Music, Sports, Melanin & Overall Excellence

“This relationship between melanin and musicians recalled to mind an experience I had at Howard University twenty-five years ago. In the summer of 1971, I enrolled in a class entitled “The History of Jazz,” which was taught by Donald Byrd, the jazz trumpeter. Occasionally Mr. Byrd would invite other musicians to give the lecture. One evening, jazz guitarist George Benson met with our group and discussed his experiences in the music industry. He shared a story with the class which explained the concept of the blue note.

Most jazz aficionados are familiar with Blue Note Records, one of the most popular recording labels. R&B fans associate the word with the Philadelphia-based singing group, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. Blue Note was a term popularized by African American musicians, but most people outside their circle were unfamiliar with its meaning.

Benson told the story of a discussion which took place between several African American jazz musicians during a gig in France. One of the musicians said he was approached by an aspiring French musician after the completion of a set. The Frenchman confided to the brother that he had listened to his performance over several evenings and took copious notes of the music that he heard.

The Frenchman stated that when he returned home to play the music he had jotted down on pieces of paper, the music sounded strangely different. The jazz musician let out a hardy laugh and told the Frenchman, ‘the problem, my brother, is that you can’t hear the blue note.’ Benson went on to explain that during the 1930s and 1940s, African American jazz musicians referred to the blue note as a range of musical notes that only African people were capable of hearing and feeling.

The various forms of musical expressions created by Africans in America (Spirituals, Blues, Jazz, Rhythm and Blues, Rock ‘n Roll, Rap, and Hip Hop) have sustained the recording industry. The music of African Americans has given America a sense of soul music and dance that has influenced musical traditions throughout the world. This represents just one aspect of how melanin systems function in the bodies of African people.

Similar achievements have been made by African American football, baseball, and basketball players. The very nature of professional sports was transformed when teams became integrated in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Historically, African Americans were excluded from sports because of the racist, white supremacist feelings exhibited by team owners, players, and fans alike. Jackie Robinson transformed the soul of baseball and opened the door for the giants who followed. Muhammad Ali brought a flair to boxing which had not existed since the days of Jack Johnson. His talent and outspokenness made him the most recognized human being on earth. Throughout the entire history of the game of basketball, there has never been a player like Michael Jordan.

The historical record will show that African American athletes have added an element of excitement to their games which has revolutionized professional athletics throughout the world. However, one should not think that exceptional performances by Africans is limited to the stage and the sports arena. When given an opportunity to compete on a level-playing field, Africans generally excel. In light of this fact, one has to be truthful and admit that there is something unique about African people. Melanin can help explain that uniqueness.” -From, “Survival Strategies for Africans In America” By: Anthony T. Browder

Consider This A Dropped Jewel: The Television & Advertising Bamboozle

“News has become entertainment. Television is the main source of news, and only real purpose of any commercial televison program is to deliver an audience to advertisers.

The programs and the advertisements become indistinguishable, both serving the purpose of massaging the viewer into the mood to consume. If there were no such thing as official U.S. government propaganda, America would still be in the grip of the most powerful propaganda apparatus in human history: the advertising industry. Advertising is not usually thought of as propaganda, because it has no obvious political slant. All the better to brainwash you with. In fact, advertising sells a political ideology as fully developed and as potent as anything...The ideology is consumerism.

There are tow types of propaganda identified by Jacques Ellul, whose book ‘Propaganda’ is a definitive work on the subject. There is propaganda of integration (sociological propaganda) and propaganda of agitation (political propaganda). Advertising is both. It presents a coherent set of values and standards, which serves the purpose of molding (integrating) disparate ‘propagandees’ into a coherent group with shared ideals- in this case, the equation of happiness with consumer products. And it ‘agitates’ its targets into performing specific acts for the benefit of the political system- namely, purchasing things, an act without which industrial capitalism, our political system, would perish.

Conflation of advertising and propaganda spawns USC professors Ian Mitroff’s and Warren Bennis’s book title, ‘The Unreality Industry.’ The advertising and entertainment industries have teamed up to instill America with a culture based upon outright falsehoods and manipulations of fact. We worship celebrities whose public personas bear little relationship to their real identities, then we purchase products designed to make us identify with the artificial celebrities. The process perpetuates until we’re living in a mirage. Or perhaps it’s more like a hologram because the illusion is deliberately created.

What becomes of our own identities in this haze of consumption? We lose them, as we submerge ourselves into the mass culture. Striving to create ourselves in the images presented to us by advertising, we lose touch with reality.” From, Conspiracies, Cover-Ups, and Crimes” By: Jonathan Vankin

Fly Interviews: Part 2- Muhammad Ali & The Jacskon 5

"If you are given a victory and a power over your adversary; then in thankfulness for God for this, forgive them..."


CLICK HERE for smart-phone viewers.

Fly Interviews: Part 1- Muhammad Ali & The Jacskon 5

Muhammad Ali is the best!...


CLICK HERE for smart-phone viewers.

Consider This A Dropped Jewel

"The answers to all major problems has always been simplicity, not complexity..."

Consider This A Dropped Jewel

Let's figure out our position in society, and how to consistently progress and seize our true greatness.

Consider This A Dropped Jewel

"...What happened was they intentionally shifted the paradigm to get us exactly where we are right now..."

Consider This A Dropped Jewel

"Have we ever taken time to step back and stepout of our 'normal' minds for a minute, and look at the madness that exists around us? Have we ever stopped for a moment and noted the madness that motivates us to jam into these subways every morning; that motivates us to work endlessly and compulsively; that motivates us to feel guilty in a moment of leisure; that motivates us to consume endlessly; that motivates us to be the victims of all kinds of erratic fashions? Have we seen the craziness that peers out at us from our television screens? Have we recognized that the television screen projects little reality at all? That we measure ourselves against what we look at there! That TV advertising is designed to keep us in a state of frustration and dissatisfaction, and designed to inculcate in us a sense of inferiority, and designed to keep us from facing reality and confronting the truth, to divert us from the pitifulness of our situation!; to not let us recognize as a people that we are in a precarious situation, and that our very biological survival is in question. We sit in front of the TV set and look at those little families whose members are so polite to each other, who are so witty,who wait for each other to get through speaking before speaking themselves, who lay in just the right line at just the right time, and who resolve their problems so neatly and beautifully, and assume that they represent the typical family." -From, "The Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness" By: Amos Wilson

Consider This A Dropped Jewel

Farrakhan talks about Michael Jackson, his changing appearance, and his desire to create a movie showing the beauty of people of African descent...

Consider This A Dropped Jewel: The Christopher Columbus Edition

How Much Is Television About Manipulating The Basic Tenets Of Psychology?

I came across this excerpt in a book and it made me think about how effect television, other forms of media, and advertising is in manipulating people's ideas and people's mental associations of images. Psychologists are often used by advertisers and television show creators to help them implement the best way to embed their messages into a viewers mind.

"One of Freud's greatest contributions was a concept called Angstsignal, or signal anxiety, which anticipated some of the most sophisticated contemporary work on implicit memory and unconscious associative networks. Freud's development of the concept grew directly from his groundbreaking understanding of fear and the pervasive ways fear organizes human existence.

Signal anxiety, Freud said describes an unconscious mental function that operates as a kind of early warning system for the psyche. It's what, after you've been burned once, stops you from having to consider consciously the merits of grasping a red-hot poker every time you want to pull it out of a blazing fire. Seeing a red-hot pojer leads to an experience of signal anxiety. It's a straightforward danger signal of the distress that would follow were you to keep grabbing red-hot pokers.

Signal anxiety results from the perception of danger. But it's also about learning to associate one thing with another, often unconsciously." [SIDEBAR: Italics as emphasized in the book.] -From, "Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism, and The Inexplicable Powers of The Human Mind." By: Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer

Consider This A Dropped Jewel: The Crabs In A Barrel Edition

Marcus Garvey once said, "The whole world is run on bluff." Listen & Analyze...

Consider This A Dropped Jewel: Hollywood & The Cigarette Connection

Dick Gregory discusses how Hollywood movies unconsciously seduces the viewer into smoking, among other things:

Consider This A Dropped Jewel: The Effect Of Watching TV Edition

"The world as given to us through television seems natural, not bizarre. For the loss of the sense of the strange is a sign of adjustment, and the extent to which we have adjusted is a measure of the extent to which we have been changed. Our culture's adjustment to the epistemology of television is by now all about complete; we have so thoroughly accepted its definition of truth, knowledge, and reality that irrelevance seems to be filled with import, and incoherence seems eminently sane." -From, "Amusing Ourselves to Death" By: Neil Postman

Consider This A Dropped Jewel: This May Very Well Be The Realest Video Ever!

[WARNING: This video contains profanity. HOWEVER, this message is extremely real and pertinent!]


It's time for us all to take the blinders off and stop falling for the okey doke. May all God's children be strong, protected, and prayerful.

Love & too much appreciation and gratitude to put into words to everyone who is contributing to the awakening. Continue to pray for all of the true warriors and truth seekers. Peace & Love.

Consider This A Dropped Jewel: The Game Just Rewinds Edition

Here's some interesting observations and recollections that Quincy Jones made about the music industry in his autobiography:

"But by and large beboppers were artists, proud, sensitive, intelligent people who practiced for hours and didn't want to shuffle and entertain white folks anymore. They said, 'We're artists and want to be treated that way.' You can imagine how that kind of attitude came off in the 40s & 50s- Black men and women talking that way. Forget it. That's why so many turned to drugs.

These were the days when managers would sign an artist, record him, take a million dollar life insurance policy, record him, let the artist tour Vegas, record him again, then smoke him and collect the insurance.

At the first sign of Charlie Parker's jones coming down at a recording session, they'd have him sign away all his composing, publishing, and artist's royalties before they'd let in the dealer so that Bird could shoot up. Monk, Bird, Miles, Basie, nobody knew the business. Most of us sold our songs and publishing rights for peanuts to people who didn't give a s*** about anything but money."