A Blues Note

Hey Y’all, 

Props to James “Lap” Baker who is a Jackson State University graduate, successful businessman, and survivor of the 1970 JSU Shooting when the Mississippi Highway Patrol, the Mississippi National Guard, and the Jackson Police Department marched onto the JSU campus, surrounded it, and fired over four hundred shots into a female dormitory, killing two and wounding eighteen. Baker emailed me a photo of Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris with all of the previous American Vice Presidents. This photo proves that a photo is worth a thousand words as it tell us everything we need to know about America and the importance of this election. Of course, no African-American President will cure all the racial ills of America, and the election of the first African-American and female Vice President will not cure all the sexist ills of America. Both racism and sexism are so ingrained into the fabric of America that America must be rewoven to remove those ills from its design. Furthermore, that reweaving of the fabric must occur at a grassroots level, from the bottom up and not from the top down, which is why Black Self-determinism is so critical. Thus, after receiving Mr. Baker’s email, my first thought was that I’m sure that this is a moment, like the election of President Obama, that Mr. Baker never thought that he’d see, especially after surviving the night when he and his classmates were target practice for white supremacy as bullets turned buildings into Swiss cheese and bodies into rag dolls. 

Then, I realized that my thought was myopic and an insult to the intelligence, work, and spirit of Mr. Baker and all the folks who worked and died to bring liberty to African people by making the American hell just a bit less hellish. I needed to remember that those folks were working under the fifth element of Kalamu ya Salaam’s definition of the Blues aesthetic, “an optimistic faith in the ultimate triumph of justice in the form of karma.” They, according to Salaam’s notion of Bluespeople, keep working against seemingly insurmountable odds because they believe/know that “what is wrong will be righted. what is last will be first. balance will be brought back into the world. this faith was often co-opted by Christianity, but is essential to the most downtrodden of the blues songs.” This is the intellectual grace, power, and beauty that has sustained African people. This is why black folks make music, write literature, create visual images, dance, and so much more because the creation of art, for all human beings, but especially for African people, is the act of acknowledging one’s existence, one’s worth, self-reflection, healing, education, and inspiration to survive to the next day and to evolve into the next greater transformation of what it means to be human. However, unlike many of their Caucasian counterparts, most African people never forgot the role of the griot and the words of W. E. B. DuBois that, “in the final analysis all art is propaganda.” It is this understanding as Bluespeople that sustained those JSU students when the State of Mississippi tried to shoot them from existence, a lynching with machine guns yet a lynching nonetheless. But, like so many other African people, those JSU students were able to heal themselves and continue with the song, “We are soldiers in the army. We have to fight although we have to cry. We have to hold up the bloodstained banner. We have to hold it up until we die.” And when the way became too dark to see and too rugged to walk, they prayed,

"Precious Lord, take my hand. Lead me on. Let me Stand. I am tired. I am weak. I am ‘lone. Through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light. Take my hand, precious Lord, and lead me home.” Then, when sorrow needed to be transformed into an energy of rebellion or celebration, they could declare Willie Dixon’s mantra, “We gonna fuss and fight till daylight. We gonna pitch a wang dang doodle all night long,” which was given ultimate life by Koko Taylor

 and resonates as a hymnal cousin to Claude McKay’s “If We Must Die” when he writes “we must meet the common foe! Though far outnumbered let us show us brave, And for their thousand blows deal one death blow!” To be clear, while African people understand the importance of being willing to shoot back, their intellect, love for humanity, and love for the Creator of humanity have propelled them to find the most creative ways to be the saviors of humanity despite being attacked, enslaved, and colonized more than any other people on this planet. As Jerry W. Ward illustrates with his poem, “Don’t Be Fourteen (in Mississippi),” “When white boys ask why you don’t like them. Spit on them with your mouth closed,” which evokes Malcolm X’s “The Ballot or the Bullet” to affirm that intellect and love were always the first weapons of choice for the children of Alkebulan. From Africa to America, African people remain the spirit of creativity and survival as one can only survive this hell by the grace, innovation, and power of Love and Creativity. So, that photo of Vice President-Elect Harris that Mr. Baker forwarded me is not a victory lap. It is an affirmation of how far we have come and how far is still yet to go with an understanding that Bluespeople have it in them to refashion the world into the creative and loving place that it should be rather than the hell it currently is. So, while y’all checkout these upcoming events, I’mma listen to some Thomas Dorsey, who was possibly the greatest gospel songwriter of all time after having been one of the greatest bluesmen of all time. And, just like it was tragedy that shifted Dorsey’s focus as a songwriter, tragedy and change are always forces that drive or compel the creative to develop innovative ways to transcend the negative and craft a more perfect way of being human. This is what it means to live on the One and be Funkdafied as our roots are planted firmly in the fertilizer of the Blues so that our leaves, branches, and fruit can flower toward the Sun, enabling us to feed folks with what they need to continue to grow/evolve beyond the Tower of Babble and into the bosom of the almighty Benefactor.