“The generation gap is another evil plan. The result of which divided the family structure, therefore creating a halt to the flow of wisdom from the wise to the young, and stifling the energy of the young which is the equalizer to wisdom and age.” Kenny Gamble, 1975 (O'Jays Family Reunion Liner Notes)
Dr. Oba T’Shaka writes that there is a need within the
African-American community for an increased “dialogue between the generations
that will provide the basis for intergenerational programming that addresses
spirit, cultural, economic, family, political, educational and international
issues that face that Race” (The
Integration Trap, 40). One model that currently exists to help facilitate
this is the programming of San Francisco’s community-run radio station KPOO. As
an existing community-based organization, KPOO has continued to survive even as
the neighborhood in which it physically resides and from which it grew, the Fillmore
District, has been under siege by hostile external forces, such as the
developer’s greed that has recently forced the closure of the nation’s oldest
black-owned bookstore, Marcus Books. KPOO itself, like Marcus Books, is struggling
to survive against these same forces, yet for over 40 years it has remained a
beacon of hope even in this era in which the diaspora is taking the form of
black expulsion (black flight) from both
San Francisco and Oakland, and other large metropolitan areas nation wide.
KPOO (both as a terrestrial radio station and an “on-line
presence”) still maintains an infrastructure in place to help provide the
“intergenerational organization and intergenerational programming that will
make the community whole” (T’Shaka, 136), through “sharing the wisdom of our
elders with the creativity of our youth.” Even under siege, the medium of
community radio holds the power to supplement and complement, “door-to-door,
block-by-block” organizing efforts already in motion on a grassroots level
(just a great football team needs a good ground game as well as an aerial
attack; or a great D-line as well as secondary since the best offense is a
great defense, and not just in the NFL).
KPOO in many ways airs out a dialogue in both music and
words in the black community today. Although most of its radio personalities
(and they are all personalities) are
over 50, and one can hear the same generation gap manifested in its
programming, this is not due to any dogmatic policy. In fact, there is a need
and desire expressed by many of this station’s elders to work more closely with
youths (of the underserved communities) to widen the dialogue and strengthen
connections without simply replacing
the old with the new.
Such “replacement” would defeat the purpose of intergenerational
community building and simply perpetuate the “evil plan,” of which Kenny Gamble
wrote, the strategies and programs of the white-run corporate media to segregate
disciplines into genres and generational “niches” to create historical amnesia
and cultural fragmentation (as if Kanye West should be framed primarily in
context of Jay Z or Taylor Swift rather than, say, Curtis Mayfield, Sonia
Sanchez, Adam Clayton Powell, or Gil Scott-Heron--who Kanye, by the way,
samples-- all of whom I hear regularly on KPOO).
Within the economic limits it’s legally mandated to adhere
to, by necessity of having to be non-profit and volunteer run, KPOO is the most
visible (that is, to say, audible) alternative to the white-run media as well
as the white-run education system. This little radio station is a living embodiment
of many of the best aspects that the Black Arts Movement and Black Studies
Programs have called for. Pedagogically, KPOO glories in the interdisciplinary
emphasis at the core of Ethnic Studies Programs, which were established to
address the structural limits of the Euro-American education system and create
an that is more relevant to the
currently under-served student populations.
Listening to KPOO around the house could give your family a
model for cultural empowerment as well as provide knowledge of self and the
richness of African-American cultural traditions that is not offered in the
white run public school system. Because it is a primarily oral, and aural,
hieroglyphic medium, it allows a wider ranger of expression than the European
over-emphasis on the linear written word, and thus provides a useful
counterbalance to the American Education system which marginalizes the value of
the living-word, so central to the African-American cultural traditions and
those who excel at oral forms of expression.
KPOO offers an intelligent legitimate immersion into the
richness of what became unjustly maligned as “Ebonics.” Ebonics was devised in
part to afford black students the same status as other students (Latino, and
Asian, for instance)—who have the benefit of (standard written)
English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) courses that allow them to be culturally
bi-lingual. Ebonics’ inclusion in a public-schools curriculum remains a
strategy that should be encouraged in order to make education more honest and relevant to the needs of the young and
the community at large, and help decrease the drop-out rate in the absence of
alternative schools that encourage one to become culturally bi-lingual---which
becomes a necessity for empowerment in this society. KPOO takes this culture as
a home base, even while providing exposure to intellectuals who have written
brilliant books in standard English.
Because KPOO’s educational programming is never far divorced
from its entertainment programming, the vast majority of its programming can be
understood as educational (even if no tests are given, and it lacks accredited
“value”)—in part because the best of African-American cultural traditions
cannot be understood in terms of the imposed specialized distinction between
them. For instance, even shows that are entirely musical, like the
60s and 70sR&B shows of JJ-On-The-Radio, have inspired and educated younger
folks of all races who listen to this music that is in danger of being erased,
and decontextualized, in the absence of a curator such as JJ.
Entertainment As
Education
The “primary function” of these old songs JJ and others play
may be just to get people dancing—or as JJ puts it, his “scratched and
distorted sounds” can “make you feel younger” (and not just if you’re old,
though obviously that’s his primary demographic; in fact, more younger white
neo-mods, and record collector geeks tend to listen to his show than the youth
of the current so-called ‘hip hop generation’). But even these few words, which
JJ repeats often during his shows, are a history lesson—reminding people what records were, specifically 45RPM records,
often on black run small record labels, and what was, and still is, valuable, beautiful and practical
about such records in this high-tech age (it’s not entirely a coincidence that
the heyday of this recorded format parallels the heyday of the black
middle-class and the mid-century black liberation movement).
The records JJ and other KPOO DJS play can tell you many
things about the inside, can reach
people from the inside-out, before
face-to-face meetings and organizing can occur (especially given the
destruction of locally-owned nightlife, safe, affordable, public places to
dance, in particular for ‘underage’ people). It tells you about the soul of
family relationships (both positive and negative), from a relatively safer
distance rendered into art. And these family relationships expressed in the
lyrics of even the most ostensibly benign ‘shake your hips’ songs are as much a
part of The Struggle as the economic, electoral and religious dimensions are
(as Amiri Baraka points out, the word for the dance James Brown did, the
boogaloo, came from Bogalusa, LA, where the Deacons of Self Defense made a
heroic stand against the KKK).
In fact, many of the older songs JJ and other DJS play, were
an inspiration for the mid-century civil rights organizing and mobilization. JJ
has also been an intergenerational inspiration and education to the younger DJS
on the station, like DJ X-1, who plays mostly local “underground” (i.e.
community-based, locally oriented) hip hop. KPOO provides a much more capacious
forum to play music to put the younger generation and the newer generation into
more explicit dialogue with each other, and air out many conflicts that exist
within the black community. All are expressed and negotiated in the living art
form of song as broadcast on a community radio station.
There are of course aesthetic disagreements: many elders
today in the black community claim they don’t like most post-1992 hip hop aesthetically, but they get the message. Conversely, younger
folks feel that way about the older music. Yet, when I’ve used JJ’s radio
program as part of a class-assignment, as a text
in a classroom, I’ve found that it can encourage students to do historical and
cultural research in ways that speak to them more than “standard” texts. Even
if younger people do not appreciate the ‘dated’ aesthetics of this musical
language (“oh, that’s my great grandma’s music”), they can value it educationally
when comparing and contrasting it with the more recent music that is in their primary comfort zone.
One of my students
brilliantly compared Kanye West’s “New Slaves” to the O’Jay’s “Backstabbers”
and put both of these songs—separated by over 40 years—into dialogue with each
other to render each a deeper experience that raised many questions for moving
forward as a person, and as a people. This kind of intergenerational
juxtaposition helps “preserve, protect, and perpetuate” the cultural pride and
unity Oba T’Shaka calls for when he writes “as we promote dialogues between the
blues, soul, and funk generation with the hip hop generation, we must draw upon
our cultural strengths to carry on an intergenerational transmission of African
American culture.” (330).
++++
KPOO’S Public Affairs
Programming
In contrast to the talk-heavy format of Pacifica’s KPFA and
NPR, there is a balance between music and talk. Even the “strictly verbal”
programming on KPOO is never strictly verbal (as whites generally understand
that term; coming from a less verbally expressive culture). For instance, on
KPOO I’ve heard “strictly verbal” historical recordings as a performance on
Black History by young Newark students called “The Spirit House Movers”
(organized by Amiri Baraka in 1968), included on the programs by DJs---I’ll say
Professors—Donald Lacy and Terry Collins; speeches and interviews with Marvin X
(of Black Arts West), novelist Judy Juanita (a former professor at Laney
College), as well as news on contemporary struggles, including Mumia Jamal’s
speeches from Death Row on Prison Radio.
I’ve also heard lectures by African healers who ground (or
root) their rejection of Western Medicine in African spirit practices (not
distinct from the powerful “root doctors” and conjurers during Slavery times in
the US). One doctor, Dr. Sebi, recently caused controversy with the medical
“establishment” because he had had success curing people from this disease.
Sebi stated how the standard American diet based on “blood and starch” has caused
an excess of mucus in the standard ‘healthy’ American diet. This (to say
nothing of the increased injection of added toxins such as corn syrup, et al,
into the fast food industry that clearly poisons people for profit) has
severely hindered the health-potentials of African Americans in particular: “We
didn’t eat this way in Africa.” His program of communal holistic health, and
his musical language, taps into primordial somatic rhythms that I’ve found much
more convincing, and useful, than even the white alternative “non-western” wellness craze, which is still
primarily individualistic in orientation: I need
to hear him more, but the AMA, in conjunction with Big Pharma and Food
lobbyists, has thoroughly “discredited” him and limited his presence in the national
discussion. (http://planet.infowars.com/health/dr-sebi-medical-prodigy)
In the wide range of such programming, KPOO presents a
syllabus that lets listeners form their own opinion. One DJ featured a lecture
by Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, who wrote The
Isis Papers, yet with the disclaimer—even to her largely black
audience—that you may not agree with
this, but it’s important to hear this brilliant, if controversial, woman who
influenced Public Enemy’s Fear Of A Black
Planet. Where else are you going to hear this outside of a Black Studies
Program? (or self-governing K-12 school that KPOO can help whet your appetite for).
On a seemingly lighter note, I’ve heard show called
Sacred/Secular (in which that split in the black community is entertainingly
addressed by two brothers) and call-in debates on whether The Seattle Seahawks
would win the 2014 Superbowl (a discussion that became implicitly racially
charged in the wake of the white media’s “thug” portrayal of Seahawks Cornerback
Richard Sherman vs. the great white hope that Peyton Manning represented).
Even the non-verbal programming, such as African-American
Classical Music (or you can call it Jazz) can include inspiring verbal
aphorisms from St. John Coltrane; or historical education in Mingus’ “Fables of
Faubus” or even the conservative curmodgeon Stanley Crouch’s “Sermon” performed
by Obama’s ex-preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright set to music by Wynton Marsalis. In
the context of KPOO, Marsalis is not allowed to dominate or tyrannize with the
narrow view of “jazz” that Ken Burns pushed in the white-media. KPOO also makes
ample room for the Black Church its gospel music programs. One of its most
important political community interventions is broadcasting the meetings of the
Hunter’s Point Citizens Advisory Committee—another frontline in the struggle
against “redevelopment” (read “land grab”).
Oba T’Shaka believes that we must start to ground any hope
of liberation of the oppressed African American people with the family, by
cultivating and resurrecting the “Twin-lineal extended family paradigm.” A
radio station like KPOO can be a highly useful tool in the linking of any new
block/neighborhood/city “intergenerational culturally grounded organization”
(139) with “existing community organizations and churches.” Clearly, Donald
Lacy emphasizes the core importance of family on his weekly show, “Wake Up,
Everybody” (a phrase borrowed from the Harold Melvin song).
Lacy himself lost a daughter to violence, and uses his forum
to rebuild from that on his radio show, as well as his community activism
off-the-radio (the Love Life Foundation), like a teacher serving as a parent in
an extended family, challenging his or her students (and teachers) to “be the
best human beings possible” so that men and women can work together to be cosmic harmonizers--and heal more than
his own personal grief and trauma. In this sense, KPOO is not only a community
organization, but also a clearing house, a larger meta-organization that fosters a coalition between various
grassroots organizations with its programming (including Latina, Native
American, and international; such as a show called “Arab Talk”) that can “heal
our nuclear families.”
San Francisco’s African American Population has decreased
from 10% to 5% in the last 20 years, while Oakland’s African American
population has decreased from 43% to 26% during the same time----to the
detriment of the culture of both cities as a whole—and this process is
accelerating in an era of Google busses, but the continual presence of KPOO for
over four decades is one of the most enduring cultural organizations that came
out of the victories fought for during the Civil Rights, and Black Power
Movements of the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s. Its presence helped fill a void
that had previously been met in no small measure by black commercial radio, but
was beginning to change when the corporate dominance of the music broadcasting
industry put local black-owned stations (such as James Brown’s radio stations)
out of business, and drove legendary R&B personality DJS like Jack Gibson
out of the industry while the ones that survived, like WBLS in NYC, had to
increasingly include more white musicians to lure white corporate advertising
dollars just to survive. These days black commercial radio has all but vanished
from the airwaves, yet KPOO with its wider scope, and communityemphasis,
comes much closer to representing the “Total Black Experience In Sound” as WBLS
claimed to around the time KPOO was founded.
A Call To Action
Like any radio station, KPOO is always available at the
flick of a switch. And, in contrast to the post-1968 increased corporate
dominance of the commercial (and even non-commercial) radio airwaves, there are
real people one can contact through
the phone (a request line; a talk line) allowing two-way non-hierarchical
communication. The “jocks” are accessible, and all have purposes and
causes—including the cause of keeping the station alive.
Embrace this tradition! I can almost guarantee you that you’ll
find something of great worth. Donate, if you can; buy a t-shirt. And, if you
cannot afford to donate money by virtue of being part of the “working
homeless,” add your voice to it; KPOO encourages it. Use your airtime wisely.
Help expand it—even by writing about it; turn people onto it (it’s amazing how
few people know about it here in Oakland, but know about KPFA). Doing so may
even help you find a job, especially if you love music and culture and have
interest and skills as a “content provider.”
KPOO also can provide an alternative to the increased
dehumanization and disembodiment encouraged by the 21st century
computer-based technocracy in most fields of social endeavor, even while
understanding that these have become necessities as Harrison Chastang does with
his “Tech Hour.”
Even if you feel isolated and turned-in-on-yourself in a
solitude that no one else understands and feel you lack “social (and high-tech)
skills” that your elders, and/or potential employers, appreciate, you have
something to say, something to “bring to the table,” and KPOO wants to hear it.
In fact, bringing the creativity and energy of youth will help KPOO in its
struggle to serve the community, to serve you
better, and push back against the individualistic, materialistic bling bling corporate
culture’s program of genocide, for instance.
Radio still has the power to help ground the spirit for the “Face-to-face” encounters, especially in a
culture of chronic distrust and suspicion---not merely the justifiably
suspicion blacks have toward whites, but also the suspicion that blacks have
toward other blacks---which was exactly what the white power structure planned
from the beginning. This is why they would be so happy to see KPOO vanish from
the airwaves---and, in fact, passed a law not long after KPOO was founded
(circa 1979) to prevent any more stations like it to appear again (and yes, NPR
lobbyists played a part in implementing this FCC regulation).
We need more stations like KPOO; Oakland needs one. Brooklyn
and The Bronx needs one; Philly needs one. When I say KPOO, I do not mean these
stations must have exactly the same model. Such new stations can do not have to
start from the initiative of elders, but could start from the youth; either way
the generations can meet in this ageless medium. For instance, a collective of
youth could form to start a podcast, a web-only radio station, with the
eventual goal of seizing—or occupying--the airwaves. If you (plural) feel it is
a worthy goal, don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t do it. The elders at
KPOO have some wisdom they are more than happy to share to help. What needs to
be understood is that, even in the 21st Century, radio broadcasting,
is an important cite of the struggle for cultural empowerment. Radio still has
the power to cut deeper than TV or ‘social media’, and KPOO uses it to its
fullest to encourage the racial pride so necessary to counter the white supremacist
cultural policies that permeate every aspect of American society.
Indeed, KPOO is an important forum for the dialogue between
the generations that will “provide the basis for intergenerational programming
that addresses the spirit, cultural, economic, family, political, educational
and international uses the face the race.” KPOO shows, as T’Shaka writes that, “it
is spirit that makes the blues the spirituals. It is spirit that makes the
gospel sacred blues. It is spirit that makes jazz blues and spirituals. It is
funk that makes hip hop the blues and the spirituals”(114). Feel the spirit.
Help KPOO Survive and Thrive in the 21st Century! It could help heal
the generation gap, and pass own the richness of a culture in danger of being
eradicated.
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