Historically according to, Ron, Detroit has always had an advanced political scene although it was less politics and more a practical response to a lack of gigs during a time of creative ferment that led guitarist Kenny Burrell and other musicians to form the "Musicians Brotherhood" which ran the very successful World Stage during the late Fifties. The Strata Corporation and allied organizations mean to I turn all this around with a concerted self-determination effort to control all the aspects of the creation, production and distribution of their art establishing themselves at the community level, which is where the rip-off begins. (Quiet as its kept, that's who makes the big money - the companies and their financiers, not this year's star/next year's has-been.) Today, most record companies catering to Black music are mere cogs in an enormous machine which is seeking (through the technique mentioned above) to monopolize, cheapen and standardize a Black Culture so as to exploit it most widely and efficiently." Ron English, guitarist with the CJQ and the Lyman Woodard Trio and president of the Allied Artists Association of 3 America (AAAA), laid it all out on the table in an article originally printed in Detroit's "Tribe" magazine - "The mechanics of this rip-off are simple, and familiar: take the young and gifted creators and performers out of the community, and ripoff some of the elements of their art addict the population to the assembly-line "hits" that "keep on coming," each just like the other (because that way they're easier to grind out and "market", i.e., sell back to the people) actively discourage development and innovation by controlling the communications media and keeping the money in the entertainment (financial) capitals of Hollywood and New York. Their existence is growing, a glowing response to the cultural rip-off of artists, and the communities which bear them, perpetrated for centuries by the imperialists in power. You see, Detroit 's Strata Corporation, 1974 edition, is only the latest, most together incarnation of an idea which began to fire imaginations in the Fifties. The simple fact of this statement is the result of a relatively complex history.
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