Boston Book Festival's 2012 Black Culture Panel

This panel, by far, is my favorite to date. I was incredibly lucky to catch it at all. I meant to attend a book publishing presentation in the same room, but in true Ideologue form, I got sidetracked by outdoor book kiosks and the ever-ready-to-make-a-Bostonian-late T. I caught the final three minutes of the publishing presentation and decided to stay along for the following panel. Heavy hitters Emily Bernard, Leonard Brown, Tsitsi Ella Jaji, and William Banfield dug in their heels and engendered a conversation and Q&A about Black music and culture that was not to be missed. Lucky for you, you had your very own insider - moi.

Full Audio *

Now, I love my obscure Icelandic composers and eardrum-defying, bass heavy rap like any reasonable pseudo-bourgie dork in their late twenties, but I grew up with Mahalia Jackson for lullabies and Al Green and James Brown at family barbecues in Chicago...and if Chicago knows anything, it's good music. Black Americans (and folks of the Diaspora worldwide) have an incredibly rich musical tradition, whether we're jukin' and steppin' to R&B in Chicago, playing music to accompany our Capoeira in Brazil, cuttin' loose in Barbados or chopping and screwing in Houston, we've taken our African roots and created genres unparalleled in their scope, influence, and ingenuity.

Leonard Brown gave us the soundbite of the session when he reminded us that "because of the contributions of African Americans through all that we know as Americana - not just in the United States of America, but hemispherically - most of what we consider aspects of culture in the Western hemisphere is sitting on an African platform."

I recently read the Huffington Post article about Israeli-born violinist Miri Ben Ari. She's been known to work with many rap artists, including Chicago's own Kanye West. While my favorite violinists happen to be of the Nathan Milstein, Jascha Heifetz, Schlomo Mintz sort, I can appreciate how Miri brings a very classic instrument to folks that would otherwise not be a fan. That said, the interviewer wanted to know how Ben Ari felt about "sounding Black". I've always found language like that highly offensive and problematic, but it provides an excellent opportunity to discuss the myriad ways that Black music and culture have contributed to our shared society. Given the range of nationalities and cultural identities of Diasporic Blackness, can we hold them all to one standard? Can an artform truly be called Black if it's played on European instruments or is heavily impacted by other traditions (for example, Negro Spirituals sung in Black US vernaculars of Standard English or Irish cadences in certain strains of Bluegrass and Blues)? If Blackness can be defined, can outsiders be deemed Black by proximity or mimicry? Does that proximity only qualify if the performer is a singer? If the performer is a violinist or guitarist, are they simply following the chords and time like their Black counterparts? To what degree is an outsider mimicking or playing into the tradition?

You see where I'm going with this. The questions are endless, but before you get to picking apart the intricacies of identity politics, the rules of belonging, and the history of appropriation, listen to the panel audio in its entirety. I think you'll find that it is a presentation worth listening to. I pose a question about the role that ethnomusicology plays during the Q&A (unfortunately, the mics weren't sensitive enough to pick up the question) and am answered by William Banfield and Leonard Brown.

Emily Bernard // Tsitsi Ella Jaji // Leonard Brown // William "Bill" Banfield

*My audio sounds like Thor and Loki fighting a battle to end all battles, so here's a link to crystal clear audio recorded by the wonderful folks at the Boston Book Festival. You can find audio from other amazing BBF2012 presentations here.

Ron Hayduk and Alexander Keyssar on Immigrant Voting at the Massachusetts Historical Society

Professor Ron Hayduk (pictured right, of Queens College, City University of New York) prepared a paper for the Boston Seminar in Immigration and Urban History and shared it with us lucky folks in attendance at the Massachusetts Historical Society back in November of 2012.

And if that wasn't treat enough, we got to hear comments from Professor Alexander Keyssar (pictured left, of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government) himself.

Full Audio

I got an opportunity to chat with Professor Keyssar after the presentation. After filling up my plate with the vegetarian options and steeling myself to ask this very cool man a question, I asked him what he would do if he was the supreme ruler of the United States.

He told me that he'd reinstate the draft, irrespective of gender. He went on to tell me a bit about his family's migration story to the United States.

I love picking people's brains like this. It says so much about their ideology and ways of being in the world. As I'm sure you know from other blog posts, I'm a descendant of full human beings that happened to have been sharecroppers and slaves - my experience and ways of understanding my citizenship in the United States is shaped by my cultural inheritance. I grew up with a language for ownership and accomplishment as linchpins for freedom and personhood.

In a land where full humanity needs to be proven, accomplishment is the only way to fully participate without question. In a country and culture where worth is narrowly defined by what one possesses, ownership is queen regnant. My family owns land in Mississippi, Illinois and Michigan to this day. I started picking that apart a couple months ago.

I was at a panel discussion for the book American History Now at Harvard's DuBois  center when I heard Professor Ned Blackhawk (Yale) speak. I soon began to renegotiate the veracity and legitimacy of a personhood / citizenship couched in ownership of stolen land.

All in all, the current ideas about (documented and undocumented) immigrant status say much about who we are as a nation, how we handle our history, and our chances of survival.

Who were we? Can we continue to afford to operate with disdain for others the way we have? How does our collective US identity buckle when faced with the realities of immigration? Are xenophobia and a crippled economy interest we can afford to pay on a principal centuries in the making?

Is there more at stake? My very convoluted question is posed at 38:28. I was hopped up on painkillers.

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot at the Brattle Theatre

The Ideologue: "I conducted a series of interviews with relatives who made the trip from Mississippi to Chicago in the late '50s and am compiling a family history to be published at the Newberry Library in Chicago. I experienced an interesting dynamic during the interviews that I'd like to ask you about.

My relatives were genuinely surprised and pleased that I asked about their decision to leave the South. After expressing those initial positive feelings, they told me how disappointed they were with how their descendants (and younger, unrelated Black Chicagoans) operated in the North. In your opinion, does an ancestor's story ever become their beneficiaries'? Will we have to contend with our stories becoming "outdated" and someone else's? Could that be why many of my relatives were reluctant to share their Migration stories?

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot: "Well, I think one of the things you do (in asking them the question and bearing witness to their story) shows that you are not only interested in their survival and story, but in their resilience and endurance. And I think that's part of what makes a good interviewer (and grandchild). They understand that the subject matter can still be raw, can still be very real (even decades later) and difficult to respond to. Ask the probing questions; they'll tell you "Feel where I'm coming from", "Stand in my shoes."

The Ideologue: Thank you very much, Professor.

Post-Q&A Reflections: I picked up the mantle my maternal grandmother left behind and became my family historian a few years ago. Moving to New England in 2009 played a major role in my desire to sift through documents and chronicle seemingly unimportant tidbits about ante- and postbellum life.

My inheritance was everything from the Southern colloquialisms I heard growing up to the accent I delivered them in. And just as I am a beneficiary of many amazing movements toward justice, I am an individual person with a lineage that needs unearthing. As a result of many hours (that quickly folded themselves into days and months of intensive searching), I had an historical trajectory for my family tree. I am fortunate in that I was able to crack the antebellum wall and find documented information about my southern and Western European relatives.

I remember sitting on the floor of my bedroom when President and First Lady Obama walked the stage with their children in 2008. I know where my family members lived after they made the journey North, where they were when Brown v. Board of Education occurred, the 19th amendment, the Reconstruction amendments, and the Emancipation Proclamation. History was no longer a detached, faceless thing; it was something to be interpreted and filtered for context. What is emancipation in a land of engineered unfreedom? What is court-mandated school desegregation in hypersegregated cities comprised of violently-unyielding neighborhoods? How do we define our full humanity, our citizenship, and our participation in this grand experiment in democracy by casting a ballot? Can we still honor our ancestors' legacies by operating in ways that they wouldn't?

Perhaps a failure to recognize the importance of your historical narrative is a youthful transgression; maybe ageism plays a role in many folks' refusal to engage the people that carry these stories inside them.

Conducting these interviews changed me. It was a nonverbal promise - with every question posed in earnest, every nod and smile, each hug of gratitude at the end, I was assuring my relatives that their stories would be honored and valued in my hands. These stories are not above critique (as many are shaped by the misogyny, homophobia, and class issues of the day), but they are mined for meaning and serve as a whetstone for my cultural critique. Just as I have a lineage, so do the systems of oppression (and related personal privileges) that we currently operate in.

Where we come from provides us with a wealth of knowledge. It's a pleasure to have it in my arsenal.