Sunday, July 20, 2014
Marvin X will autograph books at the Blues, Brews & BBQ, Monterey Bay
Marvin X will autograph books at the Blues fest this weekend, Saturday & Sunday, July 26-27, 2014.
He will be at the Post Newspaper booth. Check him out!
Crazy House Blues
by Marvin X
You in da nut house baby
but you still wanna say
you ain't crazy
You in da nut house baby
but still say ya ain't crazy
You in denial baby
please take yo medication
you in denial baby
please take yo medication
listen ta ya doctor
enjoy yo vacation
talk ta yaself
in da middle of da night
talk ta yaself baby
in da middle of da night
tell yaself baby
everyting go be all ite
I be here when ya git out
I'm all da way down faya
I be here when ya git out
I'm all da way down faya
when ya come baby
I'm just go love ya
just know one thang baby
ma love is true
just know one thang baby
ma love is true
Git yaself tagether
so we can do what we gotta do
Git yaself tagether
so we can do what we gotta do.
I'm out here hustling'
trying ta make a dime
I'm out here hustling
tryin ta make a dime
You can help me
if you can
you can help me
be a better man.
Ya love is good gul
make a old man do a flip
ya love is good gul
make a old man do a flip
If me and you was on the Titanic
We wouldn't even jump ship
If me and you was on the Titanic
we wouldn't even jump ship
We go down lovin gul
ta hell wit da ship
We go down lovin gul
ta hell wit da sinking ship.
--Marvin X
7/18/14
Marvin X with the Black Arts Movement Poets Choir and Arkestra, Malcolm X Jazz Festival, Oakland, May 17, 2014 (David Murray on sax, Earl Davis on trumpet)
Country Woman Blues
for ma man, Bobby Womack, RIP
I'm down here in da country
grape vines down the street
don't worry bout nothing
country people got everything ta eat
down here in da country
grape vines down the street
lookin fa a country woman
ain't worried bout nothing ta eat!
got plenty henny too
ain't worried bout nothing
when dat country gul come through
she say daddy I wanna to be wit you
wherever you are
city or country
cause I know you a star
Love dat country woman
so sweet so true
just treat her nice
she'll be there fa you
she just wanna laugh
please don't make her cry
she just wanna laugh
please don't make her cry
she'll be witya
til the day ya die!
--Marvin X
City Woman Blues
I loveya baby
but ya just too crazy fa me
I loveya baby
but ya just too crazy fa me
go on back where ya came from
I'll see ya when I see
took ya all round world
you still wanna act a fool
took ya all round world
but ya still wanna act a fool
go on back where ya came from
need to go back ta school.
--Marvin X
Country Woman Blues
for ma man, Bobby Womack, RIP
I'm down here in da country
grape vines down the street
don't worry bout nothing
country people got everything ta eat
down here in da country
grape vines down the street
lookin fa a country woman
ain't worried bout nothing ta eat!
got plenty henny too
ain't worried bout nothing
when dat country gul come through
she say daddy I wanna to be wit you
wherever you are
city or country
cause I know you a star
Love dat country woman
so sweet so true
just treat her nice
she'll be there fa you
she just wanna laugh
please don't make her cry
she just wanna laugh
please don't make her cry
she'll be witya
til the day ya die!
--Marvin X
City Woman Blues
I loveya baby
but ya just too crazy fa me
I loveya baby
but ya just too crazy fa me
go on back where ya came from
I'll see ya when I see
took ya all round world
you still wanna act a fool
took ya all round world
but ya still wanna act a fool
go on back where ya came from
need to go back ta school.
--Marvin X
Angela Davis, Marvin X, Sonia Sanchez, Oakland CA, 2014
Marvin X and Amiri Baraka, RIP
Rev. Blandon Reems, Aries Jordan, Toya Carter and Marvin X on a visit to Alameda County Juvenile Hall
Marvin X at rally for Palestine, Seattle WA, July 13, 2014
Black Bird Press News & Review: Poems for Palestine, Egypt, Syria by Marvin X and Mohja Kahf
Black Bird Press News & Review: Poems for Palestine, Egypt, Syria by Marvin X and Mohja Kahf
Marvin X at rally for Palestine, Seattle WA, 2014
Dr. Mohja Kahf says this chapbook is the beginning of Muslim American literature, 1968
Dr. Cornel West and Marvin X
Marvin X interviewing his friend, Amiri Baraka, Santa Fe New Mexico, Lannan Foundation, 2009
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Theatre Review: Love Balm For My Spiritchild
I attended the performance of the play Love Balm for my spirit child at San Francisco's Brava Theatre.
Painful. Disgusting. Traumatic. Mothers giving manhood training to boyz. Surely we know mother has done a grand job, and yet it is a utter failure, even though I am the product of manhood training by my mother. Don't you know she did all she could do, but by the eleventh grade I was so out of control Mama put me in a rooming house to get me out of her house and her business. After all, she had had three additional children by another man since she and my dad separated and divorced. But like Boyz in the Hood, I was all in my mama's business and she put me out of her nest.
I guess Mom was busy and so was I: she had her last child, Tommy, almost the same time I had my first child, Marvin. My son and my young brother, grew up as brothers.
So Brava Theatre, Love Balm for my Spiritchild. Poetic, sometimes abstract, but Ayodele can make the abstract sound good, and yet her life is so much in the moment. She didn't know I was in the theatre, but I saw every minute of the play. She was the major player, the diva, as always. No one can out shine Ayodele on stage. It is not only the power of her voice, her mastering of theatre craft, her being mentored by Marvin X, no, it is Ayo herself, under her own power, yet ever conscious of elders and ancestors.
But this was a group effort, so clearly a demonstration of the tragedy of our times, although Diop said there can be no African tragedy only tragicomedy. And I heard the tragicomedy in this production. But imagine one male dancer represented the male gender of a nation of people. So wonderful to see male dancers, so wonderful to see how the hip hop generation has incorporated their choreography into modern dance, alas, African dance--modern dance will never admit it's African contribution. Ask Katheran Dunham.
The story line was utterly depressing, Mothers weeping over sons shot dead by the police. For me, I have been dealing with white racists killing young black men since Emmitt Till, then Denzill Dowel in Richmond that gave birth to the Black Panther Party. Then Little Bobby Hutton, shot down in cold blood by the OPD, then fifteen year old Melvin Black, which we addressed in a rally at the Oakland Auditorium with Minister Farrakhan, Angela Davis, Eldridge Cleaver, Marvin X, et al., 1979
Alas, the police of killing of black men stopped, then started the drive by killings. I found myself in a group of mothers who had lost their sons in drive by killings. I was overwhelmed and dropped out of the group. Tonight I was again confronted with those mothers, weeping, mourning, dancing, sharing, embracing, loving the lost they shared. Great choreography or call it direction, but great. And I cannot say enough about the male dancer. Let him dance and tell the story of his brothers. Somebody hep me!
--Marvin X
Friday, July 18, 2014
Crazy House Blues
You in da nut house baby
but you still wanna say
you ain't crazy
You in da nut house baby
but still wanna say ya ain't crazy
You in denial baby
please take yo medication
you in denial baby
please take yo medication
listen ta ya doctor
enjoy yo vacation
talk ta yaself
in da middle of da night
talk ta yaself baby
in da middle of da night
tell yaself
everyting go be all ite
I be here when ya git out
I'm all da way down faya
I be here when ya git out
I'm all da way down faya
just know one thang
ma love is true
just know one thang baby
ma love is true
Git yaself tagether
so we can do what we gotta do
Git yaself tagether
so we can do what we gotta do.
I'm out here hustling'
trying ta make a dime
I'm out here hustling
tryin ta make a dime
You can help me
if you can
you can help me
be a better man.
Ya love is good gul
make a old man do a flip
ya love is good gul
make a old man do a flip
If me and you was on the Titanic
We wouldn't even jump ship
If me and you was on the Titanic
we wouldn't even jump ship
We go down lovin gul
ta hell wit da ship
We go down lovin gul
ta hell wit da sinking ship.
--Marvin X
7/18/14
Four boys dead from airstrike on Gaza beach
GAZA CITY — My day here began at 6 a.m. Photographing something as unpredictable as war still has a routine.
It is important to be out the door at first light to document the destruction of the last night’s bombings. By midmorning, I check in at the hospital’s morgue to see if families have come to pick up the dead for burial.
When the routine is broken, it is because things can go horribly wrong in an instant. That is how it happened in Libya in 2011, when three colleagues and I were taken captive by government soldiers and our driver was killed.
On Wednesday, that sudden change of fortune came to four young Palestinian boys playing on a beach in Gaza City.
I had returned to my small seaside hotel around 4 p.m. to file photos to New York when I heard a loud explosion. My driver and I rushed to the window to see what had happened. A small shack atop a sea wall at the fishing port had been struck by an Israeli bomb or missile and was burning. A young boy emerged from the smoke, running toward the adjacent beach.
I grabbed my cameras and was putting on body armor and a helmet when, about 30 seconds after the first blast, there was another. The boy I had seen running was now dead, lying motionless in the sand, along with three other boys who had been playing there.
By the time I reached the beach, I was winded from running with my heavy armor. I paused; it was too risky to go onto the exposed sand. Imagine what my silhouette, captured by an Israeli drone, might look like as a grainy image on a laptop somewhere in Israel: wearing body armor and a helmet, carrying cameras that could be mistaken for weapons. If children are being killed, what is there to protect me, or anyone else?
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