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From SeeingBlack.com Movies/TV
Broadcasting While Black offers a compelling snapshot of the heady days of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements when the desire for many factions within Black America to tell their story came to fruition via public affairs broadcasting on stations such as WNET in New York City, WGBH in Boston and WTTW in Chicago. Among the signature shows produced in the late 1960s were "Black Journal" ("Tony Brown's Journal"), "Soul!" and "Say Brother" ("Basic Black"), which is the longest running program of its type in the country. Many of these programs were informed by a distinctly local perspective, as was the case with Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant, which was produced by current WNET-producer Charles Hobson. Years before it was largely known by the phrase "Bed-Stuy, do or die," Bedford Stuyvesant was one of the most densely populated and vibrant black enclaves in the country, counting Shirley Chisholm (the first black woman elected to congress), the late Christopher Wallace, Mike Tyson, NBA hall-of-famer Lenny Wilkins, Shawn Carter, Chris Rock and (strangely enough) Michael Jordan among its natives. Inside Bedford Stuyvesant was co-hosted by Roxie Roker a few years before she became more famously known as "Helen Willis" and the mother of Lenny Kravitz. The Broadcasting While Black site includes rather arresting footage of the Leroi Jones Young Spirit House Movers and Players , a group of Black Nationalist inspired teens and tweens (a preview into the "generation next" that would sustain the nascent hip-hop movement before corporate intervention) performing spoken word poetry. Also included is a frank interview and discussion with Harry Belafonte, that could be as relevant today as it was in 1968 when it was first broadcast. Among the most ambitious programs produced during this era was "Soul!" which was produced and hosted by Ellis Haizlip, one of the great and largely forgotten cultural forces in the late 1960s and 1970s. Largely an arts program, Soul! presented an intimate view of the processes of black artists, making little distinction between so-called low-brow and high brow expression. During its five-year run from 1968-1973 the series featured appearances by pianist Billy Taylor, Patti Labelle and the Bluebelles, Betty Shabazz, Redd Foxx, Julius Lester, James Baldwin, The Last Poets, Inez Andrews, John Oliver Killens, Junior Walker and the Allstars, King Curtis (who served as musical director until his murder in 1971), Herbie Hancock, Nikki Giovanni, Jayne Cortez, Esther Phillips, Odetta, Queen Mother Moore, Victor Hernandez Cruz, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, and Melvin Van Peebles, easily establishing the show's archives as a portal into the most eclectic collection of "Negroes" imaginable. The show's content was driven by Haizlip, who imagined a world of blackness that was arguably far more progressive than even contemporary representations of blackness hope to be. As author and scholar Gayle Wald acknowledges, "Guided by Haizlip, an out gay black man, "Soul!" offered viewers radical ways of imagining--of hearing, feeling, and seeing--black community." In one of the real treats that the Broadcasting While Black project offers is the availability of six full episodes of Soul!, with the promise of several more being made available in the near future. Among the episodes currently available are those which feature an early incarnation of Earth, Wind and Fire (with female vocalist Jessica Cleaves still in the mix), Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Tito Puente and Willie Colon (hosted by original Last Poet and Young Lords founder Felipe Luciano) and an amazing and intimate portrait of a very young Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson. Though public broadcasting remains a difficult terrain for the presentation of Blackness, as NPR's recent cancellation of "News & Notes" suggest, there's no denying its enduring legacy with regard to complicating Black identity. As University of Washington Professor Habiba Ibrahim admits, "Over the last forty years--before the days of the Internet--[public broadcasting] has been the site where truly innovative work on Black cultural politics had a provisional home. The independent film series P.O.V. provided my first exposure to Marlon Riggs' Color Adjustment, and Tongues Untied; I was still a young teenager when I saw these films, and their impact was powerful." One of public television's great success stories, for example, is the Children's Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop), whose signature program, "Sesame Street," will celebrate the 40th anniversary of its debut in November of this year. During its first decade, "Sesame Street" was an important site for a mainstream presentation of Blackness, and diversity more broadly, that wasn't confrontational or controversial. Indeed, programs like Sesame Street and The Electric Company (another production of the Children's Television Workshop) are a testament as to why public broadcasting matters and why it's also been important to national conversations about race, ethnicity and difference. The folk at Thirteen/WNET are to be commended for continuing this vision. Click here to post a comment or your own review of "Broadcasting While Black” Read and search hundreds of reviews on SeeingBlack.com's Movies/TV channel and archive. You can order Esther Iverem's critically praised We Gotta Have It: Twenty Years of Seeing Black at the Movies, 1986-2006 (Thunder’s Mouth Press, April 2007)at Amazon.com or purchase at your favorite bookstore. It makes a wonderful gift! Thanks! Do you shop at Amazon? Please shop through our link and support SeeingBlack.com! © Copyright by SeeingBlack.com |
