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Do you remember when Lauryn Hill dropped "Black Rage" in 2012 and then re-mixed it as a new song-sketch in 2014... from her living room in dedication to the uprising in Ferguson? Do you remember where you were and what you were doing in August 2014 when J. Cole released "Be Free"... dedicated on soundcloud “to every young black man murdered in America”? Did you check in when Killer Mike uploaded his essay about Ferguson to his instagram account? (And peeped his Graffitis SWAG Barbershop style)? Or did you watch and listen as he urged countless black citizens to move all of their savings and checking accounts to black-owned banks in summer of 2016, to the astonishment of every major news outlet when black communities did just that!? Were you moved by the content, the style, the moments, the language? Do you want to know more? If so, this course is for you! Welcome to: Word is Bond: African American Language and Performance.
Who would have ever predicted that the very title of this class, WORD IS BOND, a title that was created in April of 2016, would have gained such national attention by July, just three months later? Perhaps, you missed it and don’t know or remember the infamous incident. Here is how it went down. In 2008, the first lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention on behalf of her husband’s bid for the presidential nomination. Here is what she had to say: “Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values, that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do . . . And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values, and pass them on to the next generation. Because we want our children – and all children in this nation – to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.” Now fast-forward to 2016, eight years later, when we heard those words again, except this time in the message of Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, at the Republican National Convention in support of her husband’s bid as the 2016 Republican candidate for president. Here is what Melania Trump said: “From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond and you do
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About the soundtrack now playing:"Underground Is My Home" introduces the current course in progress: WORD IS BOND--- African American Language and Performance. Considered an anthem for Gospel-House enthusiasts, "Underground is My Home" is featured prominently in Rennie Harris's "Home," a theatrical performance by the Alvin Ailey dancers to commemorate World AIDS Day and the brilliance of Alvin Ailey. Here are the lyrics that inspire us: "deep, deep where the sun don't shine is a place that I call home, where the planetary alignment is right and the deejay cuts out the lights, deeeeep is where I'm home." The notion and naming of an underground--- a radical, unencumbered space where black imagination and full embodiment can be free--- resonates through African American culture, so much so that we can consider it a central vernacular expression and part of African American language. Here are just a few instances with considerable hold on the black imagination: the Underground Railroad, the digital underground, the underground in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, underground Hip Hop... the list goes on. These lyrics--- this entire thumpin celebration--- seem appropriate for this college course that focuses on African American vernacular expressions, language, and performance. There will be little support or encouragement for students to take such a class in college, to center African American vernacular in what we do and how we survive as an intellectual and radical endeavor, or to write about it with fervor and conviction in 21st century digital spaces like we will do in this course. Welcome to the Underground... where we will find HOME!
TO
This website was created in spring of 2016 in a graduate course at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (GC/CUNY) called FUNKDAFIED: African American Literacies & Education (the 20th and 21st Centuries). The site began with a focus on African American literacies. In fall of 2016, the site will build in undergraduate students examining African American language and performance. For more about how to use this site, click here.
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what you say and keep your promise . . . That you treat people with respect. They taught and showed me values and morals in their daily life. That is a lesson that I continue to pass along to our son, and we need to pass those lessons on to the many generations to follow, because we want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.” Strangely enough, Melania Trump’s words are almost identical to Michelle Obama’s. Could this just be coincidence? The answer is emphatically no. In colleges today, we call this plagiarism and if you make that kind of “coincidental mistake,” there is a whole administrative procedure that WILL BE waged against you including the possibilities of: failing the assignment, failing/repeating the class, facing disciplinary action from the college’s review board, or meeting with top-level administrators at your college to confess and redress your cardinal sins. Plagiarism is serious business at any college today given the easy accessibility that everyone has to previously published and/or public information; every college in the U.S.A. has a lengthy policy that you are expected to know and understand. So regardless of whether or not you agreed with, felt sorry for, or dismissed the seriousness of the allegation of plagiarism against Melania Trump, you can be sure you will NEVER be automatically forgiven or even gently cajoled if you do something like this in your work for any college class.
There’s more to the story here than the Trumps’s mere bypassing of the redress expectations after plagiarism that everyone else is susceptible to. This is also a story about black cultural appropriation and undergirds how and why Michelle Obama’s self proclaimed legacy of her word as her bond is one that only she could make given her own black sociocultural background. “Word is Bond” has a rich epistemology in African American history. It might best be characterized as the urban shortcode for the concept of NOMMO, an important concept for you to understand from the very onset of this class. Nommo is an African word derived from the Bantu language that denotes the magical power of words to cause change. The concept of nommo means that the very acts of naming, speaking, and using language are sacred acts. It is NOT coincidence that an African-centered cultural understanding gets articulated by people of African descent across the African Diaspora today. You hear the re-mix all the time in expressions like: "word up" or when people just say "WORD!/ WORD?" (when can be an exclamation or a question, depending on intonation, and as such dictates the response). It is this concept of nommo that animates this class. The histories of race and the cultural experiences of black people in the western world have specific meanings for the ways language gets used. There are never any mistakes and there are never any coincidences.
There’s more to the story here than the Trumps’s mere bypassing of the redress expectations after plagiarism that everyone else is susceptible to. This is also a story about black cultural appropriation and undergirds how and why Michelle Obama’s self proclaimed legacy of her word as her bond is one that only she could make given her own black sociocultural background. “Word is Bond” has a rich epistemology in African American history. It might best be characterized as the urban shortcode for the concept of NOMMO, an important concept for you to understand from the very onset of this class. Nommo is an African word derived from the Bantu language that denotes the magical power of words to cause change. The concept of nommo means that the very acts of naming, speaking, and using language are sacred acts. It is NOT coincidence that an African-centered cultural understanding gets articulated by people of African descent across the African Diaspora today. You hear the re-mix all the time in expressions like: "word up" or when people just say "WORD!/ WORD?" (when can be an exclamation or a question, depending on intonation, and as such dictates the response). It is this concept of nommo that animates this class. The histories of race and the cultural experiences of black people in the western world have specific meanings for the ways language gets used. There are never any mistakes and there are never any coincidences.
To read more about Funkdafied, click here. For the African American Literacies syllabus, click here.
