Mixed Race Studies

MOsley WOtta Frontman Jason Graham to be Featured Guest on Mixed Chicks Chat

Mixed Chicks Chat (The only live weekly show about being racially and culturally mixed. Also, founders of the Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival) Hosted by Fanshen Cox, Heidi W. Durrow and Jennifer Frappier
Website: TalkShoe™ (Keywords: Mixed Chicks)
Episode: #245 – Jason Graham
When: Wednesday, 2012-02-22, 22:00Z (17:00 EST, 14:00 PST)

Jason Graham,

Steven F. Riley, Guest Host

Don’t miss this chat with Jason Graham aka MOsley WOtta—spoken word artist extraordinaire!

For more on Jason Graham, see:

• “Telling His Story, Keeping His Promises: MOsley WOtta as performer and father,” True North
• “‘MOsley WOtta’ Transcends Boundaries Of Music, Poetry And Art,” OPB News
• “MOsley WOtta,” video from Arts Beat Oregon
• “MFNW 2010: We are all MOsley WOtta,” Oregon Music News

[Note from Steven F. Riley: I’ll will be the first Mixed Roots Film & Literary Festival donor to receive the gift of guest hosting Mixed Chicks Chat]

Listen to the episode here.  Download the episode here.

The man behind the legend

Edmonton Journal
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
2012-02-14

Jay Stone, Postmedia News

BERLIN – He was a musician, a spiritual leader, a ladies’ man, a smoker of heroic amounts of ganja, a political force and a religious icon. And, 31 years after his death, Bob Marley is still a chart-topper: His Legend album sells 250,000 copies a year, even now.

“Everywhere in the world people look at Bob as some kind of leader, philosopher, prophet, someone who speaks to their lives and in whom they find wisdom,” says Scottish filmmaker Kevin Macdonald. “It’s fascinating: Why is that? Nobody else has had that effect in music.”

Macdonald directed the documentary, Marley. It’s a definitive—not to say encyclopedic—biopic of a musician who was a mystery, despite his popularity as the first poet of reggae. Almost 2 and a half hours long, it includes concert footage and interviews with friends and family. It is having its world premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival…

…The Scottish director took over the project from Jonathan Demme, who dropped out because of the lack of historical documents with which to put together a full picture. Macdonald said he became committed to it while in Uganda shooting The King of Scotland, his film about Idi Amin.

“I went into the Kampala slums with some of my actors, and people had Bob Marley pictures, graffiti, pictures,” Macdonald said. “Twenty-five years after he died, he still had a huge impact. There’s no other musician I can think of who has that position in culture, so long after he’s dead, and so far away, in a poor part of a central African city.”

He looked at the film as a kind of detective story. Much of Marley’s identity came from the fact that he was of mixed race—his mother was black, his father white—so that, in some ways, he was an outsider in his own country. Despite Macdonald’s research, however, Marley’s father, Norval, remains a mystery: There is a photograph of him in the movie, but not much information…

Read the entire article here.

MFNW 2010: We are all MOsley WOtta

Oregon Music News
2010-09-09

Aaron Brandt

Jason Graham is MOsley WOtta. So are you, and so am I. That core message of commonality is one good reason why MOWO is quickly gaining such a vast following–that, and tracks full of realistic humor, a bit of brain, and some rump-shakin’ beats.
 
Fresh from achieving local greatness by winning Last Band Standing and being voted the Best Local Band in Bend, MOsley WOtta will join an all-star lineup of Pacific Northwest acts–Shabazz Palaces, Champagne Champagne, Cloudy October, and THEESatisfaction–at MFNW on September 11th at Jimmy Mak’s. As if that pace weren’t hectic enough, he’s somehow found time to release Wake, a compilation that features the song “Boom For Real”–if you haven’t heard this one yet, check out the video below.

Let’s dive into the world of Wake and MOWO with a little Q & A, shall we?

Wake is chock-full of diverse material. We hear everything from party beats to nasal solos to interlude comedy skits–if you were given only two choices, which two “popular” artists does your music sound like a mix of?

MOWO: Somewhere between Saul Williams and Weird Al, or maybe Spearhead and Aesop Rock…

Read the entire interview here.

MOsley WOtta

Arts Beat Oregon
Oregon Public Broadcasting TV
2011

Meet hip-hop artist Jason Graham and find out why “I am MOsley WOtta and so are you!”

MOsley WOtta is a sly play-on-words meant to remind us that we are all “mostly water.” This inclusive, hip-hop reminder helps Bend-based man-behind-the-artist Jason Graham find family wherever he goes and to share his danceable message of peace and mutual support.
 
First Broadcast: 2011
Producer: Jule Gilfillan
Videographer/Editor: Tom Shrider
Audio: Randy Layton

View the video here (00:08:21)

A Philippa Schuyler moment

On an Overgrown Path
2011-08-02

John McLaughlin Williams

Philippa Schuyler. Just hearing the name takes me back to a place in my childhood I have not revisited in memory more than a couple of times in decades. Philippa Schuyler’s name was but one of dozens lodged in my parent’s large sheet music library, occupying shelf space alongside the giants and talented lesser lights of our canonic music literature. Even among those lesser lights Schuyler seemed to me an odd duck a the time, for here peering at me from the cover of the sole piece of music by her in our possession was a picture of a seven year old girl of mixed race, rather than an aged, wizened and likely bearded Caucasian man. Wasn’t that what a composer was supposed to look like?

My being a beginning pianist of about ten or eleven at the time caused me to be extremely curious about the yellowed sheets containing nine pieces of progressive difficulty penned by Schuyler between the ages of four to nine. The fact that she was considered to be an exemplar of mid-twentieth century black achievement added to her music’s mystique. My parents played piano music of timeless worth; my dad enamored of Beethoven and Brahms, my mom all quicksilver and light in Chopin and Mozart. I was learning to play Scarlatti sonatas, my mind filled with the melody and counterpoint by masters of compositional craft. I sat down to play Schuyler’s music and was immediately filled with disappointment. “This is bad”, I thought to myself! It didn’t sound like what my parents played, much less like the music I was studying. Compared with the masters Schuyler’s work seemed trite, short breathed, and to my young mind, immature. (In retrospect and in defense of Schuyler’s work, because of the unusual way in which I began to play the piano, the valuable didactic nature of these pieces eluded me completely.) I played through the music, put it away and never looked at it again. Until last week.

When Bob Shingleton asked me if I knew anything about Philippa Schuyler, I said I knew a little. That little bit comprised my early impressions of her music coupled with knowledge acquired later of her reputation as a racial role model. (I was given Kathryn Talalay’s biography of Schuyler a few years ago, but I considered her such a marginal figure that to this day I have not read it.) Remembering dimly that my mother (Mrs. Norma McLaughlin Nelson) had some sheet music by Schuyler as well as her autograph (acquired at a concert my mom attended as a child in Greensboro, North Carolina), I offered to ask my mom if she still had these items in her possession, and if so would she share them with us. Mom looked and confirmed that indeed she did, and she would. Mom sent me scans of the material that I soon forwarded to Bob. After perusing the music he asked if I might consider making an informal recording of the little pieces, and that is when my trip down memory lane began…

Read the entire article and listen to a performance of one of Schuyler’s compositions here.

Yellow Rose of Texas

The Handbook of Texas Online
Texas State Historical Association
2012-01-21

Jeffrey D. Dunn

James Lutzweiler

“The Yellow Rose of Texas,” one of the iconic songs of modern Texas and a popular traditional American tune, has experienced several transformations of its lyrics and periodic revivals in popularity since its appearance in the 1850s. The earliest published lyrics to surface to date are found in Christy’s Plantation Melodies. No. 2, a songbook published under the authority of Edwin P. Christy in Philadelphia in 1853. Christy was the founder of the blackface minstrel group known as the Christy’s Minstrels. Their shows were a popular form of American entertainment featuring white performers with burnt cork makeup portraying caricatures of blacks in comic acts, dances, and songs. The plaintive courtship-themed 1853 lyrics of “The Yellow Rose of Texas” fit the minstrel genre by depicting an African-American singer, who refers to himself as a “darkey,” longing to return to “a yellow girl,” a term used to describe a mulatto, or mixed-race female born of African-American and white progenitors. The songbook does not identify the author or include a musical score to accompany the lyrics:

There’s a yellow girl in Texas
That I’m going down to see;
No other darkies know her,
No darkey, only me;
She cried so when I left her
That it like to broke my heart,
And if I only find her,
We never more will part.

Chorus: She’s the sweetest girl of colour
That this darkey ever knew;
Her eyes are bright as diamonds,
And sparkle like the dew.
You may talk about your Dearest Mae,
And sing of Rosa Lee,
But the yellow Rose of Texas
Beats the belles of Tennessee.

Where the Rio Grande is flowing,
And the starry skies are bright,
Oh, she walks along the river
In the quiet summer night;
And she thinks if I remember
When we parted long ago,
I promised to come back again,
And not to leave her so.

Chorus: She’s the sweetest girl of colour, &c

Oh, I’m going now to find her,
For my heart is full of woe,
And we’ll sing the songs together
That we sang so long ago.
We’ll play the banjo gaily,
And we’ll sing our sorrows o’er,
And the yellow Rose of Texas
Shall be mine forever more.

Chorus: She’s the sweetest girl of colour, &c.

“Dearest Mae” and “Rosa Lee,” the only named females in the song, are the titles of two songs also appearing in Christy’s Minstrels songbooks. These songs were published earlier (1847–48) and are similar in style. Both are sung by a black man in a courtship setting with lyrics similar to those found in “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” Dearest Mae, who was from “old Carolina state,” was described as follows: “Her eyes dey sparkle like de stars, Her lips are red as beet,” and “She cried when boff [both] we parted.” Rosa Lee lived in Tennessee and had “Eyes as dark as winter night, Lips as red as berry bright.”

…In 2011 Yale Divinity School Library archivist Joan Duffy uncovered material indicating that the song’s composer might have been John Kelly, a famous minstrel banjoist, comedian, and composer who took the stage name “J. K. Campbell” in 1851 at the request of a fellow minstrel performer. According to Edward Le Roy Rice (1911), in 1859 and 1860 Campbell was working with George Christy’s Minstrels at Niblo’s Saloon in New York City under name of J. K. Edwards before changing his stage name back to J. K. Campbell. A minstrel “comic song” composed circa 1861 by “J. K. Campbell,” entitled “Ham Fat,” is similar in style to “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” One of the lines reads: “You may talk about your comfort, But Massa is the man…”…

Read the entire article here.

‘MOsley WOtta’ Transcends Boundaries Of Music, Poetry And Art

OPB News
Oregon Public Broadcasting
2011-12-30

David Nogueras, Central Oregon Correspondent
Bend, Oregon

Note from Steven F. Riley: I will be the co-host on the February 22, 2012 podcast of Mixed Chicks Chat with featured guest Jason Graham.

It’s been a good year for Bend’s MOsley WOtta.  The hip-hop group played shows around the state, opening for acts such as Ice Cube and Tricky.  The band plans to close out this year with a New Year’s Eve show in Bend. That’s where the band will unveil its third official release, titled Amalgum X. Bend isn’t typically thought of for it’s hip hop scene. But MOsley WOtta isn’t your typical hip hop group.

“No matter where you come from, what era you come from, there is some kind of music inside of hip hop that will grab you,” says Bend artist MOsley WOtta.

“Light skin, blue blood, gentlemen and ladies, girls and boys, this is that love, pain, grow, if you are living and breathing right now.  You know exactly what I’m talking about.” MOsley WOtta is the alter ego of 28 year old Jason Graham.  It’s also the band that Graham fronts…

…“I think he’s a classic artist, a classic creative brain.  You might meet artists and creative people who are introverted or socially awkward.  This is not that case,” says Salmon. Up on stage, Jason Graham is in his comfort zone.   But growing up biracial in the 1980 he says he’s always kind of felt as if he lived between worlds.  He was born in what he describes as a somewhat rough neighborhood in Chicago and moved to Bend at age 9.  These days he’s tough to miss.  He’s tall, lanky and exudes energy.   Graham says sometimes people don’t quite know what to make of him.

“Maybe people come up and they’re like so are you Mexican?  Are you Filipino?  Indian right?  That is just like with the music, I do see a total correlation there.  Between it’s like well it’s not exactly one thing.  And it never will be one thing, cause I’m not one thing,” says Graham…

Read the entire article here.  Listen to the audio here (00:04:54).

Johnny Otis, ‘Godfather of Rhythm and Blues,’ Dies at 90

New York Times
2012-01-19

Ihsan Taylor

Johnny Otis, the musician, bandleader, songwriter, impresario, disc jockey and talent scout often called “the godfather of rhythm and blues,” died on Tuesday at his home in Altadena, Calif. He was 90.

His death was confirmed by his manager, Terry Gould.

Leading a band in the late 1940s that combined the high musical standards of big-band jazz with the raw urgency of gospel music and the blues, Mr. Otis played a key role in creating a new sound for a new audience of young urban blacks, a sound that within a few years would form the foundation of rock ’n’ roll.

With his uncanny ear for talent, he helped steer a long list of performers to stardom, among them Etta James, Jackie Wilson, Esther Phillips and Big Mama Thornton — whose hit recording of “Hound Dog,” made in 1952, four years before Elvis Presley’s, was produced by Mr. Otis and featured him on drums.

…Despite being a mover and shaker in the world of black music, Mr. Otis was not black, a fact that as far as he was concerned was simply an accident of birth. He was immersed in African-American culture from an early age and considered himself, he said, “black by persuasion.”

“Genetically, I’m pure Greek,” he told The San Jose Mercury News in 1994. “Psychologically, environmentally, culturally, by choice, I’m a member of the black community.”…

Read the entire obituary here.

Mix Up, Mix Up: Reviewing Bob Marley as the Militant Mulatto

University of Miami
Fall 2011
ENG 106 R4/S4

Rachel Panton, Lecturer of English

In lieu of what would have been Bob Marley’s 66th birthday, we will explore the impact of Rastafari on the life and music of Marley, and on other contemporary Roots Reggae artists. We will also discuss the history of Marley’s mixed-race heritage and the ways in which race influenced his music and being. Students will be encouraged to investigate these issues, as well as develop their own inquiries about this mystical legend.

A Jazz Celebration – Remembering the Life of Philippa Schuyler

Southbank Centre
London, England
The Clore Ballroom
2012-01-27, 17:30Z

The Abram Wilson Quartet

Charismatic New Orleans trumpeter and vocalist Abram Wilson debuts original music inspired by the life of the Harlem born, mixed race classical piano prodigy, Philippa Schuyler, who died tragically young in 1967.

Wilson and his band of musicians explore new compositional ground with music ranging from the roughest blues to the most melodic swing. Soulful trumpet playing complements the vocals as Wilson tells the sensitive story of an extraordinary and gifted musician’s troubled life.

With a band featuring Alex Davies (bass), Dave Hamblett (drums) and Reuben James (piano), the multi-award winning Wilson has created a unique style of melodic compositions that swing and groove. His sound is reminiscent of Freddie Hubbard, Miles Davis and Wynton Marsalis.

For more information, click here.