THE AFRICAN SPIRIT AND BLACK ARTISTS

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Jimi Hendrix

James Marshal Hendrix was born in Seattle, Washington, on November 27, 1942; an American of African, European, Cherokee Indian and Mexican descent. An unsettled home environment made Jimi spend much of his early years staying with his grandmother, a full-blooded Cherokee Indian, in Canada. His mother died when Jimi was 15 about the same time as Jimi began to take a serious interest in music and playing the guitar. When he was 12 he got his first electric guitar - the instrument which shaped the next 16 years of his life. The Jimi Hendrix Experience was formed with Noel Redding on bass and Mitch Mitchell behind the drums and Jimi began doing things with his guitar that no one had done before. A series of singles followed including,'Hey Joe', 'Purple Haze' and 'The Wind Cries Mary ' made Jimi a star in England, setting the stage for his Monterey appearance. before his death from a heroin overdose

Louis Armstrong

Born August 4, 1901 (although he famously stated that he was born on the 4th of July), Armstrong's parents frequently absent, Armstrong's early childhood was spent on the streets of New Orleans. On New Year's Day 1913 Armstrong fired a pistol in the air and was arrested. He was sent to a reform school where he received his first music lessons. After polishing his skills, Armstrong met Joe "King" Oliver who became a pivotal figure in Armstrong's life, taking on various roles as mentor, teacher, and in some respects the father he never had. In 1925 Armstrong switched from the cornet to the trumpet, and recorded the first album as leader of his own band, the Hot Five. In the 1926 recording of "Heebie Jeebies," Armstrong sang with the accompaniment of his band, but he did not use any words. Using vowels and consonants, Armstrong created vocal music in a style that became known as scat singing. For all of his success and musical acumen, Armstrong was often criticized for his wacky behavior on and off the stage. Some of his contemporaries, including Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, accused him of conforming to the black stereotype of a pandering "Uncle Tom," claiming that he had become merely an entertainer for white audiences. The reality is that although his popularity had spread across the world, Armstrong was not excluded from the racism and prejudices that were pervasive during his career. He felt alienated even in his hometown New Orleans, where he refused to visit because the Jim Crow laws were still enforced. Armstrong was the first jazz musician to tour Africa extensively and one of the first musicians to play for integrated audiences. In 1957, Armstrong cancelled his tour in Russia to speak out against President Eisenhower and the way desegregation was handled in a school in Little Rock, Arkansas. His 1964 hit "Hello Dolly" reached the top of the charts in the United States and England, effectively replacing the Beatles in the number one spot. In the United Kingdom, his recording of "What a Wonderful World" also rose to the top of the charts. In 1969, Armstrong was hospitalized for three months due to heart problems, and two years later, he died in his sleep in Queens, New York.

Ray Charles

Ray Charles Robinson was born Sept. 23, 1930, in Albany, Ga. His father, Bailey Robinson, was a mechanic and a handyman, and his mother, Aretha, stacked boards in a sawmill. His family moved to Greenville, Fla., when Charles was an infant. At just five years old Charles had to endure the trauma of witnessing the drowning death of his younger brother in his mother's large portable laundry tub. Soon after the death of his brother he gradually began to lose his sight and by 7 years of age Ray Charles was blind. At 7, he became a charity student at the state-supported school for the deaf and blind in St. Augustine, Fla. where he received a formal musical education and learned to read, write and arrange music in Braille. At 15 his mother died and Charles, who said he never used a cane or guide dog or begged for money, left school and began touring the South on the so-called chitlin' circuit. later, in Seattle's red light district at just 16 he met a young Quincy Jones only 14 himself. It was a friendship that lasted a lifetime with the two working on many sessions together later in their careers.

Ray Charles Robinson dropped his last name to avoid confusion with boxer Charles got his first taste of commercial success in 1953, when he arranged and played piano on bluesman Guitar Slim's recording of The Things That I Used to Do, which sold more than a million copies. The real Ray Charles emerged in 1954 on a record called I Got A Woman. The recording reached #1 on the R&B chart in 1955. More significantly it brought together elements of gospel music in a secular setting, in a way they had never been married before, and served to spawn a whole new genre later to become known as Soul. By the late 1950s Charles was being called "The Genius."On Oct. 31, 1964, he was busted in a Boston airport with marijuana, heroin and a syringe. Taking a year off from touring, he checked into a California sanitarium and kicked his heroin habit. In 1966 he was convicted and given a five-year suspended sentence for his drug bust. Charles won 12 competitive Grammys, earned three Emmy nominations, scored the Kennedy Center Honors, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Medal of Arts and inductions into the Rock, Jazz and Rhythm and Blues halls of fame. He died Thursday June 10th, 2004.

Ella Fitzgerald

Dubbed "The First Lady of Song," Ella Fitzgerald was the most popular female jazz singer in the United States for more than half a century. In her lifetime, she won 13 Grammy awards and sold over 40 million albums. Her voice was flexible, wide-ranging, accurate and ageless. She could sing sultry ballads, sweet jazz and imitate every instrument in an orchestra. She worked with all the jazz greats, from Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Nat King Cole, to Frank Sinatra, Dizzy Gillespie and Benny Goodman. She performed at top venues all over the world

Ella Jane Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia on April 25, 1917. Her father, William, and mother, Temperance (Tempie), parted ways shortly afterward. In 1932, Tempie died from serious injuries she received in a car accident. In 1934, Ella's name was pulled in a weekly drawing at the Apollo and she won the opportunity to compete in Amateur Night. In mid 1936, Ella made her first recording. Love and Kisses was released under the Decca label, with moderate success. On the touring circuit it was well-known that Ella's manager felt very strongly about civil rights and required equal treatment for his musicians, regardless of their color. Ella continued to work as hard as she had early on in her career, despite the ill effects on her health. In September of 1986, Ella underwent quintuple coronary bypass surgery. Doctors also replaced a valve in her heart and diagnosed her with diabetes. Despite protests by family and friends, including Norman, Ella returned to the stage. By the 1990s, Ella had recorded over 200 albums. In 1991, she gave her final concert at New York's renowned Carnegie Hall. It was the 26th time she performed there. As the effects from her diabetes worsened, 76-year-old Ella experienced severe circulatory problems and was forced to have both of her legs amputated below the knees. She never fully recovered from the surgery, and afterward, was rarely able to perform. On June 15, 1996, Ella Fitzgerald died in her Beverly Hills home.

Berry Gordy

Berry Gordy founded and presided over the musical empire known as Motown. Under his tutelage, Motown became a model of black capitalism, pride and self-expression and a repository for some of the greatest talent ever assembled at one company. The list of artists who were discovered and thrived at Motown includes the Supremes, Jr. Walker & the All-Stars, the Temptations, the Four Tops, the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, the Jackson 5, and Martha and the Vandellas. But the artists alone were not the whole story by any means. Motown's staff songwriting and production teams (e.g., Holland-Dozier-Holland) and in-house musicians (including such unsung heroes as bandleader/keyboardist Earl Van Dyke and bassist James Jamerson) contributed immeasurably to the Motown sound. The idea of a self-contained operation exuding soul from its every pore was all part of Gordy's grand design.

The first hit belonged to the Miracles, a vocal group led by Smokey Robinson. "Way Over There," released on Tamla in 1960, sold a respectable 60,000 copies. It's followup, "Shop Around," reached Number Two on the pop charts and launched Motown into the national market. Overseeing the whole operation from its founding in 1959 to its sale in 1988 was Berry, who insured that Motown's stable of singers, songwriters, producers and musicians took the concept of simple, catchy pop songs to a whole new level of sophistication. Gordy, by all accounts a stern taskmaster, instituted an internal program of "quality control," including weekly product evaluation meetings, that he modeled after Detroit's auto-making plants. At the same time, the working environment was sufficiently loose and freewheeling to foster creativity. In Gordy's words, "Hitsville had an atmosphere that allowed people to experiment creatively and gave them the courage not to be afraid to make mistakes."

Sidney Poitier

Poitier grew up in poverty in the British West Indies. He left school at the age of thirteen, and later joined the US Army. Upon his release from duty, he moved to New York, where he auditioned for the American Negro Theatre. Poitier made his Broadway debut in 1946, in an all-black production of 'Lysistrata', and moved into films four years later, with 'No Way Out'. His impressive turn in 1955's gritty 'The Blackboard Jungle' brought him closer to stardom and, in 1958, he earned his first Academy Award nomination, in Stanley Kramer's 'The Defiant Ones'. The film's focus on racial politics, as well as his increasing popularity, made Poitier a key figure in the civil rights movement. For 1963's 'The Lilies of the Field', he made history as the first African-American actor to win an Oscar in a leading role. Poitier continued to make racially provocative films, appearing in Kramer's 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' as the black fiance of a white woman. In 1969, Poitier founded the First Artists Production Company and, in 1972, announced his directorial debut with 'Buck and the Preacher'. He directed and starred in his next three films. After directing the 1980 comedy, 'Stir Crazy', Poitier began to decrease his workload; after two more features, he disappeared from filmmaking for the next several years. In 1988, Poitier appeared onscreen for the first time in over a decade, in the thriller, 'Shoot to Kill'. In 1996 he starred in the long-awaited follow-up to his '67 success, 'To Sir With Love', in TV's 'To Sir With Love 2'. As an actor, director, and producer, he forever altered the racial perceptions held by both film audiences and executives, rising to superstar status in an industry dominated on both sides of the camera by whites, while becoming the first African-American ever to take home an Oscar for Best Actor.

Rudy Ray Moore

Born March 17, 1937, in Fort Smith, AR, blaxploitation legend Rudy Ray Moore began his life as an entertainer after moving to Cleveland, OH, at the age of 15. Forging a music career under the stage name of "Prince Dumarr," Moore belted out gutbucket rhythm & blues while wearing a trademark turban, recording several singles and touring through various Midwestern cities. By 1959, he had moved to Los Angeles, dropped the pseudonym, and was focusing on a standup act. A trio of comedy albums released in the early '60s on Dooto Records didn't hit for him, so Moore worked part-time in a record store, where a local wino named Rico would often visit to beg for change. The panhandler recited bawdy "toasts" in exchange for food money, tall tales set to rhyme that have figured in African-American culture for years. One of these stories was "Dolemite," the tale of a mythical black superman who fights lions and can kill women with the power of his lovemaking. Moore began incorporating "Dolemite" and other toasts into his act, as well as incorporating the style of Redd Foxx with explicit profanity and crude jokes about life on the ghetto streets. He self-financed the release of an album in this new style, and Eat Out More Often was a hit in 1970. Moore followed with a number of X-rated comedy platters, all recorded in his own home with friends as the audience (which led them to be dubbed "party records"). By 1975, Moore decided to branch out into motion pictures, and again staked his own money to produce a film version of his most famous routine. Dolemite was a low-budget action-adventure-comedy shot in and around Moore's Los Angeles home. With Moore as the pimp, a harem of kung fu-fighting prostitutes, corrupt white politicians, and plenty of excuses for Moore to perform snippets of his nightclub act. a sequel, The Human Tornado (1976), followed as well as an adaptation of another of Moore's standup routines, The Devil's Son-In-Law (1977). After releasing the concert film Rudy Ray Moore: Rude in 1982. Many rappers have named Moore as a major influence and samples from his records and films have turned up on releases by artists like Dr. Dre, Big Chief, and 2 Live Crew.

Curtis Mayfield

As the leader of the Impressions, he recorded some of the finest soul vocal group music of the 1960s. As a solo artist in the 1970s, he helped pioneer funk and helped introduce hard-hitting urban commentary into soul music. "Gypsy Woman," "It's All Right," "People Get Ready," "Freddie's Dead," and "Superfly" are merely the most famous of his many hit records. He wrote most of his material at a time when that was not the norm for soul performers. He was among the first -- if not the very first -- to speak openly about African-American pride and community struggle in his compositions. As a songwriter and a producer, he was a key architect of Chicago soul, penning material and working on sessions by notable Windy City soulsters like Gene Chandler, Jerry Butler, Major Lance, and Billy Butler. Mayfield was also an excellent guitarist, and his rolling, Latin-influenced lines were highlights of the Impressions' recordings in the '60s. During the next decade, he would toughen up his guitar work and production, incorporating some of the best features of psychedelic rock and funk. Mayfield began his career as an associate of Jerry Butler, with whom he formed the Impressions in the late '50s. After the Impressions had a big hit in 1958 with "For Your Precious Love," Butler, who had sung lead on the record, split to start a solo career. Mayfield, while keeping the Impressions together, continued to write for and tour with Butler before the Impressions got their first Top 20 hit in 1961, "Gypsy Woman." Mayfield was heavily steeped in gospel as well as doo wop and his songs were oftenmessages of black pride. Musically he was an innovator as well, using arrangements with horns and Latin-influenced rhythms that came to be trademark flourishes of Chicago soul. the his, Superfly, the soundtrack to the same-named, 1972 blaxploitation film and it's attendant Drug deals, ghetto shootings, were described in penetrating detail in the soundrack. Superfly stands as his crowning achievement. Throughout the mid-70's, Mayfield, along with Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, formed a Black trifecta of proud, wise and sensitive/sensuous men who ministered to the Black community with the new Black voice that fulfilled the promise, at least artistically, of the civil rights gains and cultural pride. On August 14, 1990, he became paralyzed from the neck down when a lighting rig fell on top of him at a concert in Brooklyn, NY. He died December 26, 1999 at the age of 57.

Scott Joplin

Birth between 1867 and 1868. His father was a slave, who soon re-located the family to Texarkana where they lived on the Texas/Arkansas border. Scott gained access to a piano in a white-owned home where his mother worked, and taught himself the rudiments of music. Joplin�s talent was noticed by a local, German-born music teacher (Julius Weiss), who instructed him further, placing special emphasis on European art forms. In 1891 Joplin was in Texarkana working with a minstrel troupe. In 1893, he was in Chicago at the time of the World�s Fair. In August 1899 they contracted with Sedalia music store owner and publisher John Stark to publish The Maple Leaf Rag, which was to become the greatest and most famous of piano rags. The contract specified that Joplin would receive a one-cent royalty on each sale, a condition that rendered Joplin a small, but steady income for the rest of his life. Sales in the first year were slight, only about 400, but as Maple Leaf became known, sales increased substantially. By 1909, approximately a half-million copies had been sold, and that rate was to continue for the next two decades. By mid-January, 1917, he had to be hospitalized, and was soon transferred to a mental institution where he died on April 1, 1917.

At the time of his death, he was almost forgotten. Interest in ragtime, too, was quickly waning as the new style of ÐjazzÓ took center stage. But Joplin never slipped totally into oblivion. His Maple Leaf Rag continued to exercise its magic on successive generations of musicians and music lovers and as the main song identified with the movie, "The Sting" the Maple Leaf Rag, composed more than a half-century earlier, once again became a current and universally loved style. Soon recordings of Joplin�s music reached the top rungs of the marketing charts for both classical and popular categories. In recognition of his significant achievements, the Pulitzer Committee in 1976 issued a posthumous award for Scott Joplin�s contribution to American music.

Alvin Ailey

"He made us believe that we were gods and goddesses, but also individuals," says Judith Jamison of Alvin Ailey. Born in poor, rural Rogers, Texas in 1931, Ailey was the child of Lula Elizabeth Cliff, and the handsome Alvin Ailey, whom she married at 16. In school, Ailey exhibited a gift for languages and began reading and writing poetry and singing. School field trips introduced him to such black stars as Lena Horne. He failed at tap-dancing, and discovered Central Avenue, which had theaters and movie palaces and cocktail lounges. Ailey watched top black vaudeville acts and films like "Cabin in the Sky" and "Stormy Weather." Remembered as a moody child, he made friends who shared his interest in the arts.

While still in his 20's Ailey auditioned for and won a role in a Broadway show. From 1955 on, he made his home in New York, studying with every choreographer on the burgeoning scene and soaking up the city's resources: films, poetry readings, new music, and dance and drama. The civil rights movement began to escalate, and Ailey found himself in a position to express its drama in theater and choreography. Dance was for Ailey "a way to communicate with whoever turned up to see his work, whether he was speaking about the power of the blues in black lives, the beauty of those lives, or, indirectly, about how it might feel to be an ugly duckling, an uncertain authority, or even, perhaps, a man considered not quite a man by virtue of his race and sexuality.

On January 31, 1960, the Ailey dancers performed "Revelations" for the first time, at the Kaufmann Concert Hall of the 92nd Street YM-YWHA. Drawn from Negro spirituals, it was as sacred as "Blues Suite" was secular, and it knocked the audience out with its combination of jazzy steps and humorous portraits. Thirty-nine years and hundreds of performances later, it is still doing that, and regularly closes the bulk of shows in New York and on tour. A suite of dances, it shows us black men on the run from sins real and imagined, and black women in all their summer glory, celebrating their faith in a small, airless, Southern Baptist church, recreating, as Dunning observes, "the gestures and ceremony he remembered from his own baptism, exaltation rising up from the stirred waters of the snake-ridden pond back of the church in Rogers, Texas." Dunning's colleague at the New York Times, Anna Kisselgoff, has said the work "addresses itself to a universal expression of faith -- in religion perhaps, in faith in art itself."

Jimmy Cliff

Born in St. Catherine, Jamaica, on April 1, 1948, with the less prosaic name James Chambers. His talent was obvious from childhood, and he began his career appearing at local shows and parish fairs. At 14, he moved to Kingston, and took the surname Cliff to express the heights he intended on reaching. Under producer, Leslie Kong, Cliff's first single was "Hurricane Hattie," and it was instant hit. By 1964, Cliff's star was so bright that he was selected as one of Jamaica's representatives at the World's Fair. A successful residency in Paris followed, and soon Island head Chris Blackwell had convinced the singer to relocate to Britain. In 1968, Cliff released his debut album, the excellent Hard Road to Travel, and won the International Song Festival with "Waterfall," a song which was a smash hit in Brazil. He swiftly moved to Brazil to take advantage of his success. A bigger, and more critical hit was Cliff's anti-war, "Vietnam," which was not commercially successful, but Bob Dylan called it the best protest song he'd ever heard.

Prior to Leslie Kong's death, they had worked on the soundtrack to the movie The Harder They Come. Produced and written by Perry Henzell, this powerful film featured Cliff in the leading role, and upon its release swiftly became an underground classic and an inspiration to down and out Blacks the world over.

Gordon Parks

Born in 1912 as Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks he was the youngest of 15 children. At the age of 16, Parks' mother dies and he moves to St. Paul Minnesota to live with his sister and her family. Soon he is kicked out of the house and he begins working as a piano player in a brothel, among other things, to support himself. At the age of 25, Parks begins to seriously pursue photography. within 4 years Parks becomes the first photographer to receive a fellowship from the Julius Rosenwald Foundation (founded by one of the greatest benefactors to the Black community in the history of America). in 1942, Parks is assigned as an correspondent for the first black air corps called the 332nd Fighter group. Although he allowed to shoot the training program, he is denied access to shoot the group in Europe. in 1944 Parks pursues fashion photography, and despite racism in the fashion business he is hired at Vogue Magazine and in 1950 he moves to Europe as an European correspondent for Life magazine and worked as a consultant on various Hollywood productions and later directed a series of documentaries commissioned by National Educational Television on black ghetto life.

Beginning in the 1960s, Parks branched out into literature, writing The Learning Tree, and several books of poetry illustrated with his own photographs, and three volumes of memoirs. In 1969, Parks became Hollywood's first major black director with his film adaptation of his autobiographical novel, The Learning Tree. Parks also composed the film's musical score and wrote the screenplay. Shaft, Parks' 1971 detective film starring Richard Roundtree, became a major hit that spawned a series of blaxploitation films. Parks' feel for settings was confirmed by Shaft, with its portrayal of the super-cool leather-clad black private detective hired to find the kidnapped daughter of a Harlem racketeer. Parks' writing accomplishments include novels, poetry, autobiography, and non-fiction including photographic instructional manuals and filmmaking books. Parks was also a campaigner for civil rights; subject of film and print profiles, notably Half Past Autumn in 2000; and had a gallery exhibit of his photo-related, abstract oil paintings in 1981. Parks was married and divorced three times and died of cancer, aged 93.

Spike Lee

Spike Lee was born Shelton Lee in 1957, in Atlanta Georgia. At a very young age he moved from pre-civil rights Georgia, to Brooklyn, New York. Lee came from a proud and intelligent background. His father was a jazz musician, and his mother a school teacher. His mother dubbed him Spike, due to his tough nature. He attended school in Morehouse College in Atlanta, where he developed his film making skills. After graduating from Morehouse, to go to the Tisch School of arts graduate film program. He made a controversial short, The Answer (1980), a reworking of D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) - a ten minute film. Lee went on to produce a 45 minute film Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1983), which won a student academy award. In 1986 Spike Lee made the film, She's Gotta Have It (1986), a comedy about sexual relationships. The movie was made for 175,000 dollars, and made seven million. His next movie was School Daze (1988), which was set in a historically black school, and focused mostly on the conflict between the school and the Fraternities, of which he was a strong critic, portraying them as materialistic, irresponsible and uncaring. With School Daze in profit, Lee went on to do his landmark film, Do the Right Thing (1989), a movie specifically about his own town in Brooklyn, New York. The movie portrayed a neighborhood (Bed-Stuy, to be exact) on a very hot day, and the racial tensions that emerge. The movie garnered an Oscar nomination, for Danny Aiello, for supporting actor. It also sparked a debate on racial relations, and exactly where Lee was taking the film. Lee went on to produce, write and direct numerous Black-themed films including, Mo' Better Blues (1990),Jungle Fever (1991), Malcolm X (1992), Crooklyn (1994), Clockers (1995), Girl 6 (1996), Get on the Bus (1996), He Got Game (1998), Bamboozled (2000), New Jersey Drive (1995), Tales from the Hood (1995), and Drop Squad (1994).

Grandmaster Flash

Grandmaster Flash is Known as one of the three Oringinators of Break-Beat DJing (The Other 2 being Afrika Bambaataa and DJ Kool Herc), And is responsble for developing and perfecting time precision on the following DJ techniquues: Cutting, Back Spinning and punch-phrasing. His Group the Furious Five was a premier group toward the mid-1970s, known for thier choreography, studded leather stage wear, and fierce Rapping Skills. Flash's 1981 Single "the Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on The Wheels of Steel" was the first record to exemplify Hip-Hop DJing Skills, and the Group's 1982 hit "The Message" was One of the First Serious Rap Records. Flash grew up in the South Bronx with a wide appreciation of music. He would sneak and raid his father's record Collection, and listen to records by Glenn Miller, Frank Sinatra, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Thin Lizzy, Led Zeppelin and other varieties of Music. Flash started to take up DJing in 1974 after seeing Kool DJ Herc play Break Music. Because Flash's DJing Skills at his parties captivated his crowd so much that it hindered them from dancing , He began to assemble a group of MCs to keep the Crowd going. Cowboy was his first choice for MC. Melle Mel was the second MC he chose, with Mel's brother, Kid Creole, Being the third. They then were billed as Grandmaster Flash and the 3 MCs. Later Flash would use a Vox drum machine with the group, Billing themselves as Grandmaster Flash and the 3 MCs with the Beat Box. Toward 1976 Flash was approached by ex-policeman and promoter Ray Chandler in St.Ann's Park in the Bronx, Who suggested to Flash that he esablish a regular spotfor his parties. Chandler found a place on Boston Road and 169th Street; Within a few months the popularity of Flash's parties forced him to seek larger venues. By September 1976 Flash was playing the Audubon Ballroom to a crowd of nearly 3000. Today, Grandmaster Flash is recognized as the First and Greatest Super D.J.'s of the rap/hip-hop, d.j. movement

Langston Hughes

(February 1, 1902 - May 22, 1967) Born in Joplin, Missouri, James Langston Hughes was a member of an abolitionist family. He was the great-great-grandson of Charles Henry Langston, brother of John Mercer Langston, who was the first Black American to be elected to public office, in 1855. Hughes attended Central High School in Cleveland, Ohio, but began writing poetry in the eighth grade, and was selected as Class Poet. His father didn't think he would be able to make a living at writing, and encouraged him to pursue a more practical career. He paid his son's tuition to Columbia University on the grounds he study engineering. After a short time, Langston dropped out of the program with a B+ average; all the while he continued writing poetry. One of Hughes' finest essays appeared in the Nation in 1926, entitled "The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain". It spoke of Black writers and poets, "who would surrender racial pride in the name of a false integration," where a talented Black writer would prefer to be considered a poet, not a Black poet, which to Hughes meant he subconsciously wanted to write like a white poet.

In 1923, Hughes traveled abroad on a freighter to the Senegal, Nigeria, the Cameroons, Belgium Congo, Angola, and Guinea in Africa, and later to Italy and France, Russia and Spain. One of his favorite pastimes whether abroad or in Washington, D.C. or Harlem, New York was sitting in the clubs listening to blues, jazz and writing poetry. Through these experiences a new rhythm emerged in his writing, and a series of poems such as "The Weary Blues" were penned. He returned to Harlem, in 1924, the period known as the Harlem Renaissance. During this period, his work was frequently published and his writing flourished. Langston Hughes received a scholarship to Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania, where he received his B.A. degree in 1929. In 1943, he was awarded an honorary Lit.D by his alma mater; a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935 and a Rosenwald Fellowship in 1940. Based on a conversation with a man he knew in a Harlem bar, he created a character know as My Simple Minded Friend in a series of essays in the form of a dialogue. Langston Hughes died of cancer on May 22, 1967. His residence at 20 East 127th Street in Harlem, New York has been given landmark status by the New York City Preservation Commission. His block of East 127th Street was renamed "Langston Hughes Place".

KRS-ONE

KRS-One (born Kris Parker) was the leader of Boogie Down Productions, one of the most influential hardcore hip-hop outfits of the '80s. At the height of his career KRS-One combined with his DJ Scott La Rock to form a pure basement, street slaying, all night New York duo. As legend has it, Scott La Rock met Kris Parker when he a homeless teenager at the shelter where Scott La Rock, was employed as social worker. The shelter was The Morrissania Men's Shelter in the South Bronx. As the story goes, after the first album, "criminal minded" featured sparse beats, sparse melodies and a melodic intellectual rap, that encapsulated the bravado and "dozens" tradition. BDP took on all comers and issued a challenge to all 5 boroughs, which provided the spark necessary to inflame all up and coming rappers to represent their home turf, and make music that swung the pendulum of creation and "answer rhymes" from ghetto to ghetto across New York. The criticism of KRS-ONE is that his raps became too preachy. In truth, the vast and vigorous transformations of Rap from it's inception in the late-late 70's to the 90's left many a first generation rapper (Kurtis Blow, Busy B, Kool Moe D, The Sugarhill Gang, Sequence, The Treacherous 3, MC Shan, Biz Markie, Whodini, Ice T, NWA, etc) grasping at gold albums, while the next generation, RUN-DMN, LLCoolJ, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Nas, Jay Z, The Fat Boys, The Beastie Boys, The Wu-Tang Clan and others, were ringing up platinum C.D's. Eventually KRS-ONE and the other O.G.'s were crowded off the stage, radio and magazine covers. However, the strength, the creativity, the foundation of Criminal Minded was so strong, deep and profound, that to this very day, it will crowd a dance floor, in homage to the O.G. sound of all the O.G.'s

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