“It is difficult to listen to [Michael Jackson’s] ‘Do You Know Where Your Children Are’ without thinking about the ongoing #BringBackOurGirls campaign.” –Article Excerpt (Aberjhani) What television audiences experienced with the debut of “Slave to the Rhythm” was Mr. Jackson as transhumanist art in its more positive and inspiring holographic form. Anyone who finds that statement unsettling probably should not. At least one potential definition of transhumanist art is the creative representation of a person, such as in a work of visual art or literature, which utilizes advanced technologies (or allusion to such technologies) to symbolize humanity as an enhanced species closer to cyborgs or angels than to apes. In its broader philosophical framework, transhumanism is a futuristic ideology that studies both the likely pitfalls and potential benefits of employing technology to enhance the physical, intellectual, and overall psychic capacities of human beings. If you accep

                     Yusef Lateef Gold digital graphic courtesy of Bright Skylark Literary Productions .                             (based on original 1968 Atlantic Records album for "The Blue Yusef Lateef) “ When the soul looks out of its body, it should see only beauty in its path. These are the sights we must hold in mind, in order to move to a higher place.” Yusef Lateef, from “A Syllogism”   How could I have known, as a nine-year-old child growing up in Savannah’s Hitch Village project, that Yusef Lateef was speaking light in the form of music directly to my soul through his saxophone and flute when I first heard his masterpiece of an album The Blue Yusef Lateef ? I could not have imagined that years later, while seeking the timbres of my own creative voice out in the world, his would find me again. It happened this time as I sat in the window of a hotel in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District, the haunting blues-heavy moans of “Juba Juba” swelling the room as t

Crowd celebrating life of Michael Jackson after his death during Black Music Month 2009.  (Getty image) The basic idea underlying the concept of Pan Africanism is that of cultural awareness and connection leading to mutually beneficial cooperation between people of African descent throughout the Global Village . It is a concept which those who are possibly more politically, philosophically, and economically motivated have promoted at least since the year 1900. One of the ways this powerful theory has met with notable success in practice has been in the area of music. To help ensure the viability of African-American music in particular, famed music producer Kenny Gamble and broadcast executive Ed Wright in 1979 persuaded then President Jimmy Carter to declare June as Black Music Month. The crowning event that year was a celebration concert held on June 7 at the White House. Featured on that occasion were representatives of the broader spectrum of black music, from the rock and