Up next on booktv a panel on impact and influence of the black Arts Movement from the 2014 harlem book festival. [inaudible conversations] scheme welcome back to the harlem book fair. My name is Marc Anthony Neil professor of africanamerican studies at Duke University and the moderator for the next panel. The panel is a new urban aesthetics of black Arts Movement in which we will have a conversation to talk about the connections between the black Arts Movement and what we see now as new forms of urban aesthetics. I am joined to my right my colleague who is doing double duty today. Professor terry from princeton university. To her right we have Melissa Castille garceau who is the author of pure bronx a book that she wrote with historian mark mason. To her right we have mr. June archer who wrote the book yes, everything can be a good thing. Next to him we have mr. Tramp daly, the adventures of the untouchables illustrator and at the far end we have mr. Anthony whyte who published the book they love to die, a piece of what some folks might describe as urban fiction or street fiction and we will talk about the complications of that as we go on this afternoon. So one of the things thats interesting about this panel there are any number of people even in this room as i sit here and look at ms. Sonia sanchez who could describe the black Arts Movement was about, who were there in the room. What makes this panel unique is that none of us were in the room. So it becomes an interesting Vantage Point to talk about what the legacy of the black Arts Movement is for people whove may not necessarily be engaged in the black Arts Movement the way we understand its historically that have taken examples from the black Arts Movement and their own work. Both in terms of content but also in terms of context. Also in terms of form. One of the things i wanted to start with is to ask all the panelists about what your sense is of the impact of the legacy of the black Arts Movement on the work that you do as writers and illustrators and creative artists in general. Good afternoon. My name is Anthony Whyte and you know back in the days i met someone who is doing a show. Maybe some of you have seen the show or heard of it. Its called zorro returns to harlem and the main character in the show was a good friend of Langston Hughes. In doing her research she told me one thing. She said anthony you are writing hiphop literature which is great but she said did you know that Langston Hughes did jazz portrait . That was news to me so i researched it and i realized that the renaissance was big at the time and Langston Hughes was doing his thing here. Hiphop music is big now that im doing my thing here so theyre some kind of correlation between his work and my work historically speaking and he used the music of the time, the rhythm to forbear his word, to be the backdrop of the rhythm of his lines of his poetry. In saying that my dialogs are hiphop and meaning the iconic expression of is what i use for my character. You will here i am saying and its colloquial but its communicative and its young and its fresh. A lot of kids get into it whereas the parents want to give so there is a correlation between jazz poetry and hiphop literature, the rhythm. I want to say on that for second anthony because when you think about some of the black arts poets whether we are talking about professor Sonia Sanchez they were conscious of writing poetry that would resonate for young folks. Hakim talked about writing poetry literally you could hear my pants for so some of the rhythms and cadences of how the poems were written were calculated to be able to sonically connect with young people. That becomes an interesting way and it almost reminds me of the way the Previous Panel talked about these black truths that we dont even know exists. We have these young hiphop artists that are tapping into finding ways to connect with young people who are tapping into larger traditions. Her book pure bronx of course is about the multicultural contemporary bronx and lets just own up to the fact that the bronx mean the home of hiphop. What does the black Arts Movement look like in terms of the legacy and the bronx 40 years, 50 years after the mome moment . I think for me in terms of writing the book its really in attention to vernacular vernacular. Its inattention to hearing the streets, to being inspired by walking along streets to listening to how conversations are formed. Its trying to hear the everyday life and that is what we try to infuse. Dr. Naison two is my coauthor he also started the bronx africanamerican oral history project so that was also really infused in terms of the way we thought about the book was really thinking about oral history. For me thats the work of Sonia Sanchez and before that someone like Gwendolyn Brooks. Its really opening up your ears and listening. I would suggest everybody take a look at the work that naison has been doing with this historical document some of that which is available on video now and theres a great interview with Vincent Harding who grew up in the bronx and has bronx roots. For someone like yourself tramp then you are working outside of the literary context and this was a conversation i came up in the earlier panel what does a black art aesthetic look like in terms of where you are working in illustration and comics . Anthony touched on a good point. I started in a comic store and it was creating characters. Im kind of known as the. What he said about the rhythm from the blues era to the hiphop era when i write we are working on another book called the badlands. I wrote the script for it so whether im writing or drawing its eyes to the rhythm of that. Of course im going to aggregate a lot towards hiphop. Like i have grand master cost doing a push from the characters and i have dmca and you can see the lineage of what they tell in a story. I would look at them as the poets were the writers researching from the late 70s when i was born to the 80s and 90s and so on. I look at their stories and one story they write can grab me and control me and it makes me want to go ahead and create the art. Cats will come up to me and me like you know thats his fly and when people say that they are saying i might want to buy that. To me when you are looking at that we try to make the illustration speaks for itself so it has a literary form. I had one page in the source, one or two pages in the comic strip. Joaquin came up to one time and he was like you are the reason i have the source. Nobody is talking about us. I did it because he wrote his so i think the correlation for me was give you love the song and it grasps you and motivates you. Any art that motivates you is transcending and takes you to that next level. Harlem is the makkah and you have the bronx. For us as a center point of the whole world and that fusion comes from that. We are like an extension and the characters from graffiti and so on. What does the legacy of the black Arts Movement look like for you . Were me if we want to touch on hiphop aspect for me writing my book was a matter of breaking down barriers because its so male driven in hiphop. One thing we have gotten so far away from as men of color is saying that i love you to one another and giving each other a hug. In my book i create opportunities for us as young men and men of color to break those barriers to say its okay to embrace your brother when you see him even as for a long time and people are from a distance looking. He is holding him for a very long time are gave him a tight hug. Why should we . Is so much his mind this is the way it has to be. We are trying to break those things down. You can still be hiphop and still be loved. Let me ask you a slightly different question. When we think about the black Arts Movement is very difficult to detach that away from whats happening politically. For many of us our introduction to the black Arts Movement is solely in the context of a Political Movement. Political poetry stuff that could be uttered in public that you could not hear in public. If you think about the power of the rhetoric in a particular moment in the black Panther Party and it was being represented aesthetically and the work of giovanni and Sonia Sanchez and the late Gwendolyn BrooksJoaquin Aboud and those folks. Is there a way to talk about the black Arts Movement outside of that content . Was there an aesthetic form for instance around the black Arts Movement that was just as important and let me tell you where you get this from. Elizabeth book center was named as the niekro poet and the New York Times had an interview with her shortly before they not gration. She made this point that will me think about black poetry its always about what it is sociological realities represented in the content of poetry . Which he says is also a form. Its a black forum that takes place in terms of black poetry set to what does that look like in terms of black arts . So the point you ended up as part of why i even wrote it was making the argument that theres something going on aesthetically and artistically and there was a point where people reduce hiphop to sociological conditions and not just that but they do this because there are no instruments in schools anymore supposed to recognize what was happening that was creatively important and beautiful. Im also quite skeptical of the desire to turn away from the political content because everything has political content. Some of it is not explicit but it all has political content. For me i think the significance of the black Arts Movement for cultural production subsequently for africanamerican studies is enormous in part because what happens is there is this explicit confrontation with the encounter with the urban space. Urban spaces are always cosmopolitan spaces. People are coming and navigating economically and navigating climate, they are navigating technology. They are navigating the dream of migrating whether its migrating north or to urban south or the midwest. The three minutes deferral. So that political moment, that artistic creative moment is really talking about doing Creative Work at the intersection of all those forces. It opens up space for black cultural studies. This idea that there is that they are there that we have to draw, theres an aesthetic foundation that can be taken to various kinds of expression that comes out of black language and movement so that there is this negotiation between the vernacular and explicitly artistic. I think it has ongoing residence for. For me i was born in 1972 so they albums in my home the poetry albums the music. Donny hathaway and roberta fla flack, its an immersion into the celebration of black embodiment. So its not just talking civil rights to black power but we dont talk about the transformative power of that celebration of black experience in embodiment and expressive culture. So i dont, so there is this aesthetic dimension that i dont want to separate from politics because i think its bold and courageous because it claims the politics that are particularly western art doesnt play in the politics even though they are always fair. I want to ask a broad question. I really think in terms of anthony to get at it first. This question is sound. If you think about the black Arts Movement as an aesthetic movement but was the sound of that movement and in what ways has hiphop tapped into that as an ongoing legacy . Theres a way and i remember john morgan to this wonderful review of ice cubes americas most wanted when it first came out. Without even talking about the content of ice cubes music which at that time was exclusively political she said this sounds like the protection. Even when you listen to dr. Dre as problematic as his politics might have been there were something insurgent about the sound of what was coming out of california in terms of the sou sound. Can you talk about about that a little bit . Yeah. I always feel that we carry every individual, every person, every unit carries a certain rhythm and walks with a certain style and a certain rhythm. We do it at our pace. I think with the running game writing game poetry songwriting and even short story, any instance of creative writing words from your heart. Now we are getting into the blood flow. I always think the sound is the sound of your heart beating. Its Something Like boom boom bam. You can check your heartbeat sometimes and almost feel the rhythm coming out of your soul onto the paper were onto your computer. I experienced that all the time whether writing a short statement or writing an essay or writing poetry. Usually i write a lot when i write so i feel that boom boom bam. Its always been hiphop for me. I go way back and i listen to the chance and i say the same thing. Those are warrior chance. Im going to take this and make you see who i am. Its more explosive and there is no holding back. Noholdsbarred. You cant tame it. You have to let it out and you have to let it out rob. Ice cube, americas most wanted that was brought rhythm and he was at his peak. I think the rhythm extends to our writing game to her dancing game and it carries us through. Its like the wave that you write on. You are either going high or you are going real well with it that you are going. There is an interesting feature on the last panel on james baldwin. No one had met mr. Baldwin but when you think about a blackhearts figure from like baraka he was a man of the people in the kind of way that literally you could walk down the street you could have a conversation p. M. Not going to start the conversation because literally almost everybody in the room has had one of those moments. I did have the opportunity for an extended period of time around this time that spike lee and malcolm x were alive. One thing that stayed with me for a long long time with this is idea for all the money being spent for in his opinion what was a version of malcolm x that it would be better for folks to set up 20 seats in the basement of their houses and do communitybased art. That always stuck with me. Particularly as we have been watching all the losses that we have been watching over these last 18 months or you the idea of independent black institutions as one of the lasting legacies of the black Arts Movement because they could not go to mainstream publishing houses to get their stuff published. There were no black studies programs as we know it that could subsidize black scholarship in that kind of way. Most of us dont know about the institute of the black world and Vincent Harding and folks of that nature. Particularly for all of you on the panel that done work in terms of more traditional media how important has it been to see yourself as independent artists with the capability to produce your work independently . Outside the publishing houses what power has the internet provided in terms of being able to do that kind of work . How important at this moment is there so much pressure for us to take our talents not to south beach but to msnbc or fox news or espn or anyplace like that how important is it to cultivate the idea of maintaining independent black institutions . For me i am currently in the music business and ive been in since 1995. I know how the machine work. Taking everything that ive learned and bring it to the independent standpoint. We have lost so much humanistic organic behavior because we are leaning on technology instead of going out and shaking hands and attending programs like the harlem book fair because we are afraid or trying to hide behind technology that we will find success on me start saying listen i have a book. These are the things that brought me to the point of writing. As we get back to social networking and networking and rubbing elbows we are going to hide behind these things but you have to touch the people and for the people to embrace what it is you are giving them from an independent standpoint you have to go out there and do the footwork. Its easy to send a facebook message or a poster a tweet or instagram picture but until they are able to understand why did you write these things and who are you and what makes you who you are we lose it to the world. Independently and make sense. If you just throw it out there from a standpoint it gets lost in translation. I think that is what is happening in the business as well as publishing and events like this and its important because so much dialogue is just beautiful. I would say from a hiphop standpoint its a battle culture. When you look at how i was brought into at an early age of course you hear cats rhyme. The first rhyme and you are like what is that . I need to be part of that energy. Its light but at the same point why was it there . You find out there was no element supporting you. I was used from the neighborhood of the playground is always broken. There is no basketball rim on the basketball course court. You go to some crazy neighborhoods and if everything. They couldve been, downtown brooklyn could have had everything. New York Services a lot of different neighborhoods but hiphop draws you in a way where it was out of necessity if i want to be a part of something that has energy and fire. Its a battle culture and you know you have to do it live. You cant hide behind it. You can promote it and there are a lot of cats that they say they do this and they say do they do that. As much as i deal with the tv and phone companies it comes back to if you have teeth and again you have to fund it. You know you are swimming with sharks for coming back to the culture of doing it live. I always feel more blessed when im painting something