African
Music Awards
and
the Answer to Racism
By Alice Bernstein
An important aspect of the Fourth Annual African Music Awards, produced
by Dr. Tal Balofin, publisher of U.S. African Eye magazine, held
recently at New York's Helmsley Hotel, is that along with exciting musical
performances, persons heard the knowledge that provides the answer to racism.
Two of the international artists honored were Emmy award-winning filmmaker
Ken Kimmelman and music professor and composer Edward Green, both on the
faculty of the Aesthetic Realism
Foundation, who spoke about the value, for art and humanity, of Aesthetic
Realism, the education founded by the great American poet and philosopher,
Eli Siegel.
The purpose of the African Music Awards, Dr. Balofin explained, is to
recognize real talent without discrimination based on race, creed, nationality,
or the influence of "lopsided parameters such as charts, record sales,
fame."
Wanda Dee
 F.A.T.E
(below)
.
. |
Award-winners included the electrifying gospel singer, David
Ojo, Guinean singer Aicha Dabata (who sang a lyric in her native language),
Wanda Dee, who sang in seven languages, three women who are the powerfully
harmonic R&B group, F.A.T.E. (For All That's Endured), Fasha Dance
Group, and music teacher Robert Levin, percussionist for Broadway's The
Lion King and founder of the Kopeyia Ghana School Fund. |
Aicha Dabata
|
| The audience was treated to outstanding performances ranging
from R&B ballads to African Hip Hop, and traditional drumming and dancing
of the Ewe people of West Africa, performed by The Rhythm Monsters, a troupe
of Mr. Levin's students.
Inducted into the African Hall of Fame in recognition of his important
films against racism, Ken Kimmelman said, |
Rhythm Monsters
|
"I had always wanted to make films that were useful, but it wasn't until
I began studying Aesthetic Realism that I learned a way of seeing based
on principles true about the world and every person - a way that can really
make a difference - which is the basis of my films. Aesthetic Realism teaches
that the deepest desire of every human being is to like the world honestly,
respect it, see meaning and beauty in it. This is the source of all art,
and all justice. And it also shows that the greatest enemy to our lives
is contempt, 'the addition to self through the lessening of something else.'
Contempt can be as ordinary as not listening to another person in a conversation,
feeling our own thoughts are more important. And contempt is also the cause
of the greatest cruelties - economic injustice, war and racism. What I
learned changed my life and had me know prejudice and racism could really
end."
Ken Kimmelman
|
The audience saw "The Heart Knows Better" - the Emmy award-winning
anti-prejudice public service film airing on major TV stations and sports
stadiums internationally, which shows a beating heart, and ends with words
by Eli Siegel: "It will be found that black and white man have the same
goodnesses, the same temptations and can be criticized in the same way.
The skin may be different, but the aorta is quite the same." |
Three other short films by Mr. Kimmelman were also shown: Brushstrokes
(for young persons) and Asimbonanga, (both films against racism
made for the United Nations) and a moving public service film against homelessness
and hunger, "What Does: a Person Deserve?" with music composed by
Edward Green.
| Mr. Green received an award for his articles against racism
published in U.S. African Eye, of which Dr. Balofin, in an editorial
of that journal, expressed his pride in "bringing to the world the great,
new philosophy Eli Siegel founded." Professor Green, who teaches jazz history
and world music at the Manhattan School of Music, spoke of having learned
"a way of understanding music that is completely without any cultural prejudice"
from Eli Siegel's landmark principle: "All beauty is a making one of opposites,
and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves." |
Edward Green
|
The answer to racism is in the structure of music, he said. "People need
to feel there is a relation of sameness and difference between ourselves
and another person that is beautiful - as different notes in music enhance
each other. Both nations and individuals," he continued, "need to learn
what Aesthetic Realism teaches: the way to express ourselves is through
being just to others, the way a musician comes to his or her expression
through being fair to notes, rhythms, and his fellow performers."
Kimmelman and Green were warmly received by the audience. "This presentation
of a difficult issue touched me deeply as an African, and a journalist,"
said Joao Carlos Gomes of the United Nations.
You can learn more about it by contacting the not-for-profit Aesthetic
Realism Foundation at
(212) 777-4490, www.AestheticRealism.org.
As Dr. Tai Balofin wrote in U.S. African Eye, "Many scholarly
persons are confident that Aesthetic Realism will be the basis of world
education in the coming century."
All photographs by David
M. Bernstein
|
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