PROUD FLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness (2003) ISSN: 1094-2254 Respect Her Gangsta!: A Review of the Music of Elaine Brown

Quincy T. Norwood

SEIZE THE TIME! (Hollywood, CA: Vault, 1969), and

ELAINE BROWN (Detroit, MI: Motown, 1973).

And so the songs in this album are a statement—by, of, and for the people. All the people. A statement to say that we, the masses of people have had a game run on us…that made us think that it was necessary for our survival to grab from each other…or to exploit each other. And so the statement is that some of us have understood that it is absolutely essential for us to do the opposite. And that, in fact, we have always had the power to…determine our destinies as human beings and not allow them to be determined by the few men who now determine them… This means all of us have this power. But the power belongs to all of us, not just some or one, but all…

ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE.

SEIZE THE TIME.

Elaine Brown (Seize The Time! Liner notes).

Elaine Brown’s latest opus, The Condemnation of Little B (Boston: Beacon Press 2002), is an edifying text in which Brown examines the kangaroo trial of Atlanta youth Michael Lewis ¹ , while simultaneously revealing the depths of “New Age Racism” in “America,” or the current ideological, political, and socio-economic terrorism that sustains the condition which George Jackson refers to as neo-slavery in Soledad Brother (New York: Bantam Books, 1970), his collection of prison letters. Condemnation further succeeds as a caustic commentary on the Black “bourgeoisie,” in Atlanta and “America” at large, with its contrived ignorance or carefree posture (“it’s not my problem”) regarding disenfranchised Black youth who are conveniently sectioned away in any one of this country’s ghettoes. The book closes with the following call for U.S. Blacks to recognize our wretched condition and break the chains of our subjugator, both necessary steps if we are to ever achieve self-determination:

If blacks would survive, it seems we must first wake ourselves from this nightmare and come to grips with its reality. If blacks would ever finally march out of the hell of Monticello, where we have lived for seemingly time immemorial, we must look away from the brutal master of this house and become masters to ourselves. We must seize our lives and destinies and collect our due. The goal of freedom must return to the top of our agenda, for it is the only business of the slave. ²

Though recorded over thirty years prior to Condemnation, the music of Elaine Brown, specifically the songs contained on her albums Seize The Time (Hollywood, CA: Vault 1969) and Elaine Brown (Detroit, MI: Motown 1973), is imbued with a revolutionary sentiment that is a constant in her current writing. In fact, the title and theme of one of Brown’s most poignant songs, “Until We’re Free,” re-emerges in the form of a dedication to Michael Lewis in Condemnation: “For Michael, Until you’re free.” The song itself is a soulful chronicle of Brown’s early life in North Philadelphia, detailing the environment and events that prepared her for a life of activism, Black Panther activism. “Until We’re Free” begins with Brown recalling her formative years spent on “York Street,” or that “third world” inside the “first”:

Yes I remember the yesterdays,
the poverty that you and me survived.
We tried living, on streets that weren’t giving.
We laughed and cried; in youth we died.
We didn’t know…
The times we saw, we didn’t deserve.
Hostility, we couldn’t see, it was absurd. ³

Brown’s lyrics call attention to the domestic terror of poverty which the downpressed have had to contend with for centuries. In the United States, Black and poor have become synonymous. This is hardly a coincidence. In a capitalist economic arrangement, poverty is made to seem as if it’s a preordained social condition, rather than a condition that is violently imposed on one group of people by another. In her autobiographical (neo-slave) narrative, A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story (New York: Anchor Books, 1992), Brown provides a vivid description of the indigent area of Philadelphia where she grew up:

York Street was buried in the heart of the black section of North Philadelphia. Its darkness and its smells of industrial dirt and poverty permeated and overwhelmed everything. There were always piles of trash and garbage in the street that never moved except by force of wind, and then only from one side of the street to the other…Our house at 2051 was indistinguishable from the other grayish, two-story, brick row houses on York Street. It was squeezed with the others into our block, a block no different in color from the rest of the neighborhood. ⁴

This passage takes us back to the lines from “Until We’re Free,” “The times we saw, we didn’t deserve/ Hostility, we couldn’t see, it was absurd.” The “absurd hostility” is, to be sure, the often well-concealed but ever-present force of white domination which keeps Blacks, Latinos, and poor whites isolated in dangerous, desolate, and filthy places as York Street. The comfortable myth of “American social justice” must not be disturbed! The commonality of the abject living conditions, captured so well in Brown’s song, slips conveniently under the radar of mass media outlets largely thanks to the popular stereotype of “shiftless and lazy Negroes,” whose alleged slothfulness justifies the destitution of our surroundings.

Brown concludes “Until We’re Free” with a revolutionary call to action: “The future calls, demanding we/ Set ourselves free as we should be.” What’s striking about these and many of her other lyrics is Brown’s consistent and vehement assertion that the revolution is in the hands of the people, not a select group of ordained individuals. Rather than making a plea to the downpressor for basic human rights, which are all people’s supposed birthright, Brown proposes the idea of a communal grassroots revolution wherein we, the people, free ourselves from the downpressor’s iniquitous reign.

On the title track from Brown’s Seize The Time, she continues with this concept of a revolution that is contingent upon the will of the people. She implores the downpressed to take responsibility for our own liberation, singing:

You worry about liberty because you’ve been denied
Well I think that you’re mistaken or you must’ve lied.
Cuz you do not act like those who care; you’ve never even fought,
For the liberty you claim to lack; or have you even thought
To seize the time; the time is now, O seize the time,
And you know how. ⁵

“Seize The Time!,” advocates the desertion of any reactionary inclination that the downpressed may have acquired, and the heightening of our collective revolutionary consciousness. In addition, Brown posits that revolution is not some distant thing that will just occur, but something very real and tangible that the people must initiate. The song climaxes, effectively, with Brown communicating the sense of urgency that must accompany any revolution, as she repeats the lyrics, “seize the time, the time is now, and you know how.” Again, Brown places the responsibility of taking liberation, systematically denied to the people, from yesterday’s chattel slavery to today’s neo-slavery, directly in the hands of the people.

Perhaps the most impressive feature of Elaine Brown’s music is its reverential love for Black youth, however historically criminalized. Songs like “A Child In The World” and “A Little Baby,” from Elaine Brown, display her genuine concern for children forced to come of age in a predatory society that essentially denies downpressed children the opportunity to experience their youth; a society that establishes the conditions which cause them to grow old before their time. Former political prisoner Dhoruba Bin Wahad comments on the malignant neglect to which youth are subjected to in the U.S.: “This society is impersonal. It’s a youth culture but it doesn’t value youth. It exploits them, it destroys them, it snatches their humanity from them.” ⁶ Bin Wahad points out that consumer culture sees youth as an expendable source of profit to be exploited much like a slave on a plantation. Those who find themselves outside of capitalism’s production-consumption schema are marginalized and frequently end up feeding the perpetually expanding prison industrial complex. Through her music, Elaine Brown takes it upon herself to speak on behalf of deserted youth surviving “in a world that won’t be kind.” ⁷

Her unwavering respect for Black youth reappears in the song “Jonathan,” an emotive, piano-driven tribute to Jonathan Jackson ⁸ which proposes that we uphold the fearless vigor of youth, particularly as it’s manifest among the lumpen-proletariat. She sings:

What he would do, none of us knew, Jonathan…
Some brothers three, they had no key, Jonathan…
Saw them in jail, they had no bail, Jonathan…
The USA will have to pay, Jonathan…
O, what a man was he.
For they would die, lest he should try, Jonathan...
O, by his deeds gave them the keys, Jonathan…
The more you see, that must be free, Jonathan...
Showed us the way, what price to pay, Jonathan…
Open the door, just do it for, Jonathan. ⁹

While Brown eulogizes Jonathan Jackson with “Jonathan,” she also uses the song to demonstrate the potential revolutionary force of youth. Brown states that Jonathan, a seventeen year-old “man-child,” has provided an example for the elder generation to follow in the struggle for self-determination. George Jackson adeptly assesses the significance of this action committed by his younger brother and comrades when he writes, “In death they redefined life. Where they fell we begin.” ¹⁰

The overarching themes that run through Elaine Brown’s music are the relevance of the present, and the latent power of the downpressed. Seize The Time! and Elaine Brown have existed on wax for three decades. Still, the messages conveyed by these albums are still very much pertinent today as we remain active in the movement for complete liberation. Elaine Brown is part of a historical legacy of “ride or die” women whose lives are characterized by an uncompromising love for the people, and an unrelenting practice of resistance, despite the brutal attacks of copious agents of white racist hegemony. I wholeheartedly recommend Seize The Time! and Elaine Brown to anyone looking to further their political education while enjoying some good music! I have to give it up to Elaine Brown for creating some dangerous, revolutionary gangsta music for the massive.

References

Brown, Elaine. The Condemnation of Little B: New Age Racism in America. Boston: Beacon, 2002.

---------. A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story. New York: Doubleday, 1992.

Brown, Elaine. “A Child In The World.” Elaine Brown. Detroit, MI: Motown 1973.

---------. “Jonathan.” Elaine Brown. Detroit, MI: Motown 1973.

---------. “Until We’re Free.” Elaine Brown. Detroit, MI: Motown 1973.

---------. “Seize The Time.” Seize The Time. Hollywood, CA: Vault 1969.

Jackson, George. Soledad Brother, Blood In My Eye (New York: Random House, 1972).

Wahad, Dhoruba Bin. Interview. Still Black, Still Strong. Eds. Jim Fletcher, Tanaquil Jones, & Sylvere Lotringer. New York: Semiotext(e), 1993. 109.