Transcripts For CSPAN2 Panel Discussion 20140810

Up next on booktv a panel on impact and influence of the black Arts Movement from the 2014 harlem book festival. [inaudible conversations] scheme welcome back to the harlem book fair. My name is Marc Anthony Neil professor of africanamerican studies at Duke University and the moderator for the next panel. The panel is a new urban aesthetics of black Arts Movement in which we will have a conversation to talk about the connections between the black Arts Movement and what we see now as new forms of urban aesthetics. I am joined to my right my colleague who is doing double duty today. Professor terry from princeton university. To her right we have Melissa Castille garceau who is the author of pure bronx a book that she wrote with historian mark mason. To her right we have mr. June archer who wrote the book yes, everything can be a good thing. Next to him we have mr. Tramp daly, the adventures of the untouchables illustrator and at the far end we have mr. Anthony whyte who published the book they love to die, a piece of what some folks might describe as urban fiction or street fiction and we will talk about the complications of that as we go on this afternoon. So one of the things thats interesting about this panel there are any number of people even in this room as i sit here and look at ms. Sonia sanchez who could describe the black Arts Movement was about, who were there in the room. What makes this panel unique is that none of us were in the room. So it becomes an interesting Vantage Point to talk about what the legacy of the black Arts Movement is for people whove may not necessarily be engaged in the black Arts Movement the way we understand its historically that have taken examples from the black Arts Movement and their own work. Both in terms of content but also in terms of context. Also in terms of form. One of the things i wanted to start with is to ask all the panelists about what your sense is of the impact of the legacy of the black Arts Movement on the work that you do as writers and illustrators and creative artists in general. Good afternoon. My name is Anthony Whyte and you know back in the days i met someone who is doing a show. Maybe some of you have seen the show or heard of it. Its called zorro returns to harlem and the main character in the show was a good friend of Langston Hughes. In doing her research she told me one thing. She said anthony you are writing hiphop literature which is great but she said did you know that Langston Hughes did jazz portrait . That was news to me so i researched it and i realized that the renaissance was big at the time and Langston Hughes was doing his thing here. Hiphop music is big now that im doing my thing here so theyre some kind of correlation between his work and my work historically speaking and he used the music of the time, the rhythm to forbear his word, to be the backdrop of the rhythm of his lines of his poetry. In saying that my dialogs are hiphop and meaning the iconic expression of is what i use for my character. You will here i am saying and its colloquial but its communicative and its young and its fresh. A lot of kids get into it whereas the parents want to give so there is a correlation between jazz poetry and hiphop literature, the rhythm. I want to say on that for second anthony because when you think about some of the black arts poets whether we are talking about professor Sonia Sanchez they were conscious of writing poetry that would resonate for young folks. Hakim talked about writing poetry literally you could hear my pants for so some of the rhythms and cadences of how the poems were written were calculated to be able to sonically connect with young people. That becomes an interesting way and it almost reminds me of the way the Previous Panel talked about these black truths that we dont even know exists. We have these young hiphop artists that are tapping into finding ways to connect with young people who are tapping into larger traditions. Her book pure bronx of course is about the multicultural contemporary bronx and lets just own up to the fact that the bronx mean the home of hiphop. What does the black Arts Movement look like in terms of the legacy and the bronx 40 years, 50 years after the mome moment . I think for me in terms of writing the book its really in attention to vernacular vernacular. Its inattention to hearing the streets, to being inspired by walking along streets to listening to how conversations are formed. Its trying to hear the everyday life and that is what we try to infuse. Dr. Naison two is my coauthor he also started the bronx africanamerican oral history project so that was also really infused in terms of the way we thought about the book was really thinking about oral history. For me thats the work of Sonia Sanchez and before that someone like Gwendolyn Brooks. Its really opening up your ears and listening. I would suggest everybody take a look at the work that naison has been doing with this historical document some of that which is available on video now and theres a great interview with Vincent Harding who grew up in the bronx and has bronx roots. For someone like yourself tramp then you are working outside of the literary context and this was a conversation i came up in the earlier panel what does a black art aesthetic look like in terms of where you are working in illustration and comics . Anthony touched on a good point. I started in a comic store and it was creating characters. Im kind of known as the. What he said about the rhythm from the blues era to the hiphop era when i write we are working on another book called the badlands. I wrote the script for it so whether im writing or drawing its eyes to the rhythm of that. Of course im going to aggregate a lot towards hiphop. Like i have grand master cost doing a push from the characters and i have dmca and you can see the lineage of what they tell in a story. I would look at them as the poets were the writers researching from the late 70s when i was born to the 80s and 90s and so on. I look at their stories and one story they write can grab me and control me and it makes me want to go ahead and create the art. Cats will come up to me and me like you know thats his fly and when people say that they are saying i might want to buy that. To me when you are looking at that we try to make the illustration speaks for itself so it has a literary form. I had one page in the source, one or two pages in the comic strip. Joaquin came up to one time and he was like you are the reason i have the source. Nobody is talking about us. I did it because he wrote his so i think the correlation for me was give you love the song and it grasps you and motivates you. Any art that motivates you is transcending and takes you to that next level. Harlem is the makkah and you have the bronx. For us as a center point of the whole world and that fusion comes from that. We are like an extension and the characters from graffiti and so on. What does the legacy of the black Arts Movement look like for you . Were me if we want to touch on hiphop aspect for me writing my book was a matter of breaking down barriers because its so male driven in hiphop. One thing we have gotten so far away from as men of color is saying that i love you to one another and giving each other a hug. In my book i create opportunities for us as young men and men of color to break those barriers to say its okay to embrace your brother when you see him even as for a long time and people are from a distance looking. He is holding him for a very long time are gave him a tight hug. Why should we . Is so much his mind this is the way it has to be. We are trying to break those things down. You can still be hiphop and still be loved. Let me ask you a slightly different question. When we think about the black Arts Movement is very difficult to detach that away from whats happening politically. For many of us our introduction to the black Arts Movement is solely in the context of a Political Movement. Political poetry stuff that could be uttered in public that you could not hear in public. If you think about the power of the rhetoric in a particular moment in the black Panther Party and it was being represented aesthetically and the work of giovanni and Sonia Sanchez and the late Gwendolyn Brooks Joaquin Aboud and those folks. Is there a way to talk about the black Arts Movement outside of that content . Was there an aesthetic form for instance around the black Arts Movement that was just as important and let me tell you where you get this from. Elizabeth book center was named as the niekro poet and the New York Times had an interview with her shortly before they not gration. She made this point that will me think about black poetry its always about what it is sociological realities represented in the content of poetry . Which he says is also a form. Its a black forum that takes place in terms of black poetry set to what does that look like in terms of black arts . So the point you ended up as part of why i even wrote it was making the argument that theres something going on aesthetically and artistically and there was a point where people reduce hiphop to sociological conditions and not just that but they do this because there are no instruments in schools anymore supposed to recognize what was happening that was creatively important and beautiful. Im also quite skeptical of the desire to turn away from the political content because everything has political content. Some of it is not explicit but it all has political content. For me i think the significance of the black Arts Movement for cultural production subsequently for africanamerican studies is enormous in part because what happens is there is this explicit confrontation with the encounter with the urban space. Urban spaces are always cosmopolitan spaces. People are coming and navigating economically and navigating climate, they are navigating technology. They are navigating the dream of migrating whether its migrating north or to urban south or the midwest. The three minutes deferral. So that political moment, that artistic creative moment is really talking about doing Creative Work at the intersection of all those forces. It opens up space for black cultural studies. This idea that there is that they are there that we have to draw, theres an aesthetic foundation that can be taken to various kinds of expression that comes out of black language and movement so that there is this negotiation between the vernacular and explicitly artistic. I think it has ongoing residence for. For me i was born in 1972 so they albums in my home the poetry albums the music. Donny hathaway and roberta fla flack, its an immersion into the celebration of black embodiment. So its not just talking civil rights to black power but we dont talk about the transformative power of that celebration of black experience in embodiment and expressive culture. So i dont, so there is this aesthetic dimension that i dont want to separate from politics because i think its bold and courageous because it claims the politics that are particularly western art doesnt play in the politics even though they are always fair. I want to ask a broad question. I really think in terms of anthony to get at it first. This question is sound. If you think about the black Arts Movement as an aesthetic movement but was the sound of that movement and in what ways has hiphop tapped into that as an ongoing legacy . Theres a way and i remember john morgan to this wonderful review of ice cubes americas most wanted when it first came out. Without even talking about the content of ice cubes music which at that time was exclusively political she said this sounds like the protection. Even when you listen to dr. Dre as problematic as his politics might have been there were something insurgent about the sound of what was coming out of california in terms of the sou sound. Can you talk about about that a little bit . Yeah. I always feel that we carry every individual, every person, every unit carries a certain rhythm and walks with a certain style and a certain rhythm. We do it at our pace. I think with the running game writing game poetry songwriting and even short story, any instance of creative writing words from your heart. Now we are getting into the blood flow. I always think the sound is the sound of your heart beating. Its Something Like boom boom bam. You can check your heartbeat sometimes and almost feel the rhythm coming out of your soul onto the paper were onto your computer. I experienced that all the time whether writing a short statement or writing an essay or writing poetry. Usually i write a lot when i write so i feel that boom boom bam. Its always been hiphop for me. I go way back and i listen to the chance and i say the same thing. Those are warrior chance. Im going to take this and make you see who i am. Its more explosive and there is no holding back. Noholdsbarred. You cant tame it. You have to let it out and you have to let it out rob. Ice cube, americas most wanted that was brought rhythm and he was at his peak. I think the rhythm extends to our writing game to her dancing game and it carries us through. Its like the wave that you write on. You are either going high or you are going real well with it that you are going. There is an interesting feature on the last panel on james baldwin. No one had met mr. Baldwin but when you think about a blackhearts figure from like baraka he was a man of the people in the kind of way that literally you could walk down the street you could have a conversation p. M. Not going to start the conversation because literally almost everybody in the room has had one of those moments. I did have the opportunity for an extended period of time around this time that spike lee and malcolm x were alive. One thing that stayed with me for a long long time with this is idea for all the money being spent for in his opinion what was a version of malcolm x that it would be better for folks to set up 20 seats in the basement of their houses and do communitybased art. That always stuck with me. Particularly as we have been watching all the losses that we have been watching over these last 18 months or you the idea of independent black institutions as one of the lasting legacies of the black Arts Movement because they could not go to mainstream publishing houses to get their stuff published. There were no black studies programs as we know it that could subsidize black scholarship in that kind of way. Most of us dont know about the institute of the black world and Vincent Harding and folks of that nature. Particularly for all of you on the panel that done work in terms of more traditional media how important has it been to see yourself as independent artists with the capability to produce your work independently . Outside the publishing houses what power has the internet provided in terms of being able to do that kind of work . How important at this moment is there so much pressure for us to take our talents not to south beach but to msnbc or fox news or espn or anyplace like that how important is it to cultivate the idea of maintaining independent black institutions . For me i am currently in the music business and ive been in since 1995. I know how the machine work. Taking everything that ive learned and bring it to the independent standpoint. We have lost so much humanistic organic behavior because we are leaning on technology instead of going out and shaking hands and attending programs like the harlem book fair because we are afraid or trying to hide behind technology that we will find success on me start saying listen i have a book. These are the things that brought me to the point of writing. As we get back to social networking and networking and rubbing elbows we are going to hide behind these things but you have to touch the people and for the people to embrace what it is you are giving them from an independent standpoint you have to go out there and do the footwork. Its easy to send a facebook message or a poster a tweet or instagram picture but until they are able to understand why did you write these things and who are you and what makes you who you are we lose it to the world. Independently and make sense. If you just throw it out there from a standpoint it gets lost in translation. I think that is what is happening in the business as well as publishing and events like this and its important because so much dialogue is just beautiful. I would say from a hiphop standpoint its a battle culture. When you look at how i was brought into at an early age of course you hear cats rhyme. The first rhyme and you are like what is that . I need to be part of that energy. Its light but at the same point why was it there . You find out there was no element supporting you. I was used from the neighborhood of the playground is always broken. There is no basketball rim on the basketball course court. You go to some crazy neighborhoods and if everything. They couldve been, downtown brooklyn could have had everything. New York Services a lot of different neighborhoods but hiphop draws you in a way where it was out of necessity if i want to be a part of something that has energy and fire. Its a battle culture and you know you have to do it live. You cant hide behind it. You can promote it and there are a lot of cats that they say they do this and they say do they do that. As much as i deal with the tv and phone companies it comes back to if you have teeth and again you have to fund it. You know you are swimming with sharks for coming back to the culture of doing it live. I always feel more blessed when im painting something live where people come in and see the work. Seeing it in your life is different. I always encourage cats to have art shows to breakdance or whatever because its live. Its like you have to experience it as a family or as a unit. Then i will encourage you to do something. The struggle. It aint easy. Some days i will have 100 people and some days i have three. It fluctuates on the project. You are like okay why do we keep doing this . Its because of the energy and it takes you back up. Whatever you want to say about the revolution to revolution still has to be financed. Nothing is going down for free. One of the folks who is carried on the legacy of the black Arts Movement pretty yearly and hiphop and chuck has this great line about the need to rock the bush and the boulevard. We know what rocking the boulevard looks like. Lets talk about rocking the bourgeois and particularly lonnie and melissa. One of the places the black Arts Movement has continued to be vital is in academia. Particularly in black studies departments and you had the opportunity to work with marc mason at fordham university. For those of you who dont know mark he says amazing historian of labor history but for those folks who dont know mark the historian they know him as the white guy that was on the Dave Chapelle skit. I know what black people think who do remember was described as a black studies professor. So what does it look like to be able to continue to work around the black Arts Movement in the academy and particularly around this idea, the folks who are doing the organic groundwork in the 50s and early 60s and what blossomed in terms of the black Arts Movement their idea was never that this stuff would go into places like duke or princeton to teach classes and students who come from families that are worth a quarter Million Dollars and things like that. How do we both do the work that is educational and still true to what the vision was of the black Arts Movement but also do that and spaces. That dont devalue doing network and to value the narratives represented in terms of the black arts. I have to want to combine that with the previous question and this question. One of the important legacies about the black Arts Movement is its creating communities of artists. This is where you got the people doing workshops and having younger black artists mentored by older black artists and creating that community. Which is incredibly important because writing can seem like something you only do by yourself but writing is a collaborative facts. You need feedback and thats just part of the process. Nobody puts out a book of anything that is solely their work. That is something that can be seen in the africanamerican studies department and i met el doing a ph. D. A lot of the people like Elizabeth Alexander and other professors who were influenced by the black Arts Movement, that sense of creating community especially when there werent necessarily spaces, they are hardfought. That has also created at least for first in that department a culture where we really value the history of our department and we really value the struggles that have gone before us. We also have a very keen eye towards you are taking what . No, thats not going to happen, thats not going to fly so we are also very protective of our department. So that kind of Community Building and you will see that in other things. A Great Institution that has come out similarly from that practice of Community Building and artists. Exactly. So i think just to start with answering the question one thing that is important to keep in mind is in the midst of the black Arts Movement and a Political Movement bears his deep commitment to intellectual work. Theres Creative Work and intellectual work. We see this becomes a precursor to the renaissance and africanamerican womens literature. We have an extraordinary production in the 70s and 80s and into the 90s. So it makes sense that universities become to a certain extent places that embrace much of this work. There are two tensions but i think are important though. One is theres pressure from universities in general. There was pressure after the movements to depoliticize black studies to depoliticize everything. There is this pressure to move us and its a perfect example because the establish of africanamerican cities are deeply connected to movements. So this pressure to suddenly say this work is too much and not connected to these living communities, so that becomes a complicated tension because of course the work is not apolitical. Its its political work so hard to navigate that and also not suffer under more of the general assaults toward the study of black people which is generally treated as suspect. What has happened is this bifurcation on the one area and this elite institutions are investing in black studies and its under assault everywhere else. This question of institutions is complicated because how much do we invest and maintain institutions because we know this work is not intellectually valued but it has the potential to transform people. That has political purpose versus choosing other institutional formations that we need to create and nurture. I think the challenge is that you answer the question in your work. You have some sense of responsibility. That sense of social responsibility is at the core of the very enterprise. Thats an interesting question about the work itself and to the work reaches. On the one hand we know something about what classrooms looked like and we know ironically the difficulty of getting students who look like us into some of those classes. We are looking at for all kinds of reasons black and latino students and John Halloway talks about this a great deal, who dont see how taking a class in black studies or womens studies or latino studies what have you is going to make them a better lawyer ironically or better m. D. Ironically for a better financier in some cases. But at the same time we are also looking at a generation of folks and we are talking about a small generation of folks who make it to college settings. What are we doing with the capson the corner . What do they know about the black Arts Movement let alone the legacy of that . How do they connect that to this broader history and for all we can say about jc good and bad one of the things this book did was it actually got 14 or 15yearold guys reading. They wanted they didnt want to here here how we use a drug dealer but it created a different context for folks to be able to lead. How do we take a legacy of the black Arts Movement and translate that to these audiences that are not going to be sitting in the e85 section of a library for trying to together the history . I think its a wonderful question and on some level what we have to do is approach the question. Its not always the people in universities who are the ones best equipped to do that work. Oftentimes universities dont to talk to people. But i do think democratizing is the language of i. T. Is access to information and knowledge is part of the responsibility of everyone who has access to this history. That can take different forms in terms of Community Organizations and in terms of writing the kind of writing one does. He can take the form of mentoring and actually supporting organizations that are already doing network and standing in the back and saying what you need me to do . Can i provide this room for your oncampus . Transportation. Resources. Can i pay for you to come here and have a daylong workshop, things like that. That requires a kind of humility that oftentimes people dont have. I think we need to create those platforms and have a dialogue even when those who are in power dont want to make it happen. We are so used to people saying now that we dont created ourselves. If you look back years ago in harlem and we were talking about it not too long ago there was a time when at any given point of the day people were on the soapbox creating platforms. We have to get back to having dialogue notches here onstage from the corner. The book dakota was great because it gave the platform were kids that listen to hiphop i dont think they understood. It wasnt a book about him selling drugs. It was a art history book. It created a but then people to come back and discuss the book so you are not looking at it from a standpoint of he was a drug dealer and now hes talking about no lets talk about the journey and the growth. Lets put it in a sense where they can take it. Im going to go to tramp after that but going back to jayz and most folks didnt know that the reference there is a graphic novel about superman coming out of retirement. Given the work that you to tramp and this is something id hear from my youngest daughter what got her interested in reading his graphic novels. Talk a little bit about how thinking about the literature and letters he and different kinds of ways to open up a book or open up and ipad invaded how we can think about other platforms in which to engage this information might graphic novels and comics. Graphic novels are similar to like my grandfather used to say about me. I wasnt a big reader. My cousins most of them girls were reading seven or eight books and im out on the street. I might get to have a book done this summer and i was supposed to get five done. My grandfather used to say he will get it. When im in college i was going to start loving reading and he was like yeah. Men specifically, you love comics write . He said thats your bridge. I think with jayz book dakota what you do is to find a way to get them interested and it opens up another level or tunnel to get you through that. Graphic novels, rhyming. You hear a song and everybody deciphers them in rhymes. We do little staffs of stuff we are doing, a lot of stuff whether digital comics we came across an interesting stat and it was middleaged housewives americans was about 50 million all listen to woo tang. We are so into the culture. We are so into hiphop that we have trouble understanding that its universal. People decipher the rhymes and than they are bridging themselves to learn more. I guess they are figuring out there are other things. When jayz said that everybody knew. We put me on and that was their crew. My cousins going to cb gbs. You see the subcultures but you get interested and you start opening up books and you start going to google and figuring things out. You were saying also that becomes a bridge. Graphic novels were official. When we go to comiccon they are talking that language. Every show or if you are klingons they will talk klingon. They are into it and they study it. People we call closet nerds in the city. How do you know that staff . I started reading xmen. They have all the sauternes into other thing. Then you really start valuing education. That is what my grandfather was saying. At 22 you start ballyhooing education. Going back to the legacy of the black Arts Movement so many poets in particular when you think about some of the jazz musicians who are engaged in the Free Jazz Movement they decided they were going to get rid of boundaries. When you look at some of the black arts and the way they laid out their words on the page in very nonlinear nontraditional ways and when you think about the music of coleman in terms of how they are breaking up the notion of form it makes you wonder if there are ways that we have not acknowledged that the freedom that the black Arts Movement endowed in terms of creativity were actually seeing played out in genres and styles that are far removed from the black Arts Movement but even black people. Plagiarism in writing. Will we do is formulate things that are great. In atlanta tried to do something that doesnt work. Is not going to yell. He tried. Maybe it will fit, but you can adapt. A variation of that. Now youre in a hybrid situation. He almost create the inspired. Every time i here, can someone the knowledge she just sounds like salt and pepper. And most of the folks in decker can ignore some. This sounds like a few. The bar of the cadence planarian will get it. Only because a reminds me. So i did. Her respect affected see levers writing a rhymes tried to make sure the bridge that gap. Any talk about the kind of political autonomy of black creativity and tens of just asking the question about how many sculptors, writers, painters, musicians created in the 1950s listening you know, i was inspired to do this culture. But miles davis was there in the room. Pick creativity, and theres no way not to think that inspired the same compact when you think about the kind of inyourface strategy that came of the black Arts Movement how much of that can we translate to a Political Movement, everything from occupy wall street and to various things of eocene play out of the last 25 1 3 years. The movement, i think about those going to visit him. I think about all those connections. Exactly when you think about the context, none of this happen in a vacuum. Talking to the chicano students and backandforth in getting ideas for which other. Thats what made some of those movements richer. That exchange. As the same thing with the pump. That exchange is what created it and also what keeps it lively. Its interesting. My entrance into urban fiction is through listening to spanishlanguage epo. And allison to latino hiphop. And allison went back assert going to a 1990s and 80s and learning. And then i start paying attention to urban fiction its infused with spanish and characters from all over. And so all of that is really important to consider when talking about the black Arts Movement. But i want to ask a question or a lease go out, the idea of thinking about the black Arts Movement in a technological context. Theres a whole host of things you cant do the least of which is being able to watch netflix. You know and when we deal with reality for them since the majority people of color particularly of african descent in this Country Access information on mobile devices. So if you can think for a moment about filling out a job application on your phone as opposed to being someplace on a laptop with quality broadband. So a colleague of mine going back to the institute of the black world has really been on this whole idea about us being able to control access. Where i will just call for the moment digital nationalism. Wheres the movement where we are creating our own servers and owning our own servers . All the information we have now we are sharing with facebook and twitter. We dont own those servers. Thats property that we dont own. We have been able to use it in particular kinds of ways towards powers that but when all is said and done we give it to the nsa etc. Etc. We have no way to push back on that. Even if we owned it the nsa is going to get it. Real talk, real talk. And i think we can press that point in some other other directions too to think about this question of access but theres also the question of what we encounter what technology is substandard lan access to learning how to code and also at the same time some of the most interesting innovative Creative Things that are being done in the digital arena are being done by communities of color globally rated so often the cutting edges resourcefulness and so it all makes me think one there is this kind of surveillance and the other is this issue that has to do with capital. It seems to me we should all be having this conversation in the power that goes along with a concentration of capital and with the inequitable distribution of capital. So for example when we pose this question about Cultural Property really what is at issue is not who owns culture. Culture is always permission but who makes money off of it. Thats her issue in their seems to be, we are stuck in this pattern that people are always on the cuttingedge of the Creative Production seem to continuously with this very narrow few exceptions to be the ones who have been broken at the end of the day. So to me the question is not simply just to create more corporations but actually to think about what is the vision for a kind of political vision. So for example people talk about Net Neutrality but dont think, dont push the conversation further to think about what would Public Access to the internet actually look like, like truly Public Access. What would it look like to not have all of these things run by corporations and i do think people would like to see the black Arts Movement push a more revolutionary imagination at least in these institutions. Anybody else want to jump in on that . So i love her comment. She takes it in a different way and youre like all code thats another another thought in the other that and another that. But are we just saying to create the server that will control the true art of the black culture or monetization . Alternately what i was trying to suggest is that its about when we create this work right, are we able to claim it as ourselves and the youtube and the Digital Space. I will get the youtube example. You can give beyonce credit for when she was pressed she would own up to where her influences are but this is someone who is digging deep into the archive that youtube has presented to her and representing that out into the world. We know the long history of people of color not being paid for what they produce and then going on to produce stuff. Talking about the chess brothers with relationship to muddy waters and those folks. Talking about berry gordy in relationship to the black audience. But you know as we get to this particular moment and we are in fact bringing and energy to the Digital Enterprise its changing how the Digital Enterprise functions. With that black folks use twitter has changed how twitter does its business. One example, at what point do we take an accounting thats not just about money but of the spirit of innovation we bring to the enterprise that make sure that innovation and experience goes back to be able to feed folks behind us with that same spirit and innovation and creativity. I think its definitely a great new frontier. As i find we are trying to we talked to lineal aunt lena was open to do a deal. We said wheres the backend for us and in our place so guys came back for us because its a lot more i feel a lot more than any deal because there are so many traps in it. There are so many things. They have for example they run gameplay inside of the game inside of the game. If youre running a show the industry game is in the gameplay and there are 20 ads that they are getting money. So you have to have your own Digital Space and the storefront and the other interesting thing we were in kind of like a bored Conference Meeting about apps and apps and web sites. You can control your own pushes but also everybody at first was like well i dont know if i trust starbucks with my credit card and i dont really care. What it is that your phone is your new web sites of the app is your web site in the app is your story. To have as much control of your own independent so i feel like we have studied a lot for three years to say lets comptroller on the web site and comptroller app into a partnership to make sure the wording is because they are very devilish. Because you have so much open space and theyre throwing everything out there. Thats really what has been happening with the conglomerates of media. They are buying up things and they things and they are our cost platforms and whether its archived or whether like you said when beyonce is throwing something out. She is already rich so shes looking at a situation as a person and as her own empowerment and business. You can overlook things because your rv rich so how much money do you need but in actuality Digital Space is the most profitable thing because its now. So you really cant compete with cbs. Cbs will on digital sioux but you know you cant control your space. So it was her server putting that app out and youtube in the last few months started saying we are not going to air a lot of free stuff. They are going to start monetizing and they are going to start restricting. Its just a platform. Whatever he gone there and we will control it. And then conversations about in actuality and access. I think if you have the apps and you have the web site the most important you can do is use it as a platform to bring it back home. You control, you know instagram and his facebook, bring those people back so thats the only way they can control it. Let me ask a very different question. We have been talking about cultivating and controlling what we are producing now. Have we done a good enough job taking care of the folks who created this . I will use hiphop pioneers is just one example of it and god bless cornell and their hiphop archive for creating the space for africa lambada but id be hardpressed to think about many cultural groups or rachel racial groups that would have artistic pioneers that would not fundamentally find ways to make sure that those folks are taken care of. There is no reason for the great innovators of our expression whether its a black Arts Movement or jazz modernist or hiphop pioneers to be able to live there last days destitute when they have created so much wealth both culturally and spiritually but also monetarily in the world. So how do we create a system that better takes care of it . As suggested earlier how do we start to use these university and institutional spaces we have to leverage resources to be able to do a better job. Also in terms of our community you know, love the fact that we just crowd funded don t. Knows film from miles davis and spike lee has use crowd forming. How about we club form some black artists poets . I think is a piece of that we have some absurdly wealthy black folks in this country who trade on a black audience in the east at least initially to get where they are and it depends upon that as a foundation and yet we dont have systems of holding them a comical that all. So theres a sense in which, and i take your charge really seriously about how do we think imaginatively about it in this is the history of black artists. We have generations of people who have died destitute. So i think that we do have to, also part of that has to be to hold those who make absurd while accountable as well because there are many of them who can take care of all of the pioneers without feeling it at all. I kind of disagree with that even though its a good idea. Its great but the idea, i think we have all got to look to ourselves. I think we have got to look deep inside of ourselves sometimes and you know its really one of those situations where i used to tell my mom you know like is it okay to beg and she would just give me that mean look like how dare you ask me that question when i send you to school. That is not supposed to be embraced so the idea of us looking for help, it seems for in and it should be treated as such. It should be the last resort. I think what you have to do is look inside yourself real day. We have the energy, we have the passion. Use it wisely and a lot of times we dont because some of those people you are talking about who are very wealthy, abundance of wealth they have created it and kudos to them. I think accountability is different than hill. If there is someone who has made extraordinary wealth off of the community, off community, off of the legacy having a responsibility. So you know exploitation is defined and there are whole bunch of people doing the work could one person out of that group gets all the profits from it. And so we have an explicative situation i think that leads to an appropriate demand for accountability. None of these people were able to create, they couldnt create the cultural forms and create the work independently so to create it is to say okay you have been able to do this because how might you reimagine your responsibility to the people who made it possible for you to achieve it . Look at berry gordy. Would you blame him for the motown experience . Would you say you did something wrong when you created this opportunity and some of these guys were on drugs and some of these ladies they threw a. The different site is barry gordy blatantly exploited some of these artists. Im saying you are saying its not okay to work with barry gordy who is a great mind. You are saying you know what . The question is how do we pull barry gordy like people more accountable in terms of how they take care of their artists . And again as monty said theres a whole history of black artists regardless of john merra who did not get paid their due. Record companies and we talk about any hiphop artists about your 50,000dollar dance. And the car and the cheap gold that you got and how much the record company, and we could be talking about rockefeller as easily as we are talking about any of the transnational companies. In the same sense, in the same sense those people created opportunities and we have utilized the opportunities and we enjoy them. We danced to the motown blitz, we did and we enjoyed it. I certainly did. I still love the temptations. I also think that. What im saying is there are two sides to the story. Theres also a reflection for example you want to make awareness of the responsibility if someone has made a lot of money. I know that when i would see them play for a lot of people to work too but on the same note if someone is like barry gordy and you make sure that the fan base that is supporting barry gordy and paying him back to okay you make it aware that you need to be accountable. Because then the reflection is going to go on. Hes going to make more money and we dont want to support that person. I also thing when you look at the arts and of black Culture Movement of the arts i wouldnt be here without that. There are a lot of people that either created their livelihood or who have just enjoyed the creation and they lived a better life. I know what chuck d who was ursulas publicist they are trying to create a foundation to support elders and hiphop whether a break dancer dancer or proper or people that have gone back to it because they never really had money. I think across the arts is important because you know we live from them. They gave us and they had to do things where people dont remember. When i was writing theres a risk and thats why you do it. But there were also a lot of people saying buddy you doing with graffiti on the train tracks that gum gum, that s. T. A. R. T. There was the voice by the poets standing on the corner or creating the art. There are a lot of people like the police or whoever telling them to get off the corner. So they had the suffrage to go through that and go through that so theres a big responsibility. As a consumer i dont mind supporting them. Im in hiphop but i would still supported. I dont know there is