The Artistic Excellence of Black Music

“So how do we respond to our dark times? The greatest tradition of prophetic fightback in the American empire is the black freedom struggle. The greatest tradition of moral and spiritual fortitude in the American empire is the black musical tradition.
The artistic excellence in the best of black music – including the magnanimity and majesty of the sound – sets the standards for the black freedom struggle.
These standards consist of radical freedom in love and radical love in freedom – the freedom to tell the truth in love about one’s self and world, and the love of the truth as one freely speaks and lives.
The Movement for Black Lives is a grand sign of hope. It is an exemplary collective effort to put prophetic fight back in our bleak moment of imperial meltdown and spiritual blackout.” America is spiritually bankrupt. We must fight back together. Cornel West, The Guardian January 14, 2018

I’ve written about how my practice of silence and worship first thing in the morning is where I often learn what I am lead to write about that day. To such an extent that some years ago I realized when I awoke I was asking the Spirit “What are we going to do/write today?” Often I will have a vague idea of something the night before. Last night the thought crossed my mind that I didn’t have any ideas for the next day.

But last night I was lead to discover the QuakerSpeak video Guided By An Inner Truth: Quaker Hip-Hop Artist Sterling Duns The caption to the video says “West Philly rapper Sterling Duns talks about his writing process and how he came to be a Quaker.” I was in the middle of watching it, but had to leave to go to midweek meeting for worship.

When I awoke this morning I didn’t feel I had a message. After breakfast I finished watching Sterling Duns’ video, and then the second one of his performance of “R.I.P Walter Scott” and was profoundly moved.

The videos eloquently speak for themselves.

I felt the connection to what I wrote a couple of days ago about the truth my friend Leah had about privilege and the Women’s March.

I thought about my friend Diop Adisa, from the Kheprw Institute (KI). Diop and I share a love of photography. During some of those conversations Diop also shared about some of the struggles he experienced, especially related to his music. Recently a number of good things have been coming from that.