UPLYFF, INC. PRESENTS... - Art+Inspiration

The Art of Linnette Lawson

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 19:50:14 GMT

Linnette Lawson, native of Cleveland, OH, has been an artist her whole life. From storytelling and poetry, to singing and dancing, Linnette covers the spectrum. And now, she has graced us all with her brilliant visual art. The exhibit is on display through mid-September, but we wanted to share her images with you - the digital community, far and wide.

The exhibit began with a fantastic opening and reception, but the art is what we came to see..

Scenes from the Exhibit Opening

GALLERY

(Most of the pieces are for sale - but they don't come cheap.. ENJOY!!)

FOUR Women

Sun, 13 Feb 2022 08:00:00 GMT

by

Ali Jamal

The Words of Queen Nina Simone:

My skin is black
My arms are long
My hair is woolly
My back is strong
Strong enough to take the pain
inflicted again and again
What do they call me
My name is AUNT SARAH
My name is Aunt Sarah
My skin is yellow
My hair is long
Between two worlds
I do belong
My father was rich and white
He forced my mother late one night
What do they call me
My name is SAFFRONIA
My name is Saffronia

My skin is tan
My hair is fine
My hips invite you
my mouth like wine
Whose little girl am I?
Anyone who has money to buy
What do they call me
My name is SWEET THING
My name is Sweet Thing
My skin is brown
my manner is tough
I'll kill the first mother I see
my life has been too rough
I'm awfully bitter these days
because my parents were slaves
What do they call me
My name is PEACHES

This powerful song has been remade and sampled by many, the most recent being Jay-Z. The song addresses the color-ism that still remains prevalent in the African Diaspora. It is a tragic tale of ignorance and neglect, but intensely relevant. The color-ism must subside - the healing process must commence.

Nina Simone gained high recognition and honor for bringing such awareness to the stage in 1966. And even today we have not gotten beyond such foolishness. We have a long road ahead but we will end this battle - slowly but surely.

Baluba Masks

Sun, 10 Oct 2021 07:00:00 GMT

by

Ali Jamal

If you buy an Afrikan mask, learn about it. Don't just place on the wall and decorate your place, gain an understanding of the rich history that can be revealed with just a few clicks on your mouse.

The Baluba masks come from the Luba, a Bantu people from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Luba people speak Swahili among many other dialects of Luba. Like other masks, the Baluba masks are used for rituals and celebrations. As you look at the masks pictured here, recognize the exquisite detail and stunning metals that adorn the borders of each.

Personally, I own two Baluba masks and anxious to learn more and more about them. Just from observation, there is bound to be an amazing story or reason for every color, bead, shiny metal, the obvious open mouth, tight eyes, and so on.

There Is No End

Sat, 19 Jun 2021 07:00:00 GMT

by

Ali Jamal

There is no end - to a great musician. Tony Allen, the Master drummer and co-founder of the Afrobeat genre, passed at the age of 79 in 2020. His music and his legacy live on and his contribution to the world of music will never leave us. After his transition last year, a project was released aptly entitled - There Is No End.

The album features songs like Mau Mau, a piece that features the formidable Nah Eeto and that packs a punch! It is so funky and will keep the head bobbing. It has a nasty beat, bass line and chant that invoke rebellion, power and creativity.

There also tracks like Coonta Kinte - "Ain't no Justice or no Peace, they might come for me" and songs that feature two bonafide Queens on the mic, Sampa the Great and Lava La Rue bless us with Stumbling Down and One Inna Million respectively. They are pure lyrical genius.

I can't say this is album of the year - that is a bit subjective - but, I'm a drummer and so my ears are biased. I love this album. The composition and care they took to put it together required discipline, creativity, risk, and pure talent. Long live the King of the Afro-BEAT - the great ancestor Tony Allen.

Lionel Loueke "HH"

Sun, 25 Oct 2020 07:00:00 GMT

by

Wulfgar Darkenwald, Jr.

Guitarist Lionel Loueke released his twelfth studio album, HH, late in 2020. The Western African artist pays homage to legendary pianist / composer Herbie Hancock with a moving and personal tribute to the master - teacher.

Having been a sideman in Herbie’s band, with the likes of Wayne Shorter and Terrence Blanchard after they selected the guitarist to the famed Monk Institute now named for Hancock, for a number of years has been deeply influential in the development and evolution of the Benin artist both musically and personally. So much so that Lionel felt the need to take on the Herculean endeavor of playing the maestro’s masterpieces and lessor known works solo after having played on “Possibilities” and Grammy-Award winning “River” albums by Herbie. Lionel’s ability to transcend genres and create unparalleled sounds on the guitar are on full display here; showing that the possibilities are nigh endless when timeless music is put in the hands of a true craftsman. When the student is ready, the teacher shall appear.

What's all that jazz about?!?

Wed, 15 Apr 2020 07:00:00 GMT

by

Wulfgar
Darkenwald, Jr.

Legendary author and poet Langston Hughes once remarked that “Jazz, to me, is one of the inherent expressions of Negro life in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul - the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and the pain swallowed in a smile.” Moreover, “the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, - a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world.

It is a peculiar sensation, this doubleconsciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness, - an American, a Negro; two souls; two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” - W. E. B. DuBois. Jazz, you see, is the culmination of the black experience in the land of the never quite free; an expression of a people whose godlike creativity, resilience, and hopefulness has not only reshaped music but the arts as a whole into an art form which all attempt to emulate with few if any having ever been able to surpass it.

Jazz contextualizes our, being that of black people, struggles and aspirations for selfactualization while concurrently itself undergoing similar transformative developments. It is not unlike German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s concept of das Ding an sich or in laymen’s terms a thing-in-itself in which objects exist, as it were, as they are; independently from observation and the experiential. Better yet stated, Jazz becoming almost an entity unto itself; a living being whose experiences mirror that of its creator. The inhumanity of slavery sung through “slave songs”; “Negro spirituals” that spoke on the horrors of the “peculiar institution”. These gave way to the blues; in much the same way bondage was supplanted by servitude, involuntary in all but the name. If “Negro spirituals” gave testimony of what happened to blacks in the past, then the blues gave account of what it felt like. This sentiment passed through the “watershed” period of the establishment of de jure segregation well into the twentieth century as two different Americas emerged; divided by the color line. It is in blues that gives what could be called and considered American music its “distinctive character.” - James Weldon Johnson. Because only in America could the subjugation of one people, the almost annihilation of another by Europeans and their descendants be considered an acceptable course of action by so many even as it were juxtapositional to the so-called “founding principles of this great nation.” The rest of the onlookers staring obliviously at the atrocities.

As influential author Ralph Waldo Ellison once remarked, “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me.” If blacks would not be seen, then the blues at least made sure we were heard. The blues, retained many of the aspects of its African roots, while adding cadence, stylized lyrics, particular instrumentation, and structure. Black folk music that detailed heartbreak and hardship, but also told of self-determination and overcoming adversity. This genre of music, whose beginnings were in the Deep South, flourished in the segregated United States; not in spite of but partial because of it.

Isolated Black America was by the law and volition, forced to be independent and self-sufficient; an all encompassing black community which was the antithesis of what was originally planned and designed by those powers that be and that which did not go unnoticed. Eventually, it was their prosperity in the face of overwhelming odds and hatred that would lead to the destruction of several black communities and the marginalization of the others; both literal and figuratively. Two disturbing trends emerged during the first half of the twentieth century as it would relate not only to the blues but black art as a whole : First, the consumption of that same art primarily by those other than people of color. Second, the seemingly inevitable appropriation of that art and culture by the same said audience. A trend that, unfortunately and most unabashedly so, continues to the current day. And so this is the backdrop from which Jazz appears. A reflection of the people who gave birth to it.

The artist and the art form bore from the same history that turned tragic, share in the sorrowful todays; however, will know a common denominator of a great destiny and a brighter tomorrow. “For the jazz is an art of individual assertion within and against the group. Each true jazz moment…springs from a contest in which the artist challenges all the rest; each solo flight, or improvisation, represents (like the canvasses of a painter) a definition of his [sic] identity: as individual, a member of the collectively and as a link in the chain of tradition. Thus because jazz finds its very life in improvisation upon traditional materials, the jazz man must lose his identity even as he finds it.” -Ralph Waldo Ellison

ATCQ - circa 1991

Mon, 10 Feb 2020 08:00:00 GMT

by

Wulfgar Darkenwald, Jr.

In 1991, A Tribe Called Quest (ATCQ), a New York based hip-hop group, reminded us that we got the Jazz. Nearly three decades later, the veracity of their words on a classic track produced by legendary DJ, Pete Rock, from their seminal album, The Low End Theory, still hold true. For as long as there is JAZZ, there is us, and then there are no dark places in which to hide. Let's reminisce for a moment.

Harriet - The Movie

Sun, 01 Dec 2019 08:00:00 GMT

by

Ali Jamal

The courageous icon, the controversial movie. Long overdue, and always overlooked - until now. After the long wait, director Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) brought a strong effort built around passion, drama, and the desire to bring life to a superhero(ine) right before our eyes. It’s one that involves a relentless road to abolitionism with hundreds of lives saved, after Tubman, played by the multi-award winning Cynthia Erivo, escaped from the hands of her slaveholders in the Maryland of 1849 at great risk to both her and her family.

She steadily became a fearless, and relentless conductor of the Underground Railroad. The embellishments of characterization drove the film's controversy, but did not take away from the context, the overall story-line and the triumphant journey to freedom. Lots to discuss about this film - let's get to it!

The Last Man in San Francisco

Tue, 01 Oct 2019 07:00:00 GMT

by

Ali Jamal

The Last Man in San Francisco.

A tale of the have and have nots - i.e. gentrification, disparity and truth. Artistic, intriguing and original, this movie examines the disillusionment that is a common thread in the Black community. It speaks to the feelings of triumph and despair, hope and disappointment. It also explores the communication barriers that continue to plague and divide Black people.

A theme that carries the movie is that of family. It questions and even confuses the meaning of the institution. With an understanding of family being a system of life, support and love, Last Man leaves us with a solemn vibe built around a narrative of dysfunction, distrust, and a painful past of separation - a familiar sentiment in many Black families on American soil.

The music and imagery are soothing and meditative. The guest appearances from Danny Glover, Tischina Arnold and Mike Epps add a nostalgia and lightness to the film and they provide a delicate balance to the storyline. Each of the three characters provides the leading pair that love and support that they need to carry on.

Jazz... We've still got it!!! pt.5

Sun, 11 Aug 2019 00:20:28 GMT

by

Wulfgar Darkenwald, Jr

Drummer Kendrick Scott released another gem on Blue Note Records entitled A Wall Becomes a Bridge. It is the fourth album from Scott’s Oracle quintet; produced by label mate and longtime collaborator of Robert Glasper, bassist Derrick Hodge. This record not only confirms Scott as one of premier drummers of this generation but also his role as an activist as it delves into such topical matters as black history, black music, and the current socioeconomic political climate. It is a compelling and ambitious work. “Archangel” is amongst the standout tracks.