Bronx Biannual

Experience Music

2007-10-08T17:20:00.000-05:00

I've got a proposal on the back burner to give a discussion about the reception of hiphop by France in the wake of the 2005 riots here. Every year, the Experience Music Project out in Seattle gives an annual Pop Conference and their deadline for proposals is coming up in December. This upcoming April 2008, their theme is "Shake, Rattle: Music, Conflict and Change."

I never had the pleasure of attending a conference; never been out to Seattle yet either. I do know many talented/knowledgeable folks who have given their own lectures there over the years though: Johnny Temple, Raquel Cepeda, Jon Caramanica, Rob Kenner, Robert Christgau, Lynne d Johnson, T Cooper, Karen R. Good, Joan Morgan, the ego trip posse, Greg Tate and others. My proposal shouldn't be rocket science, I've written about hiphop versus the French powers-that-be before.

Lauryn Hill Interviewed in Belgium

2007-10-05T16:17:00.000-05:00

This was reported on the web as a Paris interview, but it's actually from July 27 backstage at the Suikerrock music festival in Tienan, Belgium. Anyway, Lauryn Hill gave a 13-minute interview to TV Maniacs about the state of the Fugees reunion, her latest album and more. (Did I mention I kinda liked her Unplugged record?) Forthwith:

Free Burma!

2007-10-04T04:14:00.001-05:00

City Cinema

2007-09-30T05:19:00.000-05:00

My main aspiring-filmmaker hangout here in Paris is the Cinémathèque Française, kind of a movie theater/museum/film-related library in the 12th arrondissement. I've only seen Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket and Dog Day Afternoon there, but I pick up their three-month schedule four times a year just to see what's on deck. Here's their most interesting films through the first week of December. (The ones really not to miss are probably Poltergeist and American Graffiti.)

Solaris – October 5
American Graffiti – October 14
The Last Detail – October 14
Tommy – October 22
Psycho – November 2
A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy – November 16
Poltergeist – November 28
Christine – December 2

Hip-Hop vs. America: Who Are YOU?

2007-09-27T17:43:00.000-05:00

So I just discovered this afternoon that it's possible to watch the whole of BET's recent Hip-Hop vs. America over the web. With BET not available in Europe, I was happy to catch the debate. It's all fresh in my mind right now, so I'll just empty my head.

Firstly, I know a lot of the participants from the show personally: Nelson George, Kim Osorio, Russell Simmons, Jeff Chang, Touré, Farai Chideya, Diane Weathers, Kevin Powell. I've debated at Harvard and other hiphop panel discussions with Conrad Muhammad, Peter Noel, Rah Digga and hiphop industry heads about the exact same issues being discussed in Hip-Hop vs. America. The last time I was invited to speak on the ills of hiphop at Sony by the Temple of Hiphop during Hiphop Appreciation Week, I declined. (I attended, but declined to speak.) I was frankly tired of talking. Talk turns to action eventually, or you're just getting off on beating the dead horse of conversation. So to speak.

Kudos to all involved; Hip-Hop vs. America addressed every possible angle of the debate on hiphop's ills and it will end up standing as a shining moment for the network. I'm also aware that BET (where I once worked as an editor of their online site) is being picketed against lately for airing its often crazy depictions of black folk.

Most music journalists who focus on rap music and hiphop culture embrace the title of "cultural critic," myself included, and yet lately I've been thinking of myself as much more of a "witness." Critical analysis is necessary, of course, and those of us who have lived hiphop and grown up with the culture since its beginnings have an angle to dissect it critically that opponents like Stanley Crouch just can't have. But personally, I've always been more prone in my writing to pose questions rather than preach answers. The program definitely raised questions, and to me, the debate is the thing.

What is the solution? What can be done to prevent having to talk about these same issues all over again in 10 years? I guarantee that the state of hiphop will remain the same despite this hotbed moment of controversy. Kim Osorio said the most shocking thing in the whole show to me when she admitted that violence is entertaining to her, that The Sopranos is her favorite show and she likes to watch extreme violence. That's American culture. That's partially why I bounced, because of the lack of self-examination that prevents people from looking at why they enjoy stuff like that, or even viewing it as something a bit strange.

I don't believe in right and wrong, I'm a much firmer believer in the power of intention: what statement are you making to the world with your choices about who you are? Are you someone who enjoys to watch violence and doesn't feel the need to examine that pleasure? This is no dis to Kim. What I'm saying is, are the ills of hiphop really ills? Is it all intellectual masturbation to continue to go back and forth, back and forth debating what the ills are and what we should do? So-called ills will always exist, in communities, in art, in reportage, in life. Who are we in response to those ills? That is ultimately what we have complete responsibility for and control over.

I could only suggest that we all continue to profess who we are by the life choices we make, which we're all doing anyway whether we're conscious of it or not. Are you someone who protests violence and misogyny, or someone entertained by it? Someone who profits from it with a guiltless conscious? Are you someone who exiles yourself from a society whose values you too often fundamentally disagree with? Who are you? That's the only question we can all answer without endless debate.

Shows Shows Shows

2007-09-24T19:24:00.000-05:00

I fuckin love concerts (duh), I've seen everybody from James Brown, Miles Davis and Sly & the Family Stone to Run-DMC, Big Daddy Kane and Doug E. Fresh & Slick Rick to Marilyn Manson, Living Colour, Radiohead... the list definitely goes on and on. Anybody in Paris during the next two months will surely catch me at all of the following shows. (Of the six below, I've seen Meshell Ndegéocello, Jill Scott and George Clinton before. With Jill and Meshell performing the same night November 25, I'm choosing Jill. Scuttlebutt says Meshell's show has become a little erratic lately...)

George Clinton – Olympia, October 13
Amy Winehouse – Olympia, October 29
Sananda Maitreya (formerly Terence Trent D’Arby) – La Maroquinerie, November 5
Sinéad O’Connor – Casino de Paris, November 13
Meshell Ndegéocello – Elysées Montmartre, November 25
Jill Scott – Le Bataclan, November 25

Bronx Biannual Issue 3

2007-09-24T17:57:00.001-05:00

This, unfortunately, ain't the cover of Issue 3. Copyright issues stand in the way; shutterbugs of the original photos in the collage might beef. (But shoutout to M. Aleijuan King for the master effort.) But...the editing process begins in full swing this week for Issue 3 of Bronx Biannual!

First on the editorial chopping block: "Android Hugs Humanoid" by Greg Tate, a surreal tale of one woman's effort to save hoochie-mama hiphop from itself (or something like that). It's 1 a.m., and I've got to turn around that Marion Cotillard Q&A tomorrow also... But, Wednesday the latest.

Meeting Édith Piaf

2007-09-20T17:48:00.000-05:00

One day, somebody will post up on YouTube this scene in my mind's eye: Agent 99 from Get Smart singing "La Vie en Rose" in a smoky café during some sting operation with her partner Maxwell Smart. (It's not there; of course I checked.) That was my first exposure to that Édith Piaf classic as a kid, at home sick from school. I remember a combination of the song, a melancholic copy of the Defenders comic book (issue 101), and my fever gave me a lump in my throat.

And so.

Tomorrow, I'm meeting French actress Marion Cotillard for lunch at a 5-star hotel restaurant in the 8th arrondissement for a magazine interview. Cotillard, the 31-year-old César winner (the French equivalent of the Oscar), played Édith Piaf in the amazing La Vie en Rose this year. Here in France, the film was called La Môme. I sat down with actress/director Julie Delpy in the spring, star and screenwriter of Before Sunrise and Before Sunset and it was my pleasure. Before Sunrise was such a touchstone of my 20s that I stuck the film in an erotica story I wrote long ago, "Diva Moves." Anyway, Marion Cotillard's next film should be Nine, alongside Penélope Cruz, Sophia Loren and Catherine Zeta-Jones, a movie by Chicago director Rob Marshall.

Find Out What's Playing

2007-09-18T17:34:00.000-05:00

Last time the parents came to visit me in Paris, it didn't take long before we ended up at the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa. It didn't kill me to go, but quiet as kept, I don't go in for the trappings of tourism like that. I found myself explaining to them how I relate to museums.

I love museums, this is no "anti" rant. I just don't understand how people get the urge to go to the museum, and then show up with no idea what's exhibiting and walk around for their once-in-a-blue-moon slice of culture. To me, museums are like movie theaters: if they're not playing what I want to see, I'm not going to the movies just for the sake of going to the movies. It's not the theater, it's what's playing at the theater.

I bring this up because yesterday La Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine reopened here in Paris, in a ceremony presided over by President Sarkozy. Maybe I'll go and maybe I won't. But I made sure to show up for the Kara Walker exhibit last month, which just closed its run at the Musée d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris. Kara Walker (see video) is a fierce 37-year-old Sagittarian who works primarily with silhouette images depicting scenes from the antebellum South. Maybe I first learned about her while editing the art section of Russell Simmons's Oneworld magazine in the early '00s, maybe curator Thelma Golden turned me onto her even earlier at the Whitney sometime. But the exhibit was harrowing in ways you wouldn't believe if I told you, yet by turns funny at the same time. Do check out sister Kara Walker if you get the chance.

Shades

2007-09-17T16:50:00.000-05:00

So it looks like Kanye won the contest, outselling 50 Cent with 718,000 to 603,000 so far.

What this all says about the black male identity is what makes it really interesting, aside from 50 getting his ass kicked in the only arena (SoundScan) that seems to mean anything to him. Black men in America are conditioned to feel as though the musclebound hard-attitude persona is what makes a black man a black man, and to fall outside that mold is to be... nerdy or oreo or just soft. What Kanye's success could say is that society is opening up its conceptions of what constitutes a black man. Just maybe.

We (us black men) have been saying all along that we're not just Stagger Lee and John Henry, but also Duke Ellington, Colin Powell, Prince, James Baldwin, Bob Marley, Bill T. Jones, etc. Whut?

The Dotcom-ing of Self

2007-09-14T17:54:00.001-05:00

Was just over on writer Lynne d Johnson's blog, where she writes about music, media and her tech-culture thoughts and I got hyped up. It's not because she mentioned me on Tuesday as "a damn good writer," but because she's all the way digital and I'm about to come out that particular closet myself.

Lynne laments the dearth of black tech bloggers, raises awareness for both the upcoming South by Southwest Interactive Festival and the Jena 6, and... well, just go check out her blog. But Lynne's an inspiration, a writer who loves hiphop and the web 2.0 in nearly equal measures. I studied computer science in college for 3 years before switching majors (sociology); the math kicked my ass. I wrote simple Basic programs on my Atari 1600XL at the age of 11, was all up on Fortran and Cobol computer languages, reading Omni and Discover heavy before KISS and WBLS (and teenage girls in bubblegum jeans) jacked my attention. Gearing up for the launch of my first real website next month got me in a Bobby Digital state of mind; that and Wikio.com (a whole other story).

Lynne's got a bishop in the Church of Zombie that kicked my ass on Facebook days ago though. Revenge!

The Original Furthermucker

2007-09-12T17:51:00.000-05:00

Here's a story I haven't told often enough. It's about Greg Tate, who nails a nice 50 vs. Kanye piece in The Village Voice this week.

My story boils down to the fact that, at 16, I hated Michael Jackson's video for "Bad." The Martin Scorsese-directed one in the faux NYC train station, with the thug life Wesley Snipes and the "you ain't bad, you ain't nuthin!" ("Translation: niggas ain't shit," Tate later wrote.)

As was MJ's style for many years, the video debuted on the major networks so families everywhere could settle in with the popcorn and revel in the thing together. MJ fans in their 20s at the time probably lit a spliff in preparation for the 8 o'clock chime. Anyway, 15 minutes later, I hated it. My mother loved it. The clip seemed an obvious repudiation of his blackness and... what was with the pleather and buckles? Mom and Dad liked it; was I bugging?

The next week, The Village Voice dropped (yeah, I was a 16-year-old Voice reader), and "I'm White!" by Greg Tate explained everything about the video that I couldn't articulate to my folks. I didn't show them his piece; it was enough that some mysterious cat out there somewhere knew exactly where I was coming from. Like, somebody else besides me gets it.

In my 14 years of cultural criticism, I don't know that I've engendered that feeling in any impressionable teenagers out there over the years. But I'm glad to call Tate a friend these days. We did a reading together at Harlem's Hue-Man Bookstore last year (above) talking about Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone, and he wiped the floor with me. Of course.

September 11, 2007

2007-09-11T12:34:00.000-05:00

Here's another 9/11 remembrance to add to the deluge, an excerpt from my first book, Scars of the Soul Are Why Kids Wear Bandages When They Don't Have Bruises, from 2004:

I woke up that Tuesday morning sometime after ten A.M. having ignored the ringing telephone; three messages from my mother and an ex-girlfriend blinked on my answering machine. I logged onto the Internet from my Brooklyn apartment to check email and was greeted by an America Online pop-up. Two airplanes had collided into the World Trade Center downtown; the buildings were in flames. (Bear in mind, flaming Twin Towers were depicted on the cover of Jeru the Damaja's 1994 The Sun Rises in the East, as well as the scheduled-for-November 2001 Party Music by the Coup.) I received an instant message from an editor canceling our weekly meeting and suggesting I turn on my television. As I tuned in, the towers fell. Black smoke billowed in the sky outside my Brooklyn apartment.

We are not stupid, the population of my generation. As a result of our distrust of American society, many of us have been prone to absorbing conspiracy-laced tomes like William Cooper's popular 1991 Behold a Pale Horse. Members of Mobb Deep and Wu-Tang Clan subscribed religiously to its revelations of the impending "Illuminati" and New World of biological bar-code and microchip implants as the millennium approached. But truth is evermore stranger than fiction, and the monumental events of September 11, 2001 have inspired more individual research into the state of world affairs and America's standing in the international arena than any other incident in hiphop history.

The politically conscious among us wholly rejected President Bush's fabrications about Osama bin Laden's motivating hate for secularism, capitalism, democracy, and individualism. We, more than any other group, are used to the government lying to us. We have investigated on our own. The Internet (invented by the Pentagon, ironically enough) is an amazing technology. No need for conspiracy theories: It is incontrovertible knowledge that America is the only nation condemned by the World Court of the United Nations for international terrorism in 1986, for the death of tens of thousands in Nicaragua. (The U.S. was ordered to terminate their unlawful use of force and pay substantial reparations; it did neither, dismissing the court's judgment.) It is incontestable that Osama bin Laden belongs to a cadre of about 100,000 radical Islamist extremists trained by the CIA to do war with Russian invaders of Afghanistan in the 1970s, and that this network subsequently took on an agenda of its own to assassinate President Anwar Sadat of Egypt in 1981, and even ousted American military forces in Lebanon in 1983. The least educated of the hiphop community know that war against Iraq is rooted in economic interests revolving around oil.

We are not stupid, despite how we are portrayed in music videos disseminated by the record companies of multinational corporations. As our tax dollars go to providing bullets and bombs for the slaughter of innocents in Iraq while resistance seems futile, know that we are concocting new strategies for countering what cultural critic bell hooks calls imperialist white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy.

Vs.

2007-09-10T05:11:00.000-05:00

This 9/11 matchup between Kanye West and 50 Cent is more than I can handle for the blog, I'd need to go 1,000 words deep for some magazine or alt-weekly, and I probably will for some year-end wrap-up eventually. Suffice it to say, plunking down your 9.99 at the iTunes store for either guy will be like casting a vote. Fiddy = thug life, Ye = the postboho B-boy. Here in Paris, the albums dropped today (the 10th), so I've got my Kanye early. I've never been terribly interested in 50 Cent, and here's why. I'm on my way to buy a new printer from Darty and some of those deliciously ill chocolate chip cookies from the Galeries Lafayette; I'll weigh in on Graduation later this week. I will say though that the generated heat from this whole marketing plan is a good thing for hiphop on a whole, the most interesting thing to me that's happened all year. Except for the news that Danger Mouse produced the next Martina Topley-Bird record,The Blue God. But that's not strictly hiphop right there.

Read a Book (Bronx Biannual maybe?)

2007-09-08T09:11:00.001-05:00

Sicko: Fact or fiction?

2007-09-07T12:38:00.000-05:00

Michael Moore's Sicko dropped in France on Wednesday, after being out in America for over two months. Living in Paris and being a fan of Moore's work, I'd heard already from friends and read critics Stateside that he bigs up the French major.

I definitely dug the film. I've never had health insurance in my adult life until moving to Paris, and never thought twice about it. Never injured myself to where I would need it either, knock on wood. As far as the claims he makes about the French health care system... My son Lucas was born here two years back, my wife and I have our second due next month, and it's true: I know nothing about the cost of hospital bills. No clue. Her insurance paid for everything, and that was that. When she gave birth to Lucas, I didn't even have a job at the time. As new parents, we had two minor (in retrospect) scares with the baby, where a doctor made housecalls at 3 a.m. for free. We paid, sure, but we were reimbursed 100% by the insurance weeks later by direct deposit.

As far as the free nanny doing laundry... I haven't experienced that, no. But that seems like a kinda lazy way out, don't you think? Being a parent is all about balancing overwhelming responsibilities. I'm not trying to have some stranger up in the crib washing my socks for me, that's cool. Our son goes to a crèche (nursery) too, but it's not as cheap as Sicko leads you to believe. Crèches charge parents according to their income.

Sign o' the Times Redux

2007-09-04T16:23:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time in Manhattan (1989 in the West Village, to be exact), there was a record store called Revolver Records. Back in my high school daze, I used to troop down to Greenwich Village all the way from the northeast Bronx at least twice a month to cop some kosher hot dogs with waffle-print french fries, some chocolate chip David's Cookies, some gear from Unique and the latest platters that mattered from Tower Records. Every once in a while, I would head into Revolver.

Long story short, Revolver Records sold bootleg vinyl. As a teenager, I bought everything by Prince, even anything with the logo of Prince's vanity record label Paisley Park. And one day, on my first summer break from college, I happened upon He's Got the Look: a seven-track recording of a Prince concert aftershow, recorded in Paris on June 14, 1987 at the New Morning club. I've still got it (of course), with Prince and his Sign o' the Times band (Sheila E., Eric Leeds & co.) running through Jimi Hendrix's "Red House," the Temptations' "Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)," James Brown's "Sex Machine," the Family's "Mutiny" (which was written by Prince to begin with). GREAT performance, especially the Tempts cut. And now that I live in Paris, I've been to New Morning, to see saxophonist Joshua Redman a few years back. Revolver Records turned into Revolution Records at some point, and has since shut down, just like Tower. A shame.

I bring this up randomly, but the deal is, I brought the vinyl back with me from my last trip to the States and my cousin-in-law digitized the joint to make it iPod ready for the both of us. Haven't heard the record in about 15 years, and I'm hyped to have it back in the collection. Here's to Prince! Though I wrote a pretty negative review of his latest Planet Earth disc for The Village Voice last month, he's forever the man...it goes without saying. By the way, that He's Got the Look track listing is as follows:

1. Red House
2. Charlie Parker
3. Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)
4. Wasn't My Faith
5. Mutiny
6. Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine
7. Housequake

Double R foots the bill most definitely

2007-09-03T03:33:00.000-05:00

I'm back!

This slight return is really a dry run for me, myself and I, as I get back into the blogging thing in preparation for the launch of my very first website next month.

Have at thee then (as the mighty Thor would say)...

PLEASE peep The New York Times Magazine's cover story from yesterday, a Lynn Hirschberg piece on the unflappable Rick Rubin. And, some multimedia for that ass: an ol' school clip of the Rubin-produced "I Can't Live Without My Radio" from your favorite rapsploitation flick and mine, Krush Groove.

Don't Call It A Comeback

2007-04-02T09:15:00.000-05:00

Voilà! Don't call it a comeback; MML returns, with the cover to Bronx Biannual #2 no less!

Sorry to disappear. There was an interview in Milan with Sananda Maitreya (the artist formerly known as Terence Trent D'Arby), another back-to-back phone interview with Marvel Comics' one and only Stan Lee (excelsior! (you ain't up?)), and this here Village Voice essay on the Macy Gray record and the fall of neo-soul. Plus the fam and I moved to another apartment, a bigger spot near the 14th arrondissement.

So, BxBi2 has gone to the printer and will be in some selected stores as early as next month. Go 'head and order...

New Review (zooooo!)

2007-02-21T17:31:00.000-05:00

Finally finished up the introduction edit last week, so we're good to go. Cover design for Bronx Biannual #2 should come down the pike next week, courtesy of the irrepressible Chesiel John. Just got back into Paris from Milan, where I chatted it up with Sananda Maitreya (formerly Terence Trent D'Arby) for a magazine. Meanwhile, BxBi contributor Ferentz Lafargue (author of issue #1's "Rebecca, Meet Schooner" piece on Girlfriends vs. Sex and the City) forwarded this new review of the BxBi premiere from a blog by Dan Tres Omi. Wanna read it, here it go:

This journal begins with "the Paris Review is not really about Paris," thus we learn that most of the contributers to this collection of writing are not from the Bronx. As a matter of fact, KRS-One is the only one who hails from the Boogie Down. However, that description should not turn the interested reader off. Miles Marshall Lewis picked a wonderful group of writers. I expected a series of rough thesis statements put forth by hip-hop culture's latest crew of intellectuals. Instead, I was introduced to several fiction writers that I either ignored or never read too much of. Then again, this journal boasts Greg Tate, Michael Gonzales, Michael Ladd and Reginald Lewis. All heavyweights on their own.

To be quite frank, each story was exciting and left this reader wanting more. From the first story, Adam Mansbach's "Risk, Taking" to Mums the Schemer's spoken word piece, the Bronx Biannual was definitely a ride worth taking. Don't expect urban tales of drugs and kingpins. If you are looking for soft porn, then Bronx Biannual is not what you are looking for. It is urban lit that should be urban lit.

Mansbach takes us all back in his aforementioned work to the early 90s before the advent of the Internet backpacker. In his work, we find his protagonist taking his grandfather on a bombing mission. This alone is worth the price of admission. Greg Tate's "Pang Born" is part sci-fi part spy novella. Each page throws the reader off as one tries to figure out who the protagonist really is. Reginald Lewis's "Trainspotting" is a three part piece that really captures the insanity of the NYC subway. "Nothing Can Remain Unchanged" by Dana Crum is a tale of childhood friendships that are about to go through some dramatic changes. Yet the funniest piece in the book has to be an essay about Sex and the City and Girlfriends by Ferentz Lafargue called "Rebecca, Meet Schooner."

What I enjoyed about several of the stories is that most take place during the late eighties or early nineties. The stories are set when hip-hop music was considered in its golden era. It does bring a bit of nostalgia to this reader so the book touches a place in my heart. It is a quick and worthy read. We pray that this is not the final one in the series.

Best of 2006

2007-02-06T17:41:00.001-05:00

Running this week in The Village Voice is their annual Pazz & Jop poll, the best of 2006. See here my essay on the secret relationship between Gnarls Barkley and Beck, and the answer to the nagging question "is hiphop dead?"

Mike's Spot #1

2007-02-04T15:38:00.000-05:00

The only recurring Bronx Biannual writer thus far is the esteemed Michael A. Gonzales. The man's a true hiphop journalist veteran. He's probably written more cover stories in The Source than any other writer; he's one of a select few to score the cover of The Source, XXL and Vibe magazines; and he's successfully branched out into several fiction anthologies. So while I step off a quick second to finish my edit on the next Bronx Biannual introduction, here's guest blogger Michael A. Gonzales:

*******

Since taking my first writing class at John’s Hopkins University in the early-eighties, studying with a teacher who introduced me to the fiction of Harlan Ellison and T. C. Boyle, short stories have become my favorite form. Though it might sound anti-intellectual, there is a special thrill I get from reading a well-told tale in a single sitting.

While all 568 pages of Ralph Ellison’s classic Invisible Man hold a special place in my heart, I would quicker read James Baldwin’s masterful short "Sonny’s Blues" over and over again. Though the commercial magazine market has dried up over the years, at least anthologies like Carol Taylor’s daring Brown Sugar series and the groundbreaking Bronx Biannual (Thanks, Mike—ed.) have become popular over the last few years.

Though agents insist that single-writer collections do not sell well (believe me, I just keep trying), it has not slowed down the amount of new anthologies on the tables of my favorite bookstores. Blame MTV/BET programming or a general dumbing down of a nation of millions, but for a writer like me who might never have the patience to slave over a novelistic tome, it is wonderful that more folks are generating towards the short fiction flame.

Ten years ago, while slumping through the shelves of the Strand Bookstore (a perfect literary oasis where one can find many surprises) I discovered a collection of stories called Lost in the City, by Edward P. Jones. Since then, this Washington, D.C., native has gone on to win a Pulitzer for his first novel The Known World. However, it's his second collection All Aunt Hagar's Children that has me gaga.

Though this isn’t the place to delve into the deep waters of literary criticism, let me just say that if there is a better short story writer than Jones currently working, I haven’t read that person yet. Paying no attention to the minimalist method that seems to be the house style of MFA students haunted by the ghost of Raymond Carver, the maxi-techniques utilized in brilliant pieces like “Old Boys, Old Girls,” “A Rich Man” and the title joint are stunning feats of literary prowess. Jones’s stories might be urban, but they are never ghetto.

Indeed, while working on my latest Harlem narrative “Blues for Sister Rose” for Bronx Biannual #2, I was heavily influenced by the literary soul that this chocolate city chronicler sprinkles in his bittersweet words. Conjuring a spell with each effortless (at least for the reader) sentence, as my favorite poet Rakim would say, Edward P. Jones ain’t no joke.

*Michael A. Gonzales short story of the week: “Light and the Sufferer” by Jonathan Lethem from The Wall of the Sky, The Wall of the Eye

Blipsters Unite!

2007-01-28T15:49:00.000-05:00

Considering that the most amount of comments the blog has ever gotten came out of the I-was-a-B-boy-Sting-fan posting, now hear this: Sunday's New York Times just ran writer Jessica Pressler's "Truly Indie Fans," about black fans of white rock. Totally on point, though I'm troubled to hear about the supposed new term "blipster: a person who is black and also can be stereotyped by appearance, musical taste, and/or social scene as a hipster." What's America without marketing?

Submissions

2007-01-28T13:34:00.000-05:00

The floodgates are hereby open for submissions to Bronx Biannual #3! Please send all short story fiction and essay pieces—ideas for pieces, even—to BronxBiannual@gmail.com. No theme, no word limit, no sweat.

Just got the second-to-last signed permission form for next issue in this week, from Jamaican poet Staceyann Chin. She lit up Jamaica's Calabash International Literary Festival back in '05, where we first met. I recall her good humor in an impossibly sunny boat ride with Amiri Baraka, his wife Amina, poet Roger Bonair-Agard and Calabash founder Colin Channer out to the Pelican Bar (completely surrounded by water; another story). I caught Staceyann's one-woman show Role Call months later in NYC and it was fire; I want an Afro just like hers... Look forward to "Walk Amidst the Broken Beds," her meditation on New Orleans, next issue.

Bring It On

2007-01-23T17:40:00.000-05:00

So, I grew up in the Bronx: in the northeast of Co-op City after a handful of childhood years in the South Bronx. And where I grew up, in the 1980s, black kids didn't really mess with white music; a ghetto pass for George Michael maybe. But in the mid-eighties, pops brought home a VHS of Bring on the Night, the documentary of Sting recording his first post-Police album with a cadre of black jazz musicians in Paris. I just picked up the DVD from Amazon.fr, and man, the memories.

Bring on the Night, and, probably, Under the Cherry Moon, gave me my first impressions of what Paris was like... the city I'd eventually move to as an adult. Check it out if you can. I've been surprised since by the amount of black folks I've met over the years who love them some "Englishman in New York" despite the moratorium against enjoying white music in black neighborhoods.

Notes on Notes

2007-01-18T17:15:00.000-05:00

I meant to make this announcement on the 15th, so I could say something along the lines of "Amazon starts selling this book one month from today." But I forgot and fucked that up, so...

Caille Millner, author of Bronx Biannual #1's great first-person essay "Wigged Out" about the Korean black hair-care market, is publishing her first book with Penguin in February. The Golden Road: Notes on My Gentrification is the 27-year-old Harvard grad's memoir of experiencing class stratification in her native California. I spoke at a Harvard hiphop forum back in 1998 working as the deputy editor of XXL magazine, and first met Caille then. I remember her job-interviewing in NYC and taking in the Whitney Museum's last Black Male exhibit together, and her post-graduation couple of years in South Africa. In fact, the last day we saw each other was 9/11 (long story). Anyway, her writing is phenom and I look forward to forking over my 20 euros for the book.

Josephine Baker Lives

2007-01-16T05:09:00.000-05:00

So the thing about blogs, it seems, is to just let it flow... To come to the page unedited, journal-style. I could go on and on and on about the learning curve of writers-turned-bloggers (of which I am definitely one), but "who cares?" as Gnarls Barkley might ask.

I wrapped up the introduction to Bronx Biannual #2 last week; almost done with the edit now. Sunday, I caught the last date of Looking for Joséphine at the Opéra-Comique Théatre National, a play centered around Josephine Baker. When visiting one of my boys in Brooklyn last year, he put me on the phone with his homegirl Carmen Barika, who was on her way to Europe to tour in this play. Months later I ended up bumping into Carmen at the Cinématheque Française and recognizing her from her MySpace page! We all had drinks at the Brasserie Les Spéctacles café that day; I'm glad for her and everyone else in the cast. Paris loved Looking for Joséphine, and sexy New Jerseyite Nicolle Rochelle does her thing as a modern-day Josephine Baker. The play is on its way to Barcelona, Spain, then to New Orleans before returning to Paris in April.

..... (silence)

2007-01-11T14:44:00.000-05:00

We have to die / Because of lies — Tricky, "Tear Out My Eyes"

A moment of silence for the 21,500 young Americans that Bush is sending to Iraq....

(Almost) Apology

2007-01-09T15:54:00.000-05:00

So... I've got an apology to make to Callaloo, the black literary magazine. In the intro to my first issue, I made a smartass comment about Callaloo, and I recently got an email from an editor there directing my attention to their recent all-hiphop issue. He actually mailed it to me in France, and I'm feeling it, it's a great effort! So kudos (and sorry) to Callaloo, and I'll go in deeper depth next time.

Meanwhile, here's a months-back review of that first issue from Vibe.com. Reviewer Felicia Pride has since become the editor of Mosaic literary magazine, published in the Boogie Down Bronx. A public congrats to her and hers! And now, her review:

Hiphop is known for invading the stuffiest institutions (think Oscars). Therefore it was only a matter of time before heads bumrushed the exclusive circle of literary journals by doing what we do: starting our own.
In his introduction, editor Miles Marshall Lewis, author, hiphop chronicler, and Bronx native, remarks that the creation of Bronx Biannual, "the journal of urbane urban literature," follows in the footsteps of prior journals linked to cultural movements including Fire!!, published during the Harlem Renaissance, L'Etudiant Noir, created on the brink of the Negritude movement, and Yardbird Reader, founded on the heels of the Black Arts Movement. While such comparisons provide the intellectual setup, this is still hiphop and only one goal really matters: "to publish some dope stories."
Theres a breadth of style and substance included in the collection from Greg Tate's sci-fi story of a female body snatcher to newcomer Reginald Lewis's stylistic account of strangers intersecting on the train. Lewis recruited some great writers like Adam Mansbach and Donnell Alexander to expose the uninformed, to some genuine, hiphop fiction that incorporates cultural elements as well as the swagger, wit, and wordplay seen in the music. Not to be confused with street fiction, which, like gangsta rap, reflects only a part of the literary genre.
It was good not to see any bitter musings about the state of hiphop, but overall the nonfiction compiled in the journal needs a booster. Ferentz Lafargue's essay dissecting Sex and the City versus Girlfriends is, in theory, questionable, and, in execution, dull. And perhaps the biggest disappointment is KRS-One's submission. Most people, when seeing the visionary's name as a contributor, will assume that the teacher drops knowledge or blazes some rhyme-infused poetry. Nope. Instead, he
prophesizes for more than ten pages with the intent to "inspire the reader to
reach for the Christ within one's self." While you have to respect his lofty
ambitions, there is definitely an awkward pause in the journal's flow. It's like
the DJ flipped the script when you least expected.
Speaking of flow, an urban lit journal could benefit from publishing more poetry, not just because it's so closely related to rapping but also because there are fewer and fewer print outlets for poets to shine. MuMs provides the only poem, "Angels in the Realm of Paranoia," a surrealistic trip with young gods wildin' in Eden. Divided in thirds, it's three times dope and represents nicely.
For this hiphop baby with a love of literature, Bronx Biannual is destined to be the hybrid I crave. I definitely look forward to peeping the next issue while listening to some Little Brother.

BxBi #2 Line-up!

2007-01-07T14:54:00.000-05:00

With four more months to go till Bronx Biannual #2 drops in May (disregard Amazon's faux cover, and the faux February release date), here's a list of the issue's contributors and their short story/essay titles:

"The Story of My Hair" by Bahiyyih Davis
"The Newspaper Man" by Zadie Smith
"Church of the Living Womb Manifesto to Haters" by Liza Jessie Peterson
"The Wu-Tang Candidate" by Miles Marshall Lewis
"The Egg Man" by Sun Singleton
"Malaika Descending" by Sheree Renée Thomas
"Blues for Sister Rose" by Michael A. Gonzales
"Born Again" by t'ai freedom ford
"Knot Frum Hear" by D. Scot Miller
"Friday" by Kenji Jasper
"Love, Rage and Volkswagens" by SékouWrites
"Marine Tiger" by Jerry A. Rodriguez
"Walk Amidst the Broken Beds" by Staceyann Chin
"Broke-Down Princess" by kelly a. abel
"A Debt to Pay" by Carol Taylor
"Love Letter to Haiti" by Natasha Labaze

Gotta Google

2007-01-03T14:03:00.000-05:00

I won't front: as the founder and editor of Bronx Biannual, I google (y'know it's an OED-approved verb now) the title every now and then to see what pops up. Here's a new result, a kind review by Andre Medrano from issue 15 of The New Scheme, a magazine self-published out of Colorado:

This is the inaugural issue of Bronx Biannual, a publication focusing on contemporary sophisticated urban literature as the title suggests. The journal is founded on the concept of providing a forum for today’s urban writers to showcase their work in an environment free of constraints. There are no restrictive guidelines as reflected by the diverse lineup of contributors in this debut issue. It has pieces by college professors, new authors who are publishing their work for the first time, noted artists from other fields, and contributions from some are established authors. The subject matter differs as well. A considerable amount of stories are set in hiphop situations, making the read a tutorial on that culture as much as a work of literary fiction. Others take place decades ago and deal with other sides of black culture.

Some of the pieces I enjoyed more were: “Risk, Taking” by Adam Mansbach, which is a clever and skillfully written story about a Jewish kid from Connecticut bonding with his lit professor grandfather through the magic of graffiti; Michael A. Gonzales’s “Sweet Thing Superhero,” a creative story about a boy’s obsession with female superheroes that changes as he matures from a schoolboy in Harlem to a photographer in the gritty Lower East Side of the 1980s; and “Rhyme Scheme,” the tale of an underground hiphop artist on the run in southern California. That is by no means the extent of the quality writing in here, so I encourage anyone with an interest in literature and a thirst for something fresh and a little different to pick this up.

I like the fact that this is put out through Akashic, an imprint that is not traditionally identified with hiphop culture. This seems like a great opportunity for a crowd from one alternative, independent lifestyle to be exposed to art from another.

The journal is edited by author Miles Marshall Lewis, who does not lack imagination, and the future of Bronx Biannual may include interviews, essays and humor pieces. With a first edition that contains contributions from hiphop icon KRS-One, muMs (Bamboozled, Oz) as well as stellar, lesser-known writers, the future for this publication looks bright. One thing that threw me off a little bit is that Bronx Biannual will be published twice a year. I assumed “bi” meant once every two years, perhaps that is hiphop terminology with which I am not familiar.

Best of...

2007-01-02T06:39:00.000-05:00

Happy 2007 to everybody under that particular calendar! It's easy to forget there are mad places around the world measuring years differently, but that's a screed for another time. I spent part of the weekend hammering out the introduction to Bronx Biannual #2 (due this spring) and my top 10 Best of 2006 music list for The Village Voice. Their annual Pazz & Jop poll results post next month sometime; here's my list in no particular order. (Actually, it's alphabetical.)

Beck, The Information
Booba, Ouest Side
Clipse, Hell Hath No Fury
Ghostface Killah, Fishscale
Gnarls Barkley, St. Elsewhere
John Legend, Once Again
Nas, Hip-Hop Is Dead
Sean Lennon, Friendly Fire
Thom Yorke, Eraser
TV on the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain

Number One Stunner

2006-12-28T18:13:00.000-05:00

This is the very first post for a blog devoted to Bronx Biannual, the new journal of urbane urban literature! No doubt it'll be erased as I start from scratch over and over trying to perfect this thing. In the meantime in-between time, here's an idea of what the journal is, from its Akashic Books webpage. Issue #1 hit bookstores in May of 2006:

"Bronx Biannual is the most important literary journal in hiphop America. Consider Bronx Biannual an urban Paris Review, or McSweeney's Quarterly Concern from a hiphop standpoint. The journal will publish new writing—fiction, essays, reportage, interviews, poems—twice a year. The intention is to publish both celebrated and unsung writers on a variety of subjects germane to the black aesthetic. Urbane urban literature: bourgeois yet boulevard. Bronx Biannual will be fluid like water. No guiding manifesto per se, no set format. Issues might be published as graphic novels, or with two sheets of metal bound like a spiral notebook and shrink-wrapped in a Mylar sleeve, or with a concept in mind of what the Factory might've come up with had Andy Warhol put out a literary journal. Like XXL magazine edited by Rhodes Scholars at Oxford or Vanity Fair edited in the South Bronx at the Point."