Modern Griot Spotlight: “Studying for My PhD Mixtape”

Singer and violinist, Marques Toliver has released his new mixtape, “Studying for My PhD,” which is a compilation of 14 tracks commenting on the London riots. Toliver samples a variety of sources including Al Green, Nina Simone, Roberta Flack, Beyonce, Jackson 5, Bobby Womack, Shuggie Otis, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, James Baldwin speeches, and even […]

Robots of Brixton

In wake of the recent London riots, just 30 years after the 1981 Brixton riots, Kibwe Tavares released his animated afrofuturistic, sci-fi short film about the future of Brixton in which robots are disenfranchised and tensions between robots and police escalate into violence. The end quotation from Karl Marx reads: “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, […]

A Little History Lesson

During the recent London riots, David Starkey, a British historian (oh, the irony), had quite a few disparaging comments to say about the rioters and Black people, including that the “Whites have become Black.” Nabil Abdul Rashid, a British comedian, decided to do a rebuttal, giving Mr. Starkey another side to the story. Ouch!