Jason Toney

SXSW: The Panel, a Clarification

"Yo bailan en Puerto Rico. Yo bailan en Nuevo York" - Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, Che Che Colo

Lawver.net has the wiki of our panel and I want to expand on something I said.

Jason: It doesn't just apply to hiphop. You can talk about the music, but when you talk about the issues of the culture - it applies to black people. If you're coming from Harvard as a white or asian male, you're not the right voice to be the "official" voice of that issue.

Retrieved from "http://www.lawver.net/wiki/index.php/Blogging_While_Black"

I use the example Aaron used a few years ago. I might love Kabuki theatre or Bollywood films. I might read everything there is to read about those subjects. Hell, I could be a Ph.D. in the subject. As a black American, however, I can't truly understand it in the same way that someone who grows up and lives in the culture that brings forth those art forms understands them.

I could go to Kabuki with a person of the culture or attend a Bollywood film in the same way and we would experience completely different things because of who we are.

I don't want to come across like I want to limit what people can and should talk about. I just want their to be an awareness that, perhaps, when we talk about cultural issues, the most relavent voices are the experts within that culture and that we should seek them out.

SXSW: The Panel

"Maybe there is only love if you're honest." - Nuspirit Helsinki, Honest

Austin has me coughing and sniffling something fierce. It is 2:16 AM, I've ordered room service breakfast for 8:45 AM and I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to talk about the day I've had.

Our panel, Blogging While Black, was kind of spectacular. I think I talked too much but we said a lot of things that I think we've all been wanting to say; we got some black folks in the room that normally wouldn't have been at the conference at all; and, we started a conversation.

I haven't had such reasoned, genuine conversations about race, social constructs, common ground and identity since my days as the diversity program clearinghouse coordinator back in college. I loved it.

Truly, I'm amped. I got even more amped during the Where Are the Women in Web Design? panel later in the day. I want you at SXSW next year. There's no excuse. We're going to start a Road to SXSW initiative and get all you weblogging tech heads, music critics, filmmakers, and web designers to Austin, Texas for at least a few days.

Even more than the dialogue that has occurred in the last 15 hours or so regarding issues that matter to many of us, the most important parts of SXSW for me has been the fellowship that I feel when talking with web nerds and geeks about tags and folksonomies and web standards and accessibility and the tools we use and the audiences we reach and the commonalities and differences between us. I'm also attending the film festival and have gotten great ideas for my professional content goals on my work sites (and beyond) just by attending a few of those. I've made great professional connections and, more than that, I've made new friends and all of that energy has me with goals, ideas, and challenges for the spring simply exploding from my head.

Your people are here. I'm here. Tiffany is here. Lynne is here. George is here. Cecily is here. Tony is here. Ernie is here. Min Jung is here. Molly is here. Malcolm is here. Jackson is here. Prentiss is here. David Dylan is here. Hell, Black Texas is here. Most of us will probably be here next year as well.

We're already waiting for you.

I'm giving you a year to get it together and be in Austin for interactive. If you're a web professional dealing in design, social and community tools, or are just interested in how we all get together and get down in the blogosphere, this is where you have to be.

I want to know what subjects would interest you as panel discussions. I want to know what excuses you're already forming. I want to know how we can get you here.

I was at a party hosted by blogger and google tonight and then went to hang out with all the blog kids and the folks of the nick denton empire. I got kissed on my forehead.

What were you doing?

Yeah, I thought so.

SXSW: Night One

"I don't get the message so you got to run the pigeon." - A Tribe Called Quest, Check the Rhime

Working for gothamist has it's priviledges, Jake buys the beers and the pretzels.

Beer though? Really? Breaking Bread with Brad at the Ginger Man was fun but it has been so long since I drank brewskies. I can't remember the names of the beers I drank. I had two. I also can't remember the names of anyone I met but I do remember the url echoditto.com. I spent a lot of time with the DC contingent. I should have taken pictures of everyone like George.

Malcolm Gladwell came to the party and I experienced what must be my first web celebrity moment. The crowd murmured and swelled with excitement. It was odd.

I won a dvd called "High Risk" that stars James Brolin, Anthony Quinn, James Coburn, and Lindsay Wagner. It looks positively awful. As the name of my site (or some proximity of it) I was left to wonder, how many people read "negro" as "nigga"? And this isn't a race thing, I've had family do the same. What's up with that?

The opening party for the Film Festival at Buffalo Billiards featured some rockabilly band and roller derby girls in one room and a pretty mellow DJ in the other. And lots of bad white people dancing. Like really bad. Like too scary for me to get up and show them how to get down bad. And that means it was really bad because if the beat is right, I need to get down. I left when Rapper's Delight came through the speakers and the entire crowd tried to get funky.

And now it is time to kick balls.

Friday Random Ten: SXSW loves Björk Edition

"Sitting here wondering 'bout this thing." - D'nell, This Thing

I don't need to explain this anymore do I? Out of 614 songs on my iPod Mini (about 200 more songs than normal for the long time away from my iTunes), here's the

Friday Random Ten

1. Rolling Through the Hood - Kelis
2. Somersault - Zero 7
3. Books of Flags - Q and not U
4. Take Me Out (Daft Punk Remix) - Franz Ferdinand
5. Venus as a Boy - Björk
6. Verbal Clap - De La Soul
7. Pagan Poetry - Björk
8. Violently Happy - Björk
9. Let's Get Lost - Tina Dico
10. Get 'em High (featuring Common and Talib Kweli) - Kanye West

There are 33 Björk tracks on my iPod but 3 in the 10 and 2 back to back seems excessive.

SXSW: The Preamble

"I want to go to a mountaintop with a radio and good batteries" - Björk, Alarm Call

What time zone is Austin, Texas in? When I arrive there at 10:51 PM tonight will it only be 9:51 PM here? 8:51 PM? I'm thinking it's two hours ahead but what do I know?

Negrophile doesn't have an Austin clock but George knows what time it is. Of particular interest and a reminder that maybe I shouldn't wild out while I'm in Texas: Move the Crowd's 911 is a Joke.

Flava Flav clock says, "Fight the Power!" (Well, really he said, "Yo, G, yo!" but I'm taking writer's license).

My hypothesis for what I hope is only a small part of our Blogging While Black panel discussion:

One of the things I believe about people who blog is that they are looking for community and that their blogrolls reflect the types of communities that they both like and are used to interacting with. I think that bloggers rarely seek out voices that they don't normally hear in their day to day lives and in several cases, particularly on political blogs and "a-list" blogs, seek to invalidate voices that don't jibe when they enter the conversation.

Check your head at Jeneane's How White is your Blogroll? (where I said that in the comments) and then check yo' self at Halley's Ten New Voices.

See ya in Austin.

52 Books in 52 Weeks: Björk Wow and Flutter

"It's not meant to be a strife/It's not meant to be a struggle uphill" - Björk, Undo


Björk Wow and Flutter by Mark Pytlik (ECW Press). When I was in college, most of my free time was spent in two places: the student union and the Tower Records directly across the street from the student union. The summer between my freshman and sophomore year, I stayed on campus as an orientation leader and spent even more time in the record store at listening stations devouring new music. The week after a trip back west to see my girlfriend, I put on those listening booth headphones and pressed the button that corresponded to a cd with a grayish-pink cover and a simple enough title: Debut.

My mind exploded. Every song was a revelation. Over a decade later, I still feel that way. I tell you this so that you know with how much reverence I hold Björk's music. That explained, I went into reading this short biography knowing very little about the personal life of one of my absolute favorite artists. That's true about how I deal with most music, though. I don't care to know the personal lives of the artists. In fact, I think in some ways that having that knowledge affects my enjoyment of the music. If I don't know what they were going through when they wrote a given song, I can listen to it through my filters and not be limited by theirs.

But amazon.com wouldn't shut up about this book so here we are. I'm not sure whether or not I like the book. It's very antiseptic. Pytlik goes to great pains to not provide his own perspective on anything and tries really hard to not come off as a fan-boy, succeeding most of the time. His explanations of Iceland and its culture are enjoyable and while I might not necessarily like knowing the background of how songs came together, I do love knowing about the pains and joys of touring and band interaction and all that so the odd rides of The Sugarcubes and Björk's solo tours are worth the time.

The troubles on the set and in the process of making Dancer in the Dark give form and reason to why I find the picture so unsettling and uncomfortable to watch. This is almost entirely second-hand as the singer refuses to talk much at all about the film. The best parts of the book are, of course, when Björk actually does speak for herself. Her view of music in terms of color and texture explain so much about how she creates but, being the person who spends much of his life in front of a screen, I was particularly taken with this quote

It's all secret. There's no oxygen in that world. It operates like your mind. Your thought process is very similar.

She's talking about her laptop and creating music that way for Vespertine (which at times rivals Debut as my favorite of her albums). I like that. I think it's right. When I sit at the computer to write, to create, I work in secret. I add, I subtract, I search for things in the same way I might recall an image, a thought, a memory in my head without anyone being the wiser. It is secret. Even when I publish it here, it's kind of an open secret. The true story might be in the words I leave out.

It lives in a hidden place.

Still Gawking at Gawker

"I never thought I would compromise." - Björk, Unison

I'm sure it has to do with my own work as a "pro-blogger" now that I'm thinking a lot about this but the gawker/durst legal situation has been on my mind a lot this weekend. Yesterday, my thoughts had to do with the privacy question and the ideas of rules, checks and balances, and the kind of cowboy lawlessness that governs (or doesn't govern) blogs right now.

Today, my thoughts are about the right to distribute materials. I started thinking about The Grey Album and how the blog and online music community as a whole decided to distribute it despite not having a legal right to do so. That was a form of protest, right? That was a conscious decision made by members of the online community to circumvent the law to make a point.

As a short-lived music blogger, I wilfully circumvented the law and disclaimed the site with that information (as many music bloggers do) in order to share and promote music. I knew I was legally wrong, that I was not within my rights to do so but felt that the ends - passing on music I liked to new ears - justified the means. I also knew that I was opening myself up to legal troubles should someone with publishing and distribution rights come calling.

Thinking back on it, it's a stupid risk to take, but I believe in the idea of sharing music to increase its exposure and I also think that record labels are going to see how this helps their product more than it hurts it.

That said, I had no right to distribute that music. I didn't create it. I might own my copy but putting it on the internet on a public site is distributing to a mass audience. The most massive of audiences and I don't have the right to do so.

Which brings me to the Durst video. The sites that have/are hosting the video don't own the video, don't have the right to distribute it, and, if it is stolen, are in posession of stolen material. And again, we might make light of it because the video is funny or disturbing or features people we generally don't like but it is not as if gawker media created the video or are seeking to say something by hosting it.

There's no question of free speech here.

The question is do we, as personal publishers (and, in particular, as "pro-bloggers") have the right to publish anything to our sites just because we can whether or not it is our original material?

I think not.

Gawking at Gawker

"You think you've got it all figured out" - Ann Peebles, I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down

I find it interesting that just a little over a week ago, Felix Salmon argued that with the hosting of the Fred Durst sex video Gawker had jumped the shark, and now, Gawker Media is getting sued by Durst for exactly that.

I'll be curious to see how this all plays out. As The Daily Show satired of the "new journalism" this week there seem to be no rules in our new media world of blogging and it is this kind of situation that will set those standards.

I hate to be on the side of Durst, and maybe I'm not really on his side at all, but I see the merit of the case. It is one thing to link to something on the internet; it is quite another to host it on your own servers. The case seems overzealous but my guess is that it is to make sure that the defendants never host the material again or profit from it.

If I was in the same situation, I might respond in a similar fashion. The erosion of privacy as a right is a big concern for me. That Durst and Hilton before him are generally unliked doesn't make those invasions of privacy any more okay. Even more than that, forget the celebrities in each situation, there is another person in the video who isn't famous but who is being pimped across the internet and there are all those people in Paris's phone book who didn't ask to have their information shared with the world.

It is the same problem I have with people hosting and watching the R.Kelly Sex tapes. There is an underage girl in the video. Fuck R. Kelly but what about her rights? Traditional media is checked and balanced in that regard. News programs and newspapers follow the protocols set out to protect victims by the court. What protections, what rules, what laws are blogs abiding by?

And what rights do people have for retribution when they feel violated? Particularly by professional blog magazines that profit from page views and ad revenue?

I think this is a great test case.

Friday Random Ten - Post-Nap Still Sick Edition

"I'm not coming out till this is all over." - The Postal Service, We Will Become Silhouettes

Lauren is in limited play mode and Rox brought it back to her site this week and it's a weekend when I'd bet on a lot of posts on Negro Please so what better way to start than with a

Friday Random Ten

1. All is Full of Love - Death Cab for Cutie
2. Here for Now - Ani DiFranco
3. Clark Gable - The Postal Service
4. Drop it Like it's Hot (remix featuring Pharrel and Jay-Z) - Snoop Dogg
5. K.O.S. (Determination) - Black Star
6. It Never Rains - Raphael Saadiq
7. Get Off My Spaceship Bitch - RJD2
8. Morning Glory - Jamiroquai
9. How I'm Livin' - Pete Rock & Deda
10. My Life - Erykah Badu