The beauty of African-American art

Dear comrades, we stand united today to discuss a controversial situation. I, Eubie Black, am standing here to help you illuminate yourselves and understand why “American Art” is not the ultimate goal for us. It is not rare the day that I meet with an African-American pianist, a Negro painter, a Black singer; and I hear them say that they don’t want to be classified as “African-American”, “Negro”, or  “Black”. Dear comrades, this is when I wonder, If we are not going to give ourselves credit, who will? If we don’t stand proud of our roots, who will? If we don’t fight for recognition and respect, who will?

Langston Hughes, the successful Negro poet, describes our skin as something deliciously unique, for which we should be honored to have. In “Dream Variations” he refers to our color as “coffee and cream, licorice, clove and cinnamon”. Black skin is beautiful peers, it is a part of us and we should not cover or hide it, we should be proud of it.

Black people; we are just as human as white people, we are as American as white people, therefore we should be treated equally. If we are just as special as them, then why must we change for them? Why should we adjust our art, our appearance, our beliefs, for them? We should respect our roots, and fight for others’ respect as well.

Being Negro comes with not only black skin, but with a complete culture. The jazz and the blues, the portraits with black characters, the poems about oppression and racial discrimination; they are all part of ourselves and we must not suppress them for the white public. Paul Roberson, the well-known  black actor and activist, imputes his fame to the black representation he did for interracial plays. If his Negro plays are fruitful and accepted by the audience, then the rest of Negro art will be accepted too; and if it’s not the case then we must not care. Every artist faces criticism, every art piece is meant to be presented to a judging audience. We must not let the opinions of “white Americans” affect us. The purpose of our art is to liberate our afflicted history and painful past, not to enliven white people. 

Imagination

We should accept everyone as they are

Lina Uzunhasan

21 March 2016

I will start my speech by introducing myself. I am a fiction writer as well as an equestrian. I have 7 published books, 11 magazine articles and several interviews that took place in the newspapers. When I was small, I always thought how authors found topics to write about. Specially when you read a book that smashes your imagination, one might think how it is possible for someone to think of it. That was one of the reasons that made me follow this path to become an author. 

I realised that imagination is like a muscle. You have to train it for it to get better and stronger. However, there are some people that are much more creative compared to others, just like some people having stronger muscles than others. I believe it is what is called ‘talent’. It is something that you inherit from your parents, from your environment, from the people that surround you. Imagination is a thing that concerns your past and present. You can only imagine what you already saw. You might think how we can imagine dragons or aliens that don't even exist. Easy. You see a reptile, you see a butterfly, you combine them and you have a dragon. Human mind can almost never come up with completely non existent things. 

What I am trying to say is that, if imagination is based on our past, how can the ‘black’ people ever be imaginative if they are not allowed to accept their past. These people are avoiding their pasts because they think its not good for them. These people are running away from their cultures because we force them to think its not beautiful. If it was not for ‘black’ people and their pasts, there wouldn't be jazz music, there wouldn't be any boogie woogie! How are these people supposed to express their talents if we are not allowing them to be creative in their own way. It’s like trying to make a race horse jump. A race horse is build and breed for racing just like ‘black’ people have their own ways of art. We can't just tell them to do our art because we think their art is not nice, or even worse, because its not familiar! 

Everyone has to accept themselves as who they are instead of trying to change, because change might be a good thing but it shouldn't be used as a way of escape. If we are accepting the white art, why cant we accept the negro art as it is as well?

https://youtu.be/umQa7N7BQOA

<Culture Independence>

Edward Na DP1

Hello our culture’s future leaders, creators and defenders. Today as a leader of black art movement, I am here to ask you to take special responsibility. It is a responsibility which only you are able to take, able to accomplish and make it happen.

Let’s take a look back on our history. White people, only because their skin color is white, they took our freedom, family and rights to be treated equally. Since 1789 to 1861 for 172 years they treated us as animals they own. Now they are trying to take our culture away from us again. Whites are trying to make our culture as theirs by insisting that we are part of U.S and we are same people. Harlem renaissance is a culture boom that we created, take a look at the number of musicians, writers and actors. You can hardly name any famous white artist. We are the main role in Harlem renaissance, us African Americans.

Because our ancestors weren’t civilized as white people were, they were not powerful enough to defend themselves from white people thus slavery. But we are civilized now. We have knowledge to defend ourselves and power to defend our culture. Are we going to let the whites take away our thing again? Like our ancestors failed to defend themselves and lead us to be slavery for almost 20 decades, are we going to let our future generation ashamed of us? No, we should not let our dark past repeat.

My generation of artists will soon face the time to retire. We are getting old and we would not be able to perform as great as our past days. We will be less affective to society. However, you, young African American artists are going to rise as new stars and celebrities. It is now on your hand that our culture, American African's culture rise like a new star or remembered as  glory lying on the past.

We have already done it once. We have retrieved our freedom, family and rights from whites. Let us win this battle again. Make us proud of you, make your children proud of you, make yourselves pride when you look back to past in the future.

Thank you for listening

Audio File

Great choice of music or poor advertisement for Gatsby???

Great choice of music or poor advertisement for Gatsby???

Great Gatsby Soundtrack

Lina Uzunhasan

17 February 2016

The Great Gatsby: Music from Baz Luhrmann's Film is the soundtrack to The Great Gatsby (film from 2013), an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel. The album was produced by Baz Luhrmann and Anton Monsted, while Jay-Z served as the album’s executive producer.

The album was released two weeks before the release of the movie and netted an amazing 51.1 million dollars before the release of the movie (1 week after the release of the album!). The film was an incredible hit for the year since, alongside the dream actor Leonardo DiCaprio, the film also features Toby Maguire, Carey Mulligan and like its not enough, it was shot in 3D.

The Gatsby , in case you guys haven't studied it, is a story of a bootlegger millionaire Jay Gatsby and his neighbour Nick Carraway. It took place in 1920’s, a prohibition era when jazz music considered to be very valuable. Jazz music was considered to be a cultural movement that played a big role in the book itself as well. 

The record was reportedly worked on for two years. During those years the pair worked on translating the Jazz Age to the music of our times. The duo did this by mixing hip-hop, Jazz and other music types. The production would be more sensible if modern musicians that could be translated into ‘modern’  Jazz would make the match of the music and the movie more aesthetic than arbitrary. Instead, singers like Will.i.am and Fergie made the theme get ruined. The movie seems to be separate to the music. 

It is very important that the soundtrack is modern and known by the audience of the movie; however, in this case the theme to be ruined is more important of a problem than advertising the movie to the audience.

Think of it, you are watching Gatsby drink whiskey and suddenly you hear Jay-Z playing. I personally think that it would be a confusing scene after all, making it hard to understand the actual meaning of it. Gatsby wouldn't allow black people in the building anyways. 

It makes sense to add Kanye to the soundtrack because he also came from the bottom to the top of the line just like Gatsby himself. But his tracks not only don't fit the ‘jazz’ music but also it sounded like it was not even recorded properly. For example, the cover for Back to Back also sounded quite bad, (Beyonce and Andre 300 struggle through the entire song) why not use the original song from amy Winehouse?  

Of course the reason behind all this is money. They are trying to advertise the movie and the people homage the soundtracks and of course Luhrmann want to make money out of the situation. Considered that they worked on Jazz Age for 2 years might mean that they tried to make the situation less effective (less damage). This whole situation made the movie more popular and the soundtrack sold more than it would have. So we could say this was a decision of money eventually but not for art.

Jay-Z Rapping At Gatsby's Party?

Mar Yepez
19th of February, 2016

It doesn't sound appropriate, a rapper in charge of the soundtrack of a movie so classy like The Great Gatsby, but, was it really a bad decision?

Although the soundtrack got some negative feedback arguing that the songs selected weren't the right style, Director Baz Luhrmann highly praised the rapper on his work. And he is right! Jay-Z did make a good job!

"He totally nailed that the book was aspirational, that the book was really about, if you've got a cause, you can move towards a green light. That you don't reach it isn't the point; that you aspire is." said Luhrmann, director of 'The Great Gatsby'.

http://www.enstarz.com/articles/14670/20130315/the-great-gatsby-soundtrack-jay-z-produces-performs-trailer-release-date.htm

They couldn't have chosen a better person for the job. Jay-z earned his life the hard way, he was born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in Marcy Houses, he work his way to the top just like Jay Gatsby did. With his personal experience, who would understand the struggles of the though life better than him?

It's clearly shown in the songs included what Jay-Z felt was important about 'The Great Gatsby". The most recurrent one is "Young and Beautiful" by Lana del Rey. 

Although the beat of the original song was adapted and changed for the movie, we can clearly see that it was chosen for its lyrics. Doomed love, money, parties, and beauty are the topics discussed in the song and in the film. 

The tracks included by Jay-Z in the soundtrack were strongly linked to the mood. "The Great Gatsby" has an overall dark and heavy atmosphere full of toxic love and thirst for success. Songs like "Love is Blindness" by Jack White, "Into the Past" by Nero, "Kill and Run" by Sia, "A Little Party Never Killed Nobody (All We Got)" by Fergie, reflect the meaning of the film. No wonder why the soundtrack got so high up in the charts!

Buchanan: The Mirror of the Golden Ages in "The Great Gatsby"

Luisa Fernanda Yépez
18th of February, 2016

Tom Buchanan is a big, strong and muscular man, even his physical appearance represents The Roaring Twenties: abundance, strength and a contemptuous glance. 

But what about his opinions? How does this character represent the social views on race and culture at that time?

From the first Chapter, Buchanan is defined, especially through a specific phrase, as a white supremacist. He believes that the race he and his closer friends belong to must "be careful" about the rebellion of the minorities: "It's up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things." This illustrates faithfully the ideas conceived at that time: other races represent a menace to white people, and they should be kept a level below them. By other races, the character actually means New Moneys (humble beginnings);Tom is rather afraid that the rising of these people threatens his lifestyle. 

Another particular element is that Tom defines himself and his race as Nordic; he states that they have been the ones to build modern civilization. What he actually means, is that the Old Moneys (people  born rich) have made the most meaningful contributions to society. 

A quote from Buchanan that defines this whole Black/New versus White/Old conflict is the following: "I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife. [...] Nowadays people begin by sneering at family life and family institutions, and next they'll throw everything overboard and have marriage between black and white." Of course, he is questioning his wife Daisy for having sex with a humble background man. It sounds even as if he wouldn't have minded that much is it had been a man born rich like him rather than Gatsby. 

A Jewish shadow of Meyer Wolfsheim

Nikita Mosidze
19th of February, 2016


«At lunch today, I'm going to introduce you with one of New York's most distinguished businessmen, in Mr. Meyer Wolfsheim» - the first mentioning of Mr. Wolfsheim by Mr. Gatsby. A small flat-nosed Jew they called him. Meyer Wolfsheim still remains a mystic, shadowed figure of the movie. He is not talked about neither before nor after the scene in the underground complex, where most of the wealthy gathered. Mr. Gatsby, being one of the wealthy, showed his new friend Nick the surrounding, where most of the corrupt figures could be seen. The place was full of high-positioned, well-paid individuals that had a great impact in the area of their influence, including the Jewish Meyer Wolfsheim.

Criminal underworld is the dark side of the wealthy community in The Great Gatsby. Most of the wealthy are infamous for the evil actions, which had put them into the place they are in. With human molars on his tie, Meyer Wolfsheim is surrounded by mysterious rumors and unfinished tales, which made him a man to be feared of. Surprisingly enough, in the movie Meyer has an Indian look, which makes it confusing for the viewer about his Jewish identity. Mr. Wolfshein has some illegal business ideas, that are linked with alcohol distribution in the Prohibition era. However, running into illegal problems would not be an issue for our Jewish character – he has enough money to bribe the whole police department of New York; though it might be unnecessary because of the police connections he has in the criminal underworld.

If a viewer observes Meyer from a stereotypical viewpoint couple of factors could be outlined – he is rich. Jewish people were always known for their business ideas that were well-thought and highly successful. The biggest stereotype regarding Jewish people states that they never share material and value money very much. One could assume that Meyer used his “skills of being a Jew” to put him on that high point without having a great attention from the surrounding.

He was described as a “business associate”, “a gambler”,” the man who fixed the 1919 World Series” and there is much more, but the more descriptions the viewer gets – the harder it is to gather a pure image of the Meyer Wolfsheim. A certainly mysterious figure will remain in shadow, while accomplishing all the black transactions he had planned.