Lorde (1934-92) was a self-described ‘Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.’ The ‘warrior’ is as important as the other words. This is the title poem from Lorde’s 1976 collection of the same name, which was her first collection published by a major publisher. How do they view themselves, she wonders? This poem attempts to give them a voice – and in doing so, reflects the new phenomenon of the 1950s: the teenager.
Gwendolyn Brooks built upon this new tradition for this 1959 poem, which was inspired by seeing a group of young boys in a pool hall when they should have been in school. In the 1920s, it was African American poets like Langston Hughes who pioneered a new kind of poetry – drawing on jazz rhythms and African-American Vernacular – during the Harlem Renaissance. The mother sends her daughter to church, thinking she will be safe from harm and trouble there tragically, the church becomes another target of white nationalist hate. CAPTION: The telltale beat: Poe's hip-hopped folk is of the Vega-Morissette variety.Taking the form of a dialogue between a young child and her mother, the poem highlights the racial prejudice – and the real threats to their lives – that African Americans faced during Civil Rights-era America. Both appearing Sunday at the Capitol Ballroom.
#Poe polymath free
To hear a free Sound Bite from this album, call Post-Haste at 202/334-9000 and press 8102. LENNY KRAVITZ - "Circus" (Virgin America). More often, though, both come on too strong, making "Hello" more of a novelty record than a stylistic breakthrough. She sings "I wanna kill you" in "Angry Johnny," but she also announces that "I gotta be a dolphin" and "I'm not a junkie for your love." Ideally, the album would achieve a balance between the songs' romanticism and the production's harshness, and occasionally that happens. Despite her strenuously up-to-date backing tracks, though, Poe clearly comes out of the hippie-troubadour tradition. Sauntering but frequently hard-edged, "Hello" may not please Joni Mitchell fans. A New Yorker who took her nickname from Edgar Allan, Poe is plugged into the possibilities of electrobeats and computer-age metaphors: "I'm cut off from our main line/ Like a disconnected modem," she sings in "Hello," her debut album's sing-songy, Vega-like title song. In the wake of the hip-hop remix of Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner" and the success of Alanis Morissette's "You Oughta Know," more hip-hopped female folkies were inevitable.
His Princely mixture of Christianity and narcissism, however, is a lot less compelling than his guitar playing.
Kravitz is clearly not one of the open-wound rockers (like Axl Rose?) he attacks on the opening track, "Rock and Roll Is Dead": "You can't even sing or play an instrument," he taunts, "So you just scream instead." Whether he's channeling Hendrix ("Tunnel Vision") or Lennon ("God Is Love"), there's nothing deficient in Kravitz's musicianship or production skills. On a strictly technical level, the results aren't bad. Considering what an unwieldy mix that is, perhaps listeners should be impressed simply by the studio-rock polymath's ambition and chops and not worry too much about the results. ON "CIRCUS," Lenny Kravitz combines funk, hard rock, psychedelia and country with heavy loads of unrequited love and Christian testifying.