Sometimes you gotta pop out and show people… www.jazztimes.com/blog/how-bla...

The Decoding Society had a band uniform custom angular short-sleeve (almost) T-shirts Ronald Shannon Jackson had made for the band and leather pants I NEVER wore the pants I recently saw a picture of the band & chuckled to myself at my stubbornness on that issue it's definitely an NYC thing

being/living/growing up in NY is not an excuse for not knowing that Many Universities Have Farms in fact there is a high school in Queens - John Bowne HS in Flushing - that has one

I got hacked! If you get/got a Request for Proposal email from me or anything asking for your log-in info DO NOT OPEN IT I didn't send it - some scammers/hackers/bots did! My apologies to all affected

that is the logical endpoint for AI music as well If it’s all prompts & digital voices you can access on your phone Why would/should you Buy It?

the logical endpoint of selling AI books is People prompting AI to scrape the books while Not buying books AT ALL

ran into J.T. Lewis (a decade before we started Harriet Tubman) in the street one day. I asked him what he was listening to He said this was his (then) current fave I copped it the same day

so Conservatives ARE ok with reparations?

Last Thoughts before I move on: instead of engaging with the substance of MY BOOK he engaged with HIS IDEA of what my book should've been which is ironic yet weirdly on the nose given that my book addresses various ways (yt) people engaging w Black music & culture intentionally misunderstand it

it's also a question of who gets to be an "expert" some dude studying in Indiana hops on a plane to Senegal gets told some info - thumbs up - he's an expert now a drummer from Senegal shows me something at rehearsal - thumbs down - cause I don't have a "primary source"? Nah - F that

watching a Robert Ferris Thompson lecture I saw him present a mental leap/theory/conjecture of his that there was no way he had primary source for as a definitive statement /fact. I realized "If he can present his theories as fact, I can present my facts as theories. Plus mine have corroboration."

at the end of the day he didn't review my book he did exactly this:

it should be a rule that Facebook rants have to stay on Facebook no republishing/repurposing allowed - you CAN make a video though ...so people can eat you up in the comments lol

it reminded of those old NY Times concert reviews where you could tell what instrument the critic played (badly) by who he (always he) picked on in the piece. At least in this case the critic's made it clear that they wish they had the platform instead of me.

I get that people who are expecting a memoir might be perplexed by some of the musicology in the book. But I wrote the book so that unfiltered Black musicology written by an expert practitioner would be out there in the public record.

I'm a practitioner - aka a Primary Source I go to other practitioners - Other Primary Sources - for verification/validation We're the people who generate the info THAT is another point of my book We, the people who MAKE Black Music ARE the Primary Sources the documentation comes from US!

"There are plenty of other detailed discussions in the book which merit reading and discussion, though there’s not enough documentation of sources, so we must take Gibbs’s word for many of his assertions." Dude I AM the f'in documentation Other People have quoted me in their theses for decades now

"I found Gibbs’s Chapter 10, “The Art of Dub and the Science of Groove,” with its knowledgeable examination of rhythm and rhythmic frames..very much outside of my own field of expertise." NOW we're getting to the point of why I wrote the book To ADD NEW INFO to the corpus

"Gibbs does touch, if only briefly, on spirituals, but not enough for us to grasp how they evolved into the current idea of gospel. Nor does he talk in enough detail about the Black Quartet" AGAIN I wasn't covering ground that's already been covered well. I'm writing to put NEW STUFF IN THE CANON

the elements that make up country music came together BEFORE the form was marketed as such just like the elements that make up rock & roll came togther before it was marketed as such

I don't have primary sources for that time (I do for later times though)- so I'm postulating - but I would bet there were also Black people playing what would've been categorized as "country music" who had little no contact with white musicians

"There were white early country performers who had little or no contact with Black musicians, which continued through the 1920s and 1930s at the very least" Dude the word "country" like the words "race music" & "rhythm & blues" (& jazz) are marketing categories - not musical ones

"that there is a tendency to disavow some of the less reputable aspects of Black American music" I have a whole ass chapter on funk in the book - starting with the definition of the word - did this mf not read it?

I'm from Brooklyn we believe haters are a sign of accomplishment but still F em!

The Black music I know includes categories and aspects that Gibbs either never touches upon or skims over" Well guess what dude The Black music I KNOW includes categories and aspects that YOU and Others have never touched or have skimmed over Which is EXACTLY WHY I wrote the book!

I found the review amusing b/c the mf admits my book contains info that goes beyond his areas of expertise (which implies addition of new info to the corpus) while doing his best to move the goalposts into realms he knows

Congrats to me I've got my first actual literary hater.

the next offering in my FourOneOne “How Black Music Took Over The World” residency is the premiere of “Nzambici”, a piece I’ve written for the Melvin Gibbs Ensemble - a group that I lead but don’t play in - an idea inspired by the Philip Glass Ensemble killyridols.substack.com/p/bands-of-o...

if you’re a U.S. citizen today it should be obvious to you that any “progress” or achievement is ephemeral - dependent on maintenance & vigilance. This thread should be seen in that light.

my point is we can’t pretend that chauvinism is purely an American phenomenon/problem The European jazz community is trying to bolster themselves/their scene(s). And they are using state money to do that. Those aren’t critiques/value judgements - just statements of fact.

a bottom-up scene emerged in London (that didn’t require buy-in from any of the Euro Jazz police) & in 2015 Kamasi & Makaya blew up - and that along with of course Shabaka & the Black UK scene blowing up - scrambled things & forced a recalibration in both the U.S. AND Europe

back at the turn of the ‘10s” I pushed to make a Supersilent meets Harriet Tubman record & tour happen. The reasons that it didn’t are systemic- not musical. Those issues have been papered over but they haven’t disappeared

plus If you’ve jumped into the European jazz scene in the last 5 years you might not know this but there was a period when Black Creative Music in general & Black American Musicians in particular were “deprioritized” cause it’s not happening now doesn’t mean it can’t happen again

also It need to be said that the jazz touring scene being referenced in large part has its genesis in the Art Ensemble of Chicago’s move to Paris It wasn’t a question of promoters bringing them over - it was a question of them deciding to go

just saw that Substack from a couple of weeks ago telling us we need to embrace European “jazz”. While there is significant nuance to my answer- it boils down to “Don’t Get it Twisted- Europeans actively gatekeep THEIR scenes”

my book is available in the UK on June 4th

there's a difference between clever & smart this dude is clever - but he's obviously not smart & he's obviously never known anyone over 50 whose had a "real" job he's obviously never swung a mop - carried a bucket - used a drill - the list goes on

I will reiterate the point made by @jamellebouie.net : if you really wanted online political influence, you’d be making vertical video. you’d be learning how to do little booty dances while talking about political theory. you’d be mastering doing BTS fan-cams while talking about anti-capitalism

I have a Patreon account that I made back when people were saying that Amanda Palmer's business model was the future of the biz that I've never used. I'm feeling like I'm gonna fire it up soon.

João appears in my book. We had a great discussion about 3-poled logic after he asked the question that frames one of the chapters of my book that was a bit too technical to include, but validated what I was in the process of writing.

what he said about pocket is exactly in sync with what’s in my book & his reiteration of jazz’s effect on rap lines up with what Georgia Anne Muldrow & Harriet Tubman have been saying about “jazz” as a Way of creating as opposed to a musical form

I was wondering where South Carolina was gonna land on the “let’s revive Jim Crow” meter They’re a full LETS GOOOOO!

I purposely didn’t read the 30 Greatest article I did watch the interview Jay-Z did for it which I enjoyed & related to but then Fatboi Sharif & Kokayi told me about “the interview in the black suit” aka Jay-Z’s GQ interview I watched it and was like ?????

I appreciated most of that rant having said that I was working at Tower Records during the Peter Watrous era - I saw him a lot there I would ALWAYS tell him WHEN I thought he missed the mark in a review - & HOW He listened - & he grew as a critic (unlike the Other Annoying Critic from that era)

one more thing: I read “Black Skin White Masks” when I was 18 so I clearly understood that when “they” were saying “illegals” they meant Black Americans too.

2 thoughts 1) he’s proving EVERY Black grandparent who told us to watch out cause “they” want to turn the clock back right 2) There is no “common ground” here - no room for debate or compromise Anyone who doesn’t speak up (& do something) - any “centrist” or “moderate” an enemy of Black people

Now? with food & gas prices ridiculously inflated while the "taxed enough already" people remain quiet & move to gut voter's rights Can we FINALLY admit that the TEA Party was Never About Taxes but Was Always About A Black Man Being In Charge?

Systemic Racism circa 2026 Example 1: