Culture Conspicuous

  As a southern California native I had no choice but to choose Los Angeles for my city. Los Angeles was pivotal in the emergence of "gangsta rap." In the 1990's when racial tensions were prevalent and police brutality was at an all time high. Los Angeles hip hop unapologetically conveyed their day to day lives to pop culture and mainstream media in a way that had never been done before. Gangsta Rap became a form of protest and an empowerment to oppressed minorities searching for a way for their voices to be heard. Gangsta Rap shined light on what life was like in south central LA for individuals who were both affiliates and non affiliates. This attention illustrated the resilience of the individual who made the best of their situation and was successful in spite of obstacles. Rap itself embodies that success. It Was a Good Day   Ice Cubes "It was a Good Day"  imagines a day where everything goes right in LA in spite of all the consistent opposition that typical...

  chose Whitney Houston's phenomenal rendition of the anthem. This was a clear choice for me for a multitude of reasons. Whitney's voice is not just a sound but an experience and one that demands attention from its listener. On a personal level I grew up in church and hearing the power in her voice coupled with the soft transitions in the anthem reminds me of the soul that can be discovered in the sanctuary. Voices like hers echo in your soul and force you to confront emotions that you couldn't acknowledge without such a strong catalyst. In comparing Whitney's rendition to a church experience you begin to really excavate the route of symbiosis behind her voice and one that you might experience in a sanctuary.  Both experiences are married with  The Soulful Voice.  The soul and singing found in the church wasn't just praise. It started as an escape for enslaved individuals who used their voices to exist outside of time and place their emotions in a destination: heave...

  Miles Davis said jazz is dead. A bold statement, but I get it. He wasn’t burying the sound, he was eulogizing the  space  it once had. Not the horn, the swing, or the improvisation, but the room Black folks carved out in a world built to erase us. That space got swallowed by commodification. By white-washed museums and sleepy cocktail lounges. So when Davis said jazz is dead, maybe he meant:  y’all killed it. And that’s the same type of death Wilderson talks about, social death. A living body with no place to belong. A body denied its humanity not by accident, but by design. Jazz, like the Black bodies that birthed it, sits outside the gate of mainstream relevance now. Once it stopped being profitable, it stopped being visible. That’s nonrelationality. That’s Afropessimism. Henry Dumas knew something about this kind of death. In “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” we walk into a world where that circle, the bond between Blackness and belonging, is broken. Not gently cra...

  When I first listened to gospel and blues as a child, I thought they were just sad songs. As I’ve grown, I now see they’re not songs about pain, they're prayers through it. Prayers we sing with our heads bowed, shoulders hunched, but hearts still pulsing. This week, I pulled back the veil on three social sufferings: emotional isolation, generational poverty, and the illusion of strength in masculinity—burdens I’ve both inherited and carried silently. And I turned to three songs for release, clarity, and confrontation. 1. “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” – Marvin Gaye “Ah, things ain’t what they used to be…” This is not just a protest song, it's a mourning. Marvin doesn’t sing from anger; he sings from ache. The instrumentation is smooth, almost hypnotic, but it contrasts the despair woven into every word. And it mirrors the emotional isolation I often feel in today’s world. We’re surrounded by noise, flooded with connection and yet, something inside us stays untouched, unknown....