🎤Del Jones - The American Nigger Factory🏭

Del Jones, grew up in West Philly with his seven brothers, reached adulthood just as the Civil Rights movement crested in the mid-1960s. Like many cities throughout the U.S., Philadelphia in the ’60s was marked by protests, violent uprisings, and political organizing around the question of Black liberation. Music played an inextricable role in this revolutionary wave, as musicians created songs designed to amplify the movement’s message. Black folks were not only fighting on the frontlines of electoral politics, housing, economics, and labor, the struggle played out on the cultural front as well, growing in intensity and sophistication throughout the decade. Thousands of Black students staged strikes and walkouts over the lack of Black Studies courses being offered at area colleges and high schools, and in the spring of 1969, the Black Panther Party. It was in the wake of this vast revolutionary mood that Del Jones formed Positive Vibes, a fiery ensemble that blended spoken-word poetry, jazz, funk, and traditional West African drumming. Mixing up these great African American musical styles with the sound and rhythms of the motherland and timely political messages, Del Jones & Positive Vibes was a band designed to imbue Black folks with a sense of deep cultural pride and a sense of self that had been ripped away under the brutal regime of chattel slavery in the U.S. In this lecture Del Jones comments on the conditions in the United States for black people, that the NF produce.