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Constructive Creativity: The Black Arts Movement

We kicked off our Season for Nonviolence film series at the Gandhi Institute on Wednesday night, with Malik hosting a viewing and discussion of The Black Power Mixtape. In a succinct 1.5 hours, the film chronicles the birth, rise and dismantlement of the Black Power Movement between the mid-1960s and ‘70s.

While the Black Panthers, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Congress of Racial Equality and similar organizations pursued justice and equality via political and economic channels, the Black Arts Movement (BAM) developed as a spiritual, creative branch of the struggle. Through poetry and prose, visual arts, music and other creative mediums, artists probed Black America’s consciousness by expressing their unfiltered emotions and rawest experiences in their quest to survive and thrive in America. The sheer intensity and volume of creative output during this period was remarkable. Themes of self-determination, solidarity and the celebration of Black culture were prominently represented.

As a Generation X born, bebop/soul/funk/Golden Era Hip Hop loving, child born to socially aware and involved parents, I yearn for a return to the honest, restless, urgent aesthetic that characterized so much of the BAM. Without getting into an extended comparison of today’s mainstream “Black” music and urban arts institutions with those of the BAM era, let it suffice to say that an enormous opportunity exists to turn on our urban youth to the potential power in their words, music, and art. Indeed, the delivery of spiritual, and emotional sustenance still undergirds any lasting grassroots movement for social change. Therefore, while song and dance are not a solution to the challenges posed by intergenerational poverty, political manipulation and educational malpractice, the ability to affirmatively frame the struggle to overcome those impediments to human dignity in uplifting, visceral, artistic expression is a tactic that we as a society cannot afford to lose to history.

I am making it my business to orient myself within the current paradigm of urban artistic expression, to identify the redemptive elements and to trace and emphasize the connections to the art that serves as my (artistic) frame of reference and informs my worldview. The motto “each one teach one” resonates with me, and I aim to do exactly that as my awareness expands. To that end, I welcome feedback and suggestions about contemporary art that empowers and stimulates activism.

black arts mvt

by Erin Thompson

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