I am not a Pigeon.

Hey! I know ya'll have been buying SUGAR -- but where are your photos??? I was hoping to have a nice thick album full of your smiling faces (holding a copy SUGAR) to commemorate the 10th Anniversary. So far I only have three! (sad face) -- Come on ya'll don't be shy!

Any-hoo -- the SUGAR PHOTO OF THE DAY is from Vickie Beene the Librarian in MA - Thanks VB for doing your part to make Sugar's 10th Anniversary Historical!




I didn't sleep very well last night and found myself roaming the house in the wee hours of the morning. I tried to write - but my heart wasn't in it and so I flipped on the boob-tube and watched episode after episode of the TV1's series, Unsung. Unsung profiles different musical artist.
It's like Biography for entertainers. The episodes I watched, profiled Minnie Ripperton and Phyllis Hyman - the one thread that linked the stories was how the singers were marketed.

The complaint both Minnie Ripperton and Phyllis Hyman had about their record companies was that they weren't being marketed across the color line. This of course affected their sales.
You've heard these two women sing -- they had a range that was out of this world - and should have been shared with ALL people - but it wasn't, because they were pigeon holed. And even though the term "Race Music" was changed to "Rhythm and Blues" decades ago - the practice behind the term did not change.

"Prior to the emergence of rhythm & blues as a musical genre in the 1940s, "race music" and "race records" were terms used to categorize practically all types of African-American music. Race records were the first examples of popular music recorded by and marketed to black Americans. Reflecting the segregated status of American society and culture, race records were separate catalogs of African-American music. Prior to the 1940s, African Americans were scarcely represented on radio, and live performances were largely limited to segregated venues. Race music and records, therefore, were also the primary medium for African-American musical expression during the 1920s and 1930s.- St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture.

This is the same thing that has happened with books written by AA authors. Have you noticed that some booksellers have changed the signs above the AA book section from: African American Interest to Multicultural Interest -- laughing -- under that label you would expect to find a little bit of everybody, right? Wrong. The title may have changed but the message is still the same: THIS IS NOT FOR YOU.

One recipient of my letter about the injustices in the industry, felt that my claims were exaggerated. She said that she reads ALOT - and that 95% of the authors she reads are AA. She explained that she no longer bought books, because she devours so many of them - so she borrows her books from the library and never has any problem finding titles by the authors she loves. She gave me a list of these authors - none of which fall under the genre in which I write -- well there was one - but she hasn't had a deal in a number of years. The reader went on to suggest that maybe I just needed to find a new publisher.

*sigh*

Well, I'm sure there are many skeptics out there, so just in case you're one of them (and even if you're not) take a listen to The Cover to Cover Radio show and hear what me and a few other authors have to say about how we AA authors are treated in this business.

LISTEN AND LEARN