Tag: Abdul-Aliy Muhammad
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O’Shae.
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His name was O’Shae, beautiful dancer, protective friend, his heart full of love. His name was O’Shae, vogueing to the beat, taking on the rhythm’s wisdom of a Sage. His name was O’Shae, in Midwood, they conjured joy and togetherness. His name was O’Shae, and they killed him. Abdul-Aliy Muhammad…
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One Love: A Black Reverence Chair Playlist
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One Love: A Black Reverence Chair Playlist holds olden song and new flow, reverberates fast, and moves slow. Like molasses, may it pour joy that rhythms like a body, back and forth. May these sonic medicines feel into you as you prepare to sit in the sacred chair position. –…
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songs that songtracked the AIDS Crisis: aqua’s “barbie girl”
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The first time I heard the euro-pop sensation Aqua’s Barbie Girl was in the summer of 1997, at a party We The People organized in Clementon Park, New Jersey. The DJ was mixing bona fide house hits with contemporary jams. I remember this so vividly because I watched someone do…
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Songs That Soundtracked The AIDS Crisis: City High’s “What Would You Do?”
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What would you do, if you knew that many of the songs that captivated older millennials and Gen Yers were rife with vitriolic judgment? The very bops that defined how we understood our relationship to the world, would now be “Cancel Culture” fodder, and rightfully so. In 2001, such a…
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40 Years From When A Plague Was Out: The 1981 CDC MMWR Report
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40 years ago today, the Center for Disease Control’s MMWR released a report, stating that there were 5 cases reported of pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. That all the men were described as homosexual and that two of the men had already died. This is the first time we see documentation, in…
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Songs That Soundtracked the AIDS Epidemic: Spice Girls “Holler”
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“I want to make you holler, and make you scream my name” a song on the third studio album of The Spice Girls, opens up with a sonic reference to TLC’s “No Scrubs” and was released in the UK on October 23, 2000, three days before my 17th birthday. The…
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Songs That Soundtracked the AIDS Epidemic: Shirley Murdock’s “As We Lay”
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“It’s morning, and we slept the night away” that’s how we are introduced to the soft and powerful voice of Shirley Murdock, in the hit song “As We Lay.” Recorded in 1985, “As We Lay” was released on her debut studio album “Shirley Murdock” on February 18, 1986. On the…
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For the Love of the Goffney Twins
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You may remember the story: It was sensational and on the front page of the Philadelphia Daily News. They were Black twins dubbed by the media as “twin gay-porn stars” who had been charged with burglary in February 2008. Charged with breaking into a beauty shop in South Philadelphia, the…
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Songs That Soundtracked The AIDS Epidemic: Janet’s “Together Again”
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Sweet harp chords flourish as “Together Again” starts, then it picks up momentum with these lyrics “There are times when I look above and beyond, there are times when I feel your love around me baby, I’ll never forget my baby.” Janet Jackson released this single on December 2, 1997,…
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I Changed My Mind About Community
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Last year I broke up with the LGBTQ2 community–well the shallow gatekeepers that ravaged our collective understanding of what it means to hold identities at their intersections. Let me explain, I’ve always been queer, I went through so much struggle trying to understand who I am in this binary world.…
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An Offering: During A Pandemic
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This is an offering, my offering to you and in giving this offering to you, I enrich myself. I am doing this because, as they say “time is of the essence” and because I come from a lineage that finds spiritual work in the giving of gifts. My mother and…