A Time Line to Post-Soul Black Culture

A Time Line to Post-Soul Black Culture
March 17, 1992

1971 

■ MELVIN VAN PEEBLES’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baad­asssss Song premieres in Detroit in March, signaling a new direction in African American film and culture. Directed guerrilla-style in Watts, it ridicules SIDNEY POITIER’s ultra-assimilated image, instigates Holly­wood’s blaxploitation era, and projects rebellious black heroism in visual terms that will echo in pop music iconography 20 years later. It will impact the black intelligentsia more di­rectly than the working-­class blacks who will frequent blaxploitation flicks.

■ MUHAMMAD ALI, back fighting after being stripped of his title for refusing to violate his vows as a Mus­lim minister and register for the draft, has his comeback derailed by defending champ JOE FRAZIER at Madison Square Garden. Despite this defeat, Ali’s re­ligious commitment and boastful, poetic arrogance bridge ’60s activism and ’80s style.

■ AL GREEN’s “Tired of Be­ing Alone” is the first hit for the last of the great soul singers. The central fixation of Green’s music — physical lust versus spiritual love­ — is a tension that new styles will abandon. 

■ SLY & THE FAMILY STONE’s dark, murky, bitter There’s a Riot Goin’ On presages minimalist hardcore rap both lyrically and sonically.

■ Shaft, directed by GOR­DON PARKS SR., is the first Hollywood blaxploitation film, complete with fly threads, ISAAC HAYES’s Os­car-winning score, and a cameo by blaxploitation regular ANTONIO FARGAS. 

■ Two new magazines ad­dress two complementary post-civil rights constituen­cies: BLACK ENTERPRISE, the bible of the burgeoning new class of white-collar blacks, and ESSENCE, which targets collegiate black women. Both docu­ment more subtle issues than the soul-era periodi­cals Ebony and Jet.

■ A feature-length docu­mentary, Soul to Soul, con­trasts footage of IKE & TINA TURNER in West Africa with scenes of African per­formers in the U.S.

■ THE REVEREND JESSE JACKSON forms People United to Save Humanity in Chicago. PUSH will con­front economic and educa­tional issues and serve as Jackson’s platform.

1972 

■ Bubble-lettered GRAFFITI pieces by Phase 2 (Lonny Wood) are displayed at United Graffiti Artists’ Rozar Gallery Show. Soon Twyla Tharp will use a graf­fiti backdrop for a Jaffrey Ballet premiere of her Deuce Coupe.

■ Trouble Man, starring ROBERT HOOKS, has a doowop-jazz title song and an excellent score by MARVIN GAYE. 

■ Washington, D.C., securi­ty guard FRANK WILLIS re­ports a robbery-in-progress at the Watergate Hotel that will bring down the Nixon administration.

■ THE TEMPTATIONS’s “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” goes to No. 1. This Norman Whitfield production is a prime example of the cinematic funk that per­vaded black pop during the blaxploitation era. 

■ ISHMAEL REED’s Mumbo Jumbo, an innovative novel with 104 bibliographical ci­tations, scores of photos and illustrations, and a plot about Third World art be­ing “liberated” from West­ern museums, uses jump cuts and soundbites as if Reed were a film director or hip hop DJ. 

■ Superfly’s depiction of a glamorous cocaine dealer so concerns civil rights leaders that the NAACP distributes leaflets asking the produc­ers to reshoot the ending so that the dealer dies. RON O’NEAL’s charismatic Priest is a rebel with a capi­talistic cause surviving in a world of sneaky partners, corrupt cops, Mafia thugs, and cartoonish nationalists (a staple of blaxploitation). GORDON PARKS JR. utilizes cutting-edge fashion and CURTIS MAYFIELD’s hit­-filled score to reach the wide black audience Sweetback never attracted. Su­perfly’s seminal blaxploita­tion will spawn two sequels, one scripted by ALEX HALEY. In defense of the film O’Neal says, “The heroin pusher is the scourge of the black community. But we’re talking about coke, which is basically a white drug. Since coke is not physically addictive, people do not steal and rob to get it. There are no coke junkies.” 

1973

■ THE INCREDIBLE BONGO BAND releases the pioneer­ing hip hop record “Apache,” which will be popularized along with the same band’s “Bongo Rock” by a Bronx mobile DJ named Kool Herc. 

■ HUSTLER’S CONVENTION by Lightnin’ Rod (a/k/a the Last Poets) is a moralistic blaxploitation film on re­cord that’s performed in the urban storytelling tradition hip hop will overturn. 

■ The Mack, one of blax­ploitation’s most popular films, features costar RICH­ARD PRYOR at the height of his wicked comic brilliance and WILLIE HUTCH’s “Brothers Gonna Work It Out,” later a Public Enemy title.

■ ENTER THE DRAGON, Bruce Lee’s first big-budget film, costars black martial artist Jim Kelly, indicating the importance of black ticket buyers to the makers of kung fu flicks and their prospective impact on com­bative young urban males. 

■ Black Caesar stars FRED WILLIAMSON and is backed by a slamming JAMES BROWN score. Its title char­acter, a Harlem drug chief­tain, recalls the real-life Nicky Barnes. 

■ The Census Bureau re­ports that INTERRACIAL MARRIAGES rose 63 per cent during the 1960s. Although marriages between white men and black wom­en declined from 25,913 to 23,566, the number of unions between black men and white women grew from 25,496 to 41,223. 

■ NEW YORK YOUTH GANG activity reaches a high of 315 gangs and over 19,000 members. The Black Spades of the South Bronx are the biggest. One prominent member goes by the street name Afrika Bambaataa.

■ PAM GRIER begins her reign as black America’s first female action hero. In Coffy she’s a nurse who hides razor blades in her Afro and takes on drug dealers. She goes on to star in Sheba Baby, Foxy Brown, and Friday Foster.

■ With its extravagant cos­tumes and overwrought performing style, LABELLE is a turning point in blending the soul-gospel tradition with a flamboyant black gay style. Patti Labelle, Nona Hendryx, and Sarah Dash develop a strong feminist and gay male cult.

■ The Harder They Come, starring reggae star JIMMY CLIFF, turns into a mid­night hit that helps popular­ize Jamaican dance music in the U.S., while showing the effects of American western movies in the Third World. In the next decade the sound systems and criminal posses it depicts will be transplanted to the mainland. With its blend of advocacy, rebellion, and music, this film will stand as both the best rock movie and the best blaxploitation movie of the decade. 

■ A bounty of African American mayors: THOMAS BRADLEY in Los Angeles, MAYNARD JACKSON in At­lanta, COLEMAN YOUNG in Detroit.

■ At icebound Shea Stadi­um, O.J. SIMPSON not only breaks JIM BROWN’s rushing record, but becomes the first running back in NFL history to gain over 2000 yards on the ground in one season. The contrast between the two men is significant: Brown is a nationalistic black capital­ist sympathetic to the dying black militant movement, Simpson a staunch integra­tionist whose apolitical avoidance of controversy will set a standard for post­-’60s black sports stars. 

1974 

■ RICHARD PRYOR’s That Nigger’s Crazy LP, a semi­nal piece of Africamericana, brings the N-word aboveground. 

■ MUHAMMAD ALI regains the heavyweight title by us­ing “rope-a-dope” to KO GEORGE FOREMAN in Zaire. Ali and his Flavor Flav, Drew Bundini Brown, dub the fight “the rumble in the jungle.”

■ The Joint Center for Po­litical Studies reports that 2991 blacks hold elective office in 45 states and the District of Columbia, com­pared to 1185 in 1969. Prominent among them are Newark mayor KEN GIBSON and Brooklyn’s feisty Congresswoman SHIRLEY CHISHOLM. 

1975 

■ DJ KOOL HERC hosts shows at Hevalo, a club lo­cated at 180th and Jerome, where he specializes in the short “break” sections of records. The dancers who follow him will come to be called “B-boys” or “break boys.” He also plays parks with a sound system he la­bels “The Herculords.”

■ GRANDMASTER FLASH, a/k/a Joseph Sadler, builds a rep as a DJ by playing at a park at 169th Street and Boston Road. Grand Wiz­ard Theodore travels from the Bronx down to Times Square’s Downstairs Re­cords to buy records for Flash. Among the jams he selects are “white boy re­cords” such as Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way.” 

■ MUHAMMAD ALI avenges his earlier loss to Frazier in a titanic fight he titles the “thrilla in Manila.”

■ ARTHUR ASHE wins at Wimbledon, crowning his pioneering career as tennis’s first black male star. Like SIDNEY POITIER, Ashe em­bodies white (and black) fantasies of the perfectly as­similated African Ameri­can, though in reality he’s politically active. His smooth upward mobility is a prototype for Baps and Buppies to come. 

■ Cooley High, directed by MICHAEL SHULTZ and writ­ten by ERIC MONTE (who created TV’s Good Times), is a sleeper hit that provides warm, humane portraits of young men growing up in the Chicago projects and exploits the nostalgia value of old Motown.

■ From the gay club under­ground a/k/a discos comes a long-playing orgy called “Love to Love You Baby” by a black singer named DONNA SUMMER. Sum­mer’s success helps call at­tention to the increasing public influence of homo­sexual taste on the music mainstream. Paradise Ga­rage DJ LARRY LEVAN is a crucial disco figure.

1976 

■ Rocky, with its prominent black characters and action format, shows Hollywood how to tap into the black action market. Leads like FRED WILLIAMSON and JIM BROWN give way to second bananas CARL WEATHERS and MR. T of the Rocky films. 

■ A year before Star Wars, producer-conceptualist GEORGE CLINTON is already in space as the sci-fi motif of Parliament’s Mothership Connection frames extrater­restrial funk of the highest order. Spearheaded by key­boardist BERNIE WORRELL and bassist BOOTSY COL­LINS, Clinton and the P-Funk mob carry the banner for a raw black music aesthetic.

■ Sparkle is noteworthy for CURTIS MAYFIELD’s neo­soul, a plot that echoes the Supremes’ real-life soap op­era before Dreamgirls, and a superb young cast that in­cludes Irene Cara, Philip Michael Thomas, Lonette McKee, and Dorian Harewood.

■ NTOZAKE SHANGE’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf fuses a rich poetic language with feminist politics, part of the wave of African American literature by women that brings long-seething tensions between black men and women to the fore. It remains a staple of black college theater to this day. 

■ STEVIE WONDER releases Songs in the Key of Life, a sprawling double album packed with great songs. At a time when most black pop is either sappy crossover or disco drivel, Wonder’s gift for melody earns him the “genius” designation.

■ JULIUS “DR. J” ERVING joins the mainstream when the National Basketball As­sociation absorbs four American Basketball Asso­ciation franchises. Dr. J and other brothers liberated from obscurity — David Thompson, George McGin­nins, George Gervin­ — spark a revolution in style that eventually changes the NBA and elevates black schoolyard style to an art form. Soon the slam dunk will be as much part of our sporting culture as the grand slam. 

■ AFRIKA BAMBAATAA DJs his first party at the Bronx River Community Center, supported by the Zulus, a new-style gang more into music and dance than crime.

■ NICKY BARNES, a/k/a “Mr. Untouchable,” leader of Harlem’s largest heroin ring, hands out turkeys on the corner of 126th Street and St. Nicholas for Christ­mas, a scene that will appear 15 years later in New Jack City. 

1977 

■ Roots, a miniseries based on ALEX HALEY’s book about tracing his family tree to Africa, airs for eight con­secutive nights on ABC, earning the highest ratings of any network program in history and generating a long-term interest in Africa among American blacks.

■ Yale student WARRING­TON HUDLIN makes Street Corner Stories, a film about working-class black men who hang out mornings at a New Haven diner that be­comes a festival favorite in America and Europe.

■ CHARLES BURNETT has a similar success with the landmark black indepen­dent film Killer of Sheep, a neorealistic tale of an impo­tent slaughterhouse worker in Watts.

■ KRAFTWERK’s trance dance, “Trans-Europe Ex­press,” is a left-field black hit that influences many young DJs. 

■ Queens party promoter RUSSELL SIMMONS, 19, sees his first rapper, Eddie Cheeba, rhyming over the beat from Parliament’s “Flashlight” at Charles’s Gallery on 125th Street. 

■ A year after his turkey tri­umph, NICKY BARNES is convicted of narcotics traf­ficking and gun possession, ending the reign of one of the biggest old-school dope kingpins and setting the stage for younger gangsters and synthetic drugs.

1978 

■ The Black Filmmaker Foundation is founded by a collective of businessmen and filmmakers including WARRINGTON HUDLIN. 

■ DISCO FEVER, the first home of hip hop, opens in the South Bronx, a long throw home from Yankee Stadium.

■ Proto-B-boy LEON SPINKS beats MUHAMMAD ALI in a New Orleans shocker. Spinks ushers in a new generation of black athletes who battle drug abuse and the media. 

■ A typical uptown “Super Disco” is presented at the Audubon Ballroom. GRANDMASTER FLASH, THE FURIOUS FOUR (Melle Mel, Keith Keith, Kid Creole, Mr. Ness), and LOVEBUG STARSKI are on the bill. 

■ For several months this year the VILLAGE PEOPLE, a collection of gay male stereotypes fronted by soul-styled black vocalist Victor Willis, are the country’s hottest group. Many straight folks don’t get the joke. For many black gays, the Village People are a welcome affirmation of their existence in a culture that wants to ignore them. 

■ Where the Village People are pop-corny, SYLVES­TER’s “You Make Me Feel Mighty Real” is the kind of gay gospel dance music that will later inspire house.

■ The Supreme Court rules AFFIRMATIVE ACTION can result in reverse discrimina­tion. The civil rights move­ment is over and conserva­tive backlash has begun.

■ MICHAEL SCHULTZ is the first African American di­rector to land a Hollywood film without a racial theme: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, an ill-conceived Beatles homage starring the Bee Gees and Peter Framp­ton that damages the ca­reers of all involved. 

■ MICHELE WALLACE’s Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman is published to amazing hype (she makes the cover of Ms.) and scathing criticism. For all its faults, the book is crucial for its criticism of the civil rights movement, which opens the discourse on male-female relations in the African American left and giving black feminism greater media visibility.

■ Former community activ­ist MARION BARRY is elect­ed mayor of Washington.

■ A study finds that 45 per cent of all NEW YORK CITY HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS use “some psychoactive drug.”

■ Model-turned-disco diva GRACE JONES celebrates the bisexual and campy black gay aesthetic New Year’s Eve at Studio 54.

1979 

■ Reviving interest in ZORA NEALE HURSTON, the Har­lem Renaissance writer who has become the patron saint of black feminists, grows with the publication of I Love Myself When I Am Laughing, essays edited by ALICE WALKER with an in­troduction by literary schol­ar MARY HELEN WASHINGTON. 

■ A Howard Smith Scenes column on the FABULOUS FIVE, a graffiti group led by Brooklynite Frederick Brathwaite (later known as Freddy Love and then Fab Five Freddie), leads to a show of the group’s work in Rome.

■ THE FATBACK BAND’s “King Tim III (The Person­ality Jock)” is the first rap record. But Tim, who spiels in the older black radio style, is not part of the Bronx hip hop crowd. He’s hired when the Fatback Band see DJ Hollywood hosting shows at the Apollo and, instead of making a deal with the original old-school rapper, try to do it on their own — a major goof.

■ CHIC’s “Good Times” joins MFSB’s “Love Is the Message” as one of the mobile DJs’ favorite grooves. Unlike many early hip hop favorites, these songs were black radio hits that DJs and rappers adapted to their purposes.

■ SYLVIA ROBINSON, own­er of the troubled All Plati­num Records, attends a show at Harlem World dis­co on 116th Street, across from the mosque founded by Malcolm X. Robinson hears DJs rapping over re­cords and sees the reaction. She organizes the SUGAR­HILL GANG, who have the first rap hit with “Rapper’s Delight” on her brand-new Sugarhill label. Again these are not real rappers — one member is a bouncer at Disco Fever — but they at least bite rhymes from real rappers. “Rapper’s Delight” uses the music from “Good Times”; Chic requests and is granted writing credit on later pressings. 

■ EARVIN “MAGIC” JOHNSON leads his Michigan State team past his great ri­val Larry Bird of Indiana State in the NCAA final. Johnson’s blend of height and playmaking ability changes basketball. 

■ Billboard does a story on “DISCO RAPPERS” — “a spinner who talks in a lyri­cal, rapid fire, streetwise di­alogue over the pulsating rhythm track, began in the black discos of New York.” The article notes that “Rap­per’s Delight” is No. 41 on the disco chart and “King Tim III” is No. 42, and that Spoonie Gee has “Spoonin’ Rap” in stores. The story is picked up by the U.K.’s New Musical Express, which notes that the “dee­jay who raps does not ap­pear to be a million miles removed from the ancient Jamaican art of toasting.” 

■ RICHARD PRYOR’s Live in Concert opens. Pryor’s genius as mime, storyteller, and observer of human life has never been better documented. 

■ THE BLACK FILMMAKER FOUNDATION presents films by independent black film­makers around New York in parks, museums, and nightclubs. 

■ CHARLES LANE’s A Place in Time, a silent comedy shot in black and white, is shown at Othello’s disco on Eighth Avenue. 

■ The QUINCY JONES–produced Off the Wall elevates MICHAEL JACKSON to adult stardom, its 7 million sales the most ever by a black male. People begin remark­ing on how Jackson’s face is changing. 

■ DARRYL DAWKINS breaks two backboards within a month, hastening the intro­duction of flexible rims.

■ Billboard reporter ROB­ERT FORD JR. and ad execu­tive J.B. MOORE write and produce KURTIS BLOW’s “Christmas Rappin’,” which gets picked up by Mercury. The first rap artist on a major label is managed by CCNY schoolmate RUS­SELL SIMMONS. 

■ As the decade ends PCP, a/k/a angel dust, is the street drug of choice.

1980 

■ In January members of the HIGH TIMES CREW are arrested at a Washington Heights subway for “fight­ing” — that is, breaking. They are photographed by Martha Cooper for the New York Post, the first known photos of break dancing. 

■ MOLEFI KETE ASANTE publishes Afrocentricity with Chicago’s African World Press. Over the next decade this brief overview will spearhead the challenge to a Eurocentric history. 

■ Trumpeter WYNTON and saxophonist BRANFORD MARSALIS play with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Wynton’s chops, sense of history, mastery of the clas­sical canon, and well-tai­lored suits will make him jazz’s first truly “cool” fig­ure in a generation. 

■ NELSON GEORGE’s “A Consumer Guide to Rap Records” is rejected by The New York Times’s Arts & Leisure section because “it’s just too far off the beaten track” and “just seems too specialized.” 

■ MAGIC JOHNSON leads the Lakers to the NBA title with an amazing sixth-game win over DR. J’s 76ers. Magic plays center for an injured Kareem and is named the series’s most valuable player. 

■ Mr. Magic’s Rap Attack airs on WBHI from 2 to 5 a.m. Saturday nights. At several stations over the next decade, MR. MAGIC will play a crucial role in creating the hardcore rap audience. 

■ RICHARD PRYOR critical­ly burns over half his body while freebasing cocaine.

■ SUGAR RAY LEONARD loses to and then defeats Roberto Duran, who surrenders with the famous last words “no más.” 

■ WLIB switches from an all-music format to a news­talk format.

■ KURTIS BLOW releases his gold single “The Breaks.” Futura 2000 bombs a subway car in tribute.

■ RICHARD PRYOR and Gene Wilder star in the Sid­ney Poitier–directed STIR CRAZY, which earns $101 million. 

■ PRINCE establishes his off-center sexuality, multi-racial identity, and eclectic musicianship with Dirty Mind. He also wears black panties on stage. 

■ Richard Goldstein’s lengthy Voice cover story on GRAFFITI notes: “Graffi­ti’s sensibility has a musical equivalent in ‘rap’ re­cords — another rigid, inde­cipherable form that can sustain great complexity.” The piece also discusses two then unknown artists, Keith Haring and Samo a/k/a Jean-Michel Basquiat. The Voice centerfold features six whole-car designs photo­graphed by Henry Chalfant.

1981 

■ The Rock Steady Crew dancers perform at the home of the downtown avant-garde, the KITCHEN. Graffiti artists, rappers, breakers, and even roller skaters perform at the ROXY ROLLER RINK. ABC’s 20/20 does one of the first nation­al reports on this new rap phenomenon.

■ Six-month-old PROFILE RECORDS spends $750 to make Dr. Jeckyll (Andre Harrell) & Mr. Hyde’s (Alonzo Brown) “Genius Rap,” which moves 150,000 12-inches.

■ Young EDDIE MURPHY revitalizes Saturday Night Live with a slew of crazy characterizations including black pimp Velvet Jones, children’s show host Mr. Robinson, and exercise guru Little Richard Simmons. 

■ “The Adventures of GRANDMASTER FLASH on the Wheels of Steel” is the first record to capture the mixing and scratching tech­niques of hip hop parties.

■ Dreamgirls, MICHAEL BENNETT’s homage to Mo­town, opens on Broadway to rave reviews and spawns JENNIFER HOLLIDAY’s No. I single “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going,” a phlegmy retrosoul success in an era of self-conscious black pop crossover.

■ FRANKIE SMITH’s gruff “Double Dutch Bus” goes gold, feeding the idea that rap records are a silly fad.

■ CHARLES FULLER’s Pulit­zer prize–winning A Sol­dier’s Story opens at the Negro Ensemble Company. This mystery of murder and intraracial strife fea­tures a brilliant cast that in­cludes ADOLPH CAESAR, CHARLES BROWN, and the then little-known DENZEL WASHINGTON.

■ Blacks constitute 11.2 PER CENT of those EM­PLOYED and 22.3 PER CENT of those UNEMPLOYED according to the National Ur­ban League’s “State of Black America” annual report.

1982 

■ The Saturday morning cartoon characters the SMURFS inspire a dance and numerous records, each with a different spelling to avoid lawsuits.

■ Capping a long campaign led by STEVIE WONDER, DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING’s birthday finally be­comes a national holiday.

■ Junior’s “Mama Used to Say” is the first in a decade-­long stream of BLACK BRITISH SOUL RECORDS to break through on black American radio.

■ British promoter COOL LADY BLUE’s weekly hip hop event at Negril brings uptown kids downtown and rap music to white hipsters.

■ AFRIKA BAMBAATAA & SOUL SONIC FORCE’s “Looking for the Perfect Beat” comes out on Tom­my Boy.

■ HERBIE HANCOCK’s “Rockit” features the scratching of old-school DJ Grandmixer DST. It is one of the first collaborations between an established musician and a hip hop spinner.

■ Under the banner of GRANDMASTER FLASH & THE FURIOUS FIVE, Melle Mel and Duke Bootee cut “The Message,” the first commercially successful po­litical rap single.

■ ALICE WALKER’s The Color Purple is published to critical acclaim. Many black men hate it, but QUINCY JONES vows to turn it into a film.