“Our arts and culture sharing will be profitable for the mind, soul, the cultural legacies and the people!”

As part of our Griotology page on Education, Culture and Arts, Bill Banfield interviews, Ornette Coleman (@43.min:35 sec- 1: 08 min:15 sec)

Banfield, on assignment from Quincy Jones, travels the country to document the workings of contemporary working musicians.

As part of our Griotology page on Education, Culture and Arts, Bill Banfield interviews Lalah Hathaway (@55 min: 25 sec- 1: 24 min:17 sec)

A Statement About Making Music in the World

Hi friends.

We live in a “multiple shifting values society” in which the question arises; what are the things that we experience and believe in, that provide us with some grounding in our quest to have a meaningful life in our world today? People who work in the humanities, arts, education, culture creators, writers are moved by all the shaking around us and concerned about how we are defining culture today and forward. It is both a realty of our condition, and a great opportunity to do things. How does today’s generation define itself by its cultural practices, ideology and ritual(s)? What is our real cultural worldview?

The system we live in doesn't care anymore. So artistic ambition, aspiration becomes muted as it sometimes lands on suffocated soils where souls are sickened. It's not the people, it's the systematic cultural pollution we cough in. So your art is medicine now, and it's expensive to make the medicine. The artists have to brew thicker serums to help out. And that “costs” to produce.

This page, Griotology (West African musicians/artists/storytellers/culture and traditions bearers…) is a letter and key to you to walk with us on sharing and shaping together ideas that impact creatively how we live in the world as creative people. The most pressing issues, questions that allows us to address what our art, values, citizenry and purposes are is at every level how we interact today. The issue is, who cares, how am I sure that my own ways, interests matter ..? How do others read who and what and where we are entering in, in our exchanges..? How are the delivery mechanisms, the tools, technologies mirroring the right next moves? Can we trust the machines, and can we ignore the meaning of the marketplace mania, and are we swimming way too deep in too much stuff out here? It's not academic. It's actually all around us as so many things are shifting; politics, culture, economics, technologies, and the rate of value shifts in the general public place, our society. The global implications are huge. The world is spinning it seems in broad new directions.

So how does all our thinking shake out? And what are our values that define us at our core? I don't think we can rest on some of the answers for many things we held as absolutely definitive. There are some new questions, frameworks, more discussions that are necessary, and these are good and necessary. The nightmare is the potential of the divides, and waking up and finding out "they" changed the codes to the gate and closed the door, but the dreams have to do with what's possible now. It's thrilling. We have now the opportunity and tools to reboot, without losing the connections that were sure. Arts and creative exchanges actually raise the level of cooperative dialogues and sharing. That is what this Blog/ Essay area is about, and we invite you to write for it, and join in the dialogue.

Art, Culture and Contemporary Artists
Politics and Faith
Citizenry and Society (Nationhood and Neighborhood)
Global impulse (The World cultures)
Tools and Technology (computer and the internet world works)
Marketplace and Industry (What, how, and where they are selling us...)

These are some of the important discussions to have to be living in our times today. These are spiritual existence questions. These are our cultural Through-lines. Music, art, and the way people make this and connect in this is absolutely dead center of all these things. The expressions today are the result of addressing these concerns at the innermost impulses of human interaction and connectivity. It's why the colors are so bright, the language, words so dense, the rhythms so punctuate and the songs live or die. And the youth sound is the closest note at the source of all the eruptions, for bad or for better. If we don't take real time to focus on the understanding of our world today, how to love and take care of each other and then reach out and transform our society, as the old folks would say, "we are going to burn and perish faster".

So we start here with our conversations and conversions and our life forward. The beat teaches, and the song reaches.

Left of Black host Dr. Mark Anthony Neal sits down with Dr. Bill Banfield to discuss the community of Black composers and today's popular music. Dr. Banfield is a composer, author, recording artist, musical director, and exceptional live performer. He teaches a Berklee College of Music.

Berklee College of Music professor Bill Banfield went to Cuba to connect with musicians -- but he also wanted to forge a collaboration with painter Orestes Gaulhiac. Read more here: