Shoga Speaks

Robert Philipson invites his old friend Joseph Mbele — a fellow Swahili scholar he first met as a graduate student in 1986, and who later hosted him in Dar es Salaam during his own dissertation research — onto the podcast to have a conversation about the most famous book to come out of East Africa: Isak Denison's Out of Africa. What is a reflection of the colonial mindset, uncritically accepted by the European settler, and what actually holds up?

The conversation ranges from the tender (Blixen's servant Kamante, nursed back to health and immortalized as an "idiot savant" of the kitchen) to the damning (the trial of Kitosh, beaten to death by a white farmer who is sentenced, astonishingly, to only a few months for "grievous bodily harm") to the simply wrong: Denison's claim that Swahili had no written language before European contact — a claim that erases centuries of Ajami literary tradition, and one that Mbele, a native Swahili speaker, dismantles on the spot.

Philipson and Mbele keep circling back to the same uncomfortable question: how do you weigh the writer's undeniable literary gift against her colonial blind spots — especially when, less than twenty years after the book was published, the very land she wrote about erupted into bloody rebellion. Out of Africa gives no hint that it ever could

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At the turn of the 20th century, African American artists faced a fundamental question: how could they prove their citizenship and claim their place in American culture? Historian and musician David Gilbert traces how the first generation of African American performers to crack Broadway effected this transformation. 

Ernest Hogan named himself “the unbleached American.” Bert Williams and George Walker, marketed themselves as "the two real coons." Bob Cole and the Johnson Brothers transcended the coon genre entirely by writing sophisticated pop songs for white Broadway stars and crafting songs about Black romance that weren't sung for laughs.

Yet Gilbert confronts an uncomfortable truth: this topic is embarrassing, and most Americans would prefer to forget this era entirely. These artists walked an impossible line, and understanding their journey means confronting not just the ugliness of Jim Crow America but the echoes that still reverberate today.

Music

“Darktown is Out Tonight” - Will Marrion Cook
“Overture to ‘In Dahomey’” - Will Marrion Cook
“Under the Bamboo Tree” - Robert Cole and J. Rosamund Johnson
“You've Been A Good Old Wagon” - Ben Harney, Len Spencer
“You’ve Been A Good Old Wagon” - Ben Harney, Bessie Smith

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In 1896, Ernest Hogan's "All Coons Look Alike to Me" became the first song to sell a million copies in America, making him a star and setting off the "coon song craze"—an era in which African American performers and composers achieved unprecedented professional success while trafficking in the very stereotypes designed to undermine their citizenship. David Gilbert, a historian and musician, traces how coon songs emerged at the intersection of ragtime's rhythmic innovations and post-Reconstruction racial anxieties.

At its core, this is a story about the impossible bargains that Black artists had to make in an era of virulent racism—some of them achieving wealth, respect, and cultural influence by mastering the very forms designed to humiliate them, and finding within those constraints the seeds of a creative revolution that would eventually transform Broadway and American popular culture.

Music

“All Coons Look Alike To Me” – Kylan / ragtimerev
“Bully of the Town” – Holy Modal Rounders
“La Pas La Ma” – Kylan / ragtimerev
“On Emancipation Day” – William Brown
“Save Your Money ‘cause the Winter Am Coming On” – Clarice Vance

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Part Two continues the story of Marion's unbroken involvement with the Philipson family, maintained over the next four decades in spite of the distance that separated Paris from Pasadena. Dr. Philipson, whose development through French culture and language was the deepest and most sustained, reunited with Marion at age 27 and formed a relationship that lasted the rest of her life, one the witnessed the traumatic scene of his coming out, the heartbroken condolence note he wrote upon the occasion of his mother's early death, the sad and joyful bonds of family, and the French side of his personality that luxuriated in the food, bonhomie and intellectual stimulation that Marion's city never failed to provide. 

"I had always looked upon Marion with the eyes of a child, even after I had supposedly become a man.  She had no age, no sex life, no inner turmoil that I was privy to.  She was my mother's cousin, my surrogate parent, my French family when I was in Paris, an essential fixture in my life but with no affective existence outside my needs and perceptions.  I was forty, and Marion was my only Adult left." 

This was to change by the end of the story.

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Dr. Philipson looks back at the life of his cousin Marion, a fiercely independent anti-colonialist and socialist documentary filmmaker, known for her work with Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens. Philipson explores how, from an unpromising bourgeois Jewish background in Cleveland, she lived in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and beyond, surrounding herself with artists and progressive intellectuals, how her relationship with Ivens led her across the globe to Asia and Europe. As he weaves the story of her career and love life, Philipson also reflects not only on his relationship with her, but on his beloved time in Paris, a time they shared as family, and, by that token, a time of closeness and keeping secrets.

Music

“Bali Bali” – Doug Maxwell and Jimmy Fontanez
“Die lustige Witwe, Act 2: Vilja-Lied. "Es lebt' eine Vilja, ein Waldmägdelein" (Hanna)” – Karita Mattila
“I Had The Craziest Dream” – Harry James & His Orchestra
“I Had The Craziest Dream” – Les Elgart
“I Love Paris” – Ella Fitzgerald
“I Love Paris” – Instrumental 101 Orchestra
“Internationale” – A Magyar Rádió és Televízió Szimfonikus Zenekara
“Poliushko Polie” – André Rieu
"Song of the Plains” – Paul Robeson
“The Internationale” – Utah Phillips & AniDiFranco
“The Last Time I Saw Paris” – Dame Kiri Te Kanawa
“The Last Time I Saw Paris” – Dénes Dosztán
“Vilja” – Franz Lehár

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My mother's first cousin, Marion Michelle, had grown up in the first decades of the 20th century chafing against the bourgeois restrictions of Cleveland Jewish society. She went to the University of Chicago where Thornton Wilder frightened her out of serious literary effort and learned photography. She also got involved with the Communists there as a result of a trip she had made to the Soviet Union. The combination of visual arts and left-wing politics fused into a determination to become a documentary filmmaker.

This ambition took her to New York where she worked for Paul Strand, Mexico, where she took photographs exhibited under the title, "Portraits By Marion Michelle and Man Ray." In Hollywood she met the man who was to determine the next five years of her life, Joris Ivens, the famous left-wing Dutch documentary filmmaker.

"Mr. and Mrs. Pumpkin" details the adulterous passion that swept her into Ivens' exciting, nomadic, resolutely Communist world during and after World War II -- Hollywood, Australia, the new Soviet republics behind the Iron Curtain, and finally Paris. 

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Our choice of pets says a lot about who we are … and we are all very different. There are cat people; there are dog people; there are bird people; there are reptile people and on and on. The famlly pet can mark a child’s development for better or worse, but if a dog or cat lives out the full term of its life, it is a part of that family for 12 or 14 or 19 years. These days most marriages don’t last that long. 

Growing up in the relative innocence of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, the Philipson family dog — a female basset named Hamlet — progressed through the same stages of life as we did — puppyhood, socialization, taking place in the family constellation, motherhood … death. She even accompanied us on our two-year Paris sojourn.

And since we find ourselves in France, let us heed the wisdom of Anatole France. “Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” 

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The phrase "HIV Negative" implies the diagnosis "HIV positive," a precursor to the AIDS epidemic which decimated the gay male population in the 1980s and beyond.  The stigma, still a force in some sectors of our society, delayed the mobilization for effective treatment when the epidemic first appeared in the early 80s. It took Ronald Reagan five years to even mention the word "AIDS," although the disease had been ravaging our community. His presidency set the tone of the national response: stigma and marginalization, insufficient funding, avoidance of public discussion, delays in research, funding, and education. As the epidemic conducted its scorched earth assault on gay America, the most at-risk population spun about in anger, despair, disbelief, and denial. The last of these, sanctioned by the federal attitude of indifference, was the deadliest. Victims participated not only in their own destruction but -- wittingly or no -- brought about the death of others. (Religious condemnation played its evil part as well.)

You might think that being HIV negative during the awful years before retrovirals made the disease a manageable condition rather than a death sentence felt like a deliverance, but you'd be wrong. "HIV Negative" portrays the terrible toll the disease took on all of us through the lens of a prequel to our short, "The Knowing." It covers the span of time from the early 80s, the honeymoon of Adam and Peter in first love and ignorance of the disaster that was about to befall, to the end of the decade which saw the dissolution of their relationship, the descent of catastrophe on their community, and their differing responses.

And yet, it is not a tale of unrelieved darkness. The bond between the two ex-lovers remains.

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This episode explores the life and legacy of actor John Garfield (born Julius Garfinkel), focusing on how his Jewish roots shaped his identity, artistic choices, and political stance. Journalist Robert Nott, author of He Ran All the Way: The Life of John Garfield, recounts Garfield’s upbringing on New York’s Lower East Side, among Jewish immigrant poverty, and strict religious expectations. Rejecting his Orthodox father’s path, Garfield turned to acting, eventually joining the leftist Group Theater—a hub of Jewish-American creativity and political activism.

Garfield’s performances in the play Golden Boy and the movies Body and Soul, and Gentleman’s Agreement reflect recurring themes: the immigrant struggle, the lure of the American Dream, and resistance to systemic injustice. Body and Soul—produced independently—blended his real-life experiences with a fictional reworking of the biography of the famous Jewish boxer Barney Ross. Despite facing the Hollywood blacklist and pressure from HUAC during the Red Scare, Garfield refused to name names, an act of integrity that prematurely ended his acting career and possibly his life (he died at the age of 39)  but one that was rooted in his cultural and moral upbringing.

Garfield, though not religiously observant, remained culturally Jewish, embodying a complex, deeply American Jewish identity in both life and art.

Host Info
Hosted by Dr. Robert Philipson
Robert is a former professor of African-American studies with a passion for jazz and art. A published author and Harlem Renaissance historian, he has produced multiple films about the intersectionality of race, music, and sexuality.

Guest Info
Robert Nott, Author, “He Ran All the Way: The Life of John Garfield (2003)”
Robert Nott is an arts and entertainment writer for The Santa Fe New Mexican

Resources

Books
Nott, Robert. He Ran All the Way: The Life of John Garfield.

Plays and Movies

Odets, Clifford. Waiting for Lefty

Odets, Clifford. Awake and Sing

Odets, Clifford. Golden Boy.

20th Century Fox, Gentleman’s Agreement (1947)

Hollywood Backstories: Gentlemen’s Agreement

Music

“Body and Soul” - Sarah Vaughan

“Happy Days are Here Again” - Barbra Streisand

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In the conclusion of The Artificial Grandma, Dr. Robert Philipson continues his journey through post-college drift, emotional illness, and the disillusionment of returning home. Set against the backdrop of a failed commune dream, an acid-laced revelation, and the oppressive weight of family history, Philipson navigates his internal crisis from the smoggy mountaintops of Southern California back to the bedroom of his childhood home in Pasadena. 

Host Info
Hosted by Dr. Robert Philipson
Robert is a former professor of African-American studies with a passion for jazz and art. A published author and Harlem Renaissance historian, he has produced multiple films about the intersectionality of race, music, and sexuality.

Music

“Fun Fun Fun” - Beach Boys

“Four Strong Winds” - Ian & Sylvia

"Nuvole Bianche" - Ludovico Einaudi

"New World Symphony Scherzo" - Antonin Dvorak

Connect With Us:
Website: shogafilms.org
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