Thursday, May 21, 2009

Sabor De 'El Diferente': The Great Angel Canales



Angel Canales was the most underrated Sonero of the 70's and 80's. An impeccable command with an idiosyncratic flow, his punctuation gave sincerity to the lyric. A beautiful voice he could sing the bolero as well as lace the guaguanco with fire as the call and response was always clever and fluid. The musical style of his band was swinging latin jazz with constant features of extended solos and immense merging of bomba and plena. A fighter for equal pay to his incredible band players (i.e. antonio tapia wonderful on congas) and against the diluted romantica trend of the 80's it was said he tore up his compositions and quit. In retrospect, his warm and sincere stage presence had a subtle flamboyance that led some to note he was gay. Whether this was true or not, it may have made his career even more difficult. Ultimately, he was on the level of any sonero that was a Fania All Star and stopped making music in his prime.

It is said that he has toured in the late 90's and possibly may have recorded some new material. Of the few albums available (http://www.descarga.com/cgi-bin/db/scan/st=sql/sf=artist_id/se=177/va=searchquery%3dAngel%20Canales/tf=title?kr8oKr2Q;;163) are all superior with the classic 70's salsa dura sound on the early recordings (i.e. 1975's Sabor, 1976's El San Juan, 1977's Mas Sabor sold today as Markolino Dimond's Brujeria. Dimond being the band leader of the group Sabor and great pianist.) and the more avant garde latin jazz recordings with heavy bomba and plena influence recorded on his own Selanac label (i.e. 1978's El Sentimiento Del Latino En Nueva York, 1981's El Diferente, 1984's Ya Es Tiempo).

For the 1970's and early 80's, salsa was New York's Hip Hop for many. It was gritty speaking of the refusal to assimilate, it displayed the swagger of lyrical skill (the sonero literally freestyle rhymes during the call and response section of the song. Every two responses from the sonero is literally a bar) boasting of supremacy in the art and was a challenging music to old ears. It also has a root foundation (Cuban son) that it honors yet veers away from with any and all other great influences and ideas it may find.

Angel Canales possessed all of the classic sonero skills, made incredible albums and spoke to the people. His expression of love and intimacy is uniquely memorable and his rapport with crowds and enforcement of innovation will always be endearing and admirable.

Peace,
Sunez
















Wednesday, May 13, 2009

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY OL EARTH (MOTHER), MARIA!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY BEAUTIFUL OL EARTH (MOTHER), MARIA!!!
I LOVE YOU!
(This video is for her from another legend celebrating a birthday, Stevie Wonder)
Peace, Sunez

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

The Ideal Live Diet











'It is the mind that makes the body.' - Sojourner Truth

For a knowledge of self to be actualized the ideal of eating must be engaged in. Those who study the 120 lessons will find that those labeled as the 85%, those ignorant of who they are and believe in a mysterious being, energy and/or force as the creator, are seen as poison animal eaters. Thus, the pig/swine is immediately eliminated from the diet. However, the ideal live diet consists of so much more. For all, the diet must apply a conscious effort for constant research, questioning to embrace what promotes life.

Mentality of Diet:
The mentality of the diet is most important. Why do we eat? What particular reasons will we eat for? This affects what we eat eventually. Knowing your priorities in eating is crucial. The way we eat begins with why we eat. As the Honorable Elijah Muhammad spoke of in How To Eat To Live, Book 2, one should 'eat to live and not live to eat.' Ultimately, the reason to eat is in the need to gain energy for all the things we need to do, want to do and would like to try. For this, we must be healthy inside and outside of our bodies.A crucial component of our reasoning on eating is in our likes and dislikes. Our taste buds seem to tell us what tastes good or bad to us. In actuality, we have denatured them to acknowledge structure and taste by extreme measures (i.e. soft and sweet or salty and crunchy). Our taste buds, at their highest level, are designed to decide what foods are most useful to us. For instance, we will be more inclined toward oatmeal when our bodies need a higher level of quality fats or the green leafy vegetables and legumes (all of the bean family) when we need protein and specific phyto-nutrients (phyto = plant).

The major manner in the diet that one should have in eating is mindfulness. We are not a free people if we cannot control what, how and why we eat? The one thing that must be done, eating, most know nothing about, seeking only to pleasure themselves through it, never seeking how to can engage in it honorably, humanely and in an enlightening way for ourselves and others. Note that many also think this way of rest/sleep, breathing and sex/love.

To begin, eliminate the mystery of your diet. Studying the feeling of all and each food in your body one may better understand the effects of food to your work and rest. Chart how well you perform tasks after certain foods. Reflect on how a comfortably eaten meal propels your activities as opposed to a quickly rushed one. Trace these feelings back to exact foods and then reduce that to particular food ingredients.

In dealing with the proper diet, one is more and more becoming the educated consumer. Exploring the health food store studying why certain foods are actually in this store is a start. Study the nutrients and ingredients and find what is normally not in what you eat. Many of those ingredients left out of health food store products and those included hold some of the keys to better health.

Then match your diet to your lifestyle goals. How much will you study, read, write, train, build, create, share? Prepare a living diet that is the perfect energy fueling the proper culture.

The Ideal Diet:

The ideal diet is one of living foods as far as one is possible. What one eats should be living meaning that it actually has a living energy (i.e. through living enzymes, nutrients, vitamins and is not literally dead and decaying). By simplistic definition, the vegetable is as dead as the cow on one's plate yet it is the vegetable that has living nutrients, phytochemicals and chlorophyll that is actually alive while the nutrients extracted from the dead flesh is in the process of putrefying, rapidly losing its viability as it increases its decay. Essentially the living foods diet is vegan. There is no meat or dairy and all the foods eaten are free of toxins (organic if you can afford) with the right amount of nutrients and supplementation (i.e. the protein is proper to your body and training regime).

“Restraint in diet both as to quantity and quality is as essential as restraint in thought and speech." –Mahatma Gandhi

Firstly, we must study the ingredients of the foods we eat. Below is a beginning list of what to eliminate and what you can begin to replace them with. This is for detoxification meaning that when one manifests disease it is an accumulation of putrefied elements that gather in the body. Your miraculous body adjusts and manipulates these foreign or denatured foods and sacrifices parts of your own body (i.e. baldness, bad nails, wrinkled skin) to preserve the most necessary (i.e. heart, brain, major organs). So by ridding oneself of the following kinds of foods, we begin that process of detoxification immediately.


Elimination for detoxification:
1. Meat [Pork, beef, chicken and fish (except cold-water fish) & eggs]Why?: It's all dead and has no living energy. For example, beef contains vitamin B-12 and many vegetarians (those whom don't eat meat) lack it and suffer. Yet, the B-12 is an anti-oxidant (it rids the body or free radicals or pollutants). Within the beef, the B-12 is literally wrapped around an envelope of rigor mortis that is filled with carcinogens (cancer causing agents) that are the epitome of free radicals. They not only negate each other; rather the free radicals/carcinogens win out.

During rigor mortis, the body’s vitamins, nutrients and minerals wither away as the dead carcass stiffens. This stiffness is the buildup of lactic acid or waste material for energy processes that have ended. Eating a just-killed animal does little to protect one’s health from this process. Organic meats are irrelevant. The advocating of them is in their lacking the additional hormones that are injected into meats to keep them tender or bloody (a process hoping to stall rigor mortis). Nevertheless, meat naturally has hormones foreign to us humans.


Replacements: This begins with the joys of soy. The many forms it may take from soy protein (yet beware of texturized soy protein—a very processed version), tofu (one of the most adaptable foods as far as absorbing the herbs and seasonings offered it), tempeh and miso to name a few. Most meat eaters want mass via protein. Legumes (beans) and green leafy vegetables have more protein than any form of meat or eggs. Also, a quality soy protein powder in a shake daily (about 25 mg twice a day) will allow you to take in all the protein you need properly. Protein is based on the essential amino acids, the building blocks of protein. When they are all in the body in full percentage, the body builds real protein 100%. Wild caught cold water fish (i.e. tuna, mackerel, salmon, etc.) is also acceptable as they are rich in omega 3 fatty acids which are unique to these fish and essential to our body.

2. Dairy (anything made from the milk of a cow or any other animal)Why?: It's from a cow! It's healthy, natural hormones, enzymes, nutrients are all for a baby cow completely incompatible with us. As foreign substances, our bodies store it as fat and we become bulkier. The strong, foreign enzymes force us to produce much more mucus and thus hold disease longer and manifest it later.

Replacements: There are countless substitutes for milk from soy milk, almond milk, rice milk that are all healthy and tasty. There are many versions of soy cheese (beware of casein, a cow’s milk derivative in many soy cheeses). As far as ice cream and any dairy laced pastries, cookies, cakes, there are incredible substitutes that taste great and are actually healthy.

3. Condiments (Flavorings and seasonings, i.e. sugar, artificial sweeteners, salt, ketchup, mayonnaise, butter, margarine, etc.)Why?: They are all refined lacking any nutritional value, actually deadening our taste buds and are extremely addictive. Artificial sweeteners are chemical derivatives that are lethal when taken in high dosages. Sugar (not organic) is bleached to whiten it and has none of the trace minerals it once had. It goes by many names so a company can have 80% sugar content in a drink but list them separately as sugar, high fructose corn syrup, dextrose, maltose, caramel color, brown sugar (just caramel sugar added to color it), etc. Any of these forms are dangerous and addictive. The same for salt as many brands actually contain dextrose to be even more addictive. Ketchup is just sugar with tomatoes while mayonnaise is a disgusting egg (fetus) spread.


Replacements: Organic sugar, organic raw honey, stevia extract, agave nectar, brown rice syrup, carageenan), sea salt, vegan mayonnaise, organic ketchup, soy butter)

4. Processed (anything that is prepared and altered for packaging)
Why? They are man made and so health is unfortunately not primarily relevant--accessibility is. They often contain chemicals that keep them ‘fresh’ for years and years. To make them unique products they often take away all the nutrients of the food (i.e. bleached enriched flour is a bleached flour sprayed with a weak liquid nutrient solution afterwards) and concoct a product that is uniquely theirs (i.e. white Wonder Bread). Most importantly, all GMO (Genetically Modified Organsim) foods should be eliminated immediately. Many healthy foods also may be packaged as you develop your knowledge of ingredients you can begin to use all healthy products that are packaged. For now, do your best to eat fresh made and prepared foods.


Replacements: Packaged foods with organic ingredients, better cooking practices (i.e. baked chips not fried) employed on packaged goods and many more fruits and vegetables for snacks. All fruits and vegetables should be cleansed with a vegetable wash. Frozen vegetables and fruits are not processed as they are not picked at the right moment of ripeness. Then the subsequent freezing preserves the living enzymes and phyto-nutrients.The Beginner Vitamin and

Supplements List

Antioxidants:
Vitamin C - The anti-oxidant to begin with. As a water soluble vitamin, it is to be taken throughout day as it is used up. Start with a 500mg - 800mg (about a teaspoon) three to four times a day. Increase as you go along to your liking. Remember that too much will cause the bowels to loosen. So gradually increasing intake is better than overdosing. Buy a buffered powder (buffering is when a vitamin or nutrient is mixed with other phyto-chemicals. Rose hips are often used.) as this form allows one to better absorb the nutrient and control the amount ingested.

Green Tea (White tea)– Its incredible health properties are from its powerful phyto nutrients of catechins, saponin and theanine. Major antioxidant properties and medicinal effects. Add some raw honey and you have a powerful healing brew.

B-Complex - (B-complex 100mg) vitamin taken once a day.


Vitamin B1 (thiamine)
Vitamin B2 (riboflavin)
Vitamin B3 (niacin, includes nicotinic acid and nicotinamide)
Vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid)
Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine, pyridoxal, and pyridoxamine)
Vitamin B7 (biotin), also known as vitamin H
Vitamin B9 (folic acid), also known as vitamin M
Vitamin B12 (various cobalamins; commonly cyanocobalamin in vitamin supplements)

Omega 3 Fatty Acids – The body needs an equal balance of omega 6 and omega 3 oils. 6 are in many used oils (i.e. olive, sunflower, etc) however, 3 is only available directly from wild cold-water fish. Flax seed will convert to Omega 3 and can also be used. 1000 mg a day to begin with.

Chlorophyll (Green and Red) – In liquid or best in powder form, it has natural chelating abilities and regenerative properties in the DNA structure of the cell. The Red (from fruits) and the green (from plants) have a literal ‘build and destroy’ effect on the body. Green is used for detoxification while Red is used for rejuvenation. The most powerful supplement that can be recommended.

Protein Powder – A soy protein powder, twice a day at 25mg. For the athlete, muscle strength and growth are dependent on the body having the proper combination of the essential amino acids that build up to protein in the body. Taken from a vegan source, it is essential.

Creatine Monohydrate - Creatine is crucial throughout major portions of the body’s physiological functions including the muscles, nervous system and brain. This is an excellent add on for the athlete seeking to train harder. Creatine should be bought alone and is of course vegan. Beware of health shakes and powders using creatine and mixing it with dextrose, whey (water from cow’s milk) and countless other powdered chemical atrocities.

Ultimately, the mentality of the diet must coincide with one’s knowledge of self. It must be constantly building with disregard for any of society’s imposed contradictions that lead to hypocrisy upon embrace. Healthy lifestyles and movements tend to be associated with rich white people stigmatizing its relevance and relation to our people. Nevertheless, historically our people have defined themselves by eating right and exact since at least ancient Kemit (Egypt). As we live in our neighborhoods and shop for foods at bodegas (local corner stores), supermarkets and health food stores, we must begin to take the best part as it belongs to the Original people. These are the foods to eat immediately.

Peace,
Sunez