depend upon black people to eat, we would starve to death. I mean, you've been out there, you're on the bandstand, you look out into the audience, what do you see? You see Japanese, you see, you see West Germans, you see, you know, Slabobic, anything except our people - it makes no sense. It incenses me that our own people don't realize our own heritage, our own culture, this is our music, man.
Shadow Henderson: That's bullshit.
Bleek: Why?
Shadow Henderson: [slurred] It's all bullsh... Everything, everything you just said is bullshit. Out of all the people in the world, you never gave anybody else, and look, I love you like a step-brother, but you never gave nobody else a chance t- to play their own music, you complain about... That's right, the people don't come because you grandiose motherfuckers don't play shit that they like. If you played the shit that they like, then people would come, simple as that.

 

I don't think the creation of performing art that attracts a wide audience must of necessity be something that lacks artistic merit. I don't like Tyler Perry's stuff but I don't complain about it either and, more importantly, I don't think less of the folks who do like and enjoy his work. It's not for me but he does force me to think about how important it is to create an audience for one's work.

I recall catching Branford Marsalis and his band about five years ago or so at the central Pennsylvania Jazz Festival. Most of the audience for this festival is over 50 years of age. I have a great deal of respect for Branford and I own several of his recordings that I like a great deal. That being said, I think he and his band managed within fifteen minutes to completely turn off their audience not because of the complexity of the music they played but because they played each number at such a fast and furious tempo that the audience could never get comfortable.

At some point you have to establish a groove with your audience and let them pat their feet. I saw Sun Ra and his Arkestra enough times in my life to know that he and the band always laid down some tunes with a beat that got the audience movin' and groovin'. He once had an audience at the Oakland Auditorium dancing in the aisles during a show where Cecil Taylor was the opening act. You could feel a collective sigh of relief when Taylor left the stage. We all knew he was a consummate artist but we wanted something more substantial and heartfelt.

I think there are far too many artists in our community who have somehow come to believe that if they produce something that is accessible by some segment, if not all, of the masses of black folk then they have sold out and sacrificed their integrity for filthy lucre. I think these brothers and sisters need to think harder about what they need to do to reach a wider audience. I am not suggesting that they try to imitate Tyler Perry but they need to find a way to present their work in such a way that it reaches a wider, not necessarily mass, audience. This does not mean, however, that their work should be stripped bare of political content but it has to blended into narratives that both entertain and challenge people.  

the question though, is how do you do that, and at the same time grow the craft? i don't mean grow the market...the craft?

Acting is a body skill. That's sort of like asking how you advance the craft of basketball.

and control the distribution of content through the market. Black talent (artist and non-artist) is not vertically integrated into the production and distribution of art in large part because of the politics of the artists. On the one hand, you have artists who get the financial importance of the work - and are committed to sales, but generally as conduits through white folks (distribution through Hollywood for film, or the Big Six for music and writing). Tyler Perry has to be commended for his financial independence - and he is at the stage now where he should be a tremendous draw for black investors to build an entire industry around. This conversation about the art is the same conversation that is going on in hip hop - and its irrelevant in both instances because what is lost is control of the art - and the capacity for vertical integration (building revenue in black firms, hiring black folk, strengthening B2B connections, etc.)

This is a question of positioning.  The revenues from Perry's shows are strong enough and predictable enough to provide leverage for many fledgling operations in black communities.  Hating these manifestations of art (and their concomitant economic sway) because they offend aesthetic sensibilities is tantamount to flushing all of your five and fifty dollar bills down the drain because you don't like the number 5.

Harold Cruse wrote about this same phuk up two generations ago.  This is no time to honor false dichotomies.   

This conversation about the art is the same conversation that is going on in hip hop - and its irrelevant in both instances because what is lost is control of the art - and the capacity for vertical integration (building revenue in black firms, hiring black folk, strengthening B2B connections, etc.)

True. Fact is, if the artists hadn't lost control of hip-hop gangsta rap would never have been an issue. 

but writing plays is not a body skill. tyler perry is not just the actor, he's the playwright, the producer, and the creator of the soundtrack if i am not mistaken.

further while there are political and economic issues to consider, craft is important. not only is it necessary to grow the artform, it is also necessary to generate the type of self-reflection that we need about now.

writing plays is not a body skill.

Oh...going beneath the surface.

I think the craft is independent of the content and the content is where you generate self-reflection. Or maybe I'm thinking of skills or technique.

Anyway, there ARE folks advancing the art, and doing so with consciousness. Will Power always leaps to mind, but that's partly because we got one degree of separation.

Hip-Hop Visions of an Ancient World

Will Power and company turn Aeschylus every way but loose

An interview by Charles L. Mee

Will Power is best known for his high-octane writing and performance in Flow, the widely toured hip-hop solo show produced by New York City's Hip-Hop Theater Festival and New York Theatre Workshop [see sidebar]. But the kinetic performer and pioneer of the hip-hop theatre movement has thrown something new—by way of the ancient—into the mix. The Seven, Power's reworking of Aeschylus's Seven Against Thebes, runs at New York Theatre Workshop through March 12. Originally commissioned by Tony Kelly of San Francisco's Thick Description and subsequently performed at the Hip-Hop Theater Festival in 2002, The Seven has been rewritten and expanded for this high-profile outing, directed by Jo Bonney and choreographed by Bill T. Jones. Charles L. Mee—himself a prolific adaptor of the Greeks—sat down with Power at NYTW to talk about storytelling, myth and theatre.

The REAL problem is related to what T3 keeps raising. Will has the potential to be The Black Playwrite. And I don't think he's any more thrilled with that than August Wilson was (name-dropping like a mug, but since I don't do this type of writing I have to lift the opinions of some who do). I mean, everyone likes getting paid and getting lauded but Mr. Wilson he was intimately involved in setting up the first National Black Theatre Summit (which is the thing Mr. Perry is disinvited from). One of the main themes of that summit was firguring out how to get a support infrastructure in place for Black theatre.

KSpence - "the question though, is how do you do that, and at the same time grow the craft? i don't mean grow the market...the craft?"

P6 - Acting is a body skill. That's sort of like asking how you advance the craft of basketball.

T3 - This conversation about the art is the same conversation that is going on in hip hop - and its irrelevant in both instances because what is lost is control of the art - and the capacity for vertical integration (building revenue in black firms, hiring black folk, strengthening B2B connections, etc.)

T3 - I disagree. This particular discussion we are having is most emphatically not the same type of discussion that is going on within and about hip-hop music. What we are discussing here is how can performing artists create a larger, not necessarily mass, audience for their work. The question of distribution and marketing rights is extremely important but many of these artists are not close to having to jump that hurdle at this time.

KSpence - The simple answer is that they have to keep working and try to be open to a broad spectrum of influences. When Miles Davis was a young man he spent as much time in art galleries and museums as he did practicing his horn. He hung out with poets, filmmakers, painters, writers, musicians and, of course, drug dealers. (He once coldly remarked that Charles Mingus' music sounded like "tired modern paintings.")

P6 - This is an interesting and subtle point. I'm fairly certain, for example, that there were guys in the NBA who could do what Connie Hawkins and Julius Erving did but no one did it until they came along. After they came along and pointed the way, other players began to realize that they could make their bodies act the same way too. Dr. J and The Hawk managed to create a new paradigm.

I think the paradigms in acting, however, move much slower and are more highly dependent on what material the actors are given to work their peculiar magic on and who their directors might be. I read something recently in which the writer said that every American stage or screen actor working today has been influenced by the performance of Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski in the stage and screen versions of "A Streetcar Named Desire" and Brando's performances took place more than 50 years ago.

i know what the individual artist has to do.  but check out the discussion between mat johnson and shamontiel vaughn over at niggerati.com.  i know exactly what tyler has to do to grow the art, but the problem is that as an artist he is much more concerned about his BUSINESS than his art. which makes it easy to churn out formulaic hits that generate profits....but much much harder to generate "real art". 

and as an aside i know how basketball players get better at their craft. they not only practice, they devour tape, and dissect offensive and defensive moves looking at foot placement and angles. body skill is something that can be developed through "woodshedding" as marsalis calls it.

as to cruse and vertical integration. cruse himself noted that the central problem was that black artforms aren't used to advance american society. but here's where he was off.  there were a number of jazz artists trying to do this--where does free jazz come from? by ignoring them, cruse ignored the important distinction between mass entertainment and the engine that creates it, and "art". for cruse he assumed that once a black community gained control of the cultural apparatus they would in and of themselves develop their artform--or at least the intellectuals among them would.

but if intellectuals by their nature are a bit off, or a bit ahead, then there's a tightrope they've got to walk to generate art that their market likes while at the same time pushing the art forward.0

(another place the basketball analogy fails--if you've got a move no one can stop, as long as it is LEGAL no coach will prevent you from using it no matter how extreme it is.) 

 this tightrope is the one that perry has explicitly chosen NOT to walk.

but if intellectuals by their nature are a bit off, or a bit ahead, then there's a tightrope they've got to walk to generate art that their market likes while at the same time pushing the art forward.

Intellectuals are off because they're lopsided.  Intellectual, emotional, and moving center have to Work together harmoniously to produce anything worth claiming as conscious and real.

Perry is not the one who's suffering, he's not the one who dissed, and if these fools dying on the evolutionary threshing floor of popular appeal don't have the good sense that God gave them to see what's wrong with their picture, then they'll go the way of every other maladaptive useless eater..., 

he's not suffering at all. and he won't. even looking at the video it's clear who the winners and the losers are. 

but there's real--that is something that people can readily identify with because it speaks to their concrete experience on a surface level--and there is Real.

 

One of the main themes of that summit was firguring out how to get a support infrastructure in place for Black theatre.

That's what's Real. 

Dumbasses ain't figured it out yet, and are wasting cycles looking the potential great great gift horse all up in his mouf.  Some folks simply can't be taught how to Work.

"Work consists in doing something in one room and simultaneously doing something corresponding to it in the two other rooms -that is to say, while working on the physical body to work simultaneously on the mind and the emotions; while working on the mind to work on the physical body and the emotions; while working on the emotions to work on the mind and the physical body."...

if intellectuals by their nature are a bit off, or a bit ahead, then there's a tightrope they've got to walk to generate art that their market likes while at the same time pushing the art forward.

I'd suggest they alternate. Do some pop culture, do some high culture, lather, rinse, repeat. 

PT: How do you separate that from an audience for theatre? I must have missed something here. It's clear to me that Tyler Perry has a serious marketing and distribution mechanism that is aligned to the preferences of his target audience. It is also crystal clear that these other folks do not.

Quite frankly, I don't see how this is distinct from the hip hop conversation.  If rappers like Nellie can consistently outsell wrappers like Talib or Nas, the scenarios seem to track very closely.  Moreover, if none of these folks CONTROL their distribution (Black ownership of physical theatres vs. Black-owned entities like I-tunes or HMV or Tower), what's the real difference?  

In both instances, some "artist" is hating on the Dirty South (and it's northern/western/midwestern counterparts) in a manner that precisely tracks to Cruse's critique of the demise of Black theatre generations ago.  

Help me out here. 

I'm not suggesting that artists should not think about how their works are marketed and sold. Hell, every artist who actually cares about the work they produce is concerned about this issue. August Wilson, Sam Cooke, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, James Brown, Smokey Robinson and on and on. All of them were or are concerned to a greater or lesser degree about the business, i.e., revenue production side of their work. 

I would argue, however, that rap recording artists like Nelly are not outselling Nas or Talib because he has a superior marketing network than they do. He is outselling them because he is producing music that has broader public appeal than what they produce. This is not a statement about the quality of Nas' or Talib's music. It is statement about the nature of popular taste and mass culture. 

Sometimes if an artist is lucky he or she can produce a work that represents an extremely high state of artistic achievement while simultaneously attaining vast popular appeal as well. Look at what Coppola did in the first two Godfather films or what Miles Davis achieved with the album Kind of Blue. Kind of Blue is the best selling jazz album of all time; it has never been out of print. The music it contains is easily accessible even for non-jazz fans but the music that Miles, Coltrane, Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb made is a masterpiece of collective improvisational music.

I am hesitant to ever criticize the late Dr. Cruse but I suspect that he, like so many other intellectuals, did not fully appreciate, or, better understand the development of mass popular culture in the form of films and, later, television. There is something about the size of that movie screen and how it inflates the size of the actors whose images it reflects that captures the masses in a way that live theater does not. Television manages to create its hypnotic spell by shrinking the size of these images and bring them into your living room. Woody Allen's masterpiece The Purple Rose of Cairo is a comedic meditation on the power of movies and mass culture. (Yeah, I know he doesn't have any black people in his films but sometimes we have to rise above Allen's neurotic limitations.)

My point is that even if Nas and Talib are given the marketing apparatus and deals that Nelli garners they won't outsell him because his music is geared for an audience that by and large does not get Nas' and Talib's music. The hype and publicity that attends Nelli's new releases is just part of the fix or buzz that his fans enjoy. It gets their juices going. Whether they are still listening to the same tracks six months later does not matter. Al that matters is here and now. 

I'll repeat this for T3, because I think it got lost in the shuffle:

as to cruse and vertical integration. cruse himself noted that the central problem was that black artforms aren't used to advance american society. but here's where he was off.  there were a number of jazz artists trying to do this--where does free jazz come from? by ignoring them, cruse ignored the important distinction between mass entertainment and the engine that creates it, and "art". for cruse he assumed that once a black community gained control of the cultural apparatus they would in and of themselves develop their artform--or at least the intellectuals among them would.

...and here's where Craig's conception of Work falls flat as well. There is absolutely no reason to suspect that Perry is interested in doing anything more than employing and entertaining black people. This becomes a problem as it relates to the concept of Work because even though there may be less tension between the masses and "art" as we are depicting, there is still tension between those who are primarily concerned with entertainment and employment, and those who are concerned with generating art that deals honestly with the human condition in a way that is timeless. these two groups are fighting for the attention of the same consumer base, and that attention (along with that loot) is finite. 

...and here's where Craig's conception of Work falls flat as well.

sorry to front Les, but the only thing that fell flat here is your familiarity with how prosaic Work really is.  Work deals extensively with what is known as "The Material Issue" 

Tyler Perry puttin in successful though fragmentary Work, and these hoiti toiti kneegrows - by comparison - are just playing with themselves using only the contents of their intellectual centres...,  

there is still tension between those who are primarily concerned with entertainment and employment, and those who are concerned with generating art that deals honestly with the human condition in a way that is timeless.

sorry, but from what I've sampled thanks to the Mrs and her culture maven club - the hoiti toiti haps really ain't THAT deep.., 

I would argue, however, that rap recording artists like Nelly are not outselling Nas or Talib because he has a superior marketing network than they do.

It is, without question, a major part of the reason. You can't buy what you don't know exists.

He is outselling them because he is producing music that has broader public appeal than what they produce. This is not a statement about the quality of Nas' or Talib's music. It is statement about the nature of popular taste and mass culture.

A mass culture that can't tell the difference between The Message and Bitches ain't shit. 

how prosaic Work really is.

We seem to be synched up today. 

"...there were a number of jazz artists trying to do this--where does free jazz come from?"

Part of the problem with this style of music is that its aesthetic impulses, by and large, did not emanate from any American Negro or American black experiences but from European, primarily German and French, forms of musical experimentation. This music was no freer or more complex than what Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver and Louis Armstrong had done decades earlier.

Archie Shepp, Marion Brown, Henry Grimes, John Tchai, Muhal Richard Abrams etc. certainly were interested in improving and changing American society for the better but their music only appealed to a small segment of even jazz fans.

Nonetheless, I think the distinctions you provided below are correct.  

It is, without question, a major part of the reason. You can't buy what you don't know exists.

...and you can't lose what you ain't never had.  

I think you have to be motivated to look for forms of artistic expression that are either ignored or suppressed by the weight of popular culture. The people who control the distribution networks are entirely driven by commercial concerns. If they thought for a moment that Nas or Talib would sell on the same scale that Nelli does they would run over their mothers to place their products in the market.

That said, I do think there are many, many artists who are denied more public exposure because they can't acquire any, so to speak, shelf space. They either don't have brokers or if they have brokers they are not considered the right brokers. I recall watching that half-assed and untruthful television bio-pic about the Temptations, for example, and kept wondering why if they recorded for a black owned company they did not have a black manager. 

I think you have to be motivated to look for forms of artistic expression that are either ignored or suppressed by the weight of popular culture.

Yes, definitely. Not just artistic expression, either.

When I first started my comparative religions studies in earnest (i.e., for personal application) I used to call myself an adaptive failure. My thought was that the first thing you learn is the common culture, and if that works for you it's as far as you go.

they would run over their mothers to place their products in the market.

I think I read something in the paper about that...

I believe Tyler Perry has a framework that is worthy of considerable investment. However, the management of that enterprise (from a business perspective) would not be left to him. Therefore, the extent to which he retains an interest in entertaining black folk is all that matters. He might or might not become a Spielberg type. The most important thing, however, would be the financing and the infrastructure behind him.

And I maintain, it's the same thing in hip hop. 

PT said: "My point is that even if Nas and Talib are given the marketing apparatus and deals that Nelli garners they won't outsell him because his music is geared for an audience that by and large does not get Nas' and Talib's music. The hype and publicity that attends Nelli's new releases is just part of the fix or buzz that his fans enjoy. It gets their juices going. Whether they are still listening to the same tracks six months later does not matter. Al that matters is here and now."

 

---

Now, I don't disagree with that.  I've said as much at least twice upthread.  What I've suggested is that the tension between the two "camps" is real in that there is no operational unity - no sense of being engaged in functionally the same work - and hence, no mutual striving to own the art.  And that is something that Cruse fully discussed in his texts.  Perhaps it is naive to assume that these folks don't have the luxury of standing on ceremony or merely extolling the virtues of purity.  I don't believe actors or writers or producers or anyone of us have that luxury.  Operational unity and agreement are not the same.  

 

It seems to me that a bit of collaboration and less ego would do wonders for folks.  Then, after they pooled their resources, they could get at the heart of some of this stuff.  The specifics of how the economics work may be too much for right here, but it involves REITs, public schools, black banks, and hip hop artists - as well as all these theatre folks.   

 

honestly, harold didn't put too much stock in intellectuals to do much of anything - much less around the issues of culture and class...it was precisely his trenchant critique of these fissures that caught my attention the first time i read the book...in the chapter on "the intellectuals and force and violence," he writes, "It took Jones and his young Afro-American nationalists four more years to arrive at the realization that it had to establish institutions inside the Harlem ghetto in order to implement a positive program."

So how are you going to sell out Broadway (if that's what you want) in 2015 without building that infrastructure in the hood that ILLUSTRATES to the youth what your vision of theatre is?  If you build it, they will come - but if you advertise it, they may tell you to kiss their ass.   

Or other Black artists who were more concerned about 'crossing over' than creating great authenic black work. In CRISIS OF THE NEGRO INTELLECTUAL he criticizes musicains, actors and artists for trying to mime European forms and developing a independent black -contolled from top down theatre (I would also say multimedia today) because what interference would first take the way a Black Artist produces a work according to the white marketplace. (i.e. crossover) which since the 70's when black music and film became mainstream and the white companies made black entertainment that was acceptable to white sterotypes. Hip- Hop is just the most recent example of co-opting an orginal black art multimedia scene and making it a commodity. In the late 60's you had films with majority black casts where the films were amazing and diverse, by 1972 they became the same racial sterotypes that white society and now the black poor were watching. Pimps, Drug dealers, Hookers, addicts and thugs. Instead of rich black characters Hollywood did what it has always done to black talent marginalized them, but nw to bigger profits.

Elite Black Filmakers and artists need to do what Miles, August Wilson, Prince, Spike Lee, Sly and the Family Stone, Stevie Wonder and Micheal Jackson (until he became a meglamanic) use the tools of the greats that came before us and added something vital without losing one ounce of blackness. Tyler Perry whom I am not a fan of, seems to understand that appealing to the average brotha and sista at the salon or park has made dividends, If these artists want to bitch and moan that their theatre is more legitmate I would ask them because it is a White Theatre setup but with black actors or because the Tonys and Broadway recognize it as so? If these idiots want to make art that appeals to the average black person and add artistic themes then you have to compromise your vision somewhat, if you don't then expect the same empty seats a perdominately older, white, black female white male couples at your plays or movies don't blame Tyler Perry.

PTC, the content of free jazz wasn't just about aping non-black modes to generate new forms of content. it was also about freeing artists from the formal restrictions of jazz placed on them by producers and marketers. coltrane plays a 90 minute version of My Favorite Things not just because he has it like that, but to get out of the album trick bag that determined how long your tracks could be. to get out of the club dynamic that drove much of their production...how long should a set be to maximize drink purchases? cruse totally ignored this move, and its implications for his argument (the market works on black cultural production too...).

 

You note that Perry's work is fragmentary, Craig...why?  What is he missing?

I understand the material issue, and think it is important...but while Cruse had beefs with a number of intellectuals, the primary problem was two fold. He thought they ignored the role of culture in political and economic empowerment. But he also thought they missed the boat because they didn't work harder to take the artform they had in front of them and develop it craft wise. Where else would new visions of black life come from?

 

KS - We're now talking about different forms or expressions of what we both recognize as jazz or collective improvisational music. Coltrane at the point in his recording career where he became identified with what jazz critics called the "New Thing" and musicians such as Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp and Marion Brown were becoming identified as his disciples, whether that was true or not, suffered relatively little or no intrusion from Bob Thiele and others at Impulse Records.

Granted, Coltrane may not have recorded an album with the incomparable Johnny Hartman if Thiele had not pushed him to do it but the result was music of sublime beauty that almost instantly became a jazz classic. Coltrane always liked to play long, long solos. His penchant for trying to explore every highway and byway of a tune drove Miles crazy. In fact, there is a story that Coltrane once told Miles that when he got started he couldn't stop. Miles, according to the story, looked at Coltrane and said, "Well, just take the damn horn out your mouth, baby." The last studio album Coltrane recorded with Miles was Kind of Blue, which was released in August of 1959.

My point, again, is that Coltrane's interest in long forms of music preceded the birth or recognition of what came to be called "free jazz." Keep in mind, too, that by late 1959 Ornette Coleman, whose musical explorations preceded Coltrane's, had already recorded and released three albums the last of which was titled The Shape of Jazz To Come. Coleman was searching for new sounds and ways to express what he heard in his head, but I do not think he was particularly driven by the desire to outflank the A&R men at Atlantic Records.

Yes, I do believe that producers, marketers, club owners etc. caused no end of angst for jazz artists. Miles Davis, for example, reportedly nearly blew a gasket when he saw the first cover of his album Miles Ahead because Columbia's marketing department had put a white woman in a sailboat on the cover. He later forced Columbia to change the cover and he began having photos of black women (Francis Davis and Cicely Tyson) placed on the covers when any image of a woman was used at all.

Without negating your essential points I would still argue that the style of music that came to be identified as "free jazz" owed its format more to modern European forms of experimental music than it did to the American experience of African American people. The masses of black people had begun moving away from jazz music in the mid to late 1940s when bebop emerged as the dominant form because this form of music with its fast tempos, complex chord structure and sometimes jagged rhythm turns did not provide the "swing" feeling that dancers wanted. Part of what was going on obviously is that the musicians who were considered the progenitors and innovators of this new style of jazz - Charlie Parker, Theolonius Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Clarke etc. - did not see themselves and did not want to be regarded as mere entertainers. They wanted to be taken more seriously and they wanted their music to be taken more seriously.  

 

we're talking about the same thing, but emphasizing different aspects of it. your sense of the history here is much better than my own.

You note that Perry's work is fragmentary, Craig...why?  What is he missing?

The emotional depth to actually carry off a high-point, much less teach through emotionality.  Consequently, nearly all his work rings hollow.  

I think it's important for movies and plays to be imbued with the emotional, visual, or even conversational depth that can typically only result from well-coordinated group effort.  I believe that the most valuable moments in theatre art result from the emergent quality of ensemble construction and execution.  

It is axiomatic that Work is about groups..., one can Work on oneself and become stronger, but development really only occurs in the context of a group.  

I understand the material issue, and think it is important...but while Cruse had beefs with a number of intellectuals, the primary problem was two fold. He thought they ignored the role of culture in political and economic empowerment. But he also thought they missed the boat because they didn't work harder to take the artform they had in front of them and develop it craft wise. Where else would new visions of black life come from?

This is so foundational..., and personally very depressing to me at this moment. In a nutshell Les, you have put your finger on our categorical failure to build durable exoteric cultural institutions - and clearly delineated the vastness of the gap separating current Black cultural praxis from its lofty though entirely conceptual aims. I mean, we seem pathologically incapable of even getting the gottdamn blueprint right, much less breaking ground and building anything durable.

I'm thinking concretely right now about the profound deterioration of Black churches and of HBCU's. More the latter than the former. I've been observing a trend to try to put HBCU's in institutional hospice by converting part of their human capital and infrastructure into service provider mode to provide some recurring revenues to sustain them around their slipping cores.

Personal Work seeks to overcome the following

Psychological materialism is the mistaken belief that "I" exist outside of my momentary perception of things. Developmental Culture (Work culture) seeks to destroy our enslaved limitations to psychological materialism and our mistaken belief that we have a permanent "I".

Do you see where I'm headed with this?

Analogizing between personal Work and the collective praxis realized as Black institution building and maintenance and substituting Blackness for permanent "I" - yields a decidedly unpleasant realization concerning the likely futility of the Black partisan endeavor....,

I'm thinking concretely right now about the profound deterioration of Black churches and of HBCU's.

CN - I think a classic case study on this issue could be written about how the trustees and administration of Lincoln University frittered away the University's control of the world famous Barnes Collection of post Impressionist art. These brain donors could have moved the collection to the site of Lincoln University, which is located in Chester County, Pennsylvania, and easily raised the necessary funds to house the collection and create a world class international tourist destination for art lovers and the performing arts. The county and the townships where Lincoln University is located would have done everything in their power to assist them. Chester County is the most affluent county in Pennsylvania and is the home of numerous art galleries etc. They could have written their own ticket and it would have made money for the University for generations to come.

The collection will now be moved to Philadelphia and black folks will have very little, if anything, to say, let alone control, about the collection. These kneegrows, in my opinion, should be tied to trees and whipped. I know this is a terrible thing to write but I get so angry whenever I think about how these fools squandered this legacy because they had no vision despite holding advanced degrees and being touted as leaders. What idiots!!! Old man Barnes must be rolling in his grave.

Here is a paragraph I copied from the Barnes Foundation website:

"Barnes was particularly noted not only for his collection of Modern art, but also for his early and vigorous collecting of African art. While his contemporaries collected African art as examples of "primitive" cultural artifacts, Barnes was outspoken in his view of African art as a major art form that was at least as aesthetically important as other major art movements and traditions. As a child, Barnes had attended African American camp revival meetings with his mother, who was a devout Methodist. It was at those religious retreats that Barnes developed an appreciation for African American culture, especially music and creative expression. In addition to collecting African art, Barnes was seriously involved in African American social and cultural issues, and supportive of African-American artists."

When Barnes died his will specified that a majority of the members of the board that administered his foundation would be drawn from the trustees of Lincoln University, which is an historically black college. Thurgood Marshall and Kwame Nkrumah, among others, received their undergraduate degrees from Lincoln.

I believe I understand. I'd like to go back to this theater example. What the hoi polloi don't realize in this case is that Perry has an infrastructure that employs black theater technicians and actors, and generates product that gets people in the seats. They should be seeking to bring him into the fold because of the infrastructure he brings to the table

What I am suggesting is that Perry, in focusing largely on the business end has not focused enough on his craft...and that this tension would preclude him from being involved with the hoi polloi to the extent he'd have to. Perry isn't apprenticing under anyone in any form...not even in exchange for being a teacher on the other end.

So we're tripping on the hoi polloi in this case because they are the ones shutting him out (and perhaps because homeboy sounds like a chump in the video clip). But what I'm suggesting is that Perry isn't blameless in this process.

Perry needn't deal with the hoi polloi because he's already engaged the more materially useful intelligences...,

But what I'm suggesting is that Perry isn't blameless in this process.

Based on my own experience, I'd be inclined to hold him relatively blameless

and it bears repeating;

because they had no vision

so who do we deploy into these pockets of educated fool backwardness to make it mo betta? 

Corporate Blackness Workout and Restructure Specialists L.L.C.

ROTFLMBAO!!!! 

Perry needn't deal with the hoi polloi

I think his plays are quite popular with the hoi polloi!

As I wrote down thread I am not too keen on Tyler Perry's plays at all but I find the brother with the sunglasses and the air of superiority even more of a turn-off. I can't tell you how many evenings I have felt I wasted sitting in some half-empty theater looking at a so-called black play that was insufferably dull despite the playwright's desire to tackle big themes and issues.

I wish, for example, that black playwrights would start writing about black people's lives as if white people did not exist at all. This desire on my part is one of the reasons that I so loved and enjoyed the movie Eve's Bayou. I discovered something that I did not expect when I realized that the folk did not go to see it. Some of my in-laws, for example, who are Tyler Perry fans could not deal with some of the themes in Eve's Bayou and did not like the film at all despite the fact that the characters were largely middle class and affluent.

The other thing I discovered is that white folks, at least in central Pennsylvania where we lived in at the time, did not go to see the film because they assumed that it was about racism simply because the characters were black and it was set in the south.

BTW, the black hoi polloi did not go to see Devil With A Blue Dress either although it starred Denzel Washington. I suspect that many of them having been dumbed down by years of television viewing could not follow the plot. This suspicion was confirmed when I saw the movie at Union Station in DC. The young 20 something old brothers sitting around me kept asking their girlfriends to explain to them what was going on. It made me sad.

i think i meant hoiti toiti....,

hoi polloi and hoiti toiti are not routine usages for me, in any event, what I meant to say is that he doesn't have to deal with the broke-assed, wannabe highbrows...,

but back to the real issue at hand magne.., whats we gonna do about the overarching need for emissary visioneers to orchestrate outcomes based cultural production?

i meant hoiti toiti too. what you are doing already with the dubois learning center is on point, getting kids to generate their own forms of cultural production.

but that won't cut it alone, because--particularly if their productions are used to generate income--there will be a perverse incentive to duplicate what already generates loot. and whatever that thing is, it won't be generate new visions of American society. it has to be combined with cultivating in individuals a worldview that will in turn cause them to do the work required at an individual level to create powerful art.

and i too find the brother with the glasses a turn off. but i am ignoring that. just because he's a stuck up ass doesn't mean he should be ignored...he's got valid points.

(as an aside perry has mastered the art of marketing and making loot. bravo. but that type of art doesn't generate vision. almost by definition it cannot.)