8 Search results for "commercialization"

By Monika Estrella Negra The majority of the Black punks I have talked to were drawn to (or got lost in) the Punk scene in order to escape the rigidity and heteronormative idealism of traditional Black political organizing. This is not to infer that all Black punks identify with far leftist views, nor does it […]

I’ve been meaning to write this post since I watched a commercial for a K-Mart Martin Luther King, Jr. day sale. I’m all about a deal, and I can’t be sure but maybe Dr. King was also, but seriously? It took me back to a discussion I’ve had with several people regarding the commercialization of […]

By Ugonna-Ora Owoh When Leo, a 28-year-old bisexual man living in Lagos, Nigeria attended a rave for the first time in October 2022, he was in disbelief. “It was my first time seeing so many queer persons in one place,” he explains. “They felt free, nobody was worried about who was watching them or attacking […]

by Adam Mahoney I’ve been living in Vietnam for four months and from the first 30 minutes I arrived in the country, my hair was a problem. I’m a 20 year old junior in college, so when the opportunity to not be in a classroom full of wealthy, white peers presented itself, I jumped at […]

by Donnie Moreland  This essay mentions domestic violence.  August Wilson once noted, “The blues are important primarily because they contain the cultural expression and the cultural response to blacks in America and to the situation that they find themselves in.” I believe this to be true, in so far as the Blues may no longer […]

Lauryn Hill is once again a free woman after serving three months in prison for failing to pay more than $1.8 million in taxes between 2005 and 2007. Her new single “Consumerism” was released on the last day of her sentence.

Anytime an underground art becomes commercialized it is simultaneously at risk of becoming compromised. We saw this happen in the ballroom scene, rap music and hip hop culture. The same issue surfaced in the poetry scene when Russell Sims began to take spoken word and turn it into a commercialized art. Nothing is wrong with […]

Over the next several weeks I will be writing a series on  The Ballroom Scene. Wikipedia cheapens the culture by diluting the definition, calling it a “subculture of the LGBT community involving staged competitive, drag fashion performances.” The ballroom scene is not only a new black art, but it comes with a lot more baggage […]