The Black Equation, Form 2.

I want to write not out of bitterness but rather out of hope and love. The beginnings are always so great, immense and immaculate, that I hesitate to start with anything negative. And as always i’m writing from the hip. I didn’t study journalism, i’m a guitar player, so bear with me. I think i’m at least somewhat coherent. 

So here we are in the year 2005 and i actually agree to sit down and write about being black and experimental. What a fool, what a fool. The genesis comes from conversations with my wife about the hip shit, the out shit, the beat shit, the pop shit. Basically any form of art is open for our withering debates. It also springs from looking at a magazine devoted to challenging, progressive musics from around the world, and seeing their top 50 list for last year. the only black americans were rappers (3) and old jazz era men (1 living, 1 dead). So i bring up this observation about the lack of a black american presence on the avant garde scene under the age of fifty just to see if maybe i’m not paying attention.

I’m constantly fed this steady stream of future thinking folks from Germany, Japan, New Zealand, U.K., Australia, Norway, etc. but when it comes to America all i hear about is the genius that is “free folk” or if it’s black it must be hip hop, or jazz (over the age of sixty / long dead). How many more articles on albert ayler do we really need? as far as hip hop being the future of black American music… well, let’s just say that the things ornette talks about, or the things butch morris talks about, or the things cecil taylor, anthony braxton, henry threadgill, etc talk about, are not the same things that any rapper or producer is talking about (with the exception of RZA, five years ago, perhaps). And believe me, i’m looking, i’m listening. I really want to eat these words.

Am i missing something or is there really no young black Avantists? My question is simply that, a question. Is there a black American avant garde under the age of fifty? I speak of the black American because that is what i am and that is what i will be no matter where i go. What does the black American musician / artist do now with the space s/he has been given? hip hop existed, jazz existed, blues existed, the rhythms of improvisation and resourcefulness are present. Also the awareness of European traditions, Asian traditions, and nature inform our approaches. Technology is within reach, the hype of the interconnectedness of individuals is here. What does the black American do with all of this?

What do we do now that sample culture is so prominent? What do we do when success comes before an actual gestation period with our materials? Will we still want to create? How many have written about the absolute need of the American artist or thinker or doer to render completely what this space and time has to offer? Emerson and Whitman laid a certain groundwork for being what and where you are and in that comes an expression which is unique. Never mind aping foreign traditions, America is still impressive in scope, scale, confidence and arrogance, and our task as artists is to report on what we see.

Another question: where is the next generation of black artists willing to go into this unknown, fertile wood to come back with the new blueprints we so desperately need? Oh, everyone is an artist and everyone wants to be famous and get in the festivals, but i wonder how much homework these people do? I don’t want to be a crab, but i thought the “giants” who came before all taught that you must find and develop your own voice. It cannot be a copy of a great that has come before, it must be yours. That is how you must contribute to the world. Over and over i seem to meet new folks and i can’t understand why they haven’t internalized this lesson? How can you love a Coltrane or Miles or Lee Perry or Sun Ra or James Baldwin or Grandmaster Flash and not see that they changed the world with their singular outlook and expression. They didn’t copy anyone. They invented new traditions on the structures and flesh and bone of old ones. New times demand new tactics. We all are influenced, yes, but to copy is the “first sin” once past a certain age. 

Now, my generation is sitting on all these jewels but it seems like so much time is wasted on how it’s gonna look, or what the people are gonna say, or with excuses: “oh i’m shopping it to the labels.” I want to see what the black American under the age of fifty is working on in terms of taking this music, this sound, forward. Beyond rock, beyond jazz, beyond electronic, beyond hip hop. I want to hear the effort that is there when looking at the future straight up. My generation is still dependent on old guard record labels and the old guard press for affirmation and that pat on the back. I think it’s time to start planting our own seeds now.

Where is the black American with a magazine dedicated to the new arts and music? Where is the black American writing the book on the art ensemble of chicago or the black artists group or don cherry? Seems we have to wait for a European to do it for us. (Although george lewis is done with his aacm history and it’s greatly anticipated.) Where is the label run by a black American dedicated to more experimental forms of music? There doesn’t seem to be any network set up to share ideas and information or just plain spiritual support. 

Ah, the spirit? Where has it gone? I might hear animated discussions about Supercollider or LISA or beats or gushings about how it is to be just off the plane from some festival in Mexico City or Helsinki or Tokyo, but never about that old dusty spirit. Spirit is what you will need during those dark years of study and practice. Spirit is what you will need when compiling your work in the solitude of a room somewhere with the knowledge that nobody knows you exist. Spirit is what you will need when you’re bringing those boxes of your CD’s up the stairs. Spirit is what you will need when time finally does catch up to you and you finally make your statement. Spirit is what you will need to keep working.

-morgan craft

since i used koko’s recent tabloidization as excuse we may as well start with her. yes she likes nipples, she uses the hand sign “nipples” as a phonetic substitute for “people” in conversation evidently, and if she watches any amount of t.v. that’s no surprise really, but she’s not just a cross-species sexual deviant. she’s a smart cookie. koko has learned more than 1,000 words in american sign language. with the death of her friend michael (more on him later) she is now the only gorilla in the world capable of communicating with us via sign language.

her story received a lot of attention and is well known. as one writer put it: “koko was more than a media curiosity. she was a living challenge to the conventional stereotype that gorillas were slow, stupid apes ambling through the forests. In her kind, soulful eyes, millions of people saw wisdom and intelligence. for the first time, they considered just how similar they were to this surprisingly charismatic creature, one of humankind’s closest relatives on earth.” some people are skeptical about koko’s abilities but as with aliens all i can say is “i want to believe.”

don’t miss koko’s scrapbook or her making mr. rogers her bitch.

this is michael, koko’s friend, who died in november of 2000 of heart disease. though michael seemed to get less attention for his signing than koko he had talents of his own. evidently michael was quite a prolific artist in his time. both koko and michael painted often but michael is described as being much more passionate about his paintings. i am particularly fond of the portrait of his dog apple, titled apple chase.

some stats about mike- vocabulary: used over 600 signs. favorite color: yellow. favorite foods: nuts, apples, peanut butter sandwiches. favorite t.v. shows: sesame street and mister rogers. favorite music: opera by luciano pavarotti. though michael was brought to the gorilla foundation as a potential mate for koko that relationship never materialized. be that as it may koko and their other pal Ndume are still mourning his loss.

next up is chantek. truth be told i came upon an article about chantek this morning which launched me into hours of googling and ultimately lead to this post. chantek is an orangutan who for all intents and purposes was brought up as a human child. quote: “Lyn raised him as a signing infant from the age of nine months, rearing him as much as possible as a human child. Lyn toilet-trained Chantek and gave him chores, like cleaning his room, and an allowance. his favorite thing to spend it on is fast food from McDonald’s, and his weight threatens to be a lifelong problem. He has ballooned to twice the weight of a normal male orangutan. If he’s granted legal rights, as Lyn would like him to be, he could join a fast-food class-action lawsuit and become not just the most verbal but the richest orang in the world.”

the article by susan antonetta in orion titled language garden (though abridged) was interesting. it poses the question does language bring us, or an orangutan, freedom? one of the most interesting tidbits of chantek’s story, to me, is the way he views himself as opposed to the non-signing orangs he lives with. quote: “chantek calls himself an orangutan person. presumably this term would refer to any orang who’d been enculturated and given language. untaught orangutans, like his cagemate sibu, he’s given the rather snide name of orange dog. He sees himself somehow as the ape in the web photo, stiff, solemn, buttoned-up as a character in planet of the apes. His title sounds exalted as well as lonely: the only one of his kind in the universe, as far as he knows.”

for a little more on chantek try science news, and the chantek foundation.

this is kusasi. his story is something right out of shakespeare or at very least dickens. i saw a documentary on this fella a few weeks back on pbs called from orphan to king a title which drives home my comparison nicely. it was a pretty great tale. a baby orangutan named kusasi was stolen by hunters who shot his mother. he was rescued by police, and brought to camp leaky an orangutan sanctuary. the head doctor noted: “usually traumatized infants are squealing, trying to cling to the… person who most resembles mother. ... kusasi didn’t behave in this way. ... what he did was, he escaped.” he was presumed dead but to everyone’s astonishment he returned 18 months later in good health and now 5 years old…

essentially kusasi the orphan goes on the become the dominant male, or “king” in shakespearean terms, of the whole area. at the time of filming kusasi was holding a tenuous grasp of his domain and had for the first time been seriously injured by a young challenger. drama! but there’s also comic relief, like when julia roberts decided she wanted to meet kusasi. only problem was kusasi is huge and ambivalent toward humans at best. “she is a celebrity though…” well as you might expect he proceeded to paw her like piece of orangutan jerky. haha! wonderful.

for more images of kusasi and his whole kingdom you can check out this camp leaky related site.

here we have a pretty lady by the name of washoe. she’s one of the most famous chimpanzees in the world. she was captured in africa as part of an air force initiative. in fact she came from the same colony that yielded ham, the first primate in space. famously washoe was the first chimpanzee to announce to the world that chimpanzees have a sense of self. While looking at her reflection in a mirror she was asked by her human companion, “Who’s that?” Without hesitation she replied, “Me, Washoe.” much like some of our other friends above washoe was taught sign language but washoe has the distinction of being the very first.

what’s most fascinating about this particular program is that since washoe chimpanzee mothers in captivity have begun to teach their own children sign language without any prompting, creating chimpanzee family groups that can speak to one another in american sign language… so crazy.

washoe’s story is recounted in the book next of kin by her teacher robert fouts. some of which is adapted at friends of washoe.

this is kanzi. he’s a bonobo and might well be called the bonobo ambassador to humanity. kanzi was essentially kidnapped from his birth mother by a dominant female. this dominant female, named matata, was brought to the language research center at georgia state to be studied. kanzi came with her. matata was put through lexigram training tasks. quote: ‘kanzi, who was always with his mother during these training sessions, either ignored them completely or interfered with them in any manner that he could invent on the spur of the moment. he did not appear interested in learning lexigrams, though he liked the lights on the keyboard and often tried to chase the symbols as they appeared on the projectors above the keyboard. the experimenters found matata’s nearly imperceptible progress as well as Kanzi’s clear disinterest quite discouraging. at this time, it appeared that bonobos were far less linguistically competent than their common chimpanzee relatives.” and this is where it gets interesting.

kanzi was intentionally weaned off of matatas milk so they could be separated at which point-  quote: kanzi much to the experimenters’ surprise, began to correctly employ nearly all of the 10 lexigrams that were on his mother’s keyboard at that time. He didn’t need to be taught these lexigrams, as he already knew them. prior to the separation, however, kanzi had given no evidence that he had even been attending to them, much less that he understood any sort of semantic connection between lexigrams and objects in his world. even more striking than the fact that kanzi knew the lexigrams was the fact that he also knew the spoken english words which the lexigrams represented. he could not speak the words, but when he heard them he could locate the lexigram, or printed symbol, that corresponded with the word.” so essentially kanzi was the first nonhuman primate to learn language the way children do - by being immersed in a language-rich environment.

as recently as 2003 kanzi was still making headlines by being the first great ape to create his own words.

many of you may recognize this guy from one of the nonist header images. his name is enos and what you might not know is that on november 29, 1961, he was launched in a nasa mercury capsule, atop an Atlas 5 rocket, to become the first primate to orbit our very own planet earth. a little factoid about this endeavor via stopsmiling magazine: the psychomotor device that powered the equipment malfunctioned in such a way that every time enos performed per the correct protocol, he was instead rewarded with the electric shocks. The ground crew resigned itself to the fact that enos wouldn’t put up with the torture he was undergoing for long and would soon re-calibrate his actions to receive the banana pellets, thus dooming the mission. However, they didn’t reckon with the bravery and the fortitude of their little guy. enos continued to pull the correct levers, even though doing so meant receiving shock after painful shock. champion!

lastly, i think this guy is worth a mention, though he wasn’t an ape-o-naut or a primate linguist. “In 1967, local villagers in Africa’s Equatorial Guinea captured a remarkable baby gorilla. This young male was unlike any gorilla the villagers had seen before; instead of the thick brown fur of most gorillas, this baby had a coat of pure white. Through a series of fortunate circumstances, the rare white gorilla ended up at the Barcelona Zoo, where he became an international star. He was given the Spanish name Copito de Nieve and the English name Snowflake.” in the fall of 2003, at over 40 years of age, snowflake passed away.

pbs has a nice little feature on him. he was often described as “grouchy” with i think is hilarious, but from everything i’ve seen he was quite a character. until i saw a blurb about him on television last week i didn’t even realize who my comments avatar was! haha.

anyhow, hope you enjoyed these fine, by and large non-sex-scandal embroiled, folk. for more scholarly information on related subjects see the links below:

machiavellian monkeys & shakespearean apes: the question of primate language.

language and the orang-utan: the old ‘person’ of the forest.

linguistic superabundance via onemonkey.org

primate language ability, a nice overview featuring many of the folks mentioned above and this specific tidbit-

Vervet Monkey DNA 92% identical DNA to humans
Gorilla DNA 96% identical DNA to humans
Chimpanzee DNA 98.5% identical to Humans
Bonobo DNA 98.7% identical to humans

the case for the personhood of gorillas.

talking with chimps featuring washoe and nim chimpsky.

apenet. a consortium dedicated to providing new living and communication solutions for enculturated great apes. i.e. letting koko and chantek have video chats.

humans, nonhumans, and personhood.

the great ape trust.

and famous monkeys through history, linked here previously but what the hell.

oh, and if you are wondering who that grizzled and wizened looking old coot in the first thumbnail is his name is marty.