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Women are often portrayed as the victims of war. Or as nurses. And maybe as spies. During armed struggles, mass media seldom portrays women as protagonists and almost never as leaders. Of course, within the world of resistance to colonialism there have been female icons and heroes: especially Queen Nzinga in Angola, Nanny in Jamaica, and Harriet Tubman in the United States, plus, so many others who are too often nameless in our history.

The women of Viet Nam are exemplary both as fighters as well as those who are overlooked. Their reality was significantly different from media-popularized examples. In Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, often considered the greatest Viet Nam era war movie, the woman warrior is a guerrilla who threw a bomb into a helicopter; but in that movie, women were never presented as soldiers in the field. In another famous war movie, Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, the female warrior is a sniper.

In Viet Nam, the reality of female soldiers was far, far more complex. Women were both frontline fighters as well as active rear-guard operatives. Spike Lee’s movie, Da 5 Bloods, is a more recent example of the erasure of females as fighters in Viet Nam. Viet Nam has provided the setting for numerous seminal examples of American movies about 20th century men at war. In contradistinction to the male subjects, most of those movies minimize the role of women.

Here is a small example of the other side of the story: women fighters in Viet Nam. Written by Sherry Buchanan, this article presents the stories of Vietmanese women who fought for the independence of their country. Their story is not easy for us Americans to digest.

The essay is neither an anti-war homage, nor simply an anti-imperialism screed. This is a specific look at the role of female fighters. While western culture valorizes Joan of Arc, few of us focus on the literally thousands of women who were soldiers engaged in active resistance against 19th and 20th century “new world” domination in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

Many of us who served in the military during the sixties and seventies, were forced to confront conditions that counterintuitively led to a major political education. This is especially true of Viet Nam era veterans. I was in South Korea on a mountaintop approximately 50 miles below the DMZ that separated that country into two. In later years, reflecting on my experiences and the larger social reality, I specificantly wrote about the women of Viet Nam.

MORNING CALM

For the women of Vietnam, patiently threading together their share, and more, of Third World struggle & solidarity

 

the eerie bright light

that shatters morning

dawn is the illumination

of bombs

 

death dropping like

acid rain from unseen

obscene clouds,

a deadly dew

dispensed by invisible

high flying arms

 

and so began the days

when Nguyen was new,

barely born between naplam runs,

anti-personnel explosives spewing

sinister silverous spikes

with thorny barbs which savagely

struck and cut, searing

into innocent flesh

embedding shrapnel into pliant

pre-pubescent sides, into

soft kidneys and slender

bamboo colored thighs like

gleaming iron fish hooks

piercing a jaw, lancing a gill

or slicing an eye

 

but who cares now

that the war was lost so

long ago

the high-tech cameras

no longer transmit onto tv sets

into our living rooms

the pain, the unsmelt

stench of flaming bodies or

the barely believable screech

of street side summary executions

as bullets shattered the skulls

of black haired suspected cong

so who cares now

the killers are back home

here in america

where we do not see nor feel

the innumerable silent shells

waiting to explode

upward maiming a peasant’s crouch

as ox drawn plow contacts

nor do we cross

oranged wastelands where

nothing green can grow

who cares, now that

the dear johns and joes

are gone, to the victors

have gone the spoilt

 

who remembers those naked little girls

running down the highway their mouths

silently stretched open in pain

those little girls who are

no longer girls but women now

women whose wombs may never conceive

women who can not dance without pain

women whose scars will not heal

women who can not give birth without surgery

women whose ears can not hear subtle string music

women who can not remember ever having rest

         filled sleep during long quiet summer

         nights nor sense the tenderness of a lover’s

         cautious touch caressing what’s left of a breast

 

who cares?

 

as you struggle in your homeland

a place bombed almost back

“into the stone age”

patiently reconstructing human beings

out of the survivors of war

a prostitute becomes a nurse

an orphan a teacher

a cripple becomes an administrator

and a blind woman an interpreter

 

Nguyen, it is the work of you

and people like you

which gives soft/strong certainty

to worldwide efforts at

social reconstruction

 

Nguyen, knowing you helps us

know that we are more

than our past,

less than our future,

neither animals nor gods

but oppressed people who can grasp

tomorrow’s dawns and create new days

from bomb cratered yesterdays

 

in the face of pessimism

your graceful smile

thaws our war hardened hearts

 

i salute

you who continue, all of you

who inspire hope, whose recovery

encourages all of us victims

to rise and fly like phoenix

ascending out of occidental ashes

 

i salute

you who move as in a morning sun

rising side by side, always rising,

never stopping, always rising, softly,

always, certainly, softly,

as in a morning

calm

____________________________

I do not usually explain my poetry but this post is special. The context of the poem is important to me. “Morning Calm” was written in the late seventies/early eighties and was originally conceived as part of a collection of poetry to complement essays I wrote and published under the title of Our Women Keep Our Skies From Falling. 

I had planned to publish a small book with both the poetry and the essays together but, as with so much in life, that never came to pass.

I served in the U. S. Army 1965 – 1968, the Viet Nam years, but I did electronic nuclear missile repair in South Korea. Korea was a major awakening for me about the international aspects of our struggle. I learned a lot from the women in Korea, most of whom were prostitutes who lived in a small village just outside the gates of our mountaintop base. 

I came out of the army fired up and ready to rumble, seeking far more than civil rights. By 1974 I was a delegate to the Sixth Pan-African conference in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The Chinese were already working in East Africa. Does anyone remember the Tan-Zam railroad and the effort to break apartheid’s economic stranglehold on central and southern Africa?

Three or so years later, I led a delegation to the People’s Republic of China. Twenty educators and activists from across the United States spent over two weeks traveling throughout China and engaging in serious ideological sessions with Chinese comrades. Again, my consciousness was raised.

The more I learned about the world and the more people I met who were struggling for self-determination, self-defense, and self-respect, the more I understood that our struggle was truly a global struggle and not simply a racial struggle, or even mainly a Pan-African struggle. Eventually, I moved away from advocating nationalism as a solution to the issues our people faced. I also became very, very clear that sexism and its attendant ills (such as homophobia and heterosexism) was a serious issue that had to be fought both internally and externally.

“Morning Calm” is a reflection of my developing global consciousness and of my anti-sexism advocacy. In 2010, far, far removed from when I wrote this poem, I taught Vietnamese students in high school. A few of our students were born in Viet Nam. Most of them dealt in various ways with the issues of assimilation and retaining their culture, especially their language. This poem was written for the women who are today the grandparents, aunts, and perhaps a few mothers of those students. . .

One other thing, as I have said numerous times, I use music as my literary model. The rhythms and internal structure of this poem are based on John Coltrane’s version of “Softly, as in a morning sunrise.”

A luta continua (the struggle continues). . .

 

 

 

 


We sometimes forget that humans are multi-dimensional, that we can excel in more than one category and those categories can be unrelated. For example a supreme basketball champion can also be an insightful intellectual.

Meet Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Life ain’t easy when you are much taller than normal. Your genetics have significantly  ordained  your fate. If you’re over seven feet tall, you are destined to be on a basketball court, not in the library. If the authorities dis-allow the dunk, you invent and master the skyhook. Regardless of the rules made to limit you, you continue to excel.


You are the son of a cop, anti-social behavior is not tolerated in his house. You convert to Islam as a young adult and actively pursue developing your mind even as your physical talents tower over your contemporaries. You strive to be well-rounded physically, intellectually and emotionally. None of your contemporaries are quite like you.

 Your professional career has a short window. No one expects sports greatness from you after you reach forty, nevertheless, you conclude a twenty year NBA career as the all-time scoring leader with 38,387 points. Moreover,  off the court, you keep developing as a successful author and researcher.

People ask you questions–some of them quite dumb–but your responses, like your game, are often stellar. You are far more than simply a freak of nature.

You are a beautiful soul and the world is a much better place as the result of you being in it.

 

Call it what you will. There ain’t but three sides: where you were; where you at; and, if you’re lucky, where you will be. Tomorrow.

The great unknown. 

To be truthful about the self is to exam the past, be aware of the present, and to, yes, have dreams, have, uh, expectations. Sometimes great, other times viewed with trepidation: like will this work, can I last, is there really another side of this mountain?

All of us in modern America are junkies for something. Something, we believe we can’t live without. Some of what we need is real: food and water, a bit of shelter, and, somewhere along the line of living, a critical helping of love from another. But sometimes conditions are dire, the availability of succor is scant, and love is so far away; all we can see, all we can feel is pain. The pain of a life turned inside out. A life of, or approaching, emptiness.

When sugar turns to shit can we honestly look at our lives, at who we have become for whatever set of reasons?

Gil Scott-Heron (April 1, 1949 – May 27, 2011) did that in one of his most honest moments. A junkie walking through the twilight, on his way home. Knowing full well that home is only a dream. A supposed used-to-be that actually never was.

Gil Scott-Heron wrote this song of raw realization and no more need be said.

Which is not to say, everything is always fucked up. But. The reality is that life can be hard and if we are to be fully human, we will have to face death. Literal and metaphorical. Nobody gets out of here alive. If we are born, we must die.

Great artists know that every day we live ultimately brings us closer to death. That’s the way life is.

This is not just about Gil Scott-Heron. This is about all of us. And about having the fortitude to face the specifics of our personal addictions, whatever those addictions may be. Could be terrible, be tragic, but could also be that whatever good that is happening to us will eventually come to an end. We ourselves will end. 

We can never go back home again, be born again. Not in this life. Maybe in another life, a future plane of existence after we leave this one. But  we don’t really know.

Good, bad, indifferent, whatever–no one really knows if there is actually an other side.


“The Other Side” was first released on Gil’s album Spirits (1994-TVT). Here are two versions: the first in a studio and the second in live performance less than a year before his transition. Listen. Meditate on this.

 

 

 

 

 

Linda was crying.

My hands shook as I tore the paper scrolling from the teletype machine. Preparing for my weekly radio program. I too was having trouble seeing straight.

We were only thirteen Black students out of roughly 1200 at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. Sunday, February 21, 1965.

Such moments are so momentous that you can never forget them. No matter what occurs over the intervening decades. No mater how many milestones you approach and pass. Leave behind. There are some moments one can not forget. Never. Ever. Forget.

I will forever remember. Well over fifty years later. Long, long after specifics have faded, I still get emotionally shook.

Malcolm X was assassinated. Amid the clatter of the machine printing the news, the near silent, but nevertheless thunderous, crying of my classmate. I don’t remember any other specifics. Malcolm was dead.

Over a half century later, at odd moments, I experience something: could be a street sign passed on the boulevard, could be a sweatshirt someone is wearing, could be a television commercial on an unwatched show blaring in the background, suddenly that fate-filled Sunday is resurrected.

Sometimes, regardless of where I am or whom I’m with–I momentarily bow my head, look away. Malcolm is dead.

I know, everybody doesn’t feel this way. For some people it’s the moment they find out their mother died, or a spouse leaves home, or the bright joy of a graduation, moments that one never forgets. For me it was Malcolm.

Mere days after his killing, I saw a photo. His body on a gurney. His mouth hanging agape. Malcolm. Dead.

The sixties were tumultuous. The Viet Nam war. And all the assassinations. JFK-Nov. 1963; Malcolm-Feb. 1965; King-April 1968; Bobby Kennedy-Jun. 1968. A decade of death.

We soldiered on pass those ominous markers forewarning us concerning the killings to come. Regardless of the terrible trials endured in those days when so many of us died, some of us let nothing deter us in our forward march toward justice.

I know in this new millennium, the majority of people who read this were not even alive when Malcolm died, but I also know that so many of us worldwide have been touched by the spirit of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz: Malcolm X.

For example, even right-wing politicians repeat the phrase “by any means necessary”, seemingly without any awareness that the saying was popularized by brother Malcolm.

His death is shrouded in so many questions. Who ordered the dastardly deed done? Why did Black men pull the trigger? Books have been written. Movies made. Videos circulated online. Yet we may never know the whole truth.

Here are two short clips of Malcom speaking in the months immediately preceding his assassination.

It is significant that the father of daughters was a staunch defender of Black women. The split with Mr. Muhammad was both painful and permanent. Malcolm supported the statements of at least five women with whom Mr. Muhammad fathered children. Long, long before the “me too” movement was publicly expressed regarding the dynamics of powerful men exploiting women, Malcolm stood against gender exploitation. His stance is critical to fully understanding Malcolm as a genuine, upright man of moral principle. 

Never forget.

 

 

A few weeks ago, I unexpectedly received an email. Catapulted me into an internal realm where the past lives.

Intimate friends can do that: propel you down your personal rabbit hole of memories. Subsequently, a picture of us arrived. Immediately I thought of Al Jarreau (March 12, 1940 – February 12, 2017). Together, we used to listen to him.

Over the years millions have been enthralled by his singing. Music is the most reliable time machine we humans have. Carries us back to people and places we have experienced, and projects us forward into flavors we have yet to taste.

And then I remembered marveling at Al. It was a festival in Florida, a handful of miles from Zora’s home in Eatonville. Brother Jarreau was the featured performer. A sunny summer day, a couple thousand people. Al was onstage literally kicking and high stepping as he sang using that golden flute that was a combination of his physical attributes and his unbridled imagination. I was so enraptured, I didn’t even feel the deep south, east coast heat beaming down on our assembled throng.

Al was from Milwaukee but, on that hot afternoon, he could have worked for NASA. He had the talent to captivate aficionados and to shoot us into inner space with the magic of his musical moments. Ever since I have really loved his unique vocalizations.

There were two Jarreau albums I especially dug: the Grammy-winning Look To The Rainbow (Warner Bros.–1977) and Tenderness (Reprise–1994). The first from early in his career. The second later in his life. Both treasures expertly captured his beautiful feel for improvisation.

A grown-ass man, exuberant, juices flowing, laughing, enjoying himself as much as the audience was reciprocally enjoying him. Mucho years later he somehow re-discovered the spark that lit the torch-light of his talent, which had first burst fully into flame when he was much younger.

You can hear the overflow of joy in the excerpts, especially the rich combination of deep song and deep feeling topped by a wry intelligence and modernist investigations of the nature of our existence (after all, he had a degree in Psychology and a masters in Rehabilitation Counseling; he knew what it meant to be human).

That he chose music as a way to express and share the fruits of his vast understanding of who and what we are, well, perhaps that is the most potent magic of Al Jarreau.

Thank you Al for transporting me, and many, many others, back to younger days.

 

Changing America isn’t easy. Indeed, just the thought of taking over seems damn near impossible. But taking over can be more than just a dream. Taking over is actually the opportunity of every generation.

To paraphrase Franz Fanon: “Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.”

Without revealing our true history, America attempts to keep us looking at current conditions ass-backwards. Once we wake up from system-induced ignorance, over and over we find out that we really don’t know what happened: to us, to our parents, to generations that preceded us. We believe we know but most of our beliefs are actually false knowledge–stories manufactured to keep us ignorant.

Here we consider one particular period: the twelve hour take over of a hospital. New York City 1970. The Young Lords.

It may sound like Hollywood but this a real story of real people and the daring deeds they chose to undertake.

Look, listen, and learn!

 

How early?

All of these tracks were recorded before the June, 1964 Civil Rights Legislation. 

Segregation was still fully the law in much of the land. The Civil Rights Movement had not yet come fully to fruition. Television, guided by the political and economic power structures of America, was still punitively black and white.

Today, some nostalgically call for a return to those good old days. But as Moms Mabley declared: “What good ole days? I was there. Wasn’t no good ole days.”

As a young teenager I first saw Nina singing on television, “I Loves You Porgy“. Even though I was not fully aware of where the music came from or what the song meant, I was moved to my core. That moment was the beginning of a life long fascination that never faded.

Even at an early age, I was overwhelmed with the desire to be loved by someone the way this woman sang concerning some fortunate fella named Porgy. I imagined love like that was top shelf.

However as childhood dreams collided with adolescent realities, as well as with budding adult gropings through the actualities of life, the romance turned into the often contradictory existence of  what happens when we try (so very, very hard) to live our dreams. Instead of sweet fantasies, what we engaged with and end up entangled in are bittersweet actualities. 

Yes, we probably have had some wonderful moments, but those remembered reveries actually took place at the same time as our youthful hopes were dashed and replaced by the checkered ups and downs of what love inevitably means for most of us as we valiantly, but too often vainly, try to make our particular coming of age experiences more than the typical swan songs of the hum-drum, daily slogs that replace romance in most of our lives.

In truth, reality fractures romance. Reluctantly we realize that life is about far more than our own personal feelings and beliefs. As we intimately engage with others, we are forced to confront and deal with the contradictions of life as a social experience. Furthermore, for most of us, moving through America’s 20th century, life was no walk in the park. 

What Nina did for me was teach me that we are not the only ones who suffered. Nor the only ones who rebelled. When she uttered “Pirate Jenny“, that controversial German song both was and wasn’t definitely about us. There was an unmistakable confrontational tone that made clear that for Nina, this was far, far more than a show tune.

For me this song marked the beginning of Nina’s overtly activist phase–but the truth needs to be told, Nina was always using her art to engage or confront her social environment.  

Whether we (or especially anybody else) realized the reality or not: to be black is to be human, and to be human in America meant, and continues to mean, we either resist or we submit to the dehumanizing views, values, and ultimately to the authority of white supremacy. Particularly when that supremacy is often a shorthand for excluding the experiences of the majority of humanity and requiring that rather than celebrate our non-white selves, we are encouraged, indeed cajoled into striving to become other than who we naturally are.

We are no mere hewers of wood and drawers of water. We are not destined to be servants and slaves. Defined as lesser when compared to those who would consider themselves our masters. Humanity is neither all white, nor all male, and certainly not all rich. We must move beyond socially enforced boundaries. To live fully requires that we break out of restrictive boxes.

For us, to be or not to be is not a question, but rather is a choice we must make to live or to die struggling to live. To quote our poet, Claude McKay, “If we must die. . .” let it be “. . . fighting back!”

# # # # # # #

As a bonus, here are live versions of some of Nina Simone’s classic interpretations.

 

 

 

Trane. John William Coltrane (23 September 1926 – 17 July 1967). A giant of twentieth century music. As a sideman and then as a leader; as a premiere saxophonist (both tenor and soprano); plus he was also an inspiring composer. He created so much music. Over fifty years after his transition, new recordings continue to surface.

I count myself as a Trane freak. I have over 100+ CDs documenting his greatness. I never heard him live, but I luxuriate in and am inspired by his recordings.

Early on, as a young teenager, I used to walk out the room when his music came on the radio. However, one day in Nashville, while visiting at Fisk University, I was relaxing in the student lounge, and for the first time really heard “My Favorite Things”. Some higher power must have deemed that as I approached 18 years of circling the sun, I had now matured enough to appreciate music of higher realms.

I went on to devour all the music and studies of John Coltrane that I could obtain. I even constructed my own timeline and loved all the whistle stops Trane made as he roared through modern jazz. Unlike a number of jazz artists, even though his recording career as a leader was less that twelve years long, Coltrane’s music became the major force in the transition from bebop to the “new thing”.

Coltrane practiced incessantly. He cold-turkey stopped using drugs and drinking heavily. He read widely and was even seen in the audience at a Malcolm X speaking engagement. Coltrane developed a deep interest in African, Indian and oriental musical forms. When he married Alice McLeod, Coltrane became a devoted family man where he had a home in Long Island, New York. He also encouraged Alice to learn the harp which she went on to master.  

 


THE PRESTIGE YEARS (1957 – 1958)

There are 14 albums with Trane as a leader or co-leader of Prestige sessions. Plus, there are numerous albums of Trane as a sideman for Prestige releases and for releases on other labels. During this period Coltrane often recorded with, as well as occasionally under the leadership of, Donald Byrd. Here is an excursion through the famous song, Lush Life.

 

MILES DAVIS YEARS (1955 – 1961)

Trane’s tenure with Miles is when the saxophonist attracted international attention and includes what is generally considered the major recording of modern jazz, Kind Of Blue. My favorite track on that album is Flamenco Sketches. I am also a big fan of the last Columbia-label recording that Trane and Miles did together, Some Day My Prince Will Come.There is no doubt that by this time, John Coltrane had established himself as the major musician in jazz.

 


A SUMMER WITH MONK (1957)

Trane briefly left Miles and spent a summer with Thelonious Monk. Some jazz scholars refer to this as Trane’s graduate education in his musical development. Certainly when Miles convinced Trane to rejoin the trumpeter’s band, Trane had matured under Monk’s leadership into a forceful, even dominating, soloist while learning to perform Monk’s idiosyncratic music. On their four official recordings, we hear Trane fully developing his fabled “sheets of sound” techniques. However, his ballad playing is also stellar, particularly Trane’s tender reading of Monk’s Ruby My Dear.

 


THE ATLANTIC YEARS (1959 – 1961)

With his recording of My Favorite Things, Trane became both a top-selling artist as well as a true innovator stylistically. As a saxophonist, he re-introduced the soprano saxophone as a leading instrument. Indeed, after this period in Trane’s development, many tenor saxophonists were encouraged, if not outright required, to double on soprano saxophone. Furthermore, his first recording on Atlantic was the ultra-influential Giant Steps album.

 

 

 


THE IMPULSE & PABLO YEARS (1961 – 1967)

Here we find both the mature and the all the way “out” phases of Coltrane’s career. The bulk of Trane’s recordings from this period are considered the pace setters for modern music. While the last handful of titles are often a matter of taste for those who rate and/or love all of Trane’s music, it is a generally accepted truism that A Love Supreme is Coltrane’s masterpiece. A healthy bulk of the Impulse catalogue is from the period of the classic John Coltrane Quartet, featuring McCoy Tyner on piano, Elvin Jones on drums, and Jimmy Garrison on bass.

While Trane’s technical prowess on mid- and up-tempo compositions is totally undeniable, he was also especially effective on blues and slow numbers. Trane’s composition and achingly effective reading of Dear Lord is exemplary of the spiritual deepness of a mature musician.

This brief essay is far from a complete discography and does not include significant European recordings from radio broadcasts that Trane did in 1961 and in 1965, nor do we include the miscellaneous sides Trane cut throughout his career with musicians as diverse as Earl Bostic, Johnny Hodges, Dizzy Gillespie, and Duke Ellington.

I consider Trane’s collaboration with Duke on a signature Ellington composition, In A Sentimental Mood, to be definitive–especially the arrangement, featuring Duke’s distinctive piano introduction and stylings that add a second melodic line to the iconic song. Duke and Trane are often considered the premier musician’s of their respective eras.

Moreover, I consider the Impulse-label, John Coltrane and John Hartman album as the most successful and satisfying of jazz albums featuring a male vocalist from that period. Of special significance is Trane’s new take of the Billy Strayhorn composition Lush Life, which Trane had recorded as an instrumental in 1957 during his Prestige years.

 


Which brings us to the crown jewel of Coltrane recordings: A Love Supreme – Live In Seattle. The story of how the recording was done and then not discovered until over fifty years later is an epic in itself.

There are so many reasons to recommend this album. First, this is an extended treatment of only three available recordings of the whole suite: 1. the studio release, 2. a live recording from a festival in France, and 3. this recording from the last night of an extended gig in Seattle.

Secondly, this is the first recording when Pharoah Sanders has joined Trane’s band. Pharoah would go on to produce some of the most challenging music of a long career that included seminal sides with John Coltrane as well as extremely popular and innovative music as a leader in his own rite.

Third, we hear Trane incorporating more percussion in his music in addition to Elvin Jones on drums. This is a pivotal moment in Trane’s development and is recorded during the same era as ground breaking albums such as Meditations, Ascension, both the 1961 Live At The Village Vanguard as well as Live At The Village Vangard Again!, and now this new release, recorded in 1965. 

Rather than an overview, this is a actually a brief summation of the music of John Coltrane. The Coltrane wikipedia page offers more information including listing of books as well as overviews of Coltrane recordings. If one listens to the bulk of post-bop Coltrane, and particularly to the recordings Trane made as a leader, then one will received a thorough and insightful education in modern, twentieth century music.

 


Photo–Patti Labelle, Nona Hendryx, Sarah Dash 

 

After well over a decade of working together, in 1974 LaBelle had a major hit with New Orleans producer Allen Toussaint. Whenever they came to town, the night people turned out en masse, strutting the streets decked out in silver, proudly resplendent. 

Twenty years into this new millennium, LaBelle’s music continues to be a forward flag. Patti Labelle, Nona Hendryx, and Sarah Dash, in combination with their UK-bred manager, Vicky Wickham, established a new paradigm for “girl groups”. These were women. Proud women. Sexually liberated. Making socially challenging music.

The LaBelle trio were an eclectic ensemble. Hendryx was the resident wordsmith and philosopher, Labelle was an electrifying performer, Dash had an angelic voice. They combined their strengths to produce an entrancing and challenging sound.

This is not simply an obituary for Sarah Dash who recently made her transition. While we do honor Dash’s departure from this plane, what this really is, is a celebration of the feminine. Pure and powerful. They battered against the social restrictions back in the seventies, and their music continues to challenge the conservative tide that is still very much with us in 2021. 

Some of their music was too radical for radio of the last millenium. Indeed, LaBelle is more forward than much of today’s music. And it’s not a gimmick. Individually and certainly collectively, these women are easily the match of any female ensemble of the first two decades of the 21st century. LaBelle persevered for well over twenty years. Two decades. That’s a long, long time in entertainment-industry years.

Check them out. If you are unfamiliar with LaBelle, these selections will help bring you up to speed. And if you are a long time fan, these selections will bring back fond memories.

As a bonus, here is a clip of Patti Labelle singing the last song LaBelle recorded. . . I should say “performing” the last song the trio recorded. Ms. Labelle famously falls to the floor, rolls across the stage, singing as she rotates. . . just check it out.

Consider LaBelle. You may be surprised. You certainly will be delighted.