Cecil Taylor - Jazz Advance (1956)

"The Transition label and the then new music of Cecil Taylor were perfectly matched, the rebellion in modern jazz was on in 1956, and the pianist was at the forefront. Though many did not understand his approach at the time, the passing years temper scathing criticism, and you can easily appreciate what he is accomplishing. For the reissue Jazz Advance, you hear studio sessions in Boston circa 1956, and the legendary, ear-turning set of 1957 at the Newport Jazz Festival. A young Steve Lacy is included on several tracks, and while revealing Taylor's roughly hewn façade, the few pieces as a soloist and with his trio of bassist Buell Neidlinger and drummer Dennis Charles are even more telling. ... With Jazz Advance, the revolution commenced, Taylor was setting the pace, and the improvised music world has never been the same. For challenged listeners, this LP has to be high on your must-have list."
allmusic
W - Jazz Advance
Guardian
Discogs
amazon, iTunes, Spotify
YouTube: Jazz Advance (1956) - Complete Album

2018 April: RIP, Cecil Taylor (1929-2018)

The 30 Ugliest Skyscrapers in the World

HypoVereinsbank, Munich, Germany
"Designing anything, let alone a massive building, is not a simple task. It requires pragmatic decision-making coupled with bold creativity. As with any form of art, the designer ultimately strives to make something striking and original. Sometimes this effort pays off in the form of a lasting structure—a work that transcends time and place. While other times, well, not so much. Of course, it's not always the architect's fault. In some instances, like Tour Montparnasse in Paris, the designers are a bit unlucky. Had they erected their work in any other location other than the City of Light, maybe it wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb. But, alas, architecture, like all creative endeavors, is a cruel venture. As such, AD rounds up the 30 ugliest skyscrapers from around the world, ones that began with high intentions but eventually didn't quite meet the mark. ..."
Architectural Digest

In Which Our Tragic Effects Remain Purely Professional

"In every relationship, romantic or otherwise, one of the two people feels slightly closer to the other, if only by a matter of degrees. So it was with Gustave Flaubert and his hypochrondriac, flaky friend Ivan Turgenev. These two barnacles met when Flaubert was 40 and Turgenev was three years older. From the tenor of their conversations, which Flaubert seemed to treasure above all else, we can deduce that their spirits remained substantially youthful. Flaubert's self-professed love of literature was so all-encompassing it almost crowded out other parts of himself; Turgenev shared his friend's basic interest but saw the underlying reality for what it was. (Turgenev called his friend, 'the only man in existence really devoted to literature.') Turgenev would visit Flaubert at his retreat in Croisset in the summer, or in Paris during the winter season. Many of the hours they passed together consisted of Flaubert reading his novels or plays aloud, a difficult task even for one of his most central admirers. The written correspondence between the two in the 1860s leaves the mortal plane behind; it can be classified as the first bubbles of modernity to enter the universe. ..."
This Recording

2012 August: On Cataloguing Flaubert, 2013 March: Sentimental Education - 1(1869), 2016 December: Three Tales (1877), 2017 August: The Sentimental Education (1869)

Rukmini Callimachi on Audio’s Power to Reveal the Truth of the ‘Caliphate’

Rukmini Callimachi, The Times’s terrorism correspondent, at a church in western Mosul that had been converted into the headquarters of the Islamic State’s morality police.
"Times Insider delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how news, features and opinion come together at The New York Times. 'Who are they?' This seemingly simple question drives “Caliphate,” The Times’s first documentary audio series, as Rukmini Callimachi, a foreign correspondent, searches for a deeper understanding of the Islamic State. 'Caliphate' debuted in April, with Ms. Callimachi, who has covered Al Qaeda and ISIS for The Times since 2014, serving as its guide, deftly aided by the producer Andy Mills. Their 10-part series centers on the story of 'Abu Huzayfah,' a former ISIS member living in Canada who, like many jihadists, uses a nom de guerre. The podcast complements 'The ISIS Files,' Ms. Callimachi’s investigation into thousands of internal Islamic State documents that her team recovered from Iraq. New chapters of 'Caliphate' are released every Thursday afternoon, and subscribers can listen a week early. ..."
NY Times (Audio)
NY Times: Caliphate (Audio) Apple Podcasts - RadioPublic - Stitcher - Spotify

A soldier of the pesh merga, the Iraqi Kurdish military force, handed over a man suspected of being an Islamic State militant to security officials near Kirkuk, Iraq, in October 2017.
twitter
NY Times: Caliphate - newsletters
2018 April: The ISIS Files

Fleeing Iraqi civilians walked past the Al Nuri Grand Mosque in Mosul, the Islamic State’s de facto capital in Iraq, in July 2017.

Latin American Boom

Wikipedia - "The Latin American Boom (Boom Latinoamericano) was a literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s when the work of a group of relatively young Latin American novelists became widely circulated in Europe and throughout the world. The Boom is most closely associated with Julio Cortázar of Argentina, Carlos Fuentes of Mexico, Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru, and Gabriel García Márquez of Colombia. Influenced by European and North American Modernism, but also by the Latin American Vanguardia movement, these writers challenged the established conventions of Latin American literature. Their work is experimental and, owing to the political climate of the Latin America of the 1960s, also very political. 'It is no exaggeration,' critic Gerald Martin writes, 'to state that if the Southern continent was known for two things above all others in the 1960s, these were, first and foremost, the Cuban Revolution and its impact both on Latin America and the Third World generally, and secondly, the Boom in Latin American fiction, whose rise and fall coincided with the rise and fall of liberal perceptions of Cuba between 1959 and 1971.' ... In general—and considering there are many countries and hundreds of important authors—at the start of the period, Realism prevails, with novels tinged by an existentialist pessimism, with well-rounded characters lamenting their destinies, and a straightforward narrative line. In the 1960s, language loosens up, gets hip, pop, streetwise, characters are much more complex, and the chronology becomes intricate, making of the reader an active participant in the deciphering of the text. ..."
Wikipedia
W - Magic realism
New Yorker: The Woman Behind Latin America's Literary Boom
Guide to the Latin American Boom
Avon Bard Latin America
Looking Back on 50 Years of Latin American Literary Rock Stars
These are the Latin American authors you should be reading this summer

[From left to right] Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa

Impressionism: Art and Modernity

The Bridge at Villeneuve-la-Garenne, Alfred Sisley, 1872
"In 1874, a group of artists called the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, Printmakers, etc. organized an exhibition in Paris that launched the movement called Impressionism. Its founding members included Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Camille Pissarro, among others. The group was unified only by its independence from the official annual Salon, for which a jury of artists from the Académie des Beaux-Arts selected artworks and awarded medals. The independent artists, despite their diverse approaches to painting, appeared to contemporaries as a group. While conservative critics panned their work for its unfinished, sketchlike appearance, more progressive writers praised it for its depiction of modern life. Edmond Duranty, for example, in his 1876 essay La Nouvelle Peinture (The New Painting), wrote of their depiction of contemporary subject matter in a suitably innovative style as a revolution in painting. The exhibiting collective avoided choosing a title that would imply a unified movement or school, although some of them subsequently adopted the name by which they would eventually be known, the Impressionists. Their work is recognized today for its modernity, embodied in its rejection of established styles, its incorporation of new technology and ideas, and its depiction of modern life. ..."
Metropolitan Museum of Art

La Grenouillère, Claude Monet, 1869

Pina Bausch & Clairice Lispector

Pina Bausch in "Cafe Müller"
"When realism isn’t real, where is a writer to go? Meaning, the sentence is a construction which feels at least as habitable as the bus which carries a poet to an unfamiliar town, and the couch upon which the poet sleeps later that night. When realism isn’t enough, isn’t authenticated or represents a fractional or purely outward series of events, poets turn to the body of the sentence upon which to recline, repose, deconstruct and reject any sort of frame which insists upon the 'real' being limited to finite perceptions. A sentence may break, with the force of bodily gesture, something more fluid. When I think of the poet’s novel I think of an oblique truthfulness. The choreography of Pina Bausch comes to mind, as an example of art which echoes the interior and bodily aspects of the real. What is the difference between realism and the real? I’d like to preface these remarks by saying that this commentary is in no way a critique of realism, but instead a depiction of a category of the real which attempts something entirely different then say, a realistic novel evoking a specific time and place. In the work of Pina Bausch we are called to question: how does the real manifest in the body? How does the real impel a body to move? How do we represent the unsayable? Take the following quiz to find out some of your own preconceptions and expectations about modern dance. ..."
Jacket2
W - Cafe Müller (1978)
YouTube: Café Muller 3:06
YouTube: Café Muller 49:18

Mo Salah, Breaking Down Cultural Barriers, One Goal at a Time

"LIVERPOOL, England — Mohamed Salah’s routine is familiar now. As Anfield, the atmospheric home of Liverpool F.C., erupts joyously around him, celebrating yet another of the Egyptian’s goals, he runs to the fans closest to him, arms outstretched. He stands stock still, soaking in the adulation. Once his teammates have congratulated him, he walks slowly back to the center circle. 'Then there is this pause,' said Neil Atkinson, host of The Anfield Wrap, a Liverpool fans’ podcast, and a regular at the stadium. Mr. Salah raises his hands to the sky and then kneels on the field, prostrating himself in a deeply personal demonstration of his Muslim faith. 'The crowd goes a little quieter, allows him that moment of reflection,' Mr. Atkinson said. There is another roar as he stands up, 'and then everyone celebrates again.' ... His faith — and his public displays of it — have also made him a figure of considerable social and cultural significance. At a time when Britain is fighting rising Islamophobia, when government policy has been to create a 'hostile environment' for illegal immigrants, he is a North African and a Muslim who is not just accepted in Britain, but adored. ..."
NY Times (Video)

Bay Ridge Offers Small-Town Spirit Beneath a Soaring Bridge

Since 1964, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge has been the defining feature of the Bay Ridge skyline.
"Once upon a time in the nineteenth century, what we now know as Bay Ridge was something of a resort area. In its pre-Brooklyn days, the village, then known as Yellow Hook (before the yellow fever epidemic wrecked that color’s brand), attracted wealthy industrialists seeking a respite from New York life. You can’t blame them: Even today, there’s something peaceful about Brooklyn’s southwesternmost corner. After you emerge from whatever fresh hell the notoriously unreliable R train just put you through, you’ll notice that the air off the river is fresh. The buildings are low. The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, stretching out to Staten Island, soars above the horizon. Today, Bay Ridge is a neighborhood of immigrants. The first to arrive around the turn of the twentieth century were Scandinavians, whose influence can be seen at Leif Ericson Park or during the annual Norwegian Day Parade. After the arrival of the subway in 1916, Italians and Irish families populated the area, followed, in the mid-twentieth century, by Lebanese, Syrian, and Greek immigrants. These days, the neighborhood is also home to Latino and Chinese communities and is renowned as the heart of Arab New York, boasting the largest population of Arabic speakers in the city. Lately, more families have started migrating from elsewhere in Brooklyn, as well. ..."
Voice
W - Bay Ridge, Brooklyn

Balady Halal Foods offers shelves stacked high with dates, olive oil, and other Middle Eastern foodstuffs.

Thelonious Monk - Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960 (2017)

"Any occasion for unreleased Thelonious Monk recordings is one for celebration. The discovery of his excellent soundtrack sessions for Roger Vadim's film Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960, an adaptation of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos' 18th century novel, happened by accident. Producers Zev Feldman, François Le Xuan, and Frederic Thomas found these tapes while searching French saxophonist Barney Wilen's manager's archives in search of unreleased material. What they found were the original soundtrack and full sessions cut in New York during a single day in 1959 -- the same fertile year that yielded the Monk's At Town Hall; 5 by Monk by 5, and Thelonious Alone in San Francisco. Like these recordings, this soundtrack showcases Monk at the very top of his game. For various reasons including health issues and legal troubles, Monk had no time to travel or compose original music for the film. For this session he brought along tunes from his repertoire -- as was his wont throughout his career -- and reinvented them for the film with his working quartet of saxophonist Charlie Rouse, drummer Art Taylor, and bassist Sam Jones, with the addition of Wilen (who should be far better known to American jazz fans). The album is one of the only occasions in the pianist's discography where he employed two tenor players: the other was Thelonious Monk at the Blackhawk, with Harold Land alongside Rouse. ... This handsome package contains a plethora of liner essays including one by Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original. There are loads of photos in black-and white and color; all are intimate, and as revelatory as the music. This was made available during the centennial anniversary of Monk's birth; and given its quality, it makes for one of the most important jazz discoveries in recent years."
allmusic
Discogs
A Lost Soundtrack Uncovered At Last: Thelonious Monk | Les Liaisons Dangereuses 1960 (Video)
amazon, iTunes
YouTube: Rhythm-a-Ning [Alternate], Crepuscule with Nellie, Six in One, Well, You Needn’t

2012 September: Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser, 2013 August: Five Spot Café, 2014 February: Thelonious Monk - Genius of Modern Music, Vol. 1, Vol. 2, 2015 February: "Epistrophy" - Thelonious Monk / Kenny Clarke (1941), 2016 November: Underground (1968), 2017 May: The Thelonious Monk Quartet: The Complete Columbia Studio Albums Collection (2012)

Mueller Has Dozens of Inquiries for Trump in Broad Quest on Russia Ties and Obstruction

"WASHINGTON — Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russia’s election interference, has at least four dozen questions on an exhaustive array of subjects he wants to ask President Trump to learn more about his ties to Russia and determine whether he obstructed the inquiry itself, according to a list of the questions obtained by The New York Times. The open-ended queries appear to be an attempt to penetrate the president’s thinking, to get at the motivation behind some of his most combative Twitter posts and to examine his relationships with his family and his closest advisers. They deal chiefly with the president’s high-profile firings of the F.B.I. director and his first national security adviser, his treatment of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and a 2016 Trump Tower meeting between campaign officials and Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. But they also touch on the president’s businesses; any discussions with his longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, about a Moscow real estate deal; whether the president knew of any attempt by Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to set up a back channel to Russia during the transition; any contacts he had with Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser who claimed to have inside information about Democratic email hackings; and what happened during Mr. Trump’s 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: The Questions Mueller Wants to Ask Trump About Obstruction, and What They Mean
NY Times: Opinion | What Robert Mueller Knows****

Doc Martens Boots Adorned with Hieronymus Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights”

"As in cuisine, where peasant food can become trendy and expensive overnight, so it is in fashion: how else to explain the way a humble working-class boot went from the factory floor to stylistic statement. The original 1960’s Dr. Martens boot, the one with the cushioned sole, fancy tread, and yellow stitching, was designed to be affordable. That’s why the punks loved it, that’s why the ska/Two Tone guys and gals loved it, and that’s why rich rockers like Pete Townshend showed his solidarity by wearing them along with his boiler suit. But that was then, and this is...the Tate Gallery of London’s specially commissioned series of arty Docs. The '1460' boot above shows details from Hieronymus Bosch’s 'Garden of Earthly Delights' (the hellish third panel), which you have to admit is pretty cool. For the lover not the fighter among us, you can also go for the more debauched second panel from 'Garden' printed on a '1461' style shoe. ..."
Open Culture

Capitalism and the Family

Victor Berger, Bertha Hale White, and Eugene V. Debs in 1924.
"Issues of gender and sexuality are dominating the American public in a way that has few precedents in the recent past. From the alarmingly open misogyny of the president to the cascading revelations of sexual attacks in the workplace on one side, to the energy behind the historic women’s marches on the other, gender relations have risen to the top of the political debate. In a wide-ranging conversation, historian Stephanie Coontz places the current juncture in historical perspective, and offers her thoughts on how gender relations have been affected by the recent stagnation in working-class incomes and skyrocketing inequality. She closes with an eloquent plea to integrate gender politics into a broader progressive political vision. ..."
Catalyst: Capitalism and the Family
Socialism: An American Story (Video)
The Nib - Socialism: As American As Apple Pie
Red State: Does Socialism Have a Future in Texas?
When Socialism was Popular in the United States
Jacobin: Beyond Social Movement Unionism
Jacobin: Socialism and Black Oppression
The Nation: America Has a Long and Storied Socialist Tradition. DSA Is Reviving It.
The Nation: The Next Generation of Democratic Socialists Has Started Winning Local Elections

DSA members at the Women’s March in New York City on January 21, 2017. 

2016 April: Bernie Sanders and the History of American Socialism, 2014 September: Anarchism in America (1983), 2015 August: The Prophet Farmed: Murray Bookchin on Bernie Sanders,  2017 January: Reason, creativity and freedom: the communalist model - Eleanor Finley, 2017 February: Socialism’s Return, 2017 July: Don’t March, Organize for Power, 2017 December: Vermont Progressive Party, 2017 December: The 2017 Progressive Honor Roll, 2018 February: Catalyst, 2018 April: Are You Progressive?

Detroit Was Crumbling. Here’s How It’s Reviving.

"Last week, we visited the city to find further signs of recovery as Detroit moves out from under budgetary oversight. ... In Brush Park, construction equipment whirs non-stop. Old Victorians glisten with new interiors. 'What brought me back?' said John Davis, a Detroiter who moved away, then returned. 'Economic indicators.' ... Some houses sit on blocks alone, reminders of an essential struggle: A city built for 1.8 million residents now has fewer than 700,000. The dilapidated houses left behind have been torn down by the thousands. ... For a while, Detroit couldn’t pay for services most take for granted. With a cheerier budget picture, the city has resumed cleaning out storm drains and sending street sweepers down neighborhood streets, where years of grime had accumulated. ..."
NY Times

JOIN, or DIE

Wikipedia - "JOIN, or DIE. is a political cartoon, attributed to Benjamin Franklin and first published in his Pennsylvania Gazette on May 9, 1754. The original publication by the Gazette is the earliest known pictorial representation of colonial union produced by a British colonist in America. It is a woodcut showing a snake cut into eighths, with each segment labeled with the initials of one of the American colonies or regions. New England was represented as one segment, rather than the four colonies it was at that time. Delaware was not listed separately as it was part of Pennsylvania. Georgia, however, was omitted completely. Thus, it has eight segments of a snake rather than the traditional 13 colonies. The two northernmost British American colonies at the time, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, were not represented, nor were any British Caribbean possessions. The cartoon appeared along with Franklin's editorial about the 'disunited state' of the colonies, and helped make his point about the importance of colonial unity. It became a symbol of colonial freedom during the American Revolutionary War. ..."
Wikipedia

The 54 Galleries to See Right Now in New York

Annette Kelm, Proposal for Knots (2018)
"Is the New York art gallery scene thriving or dying? It may be doing both, depending on where you look. Blue-chip galleries are expanding, and a surprising number of international galleries are opening here, too, mostly on the Upper East Side. (Not to mention the prosperous art fairs arriving next week, including Frieze New York, TEFAF and the 1-54 International Contemporary African Art Fair. And they’ll be followed by the big May auctions.) But many midsize and small galleries are in survival mode, facing rising rents. There have been regrettable closings; this week, for example, that of Real Fine Arts, a pioneering Brooklyn space. Yet other midsize and small galleries persist. And good thing, too: They’re crucial as discoverers of new talent. Art fairs and auctions notwithstanding, they also help develop new collectors, those with independent taste and a sense of risk-taking. Even for occasional visitors, these intimate arenas can open new worlds. It can seem like the city is breaking out in galleries. There is now a Chinatown gallery district and one in East Chelsea/NoMad may be in the offing. My fellow critics and I have fanned out to take the pulse of the scene, producing one of the best, most evenly distributed gallery roundups in quite a while. — ROBERTA SMITH"
NY Times

Interstate Projects is showing “The Celibate Machine,” an exhibition by Cindy Ji Hye Kim. It includes, from left, “Parable of the Blind,” after Bruegel, and “As a Dog Returns to Its Vomit, a Man Repeats His Sins.” - NY Times: 12 Galleries to Visit Now in Brooklyn and Queens

Bill Frisell - Music IS (2018)

"The tradition of solo jazz guitar recordings is a long one, with guitarists like Johnny Smith, Al Viola, George Van Eps, Lenny Breau and Joe Pass demonstrating just how far a mere six (in some cases, seven) strings could be taken on their own as far back as the 1950s. Subsequent guitar soloists like John Abercrombie and Ralph Towner went even further by, at times, taking advantage of the recording studio's facility to overdub layers of guitar to create even broader expanses. But it's been during the past two decades or so that guitarists like Eivind Aarset and Stian Westerhus have explored extensive use of looping and other technological innovations, truly developing the orchestral potential of their instrument. ... If ever there was an album title to reflect the infinite potential of an art form that has occupied most of [Bill] Frisell's life, it's Music IS. ..."
All About Jazz
Release: Bill Frisell "Music IS"
amazon
YouTube: Rambler (Alternate Version) (Live)
YouTube: Music IS @Full Album 2018 11 videos

From Lone Mountain - John Porcellino (2018)

"John Porcellino makes his love of home and of nature the anchors in an increasingly turbulent world. He slows down and visits the forests, fields, streams, and overgrown abandoned lots that surround every city. He studies the flora and fauna around us. He looks at the overlooked. Porcellino also digs deep into a quintessential American endeavour—the road trip. Uprooting his comfortable life several times in From Lone Mountain, John drives through the country weaving from small town to small town, experiencing America in slow motion, avoiding the sameness of airports and overwhelming hustle of major cities. From Lone Mountain collects stories from Porcellino’s influential zine King-Cat—John enters a new phase of his life, as he remarries and decides to leave his beloved second home Colorado for San Francisco. Grand themes of King-Cat are visited and stated more eloquently than ever before: serendipity, memory, and the quest for meaning in the everyday. Over the past three decades, Porcellino's beloved King-Cat thas offered solace to his readers: his gentle observational stories take the pulse of everyday life and reveal beauty in the struggle to keep going. ..."
Drawn & Quarterly
A From Lone Mountain exclusive showcases a master minimalist’s skill
amazon

A Cinematic Journey Through Paris, As Seen Through the Lens of Legendary Filmmaker Éric Rohmer: Watch Rohmer in Paris

"Site of so many historic screenings, cradle of so many innovative auteurs, setting of so many memorable scenes: does any city have a more central place in the cinephile's consciousness than Paris? Filmmaker-professor Richard Misek calls it 'the city where cinephilia itself began.' It certainly has a place in his own cinephilic journey, beginning with a chance encounter, 24 years ago in the district of Montmartre, with one of the luminaries of French New Wave film: Éric Rohmer, who was then in the middle of shooting his picture Rendezvous in Paris. ... He tells this story early in Rohmer in Paris, his hour-long video essay on all the ways the auteur used the city in the course of his prolific, more than fifty-year-long filmmaking career. Misek describes Rohmer's characters, 'always glancing at each other: on trains, on streets, in parks, in the two-way shop windows of cafes where they can see and be seen,' as flâneurs, those observant strollers through the city whose type has its origins in the Paris of the 19th century. ..."
Open Culture (Video)
W - Éric Rohmer
W - Éric Rohmer filmography
vimeo: Rohmer in Paris

My Night at Maud's (1969)

The History of 135 Hudson

"In 1882, few of the once-grand houses that had graced the former St. John’s Park neighborhood still stood. The elegant park had been replaced in the 1860s by the Hudson River Railroad Company’s freight terminal. Wealthy homeowners abandoned their Federal-style brick mansions, which in turn were rapidly converted for business or razed for hulking warehouse buildings. No. 135 Hudson Street was an exception. ... Basically Romanesque Revival, the severe composition smacked of a medieval fortress—or prison. Gaping arches—one on the narrow Hudson Street façade and seven along Beach Street—were separated by rounded brick piers. The architects used the rounded shape not so much to add visual interest; but to eliminate the sharp corners which would be easily broken off by the in-and-out traffic of freight wagons. Iron tie rods, which elsewhere in the city added ornament by being cast as stars, starfish, or curlicues, here had the straightforward appearance of giant screw heads. These, like the iron anchor plates which were purposely left exposed, stressed the structural integrity of the building. ..."
Tribeca Citizen

2017 July: Seeking New York: The Stories Behind the Historic Architecture of Manhattan, 2017 October: The History of 452 Greenwich Street, 2018 February: The History of 121 Chambers

Women Intellectuals and the Art of the Withering Quip

"... The literary critic Michelle Dean’s new book of the same name, a cultural-history-cum-group-biography, examines the lives and careers of ten sharp women, among them Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, Dorothy Parker, Renata Adler, Hannah Arendt, and Zora Neale Hurston. What unites this disparate group, Dean claims, is the ability 'to write unforgettably.' If this casts something of a wide net, it does so out of necessity: the collected body of work this constellation of women produced—a mixture of fiction, book and movie reviews, essays, cultural criticism, and journalism—comprises a map of twentieth-century thought. ..."
The Paris Review

No Hope, No Fear: Industrial Music in Zagreb

"It was at a secondhand shop for electronics in the former Yugoslavia where, in 1982, Vladislav Knezević found a cassette by chance. It was a bootleg copy of Für Immer, by Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft. The insert had the tracklisting in both English and German, its letters uneven and patchy from the inconsistent typewriter ribbon. DAF – an electronic band with a minimalistic sound that focused on fast-paced basslines and simplistic German vocals – had somehow found their way to Zagreb, hidden among the throwaways of the shop. At the time, Knezević had no clue what an impact DAF and their style of music would have on the future of his city. But much later on, after he became an electronic musician himself, he would look back on the appearance of the cassette as nothing less than destiny. Two years earlier, the first Yugoslavian president, Josip Broz Tito, died. The country, then one-sixth of Yugoslavia, was left without stability after 27 years. There was a feeling of uncertainty that initiated an unfamiliar sense of freedom amongst the people, especially the youth. At the cusp of a new decade, Tito’s passing would prove pivotal to the history of Zagreb, and all of Croatia. While Croatia was a socialist republic before the president’s death, the 1980s promised change. ..."
Red Bull Music

Flyer for a Borghesia show at Club Đuro Đakovic in Zagreb – June 16th, 1988

Women Artists in Paris 1850-1900

"In the second half of the 19th century, Paris attracted an international gathering of women artists, drawn to the French capital by its academies and museums, studios and salons. Featuring thirty-six artists from eleven different countries, this beautifully illustrated book explores the strength of these women’s creative achievements, through paintings by acclaimed Impressionists such as Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot, and extraordinary lesser-known artists such as Marie Bashkirtseff, Anna Bilinska-Bohdanowicz, Paula Modersohn-Becker, and Hanna Pauli. It examines their work against the sociopolitical background of the period, when women were mostly barred from formal artistic education but cleverly navigated the city’s network of ateliers, salons, and galleries. Essays consider the powerfully influential work of women Impressionists, representations of the female artist in portraiture, the unique experiences of Nordic women artists, and the significant presence of women artists throughout the history of the Paris Salon. By addressing the long-undervalued contributions of women to the art of the later 19th century, Women Artists in Paris pays tribute to pioneers who not only created remarkable paintings but also generated momentum toward a more egalitarian art world."
Yale
artsy

Marie Bashkirtseff (Ukrainian, 1858-1884), In the Studio, 1881

People Have the Power - Patti Smith (1988)

"'People Have the Power' is a rock song written by Patti Smith and Fred 'Sonic' Smith, and released as a lead single from Patti Smith 1988 album Dream of Life. The cover photograph is by Robert Mapplethorpe. The music video is filmed mostly in black-and-white and features Patti Smith singing, writing and walking. The song was ranked number 22 on NME magazine's list of the 'Singles of the Year'. For most of U2's Innocence + Experience Tour, the group has used 'People Have the Power' as its entrance music. Smith herself joined them to close their show with the song at London's O2 Arena on October 29, 2015, as well as the December 6, 2015 show at Accorhotels Arena in Paris. ..."
Wikipedia
YouTube: People Have the Power

Phantom Thread - Paul Thomas Anderson (2017)

"Reynolds Woodcock, a couturier plying his trade in London in the 1950s, has a habit of sewing secret messages into his garments. ('Never cursed' is the blessing stitched in lavender thread that he slips into the hem of a wedding gown commissioned by a princess.) These invisible traces of his hand — hidden meanings in the literal sense — signify that his dresses are more than luxurious commodities. They are works of art, obscurely and yet unmistakably saturated with the passion and personality of their creator. It hardly seems an accident that Paul Thomas Anderson has inscribed his monogram in the title of his eighth feature, 'Phantom Thread,' which chronicles a few chapters in Reynolds’s fictional life and career. This is a profoundly, intensely, extravagantly personal film. I don’t mean autobiographical. I know little and care less about the details of Mr. Anderson’s personal life. Whether or not his longtime partner, the actress and comedian Maya Rudolph, has ever cooked him a mushroom omelet is a matter of complete indifference to me. Not every movie about an artist is a self-portrait of its director, but 'Phantom Thread' almost offhandedly lays out intriguing analogies between Reynolds’s métier and Mr. Anderson’s. The fashion designer, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, turns drawings into drama, manipulating color and movement and the human form to construct a material object that is also artificial, idealized and fantastical — a commodity that impersonates a dream. ..."
NY Times
W - Phantom Thread
New Yorker: The Claustrophobic Elegance of “Phantom Thread”
YouTube: PHANTOM THREAD - Official Trailer

The Next Standing Rock? A Pipeline Battle Looms in Oregon

"Each spring and fall in the old days, Chinook salmon swam up the Klamath River, crossing the Cascade Mountains, to Upper Klamath Lake, 4,000 feet above sea level. For millenniums, the Klamath, Modoc and Yahooskin Band of Snake Indians fished salmon from the lake and the river. The Klamath had agreements with the downriver tribes — the Karuk, Hoopa and Yurok among them — to let fish pass so that some could swim all the way back to their spawning grounds. After dams were built on the river starting in 1912, the salmon were blocked. Today the only 'c’iyaals hoches' (salmon runs) are enacted by the Klamath Tribes, whose members carry carved cedar salmon on a 300-mile symbolic journey from the ocean to the traditional spawning grounds to bring home the spirit of the fish. The Klamath River’s dams are scheduled to be demolished by 2020, in what will be one of the largest river restorations in American history. But there’s a threat to the dream of a revitalized river — a project that would put a newly unobstructed Klamath at risk of contamination while simultaneously contributing to climate change, desecrating grave sites and trampling the traditional territory of the Klamath people. If you’ve read anything at all about the protests near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota, you might be able to guess what that threat is. It’s a pipeline. ..."
NY Times (March 8, 2018)

2011 July: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - Dee Brown, 2012 September: The Ghost Dance, 2016 September: A History and Future of Resistance, 2016 November: Dakota Access Pipeline protests, 2016 December: Police Violence Against Native Americans Goes Far Beyond Standing Rock, 2016 December: Dakota Protesters Say Belle Fourche Oil Spill 'Validates Struggle', 2017 January: A Murky Legal Mess at Standing Rock, 2017 January: Trump's Move On Keystone XL, Dakota Access Outrages Activists, 2017 February: Army veterans return to Standing Rock to form a human shield against police, 2017 February: Standing Rock is burning – but our resistance isn't over, 2017 March: Dakota Access pipeline could open next week after activists face final court loss, 2017 April: The Conflicts Along 1,172 Miles of the Dakota Access Pipeline, 2017 May: 'Those are our Eiffel Towers, our pyramids': Why Standing Rock is about much more than oil, 2017 June: Dakota pipeline protesters won a small victory in court. We must fight on, 2018 February: PHOTOS: Since Standing Rock, 56 Bills Have Been Introduced in 30 States to Restrict Protests

Oonops Drops – Smoky Jazz Session 6

"A new round for the 'Smoky Jazz Session' with Oonops and his long-time dj-duo partner Karbunck Lottinger. It’s the sixth time that they smoke out the jazz of their vinyl selection be that pure jazz or jazz which gets entangled with rap, afro, funk or beats. Cold crushed tunes on vinyl by Sun Ra & His Intergalactic Infinity Arkestra, Badbadnotgood, Joe Henderson, Tony Allen, Damu The Fudgemunk, Dave Grusin, Quantic, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Henry Wu and many more for open minded headz and jazzcats. Get down and enjoy this little mixtape with Nina Simone’s words: Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking!"
Brooklyn Radio (Audio)

2017 December: Oonops Drops - Jazz'n'Beats 2, 2018 February: Oonops Drops – Volume 1

Jackie Robinson’s last stand: To see blacks break into the MLB managerial ranks

American baseball player Jackie Robinson (1919 – 1972) of the Brooklyn Dodgers is signing paperwork, January 3, 1945. 
"Jackie Robinson went to the grave with his final request of Major League Baseball unfulfilled. The Los Angeles Dodgers legend died discouraged and frustrated with big league teams because of the way they dragged their feet on hiring black managers and front-office employees. Some opined that black managers hadn’t been hired in the 25 years since Robinson integrated baseball because white players weren’t ready to take orders from a black man and white fans would be exceptionally cruel to them. Others speculated that the crop of black players who would eventually be hired as skippers were learning the ropes as coaches and working the minor leagues. That, of course, is a puzzling explanation, considering Buck O’Neil broke the color barrier for black coaches in 1962 with the Chicago Cubs and in the 10 years after O’Neil did so, nine black men — Gene Baker (Pittsburgh Pirates), Jim Gilliam (Dodgers), Ernie Banks (Cubs), Larry Doby (Montreal Expos), Elston Howard (New York Yankees), Satchel Paige (Atlanta Braves), Luke Easter (Cleveland), Ozzie Virgil (San Francisco Giants) and John Roseboro (Washington Senators, California Angels) — had risen to the coaching ranks by the time Robinson used his silver anniversary to call out MLB on its biggest stage. ..."
The Undefeated
SI: And Then The Barrier Broke: Remembering Jackie Robinson's first 10 days as a big leaguer
SI: The Breakthrough: Why May 1947 was crucial for Jackie Robinson
Crossing the Color Barrier: Jackie Robinson and the Men Who Integrated Major League Baseball
W - Jackie Robinson
W - Baseball color line
SABR

Are You Progressive?

"What distinguishes a progressive from a liberal? This is one of the more pervasive ambiguities in contemporary American political discourse. In a recent issue of the journal Democracy, the historian Sean Wilentz addressed it head-on: Liberals, he argues, recognize the flaws of capitalism, are dedicated to remedying them, and have great achievements to their credit in that regard, notably those of the New Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society. Progressives are meanwhile 'emphatically anti-liberal'—because they are hostile to capitalism and, 'deep down, harbor the hope that one day, perhaps through some catastrophic event, American capitalism will indeed be replaced by socialism.' But here’s the problem: The progressives Wilentz describes aren’t really advocates for socialism in its authentic sense of total 'public ownership of finance, industry, and agriculture.' Rather, he writes, they claim for socialism ('democratic socialism,' of course) the social-welfare achievements of American liberalism and Scandinavian social democracy, while rejecting the full architecture of those ideologies. ..."
New Republic

2016 April: Bernie Sanders and the History of American Socialism, 2014 September: Anarchism in America (1983), 2015 August: The Prophet Farmed: Murray Bookchin on Bernie Sanders,  2017 January: Reason, creativity and freedom: the communalist model - Eleanor Finley, 2017 February: Socialism’s Return, 2017 July: Don’t March, Organize for Power, 2017 December: Vermont Progressive Party, 2017 December: The 2017 Progressive Honor Roll, 2018 February: Catalyst

Poetry Center Digital Archive

"Poetry Center Digital Archive makes available significant portions of early audio recordings from the Poetry Center's American Poetry Archives collection, supplemented by select archival texts and images. New files will be added incrementally as recordings are prepared and as we proceed through the collection from the 1950s onward. The Poetry Center, founded at San Francisco State College (now SFSU) in 1954 by English professor Ruth Witt-Diamant, has been recording and archiving tapes of its public events for nearly six decades. We have compiled and maintained one of the most significant public collections in the USA of original recorded performances by poets and related writers reading their work. In 1974, poet Kathleen Fraser, serving as director, created within the Poetry Center, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Poetry Archives. This collection, together with the Poetry Center housed within the SFSU College of Humanities (Department of Creative Writing), today holds over 4,000 hours of unique original audio and video master-recordings, 1954–present – an inestimable cultural asset. ..."
Poetry Center Digital Archive - About
Poetry Center Digital Archive (Video)

The Unlikely New Hero of Turkey’s Opposition

Fatih Mehmet Maçoğlu, the mayor of Ovacık, a village in eastern Turkey, drew national attention when he delivered on his campaign promise of transparency and accountability.
"There’s something unusual in Ovacık, a village in a snow-capped valley in eastern Turkey where the Turkish Air Force regularly bombs Kurdish rebels. In the lobby of the town hall is a painting of Karl Marx, not of Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, whose picture hangs in most other Turkish government offices. In early February, a piece of paper posted on the building’s outer wall itemized the town’s income, expenditures, and surplus budget, part of which goes to scholarships for university students. Displaying the itemized income each year is a practice that the local mayor, Fatih Mehmet Maçoğlu, began when he was elected, four years ago. Maçoğlu promised the village’s roughly thirty-one hundred residents transparency and accountability; publicly itemizing the local government’s income was one way to deliver it. Soon after this year’s income was posted, a photo of the piece of paper was shared on Twitter—a source of news for many young Turks. Within weeks, the obscure village mayor became a grassroots symbol of good governance in Turkey. ..."
New Yorker

2016 February: The Feminist, Democratic Leftists Our Military Is Obliterating -  Debbie Bookchin, 2016 May: Turkey’s Authoritarian Turn, 2016 July: How Turkey Came to This, 2017 March: As repression deepens, Turkish artists and intellectuals fear the worst, 2017 July: A Long March for Justice in Turkey, 2017 July: Radical Municipalism: The Future We Deserve, 2017 September: Istanbul: Memories and the City - Orhan Pamuk, 2018 January: Turkey’s State of Emergency

The Many Languages (and Foods) of Jackson Heights

Roosevelt Avenue’s street vendors can provide you with everything from fruits and vegetables to a new case for your cellphone.
"Tania Mattos Jose is an organizer with Queens Neighborhoods United, which works to promote sustainable development without displacement in Corona, Elmhurst, and Jackson Heights. Mattos is an unabashed cheerleader for the neighborhood where she grew up — and hopes that visitors arrive with an eye toward honoring its residents, their culture, and the community they’ve built. Myself and my family migrated from Bolivia to Miami to Jackson Heights, and I’ve lived in the neighborhood for thirty years now. My aunts lived here, so we lived in their one room — me, my brother, my dad, and my mom — we stayed there for a few months so we could get on our feet and get an apartment. What I love is that it’s a very tight-knit community. Even though there are so many cultures and languages and people from different countries, for the essential things that matter to people, we overlap each other. ...'
Voice
WNYC: Land of 167 Languages (Video)
Jackson Heights: Unearthing the People’s Struggle
W - Jackson Heights, Queens
W - In Jackson Heights
NT Times: Jackson Heights Through the Eyes of Frederick Wiseman

An image from Frederick Wiseman’s documentary “In Jackson Heights”

Le Spectrum de Montréal

"The Spectrum (French: Le Spectrum de Montréal) was a concert hall, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, that closed on August 5, 2007. Opened on October 17, 1982, as the Alouette Theatre, it was briefly renamed Club Montreal before receiving its popular name. The Spectrum had a capacity of about 1200 and had a 'cabaret' setup with table service. A unique effect was the wall mounted lighting which included hundreds of small lightbulbs. The last show was performed by Michel Rivard, the only performer to have played over one hundred concerts at the venue. The block on which the building stands was slated to be torn down and rebuilt as a combined shopping centre and office complex. The Spectrum had been owned by Équipe Spectra which owns other venues in Montreal. On February 17, 2008, the borough of Ville Marie voted to proceed with demolition plans and on October 18, 2008, almost 26 years to the day from when it first opened, the Spectrum was torn down." (New Order, 1984; King Sunny Ade, 1985; Fela Kuti, 1989)
Wikiwand
flickr

2013 October: Montreal Metro, 2014 July: Montreal, tales of gentrification in a bohemian city, 2016 August: Montreal-style bagel, 2016 August: Montreal-style bagel, 2017 April: St-Henri, the 26th of August - Shannon Walsh (2011), 2017 May: A family affair: St-Viateur Bagel celebrates 60 years, 2017 August: Saint Catherine Street / Underground City, Montreal, 2018 February: Counter Intelligence: Montréal

Seven and a Half Short Notes on Sandy Denny

"... 1) I just finished the recent Sandy Denny biography. I was very disappointed by it. In the end, she dies. In the bio that I want to read, she’s now living in a cottage in Wales and drinking only on Thursdays. 2) In 1968, Sandy Denny joined Fairport Convention, a new British band modeled on the sound of the Byrds and on American folk rock. She was twenty-one and had spent time at university and worked briefly as a nurse but was happier staying out all night at folk clubs. Fairport had already recorded an album and were modestly successful, but Sandy upped their game exponentially, not just with a voice that could stop time with a whisper but with original songs as rich and strong as the traditional ballads the band were exploring. The three albums she recorded with them in 1968 and 1969 are breathtakingly beautiful and mysterious, digging deep into British traditions and dragging them into an ecstatic and electric future. When she left to go off on her own in late 1969, first with her own group, Fotheringay, then solo, she was at the top of her game and was lost. ..."
The Paris Review

2009 March: Sandy Denny, 2013 January: "A Sailor’s Life" - Fairport Convention, 2013 May: The North Star Grassman and the Ravens, 2018 March: Like an Old Fashioned Waltz (1974)