Time and the Choices we make

Dear friends,

In The Character Of Physical Law, author Richard P. Feynman explains, "Remorse and regret and hope and so forth are all words which distinguish perfectly obviously the past and the future". Moreover, whatever remorse or regret one has from the past, s/he shouldn't waste time getting stuck in the past, because no one can resolve, much less undo, the past.

However, one can look to the future and act accordingly by having hope inside of one's self. Because having that type of emotional factor (hope) attached to his or her choices, as all choices are accompanied by emotional factors like greed and envy or generosity and kindness, one can move forward in life with a positive attitude towards one's self, life itself, and other people. Otherwise, one ends up suffering from any number of addictions, since an addict is a person who allows, especially, the emotional factor of greed to overshadow any feelings of remorse or regret. So s/he remains stuck in the past.

G. Djata Bumpus Read full post

Black Music Month and Our Contributions to the World!!!

Dear Friends,

During Black Music Month, we should remember that, to be sure, for African peoples everywhere, being musicians has been part of Our cultural and psychic structures or internal labor processes, for millennia or scores of grandmothers' lifetimes. Lorenzo Johnston Greene further confirmed this assertion in his timeless book, The Negro In Colonial New England, "Zelah, a Negro of Groton, Massachusetts, who later fought in the American Revolution, became famous in his neighborhood as a musician." Greene also refers to Newport Gardner, "...the slave of Caleb Gardner of Newport, Rhode Island, was given music lessons. He soon excelled his teacher and later opened a music school of his own on Pope Street where he taught both Negroes and white persons." (Certainly, the music school that Gardner opened was made possible after he had freed himself from chattel slavery. Greene indicates that, a little more than 200 years or four grandmothers ago, Gardner "purchased" the liberty of himself and most of his family members after winning two thousand dollars in a lottery.)

The trend of African American musicians has continued since those colonial days, with African American musicians still having major influence on the music of which North Americans like to listen. In Amherst, Massachusetts the now late Ruth Goodwin remembers Mr. Arthur Andrews, a pianist who, she says, was without an equal. the now late Bill Russell, whose family has owned the liquor store in the center of the town for decades, recalls that, during World War II era, his father hired a local African American music group, the Roberts Brothers, to play at the elder Russell's 25th wedding anniversary. Today, Amherst's two colleges and its state university (UMass) boast to have had some of the most respected music professors/musicians in the world, from a variety of musical genres, but particularly those artists who play Black classical music (some of which is often called "jazz". - legendary musical giants with names like Archie Shepp, Max Roach, Yusef Lateef, Clarence Horace Boyer, Ray Copeland, Billy Taylor, and Fred Tillis, to name a few, and all of whom I know have known (because there are now deceased) personally. The aforementioned schools also
had such visitors as Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, Mary Lou Williams, Hugh Masakela, Modern Jazz Quartet, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon and the list goes on and on.

G. Djata Bumpus Read full post

Elaine Brown - A Woman of the People!!!

Dear friends

My old comrade Elaine Brown always keeps it real, unlike Angela Davis, the former Communist Party member (she was never a Black Panther) who, although it's kept real quiet these days, along with Jim Jones of the People's Temple cult group, by giving the latter strong support, helped lead hundreds of African American people to their slaughter in Guyana, Elaine Brown, on the other hand, has consistently fought for both the empowerment and enrichment of life for African American people, for a half-century. As you'll see on the link below, she has never either made excuses or apologized for that!

Liberation!

G. Djata Bumpus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NmT2hCqv-Q Read full post