Harlem Renaissance dialogues (part 7): The Renaissance and contemporary issues

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Created by author, poet, artist, and historian Aberjhani, The CREATIVE SPIRIT OF THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE is presented with the same inspired and joy-filled intentions that gave the world one of the most dynamically rich periods of art, music, literature, theatre, and progressive social activism it has ever known.(Original writings copyrighted by author. Artwork copyrighted by individual artists.)

Harlem Renaissance dialogues (part 7): The Renaissance and contemporary issues

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Harlem Renaissance dialogues (part 7): The Renaissance and contemporary issues

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The Enigmatic Genius of Author Ralph Ellison

Invisible Man, Shadow and Act, and Going to the Territory, all books by that quintessential twentieth century literary artist Ralph Waldo Ellison, remain towering masterworks of American literature for their penetrating explorations of racial identity, cultural complexity, and historical consequences in the United States. With Senator Barack Obama’s historic bid for the White House evolving daily into the possibility of an historic win, Ellison’s brilliantly charged writings, which first catapulted him to fame in the 1950s, are perhaps more relevant now than ever before, making Arnold Rampersad’s detailed biography of the great writer one of the best reads around during these very exciting times. Biographies of high-achieving African Americans have too often in the past fallen into one of two categories: those that romanticized their subjects as cultural heroes and those that condemned them as embarrassing villains. Fortunately, in Rampersad, we have a biographer who assigned himself t...

Guerrilla Decontextualization and King of Pop Michael Jackson - by Aberjhani

Image still from the video-poem Notes for an Elegy in the Key of Michael . “It’s very important to keep the historical context in mind as you contemplate the nature of love and service required in the 21st century.” –Cornel West, Hope on a Tightrope To what extent might the phenomenal entertainer and humanitarian Michael Joseph Jackson have been the target of an extended guerrilla decontextualization campaign throughout the second half of his life? Hardcore devotees to Jackson’s music and altruistic humanitarian vision would say there can be no question that he was targeted in such a manner. Hardcore doubters might say maybe he was the one doing the guerrilla decontextualizing through the evolving manipulations of his public profile as a performance artist. They point to his chameleon-like shift from a distinctly afrocentric appearance in one decade to androgynously multi-ethnic in the next, and in his final years to an almost ethereal projection––a figure solidly in...

This is why hip-hop icons like LL Cool J tweet positive quotes - by Aberjhani

The ever-popular LL Cool J on the March 2013 cover of ESSENCE Magazine . “What I’m sowing today, I be reaping tomorrow So here’s some joyful bars, to replace your sorrow.” --LL Cool J (from Old School New School ) It was very difficult not to laugh when reading Robbie Ettelson’s satirical rant, “Being Positive is for Chumps,” in last week’s online Acclaim Magazine , against celebrity rappers for their inspiration-oriented tweets. In fact, I’ll admit it. Even though the sarcastic tirade was based in large part on a quote from The River of Winged Dreams , the subtitle of the piece almost sent me rolling on the floor: “If Robbie of Unkut comes across one more inspirational tweet from a rapper he's going to vomit rainbows.” At the same time, I smiled at the realization that the quotes which apparently have threatened to turn Robbie’s tummy inside out were often, for the rappers who shared them, not ju...

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Now Observing the Harlem Renaissance Centennial

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Skylark in Contemplative Creative Flight: I am a visual artists whose works can be found on Fine Art American and an author whose books are as follows: --Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah (2019) --I Made My Boy Out of Poetry (1998) --The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois (2003/2017) --Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (2003/2010) --Christmas When Music Almost Killed the World (2007) --The American Poet Who Went Home Again (2008) --ELEMENTAL, The Power of Illuminated Love (2008) --The River of Winged Dreams (2010) Savannah: The Immortal City (Editor, 2010) --Savannah: Brokers, Bankers, and Bay Lane, Inside the Slave Trade (Editor, 2011) --Visions of a Skylark Dressed in Black (2012)

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