The Forgotten "Black Woodstock", Browing with Water, and Assassins' Creds
My World This Week #2
Music Word
I discovered Questlove (Ahmir K. Thompson, the African American Drummer, and much much more) accidentally when his book “Music Is History” landed in my recommendations on Audible. The book blew my mind. I mean, I’m very close to completing my fifth decade on this earth, and yet, I've not learned that I know nothing. But anyway, I hungrily picked up another of his book: “Hip-Hop is History”, and it starts with a mention of his “film project” about the forgotten “Black Woodstock”. This got me interested, and I dropped the book and searched for the documentary by Questlove (I said “much much more, didn’t I?).
Summer of Soul, the documentary in question, has a secondary title in brackets “...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised”, won the 2022 Academy Awards for Best Documentary (Feature). And luckily, it was available on Hotstar. So I watched the two-hour documentary for about four hours. Taking notes, getting my eyes teared up, googling for this or that. And it’s crazy that I didn’t know of the documentary, and worse, the “Harlem Cultural Festival” in 1969, literally the same year of Woodstock.
Some interesting tidbits about the “Black Woodstock:
About 300,000 people attended the event which was free for everyone
Black Panthers provided the security before the cops finally arrived, but the Panthers hung around, not taking any chances
The festival was taped, but the tapes had no takers, and were archived for decades
Stretched over two months (six Sundays), it featured a stellar lineup
The Moon landing happened on one of those Sundays. And CBS covered the festival in its context: “There was a large crowd gathered in Harlem this afternoon. For some of the reactions …” says the CBS anchor in the footage in the documentary, handing it over to Bill Plante, the correspondent who says, almost condescendingly: “ There are 40,000, perhaps 50,000 people at Mount Morris Park in Harlem, but they are not here watching the moon landing. They are here at the Soul Festival, part of the third annual Harlem Cultural Festival. And for many of them, this is far more relevant than the mission of Appolo 11”.
It’s a fascinating documentary about an event that should have been in our collective memories and popular history, but strangely was relegated to the forgotten corners of American history, to be unearthed fifty years later. I’d highly recommend if you are interested in music, the history of music, the history of racism, or just want to discover some great artists and be exposed to some stupendous cultural commentary.
Culinary World
One of the finds on YouTube Food Universe for me is America’s Test Kitchen, the Cook’s Illustrated channel, specifically, their sub-stream: Techniquely With Lan Lam. I love her calm, composed, and confident delivery, as she teaches about culinary techniques. The video that got me hooked is this one: “For Better Browned Meat and Veggies, Just Add Water”. Now if you thought that she’s magically browning meat/veggies with water, of course, that’s impossible (at least on earth, it’s possible at 4 times the atmospheric pressure, where you have other problems than browning foods efficiently). The Maillard reaction that is needed for browning starts above 140°C, and all the water in the pan would have evaporated long before that temperature is reached. But what this interesting method does is that it saves time, and more importantly, it leads to an “even” cooking as the surface of the food browns.
It is a game changer, seriously, for stuff like onions that can go from pink to brown to black in no time if high heat is used, and take forever to cook on low heat (leading to painfully slow browning), and not to mention, the uneven cooking that comes with it — the burnt surface with relatively raw insides. Check out this video for more (also for the excellent sauce for baked/braised chicken that comes with it):
Word World
It was through Iranian Rappers and Persian P*rn, a travelogue by Jamie Maslin (an a OK book, if you ask me) that I learned about the origin of the word “assassin”. What’s certain is that the word is a Roman makeover of ḥashshāshīn, a Persian word that is allegedly a pejorative for a worthless person.
The Wikipedia entry for “The Assassins” says:
The Assassins were founded by Hassan-i Sabbah. The state was formed in 1090 after the capture of Alamut Castle in the Alborz mountain range of Persia, which served as the Assassins' headquarters. The Alamut and Lambsar castles became the foundation of a network of Isma'ili fortresses throughout Persia and Syria that formed the backbone of Assassin power, and included Syrian strongholds at Masyaf, Abu Qubays, al-Qadmus and al-Kahf. The Western world was introduced to the Assassins by the works of Marco Polo[4] who understood the name as deriving from the word hashish
Jamie Maslin tells a story of this Ismaili cult that allegedly lured its followers with maidens and get them to kill religious and political leaders under the influence of hashish":
His group were widely feared and for good reason, as they weren’t adverse to a bit of beastly barbarity—their specialty being the murder of religious and political leaders. It’s purported the assassins’ crafty leaders would lure their followers into the castle’s beautiful gardens where irresistible maidens would tend to their every need and get them hopelessly stoned out of their minds on hashish. Nothing wrong with that, but on the downside they would then be sent out to commit murder under the belief that their leader, Hasan Sabah, had the magical power to protect them from harm’s way and that he could whisk them off to paradise.
Interestingly, according to a Reddit post, the root of Hasheesh in Arabic is Hashsha, and the word Hashaash that derives from it means “to reap”. So ḥashshāshīn is literally “the reaper”, and here we complete a circle, if this is true.
Even the story about “promise of paradise” seems to be a made by the Crusaders to makes sense of the Fidayeen nature of the assassins’ attacks. Language and etymology are windows to history and myth in ways nothing else quite is.
All in all, a very interesting week of learning. Thanks for reading.
Links/References:
NPR Review of Summer of Soul
Questlove - Black Woodstock, Black Erasure & Black Joy | The Daily Show
Interview of Questlove | MSNBC
Assassin Etymology | Merriam-Webster