Don't Fuck with the Gemini Twins, Marvin X and Sun RaAnd if you can't comprehend Marvin X and Sun Ra, don't claim to understand the
Black Arts Movement
Don't come at me with some weak ass revisionist shit about
a Neo-Black Arts Movement
bout rap is classical
rap a child of jazz
conscious rap only
revolutionary
not pussy and dick rap
jewish rap steal black conscious rap dreams
jewish rap producers pussy and dick schemes
jewish rap producers like yellow girls video ho's
black girls no chance
yellow girls asians miss ann the plan
peckerwood white/black nigga pickerwood same
pimping blackness same
afrofuturism exhibit same
miller like my woman say
and she got my brain
Afrofuturism exhibit Miller lite she say
don't let me talk
I say same
don't curate no black shit
you go insane
think you know what you know
but don't know shit in yo white brain
you try to be honest true
but the black heart escapes you
the black heart you'll never know
you not evil
just down't know
how to pick cotton how it grow
was you in the cotton field miss ann
did that cotton prick your hands fingers
did you pick the hunid pounds
yo master told you so
can't see ta can't see
did you git yo hunid off da row
is you tired bitch miss ann
did you pick all that cotton on last row
did you weigh yo sack
was it full of dirt
did the contractor whip yo ass
fakin da funk
miss ann what you know
get yo ass out da cotton field bitch
tell yo daddy to kiss my ass
I'm robbin' da contractor today
fuck hunid pounds
me and my boys goin ta town
movie with the girls
buttered popcorn
finger fuck her same hand
til movie say THE END
popcorn gone
pussy dry
baby say bye bye.
Imagine life a movie
soon come The End
lights come on
white man killing Indians gone
you cheered for white man killing Indians
Yo grandmama Cherokeee
had long straight hair
but yo stupid mind make you cheer for white man
You so sick don't deserve no land
Let the white man pimp yo ass another hunid years
take all his virus vaccines
take booster shots of his toxic white supremacy dreams
inject yourself like Tuskegee
wonder why whitey didn't tell you it was all a lie.
you so stupid motherfucka
every lie whitey tell you you suck it in by and by
for chicken wing or leg
you so glued to whitey ass
you can't wait to get the pass
eat shitty food at his restaurant
Martin Luther King, Jr. told you where to eat
where to sit on the KKK toilet seat
Sunday brunch
fancy hat women sip fake drinks
praise Jesus
but black man they fuss
single women with everything
cept black dick
make 'em sing
thank you Jesus
their voices ring
chorus of love
when black man ring their bell
deliver them from hell
plastic dicks only work so well
Sunday brunch
church hats
no black man
oh well.
--Marvin X
8/25/21
minus Jazz/Black Classical music
kiss my ass
Ain't no BAM without Jazz
kiss my ass
you fakin' da funk
get da fk up outta here
my dear
you live in fear
BAM was straight revolution
we don't kiss no politician's ass
they give you but it don't last
new regime
new machine
cut yo funds
so keep it clean
no politician kill BAM dream
New York cut Black arts funds
saw BAM no fun
poetry plays music of revolution
politicians play along
then cut funds
Baraka went home to Newark
Met Amina black as night
grew up on Howard Street
worst street in Newark
Ben Caldwell turned her on to Baraka
Sylvia was already into black arts
went to arts high school
didn't need baraka to teach her
blackness
he was detoxing from beatnik life in Village
Hettie Jewish girl
thought she had baraka for life
half jewish children
Baraka mama loved them so
Not them pica ninnies
from Amina's womb
Would his mama love them now
Ras the Mayor
Middy Jr. Chief of Staff
Mama Jones
what you say
you love them half jewish girls
or Ras and Middy Jr
black warriors from your way
Them half jewish girls qualified in Baraka mythology
children without sin
it's parents do children in
children are children
no matter mother or father
they love each other
except interruption
unresolved trauma grief of mother
or father for that matter
wash guilt down the drain
let children love
they feel the spirit
DNA same
children live myth of fathers mothers
no matter denial
truth transcends myth
truth of children same
perform myth of mother dad
denial is sad
children don't know mother dreams
sometimes father too
children dream
think their dreams true
not from father mother new
children in denial
parental dreams children make true
in their blindness children swear
their dreams didn't come from you
No mama dad
this my dream and it's true
that's a lie chile
your dreams came from
your daddy and mewe see you dreaming our dreams
what can we say of you
Let us be silent until your dreams come true.
Will you then turn to us and say
Mama and daddy I confess I am you.
--Marvin X
8/25/21
Black Arts Movement co-founders, Marvin X and Sun Ra, aka, Father of Afrofuturism. Sun Ra and Marvin X perfected the Black ritual theatre BAM dramatists sought to create in Harlem NY at the New Lafayette Theatre and Barbara Ann Teer's National Black Theatre. Sun Ra began ritual theatre with his original music, poetry, synthesizer, light shows, dance productions, including music for Amiri Baraka's Black Mass. Sun Ra was solid in the Sankofa tradition of reaching back to Kemit/Egypt and forward to outter space as in Space is the Place, his cult classic produced in Oakland.
Marvin X perfected ritual theatre with his production of Resurrection of the Dead, a myth-ritual dance drama, music by Juju, 1972. But Black Arts West Theatre musicians taught Marvin X ritual theatre as the poem below describes.
In the pick above Marvin X and Sun Ra are outside Marvin X's Black Educational Theatre on O'Farrell between Fillmore and Webster, SF, 1972. Both brothers were lecturing in the Black Studies Department at the University of California, Berkeley. Marvin was blessed to house the entire Sun Ra Arkestra when they couldn't afford the rent John Handy was charging. Marvin was blessed to have the full Myth Science Arkestra at his disposal, so he did not hesitate to house Sun Ra's Arkestra at the many spaces he occupied at the time by the grace of Allah.
Sun Ra's Myth-Science Arkestra performed the musical version of Marvin's BAM classic
Flowers for the Trashman (See Black Fire, TDR, SOS, Black Dialogue Magazine). BET was Marvin's off campus classrom. At BET Sun Ra's Arkestra had more people than in the audience of the old Greek church BET occupied. but Sonny's band played as if there was a full house.
For historical accuracy, we must note that before Sun Ra arrived, BET was blessed with the great musical sounds of Juju, under the direction of Plunky. They provided the music for Resurrection of the Dead, Marvin's opus magnum of ritual theatre. It included a name giving ceremony at which the actors were named for life by Imam El Muhajir, aka Marvin X.
He and Sun Ra produced a five hour performance of TCB, i.e., the musical version of Flowers for the Trashman. The Harding Theatre production had a cast of fifty, including BET actors, Myth-Science musicians and dancers, plus the Raymond Sawyer dancers and the Ellendar Barnes dancers. Yes, five hours without intermission. SF Sun Reporter Newspaper reviewed this Marvin X/Sun Ra extravaganza.
Where is the jazz in my world
imagine BLM marched to Coltrane, Sun Ra, Shepp Miles
Liberation music supreme
no other sound except silent night
jazz liberation
thank you Pharaoh Sanders
the Harlem benefits we all did
musicians, poets, actors dancers
At the New Lafayette Theatre
Robert MacBeth Ed Bullins Sonny Jim
New Lafayette women so beautiful
But jazz foundation of revolution
avant guard expressed communal condition
oppression hollers wails of cotton fields
Billie's strange fruit
Lou Rawls Tobacco Road
What did I do to be so black an' blue
Wail Ayler brothers
Beat your drums Milford Graves
wild man banned from bringing jungle beats downtown
Stay in Harlem Milford
let natives hear your jungle beats
break open Harlem hearts
leave us heartless downtown
Milford your wild animal wails screams shouts
too mad for uptown civility
Max was mad enough with sassy Abby
Uppity wench singing bout freedom
And Nina singing bout them women
Mississippi Goddamn
Nina you got to go
West coast jazz at Black Arts West Theatre
Cross from Tree's Pool Hall on Fillmore
Rafael Donald Garrett
Monte Waters Big Band
BJ Oliver Johnson
Dewey Redmon
They taught us ritual theatre
running from stage to audience to
Fillmore Street
bumper to bumper cars
musicians call and response to car horns
musicians and people are one
jazz alive black classical sounds
music of intelligence transcending pain suffering
liberation sounds
no other music sufficed to free our minds
blues told of suffering jazz told us to revolt
Armies march to music Sun Ra said
His band of angels and devils lead the way
I didn't come to play Jesus he say
You ain't gonna crucify me
All them people talking about freedom justice equality civil rights
They in the cemetery got they last rites didn't they
Stop teaching yo actors freedom Marvin X
They born free
teach discipline like me
how you think I keep my musicians together
discipline is what you see
Stop teaching freedom Marvin X
I can't use freedom round me
Creator set me free with discipline
You gotta have discipline to be with me
My Myth-Science Arkestra born free
Maavin X Maavin X Sonny say
you so right you wrong
You took the truth out your play
the low down dirty truth
people don't want truth
they want low down dirty truth
X Maavin X you so right you wrong
Ain't you heard the righteous man is a laughing stock
Don't be so right you wrong
I serve the Creator God
I sing His song
Some of these people I don't know who they are
They ain't like the people I used to know in Birmingham Alabama
Some of these men are beasts
They so evil the devil don't want them in hell.
X Maavin X stop teaching freedom
and you all right with the Creator God
You be on the other side of time with me.
You know I was there when the hit man came to kill you
I was outside your theatre in the Fillmore when he came to me with your picture
He showed me your picture but I put the Ra hand on him and rushed away
See X Maavin X Creator God got the power today
I serve the Creator God and He bless me night n day
All the devil do is play music I call P and D
Pussy and dick is the music of today
Put discipline with pussy and dick
You'll go a long way
I don't want them women round my musicians
They spend the night with women come back next day
can't even play
come back hungry broke
begging me for breakfast money to eat
I tell them go back where you spent the night
Make them women fix you breakfast
Make them women treat you right
Don't come back to me hungry
when you with them girls all night
Sun Ra was a motherfucka
But he taught me discipline
Discard my freedom
Then I be all ite.
RA RA RA RA RA
Black Power
Jazz is music of revolution
Black classical music
fk fusion miller lite confusion
jazz low down dirty truth
teach the youth.
--Marvin X
8/25/21
P.S. Please consider sending Marvin X a generous donation as he completes his creative mission, giving more than a half century to. the Black Arts Movement and Black Liberation Movement. He suffered two self-imposed exiles in Canada, Mexico City and Belize, Central America; was deported from Belize back to America, thrown into jail and Federal prison because he refused to fight in Vietnam. Although he taught at Fresno State University, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, Mills College, San Francisco State University, University of Nevada Reno, Laney and Merritt Colleges in Oakland, Marvin's tenure was never permanent so he could support his family. He retired from teaching in 1981 from Reedley Community College in the Central Valley with a 97% student retention record. Since then he only lectures and reads his poetry at colleges and universities coast to coast. In the original mission of Black Studies, i.e., take knowledge to the community, Marvin set up his Academy of Da Corner in Oakland at 14th and Broadway, making himself accessible to all the citizens of Oakland and as community planner/organizer was one of the key founders of Oakland's Black Arts Movement Business District, established by the Oakland City Council, January 19, 2016. Marvin X is currently organizing the Black Vendors Association with a generous grant from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. He is working in association with James Copes, Director of the Oakland Black Vendors Association at Lake Merritt. We are urgently in need of funds to hire a long term security firm to prevent the incident that occurred on Juneteenth of this year. We would also like to employ are on sanitation engineers. With 18 million dollars taken from the OPD budget we think some of those funds should be directed to the Lake Merritt Black Vendors for our long term general fund, since the Department of Parks and Recreation is requesting a long term plan. We say Lake Merritt Black Vendors are an integral part of the Black Arts Movement Business District that extends along the 14th Street corridor from the Lower Bottom to Lake Merritt, and as such the Oakland Black Vendors Association is connected with the BAMBD and concomitantly with the City of Oakland's Downtown Plan for the Next 25 to 50 Years. We demand equity, call it reparations if you like. The City of San Francisco has established a reparations plan to address the decades of systemic racial discrimination, Oakland must do the same and no other space was a critical example of racial discrimination than Lake Merritt, a space all Blacks who grew up in Oakland can recall Lake Merritt was a restrictive space and is down to this day with the current neighborhood animus in direct violation of SB946, the State law on street vending.
If you would like to support the Black Vendors Association with a generous donation, please contact Marvin X at jmarvinx@yahoo.com or James Copes at oldschoolcopes@gmail.com. Your generous donation can be tax deductible. Again, we thank the Silicon Valley Community Foundation for their generous grant to help us plan the Black Vendors Association. And we thank the Berkeley Juneteenth Foundation for serving as the fiscal agent of BVA. FYI, a $50,000 generous donation would enable us to employ a community security firm to satisfy our priority security needs. Our female vendors are especially concerned about the lax of security that allowed the homicide and wounding of six individuals on Juneteenth of this year. The incident has diminished visits to our Lake Merritt vending site on El Embarcadero, the one block area we have been restricted to by neighborhood animus and brick and mortar businesses along Grand Ave.
Since we have been restricted to this one block area, we demand the name change to Black Street from El Embarcadero. How many streets in Oakland are de facto white streets? MX
