Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London asking questions. One was, “What’s your alma mater?” I told him, “Books.” - Malcolm X

I unintentionally went down a rabbit hole recently and found myself rereading a couple of seminal books I discovered during my salad (and ramen) days in college. Likely inspired after sending my daughter off to college last week and vicariously musing about what books and ideas she’ll tussle with there, I had a flashback:

Spring semester, 1989. I was a senior at San Jose State University. If it was Wednesday after classes and close to 5:30pm, you’d find me in the student lounge at the African American Studies building for study circle with the legendary All African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP). This was/is a serious Pan African political organization that dug deep into the tenets of “scientific socialism” across the Black world. I studied with the party for years and became a student of Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Toure, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Ture, Fanon, DuBois, Garvey and others.

Wednesday nights also meant we were in a community of thinkers who devoured words, ideas, and books like food. We went toe-to-toe with each other over written ideas in ways that demanded the justification of our lived experiences — not as performance for “likes” but as face-saving, earned respect. We deconstructed books based on cited references, indexed secondary authors, and unpublished scholarship. We cherished classics from the sixties like The Autobiography of Malcolm X and The Wretched of the Earth while we embraced contemporary public scholars like bell hooks, and Cornel West. It was a time when being very green (intellectually) but insatiably curious made for late-night debates with roommates, campus protests, and, for me, a burgeoning critique of my own psychological, intellectual, and cultural self.

Bottomline: being well-read then was your raison d’être — something we all aspired to, and I didn’t limit myself to just political, anti-establishment, non-fiction or biographical books. Voracious reading, whether it was magazines, short stories, creative non-fiction or novels, soon began to plant seeds that would cement my desire to become a writer.

And soon I realized what anyone fully committed to the writing life knows: if there is no reading, there will be no (substantial) writing. Turns out, reading was fundamental. This was so drilled in us growing up that when we went off to college, I recall some elders saying odd phrases like:

Eating books.. Wait, what?

Blackfolks of a certain age or generation get it. The idea of eating books came from the Black oral tradition, first during slavery when reading was forbidden and later pulled from the slang of Black preachers (our first MCs?) signifying and playing with words from actual biblical scripture.

The Magnificent Seven: what books still hold up?

OK. Enough with the whys and what fors — back to the point of this Substack…

I’ve started to re-read seven books from my early college days to see if they still move me. Of course, I could have chosen way more than seven but keeping it short is the whole point. Here’s the selecting criteria I went with: a) books I read at a pivotal time during my college years; b) books that offer a window into who I was becoming then; c) books whose storytelling and/or themes I once thought were mind-blowing.

Here is my deserted island list, in no particular order:

Song of Solomon

1. I first tried to read Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon as a freshman. I could never get through it until I got the chance to meet Ms. Morrison a few years later when she gave a special lecture and book reading from her book, Beloved, at SJSU in 1988. Of course it went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. After getting a signed copy, I dug into the book and it absolutely flipped my lid ( I know nobody says that anymore ). Back then, folks talked about her layered writing being “hard to get through” but this book was different. It was book full of unexplainable ideas that actually seemed plausible.

   The idea of a flying African who just decided he was OWWT — that his suffering literally let him ride the air to escape bondage wasn’t just magical realism but was rooted in the kaleidoscope of black life caught between the everyday fantastic and the transcendent-near sci-fi absolutely real experiences… for us there is no separation. For many years, I returned to Song of Solomon, finding new meaning in old passages. I love literally almost every trance-inducing sentence in the book. What about Beloved? Same.

   But Song of Solomon said what I needed to hear in the late eighties. It read me as I was reading it. And gave me something intangible I needed. Maybe it was Morrison finding her stride in that era, as she centered the palpable idea of knowing as “feeling.” She imaginatively showed me through her characters that our ancestors are always among us, that the limits and infinities of love in all its forms can and do co-exist, that the frailty of the human condition is ultimately liberating… and (as usual) left it to the reader to interpret what it took in the end for Milkman to learn to “fly.”

From Chap 15, last chapter.

She stood up then, and it seemed to Milkman that he heard the shot after she fell. He dropped to his knees and cradled her lolling head in the crook of his arm, barking at her, “You hurt? You hurt, Pilate?” She laughed softly and he knew right away that she was reminded the day he first met her and said the most stupid thing there was to say.

The twilight had thickened and all around them it was getting dark. Milkman moved his hand over her chest and stomach, trying to find the place where she might be hit.

“Pilate? You okay?”

He couldn't make out her eyes. His hand on her head was sweating like a fountain.

“Pilate?”

She sighed.

“Watch Reba for me.”

And then… I wished I’d a knowed more people. I would have loved ‘em all. If I'd a knowed more, I would a loved more.”

…

As fleet and bright as a lodestar he wheeled toward Guitar and it did not matter which one of them would give up his ghost in the killing arms of his brother. For now he knew what Shalimar knew: If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.

Two Thousand Seasons

2. From Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons reveals the importance of reciprocity and intergenerational wisdom inherent in African culture. Someone in my study circle introduced me to this book and every time I read it I discover something different about slavery as told from an African writer’s perspective.

“There were those who also travelled but not over land and not over water. Movers
in the mind, their news was of communities we would have forgotten without them,
roots to ours but gone from our waking sight. Their news was of communities too far off for us immediately to remember, places where the sun rising approaches over sea, not land. Their news was also of relationships of a beauty still to be realized, of paths still to be found. Their news was of the way, the forgotten and the future way.” (pg. 117)

Wild Seed

3. Now when it comes to Ms. Octavia Butler (my very own cherished literary deity), I would include ALL of her works - but for this Substack I’ll just list two-for-one.

From Wild Seed

“The water harmed him. Soon after Anyanwu had revealed herself, he began to grow ill. He became dizzy. His head hurt him. He said he thought he would vomit if he did not leave the confinement of the small room. Anyanwu took him out on deck where the air was fresh and cooler. But even there, the gentle rocking of the ship seemed to bother him— and began to bother her. She began to feel ill. She seized on the feeling at once, examining it. There was drowsiness, dizziness, and a sudden cold sweat. She closed her eyes, and while Okoye vomited into the water, she went over her body carefully.

She discovered that there was a wrongness, a kind of imbalance deep within her ears. It was a tiny disturbance, but she knew her body well enough to notice the smallest change. For a moment, she observed this change with interest. Clearly, if she did nothing to correct it, her sickness would grow worse; she would join Okoye, vomiting over the rail. But no. She focused on her inner ears and remembered perfection there, remembered organs and fluids and pressures in balance, their wrongness righted. Remembering and correcting were one gesture; balance was restored. It had taken her much practice— and much pain— to learn such ease of control.

Every change she made in her body had to be understood and visualized. If she was sick or injured, she could not simply wish to be well. She could be killed as easily as anyone else if her body was damaged in some way she could not understand quickly enough to repair. Thus, she had spent much of her long life learning the diseases, disorders, and injuries that she could suffer— learning them often by inflicting mild versions of them on herself, then slowly, painfully, by trial and error, coming to understand exactly what was wrong and how to impress healing.

Thus, when her enemies came to kill her, she knew more about surviving than they did about killing.” (pg. 59)

Parable of the Sower

2025

“Intelligence is ongoing, individual

adaptability.

Adaptations that an intelligent

species may make

in a single generation, other species

make over

many generations of selective

breeding and

selective dying. Yet intelligence is

demanding.

If it is misdirected by accident or by

intent, it can

foster its own orgies of breeding and dying.”

(pg. 29) - EARTHSEED THE BOOK OF THE LIVING

Invisible Man

4. Of course, during my identity-seeking college years would have been nothing with my treasured annual re-readings of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Years later, I would eventually write a paper leading to my master’s thesis on the meaning of one powerful sentence from the book: “I yam what I am.”

I took a bite, finding it as sweet and hot as any I'd ever had, and was overcome with such a surge of homesickness that I turned away to keep my control. I walked along, munching the yam, just as suddenly overcome by an intense feeling of freedom -- simply because I was eating while walking along the street. It was exhilarating. I no longer had to worry about who saw me or about what was proper.

To hell with all that, and as sweet as the yam actually was, it became like nectar with the thought. If only someone who had known me at school or at home would come along and see me now. How shocked they'd be! I'd push them into a side street and smear their faces with the peel.

What a group of people we were, I thought. Why, you could cause us the greatest humiliation simply by confronting us with something we liked. Not all of us, but so many. Simply by walking up and shaking a set of chitterlings or a well-boiled hog maw at them during the clear light of day! What consternation it would cause! And I saw myself advancing upon Bledsoe, standing bare of his false humility in the crowded lobby of Men's House, and seeing him there and him seeing me and ignoring me and me enraged and suddenly whipping out a foot or two of chitterlings, raw, uncleaned and dripping sticky circles on the floor as I shake them in his face, shouting: "Bledsoe, you're a shameless chitterling eater! I accuse you of relishing hog bowels! Ha! And not only do you eat them, you sneak and eat them in private when you think you're unobserved!

[…] This is all very wild and childish, I thought, but to hell with being ashamed of what you liked. No more of that for me. I am what I am! I wolfed down the yam and ran back to the old man and handed him twenty cents, "Give me two more," I said.

"Sho, all you want, long as I got 'em. I can see you a serious yam eater, young fellow. You eating them right away?"

"As soon as you give them to me," I said.

"You want 'em buttered?"

"Please."

"Sho, that way you can get the most out of 'em. Yessuh," he said, handing over the yams, "I can see you one of these old-fashioned yam eaters."

"They're my birthmark," I said. "I yam what I am!"

(pg 263)

Hamlet

5. I had some cursory knowledge of The Bard’s Hamlet from high school but it wasn’t until I took a play-writing class in college that I really gained an appreciation for his writing and the English language itself. We read his plays, watched films of several plays, and (of course) used those ubiquitous yellow CliffNotes to study for our finals.

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

- Hamlet, Act III, Scene I [To be, or not to be]

The Prophet

6. Similar to most of the others, Khalil Gibran’s classic was never taught in class - just recommended as a must read my senior year. This profound book… damn, what can I say? If I had to give you a musical equivalent or a pairing to play along while reading Gibran, it would be Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. Uh huh, yeah. This book captures the essence of being spirit in search of itself. It opened the door to many poets around the world like Rumi, Neruda, T.S. Eliot, and others. It showed me how the simple beauty of the natural world and the language we have to describe it… can bring tears to your eyes.

On Love

Then said Almitra, Speak to us of Love.
And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them. And with a great voice he said:
When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself
He threshes you to make your naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.

But if in your heart you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am in the heart of God.”
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

- From The Prophet

Their Eyes Were Watching God

7. I came across this book during my junior year while home on Thanksgiving break. I was sleeping in the guest room and looking at my mom’s book collection. Picked it up thinking it was a religious book. What and how? Right. But once I got past the dialect, I found myself deconstructing Hurston’s linguistics and loving it. Later I learned of her work as an anthropologist and fascination with “measuring heads” and studying Black folkways in Haiti and Jamaica. It gave me a deep appreciation for Black folklore and culture. I used to regularly pick it up when I wanted revisit 1930’s-era Black life (my favorite period of American storytelling) or laugh out loud at the very regional, Black American patois and countrified humor. A plus: subsequent reads about fine-ass Janie’s “love thoughts” continue to enlighten me about the complexity and desires of free-thinking Black women.

Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men.

Now, women forget all those things they don’t want to remember, and remember everything they don’t want to forget. The dream is the truth. Then they act and do things accordingly.

So the beginning of this was a woman and she had come back from burying the dead. Not the dead of sick and ailing with friends at the pillow and the feet. She had come back from the sodden and the bloated; the sudden dead, their eyes flung wide open in judgment.

The people all saw her come because it was sundown. The sun was gone, but he had left his footprints in the sky. It was the time for sitting on porches beside the road. It was the time to hear things and talk. These sitters had been tongueless, earless, eyeless conveniences all day long. Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins. But now, the sun and the bossman were gone, so the skins felt powerful and human. They became lords of sounds and lesser things. They passed nations through their mouths. They sat in judgment.

Seeing the woman as she was made them remember the envy they had stored up from other times. So they chewed up the back parts of their minds and swallowed with relish. They made burning statements with questions, and killing tools out of laughs. It was mass cruelty. A mood come alive, Words walking without masters; walking altogether like harmony in a song.

“What she doin coming back here in dem overhalls? Can’t she find no dress to put on? – Where’s dat blue satin dress she left here in? – Where all dat money her husband took and died and left her? – What dat ole forty year ole ‘oman doin’ wid her hair swingin’ down her back lak some young gal? Where she left dat young lad of a boy she went off here wid? – Thought she was going to marry? – Where he left her? – What he done wid all her money? – Betcha he off wid some gal so young she ain’t even got no hairs – why she don’t stay in her class?”

When she got to where they were she turned her face on the bander log and spoke. They scrambled a noisy “good evenin’” and left their mouths setting open and their ears full of hope. Her speech was pleasant enough, but she kept walking straight on to her gate. The porch couldn’t talk for looking.

The men noticed her firm buttocks like she had grape fruits in her hip pockets; the great rope of black hair swinging to her waist and unraveling in the wind like a plume; then her pugnacious breasts trying to b ore holes in her shirt. They, the men, were saving with the mind what they lost with the eye. The women took the faded shirt and muddy overalls and laid them away for remembrance. It was a weapon against her strength and if it turned out of no significance, still it was a hope that she might fall to their level some day.

(from chap.1, pg. 1)

SO IF YOU WANT TO TAKE A TRIP down literary lane… give it a try.

Here’s my

Old book eating guidelines:

1) Pick 7 books from your college days. Do a close re-reading of the favorite passages;

2) Revisit the revelations, annotated margins, scribbled notes to self, etc.;

3) Extract the seeds, be they literary awe-inducing craft, politically prescient plots, existential allegories, etc. What part of the ideas no longer resonate? Have your political or social or artistic ideas drastically changed from your college days or are you still the embracing the author’s work wholesale?

If you’re lucky, you’ll find the exercise wasn’t a waste of time. This post whet my appetite and while I actually haven’t gotten to all my re-reads yet, something tells me I won’t be disappointed.

Cheo Tyehimba Taylor is a writer, author, and filmmaker whose views, opinions and creative content (incl. any typos or errors) human-made and his own.

Last week, I checked my expectations at the door when I went to see Michael with my daughter. I wasn’t aware of any negative reviews about the biopic but this was a film about Michael Jackson, the self-appointed King of Pop” — as we took our seats, I thought “ain’t a movie made” that could capture his largess or meaning to the culture. My theory was confirmed by the end as the words “The Story Continues…” appeared before the credits. As I listened to a row of Millennials in the seats behind us harmonizing to “Human Nature,” I found myself contemplating the meaning of Michael across the generations.

First Concert

MJ was the Twitter of my generation. He was a one-man social media machine who mastered the media and his image like no other artist in history. If you weren’t alive for it, you really can’t understand the magnitude. Most people in my generation can even chart pivotal coming of age experiences along a separate MJ-timeline.

I was ten years old during the summer of 1975 and when I heard the Jackson 5 were coming to The Bay, I knew I had to be there. We all did. My two older brothers, my cousins n’dem, my neighbors — all of us talked about going. We knew every one of their songs by heart — from “ABC” to “Rockin’ Robin” to “Ben” and more. We watched their Saturday morning cartoon show, bought their Motown records, practiced their dance steps, grew out our Afros like theirs, copped’ their dress style, hip slang, all of it. So yeah, I didn’t know how, but I was going.

My brothers and I locked in and began our “can we go!” campaign and somehow moms pulled out a rabbit — found impossible tickets to a sold-out show. We piled in the car and made the pilgrimage to the famous Circle Star Theater, just south of SF. The Circle Star was the shit, by any . Everyone who was anyone performed there, from Frank Sinatra and EWF to George Clinton/Parliament to Santana and more. It had a stage that slowly rotated 360 degrees as the artists did their thing, never a bad seat in the house.

The show surpassed all expectations as they hit all the highs, sang all the songs, danced all the steps. And who could forget when a 5 year-old Janet came out wearing a boa and did a little Mae West skit? As first concerts go, it set the bar high. The collective experience of being 100% locked on the performances, the call-and-response energy between the Jacksons and the audience, and the collective experiences with the people sitting next to you (the antidote to texting & selfies) was church.

Edits for Edification

Live long enough and you get to watch new generations respond to and reinterpret history. As a new film, Michael also doubles as source material for fan edits for Tik Tokers. I am not on the platform but I’ve been schooled by my daughter about the culture of “edits” and how Gen Z is remixing MJ’s music. Of course, choppin’ videos to carefully chosen audio tracks is nothing new and is rooted in the Art of the Sample from hip hop. But now ere’body (and dey cousins) can be a Dilla - with digital video replacing old school vinyl. And because these edits are being produced at an algorithmic scale, often with very high production quality, they’ve essentially brought a re-deconstructed and often humorously-juxtaposed Michael (and every other iconic artist you can think of) into a new era.

Edits, if done well, compel the viewer to seek out the (cut) creator in the same way you wanted to dig into the crates to find samples back in the day. But as good as they are - these edits don’t come close to the pure joy of seeing, watching, hearing, and experiencing him in real life.

Play MJedit

Following the creators of viral edits (like the one above by JorelMKedits, is akin to knowing who chopped up a guitar section from a Stan Getz song and wove in a vocal snippet of the word “run” from Run DMC’s “Rock Box” for The Pharcyde’s “Runnin’” ( yes, Dilla).

Every Generation

It’s dope to see creative curation on what feels like the nth degree. No need for anything analog, just their phone, inspiration and CapCut. And even doper to know this is the kind of enduring fan service Michael would have embraced. He was a preternatural when it came to mastering and managing his image, the media, and setting trends.

With all the bad news in the world, what I know for sure is that Michael would love the fact that a new legion of fans are creating video edits to create shared spaces, have fun, express themselves and connect with others. Call it joy to the world, MJ-style.

Cheo Tyehimba Taylor is a writer, author, and filmmaker whose views, opinions and creative content (incl. any typos or errors) are all his own.

He opened the Super Bowl halftime show with love. Not as sentiment but as strategy. As antidote. Striding through sugarcane fields and backup dancers dressed as field workers, he carried the original Puerto Rican flag on his back and redefined “America” as an ever-evolving continental entity.

From the real wedding ceremony and spotlight on a beloved Bronx bodega to authentic celebrations of food, work, and day-to-day living and playing all rooted in Latin culture, Bad Bunny shared his spotlight with his people, la plebe, the everyday people who are rarely seen, whose voices are rarely heard.

I’ve read comments from those who tuned out or didn’t understand the significance of his all-Spanish language performance. And if you don’t like the music that’s cool. Tune out or listen to weak-ass Kid Rock. But to ignore or deride the necessary message, especially in these volatile, fragile times in North America is dumb as hell… the math does itself.

The Only Thing More Powerful Than Hate is Love

And that ending? Just before spiking the football, he shouted out every Latin American country from “Las Antillas” and Venezuela, to Cuba, Columbia, Haiti and his beloved Puerto Rico. He reminded 100 million viewers that Latin music, with its African roots in rhythm and resistance, has always been American. He said it all in bomba, salsa, and reggaeton beats and plena rhythms, in a refusal to tone down or translate: We belong here. We’ve always been here. And love, not hate, carries the rhythm.

Lovingkindness may be trending… but we need more

I’ve been a meditation practitioner for many decades and it’s been interesting to see how meditation and spiritual self-cultivation has become so trendy, especially since the pandemic. I have no idea if Bad Bunny meditates or even is aware of the idea of the “lovingkindness meditation” — but I would not be surprised if he did.

Ask anyone who meditates using apps - whether it be Calm, Insight Timer or others, and they’ll tell you the “lovingkindness algorithms” seem to be putting’ in work these days. Thank God, we need it. The Lovingkindness (also known as Metta) meditation was actually derived from a particular Buddhist practice, supposedly taught to monks by The Buddha to over come negativity and fear… and to engender a kind of unselfish and unconditional kindness to all human beings. It’s a beautiful practice that allows for a kind of healing from the inside out. So what’s this have to do with Bad Bunny?

At the Grammy’s a couple weeks ago, Bad Bunny said “ICE out” before giving his acceptance speech. At the Super Bowl he said the same thing, not with words but with music. His whole energy and even his name (can a bunny really be bad?!) gives peace and love.

Bad Bunny’s Grammy Acceptance Speech:

Before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say: ICE out. [applause]

We’re not savage, we’re not animals, we’re not aliens. We are humans, and we are Americans. Also, I want to say to the people: I know it’s tough not to hate on these days, and I was thinking sometime we get ‘contaminados’ [poisoned] — I don’t know how to say that in English — the hate get more powerful with more hate. The only thing that is more powerful than hate is love. So, please — we need to be different. If we fight, we have to do it with love. If — yeah. We don’t hate them. We love our people, we love our family and that’s the way we do it. We love. Don’t forget that, please. Thank you God. And thank you to the academy.

Of course, love over hate is not new. It’s been embraced from every prophet ( you know the folks I’m talking bout) since time immemorial. But hate, especially the kind rooted in oppression, colonialism, false narratives, privilege, racism, and ruling-class politics always seems to keep going.

So I’m suggesting we take Bad Bunny’s lead: let love lead the way. And if Nielsen ratings are any indicator (more than 135 million watched Bad Bunny’s performance vs. 6 million that watched Kid Rock), love is winning.

One of my cherished teachers and favorite authors, the great writer bell hooks, argued that love is a courageous act of freedom, something one must to do for themselves as an act of liberation. in her book “All About Love: New Visions” she centered a kind of lovingkindness that was specific to the individual and Black communities but spoke to the universal power of love over hate.

I’m glad Bad Bunny did his thing on Super Bowl Sunday. I hope he and other artists will continue to lift up messages of love and hope in their music.

I’ll take us out of this week’s post with a classic jam by MFSB that I’m sure Benito would approve of…

Listen and let it ride… Love is the Message.

Cheo Tyehimba Taylor is a writer, author, and filmmaker whose views, opinions and creative content (incl. any typos or errors) are his own.

Last week’s tragic killing of Rene Good, a 37-year old mother of three by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis, may look different than the federally-driven spate of state-sanctioned terror, abuse of power, and violence imposed on fragile, mostly black and brown communities, but of course, its not.

Maybe it’s the ICE agents’ brute impudence or racist allegiance but lately I find myself being summoned by brother-ancestor-poet Gil Scott-Heron’s prescient words from his 1978 poem, “A Poem for Jose Campos Torres.”

The poem, Gil’s ode to a 23-year old Mexican American army veteran who was killed by the Houston police, in its totality is haunting but it’s these particular lines that made me start listening anew nearly 50 years after it was written.

A New Kind of Poet

It was 1980 and my older brother had just returned home from his first semester away at college and he’d brought this album with him. I was maybe a freshman in high school. He played the album often and each time he turned it over, the first song on the b side was this almost ominous-sounding, slow-building, musically spare track filled with biting words by a serious-sounding Black man. Who was this guy Jose Campos Torres? The poem was a tribute to a man I’d never heard of but who had the same first name as my next door neighbor — I was immediately drawn in.

Listen to the track below with today’s headlines in mind:

Like all of Gil’s work, it was pure storytelling, visceral and insistent. His conceit that a poem “like this” was facile in the face of everything BIPOC communities had faced since the civil rights movement, only a decade earlier, kept you listening. Who were the Wilmington Ten? Who was Ronald Reagan or Frank Rizzo and what had they done? It certainly cracked open a new world for me. Although I didn’t know it then, it was the accumulation of little-but-large pieces of Black Creative Expression like this, seemingly in the background — a Nina song played every Sunday morning, a framed Malcolm X oil painting in the living room or an Gil Scott-Heron album played until the needle jumped the track— that sparked my search to unpack ideas through art.

His righteous anger and erudition about our blues and why sitting on the sidelines in a racist society was /is not an option… all of that, its why imo, his work was foundational to Black arts and creative resistance in his time. His work, the countless poems that previsaged revolutions with irony, blues with joy, pan africanism with purpose (What’s the word? Johannesburg!) and an unafraid poetic politics of battling oppressive forces with verse. It’s why he’ll always be considered a god by many among the hip hop generation.

It’s why we need him in this moment.

Liner Notes over Hashtags

All these years later, I still have the original album in my [turntable] playlist (still “borrowing” it from my brother). And although I have his music in Spotify, there’s something about dropping the needle on a record I can feel, with liner notes with coffee stains.

Trend-wise, that a new generation have discovered the power of listening to analog recorded music is inspiring. I’ve also heard talk of “reading for pleasure” making a comeback among certain demos of Gen Z… the idea of twenty-somethings (actually, all of us) getting offline to read a poem or short story or novel or liner notes for pure edification — brings a smile to my face.

Upon re-reading the liner notes from The Mind of Gil Scott-Heron for this post, I came across this quote by Gil that speaks volumes about the line between the time to be civil and the time to speak out:

“I had promised myself that I wasn’t going to write material calling anybody twelve different kinds of bf’s anymore. I thought it was overkill. But after the murderous police assault of Brother Jose Campos Torres in Texas, I decided that those words weren't overkill. Just description.”

I got to see Gil perform 2 times in his lifetime, once in New York at SOBs and once in Oakland at Yoshi’s shortly before he died. His last album I’m New Here, which came after a 16 year hiatus in 2010 was a personal revelation. Although he died about a year later, it was this last album, haunting in its plain-spoken assessment of slim hope as renewal itself, drawn from his later years filled with pain from drug abuse and strife.

If you’re under 30 and new to his work, I suggest going beyond hashtags or posts and checking out ALL of his albums as well as watching every doc you can find on him. There are other docs with talking heads and more bio material on his life but I like this one, which is really an 80’s era concert film cut with sections of Gil telling his story in his own words.

In these times, I wonder what lines Gil would be writing to shake things up. So I return to the source, I listen, and I let his words simmer.

He’s still new here.

Cheo Tyehimba Taylor is a writer, author, and filmmaker whose views, opinions and creative content (incl. any typos or errors) are his own.

If this were the summer of 1996 and you asked me what rap album I had on replay in my CD player (are they back in vogue yet?) it would have to be “Stakes is High”. At the time, I was a staff reporter for Entertainment Weekly in New York and vividly remember pitching this album to my editor as a longer feature story about the significance of “conscious hip hop” and its impact on the culture, particularly in light of gangsta rap’s wide appeal and influence. Instead they ran a smaller, albeit favorable, capsule review. The timing of the album was def on-point. It was released just as the industry-fueled East Coast - West Coast hip hop feud was reaching a boiling point.

All types of now infamous debauchery were common place in hip hop back then. And De La’s album rang out like a sobering wake up call to the culture: it was time to stop glorifying gangsta rap, hyper-sexualizing and objectifying women, black-on-black gun clappin’ and violence, being slaves to brands, and seek something higher. I consumed everything the Native Tongues, et al were putting out and picking up what Posdnuos, Trugoy, Maseo were putting down.

“Stakes is High” took no prisoners:

I’m sick of bitches shakin’ asses

I’m sick of talkin’ bout blunts, sick of Vercace glasses

Sick of slang, sick of half-ass awards shows

Sick of brand name clothes

Two months after the album’s release, Tupac would be murdered in Vegas, then Biggie, murdered in Los Angeles, about six months later in March 1997.

J Dilla produced the title track and although the album wasn’t a chart-topper it still resonates, with it consistently making “best of” lists over the decades. OK… I know, I said I wasn’t gonna write a redundant music review of an old album (guess an OG couldn’t help it!) but wanted to give you some context for the culture then and why their title resonates now, esp. with the shifts we need to make in the year ahead.

One Battle After Another

Another title, I know… I watched Paul Thomas Anderson’s film “One Battle After Another” again recently with family who hadn’t seen it. I’m a big fan of PTA’s films and found this one remarkable for its relevance and craft. But its flawed-if-uneven treatment of its Black women characters for the sake of satire, script, or sales was very disappointing. Still, I gotta hand it to the marketing genius who came up with the film’s title: it truly signals what we all better be ready for in 2026. You ready?

Not trying to be all dystopian on the New Year’s Eve but a quick look back at the sweeping changes and assaults to our democracy in 2025 tell the sobering story:

Battles Lost in 2025 (short hit list)

From Jan 20, 2025 until Dec 31, 2025:

Trump’s Full Pardon of People Convicted of Violent Crimes re to Jan 6 Insurrection Implementation of Project 2025 • Immigration Enforcement & ICE Operations Federal Workforce Reduction • DEI Program Elimination • Elimination of USAID Weaponization of Dept. of Ed • Big Beautiful Bill Act Making a 15% cut to Medicaid • Medicaid Beneficiaries ages 19-64, Must Now Work 80 hours/ Month • Throughout 2025 - ICE diverted over 25,000 federal, state and local law enforcement officers from their jobs, including 14,498 from federal agencies and 8,501 state and local police; nearly 1/4 of FBI agents reassigned to support immigration enforcement • 317,000 federal employees departed government service, with tens of thousands fired • ACA premium subsidies not extended, set to expire January 1, 2026, resulting in premiums rising by average of 75% • 11.8 million people losing health insurance by 2034, with total potentially reaching 17 million • No Full Transparent Release of Epstein Files • Illegal Bombing/Killing of People of Boats in Venezuela • ICE Wrongfully arresting and assaulting innocent American Citizens • 2026 ???

I’m thinking about all the ways we gotta be ready for the BIG battles ahead in 2026 - on the political front, that means knowing all the players, issues, legislative bills, and votes at local, state, and national levels. In California, like in every other progressive state, folks are rallying to make sure they fight fire with fire. From Prop 50’s response to gerrymandering to a constant stream of lawsuits filed against the Trump regime, we’re seeing a lil’ more backbone by progressives, even if it’s much later than expected/needed. It’s about setting an agenda now - state by state - and connecting with local, independent groups and political activations that have vision. It’s knowing what your Top Ten legislative wins must be before the midterms. Do you know who your representatives are in congress? Have you let them know what you expect from them? Are you a member of a local activist organization speaking out against injustices like illegal ICE raids, anti-DEI or racist policies? In Oakland, I’m excited to see what Rep Lateefah Simon will be bringing to change the conversation about political and economic justice.

Regardless, for me it’s about asking the same questions I started this Substack with: What and where is the aspirational new land we’re searching for in 2026? Beyond any physical soil or square feet, where is the new spiritual place we must journey to for renewal, joy, and clarity? How do we wake up every day with the Budo mindset of a warrior and train physically, mentally, and spiritually for battle? What distracting social content are we allowing into every minute of every hour of every day that doesn’t serve us? What histories, science, music, art, literature, film, culture, prayer, meditations and self-love must we delve into for renewal and strength for the tough days ahead?

In 2026, I’ll search for answers by continuing to dig into the crates and personal archives as well as pull from the latest news and creative content to get closer to that New Land in my minds-eye.

If we put in the work… we’ll get over the water together.

Happy New Year!!

Cheo Tyehimba Taylor is a writer, author, and filmmaker whose views, opinions and creative content (incl. any typos or errors) are his own.

I came across the title “Infinite in all Directions” while doing some research for a short story. Its from a book by renown theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson about the universe and humanity’s role and its responsibilities, but I decided, it also speaks to the possibilities of Black people searching for and creating Black spaces everywhere.

I love when serendipity bodyslams writer’s block.

The search for new land this time is not physical, even though much of what I’m talking about is what takes place in museums. It’s really about the spatial energy that we feel when we enter museums, the infinite ways we contribute to making spaces “black.” The worlds we leave behind, bring with us, and build for the future, is what I’m tryna investigate. Clearly it’s not something I’ll be able to unpack in one post.

But when “Black Spaces: Reclaim and Remain”, opened at the Oakland Museum of California earlier this year, I had to be there. I recently returned to walk the space alone when the museum was nearly empty to experience it in the stillness beyond opening day distractions. The installations present a series of untold histories, never-say-die stories, and artistic what ifs braided into a constellation about Black dispossession, displacement, resistance and reclamation.

I especially appreciated the new work of Oakland artist Adrian Burrell (see image above) in the gallery as well as architect June Grant with blinkLAB architecture (afro-futurist designs and reimagined ideas of urban renewal); and an archive, the Archive of Urban Futures and Moms 4 Housing (incl. a house facade installation to rep the self-determination of Black mothers who occupied a house in 2019 at 2928 Magnolia Street in West Oakland as a human right). I’ve worked with Carolyn Johnson, CEO of East Oakland’s Black Cultural Zone, her sister Marian Johnson and the Equal Justice Society on reparations on various projects since the pandemic, so it was important to finally see her family’s untold story of being pushed out of Russell City — a once thriving and historic Black and Brown neighborhood near Oakland/Hayward — by eminent domain in the 1960s. The injustice done to her family is an example of the kind of systemic cultural erasure and loss of generational wealth from land ownership that has happened to Black families in America since day one.

I’ve was also honored to have my work selected and featured at OMCA in an adjacent exhibit within the museum’s California History Gallery and cohost a screening and gallery chat. My two short documentaries, capture the distinct Black spaces built by communities in West and East Oakland. “Legacy of Love” tells the story of the four Black mothers in West Oakland who founded West Oakland Health Council in 1967 to improve the health and wellness of their children and the community. It became inspiration for the Black Panther Party’s free health clinics; today known as Baywell Health, is still a trusted hub centering the health and dignity of the Black community. “East Oakland Rising,” which covers a ten-year struggle and the collective determination to fight environmental racism, unfair housing policies, and gentrification in East Oakland, tells the story of one of the last predominantly-African American communities left in the city. Both films are prescriptive book-ends to what it takes to transform Black communities.

The exhibit also presents a timeline from 1850 to present day that document Black life in West Oakland long before the Great Migration of the 1940s and shows how the AME church, social benefit clubs, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Black-owned hotels, restaurants, night clubs, civic orgs and its first Black newspaper (1892), the Oakland Illustrated Guide, put Oakland on the map long before the BPP.

If you’re in The Town before the show closes (March 1, 2026) treat yourself to a dose Black creative resistance on full display.

Here’s a quick 30-sec video trailer of Black Spaces: Remain and Reclaim to take us out.

We’ve all seen the viral social posts, reels, and YouTube videos of black expats strolling through exotic marketplaces, chillin’ on white sand beaches or giving tours of their amazingly inexpensive (by US standards), expansive and plush homes.

Whether we’re finding our own holy grails in lands outside America or not, the social media chatter has become a measurable movement—an estimated 5.5 million Americans now live abroad, up from a few decades ago when only 10% of Americans expressed interest in leaving. By 2024, according to a Monmouth University poll, that number had jumped to 34%.

While the U.S. State Department doesn’t track expatriates by race, making it impossible to pinpoint exact numbers of Black American emigrants, the proliferation of “Blaxit” Facebook groups, YouTube channels, and thriving expat communities from Accra to Lisbon tells the story the official data can’t capture. For the first time since 2012, the United States fell out of the top 20 on the World Happiness Report—a symbolic marker of why so many, especially Gen Z and Gen X, are looking elsewhere for the new land they can no longer find at home.

The short list of countries we’re flocking to include Portugal, Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, Germany, Dubai, and South Africa but I’ve always been more intrigued by the reasons expats leave - their individual emigrant stories - than the destinations they chose.

So, I called a few friends living abroad to get their take beyond the viral IG posts and Facebook chatter. Did they have any cautionary tales to offer? What does it really take to return to Africa, start a school, and build for future generations? What’s the one thing they wished someone had told them before they packed their bags?

Did they find their New Land?

Here’s a few outtakes from my interviews:

Ghana’s Kokrobitey Institute

Renée C. Neblett, founder of the Kokrobite Institute

I met Renée Neblett, founder of the Kokrobitey Institute during my last trip to Ghana, in April 2023. I’d heard of her pioneering work as an educator and fine artist who left America over 30 years ago to start a groundbreaking school dedicated to regenerative sustainability, art, sustainable fashion, and education. The Institute is located in Kokrobitey, a beautiful coastal fishing village about 45 minutes west of Accra.

During my visit, I sat down with “Auntie Renée” as she’s affectionally known, and she shared her origin story growing up Boston, her civil rights activism, and life in Germany during the seventies as a teaching artist. Later, after returning to the U.S., she became an artist in residence at Milton Academy, where she landed on the idea to create a short-term study program in West Africa. The program’s goal was to reframe Africa as a foundational “old world” for all Americans — and to provide African American students, in particular — with a tangible connection to a heritage “worth knowing about.”

I walked away from my visit knowing I would ultimately produce a film about Auntie Renee and her brand of Black genius (I’m currently producing), which really embodies the kind of creative resistance that this Substack is dedicated to.

Our conversation went from her life in Germany, the U.S., then Ghana as an expat, American culture, race, politics, human rights and environmentalism, Obama, Trump, the one percent, why America has never been great and why she’s never coming back.

What was your relationship to Africa before you moved to Ghana?

“I had been to Africa before. I was very involved in the movement. I traveled with Mariam Makeba as her secretary for a couple of years. I was in Guinea with she and Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) while Nkrumah was in exile, so I’d been on the continent. This was all before I moved here.”

You also spend a lot of time in Germany teaching?

“Yes. I went to Germany in the seventies and in those days I used to go weeks, months without seeing another Black person…my experiences in Germany actually that restructured the way I thought about race and culture… And I began to realize that people were really distinguished, not separated, but ‘distinguished’ by their culture and ethnicity rather than ‘categorized’ into opposing oppositional spaces of black and white. By the time I got back to the States that picture became very clear to me. I thought, I come from someone who was enslaved and someone who had been through reconstruction and emancipation. My parents and grandparents were Garveyites and activists and I thought ‘Is this a hobby? Is this what we do every generation? Struggle to be recognized as human beings?’”

There is a danger framing the expat story, or any story, as one thing. There are too many stories to tell...

“And they’re all connected. Everybody is confronted with that reality. But that reality is coming from one culture’s relationship, ‘how to live in this world,’ okay? Which has to do with how they envision economic, politics, governance, social well-being… America has never been great. She’s been rich. And there’s a difference.”

What “New Land” have you found, either within you or in the space you now live?

“One is always obliged to live where they are. When I conceived of the idea of Kokrobitey, it was from the vantage point of an African American to enlarge the world my students inhabited. My purpose in life now is to be part of a dynamic discourse on who we are to this environment and what this environment is to us, and what role does traditional intelligence have to play in offering us a perspective that can see us to the next century.”

It Takes a Village

Last November when I visited my good friend Eric and his family in their adopted country of Panama, I saw for myself the promise of the expat life up close. The idyllic weather and proximity to the U.S. and Black Diaspora, the stable economy, and more.

Kysha and Eric Mitchell and Family

Panama looked good on them. I’ve known Eric and Kysha for decades and knew about their long-standing desire to live abroad. How they ended up in Panama made sense. They did their homework.

A few years ago, Eric and Kysha and their two young adult children embarked on a year-long trip “around the world,” visiting and living in several countries. They traveled extensively (Mexico, The Caribbean, Portugal, Senegal, Rwanda, Kenya, and Thailand) before settling in Panama. Their choice of Panama was influenced by its proximity to the US (for family reasons), cost of living, healthcare, and its reputation as a top retirement destination.

While they love Panama, they said there were downsides like high utility bills (if you can deal with humidity and run your AC constantly, you’ll pay like $600/month), rising housing costs due to a flock of expats, and typical challenges living abroad for Americans.

‘Bout that IG life?

“Of course there’s the glamorization of people moving abroad. What you don’t see is when they leave. My understanding is that maybe 60% or so, don’t make it and return home. Tend to be younger people, haven’t quite planned it out, run out of money, and have to couch search, etc. So, you definitely want to have an income stream when you’re abroad. The language can be a barrier as well. You have to be willing and open to learn Spanish.” - Eric Mitchell

What’s your relationship with other American specifically black American expats?

“There are two distinct [Black expat] communities that I’m aware of in Panama specifically, there’s one in the beach area [Coronado], and then there is one in the Panama City. They have a regular meetup once a week for people to come out, get together, have a drink, connect socially, and then they also have other activities that happen out throughout the week or the month.” - Eric Mitchell

If you could tell people the one thing that nobody told us about moving here, what would it be?

“Do your research. I did hella research and of course the [yearlong international] trip that we took really prepared us. You could say going to all of those countries, we really learned a lot about ourselves, and a lot about just what kind of journey it is to move out of the country. To be all over the world and see a lot of other expats was a lesson … to see how we wanted to be in another country, really “be” with a capital “B” and how we didn’t want to be.” - Kysha Mitchell

Have you experienced racism there and if so, how is it different/same as in The States?

“In terms of race, I can’t say that there has been racism. The interesting thing is that we learn equally as much about ourselves as we learn about the people and the places that we’re at, wherever we happen to live.

We could go somewhere and be in a space and assume that we are being treated in a particular way because of our color, but it may in fact be kind of a classist thing. Whatever issues we might have in the states, especially the mental, if you haven’t adjusted your mental, you’re going to bring that stuff with you. So, I think you see and project onto a situation rather than what it really is.” - Eric Mitchell

What “New Land” have you found, either within you or in the space you now live?

“For me, it’s really about the opportunity to just ‘be,’ which for me means that I can detach from the peripheral… I believe that anything physical, those are all temporary things, right? What’s eternal for us is our soul, our consciousness. And being here in Panama has allowed me to explore those things. It has given me the space and the opportunity to kind of pull back from the United States. I’m not going to say I don’t watch any news. I do. But it’s a very striking difference to be here watching what’s going on as opposed to being in the United States feeling what’s going on. So, this has allowed me to quiet down my mind, and really focus internally about my spiritual growth, health, wealth, and development, all that kind of stuff.” - Eric Mitchell

Ayana Byrd

My writer friend Ayana Byrd moved from Brooklyn to Lisbon in August 2023 and hasn’t looked back. She spends many years visiting Portugal and Barcelona before her move. As a single mother with a young child, she told me there were several hurdles such as securing healthcare for her child, getting her D8 digital nomad visa, the ongoing legislative changes regarding citizenship, which could extend the timeline for obtaining a passport, etc. Still, she said she’s found a true community of both Black expats and Black and brown folks in Lisbon who make it all worth it.

Do you remember the day you decided to leave?

“For me, it was the day Roe v. Wade was overturned. I thought, I don’t want to raise a child in a country where abortion is not federally recognized. Once the Supreme Court overturned, it takes at least 40 years for a case to make its way back to the Supreme Court to be reconsidered. So, I was like, that’s my lifetime, the rest of my life. And that was the day I started planning for us to leave.”

Have you experienced racism there and if so, how is it different/same as in The States?

I’ve experienced racism here, but definitely not to the degree that I did in Spain. Or I lived in Belgium when I was 15, and I lived in Florence. Experienced more racism in all three of those places than I have here. But sadly, I’ve yet to find the place to live where I would not experience some level of racism. I say it’s much less here than the other places I’ve gone.

What “New Land” have you found, either within you or in the space you now live?

“I’m not searching [anymore], which is a nice feeling because for years I actively remember, as someone who lived in Brooklyn from 1995 until 2020, New York felt like home. But the city had changed. And I was actively thinking, where do I want to go next? Where will I have the feelings, I used to have? There’s a growing Black American population living here, and most of my friends here who are American are one or two degrees from Brooklyn or Oakland. After years of trying to figure out where I was going to feel like home, it’s very nice to not be actively thinking about that and to just feel like I’m home right now.”

- Ayana Byrd, a writer and single mother in Lisbon.

Snapshots. These are just a few of the many stories I’ve collected about Black people living their best lives outside of America, in so-called new lands. I’ll follow this up with another installment from the Black Diaspora in a future Substack. The FB Groups, YouTube Channels, IG reels, AI-created stories will continue to beckon us all to warmer suns: new frontiers, prodigal returns, Motherlanded mother wit, and returning pre-ancestors will tell their stories.

But this space is not just a travel log or meditations or political rants or cultural takes on film, writing or art … maybe it’s all of that or none of it.

Much like me, it’s a work in progress, last-minute edits, uploads, reshares, email scaffolding and all. I’m just happy to be doing what I love most (writing) on days like this made even better by the fact that I published this one on my born day (shout out to my 90-year-old mama!) So I’ll be here storytelling and steady searching in the spirit of creative resistance.

I was home for winter break, restless, and decided to rummage through my father’s old jazz albums. I’d encountered Miles, Monk, Coltrane, and Art Blakey before—each artfully-photographed Blue Note album cover pulling me in. But one stood out: Lee Morgan’sSearch for the New Land.I listened to the title track and found myself mesmerized. Later, I asked my father about Morgan and learned he was a “Philly homeboy” who’d graduated high school the same year he did, though from a different part of the city. “Lee Morgan came up after Dizzy, Miles, and Clifford Brown and was definitely influenced by them,” my father said, “but ultimately he found his own sound.”

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Search as resistance

There was something about his serious gaze and young age that drew me in: head tilted downward but looking up, self-assured and almost challenging you to look away. I learned Lee was the quintessential hard bop trumpeter (in the tradition of Clifford Brown). He could bruise your ears with his high register, rapid-fire notes or get you moving with infectious joints like Sidewinder. So, when I listened to the title track Search for the New Land it was clear this album was a stark departure.

Over the decades since, I continued to appreciate Morgan’s music, his iconic style—that 1960s “Philly clean” sartorial swag my father also carried—and his story. In 2016, when the documentary I Called Him Morgan debuted, we went to see it. So much of his life came into focus.

By fifteen, Morgan was a virtuoso. He was playing with Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers. But by early 1963, heroin had taken him—he sold his horn to buy drugs and disappeared from the scene. He was only twenty-five. Rumors spread that he’d overdosed. But by year’s end, he reappeared, recovered, and in February 1964, recorded Search for the New Land. The album’s title was evocative on two levels: his own post-addiction soul-seeking, and a deeper rumination on the rootlessness and disenchantment coursing through America in the mid-sixties.

By the time the record was released in August 1966, the country was fracturing. The Vietnam war was escalating. The Black underclass widened. JFK, Medgar Evers, and Malcolm X had been assassinated. Globally, newly independent African nations were struggling against their colonizers—struggles Morgan’s album comments on directly.

Sixty years later, the struggle continues—government shutdowns, the Supreme Court’s potential dismantling of 1965’s Voting Rights Act, unlawful ICE raids, the normalization of political violence, activation of Project 2025, a dangerously incompetent administration signaling authoritarianism while clinging to a mythic past it wants to resurrect. I could go on. What hasn’t changed are the systems that are now easily being rebooted to keep us searching. The specifics have changed. The fracture hasn’t. What Morgan understood—what his music insisted on—was that searching itself is an act of resistance. Not resignation. Not escape. A rise and return to oneself.

While few may be making overt connections between art ( esp jazz these days) as both protest and a balm preparing us for the fight ahead, I see it everywhere. In the same way soul searching stirred the country’s conscience after George Floyd was murdered, massive protest and creative civil disobedience will now be the norm for the foreseeable future.

Who is, you are

Amiri Baraka, founder of the Black Arts Movement, poet, playwright, activist and IMO pure Black Genius personified, once told me in an interview ( excerpt below) that Black Americans’ collective destiny is rooted in an educational, economic, and cultural understanding of “who is, you are”—a true consciousness of where we come from, where we’ve been, and where we must go.

That consciousness, both W.E.B DuBois and Baraka argued, was/is the foundation of liberation. And I would say not just for Black people. For any group, tribe, or nation within a nation that has been systematically enslaved, locked up, shut out, bombed, assassinated, marginalized, made illegal, denigrated and/or denied basic human freedoms. “Who is, you are” is at once an eponymous poetic query, proclamation, and challenge that still resonates in 2025. Spirit in search of itself.

And it’s quite likely that Morgan, as he feebly searched for a way to kick his heroin habit, found strength in the idea of a personal search to contribute to a universal freedom. Like countless other musicians of his era, he cut his teeth on the soul-cleansing musical traditions of the Black Church. With the tragic death of D’Angelo last week, another artist rooted in Black spiritual expeditions, I’m lamenting we may be coming to the end of the line of secular Black musicians who pull from the church (but that’s for another Substack).

Going forward, I’ll be sharing my takes on culture, film, politics, travel, creative entrepreneurship, and my archival/unavailable articles, interviews, film/video content and insider info on new projects. Like Morgan’s post-bop explorations, art and activism can transport us to new lands beyond our present reality. This new search must acknowledge the darkness while moving toward something else. That’s what we need now. That’s what this space is for.

Listen to Search for the New Land

SFNL - Music Review

The nearly 16-min track – with its shimmering, almost hypnotic intro, invites you to step into a new realm. Modal, enchanting and quietly incisive, like a dream. But what got me upon first listen (and still does) were the change ups, the movements. Between the mesmerizing solos by Morgan’s all-star sidemen (Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Grant Green, Reggie Workman, and Billy Higgins), each movement ends with a quiet crescendo and what you believe is the final note, landing softly in some reimagined “new land.” But then from the momentary lull, a bass-line slowly emerges, builds, and you’re reminded the journey never ended. There are at least five movements like this throughout the track and by the end, with its ethereal, always-arriving-still-searching motif, you expect it to never end. Maybe that was the point. These days, I play Search for the New Land nearly every day in my morning playlist. It just never gets old.

In an alternate but real universe, Cheo Tyehimba Taylor was a magazine journalist (Entertainment Weekly, Vibe, People, etc.) covering entertainment, film and Black culture. Now the founder, writer, filmmaker, author and creative strategist is searching for what’s next.