A conversation with Herb Boyd, Imhotep Gary Byrd, Gordon Chambers, Solomon Hicks, and Mark Anthony Neal
Thursday, June 15, 2017 6:30 p.m. Apollo Theater
Image: Jesse Jackson and Al Bell, record producer, songwriter, co-owner of Stax Records. Wattstax, 1972. Courtesy Stax Museum of American Soul Music, staxmuseum.com Front Cover: Photo of Curtis Mayfield by Norman Seeff. Courtesy Curtis Mayfield Estate, curtismayfield.com Album Covers: Stevie Wonder, Innervisions, Tamla Records, 1973 Gil Scott-Heron, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, BMG, 1974 The O’Jays, Message in Our Music, 1976, Philadelphia International
LIVE WIRE: BLACK MEN/SOUL MUSIC II No phase of African American history has been without a musical reference to signal or highlight our social and political circumstances. During the period of enslavement we had the spirituals, the “sorrow songs,” that Du Bois talked about in his book The Souls of Black Folk. While these sacred songs reflected the conditions and our spiritual hopes, there was the blues, the secular music that spoke to the realities we faced during the long night of Jim Crow, the rampant racism, discrimination, and the menace of white supremacy. Of course, we can't ignore the jazz that over the years has been a vibrant soundscape of our setbacks, aspirations, and victories. During the Civil Rights era, the sacred and profane merged in the music of Ray Charles, whose exciting rhythms and earthy lyrics set the stage for Sam Cooke, James Brown, Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye, and Stevie Wonder. In the 1960s and 1970s we witnessed a tumult of political and cultural change, and the music mirrored that intensity where such songs as Mayfield’s “People Get Ready” and “Keep on Pushin’”; Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On”; Wonder’s “Living for the City,”; The O’Jays “Message in Our Music” all embodied that fierce urgency of resistance personified by Dr. King, Malcolm X, and the Black Panther Party. This Soul Revolution was accentuated by the seminal rap and hip hop of the Last Poets and Gil Scott Heron, and extended into the 1980s and 1990s by Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror”. It is against this background of music that we embark on another edition of Black Men/Soul Music: Soul Revolution, and we’ve assembled a coterie of
commentators to elaborate on the music and its time.
Herb Boyd June 2017
LIVE WIRE: BLACK MEN/SOUL MUSIC II - BIOS Herb Boyd is a journalist, activist, teacher, and has authored or edited 23 books, including his most recent one, Black Detroit, A People's History of SelfDetermination and By Any Means Necessary: Malcolm X—Real, Not Reinvented, co-edited with Ron Daniels, Maulana Karenga, and Haki Madhubuti. Other recent books include Civil Rights: Yesterday & Today and Baldwin’s Harlem, a biography of James Baldwin, which was a finalist for a 2009 NAACP Image Award. In 1995, with Robert Allen, he was a recipient of an American Book Award for Brotherman—The Odyssey of Black Men in America, an anthology. We Shall Overcome, a media-fusion book with narration by the late Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, is used in classrooms all over the world, as is his Autobiography of a People and The Harlem Reader. His articles can be found in such publications as The Black Scholar, The Final Call, the New York Amsterdam News, Cineaste, Downbeat, and The Network Journal, among others. He is an Adjunct Professor in Black Studies at City College of New York and lives in Harlem. Imhotep Gary Byrd is an internationally-known radio personality, motivational speaker, Motown Recording Artist-Songwriter, Columnist, and Spoken Word Performance Activist. Byrd presents talk radio from an Afrocentric perspective with universal appeal. His consciousness-raising messages, poetic monologues, indepth studio interviews, and coverage of local, national, and international events can be heard regularly on Express Yourself, simulcast over WBLS-FM WLIB-AM and on Radio GBE, featured on WBAI-FM. Additionally, his Tri-State events column, “Imhotep’s Guide to Black Events,” can be read weekly in the New York Amsterdam News.
Singer-songwriter-producer and recording artist Gordon Chambers is no stranger to the music industry. His solo albums have been nominated for Independent Soul Album of the Year by Soultracks.com and have been among CDbaby's top R&B sellers. His #1 hits as a lyricist include: Anita Baker's Grammy-winning hit “I Apologize”, Brownstone's Grammy-nominated “If You Love Me”,
LIVE WIRE: BLACK MEN/SOUL MUSIC II - BIOS Angie Stone's “No More Rain (In This Cloud)”, the Grammy-nominated theme song of Set It Off “Missing You”, and The Isley Brothers' “Just Came Here To Chill”. He has written for over 75 recording artists, including Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Beyoncé, Brandy, Trey Songz, Usher, Jamie Foxx, Patti Labelle and Marc Anthony. He is the winner of 8 ASCAP songwriting awards and four Dove nominations. His albums include: Introducing Gordon Chambers; Love Stories; Sincere (which includes tributes to his idols and mentors Donny Hathaway, Phyllis Hyman and Gerald Levert); and his newest album Surrender (featuring duets with Lalah Hathaway and Eric Roberson). gordonchambers.com Solomon Hicks is a jazz and blues guitarist, singer, and composer who began performing professionally at the age of 13. An eclectic musician, Solomon excels at a number of styles ranging from jazz, blues, classical, gospel, R&B, funk and classic rock. He studied jazz, classical and Afro-Cuban guitar at the Harlem School of the Arts, Harbor Performing Arts Conservatory, Opus 118, Jazzmobile and Barry Harris’ Bebop workshops. He has earned the nicknames Lil’ B.B. King, East Montgomery, and King Solomon from his fans. Solomon recorded his first CD Embryonic, with the Cotton Club All-Star Band at the age of 14. His CD, Carrying the Torch of the Blues, was released in 2015. Solomon has performed at B.B. King’s, Minton’s Playhouse, Terra Blues, Iridium, Ginny’s Supper Club, and at various Harlem Arts Alliance events. He opened for KISS on the KISS Kruise V, in 2015. Earlier this year, his band performed on the Joe Bonamassa Blues Cruise. kingsolomonhicks.com Mark Anthony Neal is Professor of African and African American Studies at Duke University, where he teaches courses in Black Cultural Studies, including signature classes on Michael Jackson and The History of Hip-Hop, co-taught with Grammy Award winning Producer 9th Wonder. Neal is the author of five books including Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and The Post-Soul Aesthetic and Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities. Neal is also host of the weekly video podcast Left of Black, which is the signature program of the Center for Arts, Digital Culture and Entrepreneurship, which Neal directs at Duke. Follow him on Twitter: @NewBlackMan
LIVE WIRE: BLACK MEN/SOUL MUSIC II Living for the City A boy is born in hard time Mississippi Surrounded by four walls that ain't so pretty His parents give him love and affection To keep him strong moving in the right direction Living just enough, just enough for the city His father works some days for fourteen hours And you can bet he barely makes a dollar His mother goes to scrub the floors for many And you'd best believe she hardly gets a penny Living just enough, just enough for the city, yeah His sister's black but she is sho 'nuff pretty Her skirt is short but Lord her legs are sturdy To walk to school she's got to get up early Her clothes are old but never are they dirty Living just enough, just enough for the city, um hum Her brother's smart he's got more sense than many His patience's long but soon he won't have any To find a job is like a haystack needle Because where he lives they don't use colored people Living just enough, just enough for the city His hair is long, his feet are hard and gritty He spends his love walking the streets of New York City He's almost dead from breathing on air pollution He tried to vote but to him there's no solution Living just enough, just enough for the city I hope you hear inside my voice of sorrow And that it motivates you to make a better tomorrow This place is cruel nowhere could be much colder If we don't change the world will soon be over Living just enough, stop giving just enough for the city!!!!
Writer: STEVIE WONDER From the album Innervisions, 1973 Publisher: EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group
LIVE WIRE LISTENING STATION Soul Revolution Playlist (abbreviated) Don’t Worry, Curtis Mayfield, 1970 (Written by Curtis Mayfield) My People, Hold On, Eddie Kendricks, 1972 (Written by Anita Poree & Leonard Caston Jr.) Evil, Stevie Wonder, 1972 (Written by Stevie Wonder & Yvonne Wright) Living for the City, Stevie Wonder, 1973 (Written by Stevie Wonder) Someday We’ll All Be Free, Donny Hathaway, 1973 (Written by Donny Hathaway) What’s Going On, Marvin Gaye, 1973
(Written by Renaldo Benson, Al Cleveland & Marvin Gaye) Open Our Eyes, Earth, Wind & Fire, 1974 (Written by Leon Lumkins) Winter in America, Gil Scott-Heron/Brian Jackson, 1974 (Written by Gil Scott-Heron) Rolling Down A Mountainside, The Main Ingredient, 1975 (Written by Issac Hayes)
Message in our Music, The O’Jays, 1976 (Written by Kenny Gamble & Leon Huff) Scan the QR code to hear the full playlist on Spotify
ABOUT THE APOLLO THEATER The Apollo is a national treasure that has had significant impact on the development of American culture and its popularity around the world. Since introducing the first Amateur Night contests in 1934, the Apollo Theater has played a major role in cultivating artists and in the emergence of innovative musical genres including jazz, swing, bebop, R&B, gospel, blues, soul, and hiphop. Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Sammy Davis, Jr., James Brown, Michael Jackson, Bill Cosby, Gladys Knight, Luther Vandross, D’Angelo, Lauryn Hill, and countless others began their road to stardom on the Apollo’s stage. Based on its cultural significance and architecture, the Apollo Theater received state and city landmark designation in 1983 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. www.apollotheater.org
APOLLO EDUCATION PROGRAM The Apollo Theater Education Program extends the Apollo’s commitment to enhancing the life of the community. The Education Program focuses on four distinct areas of learning and engagement: residencies, workshops and tours for schools; curriculum materials aligned to state and national learning standards and study guides derived from the Theater’s history; career development for teens and adults through the Apollo Theater Academy; and discussions and lectures for the public that highlight the history of the Apollo and its impact on American art, culture and entertainment.
LIVE WIRE Produced by the Apollo Theater Education Program, Apollo Live Wire is a discussion series that focuses on the arts, culture, entertainment and other topics pertinent to the legacy of the Apollo Theater. @ApolloEd
@ApolloEdHarlem
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Generous support from Apollo EmpowerHer, Conscious Kids Inc., Con Edison, Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation, Insperity, The Reginald F. Lewis Foundation, Ellis L. Phillips Foundation, Pinkerton Foundation, and public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.