Tag Archives: theater

May 04 2020
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Activism, Art, Excerpt, Fiction, Human Rights, Outsider Artists, Poetry, Protest, spoken word, Story, Theater & Performance

Angela Davis & Jean Genet

The Protest Artist is like the ice upon a body of water; it’s the frozen lake – enabling the Activists (realizers of the vision) to carry themselves OVER the water to the other side, 

the artist is the bridge

the crossing is the activist, the arrival is the fight (revolution).  You can’t have one without the other.
The artist receives the prophecy, the activist must decide what to do with the prophecy.
The artist is the seer
the activist is the doer
(Somewhere in between…is the Actor)
—-preface to the poem “Coda for My Shadow”
image1
Angela Davis and Jean Genet in conversation, New York City 1969 at a​n Arts Festival. ​(Photo by Robert Cohen, circa 1969​ – ​ from page 69 of Art of Protest by TV Reed)
​The spring of 1969: as the Paris rebellions failed, a​ conference about the Black Panthers Theater took place in Oakland​,​ which ended in an argument about the direction the theater should take – ​ which by this point was in demise due to FBI infiltration.​..Angela Davis and Jean Genet confer before embarking on two separate routes to the same ultimate destination.
*

ANGELA DAVIS: If only I could only revolt as well as you create plays

JEAN GENET: No, if only I could write as elegantly as you revolt…if my words were as dangerous as your eyes I would not have the urge any longer to dream of a future. Instead I’d be living it.
AD: Yes but I was endgaming to the end of our imagination; I picked up a gun while you could still pick up a pen.
JG: The pen is not mightier than the sword.   It’s just more scary.
AD: If our words and actions were one we wouldn’t have to have this discussion. We could overturn society’s injustice with the swivel of a gun and the precision of a play and so…the world would not be a stage it would be our sun. And the sun is merely a star.
JG: But unfortunately for a star to exist one must be surrounded by darkness.
AD: “Let’s make new light out of love and erase all the darkness that comes with it.”  (I read that somewhere last year.  I think it was Bullins or Jackmon who wrote it; Huey had it painted on the back wall of one of Fred’s theater spaces in Chicago.)
JG: Is that act one or two?
AD: It’s the whole play
Or when the play –
JG: ceases to to be a play.

— Teeming Towards Triple Threats: Revolution in Radio Drama for a Podcast Age Vol. I 

Stay tuned for further information regarding transmission and production of the recorded podcast series: “Rebel Radio: Audio Works for a New Age” – coming this fall in conjugal with Speller Street Films LLC.  



 
















 









		

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Jan 23 2015

						
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						Essay, Excerpt, Journalism & Documentary, Theater & Performance
							

	

						

					Beethoven, Pushkin & African Ancestry…
				

		
		

						
“One of the homes in which Beethoven resided in Vienna, Austria, the music capitol of European Music at that time, was called the “Schwarzspanierhaus,” the “House of the Black Spaniard.” Beethoven is said to have had some directly known African ancestry. In parts of Europe, it is a common and known secret to refer to Beethoven as “Black Beet”. I only learned this when I lived in Germany.




Schwarze Deutsche: Ludwig Van Beethoven 


It was not as astounding to discover this as it was to learn that Alexander Pushkin was Black – I discovered that when I was 16 in Moscow, celebrating Christmas 1992. (In fact, we stayed at the same hotel George Bush had just left – how bizarre is that?) I was studying for 2 weeks with one of my Acting teachers Marat Yusim – a Russian born director himself – at the Moscow Art Theater (Roman Victuc, Oleg Tabakov were teaching) and it seemed like a year. I mean that positively. Our Russian guide was bowled over and embarrassed that WE did not know that Pushkin was a literal Black Russian.


Alexander Pushkin, Moscow
Alexander Pushkin, Moscow


I will never forget that trip, it left an indelible mark on me. Some travel to the Motherland continent to get another, deeper sense of their identity and Black roots. Me? I traveled to Russia! And I came back a changed young man. I discovered The Velvet Underground, cigarettes, Jean Genet, Melvin Van Peebles first film “Story of a 3 Day Pass,” and a great love for Maxim Gorky.


I left America thinking I wanted to be a star, and returned committing myself to the pursuit of art. I had found my own God inside. In January, 1993 I began work on the very first play I would ever direct.


Everyone thought I was crazy.


They still do.


*

		

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Nov 02 2014

						
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						Entertainment, Excerpt, Fiction, Film, Horror, Journalism & Documentary, NYC, Poetry, Protest, Story, Theater & Performance, Video
							

	

						

					A Cinematic Protest Returns to the Screen!
				

		
		

						
Thursday, November 6, 2014 @ 7:00pm!


” The Best Black Film of The Year!”  – Kam Williams, 2002, The NJ Herald


After more than a decade, the 2002 cult classic AS AN ACT OF PROTEST will finally get its Chicago ‘premiere’ at the Studio Movie Grill Chatham Theater, 201 West 87th Street, courtesy of Floyd Webb and Black World Cinema. 


A cinematic “line in the sand against racism,” it is provocative, disturbing, and emotionally arresting at times – this is a movie unlike any other made in the early part of the 21st century as it signified a new type of “protest art” within the dramatic arts, linking the political consciousness of 1960’s-1970’s radical theater with the cinematic urgency and simplicity of the “Dogme 95″ Digital Video revolution in world cinema.


Hopefully we can get some folks in the windy city to brave the weather and get a chance to see Dennis Leroy Kangalee’s seldom seen “missile from his youth”!


'As an Act of Protest' design by Benn Starr (2014)
‘As an Act of Protest’ design by Benn Starr (2014)


Thursday, November 6, 2014 at 7pm, Adm. $6.00


Black World Cinema @


Studio Movie Grill Chatham Theater

210 W 87th Street


Additional information:


Click here for video excerpts or more information on the film itself.


Contact: Black World Cinema, 9 W Washington St, Chicago, IL 60602


Curated by: Floyd Webb, floydwebb@gmail.com


Visit http://aaaopfilm.wordpress.com/screenings/ for more information. 

		

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Aug 25 2014

						
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						Books, Entertainment, Essay, Excerpt, Film, Journalism & Documentary, NYC, Philosophy, Theater & Performance, Uncategorized
							

	

						

					Black Film & The Underground Spirit: 1
				

		
		

						
Kangalee by Hallstrom


“…the new breed of American filmmakers need to turn a blind eye to the Reservoir Dogs of the American Beauties and express themselves. Black people will play Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up,” blast Wu-Tang’s most innovative tracks, and spout the poetry of Amiri Baraka or Sonia Sanchez and yet will still think that a film like “The Best Man” or “Shaft” is good enough for them. I know there are a lot of talented, radical, sensitive people out there. But where are they? Certainly not behind the cameras…”


 — from “Towards a Black New Wave & Notes from the Underground,”  (Harlem, August 26, 2000) 


 


(c) August 26, 2000; April 14, 2003; August 25, 2014 by Dennis Leroy Kangalee

		

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Jun 22 2014

						
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						Entertainment, Film, Hollwyood Racism, Journalism & Documentary, Theater & Performance
							

	

						

					Flowers for Gunn: Remembering an Outlaw Artist
				

		
		

						
If John O. Killens was the soldier of darkness, James Baldwin the prophet of darkness, then Bill Gunn was the prince of darkness…

 – Ishmael Reed, Airing Dirty Laundry (1990)


Bill Gunn: A revolutionary writer & filmmaker
Bill Gunn: A revolutionary writer & filmmaker




After reading Tambay Obenson’s reaction to Spike Lee’s vampire film, Da Blood of Jesus, a part of me sighed in accordance with Obenson’s exasperation as he simply implored audiences to just see Ganja & Hess instead. 


Obenson is one of the most honest and dynamic critics and supporters of independent filmmakers, especially Black filmmakers, that I have ever read.  He does not mince words and he expects a lot from filmmakers.  His honesty is refreshing.  


I have not seen Da Blood of Jesus and I doubt if I will for some time.  I already wrote last month when I went public with development plans for Octavia that I felt it was odd that Jim Jarmusch and Spike Lee had both released vampire films as I was just about to start one.  I thought I might have gone the way of “fashion.”  But of course I realized that vampire films and vampires themselves are as different to dramatists as the gangster or romance genre might be.  Everyone has their own idea of vampirism and what that could mean. And that’s a good thing.


However, I write this because Obenson knows cinema and he’s right to acknowledge one of the greatest films ever made: Ganja & Hess. A film so overlooked that most people are unfamiliar with it, and the ones that are think its some exploitation film.  These people are shocked to hear its back-story that, already, has accrued a mythic status.  And I’m often perplexed as to why more filmmakers don’t reference him or acknowledge his contributions publicly.  What’s even more shocking is that Lee’s Blood is a remake of Gunn’s masterpiece and I find this all the more confounding.  Instead of remaking a haunting delicate film into a virtuosic, ironic “art film,” why not simply acknowledge the original?  Is a remake necessary? Spike Lee would have done us all a favor if he had simply written a monograph on Ganja & Hess and called it a day.  The world needs to know more about Bill Gunn. And if artists want to pay homage to the masters, we should express what we know about life as opposed to cinema – and that would be enough…All the great masters express and teach us what they themselves know about life.  And that’s what Gunn did. 


Bill Gunn was a triple threat – an actor, writer, and a director. Chiz Schultz was familiar with Bill Gunn’s work,(he had written Hal Ashby’s The Landlord, for instance) and he produced Ganja & Hess in 1972 for a small amount of money.  Gunn wrote a “double script”  which led Kelly-Jordan distributors to believe he was making a “blaxploitation” picture — but instead made his own personal film. He was not out to “sell” blackness or capitulate to stereotypes for a buck. He wanted to make his own “cinematic poem.” One must understand the sheer guts it took to do this, to play the “spook who sat by the door” and say “yes, yes, yes” to the money men and run off and make a serious work of art that did not care or concern itself with any of the commercial interests of the filmmaking business enterprise. That’s righteous! 


When Kelly-Jordan requested an exploitive commercial re-cut Gunn threw a chair through the window leading Kelly-Jordan to call him “crazy.”  Gunn quipped, “I have more craziness in the top draw of my bureau than you will ever imagine.” 


Now that took balls.  If a white man had done that, they’d have branded him “passionate.”  Because it was an African-American – a brilliant one at that – they had to dub him “crazy.”  


Well, I always felt at home with Gunn’s fervent vision and his idiosyncratic approach to writing and directing. He is another example that filmmakers must be personal and unique in the way that a musician or painter is.


Directors Haile Gerima and Mario Van Peebles gave me permission to be angry and politically upfront, the absurdist Wendell B. Harris inspired me to be cerebral, but it was the “The Mighty Gunn” who affirmed my aversion to orthodoxy, who inspired my work to reflect the non-linearity, the odd rhythm, the surreal tones of life’s phases (past, present, and future), and who made me realize that a vampire film does not have to be sensational.  Like Antonin Artaud, Bill Gunn knew the horror is not what is imagined, but in what is real.  And Gunn’s vampire film is horrifying because of the layers and themes it weaves and does not resolve – colonization, cultural displacement, addiction, etc.   Bill Gunn inspired a legion of underground and avant-garde painters and dramatists to be as strange as they actually were.  The freedom in that alone is revolutionary.  And quite dangerous to the Powers That Be since no system has been as aggressive in their approach to homogenize black artists as much as Hollywood.  


I can immediately see how Ishmael Reed (who published Bill’s work and produced his Personal Problems)  and Gunn may have connected as artists – as they both eschew rules and are informed by a multitude of things, bearing a collage aspect to their work.  It was this that I always identified with as an artist and in the case of Gunn – his unabashed mixing of the impenetrable with the aggressively obvious. It was as if he blew his trumpet and muted at the same time.  Those tones not only resonate within Ganja & Hess a film that will leave you haunted well after having watched it (even if you don’t like it) but are also implicated in his writing.  After all, the man was a poet of the theater.  I encourage everyone to read his brilliant “Rhinestone Sharecropping,” a chilling, Kafka-esque account of a black screenwriter’s experience in Hollywood and the hell that swallows him up. The actual ‘vampires’ in Bill Gunn’s book are the rich gangsters who of course don’t view themselves as racist and are quick to drain the artist of his soul and integrity.  They need soul and integrity to suck on…because they don’t have any of their own. 


My vampire film shall be quite different, as it should be, but I hope it bears the uniqueness and honesty that Gunn’s brought forth.  My vampire is an outcast, a marginalized “alien” caught in between her past and future, as well as America’s.  My vampires are artists – some are even literal artists.  But they are all sensitive – almost too sensitive.  And there is no blood that can sustain them.  For man’s blood is tainted. Including Jesus’.  And there is nothing to be addicted to – except truth.  And that is what ultimately kills.


The fact that punk music as an artistic ethos plays a part in my work is no coincidence.  All those who dare to be honest and to be themselves are “punk.”  And Bill Gunn was creating his crowning achievements with the actual rise of punk and hip-hop; the first known black punk band Death were recording only two years after Ganja & Hess had been made.  And Gunn died at the end of the 1980’s – when Hollywood’s Suits had already returned with a vengeance against all of the creativity set forth even by their own “establishment” pop star directors like Warren Beatty and Francis Ford Coppola nearly a decade before.   (The Empire did, in fact, strike back didn’t it?)


In memory of Bill Gunn, I post this remarkable letter written to the NY Times in 1973 as he was defending his art and trying to teach a few lessons in the process.  Of course they probably had no idea why he was so “ornery” and they probably smirked and called him “just another bitter crazy black man.” And of course not even the great liberal East Coast critics could admit that THE ONLY AMERICAN FILM SHOWN IN CRITICS WEEK AT CANNES IN 1973 WAS “GANJA & HESS.”  (Not other classics like Mean Streets.  Not Serpico.  But Ganja & Hess. Now that says something!)


I’m not shocked.  Of course they labeled him “crazy.”

Somehow they don’t, and never will, understand not only the Black consciousness of the Diaspora, but the genius inherent in a handful of living artists.  Why?  Very simple: the establishment prefers their artists dead.  


I love you Bill. 


                                           *

This is the text of a famous letter sent to the NY Times from Bill Gunn in 1973. Gunn was the legendary director of the cult classic “Ganja & Hess”, “Stop,” and the post-modern domestic drama “Personal Problems.”



To the Editor: (NY Times)


There are times when the white critic must sit down and listen. If he cannot listen and learn, then he must not concern himself with black creativity.

A children’s story I wrote speaks of a black male child that dreamed of a strong white golden haired prince who would come and save him from being black.  He came, and as time passed and the relationship moved forward, it was discovered that indeed the black child was the prince and he had saved himself from being white.  That, too, is possible.


I have always tried to imagine the producers waiting anxiously for the black reviewers’ opinions of “The Sound of Music” or “A Clockwork Orange.”

I want to say that it is a terrible thing to be a black artist in this country – for reasons too private to expose to the arrogance of white criticism.

One white critic left my film “Ganja and Hess,” after 20 minutes and reviewed the entire film. Another was to see three films in one day and review them all.  This is a crime.


Three years of three different people’s lives grades in one afternoon by a complete stranger to the artist and to the culture.   A.H. Weiler states in his review of “Ganja and Hess” that a doctor of anthropology killed his assistant and is infected by a blood disease and becomes immortal.  But this is not so, Mr. Weiler, the assistant committed suicide.  I know this film does not address you, but in that auditorium you might have heard more than you were able to over the sounds of your own voice. Another critic wondered where was the race problem.  If he looks closely, he will find it in his own review.


If I were white, I would probably be called “fresh and different.  If I were European, “Ganja and Hess” might be “that little film you must see.”  Because I am black, do not even deserve the pride that one American feels for another when he discovers that a fellow countryman’s film has been selected as the only American film to be shown during “Critic’s Week” at the Cannes Film Festival, May 1973.  Not one white critic from any of the major newspapers even mentioned it.


I am very proud of my ancestors in “Ganja and Hess.”  They worked hard, with a dedication to their art and race that is obviously foreign to the critics.  I want to thank them and my black sisters and brothers who have expressed only gratitude and love for my effort.


When I first came into the “theatre,” black women who were actresses were referred to as “great gals” by white directors and critics.  Marlene Clark, one of the most beautiful women and actresses I have ever known, was referred to as a “brown-skinned looker” (New York Post).  That kind of disrespect could not have been cultivated in 110 minutes.  It must have taken a good 250 years.


Your newspapers and critics must realize that they are controlling black theater and film creativity with white criticism.  Maybe if the black film craze continues, the white press might even find it necessary to employ black criticism.  But if you can stop the craze in its tracks, maybe that won’t be necessary.


                                                                                    Bill Gunn

Author and director of                                                                             “Ganja and Hess”

New York, 1973

		

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Jun 12 2014

						
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						Activism, Entertainment, Film, Journalism & Documentary, Poetry, Theater & Performance
							

	

						

					Ruby Dee  1922-2014
				

		
		

						
Image


 


A remarkable actress.


A passionate woman.


She was radical before being radical in Hollywood became hip.  She knew risk in a way that would put any Hollywood ‘(H)Activist’ in 2014 to shame. This is a person who worked closely with such mavericks such as Lloyd Richards, Lorraine Hansberry and Jules Dassin. An artist who toed the line, pushed barriers, and helped interpret the soul, thoughts, and feelings of not only a generation or a race or a gender –


but an age where consciousness was not only something that the enlightened aspired to but where actors, too, were not mere hired arms


but instruments that illuminated the human condition and liberated the mental shackles impeding our evolution.


I hope your exit was joyful, Ruby.


(Say hello to Ossie for me)

		

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Oct 27 2013

						
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						Humor, Poetry, Protest, satire, Theater & Performance, Video
						Video
					

	

						

					Tourists in Harlem…
				

		
		

						
The Nomad Junkie’s comedic interlude about ignorant, annoying, and ultimately racist tourists assaulting Harlem and “inner-city” enclaves. Written & performed by Dennis Leroy Kangalee, directed by Nina Fleck. This excerpt is from the 2011 premiere of “Gentrified Minds” at the Downtown Urban Theater Festival at the Manhattan Movement & Arts Center.   



		

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Aug 29 2013

						
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						Poetry
							

	

						

					Message to Fellow Artists (Another Rant in Between My Missed Dose)
				

		
		

						
A confessional sermon delivered at A.A.

(Artists Anonymous)

…and no, this is not just another midnight ramble.


*


I come to you, my brothers and sisters, with nothing but love and understanding.


I am, by no means, greater, better, more talented, or more important than any other artist.  I’m not.  And I never will be.  However, that doesn’t mean I don’t know my own “worth,” that I am not aware of where I am at and what I could still create or achieve.  The life of the true artist is one of turmoil, daily struggle, anxiety, and sweat — peppered with overwhelming moments of bliss, pride, recognition, camaraderie, and success.  No one forces us to create, no one actually chooses to be an artist.  It chooses you.  “It” is something we give in to.  We follow it.  Like a sixth sense, a pied piper, a “formless hunch” as Peter Brook might call it.  So we do what we must, what we feel we are born to, and we hope we do it well.  The real artist, those concerned with the eternal murmuring of humanity and the spirit, are aware from day one that the game is rigged.  That the odds are stacked against us.  We know, innately, that our life’s work may not resolve itself in some pleasant happy ending or an armful of awards or endowments.  The artist hopes for a happy ending, but does not live his life — nor create his fictitious one — according to it or any sense of mainstream acceptance. 


I’m not sure what I’m getting at here.  Sorry, there’s sleep still in my eye — and I’m trying to shake off the last two phone calls we received this morning, asking us for money.  I told this person, not exactly a friend – but a stable acquaintance, that my wife and I did not have any money.   In fact, I told him we were just getting caught up on rent and were just getting acclimated to new day jobs that would enable us to continue developing and finishing some projects that would require some concentrated money and time.  This man scoffed, “What do you mean?  You’re a writer…You’re working a survival job!?”


“No, ” I said, “I’m working a job so I can do my art which will allow me…to survive.”


“Well, why don’t you borrow?”


“What planet are you on?  Borrow what from whom?  I don’t have parents, none of my friends are rich, and the one or two jerks I know with money would rather see my die before they would ever cut me a check.”


“Tsk, tsk…When are you going to learn?  Crowd-funding is the answer.  Kickstarter: that’s the way of the future.”


I forgot what I said, I know I shouted, belched, cursed, nearly strangled my phone (I wished I still had our old home phone — I could have engaged in that most righteous act of — literally — cutting the cord of the phone.  I did this over ten years ago, when Chase Bank took over the theater I was directing in Harlem.  I was young and manic then, but that one act — cutting the telephone cord — was like a holy ritual; to sever the negativity, the “non-believers,”  the satanic offerings…Sorry, I am losing myself here, bear with me as I be-bop back into my brain and get back to that original thought.


Artists, who are we?


There is nothing pretentious or self-important or pompous about reveling in that majestic title that describes our lot.  Somewhere, at some point in the eighties I think (this is all conjecture, I was just a kid in the 80’s) — the idea of the “artist” became fodder for fashion and news media, I suppose Warhol had a lot to do with this. In fact, he himself was the motivating force behind all this, he was the gross pimp-charlatan of actual ideas and feelings and concepts.  Remember, it was not that he gave us Heinz soup — but that he coerced the rest of the country (the world) into regarding ADVERTISEMENT AS ART.


*


A step further now in the 21st century: art is supposedly in the hands of everyone; the internet and the establishment media have pawned this idea that “everyone is an artist” without admitting the fact that 90 percent of us have nothing interesting or honest to say.  Hell, it doesn’t have to be original — but it should at least be honest.


And who should we blame for this?

Ourselves, of course.  The artists who have accepted their curse, their stigma, those of us who wear our disease like a badge of honor:  we screwed up here, folks.  We betrayed each other. 


Instead of us taking pride in the ten-year creation of a damned good novel NO ONE MAY EVER READ or appreciating our own skill in the pains we took to choreograph a ballet or record our own music,  we have allowed Pop Culture “madmen” to tell us who we are, what we do, and how to do it.  


*

I was a theater director here in NYC, when the last crumb of social freedom and artistic urgency still burned brightly, and anybody in the theater will tell you: it’s about many things, but it ain’t about the money.  I left the theater for too many reasons to get into, but even at the tender age of 24 I was directing, producing, developing plays and actors…and PAYING EVERYONE INVOLVED.


How?  By working whatever job I could, even if it had nothing to do with the arts.  In fact, I got more money and support for my revivals of Jean Genet and James Baldwin in the “corporate” sector than I did from the so-called “Arts funding” community.  Sure, I could have used Kickstarter had it existed then and it would have helped, but the bottom line is that if you’re going to talk the talk, you must walk the walk.  At least half the cash I raised for the plays I produced uptown came from other people in the area; at one point in my life all of my construction co-workers were throwing me money so I could keep my theater company alive.  That was gangsta.  That was hard.  That… was romantic. 


No one wants to work and save their money for their own projects anymore.  Everyone expects other people to drop a dime as soon as they say they are producing a movie or writing a book.  What??  There are people starving and you want me to give film school brats money so they can do what exactly?  NOT pay their actors or crew…so they can get into some absurd film festival? You want me to give you a $50 donation so you can adapt Moby Dick for the digital age?  Kiss my ass, I rather give that money to a poet who is destitute but can make 4 sentences on a napkin rival Rilke!

Who are we kidding?  (And to top it off, I’ve seen more Kickstarter campaigns that were interesting than the actual project itself!!) 


It takes a lot of guts to ask people for money and to show them exactly what you are going to do with that money.  I don’t mean to make them feel “cool” about giving you money, I mean honestly try to explain and defend your vision of life.  It builds character looking into someone’s eyes and just talking about your work, not “pitching” – but simply…explaining.  Now, it’s all about selling yourself to an internet site so you can raise money.  Imagine Picasso or Miles Davis or Phyllis Hyman or Bill Hicks doing a “campaign” for their project.  Exactly.


The idea of Kickstarter was a tremendous resource for artists – despite the fact that Big Names and Hollyweird babies like Zach Braff and now Spike Lee are usurping the tiny corners of the world once inhabited by independent artists.  And when I say independent artist – I mean literally an “independent” vision.  It has nothing to do with how much money you have or spend.  But in 2013 MONEY has now become synonymous with art, quality, etc.  It is pathological and it is becoming more and more dangerous.


I don’t care that Steven Speilberg or George Lucas are fearful that the Hollywood system will be dismantled soon.  Who gives a damn? It should be dismantled, I can’t wait!  But…will that mean that the future is some bloated Hollywood director standing on the corner of Beverly Hills with his hat in his hands asking for a hand-out?  These people don’t need money to make their movies..they have all the money they need. They’ve all lost their minds. 


*


Real artists will find a way to make their art, regardless of how much money they have.  Money ain’t everything.  Even a junkie will find a way to get high without a dime in his pocket. 


I say help the needy, not the greedy.  Take all that money and make something worthwhile: homes, healing centers, health systems, habitats…for all.  Just to start. 


In this corrupted world of “Reality TV” and sampled music and shadows of real expression, artists should not feel ashamed or embarrassed by their positions but should speak out and demand that we as creators take back some of the power we have freely given to Businessmen, Advertising freaks, media spin doctors, and hollow, shallow, meretricious celebrities. 


Artists and Activists have let the ball drop. It is the Businessman’s job to screw over the artist. It is the Artist’s job to reveal that the Businessman has no soul. 


No scratch that: Everyone has a soul.

But it is the Fascistic-Greedy-Money-Grubbers that resent that twitch inside…and it is the Artist’s job to express some of that shame for them.


Be proud to be who you are and seek to truly say something in this lifetime. 


Be more interested in ten living poets than ten dead ones.

Stop giving your money to film schools and take that money and just make your own movie.

Support artists in your own neighborhood or start with artists in need who may be of a similar ancestral or cultural background.

If possible, collaborate, trade ideas, have arguments, and make love to other artists.  Understand that the time is now, the seeds must be planted now.  And it doesn’t matter how old you are.  In fact, if you’re as nuts as I am and you’ve read this far: try to cross-pollinate and if you’re older and wiser, lend some of our time or energy to a younger artist’s enterprise.  Or maybe just offer to provide honest constructive criticism.

If you have no money, barter.  Trade and help each other.  In fact, maybe this is where we should start.  I’ll write for you, you paint for me, Aliyah can cook, Curt can drive, etc.  Find the naturalness, the “real-ness,”  the folk art within any medium – all over again. 


Try – very conscientiously – to disown any influence from pop culture, school, the established mores of art, etc. — and develop your own ideas and put them forth like a strong handshake, a bright smile, or a passionate bear hug.  We must rid ourselves of the hateful, hollow, dangerous, and miraculously socio-pathic tendencies of the establishment’s corporate media.  Whether it’s Fox 5 or MTV or Harper Collins.  At this point, I suspect they are all the same.  So for the independent-minded writer who self publishes but salivates at Hollywood movies — I have to take the time to make him understand he is part of the problem, not the solution. 


*


There is no reason why the arts and the artists have to feel abused, overwhelmed, or irrelevant because they are not on Page Six or at some awards show or being groomed by MOMA. 


Politicians stick together, so should Artists.  Things are only “bad” because they have divided and conquered us.  We are the new colonized, oppressed, and forsaken.  And we hail from all walks of life, all races, all countries.  Even the ones that don’t exist yet.


Remember who you are, why you do what you do, what means most to you…and what keeps you honest.  Remember that if money were an indication of talent, insight, or importance than everyone on the top ten right now would be more important or special than Billy Strayhorn, Janis Joplin, Emily Dickinson, John Cassavetes, and Van Gogh.  And that’s just for starters.  


Get your priorities straight:  we need money, obviously.  But we don’t need to pander and humiliate ourselves consistently for money in order to embark on projects not worthy…

I think the challenge here is for artists to take the arts and all that it implies into their own hands and start figuring out new ways of seeing, feeling, and sensing again.

The arts, frankly, needs…art.


And so I say once again: A shot in the dark, a mark on the cave wall – that’s all we are.

And that itself is precious enough.


Support living artists or you will see no visions or receive any prophecies. 


*

		

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Aug 29 2013

						
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						Music, NYC, Poetry, Protest, Theater & Performance
							

	

						

					My Final Scream: Punk & Poetry
				

		
		

						
“EVEN MORE POWERFUL LIVE THAN IT WAS ON THE PAGE! BRILLIANTLY STAGED BY NINA FLECK -A STRONG MIX OF WORDS & MUSIC THAT CREATES A DIFFERENT THEATRICAL EXPERIENCE…KANGALEE WILL BE FOUGHT EVERY STEP OF THE WAY, BUT HE ALREADY KNOWS THIS.”

                      – Reg E. Gaines, NYC Downtown Urban Theater Festival Director, 2011

                    Tony-Award Nominated author of Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk


Dennis Leroy Kangalee as The Nomad Junkie fronts his theatrical punk band in "Gentrified Minds" (2011)  [photo by J.Lehrman]
Dennis Leroy Kangalee as The Nomad Junkie fronts his theatrical punk band in “Gentrified Minds” (2011)  [photo by J.Lehrman]


Every now and then it is healthy to remember your personal war stories.  From time to time, I will share bits and pieces of past works that might fit such a definition.  Below are lyrics to the title song of my 2011 performance piece, “Gentrified Minds: The NY Horror Vol.2,” a musical spoken-word piece about gentrification.  I was coming out of a long deep-seated emotional stir regarding the virulently corporate-friendly gentrified nature of NYC.  It was stifling, sad, and arresting to feel like an alien in my hometown.  My wife and muse Nina Fleck, pushed me to express my views about it all in a theatrical piece that combined our love for poetry, protest, and punk in one.  It was meant to be a dagger in the side of the suburbanization/homogenization of New York City.  To this day I don’t know a single soul who has gained anything as a result of the gross over-development of NYC.  And if they did gain, it was just more money…and they were probably already rich to begin with.  The project came to a swift halt in 2012 but it was one of the most thrilling and freeing experiences I ever had.  It was the tail end of a long phase that gave birth to a number of poems in the guise of my “Nomad Junkie” persona and it was my last sigh in a tense chain of ‘holy rants’ and aggressive works that I construed to be viewed as poetic grenades.  In the end, I was reminded that protest art doesn’t really do much to the status quo, but it does affirm the tremors of each choir member you may choose to preach to.  And that’s all right, because that says a lot.  It solidified my belief that the nature of true rebellion can never be popular.  For when it becomes tamed — so does one’s passions. 




Gentrified minds

Speak in gentrified times

Of gentrified ways

In gentrified days

With tongues that they stole

From mouths that they sold

In order to live “that way.”


“That way” is the day

That you knew you would pay

For the sins of a hustler

Who gave birth decay

My gait ain’t my own

Nor the shoes that I own

Barely’s the air that I suck

Or the sounds that I groan —


We are

Gentrified Minds.


I have no culture

Only a vulture

That breeds on my dying days.




Click here to see video excerpt of the performance.


or visit this earlier post


*


Visit this link for a glimpse into an earlier phase of my NY Horror series.


(c) 2011 by Dennis Leroy Kangalee; Words by DL Kangalee, music by Bob Kuch. 

		

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Aug 16 2013

						
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						Entertainment, Humor, literature, NYC, Poetry, satire, spoken word, Story, Theater & Performance, War
							

	

						

					All The Smart People I Know Don’t Have Children
				

		
		

						
villagedamned[1]


What would they do with them?


Happily murder and warp and pervert them into three legged jungle gym monsters, putrid little hyenas on hind legs with credit cards and shoot em up with knowledge of stocks and bonds and baseball averages and when to say which curse word & when not to?


Who has time for this?


Even scarier: Who wants time for this?


Can’t we fix the crooked sign above the altar first?  Clean up some shop a bit, kick a little ass & get the crooked rooked regogos out first??


Can’t we at least let all the children who are children be children first & let them grow up before we implore & ingratiate this planet with more fucking kids??


Can’t we give it a rest, just sterilize maybe two or three billion males for a generation or so.  Wouldn’t you want to be able to make love & not worry?  Don’t you miss sexual abandon?  Wouldn’t it be nice to not care?  You could feed the starving babies & we could all take time to get to know one another…That’s a lot of work, isn’t it?


Or are you that egotistical that you need to spill your own seed?


(“It’s not that I dislike children – it’s what they might become. If I had to bear witness to my child’s lack of success I’m not sure I’d be able to handle it. I barely handle my own.”)


*


My greatest fear would be to have to explain to my child how to lie.  I’m not sure I’d be able to handle it.  I mastered it early, by observing the sweltering pain & bile festering in my parents’ eyes.


And now children take to these masks like an inchworm making its way across the Last Leaf.


Birth.


Money.


Talk.


Money.


Family.


Money.


Walk.


Money.


School.


Pool.


Summer camp.


Satan, Santa


Blue Jean crews.


High School.


College.


MONEY.


MONEY.


MONEY.


Madness. Sheer madness. That’s all it is…I sometimes wake up from a deep-sleep & ask myself “Is this all worth it?” Then I ask “What the hell IS this?” And I can’t make sense of the sloppy eyes & dumb mouths carving out slings to wear upon their hearts


& all I think is “There were no slings for hearts when hearts beat & bled or bowed & stood” And I ask the College boy who just got home last summer–I ask him when I pass him and his girlfriend on the stoop: “You ready, College boy?” “For what?” “For all THIS.  You ready?” And he doesn’t answer. And my heart (which never had an aspirin nonetheless a sling) twists for this kid and his doe-eyed girlfriend tugs at him begging for an answer


& I try to send a message but my lashes aren’t long enough & she mistakes my popping sockets for some wild-eye battle cry


& now I have to break the cool & say straight out (cause no one knows how to READ anybody anymore): “He’s got time to answer.  And when he can’t–he’ll figure it out.  Just don’t beat him up about it.  Learn the word ‘Tragedy’ first, and understand that we’re just here to be abused. Walk in the direction of oncoming traffic & always be kind to a lame horse.  For if you’re as sensitive as he is–they’ll get rid of you, too…it just may not be as quick. If it is–they will not forgive the man who’s quick to dis-assemble.”


She shies me away, He doesn’t look in my eye–so he missed it when I rubbed out all the pennies declared and the sleep that will not go away.  “This is important,” she says, and she turns up the volume on their computer screen to watch the latest News Crawl…


“No need for drugs anymore. All you have to do is turn on the TV.   Although I doubt you’ll learn as much about yourself.”


In truth, I didn’t know what to say.  She was cute & reminded me of my first crush, he was lanky and awkward and prettier version of how I might have looked at eighteen with a Caesar and basketball hands.  He was being sent to Tennessee in two days.  From there, he’d go into Iraq.  He was old enough to be my son.  Once he even tried to act like one – he knocked on the door & asked my Lady if he could ask me some questions about Shakespeare since I “speak so good,” & could I help him with his term paper?


My Lady was right not to tear out his delusion from such watery eyes & she said of course I’d help & I’d be only a few minutes & she coerced me into spilling my guts to the kid about crying havoc & letting slip the dogs of war – without mentioning of course that I was unemployed, non-degreed, &  increasingly un-published.  “But you write a mean business letter,” she teased, “and it’s not that no one will publish you – it’s that no one knows what to do with you”.


She definitely knows how to get me moving, that’s for sure.


I helped the kid with his paper – it was on Lear, not ancient Rome, but it didn’t matter – his future was so far off & away from our water-damaged ceilings and tiny kitchen, it wouldn’t have made a difference how many fancy metaphors or how colorful my language was in expounding on Shakespeare’s tragedies.   This sorrow was much greater & deeper & stranger.


“Mr. Kangaleri,” he said – as if I was some Italian Indian who could not speak English – “Mr. Kangaleri, I want you to know I appreciate your help…You…you do a lot…for me.”  He paused more than Brando & for a moment I thought this kid’s got something.  He’s got something.  But whatever he had…he was going to spill out over Iraq.  I wondered about his parents.


His mother was a sexy thing – her black-gray hair reminded me of a vanilla-chocolate swirl on an ice cream cone & I always smiled dumbly when I saw her.  My Lady & her traded secrets & beauty tips & sometimes Astrology books.  She dated a lot and eventually settled on some jerk who told the kid he had two choices: “Eat or be eaten.”


I would have told him he had at least three: “You can be in the fight.  Watch the fight.  Or produce the fight.”     I was still trying to figure out which hole I was in, sometimes it was all three.  But at least it meant I was alive, no? Then it dawned on me: no, the only options are the ones you make for yourself.  You didn’t have to join or fight anyone’s battle – your life itself is a battle.  You don’t need to look for a ring to get into, you are a ring!


I assured the boy he could be whatever he wanted as long as he had some passion.  As long as he had a yearning to be free.


That word fell out of my mouth so many times that morning my Lady started to get suspicious.  “Stop it, “ I assured her.  “Freedom is all we got locked deep down inside of us,” I explained to him,” it’s right there next to love, hate, & fear. And you can get thrown out into the field with the scent of one of them and that will determine who follows you, which hellhound will be blazing your trail.”


This scared him.  Although I didn’t have the nerve to tell him that, in the end, freedom was an abstraction.  And none of us knew it cause none of us ever had it.   “Your grandparents understand freedom.   Cause they remember what it was like when they still had to fight for it.  The more aware you are of what you can’t do and the more outraged you become – the clearer freedom is.”


*


The next day his mother’s boyfriend stepped to me & he made it clear my “terrorism” was not appreciated.


He handed me back the books I gave to the boy for his graduation – a well thumbed 1983 edition of Brave New World – which he held out like a bug infested mattress – and the Encyclopaedia Africana – which he said was too heavy for a boy to lug around & anything he needed to know he could look up online & besides he was “Puerto Rican” and “not Black” & he didn’t want to confuse the kid any more than he was.    He leered at me sideways & then said, almost proudly, “that’s the book that kid read before he shot the Congresswoman in Arizona.  I don’t want my kid carryin’ that shit, you know I’m sayin?  That’s like Hitler or something right?”


I had no clue what this man was talking about.  And when I closed the door I realized how sad it was that all the smart people I know don’t have children.  But who could blame them?  How could you compete with these creatures taking over.  It was men like him you’d have to contend with at PTA meetings or baseball games or god forbid if your kids got into a fight.


*


Frederico died eighteen months later.  He was blown apart in Iraq.  Accidentally killed by his own unit.  His body was shipped back to Washington Heights where his mother used all his medals as icons to decorate her front door.  Stupid woman.


My Lady showed me a letter Frederico had written for my birthday, shortly before he was killed:


Dear Mr. Kangeleri,


Hope you & Mrs. Kangaleri are doing well.  Happy Birthday to you!  I took your advice and have begun laughing whenever I say Happy Birthday!  You’re right – it makes it easier to swallow, less silly if you just laugh it out and celebrate yourself or your friends by yelling “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” 


My birthday was last month and my two best friends, both pilots as well, agreed with me that we could do just about anything if we’d stop accepting and questioned the bigger picture.  But I’ll be honest, I have no regrets joining the Army but I do concede that it’s showed me that there’s more to life than picking up a gun or attaining a medal or getting promoted or defending a flag.  And the name itself “Armed Forces,” implies a shortsighted, almost limp explanation of what and who we are. 


I want to help.  Not be an armed force.


They keep reminding me that I’m not here to enhance my understanding of Ethics, but when you are flying over a holy city and all you hear are the sound of a million plus voices chanting & praying to their God, you know that there is something deeper.  You told me once you were a failed artist and that you could not give me sound advice cause you had no money and not attained much – but do you remember what you said before I left for basic training?  You said you were so far of the radar, that no critics would even review your work cause you had no demographics.  And you said you were a writer, not a Newsman, and that half your success as an individual was knowing this.  The other half was meeting a woman and falling in love with such a beautiful entity as your wife.   You said Mrs Kangaleri was your Pulitzer.  Well, for several days, even weeks – I mulled that over in my head, and I let your words wash over my brain. 


Flying over those souls as they lay in devotion to a God I’ll never see or understand made me realize what you meant when you first told me to read Shakespeare and Neruda and Langston Hughes or Kafka and then fall in love.  You told me a Man should have the experience of having the hairs on the back of his neck stand and a soft ache in his heart at the same time.  You said a man sees clearer when this happens, you mentioned freedom, and perception…You made me laugh cause you said these experiences were rare – like getting a woman to reach orgasm or making the perfect cup of coffee or creeping up behind cat without them noticing you or just observing the splendor and pride in the early morning sun.   I remembered all these things you said.  Well, I did not find my Mrs Kangeleri (yet!) but I am hoping I have time.  You told me I should not even think about marriage until I was at least 40.


But I did attain one portion of your assignment:


I felt the hairs on my neck stand…and I understood the promise and the pain of all that a writer struggles to express.  And I got that flying over Cairo.   In some way, it was like coming home. 


I am not sure where this war will lead or how it will end.  I am no longer angry for joining, yet I am ashamed at how ignorant I was before.  Is it wrong to feel that these people here or more my own people than my family or friends in New York or in the United States? 


I think I’m going to be a writer.   Aren’t there a bunch of writers who started off in the military? 


(Hey it could be worse: I could have become a police officer!)


Enjoy your birthday old man!


Frederico Luanta


I cried like a baby when I read this letter.  One night I came home late and ran into Frederico’s mother’s asshole-boyfriend.  He couldn’t look me in the eye and a part of me was waiting to see if he’d say anything cause I was looking for a fight.  The landlord fucked me on the heat, our bathroom still had molding and water leaking from the ceiling, the kitchen sink still overflowed when these spoiled brats upstairs decided to play Suburbs and use a washing machine IN THEIR KITCHEN.


Yeah, I was already on edge & looking for a fight, a razzled-dazzled gleaming bird of steel and blood was lurking in my chest, for several weeks my Lady was calling me “Jekyll AND Hyde” literally…I was on the move and I felt like the incredible Hulk when this sorry piece of human flesh slimed right by me.  I wanted to show the ingrate the letter his woman’s son wrote to me, I wanted to show him how beautiful and soulful this young warrior truly was, but I didn’t say a word.  “Lady Kangaleri” would have been proud, she told me later I had to stop wasting my energy on those types of people.  Frederico’s mother was not so hot anymore herself.


Her looks had left – I mean fled, and her capacity to talk and think and maneuver seemed greatly diminished.


*


When her boy died, she kicked out her Romeo and flew back to Puerto Rico.  Rumor had it that she had killed herself. I would have if I were her.  On second thought, I would have killed that jerk she was fucking for the past 5 years – that sorry sad demon who screwed up her son – and then I would have killed myself.


But she didn’t.  After 6 months in the Caribbean, she came back rested, warmer, 13 pounds lighter, and looked a day older.  She had a nine-year old brat with her who never ever once looked up to say hello when she passed.


When I asked her who the kid was, she said she was her “heart.”  (“she’s my heart, my new duende – isn’t she beautiful?  I told my brother let me bring her to New York for a minute and see if she could do some modelling.  She’s like Julia Roberts!”)


She then said she was going to open a Tarot Reading business.  She said she got a message from Frederico telling her to do this for America.


This is why all the smart people I know don’t have children.


Who would they play with?


 


 


A slightly different version was originally published in Lying Meat & Other Poems Beneath the Oil (2011)


 

		

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