http://bretzawilski.com/griot/

Hi All,
Please click the link to participate in this week's griot discussion. Thanks, and enjoy!

African American Sacred/Secular Continuum

 African American ways of knowing operate on a Sacred/Secular Continuum. This means there is rarely a division between sacred and secular ideologies. This is because historically sacred gatherings were the only place Black people could gatherer without the gaze of white overseers.   Historically the Black church initiated and sustained insurrections and critical activism. Both Sojourner Truth and Malcolm X, were Preachers

African American oratorical output has six classification schemes.
(1)  to protest grievances (2) to state complains (3) to demand rights (4) to advocate radical cooperation (5) to mold racial consciousness and (6) to simulate racial pride  (Gilyard 2011)

Remix: Afrofuturistic Road Map

We decided to use a mind map to try to represent our conversation last week. Our map touches three key points: the back in the day narrative, living memory/rememory, and eblack studies/remix. Each main point is supplemented by a number of examples and analogues. Some examples come from those sections of Digital Griots brought up during Reading Group. Some come from questions and examples brought up during our conversation.

We invite you to click around our map, explore our links (note: they will not open up a new window), and consider the connections we've tried to create here.

To navigate to our mind map, click the link below: https://coggle.it/diagram/53206e227f352281050031a3/58200ad6bff4da177373a4a85c4f0a8c9b6947a8ac614dbe1eb667c9a96c6dad

TJMS: Steve Silk Hurley Inauguration Day Mix 2013 [AUDIO] | Old School 100.3

TJMS: Steve Silk Hurley Inauguration Day Mix 2013 [AUDIO] | Old School 100.3

Sarah Smile Remix- Drake with Hall&Oates (+playlist)

Banks, "Mix," and Pinterest

In order to further explore our discussion on Banks' chapter, "Mix," we decided to create a Pinterest board (a site of spatial organization that can host ideas, associated images, and appropriate links simultaneously) focused around certain core ideas (pertaining to the chapter) that we expressed and discussed in reading group on Feb. 17th:

"Students intentionally write how they wouldn’t talk and then you have them read it out loud and say, “Would you ever talk like that?”

"Writing is scary. Once you put it on paper, you have to take a look at it."

"Many students perceive writing as very academic. Just that can be intimidating. So it can be hard to ask students to write, particularly at the beginning of the course."

"Many people probably don’t have positive experiences with writing."

"The role of the griot is to encourage the community to create texts together."

"The griot is a member of the community, but are there times when the griot is not a full participant or when he/she is overlooked?"

Here is the URL to our pinterest board: http://www.pinterest.com/fgriots/adam-banks-mix/

Three Griot Mixes

This is our attempt at 3 different mixing styles, recognizing that each person has his/her "own blend...[his/her] own mix" (39). As you listen to/watch/experience each mix, here are some thoughts from the chapter to keep in mind:

• As we think about “the mix,” remember the “new and renewing possibilities that are emergent in the many complex practices of the DJ providing the mix: selection, arrangement, layering, sampling, beat-matching, blending. In the thought that anything – any sample, any sound, any tradition, any clip – is available to be used in any text” (35).
• “And one must teach in the idiom – not just the language practices but the ways of seeing the world, the ways of being in the world, the values, attitudes, knowledge, needs, hopes, joys, and contributions of a people as expressed through their language” (49).
• When people “see themselves as griots” they “value the oral tradition and print and digital literacies, and…develop writing and rhetorical practices that link the three toward the goals of building community and deep democracy through critical literacy” (83).

We present the mixes in no specific order. Feel free to experience them as you want…

Mix 1: http://digitalgriotreadinggroup.tumblr.com/ (Password: readinggroup2014)

Mix 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRV28dwoMaM&feature=youtu.be

Mix 3: http://youtu.be/ToMEtT3Yjw8

Christine, Heather, and Logan 

Animated Griots

To tell our story, we decided to represent ourselves as cartoons that look and sound exactly like we do in real life. We were also too cheap to upgrade, so we were limited to 30-second videos. Hey, isn't the essence of DJ-ing improvisation?

(Click on the links below)

Introduction

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Conclusion


Sincerely yours, Jen, Aimee, Bruce, and David