Dr. Cornel West: The Mind Meets Music

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By: Kayceman

Dr. Cornel West

JamBase has featured a wide array of artists in our time. From jam heroes to hip-hop heavyweights to jazzbos to rock gods and more, we’ve covered a wide spectrum. But we’ve never had anyone like Dr. Cornel West grace our virtual pages before.

Dr. West is without question one of America’s most important, gifted, interesting and, at times, controversial intellectuals. He is a philosopher, historian, sociologist, theologian and a true genius. The former Harvard instructor and current professor of religion at Princeton University has authored 17 books including 1993’s essential Race Matters and 2004’s Democracy Matters. This past August West released his second album, Never Forget: A Journey Of Revelations (Hidden Beach). This cerebral sound slab features black music luminaries such as Prince, Andre 3000 of Outkast, Talib Kweli, Dead Prez‘s M-1, Jill Scott, KRS-One and more. Without further praise and build-up, we’re proud to bring you this insightful conversation with one of the most influential minds in America.

JamBase: Thinking about the power of spoken word, do you recall who first introduced you to the power of words and language?

Cornel West: Words and language in general has to do with church and Reverend Willie P. Cook, one of the great ministers, preachers and pastors in California. He was my preacher and pastor at Shiloh Baptist Church, and he exemplified the ways in which one can use words in order to inspire and illuminate people and their situation.

JamBase: Taking it from there to music, do you recall where your first musical inspirations came from?

Cornel West: No doubt about that, that has to do with church and rhythm & blues. It has to do with Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Curtis Mayfield, Gene Chandler, Billy Stuart and Aretha Franklin. So, on the one hand I’ve got church every Sunday, where you have beautiful, powerful music, and then, of course, you’ve got the music on the block, the music on the streets.

JamBase: Moving that towards today, what artists do you find inspiration in?

Dr. Cornel West

Cornel West: It goes across the board. On the one hand you got Wynton Marsalis in jazz, Kenny Garret in jazz, McCoy Tyner in jazz and then in rhythm & blues Luther Vandross, Curtis Mayfield and Glen Jones. And then, of course, the groups The Dramatics, The Whispers, The Enchantments – I’m old school in that sense – [and] Teddy Pendergrass. I should mention The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron. When it comes to spoken word with music and political thrust it was really Gil Scott-Heron and The Last Poets who had the biggest impact on me until brother Chuck D [Public Enemy] came along.

The line from Heron to you, do you draw a lot of inspiration from him?

He’s just such a towering figure, so I’ve been inspired by him. But I never wanted to imitate.

Beyond the subject matter, how do you feel your musical work intersects with your academic life?

It’s continuous. It’s all about Paideia. When I talk about a singing Paideia, a danceable education, Paideia has to do with three things. It has to do with the formation of attention so you move from focusing on frivolous things to serious things, from superficial things to substantial things. Secondly, it has to do with the cultivation of the self that comes to term with reality [and] history, as well as mortality. And third, it has to do with the maturation of a soul, which means learning how to be compassionate, loving, empathetic. That’s what manifests in my writing. That’s what manifests in my speeches. That’s what manifests in my music. It’s continuous in that way.

Looking over the list of people and listening to this album, the track with Prince is fabulous. That may be the shining star on the album in my opinion.

As you know he has never-ever-ever-ever done anything outside of his own stable. He’s never allowed any of his music to be sampled. When I first met him he told me he was never gonna have his music sampled in hip-hop, and this is the only time he’s done that.

How did you go about getting him to do this?

He was just so kind. I met Prince about four years ago, he invited me to Paisley Park and I gave a lecture during his xenophobia conference he has every summer. He brings people from all around the world. I spent four days with him and we had a good time and then he also was kind enough [to ask] me to introduce him at the NAACP image awards. I did a big introduction with him then, so we got a chance to talk again and so forth. So, we just approached him. Mike Dailey, who did most of context [on Never Forget A Journey of Revelations], he’s the third brother along with my blood brother Cliff West. And [Prince] did it right away, we couldn’t believe it. He told his executive assistant, “Yeah anything brother West wants to do, just let him do it.”

Thinking in a general context, obviously hip-hop is a major movement in America, but for black youth do you feel that it fills the void left by religion and community, both of which seem to have withered in recent years?

I think that’s true. Chuck D said hip-hop is a black CNN. It’s not just an information network but it does constitute a community. It’s very important to keep in mind that you have a lot of young folks growing up with a certain distance from their elders, and therefore they tend to look to each other as to how to live, how to love, how to get through the move from womb to tomb. Therefore, hip-hop actually becomes a kind of parent as well as a community, in terms of a source of wisdom. Now, a lot of times there aren’t too many good examples that generate good judgment, so you end up with bad examples and bad judgment in terms of the hedonism, narcissism, misogyny, homophobia and so on. But, there is no doubt that hip-hop is the main form of transcendence and community for young people who are trying to both get distance from their pain as well as learn to be human. That’s one of the reasons why I tried to intervene in this way, to let them know that some elders do care about them and are concerned about providing some insight. And to learn from them, because it’s mutual, it’s not paternalistic.

Continue reading for more with Dr. Cornel West…

Hip-hop actually becomes a kind of parent as well as a community in terms of a source of wisdom. Now a lot of times there aren’t too many good examples that generate good judgment so you end up with bad examples and bad judgment in terms of the hedonism, narcissism, misogyny and homophobia and so on. But there is no doubt that hip-hop is the main form of transcendence and community for young people who are trying to both get distance from their pain as well as learn to be human. -Dr. Cornel West

What was the overall goal of this album?

The goal of the album is to promote an awakening among young people especially. That awakening has to do with both a sense of history – that’s what the “Never Forget” is about – but also to fuse fun with the struggle for freedom, ’cause I don’t wanna down play the fun. I think that comes through on the album, too. You’re having a good time but at the same time it’s connected to something very serious, which is a lot of people catching hell out there, too much social misery and we need to muster the courage to struggle for freedom.

How much consideration was given to the tracking and flow?

Andre 3000

There was a lot of consideration. The central trope, of course, is journey. So, you “Never Forget” but we’re not getting stuck in the past. We’re bringing together the three dimensions of time: the Past, the Present and the Future. Therefore, on a journey you have to both go back to your roots in order to go forward with courage and vision and determination. What you see on the album is at the very beginning starting with Talib [Kweli]‘s thing “Bushanomics,” which for me is just a classic before it even hits. Not because I’m on it but because Talib is at the top of his form. That brother is spittin’ like I don’t know what with the echoes of Grand Master Flash. So, at the beginning we said we’re taking hip-hop back to its roots where the struggle for freedom and the fun go hand-in-hand, and from there it just begins to flow in terms of “Still Here,” in terms of “America,” in terms of brother Prince and we wanted to say something about “9/11.” We wanted to hit the “N Word,” especially because of the present day controversy [with Don Imus], confront Bush directly with brother KRS-One and M-1, and go through that three song sequence on time and the nature of time and the way in which you need to make crucial decisions regarding what kind of human being you want to be in time. That’s when we got me and Andre [3000 – Outkast] dialoging and Sister Jill [Scott] comes in for the reprise, and we wanted to do a thing for the black sisters especially given all the degradation of black sisters in hip-hop.

How do you reconcile mainstream hip-hop, how did it get so bad?

It’s just not that rich and deep in dealing with life. If you actually look at the major hits and major albums and major artists, you don’t have a lot of deep and serious stuff out there. The thing is I don’t believe in trashing the hip-hop artists. I love 50 Cent. I love Snoop. I love Ludacris and these folks. I’m just very very critical of much of what they do in terms of the content of their lyrics. I’m convinced they could take more responsibility regarding higher ideals of what it means to be human. Now, they are free to do what they want to. I don’t believe in censorship. Not only that, but I also believe they can change. That’s why I don’t give up on them at all.

It’s one thing to be able to do it, but it’s another to have a responsibility. Do you feel that artists in the mainstream, when you talk about Snoop or 50 Cent or whomever, do you feel they have an obligation to raise their game, so to speak?

Jill Scott

I think they do. I really think they do. Music is such a precious thing in the lives of all of us, I think they have an obligation to be sophisticated artistically, and many of them do meet that. They have an obligation to be mature [and] many of them do not meet that. They have an obligation to be honest and sincere and authentic, in terms of who they are, and I think they do meet that. Who they are tends to be not that mature. I don’t want to downplay the role of the industry. I think it’s very important to acknowledge that 72-percent of hip-hop CDs are bought in vanilla suburbs by white brothers and sisters, and people are very market conscious in terms of who is buying the CDs and what that particular constituency tends to want out of hip-hop. It’s true that it’s difficult to be a big star and mature at the same time. I think Jay-Z says that quiet explicitly: if I get too serious folks not buying my stuff.

Nas just put out an album called Hip-Hop Is Dead…

…yeah, Nas is a serious brother.

He sure is. Now I don’t think he was saying that hip-hop is actually dead. It was more of a question than a statement, but it is sick. So, can we save it? Can we bring it back to the time when people like Chuck D were really running the show? Can we bring mainstream rap back to that?

KRS’ book Ruminations is a good starting point, as well as Chuck D’s book Fight the Power. Both those books I think are very important, and that’s why I invoke them in my chapter on hip-hop in Democracy Matters because they both have an analysis of hip-hop about when the shift takes place, why it is that the industry tended to promote certain kinds of artists who were not politically sophisticated as opposed to others. And I think they’re right about that. I think that once the big big money got in on it, and once the constituency shifted from chocolate cities to vanilla suburbs, they don’t explain everything but they explain a lot in terms of the dumbing down of hip-hop. I do think hip-hop will bounce back. I think hip-hop will never die. I think brother Nas would acknowledge that. He’s trying to be Socratic. He’s trying to get us to think critically, reflect on what hip-hop is – why did it change, how do you move from Kool Herc to 50 Cent. We have to understand that trajectory, understand that story that has taken place. It’s a very very rich tradition.

Continue reading for more with Dr. Cornel West…

The goal of the album is to promote an awaking among young people especially. That awakening has to do with both a sense of history – that’s what the “Never Forget” is about, but also to fuse fun with the struggle for freedom. ‘Cause I don’t wanna down play the fun. -Dr. Cornel West

You call the album Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations. So, what exactly are the revelations that we are getting?

Dr. Cornel West

First, they are revelations that we can go back to the best of the roots of not just hip-hop but black music. And those roots need to be revealed. They need to be disclosed because they have been ignored, and sometimes even denied – sometimes out of ignorance, sometimes out of not wanting to go back because you can’t make money. When I talk about the spirit of Curtis Mayfield at work in the album it’s a matter of disclosing and revealing what Curtis Mayfield and others represent, and then saying something about where we are now, where we are now in the present, revealing the struggles not just the suffering and the misery, but the struggles against the resistance, the resiliency. We’re still here, America. America, we understand who you are and we’re still trying to change the world, we’re still trying to make you better, we’re still trying to redeem your soul on a certain level, to use Martin King’s language. And then to try to reveal a future that can be different. The future doesn’t have to be just a repetition of the present with all the hedonism and narcissism. So again, it’s revelations but it’s linked to those three dimensions of time.

You touched on the history of black music. Do you feel that in some way that hip-hop is what jazz used to be to black Americans?

That’s a tough question because the communication systems are so qualitatively different. The idea of being able to watch Coltrane or Monk on TV 24 hours [a day] is just so alien. Jazz is America’s greatest art form, but at the same time it never had the scope of popularity that hip-hop has. So, I wouldn’t really want to say that hip-hop is today what jazz was then because jazz just never-ever had that kind of public.

Considering all the topics you touch on in the album, from 9/11 to the Imus stuff and everything that we’ve been talking about, do you feel, in the context of the past 20 or 30 years, America is moving forward? Are we getting there or are we slipping backwards? Where are we?

I think on the one hand we have definitely moved forward to the degree [where] America now embraces black professionals and a black middle class in a way it never has before. That’s significant, and that’s part of the success and triumph of the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King and Fanny Lou Hamer‘s legacy. On the other hand, we’re going back because the vicious white supremacists that relate to the black poor, the young black brothers especially, but also the black sisters who are locked into the hoods – [people] who are not reveling in the American Dream, who are locked into the disgraceful school systems, unavailable health and child care, the under-employment and unemployment and so forth. For them, things are even more hopeless. And they often are rendered invisible when it comes to public policy even though they are highly visible when it comes to videos. In that sense, we’re really in a paradoxical situation. On the one hand, we have the Oprah Winfreys and Obamas and Robert Johnsons who are thriving in a way their grandparents could never conceive of. On the other hand, the cousins of those same folks are locked into the hood and wrestling with levels of hopelessness that are just beyond description.

Taking a step back, how does somebody go from revered professor and famed author to a hip-hop artist? How do you make that jump?

Dr. Cornel West

I think they probably just say the brother is a bit schizophrenic. He wants in the classroom and on the street and in the studio, and I say to them that basically it’s somebody whose fundamental need is to tell the truth, expose lies, bear witness and try to promote education at its deepest level, that Paideia that I talked about. It just takes a variety of different forms of expression. I see it as a seamless web.

So, is this album an attempt to reach a sect of people you might not otherwise reach?

Absolutely, those who may not necessarily read the 17 books I’ve done. Granted, I don’t want to imply that hip-hop culture doesn’t read, because that’s not true. I encounter young folk who listen to hip-hop all the time who also have read Race Matters, who also have read Democracy Matters, but there are millions of young folk who have not read Race Matters or Democracy Matters or any of the other books who very well may pick up this CD and say, “Wow, this brother’s got something going on. I gotta think about myself. I gotta think about society. I gotta think about the world.”

Obviously, music has the ability to change and to do amazing things. Do you feel that an album has the ability to change the world?

Absolutely. There’s no doubt about that. [Percy Bysshe] Shelly‘s wonderful last line in “A Defense of Poetry” [is], “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” because you have to have vision and imagination in terms of your action. All action is informed by some vision and some imagination and I would add, one hopes, empathy, too. When you look at the degree to which albums have changed my world – What’s Going On [Marvin Gaye] changed my life in a deep way [and] the same is true for Songs In the Key of Life [Stevie Wonder] – that is to say, it didn’t just sustain me, it helped provide a different way of looking at the world and gave me strength and fortitude and determination. And that’s precisely what changes the world, when you actually touch people’s lives and souls and minds and get them to go a different way.

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