[Landline special] Always in season, or: Collard Greens a la Shepp
From the fantastic VIBRATION COOKING Or, The Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl, by Vertame Smart-Grosvenor (1970)….
The whole book is like this. Fantastic! I only know about it because of seeing Ishamel Reed's 1970 Neo-Hoodoo Manifesto recently, where he mentions it…
If Vibration Cooking is any indication, there’s probably a lot of lost treasures in this manifesto from the author of the absolutely essential, unstoppable, erudite dance party novel Mumbo Jumbo1. Let’s recover them all!
More soon,
Jay Babcock
Arizona
“Landline Special” is for all you paid subscribers to Landline. Material from it will eventually be used in the free-to-all, public Landline, so that no one ends up being left out cuz they’re short on cash. Thanks again for your support. More stuff on the way!
Wikipedia: ‘Parliament-Funkadelic leader George Clinton has cited Mumbo Jumbo as a primary source of inspiration for his P-Funk mythology. In Thomas Pynchon's 1973 novel Gravity's Rainbow, a remark by the narrator places Reed in the heart of postmodern intertextuality, saying: "Well, and keep in mind where those Masonic Mysteries came from in the first place. (Check out Ishmael Reed. He knows more about it than you will ever find here.)"‘
Thanks for this - I'm in the process of cataloging a large collection of Black Studies books from the 60s + 70s, and a copy of _Vibration Cooking_ is among them - I know this stuff is gold + has a lot of relevance still, but it's heartening to have that confirmed in real time!