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“That Girl” – Stevie Wonder Cover by Nadir Omowale for The Year of Living Stevie

So a couple of years ago Daryl Bean asked us to participate in his Year of Living Stevie podcast. We were one of several artists he asked to perform their own take on a couple of Stevie Wonder tunes and to talk about how Stevie has influenced their music.

Now as any real musician knows, taking on a Stevie song is always a challenge. He has an uncanny knack for writing compositions that seem simple, but are deceptively difficult. But it’s Stevie. You have to accept the challenge, and his catalog is so deep, you can’t take on one of the more well known classics. So you dig deep into the Book of Stevie, and you dig deep into yourself.

We chose one of my favorite songs that I’ve always wanted to cover that few people ever do, “That Girl”, one of the new songs he wrote for his 1982 greatest hits compilation Original Musiquarium.

We quickly learned why people don’t do this tune. It kicked our behinds from jump. Luckily we had the professor, Philip Whitfield, on hand to help us navigate the changes. Steve Caldwell and I then turned up the dirt on top of the funky, nasty groove laid down by the dynamic duo of Christopher Spooner and Lauren Johnson. And yes, if you know the original, you’ll hear that I took it upon myself to learn how to play Stevie’s harmonica solo on guitar.

This was a really fun project, and I’m so glad Daryl shared it today to celebrate the Master Blaster. Hope you enjoy! #HappyBirthdayStevieWonder

 

“Fight The Power” – Nadir with the 2017 Don Was Detroit All-Star Revue

This was an unforgetable night with the Don Was Detroit All-Star Revue at the Concert of Colors in 2017. The theme of this show was Songs of Revolution and Resistance, and they messed around and let me sing one of my favorite songs.

Don Was Detroit All-Star Revue 2017
“Fight the Power” featuring Nadir Omowale
The 2017 Revue theme was Songs of Revolution.

Nadir – vocals
Don Was – bass
Luis Resto – keyboards
Brian “Rosco” White – guitar
Randy Jacobs – guitar
Ron Pangborn – drums
Ron Otis – drums
David McMurray – sax
Rayse Biggs – trumpet
Sweetpea Atkinson – backing vocals
Sir Harry Bowens – backing vocals
Donald Ray Mitchell – backing vocals

Recorded live @ the 10th Annual DON WAS DETROIT ALL-STAR REVUE at the 25th CONCERT OF COLORS July 15th, 2017, Meijer Stage, Orchestra Hall, Detroit, MI

Detroit All-Star Revue Curator – Don Was
Co-Host – Ann Delisi
Executive Producer – Ismael Ahmed
Production manager, front-of-house engineer, recording engineer – Chris Tayler
Stage Manager – Dave Shelley
Track Mixed by Jeremy Matthew Siegel
Director of Photography – Kevin Leeser
Camera Operators – Eric Steele, Nick Drankowski, Alex Jacobsen Wrangler – Rob Green
Video directed and edited by Gemma Corfield
Special thanks to Kathryn Grabowski

How The Americas Were Won: Pandemic Imperialism

Historian Jamon Jordan of the Black Scroll Network places the current pandemic in historical context. We should ALL take heed…

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From 1492-1502, Christopher Columbus (Columbus was Italian, and his real name in Northern Italy was Cristoffa Corombo, while in the rest of Italy he would’ve been Cristoforo Colombo) made 4 voyages to the Caribbean. Along with bringing Catholicism, he also brought European conquest and slavery.

But that ain’t it.

The Spanish, who sent Columbus to the “Indies”, and were the overwhelming majority of those who came with Columbus on his 4 voyages, brought at least 30 diseases from Europe that the Carib, Arawak, Taino and other indigenous people of the Caribbean had no immunity against.

Smallpox, influenza, measles, bubonic plague.

You Name It.

The pandemic caused by these diseases killed over 200,000 people in the Caribbean – about 95% of the indigenous population by 1517.

The diseases made it easier for European conquest over the Caribbean. So the Spanish would take Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and more; the French would take Guadeloupe, Martinique, and San Domingue – which you know as Haiti; the Dutch would take Curaçao and Suriname; and the British would take over Barbados, the Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, Jamaica and more.

The Portuguese took over Brazil.

The disease pandemic of the Caribbean paved the way for the colonization of ALL OF the Americas.

In 1519, Hernán Cortés, a Spaniard goes to Mexico to conquer one of the most powerful empires in the world – the Aztecs.

Although he has powerful weapons – horses, guns and cannons – it is an outbreak of smallpox which weakens the Aztec army to such a level that Cortés is able to sweep into and conquer Tenochtitlan and topple Moctezuma II’s rule over Mexico.

In 1607, English settlers establish a colony in what they name Jamestown, in what is now the state of Virginia. These English colonists, like the earlier Columbus-led Spanish bring dozens of diseases to the Powhatan Confederacy – a union of indigenous people in the Virginia area.

By 1700, 75% of the Native peoples in Virginia died, including members of the once powerful Powhatan Chiefdom of more than 30 tribes, including the Mattaponi, Pamunkey, and Chickahominy.

Smallpox, introduced by the English settlers at Jamestown, then swept the Atlantic coast from Florida to Maine, and moves inland.

In 1620, when the Puritan Separatists arrive at Plimouth (Plymouth), they find a cleared land perfect for planting and settling.

Why?

Because British sailors have been here already and caused a smallpox epidemic among the Wampanoag and their village Patuxet, was wiped out.

The “Pilgrims” would declare that God cleared the land for them as a blessing.

During and after the Civil War, there was a smallpox epidemic, and as Black people died after becoming free, whites, including northerners, declared that Black people were dying because they were physically inferior and there should be little to no health care given to them because this is nature taking its course.

In 1918, during the major flu pandemic, 50 million people died worldwide. However, in the United States, Black people died at 3 times the rate of whites.

Why?

Black people were turned away from most clinics and hospitals because Black people were not allowed to be treated in white medical facilities.

If they were allowed, they were relegated to areas in the basement and received just enough care to be quarantined away from other people. If they didn’t get better on their own, they died there with almost no care from white doctors.

It was during this flu pandemic that Black doctors in Detroit founded the first 2 Black hospitals in the city – Mercy Hospital in 1917, founded by Drs. David and Daisy Northcross, and Dunbar Hospital, in 1918, founded by Dr. James Ames, and 30 other Black doctors.

One of the reasons why Detroit gained 2 Black hospitals within one year was because of the heightened level of illness in the Black community largely connected with the flu pandemic and the racist policies of the white medical community.

Dr. Ossian Sweet, after he, and his wife, siblings and friends win freedom after being charged with murder when they defended their home in 1925, lost his wife, his daughter, and his brother to tuberculosis. Because of the TB outbreak, Dr. Sweet would found a succession of TB hospitals, each one closing after being attacked by the federal IRS, or higher rate fees from insurance companies.

Dr. Sweet himself would be lost to suicide in 1960.

So, today as we deal with COVID-19, and we see the higher rates of death surging in the Black community, you should be very clear about the history of pandemics and race.

Black people and Indigenous People have been subjected to diseases from Columbus to Tuskegee, and they have also been discriminated by the white health care community which exacerbated their death rates.

Political leaders have used outbreaks as justification for segregation and marginalization of Black people and the poor throughout world history, ESPECIALLY in the United States.

Your eyes are not playing tricks on you when you see a hospital in predominantly Black Detroit have so many dead bodies that they stack them on top of one another and can’t find the corpses of people when the funeral home and families come to claim their loved ones.

It should be NO SURPRISE that Nazi-like racist reactionaries invade the state Capitol and connect their disdain for stay-at-home policies with their ideology of anti-Blackness.

Pandemics have historically been periods of heightened racism, where attacks on Black people and Indigenous people are magnified as well as a politically strengthened war against the poor in general.

During the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s-1990s, the LGBT community was further “other-ized” and Black people were too. The federal government even implemented a policy against Haiti and Haitian immigrants as an answer to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

And the continent of Africa has never really recovered from the AIDS pandemic.

Not even going to bring up Ebola.

There have already been numerous attacks and even killings of Asian-Americans as a racist response to the coronavirus. The president himself referred to it over and over as the “Chinese virus.”

So When folks post or attach the hashtag
#WeAreInThisTogether, and believe it to be true, that we are REALLY ALL IN THIS TOGETHER – they are either historically naive or intellectually dishonest.

Because this has never been the case and there is no American precedent for a health crisis to create unity between races.

At best, a form of unity across racial and class lines during a heath crisis pandemic is AN ASPIRATION.

It is something we may want TO WORK TOWARDS.

But be clear, a LOT OF PEOPLE do not want that, and there is no widespread history of this.

The legacy is something different, and Black folks, at best, need to find ways to work together, provide and support community groups that assist residents, transport goods and services, do what they can to help the medical facilities in their communities, and stay healthy.

The history – the legacy – the present-day reality IS – that there was not, is not and won’t be a cavalry of support from all sides of society and that Black folks are largely ON THEIR OWN.

Help is not coming.

And if it does come, it arrives late.

HEY, YOU!! LISTEN!! DON’T GIVE ME ANY LIP!!

HEY, YOU!! LISTEN!! DON’T GIVE ME ANY LIP!!
Love him or hate him or somewhere in between, this is our guy.

Remember this: First and foremost, the President of the United States is caretaker of the empire. So no matter WHO sits in that Oval Office, their job is to keep the empire strong and maintain the “American Way of Life”.

I am an anti-imperialist, so I will ALWAYS be at odds with the POTUS, no matter WHO it is. Yes, Biden is an oligarch. That’s the JOB of the president! To keep the nation safe for the oligarchy. You don’t believe me? Then read your history. No, not what they taught you as a junior in high school. REAL US HISTORY!

That being said, this is a VERY important election. Whether you believe your Democratic nominee is the right man for the job is IRRELEVANT! Put your personal feelings aside!

DONALD TRUMP MUST NOT BE ELECTED FOR A SECOND TERM! No IFs, No ANDs, No MAYBEs! PERIOD!

Yes, America has had racist presidents before. Yes America has had incompetent presidents before. THIS MOMENT IN TIME IS A CRITICAL AND SINGULAR MOMENT IN US HISTORY. The nation as you know it is already gone. Don’t allow everything you know and love to be swept away as well.

Am I being hyperbolic? Am I exaggerating? You REALLY think so? You really think it’s either going to get better or stay the same with another four years of MAGA? “It can’t get any worse?” REALLY??? DO YOU HONESTLY WANT TO FIND OUT??

Do you want to see some sense of the Hope and Promise that many of us believed had arrived when Obama was president, or are you one of those people who wants to turn back the clock to a time when “girls were girls, men were men, and people like YOU knew to STAY IN YOUR PLACE?”

If you truly love your family and my family, if you care about humanity and morality and human decency, IT IS YOUR CIVIC DUTY TO DO YOUR BEST TO MAKE SURE THAT TRUMP DOES NOT GET RE-ELECTED!

I’m sorry it has come to this. A lot of you are PISSED right now. Many of you are THRILLED, happy because you think Grandpa Joe is the best man for the job.

Whatever. It is what it is. Joe Biden is our guy. Give him your vote. Should you knock doors or make phone calls or put up a yard sign? That’s up to you.

But I’ll tell you this. TRUMP MUST NOT BE RE-ELECTED. Do what you gotta do. Don’t be ambivalent about it. GET THE JOB DONE!

DON’T FIGHT ME ON THIS. DON’T ARGUE. DON’T DEBATE. LIKE IT, LOVE IT, HATE IT. This is what it is.

You have your marching orders. Don’t fail your children, the rest of the human species, and all the species on this planet. Get ‘er done.

JusBam Tribute to Bill Withers: “Use Me Up” featuring Nadir Omowale

A wonderful tribute from our friend, collaborator and client, JusBam:

“People would say that I was way too young to have a crush on Bill Withers..My Grandma Inez introduced me to him and I have been in love every since. It has been a dream of mine to make this song..and I turned out even more amazing than I imagined. So Thank you! for inspiring me to live my dream #RIPBILLWITHERS

“Use Me Up is a powerful uplifting song that reflects the positive blessing in life. Produced and featuring Nadir Omowale of Detriot, MI. This song will lift …”

Nadir’s Tribute to Bill Withers – “Sunshine” by Jack Johnson from “Round One”

So many of us have very personal Bill Withers stories. Because she practically dared me, I sang “Use Me” to Akanke Rashad-Omowale at our wedding.

We also recorded this Bill Withers cover for the Jack Johnson Round One album in 1995. That’s Simone White on drums, Ethan Pilzer on bass, Paul Cochrane on guitar, and some dude named Kurtis McFarland on vocals and drum loops.

The album was mixed and co-produced by Rob Feaster and Kurtis at The Castle in Franklin, TN.
Corbin Dooley and Paul Brinberg were the heads of our record label, PC! Music Company. Bill Steber took the band photo.

You can check out the full album on Bandcamp:
http://jackjohnsonroundone.bandcamp.com/album/round-one Name your own price if you want to download it. We will not be mad at you. You might hear some other songs you recognize.

Anyway… We will really miss Bill Withers. His music meant so much to so many of us.

 

I’ve hesitated to post anymore info about covid-19, but I just got back from the grocery store, and saw the debate about masks on someone’s timeline. That made me research, and I’m sharing what I’ve found so far. It’s helpful, but like most everything centered around the pandemic, more testing and studies are needed to say for sure.

So what’s the answer? Should you wear a mask when you’re outside at all, or just when you’re around people?

This article in The Atlantic helps pull back the veil.


“Even if coronavirus particles can move through the air, they would still diffuse over distance. “People envision these clouds of viruses roaming through the streets coming after them, but the risk of [infection] is higher if you’re closer to the source,” says Linsey Marr, who studies airborne disease transmission at Virginia Tech. “The outside is great as long as you’re not in a crowded park.”

“In February, scientists in Wuhan, China—where the coronavirus outbreak originated—sampled the air in various public areas, and showed that the virus was either undetectable or found in extremely low concentrations. The only exceptions were two crowded sites, one in front of a department store and another next to a hospital. Even then, each cubic meter of air contained fewer than a dozen virus particles. (No one knows the infectious dose of SARS-CoV-2—that is, the number of particles needed to start an infection—but for the original SARS virus of 2003, one study provided estimates many times higher than the levels detected in the Wuhan spaces.)*

“These particles might not even have been infectious. “I think we’ll find that like many other viruses, [SARS-CoV-2] isn’t especially stable under outdoor conditions like sunlight or warm temperatures,” Santarpia said. “Don’t congregate in groups outside, but going for a walk, or sitting on your porch on a sunny day, are still great ideas.”

READ MORE HERE

Dream Big with Jill Jack – The Importance of Listening with Nadir Omowale

LISTEN HERE ON EMPOWER RADIO

Jill Jack is a 43 time Detroit Music Award winner who has traveled the world sharing her life experiences through song. What Jill has enjoyed the most over her 30 year music career was meeting people. Jill found that in sharing her trials and tribulations, her dreams and aspirations she connected with people of all walks of life. Her fans would reach out to her and ask for advise on how to pursue their dreams. Jill decided 3 years ago to create Dream Big Incorporated – a place where Jill could share her gift of believing in, supporting and guiding individuals of all walks of life pursue their biggest dreams! Dream Big with Jill Jack! A radio show that will inspire, educate, and encourage listeners to be and do what their hearts are nudging them to do.

Jill invited Nadir on her radio show where they talk about the importance of listening, being aware, and of actually putting the appointment in your calendar so your phone beeps at the right time.

Click HERE to LISTEN NOW

© Nadir Omowale