Lester Allyson Knibbs, Ph.D.
Music, Mobilization & Strategy

The Power of Intelligent Listening
With the Name of the Gracious and Compassionate Creator of the Heavens and the Earth
There is a war against African American men. African American men are being shot down in the streets by uniformed policemen. African American men are being dragged into the criminal justice system in outrageous numbers. African American men are dying from the effects of stress. African American men are underrepresented in colleges and universities. These difficulties add to the burdens of already overburdened African American women.
Next:  How does music relate to strategy?
I am proposing an overall strategy for liberation which I call "Son of Mary" and which I discuss elsewhere.  These web pages propose a secondary strategy, which I call "Music, Mobilization & Strategy".  For our liberation, we must have strategies within strategies.
Pharaoh ruled the Children of Israel by killing the men and allowing the women to live.  This is a strategy of tyrants.  What it means is destroying the spirit of courageous leadership.  In that sense, African Americans are being assimilated as a people who are materialistic, conservative and accommodating.  We want a piece of the pie.  We do not understand that the people who rule America from the shadows want African Americans to BE a piece of the pie, which they consume at leisure; it's their pie.
Music, Mobilization & Strategy is about the strategic benefits of listening to symphonic music.
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The Europeans (so-called "white people") have convinced the world that Africans have little or nothing to do with what they call "classical music".  By classical they refer to the Greeks and the Romans, claiming them as ancestors and as the originators of their civilization.  In fact, today's Europeans are descendants of Germans and Slavs, not of Greeks and Romans, and they are heirs to civilization which came to them from Africans - ancient, medieval and modern.  The ancient Africans, called Egyptians, were the progenitors of Greco-Roman civilization; the medieval Africans in Spain and other parts of Europe, called Moors, were the progenitors of the European rise into modern civilization; and modern Africans caught up in the trans-Atlantic slave traffic have been, since the 16th century,  a powerful influence on the development of symphonic music.
 
Although these facts may cause African Americans to feel better about their place in the world, they have little to do with the benefits of listening to symphonic music.  Whatever the Europeans intended the symphonic repertoire for, I am convinced that the Creator has made it an encyclopedic compendium of strategies.  When African American men listen (actively listen) to this music, strategic thinking will become second nature and automatic.  This is what we need.  Cultural nationalism will lead to African Americans as a museum display.  Piece-of-the-pie accommodationism will lead to the extinction of African Americans as a people.  Violent confrontationism will lead to violent extermination.  We must think strategically to be free.
 
 
(A work-in-progress.)
(Last update:  December 9, 2003)
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