The Gentrification of Black Music and Media and The Myth of Black Buying Power with Dr Jared Ball

Welcome to a special re-introduction of 1919 radio; In this episode our host Mohamed Nuur is joined by Dr Jared Ball, scholar, professor, and author of I mix what I like: A Mixtape Manifesto as well as The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power. I speak to him about his books, mixtape radio, emancipatory journalism, & the gentrification of Black music and media.

Title sequence credits:

Introduction clip: Angela Davis on Democracy Now!
Second clip: Sister Souljah response to Bill Clinton
Third clip: Kwame Ture on Organizaiton and mobilization Song: The Pharcyde - Runnin'

Transcript

1919Radio Intro audio clip 0:00

I never experienced anything like the conditions we are currently experiencing.

I am mentally spiritually physically, emotionally, intellectually and academically developed and acutely aware of the condition of African people throughout the entire world.

We don't want fortune, we dont want popularity we want power, power. And power comes only from the organized masses.

MN 0:48

Welcome to a special edition of 1919 radio. My name is Mohammed and I'm your host. In this episode I'm joined by Dr. Jared Ball, scholar and author of I mix what I like a mixtape Manifesto, as well as The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power. I speak to him about his books, mixtape Radio emancipatory journalism and the gentrification of black music in media.

1919 radio was first started to challenge the gentrified club spaces in Toronto, by hosting a community based platform for independent DJs. We wanted to host an educational interview with Dr. Ball to reintroduce our radio platform as multimedia projects rooted in anti colonial resistance emancipatory journalism and cooperative community power. I hope you enjoy the show.

Can you begin by introducing yourself, your platform, and the work that you do?

JB 1:41

Sure. Well, my name is Jared Ball and professionally. I am a professor of media and African American, African Diaspora studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland. And I curate the multimedia website, I mix what I like.org and try to support as many grassroots political and cultural and media journalistic movements and efforts as I can.

MN 2:07

My first question is about I Mix What I like, A central concept in your book is this notion of a colonized rhythm nation. Can you describe what you mean by it? And what does internal colony theory on this idea of a cohesive African America mean for Black music and media broadly?

JB 2:26

Well, the colonized colonized rhythm nation phrase comes from Professor is it Norman Kelly, it's not Robin DG. Kelly, I think it's Norman Kelly who I got that from. But the sources obviously cited in the book, I just can't remember exactly off the top of my head, I think it is that, which I thought fit perfectly within what I was trying to do with that work, which was to center this concept of internal colonialism for Black America here in the United States.

The idea is just simply that to the extent there is a black community or a black nation, it is colonized internally in the United States, and that the point I was trying to make is that similar to many others, I was trying to extend the tradition of those who are saying this internal colonialism meant or means that the more or less the traditional relationships that are established through a colonial process exists here. Extraction, exploitation, physical and social and economic and political distance and difference.

Then in the context of hip hop or music or cultural expression, the same processes exist, that a black community here that is socially and physically segregated, still, to this day, has its cultural production mined like any other natural resource, packaged, produced, owned and redistributed, sold by a dominant mother country. With all of the wealth and benefits accruing to that mother country, while the colony itself devolves. In summary, over the course of the history of hip hop in this country, 50 years or so, the black community has produced billions and I think at the time we're talking about $40 billion a year all told. But the conditions in those communities have actually worsened. So that's what I was trying to just quickly identify and I think more appropriately contextualize that process.

MN 5:04

What is the role of mass media and American cultural production in shaping and erasing political consciousness? And what role does independent black media play here?

JB 5:16

Well, media and propaganda in the United States play the dominant role more than any other force in managing consciousness manipulating public opinion, or as has been popularly said, by Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent. That is their primary and I would argue even sole function. Independent black media, to the extent that it has ever existed or exists today, has been to offer up messaging and cultural expression that encouraged different forms of organization in response to the conditions faced by black people. I don't know how much you want to get into it. But there's, I think, a lot of room to argue, again, to what extent is there? Or has there ever been an independent black media and to what extent that media performs, you know, sort of the roles they're popularly conceived of performing that is encouraging something other than a dominant narrative or expression. But that has at least traditionally been part of what independent black media has done. Has provided space for people to communicate ideas and culture that are not accepted or sanctioned and that has been invaluable to political struggle.

MN 6:49

In your book, you also talk about mixtape radio as a tool of anti colonial resistance. Can you expand on that and what you mean by emancipatory journalism?

JB 7:00

Well I'll start backwards, emancipatory journalism is a concept that was coined and developed largely by Professor Haman, Shaw, a professor of journalism in the University of Madison, Wisconsin, and simply put is just is just a historical application of journalism or a philosophy of journalism applied by those who were colonized in response to colonization. That argues that journalism and media must be produced and practiced by and for those in anti colonial political struggle. So not that you shouldn't be sound and researched and honest, but that you should not be biased, or that you should not, eschew bias, you should not avoid bias, that you should be biased in favor of your political struggle, and you should be performing your work as part of an organized effort to end that oppressive relationship.

I saw mix tape radio, you know, at the time I was arguing, and hopefully you and your crew can do this, but it would have to be re rebranded and reformed because the mixtape that I was primarily talking about was an analog hardcopy, low tech, offline, literal CD or cassette that would be distributed that would contain art and content and music and power and journalism and politics that you couldn't get in terrestrial radio, or mainstream media. It was just to borrow from or extend the history of the hip hop mixtape which is an underappreciated history, that is without the mixtape, without DJs being able to create cassette tapes and CDs with music, and blends and messaging that could not be found on radio, there would be no explosion of hip hop. That was as Angela Ards put years years ago, hip hop's original mass media.

So as a lover of mixtapes, my whole life and then at one point, a producer of at least a journalistic form of them, you know, I wanted to just to try to make an argument around politicizing that history. And, honestly even more than anything practical, I think, to make the argument that an approach of this history and recognition of this history would help I think better interpret the current condition and offer other analyses and explanations and responses to it. In other words, the history of the mixtape, I think does expose the colonial relationship that black people have in this country and elsewhere to the state.

MN 10:11

Can you elaborate on that last point?

JB 10:15

In the history of hip hop you have the core and original elements of DJing, B-boying emceeing, and graffiti emerging out of the poorest, most impressive black and brown communities in the United States that are themselves comprised of an African Diaspora that is coming from the Caribbean that's coming from the continent, it's coming from up your way, in Canada down to New York and down to the east coast of the United States, where Harlem historically had become the pan African, African Diaspora Mecca, pun intended, so to speak, for the African world.

So within the United States, with all the internal migrations forced and otherwise north to south, west, to East, east to west, etc. You have, at the time, the creation of this black Mecca, in Harlem, in New York City, more broadly, etc. Where and of course, in the Bronx, where it's said, although there's some debates around that, you know, Bronx and some argue even in previously in Queens, you know, in many ways in New York, it [Hip-Hop] emerges. But it's emerging as a response to Colonial conditions. Whether it's black people having the programs cut that would have more people being taught traditional musical instruments. You know, you have that cut and then you have people start moving towards stereos and you have the technology coming from Europe of mixing boards and turntable technology, and new music coming from other parts of the world. You have all of that sort of coalescing in a moment, where black and brown people here, would start taking these and combining them other traditions.

Also, in the context of not having access to any sort of mainstream media, black radio, didn't even want to play rap music initially. And then saying, Well, okay, fine. We're going to steal electricity from streetlamps, we're going to set up in the park since we don't have, stadiums and clubs to play in, since we can't get on the radio we'll record to a mixtape or record to a cassette and we'll distribute that throughout the community all the way up and down the East Coast of the United States. Even to where I was in Maryland getting mix tapes from New York as a kid, hearing music there was no radio for. So that's how it creates this underground medium where the mixtape literally carried hip hop beyond its original boroughs and communities into the United States and made it grow to a point where it had to be, as I would at least argue, colonized, co opted, and turned into the commercial bastardization that we have now at least in terms of its mainstream form. So that's what the mixtape to me always represents, it is the underground newspapers of other places and times. It's the underground, cassette tapes of people in Eastern Europe trying to communicate when an overreaching communism was suppressing them. It's the the Radio Free Dixie of Robert Williams broadcasting from Cuba, to the southern part of the United States advocating black liberation. It's the Underground Railroad communication, that was intercontinental, through the Western Hemisphere, that somehow enabled Africans to escape up and down the continent. So to me, the mixtape just represents an extension of all of that of underground journalism of the radical kind of broadcasting and media that is unsanctioned that leads to and supports radical political movements

MN 14:30

10 years on, from publication, corporate power is only consolidated even further. The so called musical OPEC is now three after universal purchased EMI in 2012. How have things changed and how have streaming services like Spotify affected everyone or everything I should say.

JB 14:52

Look, Harold Ennis was right years ago, talking about a Canadian, who wrote the bias of communication in the 50s and he was right. Advances in media and communicative technology, enhance or enable further consolidation of power. So from the printing press to today, the more highly technical communication becomes, the more consolidated the power is that controls it. So now, just in terms of the context, we're talking here, with Spotify, and, you know, iTunes, and now youtube music, which is the number one music distribution network, now you have an even increased consolidation. YouTube is owned by Google, YouTube's music is run by Leo Cohen, who was the same horrific corporate destroyer that people have been pointing to in hip hop, going back to the 80s, who's right back on top. So it's about what hasn't changed, it's literally the same man has even more power today to influence who becomes famous.

People have to understand fameis political it has nothing to do with talent, although talent is important. So I shouldn't say it has nothing to do with talent, I should say talent is not the number one determinant and it is not necessarily required, as there have been plenty of untalented people who have become enormously popular. The mechanism of popularity is political. Celebrity is political. As I've often said, you cannot be rich, famous and radically political, history is clear. There is no example of someone sustaining, being rich, famous and radically political all at the same time, maybe one of the three, maybe two of the three, but I'm literally unaware of any exception to that rule. Once you become rich and famous, if you are radically political, your career is going to get destroyed or worse snd history is replete with examples of that. Aren't we about to celebrate Bob Marley's, isn't Bob Marley's birthday coming up? I think we're getting close to Bob Marley's birthday. I don't know. Anyway, he's a perfect example. As soon as he's rich, and famous and radical, he's gone and he's rebranded as someone who is every little thing is gonna be all right and let's just smoke a lot of weed. All of the radical messaging is wiped away and rebranded and repackaged. Michelle Stevenson has done some great work on that, by the way, if anybody wants to go back and look at that. Simply that, the process of popularity is managed.

So musically to get placed at the top of Spotify or YouTube or any other platform, it is a payment relationship. It's a payola relationship where someone is paying for that placement. It's a relationship that is manicured. over decades, people like Paul Porter have done great work on this, Rolling Stone even put out an article I think last year or a couple of articles within last year or two talking about how even as we move to digital platforms that process of payola or pay for play has remained. So really, theres only three record labels that can afford to do this Universal Music Group, which is number one, Sony number two, and Warner, number three, a distant number three, but still number three. They can pay to have their artists promoted and placed so that when you click the algorithm tells you that this artist will show up and that artist will show up and that artist. The experience that we have online, which is another conversation, is an entirely manicured experience in itself. So this idea that we're just entering a free and open Internet, is entire mythology, particularly at this point. So this makes it, despite what many I think argue and claim, makes it harder for alternative so called or different artists to be heard or seen. So when you are able to do all this promotion, you're also to create a marginal space for everybody else to be pushed into. So you know, we can have this conversation, anyone can have a conversation, but those that are promoted and paid and placed, will get more attention. It's the same way with music. I was even just looking at it a couple of weeks ago for another presentation and I'm sorry, I don't have this specifics right in front of me, but if you look and if you want, I'll dig it out real quick, but if you look carefully, you'll see that artists are paid less per digital download or stream today than they were paid for spins on radio traditionally, historically, or sales of CDs, or records historically.

So in other words, artists are more exploited today for their product than they have been historically, despite this appearance of everybody's out here, everybody can get it, everybody has an opportunity, it is, unfortunately, something very different. It doesn't matter if you can walk away with a hard copy of a CD or a record or you just lose your stream because they shut down your account. To me, what's more important is the process that would have encouraged you to buy the album or the CD or the cassette, historically, is the same process fully intact, that encourages you to stream or have a playlist of certain artists on a digital platform today. And that process is controlled by a handful of very wealthy white men. That's why they say Lucien Grange, who was the head of Universal Music Group, they still to this day, call him the most powerful man in the music business. So how is this white French man who has got to be in his 70s, or something, at this point, literally has more control over the music you and I hear, and that the students that end up in my classroom hear than anything you and I could do. He's determining the artists that they are introduced to, and that they are, through imposition, encouraged to believe that they like. That's done I think even more easily today than it was done when I was coming up.

MN 22:05

Let's shift gears to talk about your newest book, The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power. Can you define what you mean by black buying power? And how is it a myth?

JB 22:15

Well, what I mean by black buying power is that it doesn't exist. What people are encouraged to believe that black buying power means is that there is this 1.3 or four or $5 trillion pool of money that black people sit on, and foolishly spend on frivolous goods, when instead they could become more quote, unquote, financially literate, and save and deposited, invest that money and increase their wealth and close the racial wealth and income inequality gaps. That what I'm saying, and I think, not I think, I have proven and it's not a matter of arrogance, it's a matter of simplicity, it's really not a complicated issue. If you look at the way the claim of the 1.3 trillion is made, it's easily dismissed as false and then if you look at the actual data of the condition of black people in this country, economically, you see that there is no quote unquote power in that economic relationship. Power in the phrase buying power is defined based on those who created the phrase, which are marketers and advertisers. So it means the ability to spend money and enrich those who own various goods and services that you'll buy, which are not black people. So power and buying power is a phrase is a measurement of the ability of black people to enrich white corporations.

So what I've done in the book is just outline the history of it, and the method and mechanism by which, just as I was saying [before], in terms of music, popularity and celebrity. I outline the process by which this myth is propagated and popularized, and the context in which that it's done and why it's done. Then I show how it is, in fact, created out of a single, literally one source, whose data is itself based on, as they say themselves 'estimates and projections'. It has nothing to do with income and wealth and I just show why it all happens, in other words, to say, ultimately, that black people cannot get free through what is always encouraged through a black capitalist enterprise of starting a business supporting a business or banking black or buying black.

That is not how wealth is created. That's not how white people became wealthy. So to tell black people, within a white supremacist capitalist society that, that's how they can become wealthy is in fact, mythology. And the ultimate point which I talked about, is to discourage black people from engaging the only power that anybody has which is political power, organizational, movement, or building power. So instead of saying we should politically organize and assume political power, we're told to start businesses and support banking institutions, etc, and so forth. And that's the mythology that helps maintain this wild and increasing inequality.

MN 25:21

What is the role of hip hop in the music industry at large in shaping and promoting this propaganda?

JB 25:27

Well it's tremendous. I talked a little bit about it in the book, but historically and going back even to the I Mix What I like book, is where I talk about the developed trend over some decades ago of promoting products and commercialism within the lyrics of rap music. Where there were literal business relationships between products, and rappers to promote those products. Whether it's a liquor or clothing, or some other kind of item. So hip hop does the same thing in terms of promoting black capitalism and black buying power and black banking. Because the popular form, the commercial form of rap music is meant to satisfy the ideology and political needs of the commercial world. So they don't want discussions of socialism and pan africanism and armed struggle, and you know, all of that stuff that's replete in black history. They want a discussion of one form of black struggle, which is black entrepreneurialism, mainstream politicians, and the fantasy of inclusion. So as long as there is this fantasy of a lottery victory of inclusion, it reduces the likelihood of radical formation and political revolution.

MN 26:52

What is the path forward for us as creatives and consumers now that the illusion is basically shattered?

JB 26:59

I try to, at least on some level, ethically consume. I have my own personal boycotts, there are places I don't go and there are businesses and places I do intentionally go to. The argument that, that can lead to radical change, that's mythology. We should all look to work collectively and look to support one another, that's a given. To turn that into an argument that, that is in and of itself, a political movement, or platform or strategy or path to liberation, that's a different and for me, disagreeable point, that doesn't work. So I don't argue that my boycotts in support of this or lack of support of that, is going to lead to revolution. We should do cooperatives and co ops and buy black and bank, do all of that. I had a whole ethic of [supporting] artists that I knew or who are radical, I would make sure to buy their work, even if they tried to give it to me for free. That's great.

That didn't make anybody rich and it wouldn't have kept anybody from being more poor. What we need is what the those in power have always understood is necessary, you have to have political power and you have to set public policy to address the needs of the people. Between, what did I just read, between 2008 and 2019, the financial elite in this country were given through public policy redistribution, and a whole bunch of mechanisms like $19 trillion. This past summer, the hope and cares act here in the United States gave, four to $6 trillion to the financial elite to cover their losses during the pandemic and gave nothing but pennies to the people. That's public policy. Wall Street wasn't smarter than anybody, they didn't work harder than anybody. They didn't set up businesses and small businesses and talk about support our wallstreet, no. They went to the politicians and said hey, create money redistribute money do whatever the hell you have to do just make sure that we get our money. Then they tell us, you go start a business you go shop responsibly, you go support your underground rapper. That's how you'll build wealth; that's what I'm saying is ridiculous in mythology.

MN 30:02

One thing I also liked about I Mix What I Like was the Fanonian aspects to your analysis. So I'm wondering if you could maybe touch on propaganda and the Fanon aspect of your analysis in your first book.

JB 30:16

Just as I was saying, we can't shop our way to freedom, we can't music our way to freedom. This is part of a political struggle and as Fanon pointed out, colonialism is about total conquest of land and people. And as he said, that's all that's it, that's what it is, we can get deep, he could obviously get deep, but that's what it is. So what I was trying to point out is, we are in a colonial situation, that means we can't just simply write a good song where a good shirt vote for a good politician, I mean, theres something more intense that has to take place here. What we're having to deal with even more immediately, despite maybe appearances than the physical violence, is the psychic violence that Amos Wilson and and Fanon and others have talked about in different ways that comes right afterwards.

So we've already gone through the initial physical conquest, they enslaved our ancestors, they wiped out the indigenous people, they suppressed hundreds of rebellions, imprisoned hundreds and 1000s and millions of people subsequent to all of that. There counter intelligence programs assassinated and exiled our radical leaders and destroyed the movements, you know, and all of this is still ongoing. They've wiped out the military wing of the revolutionary struggle at this point. So far, they destroyed the Black Liberation Army, they've, they even just re-upped the bounty on Assata Shakur, again, last month. What comes after that is a never ending wave of propaganda and psychological warfare. Obviously, we don't have time to get into it now but one of the many underappreciated histories of this country is the history of the rise of propaganda in the communication system in this country. And the point I made about Harold Innis earlier is perfectly appropriate to this history, those in power have looked to consciously develop mechanisms to manage our consciousness and our public opinion or, manufacture our consent, as I said earlier, as Chomsky and Herman had pointed out. This is the primary way that they manage people's behavior and keep us more or less in line. So, we cannot under estimate, and we should not under appreciate the levels or the extent to which that those in power have worked to do this, whether it is literally writing thousands of television shows and films to put a positive light on the military and the police. Whether it is it is placing, you know, CIA assets in media outlets and journalism outlets, whether it is assassination and psychological warfare operations that have gone on. Whether it is simply the consolidation of the commercial media apparatus into a handful of corporate entities whose literal legal mandate is to simply make money for their stockholders. You know, all of this creates a situation where depth and substance and breadth of ideas and radical ideas are not going to find a lot of room not going to find a lot of time. And this is done intentionally, because, as those in power have mentioned, they want what they call full spectrum dominance.

The internet is military technology in its origins. As you talk about hip hop, as Jay Rue said decades ago, the same chip that powers my video game console powers nuclear arms. We're using a version of the technology that is powering satellites and remote drone strike capabilities and surveillance capabilities. I mean, that's why I emphasize Fanon. The real purpose here is to conquer land and people to extract resources and wealth from the labor of others to dominate, to set up a situation where the colonized have a psychological protective network that assures that their white supremacist colonial status will not be assaulted.

Former CBS executive or was it an ABC executive Les Moonves said during the Trump campaign in 2012, 16 rather, he said that, Trump's campaign may be bad for the country, but it's good for CBS or good for ABC. In other words, we're here to make money, we're not here to provide necessary information and sound logic and reason [even] ff it means destroying the country so that our profit margins will go up. That right there, I think crystallizes the ethic of the media, because they would rather have Trump spouting nonsense, then have a more substantive conversation with anybody else, even though they recognize that he is disagreeable. They would rather give him airtime for their own other nefarious political financial reasons, then allow for more logical and substantive conversation that might threaten their ideological and financial position.

MN 36:06

How does the gentrification otherwise known as forced relocation, impact hip hop and underground press broadly? And as a follow up, what are the ways in which the internet is implicated in this process of gentrification?

JB 36:18

Gentrification, obviously, points to the colonial status as is. One of my favorite professors, Dr. James Turner had pointed out years ago, the colonial reality of black America is evident in the gentrification process, is colonial removal. I mean, the inability for communities to protect and maintain their their possession of land or territories, that's colonization right there. When you can dislocate and nterrupt and divide and disperse communities, obviously, it's going to interrupt cultural transmission. As I pointed out, I think actually, and others have pointed out, it's kind of like what Huey Newton once said about inter communalism, that there that there are no real protected boundaries or borders anymore. One of the things that those in power can do, the United States in particular, is project its messaging across any border into any community. So it's not only the physical gentrification and colonial removal of black populations, it's the inability of any population to protect itself intellectually or cognitively, from dominant messaging. As all of that is imposed through us, through this incredibly sophisticated and penetrative and pervasive media apparatus.

So more I think interruptive even than the physical dislocation has been the ability for record labels and their lawyers to copyright in particular, which is something I tried to write about, to literally redefine and reframe, and repurpose and rebrand and reform hip hop. As others have pointed out, Chuck D and others, you know, from Public Enemy many years ago, the beats that were produced for Public Enemy with all the sampling that is now owned not by other artists, but by white lawyers and corporations who bought up the rights to those other artists music. You can't make beats like that anymore. So literally, the sound the sound of rap music, the sound of hip hop has changed. From my boom, bap era to whatever, whatever it is today. Like it or not, it doesn't matter, that's irrelevant. The sound from today is less likely to rely on multiple samples is a product largely of an early 2000s era 90s era shift in corporate control over copyright and intellectual property. Which is again, part of the process of the music industry, that assures that artists have no control over and don't make the lion's share of the wealth that they produce. It's even worse now, artists used to be able to count on going on tour to make their money. Now with 360 degree deals where everything someone does under their brand is taxed, so to speak by their label. It's even harder for artists to do that.

Again, the internet, I want to say what is the late 60s I forgot the exact year but the internet was initially created by the military, US military to allow it to communicate between computers on the private network. As it got expanded and commercialized, it has taken on much of that same kind of work. I mean, people like to think of it as a free or at least used to be a free open space. It has always, and ever increasingly so, become the tool of intelligence agencies, the military industrial complex. I mean, there's all kinds of people, there's operation sock puppet, there's all kinds of examples of how that's done. But as I said, they want full spectrum dominance, they're saying that, again, communication in general, nevermind just the internet, even what we call entertainment, in the language of those in power has been a mechanism for maintaining political order and projecting American dominance globally. Whether it's putting black people even in the background in movies in the 1950s, that would be exported all over the world to make it seem like black people were doing better here than ever, or sending jazz artists around the world in the 50s to promote an open American democracy in the post World War Two era, or sending rappers on the same mission in the 2000s to promote a positive America to the world. The use of art and entertainment, so called entertainment, and media as propaganda for the state is as old as the state itself. I mean, even as Patricia Bradley pointed out in her great book on propaganda and slavery, I think that's the exact title. She talks about, you know, people drink the beer, Sam Adams. Well, Sam Adams was a white supremacist propagandist who only used the word slavery in reference to what he and his white colonists suffered from the British and never talked about what was going on with the Africans he was enslaving and others were enslaving here in the United States. So from the beginning of this country propaganda, as my brother, Dr. Todd burrows. Todd Stephen burrows pointed out to me years ago, you got to look at this history its deep. When Crispus Attucks was killed at the Boston Massacre, The so called Boston Massacre was a handful of people were killed, but one of them was black. When Paul Revere went on his famous ride to encourage the colonists to fight against the British and he was a pamphleteer he was a media maker, and he printed all these pamphlets, and he wanted to use the Boston, so called massacre as propaganda against the British. But he knew. You can't put a black man on the cover of a pamphlet to inspire white people to fight other whites so he literally changed Attucks to a white man for that pamphlet.

So my point is from the beginning, even before this country was a country, propaganda has been, more than its military, even more than then, I know this sounds crazy, even for me to say, but even more than the lash, the whip, and the chains. It was the propaganda of, there is nowhere else for you to go, there is no better world for the enslaved to have. Or the propaganda of the version of Christianity that was more of a mechanism of social control, then the physical and all of it ultimately failed as everybody was rebelling all the time which is why they were forced into a civil war that the claim was to free black people but it was really to manage the freedom that black people were going to get themselves one way or another. Again another conversation, I say all this to say that propaganda and dominant messaging has always been essential in the music industry, certainly in entertainment, what we call entertainment has always played a part in that. Listen, Before he died, Zbigniew Brzezinski one of the main power players here in the United States, he said that one of the things that was going to protect America as an empire unlike any other empire of the past, was the internet. He said specifically because most people use the internet , t's dominant language is an English, which is a cultural imposition that reorients people to the west, and allows them to project their messaging into the world at the speed of a click, in ways that could never have been done when the Roman Empire or the British Empire were the empires of the day. Now, the United States has the internet, as he argued and would be protected and I think that's largely correct as again, as wonderful and expressive as it can get on the internet as radical as it can get. It gets plenty right wing and plenty vicious on the other end as well. And it's much more well organized and funded on the other side as well, and managed. The internet is absolutely a tool is allowed for expansion of drone strike programs, surveillance technology, advertising, it is presided over an increased gap and divide in race in wealth and income. What is it 50 years of the internet. Have we seen an end of war? have we seen a reduction of war even have we seen an end of sex trafficking, slavery. I mean, name it, name it and certainly the gaps in wealth and income have only gotten worse.

MN

that's all for today. 1919 is launching our fifth magazine issue, titled Free Dreams next Friday February 26 and will feature afrofuturist artwork, essays, interviews, poetry and more. It was a labor of love, and powered by community and collective struggle so huge thank you to all who contributed to making it a reality, pre orders are up so make sure you order your copy today.