Nia Coffeehouse dates and Protest songs from our readers

Home base for the Nia Coffeehouse is at 2555 Euclid Heights Boulevard in St. Alban in Cleveland Heights 44118.   For more information Ph. 216/759-0790, leave a message here in comments or at Leftthumbprint@gmail.com.  

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In this bloggissue:

1. Announcement and information about our next Nia Coffeehouse events
2. More on protest jazz and music
3. Comments and favorites from our readers
4. Wade in the Water

Our next happenings...

1. Our next Nia Coffeehouse @ St. Alban music and poetry set is June 26th @ 6:00pm. Nia is coming at you with healthy music, phenomenal words, and some healthy eats for you. And unless we say otherwise, Always Open Mic.  

 Our featured poet is Judith Mansour.   

Judith after her last event... got kinda rowdy

Judith Mansour

Judith has a BA in English and, Psychology and an MA in English and Creative Writing.  She has been a creative force in the writing, art and literature scene behind the scenes and in front of the mic for years. You can find Judith at LinkedIn  and at  facebook.

Vince Robinson (seated) with past and current Jazz Poet members

 The band- Vince Robinson and the Jazz Poets.  Look for future Nia blogs dedicated just to this powerhouse who has done so much in poetry, jazz and the community but for now go here are no less than ten pages on Vince and the cats take your pick.

So Many Issues Too Little Time

Soon Nia will be looking at beautiful music and laying protest jazz aside unless you our readers want to keep protest alive.
We've got some interesting responses for favorite protest music from you but first we have questions. It is quite possible that most folks feel overwhelmed and powerless to do anything about today's social ills.  For one thing, the "what can little ole me do" syndrome kicks into effect for many and secondly there are so many things that need attention it is overwhelming, for instance there is fracking, homelessness, infant mortality, child abuse, oil spill issues, Kony, Travon Martin; the object or the objects of the occupy everything movement; the Grammy awards categories being cut that Nia thinks is an important cultural, diversity and monetary issue for people of color and the list goes on.  

Musicians: Powerful or Powerless

Should musicians and people in media feel powerless? Many talk about the power of music but maybe it's a fairy tale conjured up by musicians and their managers.  Already the entire burden shouldn't be put on jazz so we can broaden the conversation for now with an emphasis on jazz.

Mark David Ritscher aka Malichi Ritscher, a fixture and musician in the Chicago music scene, apparently didn't think the power of music was enough.    Ritscher's self-immolation in 2006 on downtown Chicago's Kennedy expressway not mentioned by the media for nearly a week . Chicago Sun-Times columnist Richard Roeper, finally wrote  "With all due respect, if he thought setting himself on fire and ending his life in Chicago would change anyone's mind about the war in Iraq, his last gesture on this planet was his saddest and his most futile."^[3]

Ritscher left a detailed smoking gun (sorry) pointing at protest as the raison d'être of his actions.  What about protest music, the power of music, the music that soothes the savage beast?  The actual quote is "music has charms to soothe the savage breast" and forgive me for waxing pedantic. It would be remiss of us not to mention that according to Ritscher's son Mark David was a recovering alcoholic fighting depression and yet we say this exposes two more arena's in which one must question the power of music.

Latin Jazz, Grammy Awards Protest

Go to Multi- American for the entire video and more info on the protest

In contrast to Mr. Ritscher's self-immolation members of the Latin Jazz community protested with music and signs and slogan-chanting the elimination of 31 mostly people of color categories from the Grammy Awards. Polka, gospel, Native American and R&B are among the categories that have been removed.  It would be very interesting if musicians took a page from Black folk and started their own Grammy since they as a group are now not allowed to participate; because of this kind of exclusion Black newspapers sprang up, Miss Black America beauty pageant and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) to workers' unions, clubs and restaurants.






Nia would like to hear from musicians and people in the industry; 

1. What are you doing/ have done with your talents to "fight the power?"  Where and when are you doing it, venues, times and dates if appropriate.  Here is an effort by Cleveland Orchestra member violinist Isabel Trautwein.
2. Is Nia asking the right questions?
3. Is Nia defining the "power of music" correctly?

Nia would like to hear from patrons and music lovers;

1. What place does music hold in your life?
2. Has music effected change in your life, an epiphany perhaps, set you on a different path, "saved your life," or helped you through a most difficult time in life?  What was the music that "did it?"

What could local musicians do to help local causes say in Cleveland, Ohio? 

Your comments on Protest music

Ian Heams from Barnet a borough of London writes:

"I totally agree Oscar Brown Jr and also that satire and humour can be found in the MUSIC as well as the lyrics. At our local pub on Sunday (The Mitre) the band playing there (Big Chief) played Fats Waller's "Ain't Misbehaving" to a ska beat. It worked a treat and the humour of the contrast between old and new wasn't lost. There's also a tension between a song by a black composer/performer being played to rhythm mostly thought of as being developed by white artists."For me Jazz works best when it's in fusion with other music and the players are pushing the boundaries."

Ian concerning Nina Simone: 

"There's a woman who understands, and owns, her own feelings and is big enough to respect other people and allow them theirs. Great performance."

From musician: Simmie Davis PROTEST SONGS. I aint got time to die, Lift evry voice and sing, To be young gifted and black.


From pitmonkey

"One of the most powerful protest songs is surely, "Wade in the water". Still sung today, it is well known for the double meaning of it's lyrics which continually remind us of the horrors of slavery which, after 300 years still exists in various forms."

"Wade in the Water" is the name of a Negro spiritual first published in New Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers (1901) by John Wesley Work II and his brother, Frederick J. Work (see Fisk Jubilee Singers).
The main chorus is:

Wade in the water.

Wade in the water children.

Wade in the water.

God's gonna trouble the water.

The song relates to both the Old and New Testaments. The verses reflect the Israelites' escape out of Egypt as found in Exodus:14.^[1] The chorus refers to healing: see John 5:4, "For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had."
Many internet sources and popular books claim that songs such as "Wade in the Water" contained explicit instructions to fugitive slaves on how to avoid capture and the route to take to successfully make their way to freedom.^[2] This particular song allegedly recommends leaving dry land and taking to the water as a strategy to throw pursuing bloodhounds off one's trail.
 - Wikipedia

Here is a cool version of Wade in the Water by Kevin Whallum:


Wade in the Water - Jazz Version from unityall on GodTube.

Ethiopian Coffee Ceremony

I hope you enjoy this essay on Ethiopian Coffee Cerimony by Emily Doyle
Ethiopian Coffee Ceremony

culture by the cup

Culture in a Cup
By
IT Blog
Food writer and Modern Spice cookbook author Monica Bhide recently returned from visiting her family in India, and we asked her to share some glimpses of contemporary life she noticed while there. You can read her first post here.


For centuries India, particularly North India, has been a country of tea drinkers, while steaming cups of coffee were loved by the folks in South India. And then something happened. Since 2000, coffeehouses like Barista and Café Coffee Day have begun to spring up in major cities by the hundreds. They offer different types of coffees, smoothies, and snacks very much like Starbucks does. The initial reaction was interesting to watch. "The affluent young Indians will love it," the media claimed, as they noted all the youngsters gathering at the coffeehouses. There was an outcry from lovers of Indian culture and tea--it was blasphemous for them to even think that coffee culture could be percolating here in India, sacrilegious that a tea-drinking nation could love drinking coffee. Culture watchers were quick to point out that people drinking in these fancy coffeehouses weren't any better than the ones who drank tea off the street stalls.

My view is a bit different.

In my opinion--and I have been watching this closely over the past ten years-- these coffeehouses aren't about the coffee. While tea stalls provide a quick stop for the frantic in need of a hot shot, they aren't places to gather for contemplative conversations. A Barista opened near my parents' home in New Delhi several years ago, and as I stopped by on a daily basis during five weeks of my trip, I discovered it had culture of its own.

The early morning hours find retired older men who sit around with newspapers in hand discussing politics, their children, the new iPod Nano and their good old times. I spoke with a few of them and they told me there was nowhere else to go in this heat, and at home their wives objected--oh, the maids are cleaning, not now! So they meet here; this is their support in their old age. The afternoon finds the young adults with their laptops, and book clubs meeting to discuss the latest Jhumpa Lahiri masterpiece. As the day fades, these coffee shops become places to be seen, with teenagers gathering to discuss where to eat and what the evening holds.
They meet, they talk, they reminisce, they discuss, and they work here. True, some of them sip the beverages offered, but it isn't about the coffee. It is about the culture: the togetherness it has bought. Why not celebrate what it is bringing to contemporary India, instead of lamenting about what it is supposedly taking away? There are, and always will be, crowds at the local tea stalls. That is also a culture, and I don't think it will, or should, ever go away. But this diversity is what makes India what it is today.

Photos: Above, a lovely cup of cappuccino is served at the Barista in Phoenix Mills, Mumbai. Below, a traditional tea stand in Mumbai. By Monica Bhide.

Coffee Roads that Cross to the Future and Rome

B. "Coffee roads that cross, to the future and to Rome. (On the Continent).(Coffee, coffeehouses and European history and culture)." Tea & Coffee Trade Journal. Lockwood Trade Journal Co., Inc. 2002. Retrieved October 10, 2009 from HighBeam Research: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-86876710.html

Coffee's Road to the Future Raising Coffee From the Dead
However one chooses to believe that coffee came to Europe -- abandoned by fleeing Turks at the walls of Vienna after their unsuccessful siege, shipped in by Venetian galleys as prizes of war -- it is indisputable that the stimulating drink caused a revolution in Western Culture. Coffee house quickly spread from Vienna and Venice to Paris and London.
The "cafes," as they came to be known, were far more than our espresso bars. They became the collective depository of those supercmharged explosives of culture -- political thought and radical art.
The European cafe became something of a common man's parliament of free speech and thought. This is why the geniuses of the ages have adored them, from Bach to Voltaire. Far before the advent of the Euro or the bureaucratic corridors of power at the EU in Brussels, they existed in all European nations and were a nexus of thought and energy -- a pan European stimulation by the dark and aromatic bean.
How many revolutions were plotted over cups of cafe coffee; how many schools of art found their beginning at those wobbly, wet tables and on such uncomfortable chairs? It is not hyperbolic to suggest that the cafe and coffee were perhaps second only to the University and the book in bringing enlightenment and a commonality of shared ideals to play in the rapid advancement of Western culture from the 17th century well into the past century.

African Origins of Coffee

Did an Ethiopian
goatherd discover coffee?

AFRICAN ORIGINS (Circa A.D. 800) Goats will eat anything. Just ask Kaldi the legendary Ethiopian (map) goatherd. Kaldi, the story goes, noticed his herd dancing from one coffee shrub to another, grazing on the cherry-red berries containing the beans. He copped a few himself and was soon frolicking with his flock. Witnessing Kaldi’s goatly gambol, a monk plucked berries for his brothers. That night they were uncannily alert to divine inspiration. History tells us other Africans of the same era fueled up on protein-rich coffee-and-animal-fat balls—primitive PowerBars—and unwound with wine made from coffee-berry pulp. Coffee later crossed the Red Sea to Arabia, where things really got cooking... [next]

© 1999 National Geographic Society. All rights reserved.