Black Disabled Art History 101 by Leroy F. Moore Jr

Black Disabled Art History 101 by Leroy F. Moore Jr

Sit down & listen
cause there will be a test at the end
Displaying & speaking
our history & culture
through music & art
From slavery to homeland security
Black disabled artists
roots grow deep
however this garden is starving for recognition
The most famous classical pianist
in the mid to late 19th century
was a Black Blind Autistic slave
Tom Wiggins aka Blind Tom was his slave name
his master used him to make money
and left him poor and broken
Horace Pippin, the first Black Disabled self-taught painter
lost his arm in WW1
using his left arm
to prop up his right forearm
crafted his first masterpiece depicting horrors of war
Oh, the price he paid for being Black, Poor,
Self-taught & Disabled
Blues is the Black Anthem
attract blind singers & musicians
to make a living on the streets
some made it into recording studios
Blind Willie McTell born in 1898
played on the streets of Atlanta
Blind Willie Johnson born around 1902
a street evangelist
stepmother threw lye
in young Johnson’s eyes
causing blindness
Johnson became the first
gospel guitarist too record
he died of pneumonia
hospital refused admittance
due to his blindness
Blind Blake & Blind Boone’s
Birthdates are not known
Blind John William Boone formed
his own concert company
traveling all over the country
more than 8,000 concerts
in the USA Canada, Europe & Mexico
The most popular Male Blues
recording artists of the twenties
was Blind Lemon Jefferson
he was also a street performer
Black deaf schools
in the fifties produced
independent businesses like barber shops
down south and social clubs in the East
Writers like Mary Herring Wright, Linwood
Smith & Ernest Hairston
voice the experiences of our Black Deaf Brothers & Sisters
Listen to the Melody Heartbeat of a Black Deaf Woman
Jades fingers reads I’m a proud Black Deaf Woman
Black sign language was developed ‘cause societal
attitudes & educational policy helped create a dual
system and what grew?
A strong Black Deaf identity
integration killed Black Sign & almost
erased Black Deaf Culture
Let’s travel to Jamaica
Where in the fifties Polio infected the island
Skelly, Wise & Apple are Israel Vibration
they met each other
at Mona Rehabilitation Center
got kicked out ‘cause their religious beliefs in Rasta
homeless, poor & disabled
began to sing on the streets
now they are the Fathers of Reggae
Back to Africa
tribal dancing
to the drumming, guitar strumming and singing
of Amadou & Mariam
a Blind married couple
blending Rock, Pop, Jazz & Hip Hop
with an international flavor
from Cuba to Asia & India to America
Coming home to the Bay Area
to swing from Charles Curtis Blackwell & Avotcha’s
jazz Poe-tree & celebrate
Disabled African American Visual Artists
at Harambee’s annual art show called KUUMBA
So get out your number two pencils for your final
on Black Disabled Art History

Void Deck by Alfian Bin Sa'at

Void Deck by Alfian Bin Sa'at

Where the neighbourhood wives,

After a morning at the wet market,

Sit facing the breeze

To trade snatches of gossip

About leery shopkeepers,

The local louts,

(Like that fella who's always drilling his walls –

Gives me migraine)

And that mad woman

Who throws things from her window.

With careful put-downs they

Fashion boasts, about stubborn sons,

Lazy daughters, who by some miracle or mistake

Always score well in class.

When words falter,

Gestures take over: pursed lips, rolling eyes,

Animated hands adorned by bangles of

Gold, jade, steel, string.

And children orbit around them

Laugh without diction –

Their games of tag a reassurance

That there has been no hothousing

Of who is unclean, unwashed,

Untouchable. When they break out

Into some kindergarten song,

One almost believes in a generation

Cleansed of skin-deep suspicions,

And free from the superstitions of the tongue –

And old folks sit like sages

To deploy chess pieces with ancient strategies.

In a corner, a caged bird bursts

With the song of its master's pride

And wrinkled women breathe, through

Tai-chi-tuned windpipes, the operatic melody of the air...

All a wanton fantasy.

Eyes reveal a meeting-point

For loners and loiterers:

A sense of things reduced-

Conversations that trickle through

Brief noddings at lift landings,

Teenage rhetoric scrawled, in liquid paper,

On the stone-table chessboard,

(Where the king used to sit)

The grandiose house-selling dreams of residents

Compacted in anonymous letterboxes;

As an afterthought, an old man pees

Under a public phone.

A place to be avoided, this,

How in its vastness it devours hours.

Little wonder then,

Why residents rush through void decks

Back to the cramped comforts of home

As if in fear of what such open space might do

To cosy minds.