Today’s kinté Media Links
Son House “Death Letter” Update
The historical and foundational lyrics of Son House, his Delta Blues song, “Death Letter” were updated on September 27 of this year. It turns out that my transliteration of the phrase, “the good ol’ Sun [went] down” is incorrect: listening tells me that the phrase is, “the good Lord’s Sun went down.”
The listening process is aided by auditioning several versions (performances) of the same song. There are YouTube.com videos of Son House singing the song—and this goes a long way for me… You will notice that Son House, changes the lyrics from performance to performance—so the Blues is how it hits you—this is not about the Imperial fantasy of objective detachment and factory duplication. Son House is an agile programmer!
Griot Pop on a Camera Phone
Fumilayo captured on the streets of L.A.: The bass player is Leah Luna and the drummer is Chester Whitmore. In the middle is Fumilayo Bankole. Her first release is L.A. River. Look for her at small, intimate performance space near you (in Los Angeles—the world tour comes later…).
“Women flee east Germany for opportunity in West, leaving men behind”
What a tangled ghetto “we” weave. It takes a news organization from Turkey to release a news story like, “Women flee east Germany for opportunity in West, leaving men behind.” Please, reader, find a story like this in a major Western news source. This story would confuse the American public, north and south. Go ahead, dude, read this:
Why it’s the women who leave for opportunity in the west remains a topic of intense discussion. Sociologist Steffen Kroehnert, who did the report on the female exodus for the Berlin population institute, suggests that female-headed households and lack of male role models in education may play a role.
“One of the reasons for this phenomenon is that young men in eastern Germany don’t have any male role models and are not encouraged to strive for a better education,” Kroehnert said. “Much more than in the West, most kindergarten and school teachers are female and more often families are raised by single moms.”
What? Are we talking about people of color here? No! We are talking about “white” Germans! Yes my fellow Americans, it seems that the perils of the single mother is not an issue of genes (this not to suggest that being a single mother means failure—I’m just telling you that I can count). It would really, really impress me to find out that some young, bright, self-described “Black” professional in the local American news bureau actually tried to run this story—or a story like this story—but was shot down. It would further reinforce the view that white supremacy means hiding white truths from white people—and our bright news-room professional escapes the accusation of being “blinded” by his “own race.” I wonder whether Farai Chideya tried something like this…