Journey to Italy - Roberto Rossellini (1954)

"In his 1950s collaborations with Ingrid Bergman, the great Italian director Roberto Rossellini captured his wife and muse in a light completely different from her glamorous Hollywood persona. Drawn, fretful, and confused, the Swedish star wanders through these films as if looking anxiously at the man behind the camera, begging for direction while the exploratory Rossellini sought emotional truth by dropping her into alien landscapes. It's a harrowing series of portrayals of unsettled female consciousness, and also a glimpse into a complex behind-the-scenes romance as revealing as the films Josef von Sternberg made with Marlene Dietrich some 20 years earlier. If not quite their The Devil Is a Woman, the 1954 masterpiece Voyage to Italy is similarly awash in the emotional unease of a relationship racing to its end, a meta sketchbook where the disillusionment of the protagonists seems to irresistibly mirror that of the actress and the filmmaker. ..."
Slant
W - Voyage to Italy
NY Times: Revisiting a Rossellini Classic to Find Resonances of Today
senses of cinema
YouTube: Trailer, Viaggio in Italia
YouTube: Voyage to Italy 1:25:40

2009 May: Roberto Rossellini, 2010 March: Roberto Rossellini’s War Trilogy

Hand of Kindness - Richard Thompson (1983)

Wikipedia - "Hand of Kindness is the second solo studio album by Richard Thompson. ... Hand of Kindness is a distinct departure from the albums that preceded it. Thompson biographer Patrick Humphries observed that with this album Thompson 'left the darkness behind him and walked out into the light'. This is one of the most straightforward and up-tempo rock albums in the Thompson catalog. The mood is generally exuberant and Thompson's vocals and particularly his guitar playing are confident and extrovert...."
Wikipedia
allmusic
iTunes
YouTube: Tear Stained Letter, Hand Of Kindness, The Wrong Heartbeat, A Poisoned Heart And A Twisted Memory, How I Wanted To

2011 July: Shoot Out the Lights - Richard and Linda Thompson, 2012 February: I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight, 2014 March: Videowest 81, 2015 October: Richard & Linda Thompson - Rafferty's Folly (1980), 2015 December: Rumor and Sigh (1991)

The Fantastic World of Mr. Phelps

"Postcards have been cherished by people as tokens of memory since at least the 1800s. This is something I’ve known since I was a kid, but never really thought about until I worked on a research and design project centered on the postcard collection at the New York Public Library’s Picture Collection. The project led me to one man in particular who collected postcards sent from his friends who traveled the world. His postcards took me on an unforgettable journey. That man was Mr. Walter Phelps Warren. Postcards have been used for sending greetings from afar and expressing to a loved one how you wished they were with you. These capsules of time, landmarks and monuments attempt to capture places in order to showcase them to those who are not there. Do postcards successfully depict a place? Do culture, behavior and current events come across in this media? Are postcards like the social media we use today? These questions and many others were the base for one of the most memorable research projects I’ve ever conducted. ..."
The New York Public Library

Who gets to say how black people see themselves? - Marlon James

"Nearly every rap album has that one moment you can’t get with. If you’re a woman, there are at least five. It’s been almost a year since I first heard Kendrick Lamar’s 'To Pimp a Butterfly,' an ambitious, spellbinding, masterpiece of a rap album, and it took me nearly a year to like it. The main reason: the 13th song, 'The Blacker the Berry.' Up to that moment, musically if not lyrically, 'Butterfly' is almost a quiet storm of an album, a record that gazes more inward than out, even as it tackles institutional racism and hood politics. Then comes 'The Blacker the Berry,' all booming drums and NWA-style rage. For the first time, homeboy is furious, as if he has just realized that the only response to the stereotype of the angry black man is to get angrier. It’s the part where I thought I would be most engaged, but it turned into the part that locked me out. ..."
NY Times: 25 Songs That Tell Us Where Music Is Going (Video)
W - "The Blacker the Berry"
GENIUS: "The Blacker the Berry"
The Atlantic: Kendrick Lamar Is Not a Hypocrite
Pitchfork - Grammys 2016: Kendrick Lamar Performs "The Blacker the Berry" and "Alright," Debuts New Track in Politically Charged Performance (Video)

2015 December: To Pimp a Butterfly (2015), 2016 March: When the Lights Shut Off: Kendrick Lamar and the Decline of the Black Blues Narrative by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah (2013)

Penn Station, New York - Louis Stettner

"When New York’s original Pennsylvania Station was demolished in 1963 to much protest, a part of the city was lost forever. The McKim, Mead & White–designed Beaux Arts train station would be known in the years to come as much for its destruction as for its beauty. Built in 1910, the massive station stood below a vaulted glass roof, and the waiting room, modeled after the ancient Roman baths at Caracalla, would fill with dappled light as passengers came and went. The old Penn Station was, by nearly all counts, more enchanting than today’s incarnation, which lies underground, below Madison Square Garden. Louis Stettner, born in Brooklyn in 1922, first had the opportunity to photograph the old Penn Station in 1957. ..."
Architectural Digest: Take a Trip Back to the Days of New York’s Original Penn Station
NY Times: Louis Stettner and the Glories of Penn Station
CityLab: Photographing the People in New York's Old Penn Station

Julio Cortázar - Cronopios and Famas (1969)

"... [Julio] Cortázar shows a wide range of talents in these very different stories. He avoids the obvious didacticism of most such modern fable-literature, working with considerable more subtlety. The pieces also vary greatly in form and approach. The final section of the collection shares the title of the volume itself, Cronopios and Famas. It deals with the creatures (or human types, if one prefers) of the title -- as well as a third genus, esperanzas. Cortázar contrasts these three classes of being in numerous scenes and tales. ... Cortázar is always interesting stylistically, and Paul Blackburn's translation seems to capture most of the writing quite well. The translation (from 1969) holds up well, with few jarring dated anachronisms -- no small feat, given Cortázar's playful and experimental style."
the complete review
THOUGHTS OF XANADU
Wikipedia
EPC: from Cronopios and Famas "The Instruction Manual"
Google: Cronopios and Famas, Julio Cortazar/Paul Blackburn
amazon
YouTube: Julio Cortázar Talks Cronopios and Famas - English Subtitles by Minifiction

2011 November: Blow-Up (1966) - Michelangelo Antonioni

Robert Ashley - Perfect Lives (1977-83)

"PERFECT LIVES was developed musically through live performances in Europe and America. 'Blue' Gene Tyranny was Ashley’s first collaborator — his keyboard melodies and harmonies define the character of Buddy. Tyranny and Ashley performed a chamber version of the piece many times together (including at The Kitchen in early 1978). Shortly after, The Kitchen commissioned PERFECT LIVES as an opera for television, the live version expanded to include richly layered orchestral tapes produced by composer Peter Gordon, and the singing of Jill Kroesen and David Van Tieghem. In 1980, John Sanborn recorded the basic video tracks on location in Illinois according to the templates provided by Ashley’s score. From this material, The Lessons, a preview version of the opera (based on keyboard gestures by 'Blue' Gene Tyranny) was produced through the TV Lab at WNET. In the fall of 1982, a pre-sale was obtained from Channel Four Television in Great Britain, making possible the completion of Perfect Lives. ..."
Robert Ashley
frieze: American Opera
Lovely (Video)
allmusic
Reading Robert Ashley's Perfect Lives
amazon
YouTube: Perfect Lives 1 The Park Privacy Rules, 2 The Supermarket Famous People, 3 The Bank Victimless Crime, 4 The Bar Differences

2008 March: Robert Ashley, 2012 April: Sonic Arts Union, 2012 July: Various - Lovely Little Records, 2013 October: The Old Man Lives in Concrete, 2014 March: Robert Ashley, 1930-2014.

The Egyptian Counterrevolution

.
"The most common interpretation of the Egyptian Revolution goes something like this: in January 2011, thousands of young Egyptians used social media to build a mass movement against Hosni Mubarak’s authoritarian government. In February, the revolution brought down Mubarak and paved the way for democratic elections. But after the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party won the 2012 elections and began implementing Islamist policies, the army was forced to step in again to prevent the country from backsliding into authoritarianism. ..."
Jacobin

2014 July: Stories of Change – Beyond the ‘Arab Spring’, 2015 December: The Square (2013)

Interviews - Robert Wyatt (2014)

"Robert Wyatt is sitting in his English cottage near the picturesque Lincolnshire Wolds, recovering. The 69-year-old recently broke his foot, though he’s not looking for sympathy. 'It doesn't bother me,' shrugs Wyatt, who lost feeling in his lower half after falling out of a four-story window 41 years ago. 'I don't use these things anyway!'

This no-bullshit humility—along with a discography that combines jazz, pop, and experimental sounds into something completely singular—is at the core of Wyatt’s appeal. He’s certainly the only human to have recorded with Jimi Hendrix and Björk, for instance, but he’s not exactly going to yell such factoids from the mountaintops. Luckily, writer Marcus O’Dair is doing that for him with the new authorized biography, Different Every Time. ..."
Pitchfork (Video)
Robert Wyatt - Interview by Richie Unterberger (1996)

2010 November: Robert Wyatt, 2011 October: Sea Song, 2012 October: Comicopera, 2013 March: The Last Nightingale, 2013 September: Solar Flares Burn for You (2003), 2014 March: Cuckooland (2003), 2014 October: Robert Wyatt Story (BBC Four, 2001), 2014 December: Different Every Time (2014).

Barcelona Floors

"The City of Marvels is how writer Eduardo Mendoza called the coolest city of the Mediterranean in one of his novels. The book is set at the turn of the 20th century, a time in which Barcelona boomed and became what it is today. A time in which factories’ chimneys grew side by side with the Sagrada Familia’s towers. That tumultuous era left its signature on thousands of floors in the city – one of its marvels. Pavements laid in churches, palaces and avenues form an amazing mosaic. 'These floors are addictive', says José Jóvena, creator with Elisabet Martínez of Tile Addiction. The two have uploaded hundreds of pictures of Barcelona’s floors on Instagram. Recently, they discovered that a German photographer, Sebastian Erras, shared their passion for floors.  ..."
Barcelona Floors
Venetian Floors
Sebastian Erras
Instagram

2009 March: Barcelona 1908, 2014 September: I Work the Street. Joan Colom, photographs 1957-2010, 2015 May: Barcelona: Berta Marsé, Ricardo Feriche, Javier Velasco. 2009 August: Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice, 2011 April: Venice Backstage. How does Venice work?.

The David W. Niven Collection of Early Jazz Legends, 1921-1991

Lionel Hampton, tape 3, 1938-1939
"... I became the proud owner of every recording up to the start of WWII and some 75% of his recordings until his death in 1974, some 180 hours of the recorded Duke Ellington. Throughout the ten years prior to WWII, during my high school and college years, my 78 RPM 10”, followed by 33 1/3 RPM LP, collection grew to the thousands. ... I had always hoped that maybe at least one of my kids would show an interest in my collection, so I began making tapes that could include a chronological compilation of my collection, along with commentary: date and place of recording, personnel, soloists, etc. The main reason for doing this rather major project was to put my collection into some kind of compendium form that would attract my children to the music that had been of such significance in my life. My collection amounted to over 10,000 hours of tapes. No two people will agree with my selection of Legends. I decided to choose from the years prior to the BeBop period, i.e., before Gillespie, Bird, Monk, Miles. ..."
Internet Archive: About
Internet Archive: Collection (Video)

When You Listen to Music, You’re Never Alone

Gustav Klimt, Schubert at the Piano II, 1899
"On a late spring evening in 2015, at South Street Seaport, a square on the southern tip of Manhattan, hundreds of people slipped on headphones and slipped into their own worlds. It was a clear night, perfect for a stroll, but attendees weren’t interested in local shops and restaurants. They were too busy dancing silently to the music, tuning in—or tuning out—to a 'silent disco.' The silent disco is a concert that passersby can barely hear, and that attendees can customize with a flip of the switch. At this event, a wireless signal allowed dancers to choose their favorite of three playlists. Each pair of headphones covered the ears and gave off a robotic glow. 'This is what we’ve been reduced to: dancing with ourselves,' one dancer told a reporter from The New York Times. ..."
Nautilus

New Yorkers - Benedict Evans

Kristen
"These pictures began as an exercise, really, in making a quick, collaborative portrait in one or two frames, with little control over the background, light, etc. I enjoy the slightly weird interaction of asking a stranger who catches my eye if I can take their picture. Relatively few declined, and after a while I put them together to form a small series. Many of the pictures were taken around the time I was working on projects for Bklynr, including “Dirty Dreamer' and 'A Place to Call Home.' So it feels fitting that they appear here. I’m sad to see Bklynr closing its doors, but am proud to have been part of a great project from some very good people. A big thank you to Bklynr, and all its readers."
Bklynr

George Bellows, "Dempsey and Firpo," 1924

"Dempsey and Firpo, one of George Bellows’s most ambitious paintings, captures a pivotal moment in the September 14, 1923 prizefight between American heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey and his Argentine rival Luis Angel Firpo. The frenzy lasted less than four minutes, Firpo going to the floor nine times and Dempsey twice. Although Dempsey was the eventual victor, the artist chose to represent the dramatic moment when Firpo knocked his opponent out of the ring with a tremendous blow to the jaw. At the match on assignment for the New York Evening Journal, Bellows portrays himself as a balding man at the extreme left of the picture. His geometrically structured composition also creates a low vantage point that includes the viewer: looking up at this angle, we find ourselves among the spectators pushing Dempsey back into the ring. The excitement is further heightened by the chromatic contrast between the fighters bathed in lurid light, and the dark, smoke-filled atmosphere around them."
Whitney, Whitney (Video)
Art Beyond Sight
The Atlantic - 'Dempsey and Firpo': The Greatest American Sports Painting
MoMA
Dandelion:
W - Jack Dempsey vs. Luis Ángel Firpo

New Order, olden style: A unique take on Blue Monday

Orkestra Obsolete: Blue Monday
"New Order's Blue Monday was released on 7 March 1983, and its cutting-edge electronic groove changed pop music forever. But what would it have sounded like if it had been made 50 years earlier? In a special film, using only instruments available in the 1930s - from the theremin and musical saw to the harmonium and prepared piano - the mysterious Orkestra Obsolete present this classic track as you've never heard it before. ..."
BBC (Video)

2009 February: New Order, 2011 May: Movement, 2011 October: Low-Life, 2011 December: Brotherhood, 2012 May: Unknown Pleasures - Joy Division, 2012 September: Power, Corruption & Lies (1983), 2015 June: Believe In A Land Of Love: New Order's Low-Life 30 Years On, 2015 November: True Faith (1987).

11 Essential Feminist Books: A New Reading List by The New York Public Library

Virginia Woolf
"We now find ourselves about a third of the way through March, more interestingly known as Women’s History Month, a time filled with occasions to round up and learn more about the creations and accomplishments of women through the centuries. And 'who better to honor this March than history’s influential feminists?' writes Lynn Lobash on the New York Public Library’s website. We’ve previously featured treasures from the New York Public Library, including art posters, maps, restaurant menus, theater ephemera, and a host of digitized high-resolution images. Today it’s time to highlight one of the many recommended reading lists that the NYPL’s librarians regularly create for the reading public. ..."
Open Culture

Nathaniel Rateliff's Stax playlist: Otis Redding, Sam and Dave and more

"The Night Sweats frontman selects a soul-baring slice of blues, a magical dance track and one of the most recognisable instrumentals recorded. Wendy Rene – "After Laughter (Comes Tears)." I love how haunting this song is in its instrumentation and arrangement. There is so much space for Rene’s vocals to shine, and she is so full of soul. It sounds far ahead of its time, and it was sampled in a Wu-Tang Clan song. ..."
Guardian (Video)
Otis Redding - These Arms Of Mine

American crossroads: Reagan, Trump and the devil down south

Nixon, Reagan and Goldwater in 1965
"How did it get to Trump? To put it in Trump terms: you could say it started with a deal. Or more precisely, a big deal with various side deals attached, all of it amounting to one grand, dark bargain whose payment may be coming due at last. If one was inclined to reach for metaphor, you could say it was a deal with the devil. Or you could say it started with this, a plank adopted by the Democratic national convention of 1948: The Democratic party commits itself to continuing efforts to eradicate all racial, religious, and economic discrimination. That was enough to bring the devil howling out of his hole, that foot-on-the-neck-of-the-black-man devil of the Jim Crow, hookworm, lynch-prone south – 'the solid south' that reliably delivered its votes to the Democratic party every four years. ...'
Guardian (Video) Cross Road Blues - Robert Johnson (1936)
W - Southern strategy
Newsweek: Trump and the Racist Ghost of George Wallace
How the ghost of George Wallace hijacked the GOP
Esquire: The Roots of Donald Trump's Candidacy Lie in a South Carolina Cemetery
Rolling Stone - Revenge of the Simple: How George W. Bush Gave Rise to Trump (Video)
Washington Post: Researchers have found strong evidence that racism helps the GOP win
Esquire: Up in Michigan, Where American Fascism Lived Once Before

Annie Leibovitz - Women: New Portraits

"Wapping Hydraulic Power Station is a spare, redbrick ex-industrial utility space, not one of the glossy, high-end galleries that populate the West End of London. At first, it seemed odd that a photographer of the standing of Annie Leibovitz should have chosen such a place, well away from the comfort zone of the art-dealing classes, to launch her traveling exhibition 'Women: New Portraits.' But any woman who visits will understand, with a gradual and visceral realization, why Leibovitz has positioned her long-collected essay on womanhood very deliberately here, off the beaten track of money and establishment art. ..."
VOGUE: Annie Leibovitz’s New Exhibit Is a Life-Affirming Celebration of Womanhood
WOMEN: New Portraits - Annie Leibovitz (Video)
NY Times: Annie Leibovitz’s Classic Portraits of Women, Now in Expanded Form
Vanity Fair (Video)
Architectural Digest: Annie Leibovitz Discusses Her 2016 Traveling Exhibition, WOMEN: New Portraits

2013 October: My Desk

The Astonishment Tapes: Talks on Poetry and Autobiography with Robin Blaser and Friends

"Robin Blaser is in his element in these monologues in interview format — personable, pedagogic, and himself a 'high-energy construct,' to not-quite-cite Charles Olson. By virtue of this book, the reader experiences Blaser as a unique force field of magnetic knowledge and charismatic charm. He is at home among the poets, themselves practitioners and friends, meeting in 1974 at someone’s house in Vancouver. The agenda is mixed: the taped sessions from which these talks are transcribed were apparently proposed by Warren Tallman to constitute or contribute to Blaser’s autobiographical memoir, and probably to dig into the complex nexus of a famous triad: Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, and Blaser. Their comradeship, quarrels, spites, and splits (among those involving other intimates) are one tale of the formation and impact of the 'Berkeley' or 'San Francisco Renaissance' in the New [North] American Poetry, a poetics and practice — with its accompanying lore — that energized these Canadian poets in distinctive ways. ..."
Jacket2: In his element
Bookslut
Google: The Astonishment Tapes
The Astonishment Tapes
Project MUSE
Of Robin Blaser

November 2007: EPC, November 2009: Robin Blaser (1925 - 2009), March 2010: The Moth Poem, Les Chimeres, 2011 February: The Holy Forest, 2011 July: "Image-Nation 21 (territory", 2007 November: Jack Spicer, 2010 February: mad cartographer (PoemTalk #28), 2010 April: Manroot and Acts, 2011 January: 5 Poems by Jack Spicer, 2012 July: The Collected Books of Jack Spicer, 2015 January: 'Absolutely temporary': Spicer, Burgess, and the ephemerality of coterie, 2015 March: San Francisco Renaissance

‘Downton Abbey’ Finale: A Grand British Story With an American Finish

"We felt it from the opening credits, didn’t we, Abbots? We heard the familiar chords. We watched Lord Grantham and his yellow lab (Isis? Tiaa?) take their last stroll together across the green. We registered the final iterations of the ringing bell, the simmering pot, the lamp, the chandelier. One last time, we thought. And no more. And the whole while Baron Fellowes seemed to be thinking: Right. Let’s clean this up, shall we? Indeed, from a certain angle, the final episode of “Downton Abbey” was just about getting people out of the fine messes their creator had gotten them into, and hustling them with all due celerity toward the finish line. ..."
NY Times
'Downton Abbey' series finale recap: A very fond farewell
Downton Abbey Series Finale Recap: Happy Enough
NY Times: ‘Downton Abbey,’ the Good, the Bad and the Forgotten

2012 March: Downton Abbey, 2013 February: Downton Abbey 3, 2015 January: ‘Downton Abbey’ and History: A Look Back, Recap: Rumble With Lord G!, 2015 February: Recap: Prayers for Lord G’s Truest, Furriest Love, 2015 February: Recap: The Crawleys Should Have Sent Their Regrets, 2015 February: Recap: Yes, It’s Called the Hornby Hotel, 2015 March: Recap: In the Finale, Mary Meets Mr. Handsome, 2016 January: Downton Abbey Returns for a Feel-Good Final Season, 2016 January: ‘Downton Abbey’ Season 6, Episode 3 Recap: So Nice to See Him Again? , 2016 February: ‘Downton Abbey’ Season 6, Episode 5: Bloody, Bloody Downton, 2016 February: ‘Downton Abbey’ Season 6, Episode 8: Lady Mary, That Skinny You-Know-What.

Bush Tetras - Rituals EP (1981)

"In New York in the late '70s & early '80s, the Bush Tetras blazed brightly in the sweaty clubs of the Lower East Side, playing music that was a blend of funk rhythms & dissonant guitar riffs. Lead guitarist Pat Place had been the original guitarist & one of the founding members of the No Wave band The Contortions. With the Bush Tetras, she continued to pursue some of the musical ideas she had explored in that band, themes of driving rhythm & nihilistic trance...hypnotic, tribal, & dirty. Together with vocalist Cynthia Sley they produced the most distinctive aspects of the Tetras sound. Sley’s half-spoken, half-sung vocals, often repeating simple phrases over & over again, creating a hypnotic monotony similar to Place's guitar rhythms. ..."
Digital Meltd0wn
YouTube: Can't Be Funky, Funky Instrumental, Cowboys in africa, Rituals

2011 December: No New York, 2014 July: No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980, 2014 July: Bush Tetras, 2015 October: Pat Place

Ralph Willis

Wikipedia - "Ralph Willis (1910 – June 11, 1957) was an American Piedmont and country blues singer, guitarist and songwriter. Some of his Savoy records were released under pseudonyms, such as Alabama Slim, Washboard Pete and Sleepy Joe. Willis was born near Birmingham, Alabama. In the late 1930s, Willis moved to North Carolina and started to play along with musicians who were familiar with Blind Boy Fuller. Willis recorded his debut material in 1944, and continued until 1953, issuing fifty tracks via several record labels including Savoy, Signature, 20th Century, Abbey, Jubilee, Prestige, Par, and King Records. ..."
Wikipedia
Record-Fiend
American Music
YouTube: New Goin' Down Slow, Door Bell Blues, I'm gonna rock, Old home blues, Income Tax Blues, Tell Me Pretty Baby, Somebody Is Got To Go, Cool That Thing, Ralph Willis & Brownie McGhee - Sportin' Life, Why'd You Do It, Christmas Blues, Mama Mama Blues, Gonna Hop On Down The Line, Going To Virginia, Comb Your Kitty Cat, Blues, Blues, Blues, Boar Hog Blues, Amen Blues, Everyday I Weep And Moan, Eloise, Alabama Trio Steel Mill Blues

Bad medieval book manners.

The Middle Ages being used to reinforce the Renaissance, as it were.
"Handle with care. Those who have worked with manuscripts in libraries and archives know that the casual relationship between the reader and the printed book stops at the door and a special covenant enters into force once we approach bound parchment (ok, some paper, too, mais j’en passe). ‘Be careful with that’, ‘no flash, please’, ‘don’t open it like that’, ‘use a book-rest, don’t you see you’re hurting it’ are ululations typical of a manuscript room. Needless to say, things were not quite like that in the long Middle Ages. Those manuscripts that have made it through fire and water, deliberate destruction or noxious negligence usually tell us stories of a book culture where the reader and the book were only slowly coming into a friendly bond. ..."
philobiblonia - Part 1, Part 2

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid List

"Throw on your favorite tie-dye, your jeans patched with bits of guitar strap, a North American Indian headband and, in the words of Dr. Leary, 'turn on, tune in, drop out.' Even though we did all those things (and a few more we don’t care to reveal), we still had a pleasantly far-out but tricky task in limiting the list of great songs to a mere psychedelic 16. So, we are gladiators entering the arena. The usually friendly crowd wants our blood. Shouts and murmurs ripple through the seats. How could you have forgotten 'Strawberry Fields Forever'? Speaking of berries, what about Strawberry Alarm Clock’s 'Incense And Peppermints'? 'Season Of The Witch' by Super Session? What about 'The Acid Queen' from The Who’s Tommy? ..."
song mango (Video)

Feminism Against Capitalism

Italian women at a labor protest in the 1970s.
"Socialism and feminism have a long, and at times fraught, relationship. Socialists are often accused of overemphasizing class — of placing the structural divide between those who must work for a wage to survive and those who own the means of production at the center of every analysis. Even worse they ignore or underplay how central other factors — like sexism, racism, or homophobia — are in shaping hierarchies of power. Or they admit the importance of these negative norms and practices, but argue that they can be rooted out only after we get rid of capitalism. Meanwhile, socialists accuse mainstream feminists of focusing too much on individual rights rather than collective struggle and ignoring the structural divides between women. ..."
Jacobin
The Italian Women's Movement 1968-1978
Italian feminism, workerism and autonomy in the 1970s
W - Feminism in Italy

Gnawa music

A 19th century Gnawa musician
Wikipedia -"Gnawa music is a rich repertoire of ancient African Islamic spiritual religious songs and rhythms. Its well preserved heritage combines ritual poetry with traditional music and dancing. The music is performed at 'Lila's', entire communal nights of celebration, dedicated to prayer and healing, guided by the Gnawa Maalem and his group of musicians and dancers. Though many of the influences that formed this music can be traced to sub-Saharan West-Africa, its traditional practice is concentrated in Morocco and the Béchar Province in South-western Algeria. ... Gnawa music is one of the major musical currents in Morocco. Moroccans overwhelmingly love Gnawa music and Gnawas 'Maalems' are highly respected, and enjoy an aura of musical stardom. ..."
Wikipedia

Claude McKay and Gnawa Music

"A dancer whips her hair and lifts and drops her chest as the thwacking bass sound of the sintir fills the air. There are cries of 'Ifriqiya!' and 'Kandisha!' The musicians call out the names of different saints and spirits and ask for healing as a soprano sax sounds over the vocals. The dancer lights two sticks on fire and begins passing the flames over her bare torso. The metal castanets beat faster, the dancer’s hennaed arms point upward, and she begins to spin and spin, the flames swirling around her head. The percussion stops—she drops to her knees, throws her head back, and pushes a flaming stick deep into her throat, extinguishing the fire with her lips. The restaurant crowd cheers loudly. The dancer walks “offstage,” and the waiters bring platters of food to the customers. These kinds of Gnawa music shows can now be seen regularly in New York City, if not always with the fire-eating—in Times Square, at music spots in Harlem, Latin clubs in Queens, impromptu jam sessions in Central Park. ..."
New Yorker

Feature: Gnawa Music of Morocco

"Dr. Chouki El Hamel received his doctorate from the University of Paris-Sorbonne in January 1993. ... He is currently finishing his book, “Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam” He contributed this essay to Afropop Worldwide for the program African Slaves in Islamic Lands. Westerners who have visited Morocco have likely encountered Gnawa musicians. In the coastal Atlantic town of Essaouira, where an annual festival of Gnawa music takes place, and in Marrakesh, at its spectacular central square called Jamaa el-Fna. The colorful gowns and caps of Gnawa musicians, covered with cowry shells, coupled with the distinct sound of their instruments – metallic castanets, heavy drums and a three-stringed bass lute (guembri) – provide both visual and audio confirmation of the Gnawa presence. ..."
World Music Productions (Video)

“There is Nothing Like This Festival”
"It’s late afternoon on the Atlantic Coast and a lazy wind is rolling in, weaving between surfboards and mint tea. I’m with a group of new friends in a café in Essaouira, Morocco. We’re all here for a unique world music festival, and I’m trying to figure out if this heady beach party is by Moroccans for Moroccans, or if it’s a watered-down experience Westernized enough for foreigners with deep pockets. 'It’s definitely for foreigners,' Walid, a twenty year-old student, tells me. It’s his second time attending the Gnawa Music Festival, this time with a group of dreaded friends in tow, all from the capital city of Rabat. ..."
Roads and Kingdoms

Morocco: Crossroads of Time (1995)

"Morocco has one of the world's richest cultural traditions, inspiring creative geniuses ranging from Henri Matisse and William S. Burroughs to Ornette Coleman and Jimi Hendrix. Listening to this album, it's easy to see why these artists were so fascinated with this mystical culture, whose geographical location on ancient trade routes led to the incorporation of elements of Asian, African, European and Middle Eastern musical traditions. Ten songs and two ambient recordings made in the bustling marketplaces at Fez and Marrakesh take listeners on an aural tour of this magical land, from Paul Bowles' 1959 recording of Abdelkrim Rais' Andalusian orchestral ensemble to Zoughari's hypnotic Gnawa rhythms to Guedra's Sufi-style healing chants. The package includes a mixed-media book with 64 pages of photos, cultural insights, and detailed track listings, making Morocco: Crossroads of Time the most inexpensive ticket to an enriching Moroccan cultural experience you're likely to find."
allmusic
Discogs
amazom

[PDF] ]Moroccan Gnawa and Transglobal Trance - Penn Museum

YouTube: Morocco Gnawa Music Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12, Part 13, Part 14, Part 15, Part 16, Part 17, Part 18, Part 19

25 Radical Things to Do in Greenwich Village

8th Avenue and Jane Street
"Flipping through Greenwich Village: A Photographic Guide by Edmund T. Delaney and Charles Lockwood with photographs by George Roos, a second, revised edition published in 1976, it’s easy to compare the black and white images with the look of today’s neighborhood and see how much the Village has changed. A long shot photograph of Washington Square taken up high from an apartment north of the park, and with the looming two towers of the World Trade Center off to the distant south in the background, reveals a different landscape than what we would encounter today. ..."
Walking Off the Big Apple

2009 May: Washington Square Park, 2010 January: Judson Memorial Church, 2011 February: Greenwich Village, 2011 July: East Village, Manhattan, 2012 July: MacDougal Street, 2013 August: The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village, 2014 August: South Village, 2014 October: Houston Street, 2015 September: Folk City: New York and the Folk Music Revival, 2016 January: Chumley's

New Sensations - Lou Reed (1984)

"Lou Reed never struck anyone as one of the happiest guys in rock & roll, so some fans were taken aback when his 1984 album New Sensations kicked off with 'I Love You, Suzanne,' a catchy up-tempo rocker that sounded a lot like a pop tune. After reaffirming his status as one of rock's greatest poets with The Blue Mask and Legendary Hearts, what was Reed doing here? Lou was having a great time, and his pleasure was infectious -- New Sensations is a set of straight-ahead rock & roll that ranks with the most purely enjoyable albums of Lou's career. Reed opted not to work with guitarist Robert Quine this time out, instead overdubbing rhythm lines over his own leads, and if the guitars don't cut quite as deep, they're still wiry and in the pocket throughout, and the rhythm section of Fernando Saunders and Fred Maher rocks hard with a tough, sinewy groove. ..."
allmusic
W - New Sensations
Spotify, iTunes
YouTube: New Sensation - 9/25/1984 (Live), Doing The Things We Want To, I Love You, Suzanne
YouTube: New Sensations Full album vinyl LP

2010 August: Heroin, 2011 June: All Tomorrow's Parties - The Velvet Underground, 2011 June: The Velvet Underground, 2012 November: Songs for Drella - Lou Reed and John Cale, 2013 October: Lou Reed (1942 - 2013), 2014 June: The Bells (1979), 2014 August: New York (1989), 2015 June: Capitol Theatre Passaic, NJ 9/25/1984, 2015 October: The Blue Mask (1982).

"Make It Funky" - James Brown (1971)

Wikipedia - "'Make It Funky' is a song recorded by James Brown with The J.B.'s. It was released as a two-part single in 1971, which reached #1 on the U.S. R&B chart and #22 on the U.S. Pop chart. It features the band members chanting the song's title and a prominent organ part played by Brown himself. Bobby Byrd also contributes vocals and a spoken intro. Brown recorded a continuation of the song, titled 'My Part/Make It Funky', which was released as a second two-part single and charted #68 R&B. Parts 1 and 3 of 'Make It Funky' were included on the 1972 compilation album Soul Classics, while Parts 3 and 4 appeared on the album Get on the Good Foot. Live versions of 'Make It Funky' appear on the albums Revolution of the Mind and Live at the Apollo 1995."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Make It Funky Part 1 Thru 4 (Super Rare)

Bob Dylan’s Secret Archive

"TULSA, Okla. — For years, Bob Dylan scholars have whispered about a tiny notebook, seen by only a few, in which the master labored over the lyrics to his classic 1975 album 'Blood on the Tracks.' Rolling Stone once called it 'the Maltese Falcon of Dylanology' for its promise as an interpretive key. But that notebook, it turns out, is part of a trinity. Sitting in climate-controlled storage in a museum here are two more 'Blood on the Tracks' notebooks — unknown to anyone outside of Mr. Dylan’s closest circle — whose pages of microscopic script reveal even more about how Mr. Dylan wrote some of his most famous songs. There have long been rumors that Mr. Dylan had stashed away an extensive archive. It is now revealed that he did keep a private trove of his work, dating back to his earliest days as an artist, including lyrics, correspondence, recordings, films and photographs. ..."
NY Times
WSJ: Bob Dylan’s Secret Archive Heads to Tulsa (Video)
Pitchfork: Bob Dylan Secret Archives to Be Displayed in Tulsa (Video)

Adrian Tomine - Killing and Dying (2015)

"Brooklyn-based cartoonist Adrian Tomine has been drawing professionally since he was in high school. Now, at 41, he’s an in-demand illustrator whose work regularly graces the covers of the New Yorker and classy Criterion Collection movie re-releases. ... His new collection of short stories, Killing and Dying, is about as pure an expression of that love as an artist has produced during the recent boom in literary comics. Far more diverse in style than anything yet from the notoriously meticulous artist, Tomine’s six stories about people striving and failing span four years of the author’s life, and mark a significant change in the way he works. They’re also very funny. ..."
Guardian: New Yorker illustrator Adrian Tomine
Full-Stop
NY Times: Adrian Tomine’s ‘Killing and Dying’
amazon: Killing and Dying
Livestream: Adrian Tomine (Video)

Rimbaud in New York

"Boy genius, rebel, visionary, Rimbaud set off a bomb in the world of letters with the publication of Illuminations. 130 years later, this dazzling book of poems, written mostly in prose, continues to amaze. John Ashbery's recent highly-acclaimed translation offers us these poems through the wonderfully precise and always surprising language of one of America's greatest contemporary poets. For Rimbaud in New York, The Civilians create a wildly original, playful and enriching inquiry into the meaning and legacy of Illuminations, staging how these revolutionary poems continue to resonate in the American imagination, setting off explosions in the minds of new readers. ..."
The Civilians
BAM
‘Rimbaud in New York’ Conjures ’70s Bohemia Downtown
Soundcloud: BAMorg - Beyond Rimbaud in New York
[PDF] Rimbaud in New York

2008 May: Arthur Rimbaud, 2010 November: Arthur Rimbaud - 1, 2012 October: Patti Smith: Poem about Arthur Rimbaud (Subtitulado), 2012 December: Writers’ Houses Gives You a Virtual Tour of Famous Authors’ Homes, 2013 August: Arthur Rimbaud Documentary, 2013 November: julian peters comics - The Drunken Boat by Arthur Rimbaud, 2014 June: In Which We Begin To Roar With Laughter At Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, 2015 May: Illuminations - Arthur Rimbaud (John Ashbery - 1875).

Sicario (2015)

Wikipedia - "Sicario is a 2015 American crime-thriller drama film directed by Denis Villeneuve and starring Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, and Josh Brolin. Written by Taylor Sheridan, the film is about a principled FBI agent who is enlisted by a government task force to bring down the leader of a powerful and brutal Mexican drug cartel. ... During an FBI SWAT raid of a hideout occupied by suspected kidnappers in Chandler, Arizona, Agent Kate Macer, her partner Reggie Wayne, and their team discover dozens of corpses. While the team investigates, an improvised explosive device detonates, killing two officers. In the aftermath, Kate's boss, Dave Jennings, recommends her for a task force assembled by the Department of Defense and Matt Graver (a CIA Special Activities Division undercover officer) to implicate those responsible, including Sonora Cartel lieutenant Manuel Díaz. ..."
Wikipedia
New Yorker: Dark Places
Mexican Cartels and Wet Willies: The Story Behind 'Sicario'
Roger Ebert
YouTube: Sicario Official Trailer #1

When the Lights Shut Off: Kendrick Lamar and the Decline of the Black Blues Narrative by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah (2013)

"In a moment I will tell you why Kendrick Lamar, a young rapper from Compton, deserves much of the acclaim, and, even more so, the analysis he has received, but first let us deal with the vanguard of black memoirists who came before him and in whose well-forged path he follows. In the summer of 1945, Ralph Ellison wrote a review of Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Wright’s semiautobiographical novel about his tough boyhood in Mississippi. In Ellison’s piece he suggested that Black Boy is shaped more by the blues tradition born from the same hard countryside as Wright than it is by any literary genre or narrative model. ..."
Los Angeles Review of Books

2015 December: To Pimp a Butterfly (2015)

Roots Reggae Tape - Jamaica 1978 rare

"This is a real Roots Reggae mixtape with rare tracks from the golden era of Jamaican music. The Wailers & Johnny Lover - Sun is shining, The Righteous Flames - Must be a revolution, Maurice Wellington - Girl you’re so divine, Shenley Duffus - To be a lover, The Flames - Zion, Senya - Oh Jah come, Little Roy & Ian Rock - Christopher Columbus, Errol Dunkley - This train, Ronnie Davis - Money never build a mountain, The Ethiopians - The word is love, The Mighty Maytones - Ital queen, The Heptones - It’s like heaven, King Burnett & Lee Perry - I man free, Asher & Trimble - Humble yourself, Prince Alla - Bosrah, Morvin Brooks - Cheer up black man, The Royals - Make it believe, Gladstone Anderson - Rockers, Paul Freeman - Life is sweeter than money, Bob Marley - She used to call me data, Chenley Duffus - At the end."
YouTube: Jamaica 1978 rare

Ishtar gate and Processional Way

"The Pergamonmuseum was designed by Alfred Messel; its construction was overseen by Ludwig Hoffmann and lasted twenty years, from 1910 to 1930. A smaller building initially stood on the same site for a just few years before being torn down. It housed the important excavation finds unearthed by the Berlin museums, such as the frieze panels from the Pergamon Altar, reclaimed from the earth in digs that lasted from 1878 to 1886. Inadequate foundations, however, soon resulted in the building becoming structurally unstable and it had to be demolished. The new, larger Pergamonmuseum was built as a three-wing complex. The museum now houses three of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin’s collections: the Antikensammlung, Vorderasiatisches Museum, and the Museum für Islamische Kunst. ..."
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
W - Ishtar Gate
BBC: The Great Gate of Ishtar
NY Times: Berlin’s Museum Tours in Arabic Forge a Bridge to Refugees
Ishtar gate and Processional Way (Video)
From Babylon to Berlin: The rebirth of the Ishtar Gate

Alfred Sisley, Banks of the Seine at By, 1839–1899

"A young girl in a blue dress, thought to be Sisley’s daughter Jeanne, walks along a path by the Seine. This is one of a group of paintings of local rivers that the artist made shortly after he and his family settled near Moret-sur-Loing, southeast of Paris. A scattering of white and yellow flowers suggests the scene was painted in spring. Sisley used a variety of different brushstrokes to record subtleties of light, color, and atmosphere."
The Clark
From Paris: A Taste for Impressionism

2009 May: Alfred Sisley, 2015 October: The Age of Impressionism: Great French Paintings from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

Ramble Ramble: Beyond Repair

"Start talking to people who ride bicycles, and you will discover they have one thing in common regardless of their background, ability, or social group. People who bike regularly see more of the world. For some time, I have been hoping to stumble upon an outlet that would present me a platform to begin sharing the observations, stories, and questions piling up from my daily ramblings and travel by bike. The idea with this new series of articles for Mn Artists is to seek out art within the Twin Cities, ride my bicycle to see it, and then write about my experience, including how I got there. ... I’m not at all the first to mark such definitions. Thoreau noted that “wild” is the past participle of willed. Other writers -- Gary Snyder, Terry Tempest Williams, Jack Turner, and Barry Lopez to name a few -- have similarly worked to clarify the discrepancies between wildness and wilderness, and to explain why wildness is so essential to human life. ..."
Explore Minnesota Art Scene

Bialy

Wikipedia - "Bialy (Yiddish: ביאלי‎), a Yiddish word short for bialystoker kuchen (Yiddish: ביאליסטאקער קוכען‎), from Białystok, a city in Poland, is a small roll that is a traditional dish in Polish and Polish Ashkenazi cuisine. A traditional bialy, or cebularz as it is known in Poland, has a diameter of up to 15 cm (6 inches) and is a chewy yeast roll similar to a bagel. Unlike a bagel, which is boiled before baking, a bialy is simply baked, and instead of a hole in the middle it has a depression. Before baking, this depression is filled with diced onions and other ingredients, including (depending on the recipe) garlic, poppy seeds, or bread crumbs. ..."
Wikipedia
Everything You Need To Know About The Bialy (Including A Recipe)
Inside New York's Cult of the Bialy
Bialy History - Brooklyn Bialy Recipe
NY Times: The Bialy Eaters: The Story of a Bread and a Lost World By Mimi Sheraton
amazon
YouTube: NY Bialy, How The Oldest Bialy Bakery in the U.S. Makes Their Bialys

2014 November: Bagel

The 90 Minute Guide: Fela Kuti

"Few musical artists of the 20th Century have a biography as incredible as Fela Kuti’s. The Nigerian bandleader and pioneer of Afrobeat was born to politically progressive parents, attended university in London, started a highlife band in the ’60s which evolved into Africa 70, and recorded some early sessions in Los Angeles before having to split the country in a matter of days. In the ensuing years, Kuti would soon start a commune in Nigeria he dubbed the Kalakuta Republic, learn to play saxophone (and quite well at that) and increasingly compose funkier and more expansive Afrobeat tracks with lyrics detailing political and social strife in West Africa. One of his songs resulted in the burning and brutal attack on the Kalakuta Republic, and in return, Kuti sent a replica of his mother’s coffin to the Head of State. ..."
Treble (Video)

Don't You Be Afraid To Lie By Me: The Strange World Of... Bert Jansch

"A messy thatch of black hair and sideburns gazing back at the camera, a beehived girl on the floor... the cover of It Don't Bother Me, Bert Jansch's second solo LP, shows that '60s folk music wasn't averse to myth-making. He had chops, though, did Bert. ... The next five years before his debut album arrived were of Leonard Cohen-grade legend: squatting in squalor with The Incredible String Band's Robin Williamson, busking and playing through Britain and Europe with a girlfriend he married because she was too young to get a passport (they divorced pretty quickly), being deported from Tangiers back home on the way to Marrakech to make music (less mythically, he had contracted dysentery), and returning to a booze-and-weed fuggy flat chock-full of folk musicians, albeit in less exotic environs between Cricklewood and Kilburn. ..."
The Quietus (Video)

April 2010: Bert Jansch, 2011 October: Bert Jansch (November 1943 – October 2011), 2014 February: Bert Jansch / John Renbourn - Bert & John (1966), 2014 May: L.A. Turnaround (1974)

Gregory Crewdson: Cathedral of the Pines

The Motel, 2014
"Gagosian New York is pleased to present new photographs by Gregory Crewdson. Cathedral of the Pines (2013–14) was made during three productions in and around the rural town of Becket, Massachusetts. In images that recall nineteenth-century American and European paintings, Crewdson photographed figures in the surrounding forests, including the actual trail from which the series takes its title. Interior scenes charged with ambiguous narratives probe tensions between art, life, connection and separation, intimacy and isolation. The series comprises thirty-one digital pigment prints, each measuring 45 × 58 inches framed. In Woman at Sink, a woman pauses from her household upkeep, lost in thought. ..."
Gagosian
State: For Photographers, Living Life Is a Constant State of Preproduction
NY Times: Alone, in a Crowd, With Gregory Crewdson
Interview: Gregory Crewdson, Mystery in Everyday Life

The Travelling Record Man

"The bulky title of this disc was sparked by its documentation of recordings assembled by Joe Bihari of Modern Records on scouting trips through the South for talent between 1948 and 1953. ... Just two of the names on this 24-track anthology are famous: Howlin' Wolf, represented by an audition acetate of 'Riding in the Moonlight' (first issued in 1991), and Elmore James, whose two cuts appeared on an Ace box set in 1993. ... This is raw, Southern, just-post-World War II blues, caught in its transition from its rural roots to something more electric and citified. ... The fidelity is imperfect, as many of the tracks were taken from acetates or 78s, but has been cleaned up considerably by modern technology."
allmusic
Ace Records
Blues On Stage
Spotify
YouTube: Baby Face Turner - Blue Serenade, Drifting Slim - My Sweet Woman, Charley Booker - No Ridin' Blues, Howling Wolf - Riding In The Moonlight, Smokey Hogg - I'm Gonna Find Your Trick, Cairo Blues - Lil' Son Jackson, Joe Hill Louis - Good Morning Little Angel, Tiny Webb - Tiny's Down Home, Sunny Blair - Please Send My Baby Back Home, Elmore James - My Baby's Gone, Calvin Frazer - Rock house, Willie Nix - Lonesome Bedroom Blues, Rambling On My Mind - Robert Johnson