Hard Knock Radio 94.1 FM: In honor of Memorial Day we dropped a nice Memorial Day Mix that features everyone from Paris to Digital Underground to Goapele to Gil Scott-Heron to Michael Franti to Dilated Peoples and Saul Williams just to name a few.. Click the link below to listen..
As you listen, keep in mind the importance of us taking all the steps we can on a diplomatic bases to find solutions to conflict.. We must find ways to stop the Military Industrial Conflict where we have scores of multi- national corporations that profit insanely off of war and potential conflict…
On another note.. as we reflect on Memorial day, Folks may wanna reflect on its ‘lost origins’..Here’s an excerpt from Yale History professor David W. Blight ..You can peep the entire article at http://www.davidwblight.com/memorial.htm
Thousands of black Charlestonians, most former slaves, remained in the city and conducted a series of commemorations to declare their sense of the meaning of the war. The largest of these events, and unknown until some extraordinary luck in my recent research, took place on May 1, 1865. During the final year of the war, the Confederates had converted the planters’ horse track, the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club, into an outdoor prison. Union soldiers were kept in horrible conditions in the interior of the track; at least 257 died of exposure and disease and were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand. Some twenty-eight black workmen went to the site, re-buried the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery. They whitewashed the fence and built an archway over an entrance on which they inscribed the words, “Martyrs of the Race Course.”
Then, black Charlestonians in cooperation with white missionaries and teachers, staged an unforgettable parade of 10,000 people on the slaveholders’ race course. The symbolic power of the low-country planter aristocracy’s horse track (where they had displayed their wealth, leisure, and influence) was not lost on the freedpeople. A New York Tribune correspondent witnessed the event, describing “a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never saw before.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VySYI7dALug
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I met Somalian born rapper Knaan about 3 or 4 years ago in his current place of residence Toronto. We chopped it up back then and he assured me that it was just a matter of time before the US Hip Hop scene would open its arms to rappers from other shores. At the time that seemed far-fetched because even though we all know that Hip Hop is a worldwide phenomenon, very few heads in the states can cite more than 3 or 4 artists from neighboring Canada much less from overseas. Ask folks to name artists from Africa and the conversation is all but over…
We talked about the make up of Knaan’s album and what it was like working with Maroon 5’s Adam Levine and Hip Hop legend Chubb Rock. He explained that Levine was a real cool and basically came through and laid down vocals for free. He just wanted to show respect and appreciation for the music.