Black Consciousness Chronicles (Interviews)

In 2008, I traveled to Port Elizabeth, South Africa for three months.  These months significantly changed my life.  I was introduced to hip hop artists, to Xhosa and Zulu customs, to the activist legacy of the Eastern Cape, to political leaders, AIDS survivors, high school students living in the Townships, to anti-Apartheid activists…I felt transformed by the history around me, the stark differences between South Africa and the United States, as well as the startling similarities.

One thing was for certain, Africa changed from a question mark, a mystery in my psyche, to a vastness—and I’d only seen a small glimpse of the immense landmass, the complex continent that is Africa.  

During my stay, I met people that were willing to share their incredible stories and insights.  Elders spoke about life under the brutal system of Apartheid, the current challenges South Africans face, and the potential that poetry has to serve as a tool for liberation.

In the light of the last days of February and Black History month, (surprisingly, South Africa also has a Black History month—go figure) I’m sharing a few interviews that I conducted with you all. I originally interviewed these folks (Kusta, Analisa and Black Thought) using a cassette tape and recently transferred them to CD files at the Mills College Music Department. The quality isn’t the best in the world, but I think it sounds decent. Please keep in mind I’m an amateur interviewer—feel free to comment, give feedback, etc.  Listen to elders and young folks speak about their dreams for the future. Enjoy…

INTERVIEWS ON SOUND CLOUD:

http://soundcloud.com/madlines

PATWA

“Jamaican Creole is a language created out of hard necessity by African slaves from the 17^th century British English and West African, mostly Ashanti, language groups, with a lexical admixture from the Caribe and Akawak natives of the island.  It is a powerfully expressive, flexible and, not surprisingly, musical vernacular, sustained and elaborated upon for over four hundred years by the descendants of those slaves, including those who have migrated out of Jamaica in the second great Diaspora for England, Canada and the United States.  Fortunately, its grammar and orthography, like that of the pre-18^th century British English, have never been rigidly formalized or fixed by an academy of notables or any authoritative dictionary.  It is, therefore, a living, organically evolving language, intimately connected to the lived experience of its speakers.” –Russell Banks

Concept: Black

 ”The blackness is visible and yet it is invisible, for I see that I cannot see it.  The blackness fills up a small room, a large field, an island, my own being.  The blackness cannot bring me joy but often I am glad in it.  The blackness cannot be separated from me but often I can stand outside of it.  The blackness is not the air, though I breathe it.  The blackness is not the earth, though I drink and eat it.  The blackness is not my blood, though it flows through my veins.  The blackness enters my many-tiered spaces and soon the significant word and event recede and eventually vanish: in this way I am annihilated and my form becomes formless and I am absorbed into a vastness of free-flowing matter.  In the blackness, then, I have been my individual self, carefully banishing randomness from my existence, then I am swallowed up in the blackness so that I am at one with it.”

“Blackness” from At the Bottom of the River by Jamaica Kincaid