I've been listening to this CD since PAT THOMAS' lecture about the book and CD at Cafe Oto back in May and having now also read the book I have to say that as an introduction to both the causes that the artists Pat is talking about and are fighting for this is a very good place to start. Pat delves into the records put out by key (and not so key) figures in both the American Black Power movement and also the Black Nationalist, and takes the time to explain the crucial differences.
The album opens with the Shahid Quintet's Invitation To Black Power. It's a very pertinent spoken word rap about how you will never achieve equal rights and justice through carrying a can of petrol or resorting to guns and violence, made all the more startling by being set against a light jazz backing, allowing the words to hit with force. What the book does is to explain the background to the civil unrest and oppression in the '60s and of course the Vietnam War.
Pat found the aticles and artwork by,in effect, being the Whitey who listened to as many of the remaining Black Panthers and SNCC and as many of the players as he could find to give us a picture of the big causes like the wrongful arrests of Huey Newton ar the murder of George Jackson: an event that Bob Dylan released a charged protest single about that. This is the first time it has ever appeared on CD as Pat somehow managed to get Bob's permission to use it. Respect.
But the contrast of going from Dylan's telling of another sorry tale of injustice is then juxtaposed by The Watts Prophets' Dem Niggers Ain't Playin': a song that a lot of people might find troublesome but put into the context in the book about the troubles around them and the Watts riots it is almost a cry for empowerment.
The book also delves into the labels involved and how many of the bigger labels like Motown would have little side labels for this music and, in Motowns case, they ran Black Forum: a label that they seem to have tried to write out of history. Thus, Pat goes where they might prefer you don't go to astonish us with this micro lablel's roster. It's breathtaking, including Martin Luther King Jnr, Stokely Carmichael, Amiri Baraka and Bill Cosby (so not exactly a bunch of obscure nobodies) and just for the amount of times Amiri Baraka's Who Will Survive In America that closes the CD has been sampled, it should have made Motown proud of the work Black Forum put out.
One of the funny moments on the CD is hearing Dick Gregory's stand up routine on Black Power where he questions if white folk would be as scared of Brown Strength as they are of Black Power? It's among many very good observations which show that the movement had to work on as many levels as possible to get us to a brighter day.
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Of the real obscurities that Pat found is a very tough tune by Kain called I Ain't Black. It has a band stirring up something like Henry Cow-style Jazz prog rock married to a singer calling out "You Black Bastard" to someone over and over again before the rap opens out and goes rather mad in places with the rage of the oppression around them. It's a very clever and thought provoking tune that needs to be heard.
Reading about Elaine Brown's fight, everything that became the Wattstax and finding out that in the 70's one of the first black mayors (Carl B. Stokes) put out an album on Flying Dutchman that contains A Black Suite for String Quartet and Jazz Orchestra, I was left wondering if it was at least in part inspiration of Yusef Lateef's much later African American Suite for Quintet and Orchestra.
One of the stranger episodes covered in both the book and CD is Timothy leary's exile in Eldridge Cleaver's compound in Algiers and Eldrige's track is his explanation of why he told Timothy to leave as he feels the last thing young Blacks in America need is to be dropping out on acid when they need to be sober and straight to bring about change. He manages very succinctly to put Tim in his place as someone fighting for things the Black man cannot even dream of fighting for when they don't have decent education or normal civil rights.
The book also makes clear that the Black Panthers and other organisations were often providing services the local city councils should have, from ambulances and education to school buses and after-school creches to make sure all the kids got the best education they could and could get out of the ghettoes.
To sum up, not only are this book and CD educational they look and sound great as well and I haven't even mentioned the Gil Scott Heron or John Lennon and Yoko Ono tunes or much much more offered up by this fantastic coffee table book.
Light in The Attic's wesbite for the CD
Fantagraphics online for the book
Review of Pat Thomas' Cafe Oto lecture on W&H
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