Bio:
Askia Davis, Sr. Ed.D. was born in rural Georgia and at the age of 15 joined “the Great Migration” of African Americans to cities in the North. At age 16 Askia lived independently in the borough of the Bronx in New York City. Also at age 16 he “stumbled upon” The Autobiography of Malcolm X and his view of the world was transformed.
Soon after, in 1968 he joined the Black Panther Party in Harlem (not to be confused with the so-called “New Black Panther Party” and its positions on race and violence) and became its Lieutenant of Education, leading classes in studying revolutionary books and literature that provided a context for community service. In 1968 he also became a leader of the successful struggle to open enrollment of Brooklyn College and City University of New York to Blacks and Latinos. At Brooklyn College in 1969 he was arrested, along with 18 other African American and Puerto Rican students, and held on Rikers Island facing the threat of being sentenced to 228 years in prison. With the assistance of Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm and other community leaders, he and his friends were released from prison.
Askia later completed a doctoral degree at Teachers College, Columbia University in 1983. Professionally, Askia has been a teacher, a counselor, an administrator, the senior assistant to three successive chancellors of the New York City Public Schools, superintendent of schools in Harlem, and deputy regional superintendent for 140 schools serving 99,000 students in the Bronx.
Askia is currently a writer and an educational consultant, specializing in strategic planning, team building, curriculum change, Models of Teaching, proposal development, and leadership.
He is a Social Entrepreneur, Executive Volunteer, and Co-Founder of the Executive Service Network (ESN) of Nigeria, focused on enhancing the organizational capacity and impact of social development enterprises and institutions in Nigeria through the deployment of tens of thousands of volunteers who are active and retired professionals. Trailblazing leader with significant accomplishments in transforming educational institutions and outcomes in the USA. Inspirational speaker and master of executive leadership training, strategic planning, team building, organization development and proposal development/writing.
What do you get when a father, who came of age in the Black Power and Black is Beautiful Generation, attempts to raise a son coming of age in the Hip Hop Generation? You get two views of reality, psychological warfare, harmony, disharmony, hope, and ongoing transformation.
Coming of Age in the Hip Hop Generation: Warrior of the Void is a co-authored father-son memoir. It is written in the son's voice and covers the first 18 years of his life growing up African American and Puerto Rican in Brooklyn.
The void is the space that exists between who we are and who we are called to become. It is the space where we encounter so many flamboyant demons while our few guardian angels often remain hidden from sight. Demons often choose not to appear horrific; they most often choose to appear enchanting. Warrior of the Void presents Askia Akhenaton's faith-affirming journey through the first 18 years of the void.
Come inside for an intimate and unique examination of: innocence and harmony; love and heartbreak; sex education and mis-education from parents, teens, the Internet, teachers, and musicians; disharmony and the fight for independence and self-identity; racial profiling and stop-and-frisk encounters with the police; mind manipulation to create a pervasive and negative image of black and Latino males; American his-story vs. history; the spell of video games, music, sports, and social media; 12th grade senioritis and its cure; and God, faith, and family.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).