Archive for March, 2004

A few years ago, I got into a discussion about James Brown with some of my relatives. One uncle was of the opinion that James doesn’t deserve all the credit he gets. “His band made him,” my uncle said. I didn’t debate the issue with him, since we were on totally different levels of knowledge and appreciation where James is concerned. That is to say, while my uncle may have actually been around to see James Brown perform in his heyday, I doubt that he has done the amount of reading and research that I have. So he may know James, but he don’t know James like I know James.

In Funk, the Music, the Rhythm, and the People of the One, Rickey Vincent states, “…the central locus of all funk was James Brown.” While I absolutely agree with that idea, I think it’s important to clear up some misconceptions. First, James Brown did not have a band. Allowing for small changes in personnel in recording sessions, he had three different bands. That’s what my uncle didn’t understand. The group that recorded “Cold Sweat” is very different from the group that recorded “Sex Machine,” which is again very different from the group that recorded “The Payback.” So what I think I want to do is look at the different what I think are the best songs of each era and break down the different manifestations of the funk that came about.

The eras as I describe them here are based on the following Polydor records reissues of James’ work:

Foundations of Funk: 1965-1969
Funk Power: 1970
Make It Funky: The Big Payback1971-1975

There are some other good anthologies out there, but this set is top-notch. Anybody who wants to get a good in-depth understanding of what James Brown’s work was about should invest in these. I like these principally because on every disc there is some previously unreleased work, which provides the sharpest contrast to the the hits we already know.

While I appreciate James Brown’s early work, including some of his most recognizable hits, Please, Please, Please, I Got You (I Feel Good), and Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag, those don’t necessarily constitute funk for me. I can’t help but like the personnel because there’s a Tooley in there playing the trumpet. (I don’t know if there’s any relation. I doubt it, but it’s nice to imagine sometimes.) In them are elements of funk, but it wasn’t until 1967 that James kicked in the door of the funk era with “Cold Sweat.”

The first thing to notice about Cold Sweat is the One. Rickey Vincent writes extensively about this in Funk, so I will not attempt to retread his points. What I will say is that the listener must pay attention to the fact that the accent is on the first beat of the first measure. The listener should also notice that all the instruments come off the One as well. That’s the engine that drives Cold Sweat. The importance of the change in emphasis from the 2-4 to the One cannot be overstated. Everything was different after that.

The song that perhaps illustrates the changeover best is “Funky Drummer.” At the beginning of FD, the drummer and band use a rhythm that was typical of early r&b/rock & roll (which are at times indistinguishable.) Both the snare and the punch of the horns is on the two and the four beats for the first 3:10 of the song. Then there is a middle part, during which the drummer doubles down on the one but no clear pattern is established. Then, at 4:06, we get the first appearance of the Funky Drummer beat, which has been sampled so many times. The pattern is, of course, most obvious in the drum solo. If we allow the onomatopoetic values of ‘Boom’ for the kick (bass) drum, ‘Bap’ for the snare, ’sssp’ for the high hat, and ‘Chicka’ for a quick one –two comprised of a tap of the high hat with a light hit of the snare, then the beat would go like this:

Boom boom BAP chicka chicka boom Bap sssp

This description is, of course, simplified, since I cannot verbally represent sounds layered sounds.

Now, back to Cold Sweat, which preceded Funky Drummer by three years. The early James was marked by a massive horn section. (Unfortunately, all my CDs with the liner notes are up in Philly so I can’t break down the personnel like I want to) But suffice it to say that he could effectively split them up into brass and woodwinds. In reality, it’s probably best to say that he had an orchestra without the strings. That’s how many people he had on stage. With all those people, control is a must and control is what he had. Everybody was locked in. Cold Sweat is not different from his other songs in that respect, but the tightness of the band on that track is unmatched.

Keeping Cold Sweat in mind, that era produced my favorite James Brown song, and the one that I think best typifies everything James and the boys had going on at that time, “Let A Man Come In and Do the Popcorn.” This is the one. Nobody really knows this song; except for the Foundations of Funk compilation, it’s not on any CD I’ve found. It wasn’t a big hit. Nevertheless, this is not just a James Brown song, it’s a meta-James Brown song; to understand this record is to understand the principles behind all James Brown records.

First, let’s deal with lyrics: the lyrics in this song don’t really make sense. This song was not written to express a thought, it was written as a conduit for a groove. Hence gems like, “Waterboy/the boy with the bucket/if you didn’t want the job/you shouldn’t oughta tuck it”

Musically, we have the evidence of the orchestral horn arrangement. On one hand we have one set of horns (woodwinds, I think) doing a slow descent, then the brass comes behind them and does a faster descent, then they all punch out circular round to close out the measure. This display is all about control. There are two tempos at work that get combined into one. The bass line stays consistent throughout, and there is no improvizational drum solo. James exhorts the drummer to “gimme a little bit mo’” at one point in the song, but there’s nothing like Funky Drummer going on. There is, however, one trombone solo.

The reason I think “Let A Man Come In…” is the best James Brown song is that it represents the tight focus of Cold Sweat, and it also displays James’ gospel roots. If someone is familiar with the asthetics of Black preaching, it’s all present here; all the way down to the shrieks of “Early! In the mornin’!” that would be heard in any Easter Sunday sermon. Also present are James’ band-instructing grunts, yowlps, and hollers. It’s wild because when you listen to the song, it seems as if the tempo changes, but it really doesn’t. It’s a mirage that appears because of the massive amount of energy that is infused into the song.

Maybe next time, I will break it down a little further. Right now, my brain is frying from trying to put these observations into words. It’s one thing to point out what’s going on to somebody who is listening to a song. It’s another thing altogether to try to explain aspects of a song while assuming that the reader has never heard the song, and probably never will. Having said that, I recommend that anybody who wants to hear some good James Brown records get the Foundations of Funk cd, if nothing else. Then you can hear Let A Man Come In. I will definitely break down the 2nd era next time.

This is why I can’t seriously do politics: most of the time, it seems that people are so entrenched in their opinions that they refuse to acknowledge that there are other legitimate options and thought processes. In both of these pieces, I’m just like, come on!

In reading over some of the headlines at Black Electorate, I was particularly struck by the article about the woman who seems to want some type of remuneration from Brown University because of some dealings they may have had in slavery. What’s the point in that, really? Brown is an Ivy League university. I could be wrong, but I find it hard to believe that many of the Black students there are being held back or otherwise systematically discriminated against. If you’re Black and communicate well, and have even a modicum of intellegence, a university is almost like a utopia. Sure, there may be an individual incident here and there, but I don’t think that those situations represent the total experience. Those are just some bumps in an otherwise smooth road.

Let’s say that the panel finds that the founders of Brown University did have some dealings in slavery and that they did profit substantially. Nothing in the article indicates that this is so, but just for the sake of argument, let’s say it happened like that. What happens now? Do they cut a check to all the Black students at Brown? If that’s the case, let me transfer right now! But seriously, one of the difficulties I have with reparations is the question of who gets them. Would they go to all Black alumni of Brown? Would they go to all Black students who were enrolled at the time of the decision? Would it wind up being a scholarship? And then there’s the problem of determining who is actually Black. What’s the definition? Who sets it? The NAACP?

Situations like this make me really believe in John McWhorter’s “Victimology” framework. He says that one of the main things holding Black people back is their embracing of victimhood. This situation with Brown seems to be just that. Let’s look at something that happened over 200 years ago and see how somebody took advantage of people who looked like us.

I’m not one of those people who believes that everything is okay now, and that racism doesn’t exist or anything like that. For that matter, neither does McWhorter. I do think, however, that plumbing history for examples of racism does nothing to make the lives of Black people better today. To be sure, such things should be noted, since they provide a context for what we know and believe about America, but at the end of the day, that stuff happened a long time ago. Whether the founders of Brown made money off slaves or not, I doubt that it has any impact on the Black students who are there now. In the same way, the fact that I probably could not have gone to the U. of Maryland 100 years ago has no bearing on what I do while I am there now.

In short, I think that the problems we face in the Black community cannot be solved by looking back at what happened in the past. That old saying about people not knowing their past is true (whichever saying you know, that’s the one I meant.) but it’s also true that you can’t drive forward if you keep your eyes on the rearview mirror. The racist practices of the past are bad, but they have maybe 3% stopping power. Racist practices of today are bad but they have, maybe, 22% stopping power. That other 75%, that’s totally in our control. What Nicholas, John, and the rest of the Browns that founded the University, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and even George Wallace and Bull Connor did is not keeping kids today from reading and learning mathematics to the appropriate level for their grade. There’s a place for discussing the effects of racism, but this is not it.

On the other side of the aisle, I read an archived article about Black History Month by Mychal Massie. Overall, I agree with his premise. However, smack dab in the middle of the piece, he writes, “During Black History Month, black children have Paul Robeson, Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. DuBois – all of whom were purveyors of bitterness – force fed to them.” I have two problems here: first, I don’t think most Black students could identify two of the three. I’m assuming that they would probably be able to pick out Marcus Garvey because of his military-style regalia, but that may be a huge assumption on my part. Second, and more disturbing to me is the way he singlehandedly dismisses them because he disagrees with their politics.

If there’s anything that bothers me about the discourse of political thought it’s the fact that we act like only people who agree with us are worth knowing or learning about. Now, in Massie’s defense, he does mention three people whose names I am unfamilar with, James A. Harris, William Lester Jr., William B. Purvis, and Capt. Robert Lawrence Jr., so there is some research for me to do. The contributions of those four men notwithstanding, that a Black intellectual of any stripe can just casually dismiss W.E.B. DuBois or Paul Robeson is unconscionable. This is particularly true when discussing them as people Black students should, or in Massie’s case should not, learn about. Marcus Garvey is an important figure too, but he doesn’t resonate with me like DuBois or Robeson.

Students need to learn about DuBois because they need to understand that Black folks most certainly do have a heritage as intellectuals. And I’m not talking about Black(?) folks way, way back in Africa somewhere, I’m talking about in these United States. Now, I’m not necessarily comfortable with DuBois’ embrace of socialism, but I think that it represents a teaching opportunity. The teacher could engage the students on whether they think his ideological responses to the racism that he saw in his day (might the fact that he had to go to Germany to get his PhD because no school in the States would accept a Black PhD candidate have had something to do with his “bitterness”?) were warranted and whether such thoughts are appropriate now.

As for Paul Robeson, I am just aghast that anybody could just casually dismiss him. If I had known who he was when I was younger, Paul Robeson would have been my role model. He did everything. Paul Robeson was the 3rd Black student at Rutgers, having earned an academic scholarship. While there, he earned 15 varsity letters and was a 2-time All American in football. In addition to numerous academic awards, he graduated valedictorian. That’s just college. That’s before he graduated law school or started performing. What more could someone want to point to in one person? He is the perfect example for students that one need not give up in one area to do well in another. Again, while I understand that Massie’s objection to Robeson being taught during BHM has to do with Robeson’s political positions later in his life, I think that such thinking can short-circuit the learning process. It is every thinking person’s right to interrogate Robeson’s political actions. Whether one decides that his actions were valid or not is immaterial. All students would do well to learn about and learn from Paul Robeson.

As an aside about Robeson, while we all venerate Muhammad Ali for standing up for what he believed even though it cost him his title, we only celebrate him today because he won his title back. Most people don’t know about Paul Robeson because he never got back on top and as such, does not fit the story arc into which we typically cast our historic figures. At least now we’re starting to recognize his greatness. He’s on a postage stamp…looking like Sidney Poitier.

Lashawn wrote about it today and it just kinda provoked me to put my 2 cents in. The fact that R. Kelly got nominated for an NAACP Image Award while he’s got CHILD PORNOGRAPHY charges pending is mind-boggling. And in the interest of disclosing my biases, let me state right up front that I have never like R. Kelly as a singer. I’m pretty good about not fooling myself into thinking that I know celebrities, so I wouldn’t say that I have any personal animus towards him, I just don’t think he can sing. He’s like 7-up — never had it, never will. Well, at least I was neutral until all this madness with the tape started. (I did not see the tape, even though I have had opportunities. I always figured that if he was going to jail for making it, I would be just as culpable for watching it. So it might not be him. Gotta play fair.) Once the tape came out, my respect for him sank. I mean, regardless of whether he did it or not, why the devil would his next single after the scandal be “Ignition?” In the words of Kane, “Wha’chu on, hops? Dope or dog food?”

Anyway, my point in bringing this up is that the NAACP, by nominating R. Kelly, did the functional equivalent of walking through a lion cage in a wildebeest jumpsuit. For real. I had run out of jokes, the story was so old. Then they go and revive it by nominating him for an image award. The amount of stupidity involved there cannot be overstated. What kind of credibility can your organization have when you nominate an alleged child pornographer for an award? (I bet the folks at Vivid Video wouldn’t let that type of thing slip through.) Now, people are legitimately questioning everything about the NAACP, including its place in the America today.

I know the NAACP used to be about something, but what do they do now? Kweisi Mfume signed on to PETA’s blackout of Kentucky Fried Chicken. The logic behind targeting Black folks is ostensibly “because black people can relate to the suffering of chickens.” Obviously they never met me. I never met a chicken I didn’t like– fried, baked, in a taco…well, actually I did meet one I didn’t like. Boiled. (Yeah, boiled.) A friend of mine used to tell me that if the chicken goes extinct, I will be the prime suspect. And don’t think a bunch of vegans is gonna get me to change my mind. But I digress.

The NAACP is now a joke for everybody all along the political spectrum. From as far left as Aaron McGruder (creator of the Boondocks) all the way to the Armstrong Williams right, everybody has weighed in on the utter…I can’t even think of a word for how stupid this is. They’re just a joke. I’m not disrespecting the history of the organization, I’m just pointing out how far it has fallen. If anybody is disrespecting the history of the NAACP, it’s the current “leadership.” So basically, the NAACP has gone from W.E.B. Du Bois to Thurgood Marshall to Kweisi Mfume to R. Kelly? (One (or two) of these people just doesn’t belong) And I know, Kweisi Mfume responded to the uproar by changing the manner in which people are nominated, so nothing like this could happen again, but at this point, it’s just too late. I hope my grandmother cancels her membership.

Now I know I don’t want the Eagles to get Terrell Owens. If he can’t take it like a man that he got traded to Baltimore, how’s he gonna act on the Eagles? He’ll kill that team. I mean, hey, Thrash and Pinkston are no superstars. They’re probably not even starters. They know how to play and keep their mouths shut, though. And it’s not even like I mind mouthy superstar players, because I don’t. In the appropriate context. Pardon the cliche, but Philly really is a blue-collar town. Even AI, no matter what people may say about him, is blue-collar to the bone. He might beef with his coaches, but on the floor, that man is about trying his best to win a game. (We won’t get into that deal about practice.) T.O., I don’t know. The way he’s acting about this trade, I’m sure I don’t want the Birds messing around with him now. Let him go to the Giants and start acting a fool when Sherri– I mean Kerry– Collins starts throwing to Shockey too much. He doesn’t want to go to Baltimore because he knows that Big Ray is just waiting for him to cut up. Ain’t gon’ be no gettin’ up in the quarterback’s face when #52 is around. Not that the Eagles brass would listen to me anyway, but vote no on T.O.

Did the first stage of a research project I’m working on today. As part of the process, we had some high school students choose pseudonyms. I might’ve biased their choices by mentioning Ice Cube as an example, but that’s neither here nor there. One of them chose 2Pac and the other one chose Biggie. They’re both 9th graders; that means Tupac and Biggie have been dead for most of “2Pac” and “Biggie’s” lives. Wow.

I’m still working on that James Brown post. At least this week I have actually started it. Looking at it, I’m probably gonna wind up breaking it up into sections. Otherwise, it’s just gonna be too long. I think. The holdup is that I don’t have my home network properly configured so my computers aren’t sharing information. Hopefully I will have all this racket adjusted and regulated sometime this week. At that point, I will post that piece.

I was on my way to look for a USB cord for my computer when I found out that McDonalds is going to discontinue their super-sized fries and drinks. I am not at all happy about this turn of events, although I am less bothered by it now than I would be under other circumstances.

Although McDonalds spokespeople are saying that the move is at least equally concerned with operations issues, like reducing store inventory (when you buy fries or a drink, what you’re really buying is the container, not the food substance.) and reducing the number of tasks for the employee, I think that this move is largely because McDonalds is one of the main targets of people like me, who are looking at the obesity epidemic. Like I said earlier, though, I’m not in favor of this move.

First, as I mentioned when I wrote about this earlier, the staggering increase in obesity is not due to increased caloric consumption at meal times, but during snacking. While I never followed up on that post, the main thrust of the paper was that the increase in obesity is due primarily to the fact that food is cheaper and can be prepared faster. The basic idea is that food consumption is inversely proportional to the time-cost of that food. At first, this might seem counter-intuitive. Take the traditional Thanksgiving dinner, for instance. That takes a long time, but in eating that, people tend to take in more calories than they would with, say, a Hungry Man dinner with the same food. That part is true. The rub is that holiday dinners are special occasions and the time cost of those dinners is part of the whole celebration. Most people don’t eat like that every day, or even every week. For many people, particularly those who have found themselves to be a part of the growing trend (no pun intended…well, maybe a little intended.), much of their diet is comprised of processed food, which tends to be cheaper, easier to prepare, and higher in calories. So while that homemade cornbread dressing may taste better than Stove Top, the fact that Stove Top is easier to make means that it’s more likely to be made and consumed more frequently.

But even that assessment is not quite true to the research. It’s the snacks. If you think about processed foods, which are the cheapest, easiest to prepare, and highest in calories? Junk food and snacks. My personal temptation was Hostess frosted honey buns. How cheap? Two for a dollar. How easy to prepare? Open the package. How high in calories? I don’t have a wrapper here, but high. I know that one of them has about 54g of carbohydrates in a serving. Translate that to calories and it’s gotta be high. Since snacks are cheap and easy, people eat a lot of them. They take in a lot of calories, too. Without regular exercise, those calories add up quickly.

To prove their hypothesis, the study’s authors divided their test groups into five categories, with the idea that if the main cause of the increase in obesity was the reduced time cost of food preparation, then the people most impacted by the changes in food would be the people who experienced the changes in weight. The results seem to bear this out. Single men experienced the smallest increase in obesity, while married women experienced the greatest. If the authors’ premise is correct, then this shows that groups that don’t traditionally cook, like single men, didn’t eat more because food was cheaper and faster. For groups who cook a lot, like married women, the decrease in preparation time corresponded with an increase in frequency of consumption, and therefore an increase in calories.

To be sure there are flaws with this study. It does not disaggregate by race, or income, both of which could yield some very interesting results. My own research is focused on nutrition and obesity vis a vis walkability and urban design, so it’s interesting to me to note which restaurants and stores are in which neighborhoods. If I live in the ‘hood, is processed food the only thing I can buy? Did obesity rates around the way increase at the same rate as they did everywhere else? If so, what does that mean for the culpability of fast food joints like McDonalds or the ubiquitous corner stores that sell nothing but candy and ready-to-eat foods? If not, is there a difference in the amount of physical activity that explains the trend?

In light of this study, I think it might be interesting to look at the rise of the microwave. That’s the central locus of all cheaper, faster food. Thinking back, the popularity of the microwave really took off during the 80’s, when the massive increase in obesity began in earnest. There are some other possilities for research variables I can think of, like the correlation between the microwave, kids, and the idiot box. I’m just not feeling like spelling them all out right now.

Back to McDonalds, I guess the main thing that frustrates me is that I like super-sized drinks. Forty-four ounces, that’s enough to last me…maybe 10 or 15 minutes. Those other sizes are barely enough to wet my throat.

(While I’m aware that the ‘Taliban’ is a loaded term, I’m not using it in the sense of an oppressive religious oligarchy, just a government that based its laws and policies on its interpretation of sacred text(s). Maybe I should come up with a different word, but right now I can’t think of one.)

As the ruckus over gay marriage continues, both sides have begun to solicit the support of Black churches. That is not surprising, given the importance of the church in the Black community. Interestingly enough, there are some churches that support gay marriage, while others contend that marriage should be between a man and a woman. For the purposes of this post, I’m not interested in the validity of either position, I’m looking at a larger question. That is, what would it be like if Christians had total control of the government and could run the country in the way that seemed best to them?

(I’m a Christian, but for the purposes of this exercise, since I will be describing two groups of people who share the same religious beliefs (ostensibly), I will refer to them in the 3rd person. Furthermore, it’s not my place to say whether somebody truly believes in Jesus based on his or her political beliefs. If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that nobody has a monopoly on the truth.)

I guess the first thing to do is acknowledge that even among self-professing Christians, there are differing political views. Some churches take more liberal views, others conservative. One group seems to favor a more contextual interpretation of the Word, while the other takes the Bible more literally. Given that, a short answer to my question would be, it depends on which Christians were in charge.

The thing that really got me thinking about this was a book I read last week, The Bookseller of Kabul, by Asne Seierstad. One chapter lists the 16 rules the Taliban implemented when they took power in Afghanistan. That made me wonder how this country would be any different if the proponents of any religion had full control of the government. Here’s the list:

1. Prohibition against female exposure
2. Prohibition against music
3. Prohibition against shaving
4. Mandatory prayer
5. Prohibition against the rearing of pigeons and bird fighting
6. Eradication of narcotics and the users thereof
7. Prohibition against kite flying
8. Prohibition against the reproduction of pictures
9. Prohibition against gambling
10. Prohibition against British and American hairstyles.
(Would I be able to wear a ‘fro?)
11. Prohibition against interest on loans, exchange charges, and charges on transactions
12. Prohibition against the washing of clothes by river embankments
13. Prohibition against music and dance at weddings
14. Prohibition against playing drums
15. Prohibition against sewing women’s clothes or taking measurements of women
16. Prohibition against witchcraft.

Because we live in America, our conditioned response is that the above list represents a draconian legal system. Certainly, some of the items are very foreign to our way of thinking. The injunction against kite flying seems ridiculous to us. The one against narcotics, however, is not too different from our official policy.

One thing that makes any comparison between Christian groups difficult is that only the Christian Right has fully articulated their politics vis a vis their Christianity. In their case, then, it’s relatively easy to anticipate some differences and what some of those differences might be. We know, for instance, that abortion would be illegal and that gays would not be allowed to marry. But what else? What about alcohol, tobacco, and firearms?

For Christians on the Left, it’s a little more challenging. I’m not sure whether they would make any changes. I can imagine that there might be some redistribution of the country’s wealth and that there would be a conspicuous attempt to make a difference in the lives of the poor, but other than that, I can’t think of much. Moreover, I don’t know if I can really figure out how those types of changes would be any different than those that a humanist might make.

I’m just not sure about the whole thing. If anybody has some opinons, I would be glad to hear them.

The Eagles got Jevon Kearse. I’m not sure whether I’m impressed or not. There’s a part of me that wants to get all hopeful and everything. Especially since the defensive line was in disarray almost all of last season. Getting all the injured players back and adding a good player to the mix seems like it could make a big difference in the defense’s performance this season. At the same time, I’ve been burned far too many times to get all excited. Besides, even though the defense wasn’t its usual dominating self, it generally worked. It’s that doggone offense that’s the trouble.

To that end, I don’t know if I want the Eagles to get Terrell Owens. I think I would prefer to see the Eagles get a more solid low-key receiver. Especially with Donovan being the main locker room presence. I don’t think Donovan the type of personality that keeps everybody in check. He seems to be more about leading by example and by word sometimes. With a player like Owens, a team has to have somebody who leads by word as well as deed. Maybe I’m wrong and Donovan is in there checking people, but it’a a concern to me. Hopefully, Andy Reid has his eye on somebody none of us is even thinking about who can make a serious contribution. Stinkston and Trash…naw, that’s not nice. Pinkston and Thrash, probably good 3rd receivers, just can’t be the starters if the Eagles expect to make that final step in the improving NFC East.

I don’t know. But wha’snever I play, it’s got to be funky!