All posts filed under: Represent

MC Elis – 6 year old Brazilian musical artist

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This young girl is over here singing about: Loving her natural hair: it’s NOT dry/hard, it’s her crown as a queen Being sick of racism Pride in her Blackness: referring to herself explicitly as Black (preta) rather than one of the endless other terms that refer to color (mulata, moreninha) but try to maintain distance from being of African descent. Also, peep the black panther on her shirt! Go dance with Elis! LYRICS Vem dançar com a elis Vem dançar com a elis Aqui não tem caô Só chegar e ser feliz Eu já estou cansada Dessa ideia de racismo Eu não tô de mimimi Fale o que quiser nem ligo O meu cabelo não é duro Ele é crespo e muito lindo Vou passar logo a visão Tá incomodado comigo? Vem dançar com a elis Vem dançar com a elis Aqui não tem caô Só chegar e ser feliz E não venha com esse papo de mulata e moreninha Sou preta com muito orgulho Minha coroa é de rainha (Note: some of they lyrics …

Book 7: Zami: A New Spelling of My Name–Audre Lorde

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Admission: I added Audre Lorde to my list of Black women authors to read because I thought I should stop silently nodding my head in agreement whenever someone referenced her during conversation so I could avoid having to admit that I’d actually never read any of her work, and finally be able to critically engage in those discussions. There are certain authors that are required reading when you go to a school like Oberlin, and you sound like a fool when you don’t know them. Lorde is one of them. I wasn’t sure what I was going to get reading Zami. I chose this book rather than her other works because I remember getting emails from/about the student organization of the same name while at Oberlin. An organization that was for LGBTQ+ students of color that engaged in political activism and published a magazine (Zami Zine). I won’t say I breezed through this book like I have the previous few I’ve read on my 30 to 30 list, but I did finish feeling like I’d …

Black National Anthem

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For whatever reason, yesterday morning I may have spent over an hour watching different youtube versions of the Black National Anthem aka Lift Every Voice and Sing. I guess I was looking for that perfect version: one that wasn’t too fast, that was arranged in parts instead of just singing the basic melody, one that had a good amount of bass in it, and one that played a specific musical phrase with what I consider to be the correct note even if it’s not the one commonly played (that’s pretty vague but barring my filming a video of myself singing the difference, you’re just gonna have to go with that explanation). Anyway, I never found that perfect version, but of the ones I did find one rose to the top as my favorite. While in this rabbit hole of song versions, I came across a lot of very…let’s just say, interesting, ones. The 70s and 80s produced some interesting video productions of Lift Every Voice and Sing. Some of them were just fun re-interpretations, and …