Jazzanine

Soul Train , the televised presentation of ‘70s-‘90s music and dance, is a much beloved, iconic symbol of culture in the world of not just R&B music, but popular music around the globe. My recollection of my teen years is filled with memories of gathering around the TV set in our Bronx apartment for the absolutely necessary weekly half hour of live performances by Black America’s hottest acts, funky dance moves performed by enthusiastic teenagers, and host and founder Don Cornelius’ unflappable cool. To relive these memories, hear those sounds, and enjoy a great oceangoing vacation sounded like a good bet – and that’s the premise of this particular cruise experience. You get the fabulousness of cruising to fantastic vacation locales, mixed with the nostalgia and musical excellence of the Soul Train brand. I’d wanted to go on the cruise since it was first introduced; was even offered an opportunity to go back in 2014 but couldn’t get the time off. But thank the Lord, praise th...

Times are tough. Many baby boomers I know are struggling to stay level in a topsy turvy universe. They are being edged out of their jobs by younger workers willing to work for less. Struggling to launch children into adulthood. Trying to help their parents with health and housing issues. Trying to maintain their own mental and physical health. All while watching the daily nightmare news from Washington with increasing dismay. Earlier this week, surveying my own troublesome situation, I reached back in my mind for a song lyric to both sum up the issue and encourage me (I often think and communicate in song lyrics). I thought first of Tupac's "Keep Your Head Up," and also Soul II Soul's "Keep On Moving," but being a baby boomer I went even further back to a 1972 rock anthem by a one-hit wonder called Argent. The song, "Hold Your Head Up," had the lyrics I was seeking in the moment (though it has an overlong instrumental break with an insipid and d...

I joined Billboard in November 1987 as a copyeditor. It was a big step backward, careerwise, moneywise, as I’d already been a section editor at Essence . But I’d made a brief misstep by leaving the magazine to double my paycheck as a public information officer at the New York City Housing Authority, a job I learned to hate very quickly. I was desperate to get out of City government and lucked up on the Billboard editorial support position. It was a great move for me, because all I was interested in then was music and writing. I’d worked for NYCHA for a grand total of 90 days when I turned in my resignation. Nelson George was editor of the Black Music section, a part-timer who came into the office at 1515 Broadway to open his mail, turn in his stories and conduct other business. We’d met first at Essence , where he was a frequent contributor. Now that I was at Billboard , we sat on the same cubicle aisle. He made sure that I was usually the one to copyedit his stories because I...

A month or so ago, I had this really weird dream. I'll spare you the bizarre, surreal details, except this one: Me and Kevin Costner standing in a Wells Fargo way station. (I know, just go with it.) I had just taken out a cigarette; Kevin thought it was for him and took it from me, but then he saw that it was a Virginia Slim or Benson & Hedges -- something menthol, at any rate, long and skinny, from my real-life smoking past -- so he flipped it and stuck it in my mouth with a smirk. I reached in my pocket and pulled out an oversized pack of Marlboros in the red and white carton and he took one. It was like this funny little personal moment of comedy between us. Then he took a silver fliptop lighter and lit us both up. In the dream that cigarette was so good! I haven't had an entire tobacco cigarette since the '90s. But that sent me on a total reverie about my smoking past. I smoked cigarettes on and off for at least 20 to 25 years, surprisingly. In the 1970s black...

Tomorrow is Election Day. I am trying hard not to panic, to be overstimulated, over-involved. I did not watch the second Trump/Clinton debate in real time, because I knew that it would agitate and terrify me, and I wanted to get a decent night's sleep. But I did watch and re-watch the footage, the eye-rubbing spectacle of a grown man lurking and hulking behind the nation's first female candidate as though he both couldn't bear to have the camera off of him for a moment and that he was poised to strike, adder-like, at his opponent from behind. I watched the third debate, with ever-widening eyes, as the Republican candidate continued to approach what should be reasoned political discourse as though it were a 5th grade playground standoff ("Wrong! Wrong!" "Such a nasty woman!") And so my terror deepened, and in the intervening weeks leading to tomorrow's finale, I have been engaging in mindful soothing techniques designed to detach me from the proce...

I’m working a desk job in Washington, D.C., these days, doing what I spent much of my career doing: Writing. But three years ago I was employed at a major department store, putting in 30 hours a week. It was my only source of income at the time. While there is nothing remarkable in that – hundreds of people earn a living that way – it was remarkable for me . I’m a writer. I’ve written and edited at consumer and trade magazines, websites, and radio syndicators. Editor at Billboard. Editor at Essence. Daily news writer for syndicated radio. Interviewed major recording artists and other notables and celebritiess. That’s been my gig: A computer, a phone, a notebook and a microphone. But in November of 2012, my situation got tight. I’d moved from California to Virginia to be closer to family, and during that time I struggled to find meaningful, full-time work. I was in the wrong market, but couldn’t move again. Desperate to tide myself over, I swallowed my pride and filled out an applica...

Ah, the daily commute! One of the necessary evils of working in a big city. I grew up in NYC and since the age of 12 was riding the subway a minimum of twice a day, so I knew the system and I knew the ropes: Move quickly, don’t block anybody’s way, be aware of your surroundings, use common sense. And you could ride anywhere in the system for a standard fare. NYC was dirty and there was crime and it wasn’t perfect, but it was an efficient system that set my expectations for how a city’s transit system should be. Admittedly I have been gone from the daily NYC grind for 20 years, and I’m obviously older, so my perspective may be skewed. But despite the Washington Metro being named the Number One public transit system in the U.S. by a firm called SmartAsset (should be called SmartAss), I’ve been in the VA-DC-MD area for four years now and this is not my experience. Riders are throwing in the towel and going back to driving (if I had better night vision for driving I probably would, too)....

The recent New York Times Sunday Magazine story, “ The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn’t ,” uses some broad government labor statistics and anecdotes from a handful of creative artists to make the misleading and specious argument that the Internet has been a boon for creative artists. In arguing that art survives despite technology, the piece blithely ignores the fact that many creative professionals themselves have been devastated by it. Creators within the music community are finding it more difficult than ever to make a living at their craft, and much of that difficulty is directly traced to Internet-based music services that don’t compensate them fairly for use of their work. The digital revolution that began in the ‘90s ushered in an era of devaluation for intellectual property across a range of industries. As the article rightly points out, consumers expect music – and movies, magazines, and news coverage -- to be free or nearly free, and the Internet feeds that expectation. ...

The following is a creative piece I wrote while completing my MFA. Justine The daughter I do not have is named Justine. Her name aligns with the proliferation of names beginning with “J” that pepper the leaves on my family tree. I picked out her name long ago, almost since I could read, and I am hopeful that when she grows she will be judicious and wise as her name implies. Justine looks at me with golden eyes. I plait her long, brown, kinky-curly, fine hair into two skeins, one over each shoulder, the way I wore mine when I was a child. But I won’t turn the braided ends up and tuck them into rubber bands so that they look like the blunt stumps of docked dog tails, the way my mother did me. No. I will spray the loose ends with water and let them curl as they may. When I have more time I will sit with her, mark out her scalp with a pink comb, and make many long braids, so that she appears to have a mane of thin twined ropes of brown. I will watch her braids fly around her head as...

“Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need.” -- Voltaire It’s another Labor Day. Most of us think of the holiday as the demarcation line on the calendar marking the end of summer, our last chance at a warm weather barbecue or swim, or just that much-needed day off from work. On this day honoring “the economic and social contributions of American workers,” I’m thinking of what it is to “labor.” I’m thinking of the many unemployed who don’t currently have the opportunity to serve the nation, their families, or themselves through a simple thing we probably always took for granted: a job. Since the age of 14, I’ve earned some kind of paycheck. I’ve been a summer camp counselor, a department store cashier, a library page, a photography school intern, a girl Friday for a filmmaking foundation. In college I juggled classes with Boston gigs as a writing tutor, a retail store clerk, a hospital assistant, a publishing company researcher, and a program assistant at the Cambr...

June is Black Music Month. I first heard this tagline during my years as editor of black music at "music industry bible" Billboard in the late 1980s; heretofore I was unaware of any such celebration. I was raised in New York City and blessed or cursed with the cynicism of natives of the metropolis; after a few years in the music biz I was quickly learning the warp and woof of the rather slick fabric undergirding the frothy array of the music industry. So I quickly attributed the proclamation of black music ascendancy for the month of June as an invention of the record industry itself – much as Valentine’s Day, Secretary’s Day, Mother’s Day and other heart and hearth holidays were inventions of the greeting card biz. I thought, Hey -- the kiddies were out of school for a glorious stretch of "hot fun in the summertime," and the season offered endless opportunities for music-infused vacation activities of all kinds. The record labels and their distribution com...