“Wind Me Up, Chuck” – RIP

The Nation's Capital mourns the passing of Washington DC’s favorite son Chuck Brown known as the “Godfather of Go-Go”. Details are a bit scant at this time, but it has been confirmed that Chuck whose been hospitalized with pneumonia for the past two months, leading to cancellation of shows and other public appearances. Rumors swirled around town that Brown had passed earlier in the year, although his family and management debunked the claims.

Chuck made a name for himself in the 70s with the smash hit “Bustin' Loose” and effectively birthing a new genre in Go-Go music. Largely a native to the Washington Metro area, Go-Go music is a byproduct of funk and soul backed by African rhythms, call-and-response chants and dances tailored made for the music. Brown was infamous for his "Wind Me Up, Chuck" routine and his hefty baritone voice was both melodic and confident.

Chuck Brown was a favorite of Washingtonians, enjoying popularity in the city and abroad that continued on for decades. The Godfather is considered by many to be Washington musical royalty, and his loss leaves behind a legacy of hits and thousands of mourning fans who grew up with his music.

The 75-year-old musician’s is said to have learned music in his early years in prison where the performer, singer, guitarist and songwriter developed his commanding brand of funk in the mid-1970s to compete with the dominance of disco. Like a DJ blending records, Mr. Brown used nonstop percussion to stitch songs together and keep the crowd on the dance floor, resulting in marathon performances that went deep into the night. Mr. Brown said the style got its name because “the music just goes and goes.”

In addition to being go-go’s principal architect, Mr. Brown remained the genre’s most charismatic figure. On stage, his spirited call-and-response routines became a hallmark of the music, reinforcing a sense of community that allowed the scene to thrive. As go-go became a point of pride for black Washingtonians, Mr. Brown became one of the city’s most recognizable figures.

“No single type of music has been more identified with Washington than go-go, and no one has loomed larger within it as Chuck Brown,” former Washington Post pop music critic Richard Harrington wrote in 2001.

Mr. Brown’s creation, however, failed to have the same impact outside of the Beltway. The birth of go-go doubled as the high-water mark of Mr. Brown’s national career. With his group the Soul Searchers, his signature hit “Bustin’ Loose” not only minted the go-go sound, it spent four weeks atop the R&B singles chart in 1978.

“Bustin’ Loose” was “the one record I had so much confidence in,” Mr. Brown told The Post in 2001. “I messed with it for two years, wrote a hundred lines of lyrics and only ended up using two lines. . . . It was the only time in my career that I felt like it’s going to be a hit.”

It was Mr. Brown’s biggest single, but throughout the 1980s “We Need Some Money,” “Go-Go Swing” and “Run Joe” became local anthems, reinforced by radio support and the grueling performance schedule that put Mr. Brown on area stages six nights a week. While rap music exploded across the country, go-go dominated young black Washington, with groups including Trouble Funk, Rare Essence and Experience Unlimited (also known as E.U.) following in Mr. Brown’s footsteps.

Mr. Brown performed less frequently in his final years but still took the stage regularly. He would often comment on his golden years in rhyme. “I’m not retired because I’m not tired. I’m still getting hired and I’m still inspired,” he said in 2006. “As long as I can walk up on that stage, I want to make people happy. I want to make people dance.”

"Wind Me Up, Chuck" and may your soul Rest in Peace. And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…

http://johntwills.com

The Un-Justiced

In recent years, we have witness torture inflected upon people in the name of terror. In nearly every city in America African-Americans are victims of abuse at the hands of the police, vigilantes, and murdered that seems often times to go unnoticed by justice. 

In the last few month’s we’ve witness the assassination of a young black child – Travon Martin – similar to little Emmett Till over a half century ago. The Klan is on the rise and most conservative law makers are trying to turn back the hands of time.

This brings to mind another American travesty that goes unnoticed. During an Occupy the Justice Department rally, held recently in Washington DC, I was struck by something said by Hip-hop duo Dead Prez. This profound statement consumed my thinking on the subject of what I like to call “Modern Lynching’s”.

The statement: "Behind me on the wall it says this place is a place of hallowed justice, it should say this is a place of hollow justice, there's no justice. We're right in front of the injustice department because for over 40 years we've seen Mumia Abu Jamal get no justice, we've seen Eddy Conway, we've seen Mutulu Shakur, we've seen Herman Bell, we've seen Jalil Muntaqim, and countless other colonial subjects shot down by the police departments inside this country, no justice,"

This event began with speakers and entertainment including MOVE member Ramona Africa, Chuck D of Public Enemy, and M-1 of Dead Prez – all chanting, "Free Jamal. Free them all". Hundreds of protestors with ages ranging from the 20s to the 80s, including many parents with small children, rallied outside the U.S. Department of Justice April 24. They were demanding freedom for Mumia, freedom for all political prisoners, an end to solitary confinement, and an end to mass incarceration.

This got me thinking about a political prisoner whose name is Mumia Abu Jamal who turned 58 that day. Many people may not know or remember his case but he is a casualty of the short end of the long arm of the law. If you don’t know who Abu Jamal is, he was convicted in the 1981 for the shooting death of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner and sentenced to death row in 1982.

His supporters maintain his innocence, insisting he was set up by a Philadelphia police force that was under federal investigation for corruption and widespread civil rights violations. Abu Jamal was hated for his work with the Black Panther Party and his reporting in support of MOVE family members who were often victimized by the Philadelphia cops.

The Constitution and Western jurisprudence, going back to the Magna Carta and before, do not require a person accused of a crime to prove his or her innocence. The burden of proof is on the prosecutors to convince a jury of one's "peers" to unanimously agree on guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt." Not so in Abu Jamal's case. The odds were stacked against him from the beginning.

Fifteen of the 35 officers involved in the evidence collection in Mumia's case were themselves convicted and sentenced to jail on a number of misconduct charges. On top of that, he was victimized by a rigged, racist legal system which unfairly manipulated evidence, excluded Blacks from the jury, and coerced witnesses to testify falsely against him. His legal defense was a joke. His attorney did absolutely no investigation of the circumstances which left Officer Faulkner dead and Abu Jamal shot and wounded.

In December 2011, Mumia was removed from death row following a number of court appeals which went all the way to the Supreme Court. He is now imprisoned for life without the possibility of parole. After the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's vacating his death sentence, prosecutors abandoned their efforts to reinstate the death penalty rather than go back into court. Had they gone back in court, evidence of decades of police and prosecutorial misconduct might have been introduced, possibly leading to a new trial. There is abundant evidence "proving" Mumia's innocence.

The state of Pennsylvania could never get a re-conviction. With all the forensic evidence that has been uncovered, all of the witnesses who have recanted their testimony, declaring they were forced to lie in the original trial by crooked cops, if they dared to try to go before a judge again, it would be a wonder if the prosecutor and cops would not be exposed and themselves prosecuted for their underhanded tactics.

Right now the United States represents 5 percent of the world's population but we incarcerate 25 percent of the world's prisoners. And guess which group of people is disproportionately represented in the American criminal injustice system. This group also represents a large number of what I call the incarceration of the “un-justiced”. We know CONTEL was real, it happened, and it happened to US.

If nothing changes – nothing changes! And that’s my Thought Provoking Perspective…

http://johntwills.com