music for a good mood

jean grae: keep living

some songs live with you.   i have had itunes for more than 4 years and this song has never lost its first place position.  this was the song i listened to in palestine, congo, mexico, virginia, minnesota, and chicago.  it is the song that i walk to– down the street no matter the continent.  it stays on repeat.

now why does this song put me in a good mood?  i guess because i believe in survival.  and it reminds me that no matter how bad things gets ‘out there’ those of us who are scrappy, who hustle, who are creative, who know how to survive, will do so…yeah they are destroying the money supply in this country.  the dollar is losing value.  a capitalism in crisis and even the capitalists dont know how to deal with it.  but its like claire huxtable said when she was asked about the ‘black’ perspective during the Depression: we learned that misery doesnt enjoy company.  (i love the ambiguity of her response)…in other words, welcome to our world…

tupac: dear mama

when i was in highschool, tupac was murdered.  the first thing i loved about tupac was his eyelashes. crush.  in the eastern congo and ethiopia in 2005 barbershops were playing tupac on their cd players.  and murals of he, bob marley, and che, a trinity of the brown and black ghettos and shanty towns, were splayed on white washed buildings.  it is amazing how he has become a global third world icon.  all three of these saints are complex figures.  neither pure angels nor devils.

i dont vote

i wrote this as a response to moya’s discussion over at quirky black girls about ambivalence toward the election of obama…so i am posting it here as well…

i didnt vote. i never vote.
i guess i am of two minds…but them i am usually of two (or more) minds. the day of the election, i went to arabic class. my teacher had scheduled the class an hour earlier than usual because he wanted to get to grant park in time in order to celebrate obama’s victory. i was kind of surprised. he grew up in gaza, studied at bir zeit in the west bank and obama is very pro-israel. now, obama’s position on israel has not gotten alot of press, but frankly, when he announced that he believed in an undivided jerusalem, i was pissed. let me unpack the phrase ‘undivided jerusalem’ for a moment. jerusalem at the moment is one of the most contested pieces of real estate in the world. the israeli government has built large israeli settlements surrounding jerusalem in order to make the ‘facts on the ground’ that all of jerusalem and the land surrounding jerusalem belongs to israel. at the moment there is west jerusalem (israel) and east jerusalem (palestinian) and then surrounding east jerusalem massive israeli settlements that block east jerusalem palestinians from being able to reach the rest of the west bank without going through a series of military checkpoints. it can take hours to travel ten miles to the nearest city in the west bank. i am not talking about abstract people, or dots on a map, i am talking about my friends that can’t go see their family or their family land (if the israelis havent already confiscated that family land for israeli settlements).
on the other hand (the other mind) i think about my daughter. my little biracial daughter who is seriously going to grow up thinking that it was the olden days when a person of color could not lead the empire. she is going to shrug her shoulders and be like: whatev, mom. the way that i used to be when my mom used to tell me stories about integrating her high school in rural south carolina. when i was a teenager, in my (integrated) high school i told everyone that i planned to become president of the usa. i wanted to change the world and the presidency seemed like the instrument to use. i would tell people that i refused to say the pledge of allegiance (it was required that everyone in the school stand for the pledge every morning…welcome to virginia) until racism ended in the usa. a fellow student asked me how was i going to be president of the usa if i wasnt willing to say the pledge…and my lil 13 year old self quipped…well when i am president then obviously racism will have ended! in that school i was considered really radical for thinking that i (a geeky lil black girl) could be president.