Askia Davis Sr. via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other...
- Steps from Askia Davis Sr.:
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
'mātriks / "source" / from "mater", Latin for "mother". We're real mothers for ya!
I'LL TAKE YOU THERE! ▶
- Steps forward by: The Artist
Who I Am & Where I Live
- Name: Askia Davis Sr.
- City: Brooklyn, New York
- Country: United States
My Life & Work
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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.
Contact Information
- Email: askia@askiadavis.com
- Telephone: (347) 885-4625
My Media & Markets
- ▶ Book Purchases: http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Age-Hip-Hop-Generation/dp/0985502401
- ▶ Website: http://www.askiadavis.com
More
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Quotes, Notes & Etc.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
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 world's artistry via giant steps through a matrix based in the phenomenon placing most of the 7.8 billion of us within 6 or fewer degrees — steps — of each other ...
... a project conceived and built in the fertile, fecund and atavistic ground zero of Bahia, Brazil initially for the discoverability of this singular region's dispossessed genius.
All explained in the window immediately below. Followed — beneath this window — by scores of magnificent artists, each leading to myriads more artists/categories. Inside this window also may be found our Brazilian record store radio, named by British journal The Guardian as one of 10 of the Best Radio Stations Around the World!
IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT
Brazil is not a European nation. It's not a North American nation. It's not an East Asian nation. It straddles -- jungle and desert and dense urban centers -- both the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn. It absorbed over ten times the number of African slaves taken to the United States of America, and much of its aboriginal population was absorbed into the general population-at-large. Its people have lived under oligarchy, plutocracy, dictatorships and massive corruption, with elements of these still strongly entrenched today.
But!
Brazil has buzz...not the shallow buzz of a fashionable moment...but the deep buzz of a population which in spite of -- or perhaps because of -- the tough slog through life they've been allotted by humanity's dregs-in-fine-linen, have chosen not to simply pull themselves along but to lift their voices in song and their bodies in dance...to eat well and converse well and much and to wring the joy out of the day-to-day happenings and small pleasures of life which are so often set aside or ignored in the European, North American, and East Asian nations.
For this Brazil has a genius perhaps unparalleled in all other countries and societies, a genius which thrives alongside peeling paint and holes in the streets and roads, under bad organization by the powers-that-be, both civil and governmental, under a constant rain of societal indignities...
Which is all to say that if you don't know Brazil and you're expecting any semblance of order, progress and light, you will certainly find the light! And the buzz of a people who for generations have responded to privation at many different levels by somehow rising above it all.
Raimundo Sodré, in a conversation ranging through New Orleans and Harlem and the South Side of Chicago ... and Appalachia and Irish villages and Russian shtetls and the unofficial symbol of Brazil's Bahian-born national music (the pandeiro) almost certainly having arrived in Brazil in the hands of Sephardic Jews (including conversos) fleeing the Inquisition, once remarked: "Where there's misery, there's music!"
A pandeirista on the roof. And it's not just music. And it's not just Brazil.
