Routine: Grand Master Flash Tutorial (1983)

"In 1983, Grand Master Flash was making history and paving the way for the future of turntablism. Grand Master Flash pioneered the way for DJs and innovated numerous techniques. Today we have an antique routine that doubles as a fun tutorial from the master himself. Grand Master Flash demonstrates what the whole world wants to know, 'What is a break mix?' Break out your notebook and watch how to do a break mix below. ..."
DJTechTools (Video)

2009 August: Grand Master Flash, 2015 June: "White Lines (Don't Don't Do It)" - Grandmaster Flash + Melle Mel (1983)

Shakespeare and Company, Paris - A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart

"This first-ever history of the legendary bohemian bookstore in Paris interweaves essays and poetry from dozens of writers associated with the shop--Allen Ginsberg, Anaïs Nin, Ethan Hawke, Robert Stone and Jeanette Winterson, among others--with hundreds of never-before-seen archival pieces, including photographs of James Baldwin, William Burroughs and Langston Hughes, plus a foreword by the celebrated British novelist Jeanette Winterson and an epilogue by Sylvia Whitman, the daughter of the store’s founder, George Whitman. The book has been edited by Krista Halverson, director of the newly founded Shakespeare and Company publishing house. ..."
ArtBooks
Shakespeare and Company: The Best Book Shop in the World
ArtBooks: Krista Halverson on the Making of 'Shakespeare and Company, Paris: A History of the Rag & Bone Shop of the Heart'
amazon

2012 December: Shakespeare and Company, 2016 January: What It's Like to Live Inside the Legendary Paris Bookstore Shakespeare & Co.

Hear 508 Hours of Songs Recorded by Rudy Van Gelder (1924-2016), the Engineer Who Created the Sound of Modern Jazz

"The art of audio engineering is mostly a dark one, an alchemy performed behind closed studio doors by people who speak a technical language most of us don’t recognize. That is until recently. ... But with the democratization of recording technology, I fear we may begin to forget what really great, really expensive, audio engineering sounds like, an unheard-of consideration in the fifties and sixties, when the process may as well have been magic to most record buyers, and when engineer Rudy Van Gelder recorded some of the greatest—and best sounding—jazz albums ever made. A Love Supreme? That was Van Gelder. Also Miles Davis’ Walkin’, Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage, Sonny Rollins’ Saxophone Colossus, Horace Silver’s Song for My Father… Dexter Gordon, Donald Byrd, Wayne Shorter, Art Blakey…. You’re getting the idea. ..."
Open Culture (Video)

Brooklyn, Lost and Found

Found at Plum Beach.
"The refuse that clutters Brooklyn’s neglected parks, vacant lots, and forgotten shorelines is typically considered an eyesore if it isn’t ignored altogether. But a closer examination can yield surprising rewards. When you adopt the perspective of an archaeologist, the experience of walking down a litter-strewn street can become a kind of treasure hunt, where puzzling relics of the city’s past await you in the most unexpected places. We can search through the urban rubble with the same fascination as the excavators of ancient civilizations, making discoveries that connect us to a more immediate ancestry. Decaying dolls and peeling lawn ornaments take on totemic significance as emblems of an imagined urban mythology. ..."
Bklynr
W - Bay Ridge, Brooklyn
CityLab - Interactive Map of the Day: The Age of Every Building in Brooklyn
NY Times: Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, a ‘Small Town’ in a Big City
Bay Ridge: an oasis in the urban jungle of New York City
YouTube: Bay Ridge Living: A Personal Tour, Tour the Arab Community in Brooklyn, NYC

2015 December: An Introduction to Novelist Gilbert Sorrentino’s Bay Ridge

Robert Wyatt - Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard (1975)

Wikipedia - "Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard is the third solo album by Robert Wyatt. The follow-up to Rock Bottom, for which Wyatt had written all of the music and lyrics, Ruth... consisted of Wyatt's adaptations and arrangements of other people's music (either friends – Phil Manzanera, Fred Frith, Mongezi Feza, former Wilde Flowers bandmate Brian Hopper – or influences – Charlie Haden) with Wyatt adding his own lyrics in much the same way as he had done on Matching Mole's Little Red Record. ... Much of the album features Wyatt (on lead vocals and keyboards) backed by a "band" consisting of bassist Bill MacCormick, drummer Laurie Allan and saxophonists George Khan and Gary Windo, with Brian Eno adding his own idiosyncratic 'anti-jazz' touch. ..."
Wikipedia
The Quietus
Discogs
Spotify
YouTube: Ruth is Stranger Than Richard - Full Album

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), 2016 March: Interviews (2014), 2016 June: Dondestan (Revisited)(1998).

Edward Hopper - "Drug Store" (1927)

"... Hopper also recorded architectural scenes, both rural and urban, instilling each with a similar feeling of abandonment; he chronicled the ravages of the Depression by depicting forsaken farms and 'For Sale' signs on suburban streets. ... Now known as Drug Store, the painting is one of Hopper’s early masterpieces. Many of the themes and devices seen in his later work are evident in this striking picture. In Drug Store Hopper utilized the brilliance of electric light, his love of architectural features, and his sense of drama to convey eerie nocturnal solitude. In many of his nighttime paintings, dazzling light streams from a window surrounded by darkness. ..."
MFA
Edward Hopper
Antiques and Fine Art

2008 July: Edward Hopper, 2010 October: Finding Nighthawks, 2010 December: Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time, 2012 Wednesday: Through Edward Hopper's eyes: in search of an artist's seaside inspiration, 2013 July: Hopper Drawing, 2014 May: INTERVIEW: “An Interview with Edward Hopper, June 17, 1959″., 2014 September: How Edward Hopper “Storyboarded” His Iconic Painting Nighthawks, 2015 February: Edward Hopper's New York: A Walking Tour, 2015 September: Edward Hopper life and works, 2016 May: "Night Windows," 1928, 2016 July: Sunday (1926).

Che - Steven Soderbergh (2008)

Wikipedia - "Che is a two-part 2008 biopic about Argentine Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Benicio del Toro. Rather than follow a standard chronological order, the films offer an oblique series of interspersed moments along the overall timeline. Part One is entitled The Argentine and focuses on the Cuban Revolution from the landing of Fidel Castro, Guevara, and other revolutionaries in Cuba to their successful toppling of Fulgencio Batista's dictatorship two years later. Part Two is entitled Guerrilla and focuses on Guevara's attempt to bring revolution to Bolivia and his demise. Both parts are shot in a cinéma vérité style, but each has different approaches to linear narrative, camerawork, and the visual look. ..."
Wikipedia
Criterion (Video)
New Yorker: Che’s Way
NY Times: Saluting the Rebel Underneath the T-Shirt
Roger Ebert
YouTube: Che - Movie Trailer, Steven Soderbergh on Che

2010 March: Che, 2010 December: Che Guevara in popular culture, 2012 September: The Motorcycle Diaries, 2015 August: ¡Cuba, Cuba! 65 Years of Photography

Glen Baxter

"Over four decades and many books, 'Colonel' Glen Baxter has built a world and language all his own—slightly familiar, decidedly abnormal, irresistibly funny. Baxter’s drawings and prose poems are a delicious stew of adventure novels, highbrow hijinks, and outright absurdity. The following is a selection from Baxter’s new book, Almost Completely Baxter, which brings together highlights from the full sweep of his long career. —The Editors ..."
NYBooks: At Home with the Irrational
Flowers
Glen Baxter
Wikipedia

George Orwell - Homage to Catalonia (1938)

Wikipedia - "Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations in the Spanish Civil War. The first edition was published in the United Kingdom in 1938. The book was not published in the United States until February 1952, when it appeared with an influential preface by Lionel Trilling. The only translation published in Orwell's lifetime was into Italian, in December 1948. A French translation by Yvonne Davet—with whom Orwell corresponded, commenting on her translation and providing explanatory notes—in 1938–39 was not published until five years after Orwell's death. ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times: George Orwell's Prelude in Spain
[PDF] Homage to Catalonia
amazon

2011 July: Spanish Civil War - 75 Year, 18 July, 2011 August: Down and Out in Paris and London, 2012 March: 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother), 2012 June: "The Spanish Earth", Written and Narrated by Ernest Hemingway, 2013 January: The Real George Orwell, 2015 August: Songs of the Spanish Civil War

James Blood Ulmer - Black Rock (1982)

"Recorded and issued in 1982, Black Rock was James Blood Ulmer's second Columbia album, a follow-up to the previous year's Free Lancing. This was also Blood's first attempt to take the harmolodic jazz of Ornette Coleman and marry it directly to rock's visceral appearance and funk's in-the-pocket groove. Certainly all his records from Captain Black on displayed this penchant in varying degrees, but all were linked to the deep exploration of harmolodic's scalular heights and unknown territories. ... This is a fitting introduction to Blood Ulmer's unique, knotty, and truly original guitar and composition style. Black Rock is all funk, rock, jazz, and punk, indivisible and under a one world groove."
allmusic (Video)
W - Black Rock
Discogs
DUST IN THE NOSTRILS
YouTube: Black Rock (Live @ Jazzbuehne Berlin), Love Have Two Faces
YouTube: Black Rock, Love Have Two Faces, Fun House, Overnight, Revelation March, Open House

40 Colorful Kodachrome Photos Of 1940s NYC

"It's rare we can look back at an era of NYC like the 1940s and see it through such sharp, colorful images. Thanks to Charles W. Cushman, a tourist here during that time with a knack for photography, it's possible. We've looked at Cushman's vast archives before—which span the nation and overseas over a few decade—all in all containing 14,500 Kodachrome color slides. He donated the images to his alma mater, Indiana University, and they digitized everything after nearly tossing them in the garbage. Check out his 1960s NYC photos here, and click through for his shots of New York City in the early 1940s. ..."
Gothamist (Video)

Isaac Hayes - Hot Buttered Soul (1969)

"Released at the tail end of the '60s, Hot Buttered Soul set the precedent for how soul would evolve in the early '70s, simultaneously establishing Isaac Hayes and the Bar-Kays as major forces within black music. Though not quite as definitive as Black Moses or as well-known as Shaft, Hot Buttered Soul remains an undeniably seminal record; it stretched its songs far beyond the traditional three-to-four-minute industry norm, featured long instrumental stretches where the Bar-Kays stole the spotlight, and it introduced a new, iconic persona for soul with Hayes' tough yet sensual image. With the release of this album, Motown suddenly seemed manufactured and James Brown a bit too theatrical. Surprising many, the album features only four songs. ..."
allmusic
W - Hot Buttered Soul
Pitchfork
45 Years Ago: Isaac Hayes Changes Everything With ‘Hot Buttered Soul’ (Video)
Spotify
YouTube: Hot Buttered Soul

Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age

Nicole Eisenman, Beer Garden with Ash, 2009.
"The resurgent interest in contemporary painting in recent years has coincided with an explosion of new digital media and technologies. Contrary to canonical accounts premised on medium-specificity, painting’s most advanced positions since the 1960s have developed in productive friction with contemporaneous forms of mass media and culture. From the rise of television and computers to the Internet revolution, painting has assimilated precisely those cultural and technological developments that were held responsible for its presumed ‘death’. Moving far beyond its technical definition as ‘oil on canvas’, painting during the information age has consistently offered a site for negotiating the challenges of a mediated life-world. ‘Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age’ will be the first exhibition to tell the story of painting’s adaptation, absorption and transformation of information technologies in Western Europe and the United States since the 1960s. ..."
Museum Brandhorst
Brooklyn Rail
ArtNews
Frieze
amazon
YouTube: Ausstellung "Painting 2.0": Malerei im Informationszeitalter

Detroit Blues: Early 1950’s

"These 15 tracks are tough, raw-edged, primitive urban blues from the Motor City. Kicking off with four sides from Baby Boy Warren ('Sanafee,' 'Baby Boy Blues,' 'Mattie Mae' and the instrumental 'Chicken'), three of them feature the harmonica talents of Sonny Boy Williamson, Washboard Willie, Boogie Woogie Red on piano and former Robert Johnson running buddy Calvin Frazier on lead guitar, making this combo the Detroit equivalent of the original Muddy Waters band. ... Much cruder than the more polished sound of Chicago blues, this compilation highlights some of the very best that emerged from this early, embryonic period."
allmusic
Discogs
WFMU (Video)
YouTube: Big Maceo - Big City Blues, Baby Boy Warren - Baby Boy Blues, Baby Boy Warren - Mattie Mae, Eddie Kirkland - No Shoes, John Lee Hooker - House Rent Boogie, I Need $100 - One String Sam, Baby Boy Warren - Chicken, Bo-Bo Jenkins - 10 Below Zero, Hastings Street Opera Pt 1 & 2 - Detroit Count, L.C. Green - Remember Way Back

Culture - Africa Stand Alone (1978)

"Africa Stand Alone is a 1978 album by Jamaican roots reggae band Culture. It was recorded with engineer Sylvan Morris at Harry J's Studios, Kingston, Jamaica, in the interim between the band's sessions with producers Joe Gibbs and Sonia Pottinger, and produced by Jamie Hatcher and Seymour Cummings. Neither the backing group (christened the Sons of Jah by Culture's lead singer Joseph Hill) nor the producers of Africa Stand Alone had appeared on record before. Perhaps for this reason, the versions here of the tracks that also appear on 'Harder Than the Rest' are renowned for being rawer and less disciplined. The musical backing tracks are also known for being more minimal, thus allowing the vocals to take a more central role."
Heaven Street Records
W - Africa Stand Alone
Spotify
YouTube: Behold The Land, Garvey Rock, Innocent Blood, More Vacancy

2015 May: Two Sevens Clash: The 30th Anniversary Edition (1977/2007)

1960 materials at UbuWeb

"I didn’t need any reminding of the deep richness and capaciousness of UbuWeb, Kenneth Goldsmith's archive of texts, sound art, films, audio recordings, and concrete poetry, most of which is unavailable elsewhere. Yet this depth amazed me yet again, when (with thanks to Kristen Martin) we located all of the materials in UbuWeb dated 1960. The list and links are below. Today, too, Goldsmith features this selection on UbuWeb itself. ..."
Jacket2 (Video)

1UP in Berlin : “ 'All City' Doesn't Even Begin to Cover It ”

"An amorphous shape-shifting consortium of Berlin-based aerosol hooligans named 1UP is one of those graffiti crews who eventually make the entry into graffiti street lore because of the scope and daring of their travails. Primarily Berlin based, you’ll find their almost-commercial sounding name on roofs, walls, abandoned factories, and in tunnels in many cities around the globe. Without a clear idea of the exact number in their association nor precise membership these daredevils are most often described as white men in their twenties and early thirties reveling in the athleticism and sport of graffiti, in addition to style. ..."
Brooklyn Street Art (Video)

Field Guide to Wildflowers of the Eastern Region Book

"... This field guide is probably the field guide I use the most out of all of my Audubon Field guides (I have about 7), and it has never let me down! Identifying wildflowers in forests, wetlands, and even on casual walks has been so easy with this field guide. Even if the exact species isnt in the field guide, it gives me enough information as to what genus and family it is in, so that I can identify it using other sources later. I love how they group the species by color and flower arrangement! I reccomend this to anyone who is interested in entering the botany field! - Joe B."
amazon

Bruce Springsteen - The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle (1973)

"Bruce Springsteen expanded the folk-rock approach of his debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., to strains of jazz, among other styles, on its ambitious follow-up, released only eight months later. His chief musical lieutenant was keyboard player David Sancious, who lived on the E Street that gave the album and Springsteen's backup group its name. With his help, Springsteen created a street-life mosaic of suburban society that owed much in its outlook to Van Morrison's romanticization of Belfast in Astral Weeks. ... The production is fine. And the album's songs contain the best realization of Springsteen's poetic vision, which soon enough would be tarnished by disillusionment. He would later make different albums, but he never made a better one. The truth is, The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle is one of the greatest albums in the history of rock & roll."
allmusic
W - The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle
Dusting ‘Em Off: Bruce Springsteen – The Wild, The Innocent and The E Street Shuffle
Spotify
YouTube: Spirit in the Night - Live 1973 in Los Angeles, Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) - 09/20/78, Incident on 57th Street - 09/20/78, Kitty's Back - 09/20/78, Wild Billy's Circus Story, Sandy - 09/19/78
YouTube: The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle (FULL ALBUM)

The Roof Garden Commission: Cornelia Parker, Transitional Object (PsychoBarn)

"A large-scale sculpture by acclaimed British artist Cornelia Parker, inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper and by two emblems of American architecture—the classic red barn and the Bates family’s sinister mansion from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film Psycho—will comprise the fourth annual installation of site-specific works commissioned for The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden. Nearly 30 feet high, The Roof Garden Commission: Cornelia Parker, Transitional Object (PsychoBarn) is fabricated from a deconstructed red barn and seems at first to be a genuine house, but is in fact a scaled-down structure consisting of two facades propped up from behind with scaffolding. ..."
Metropolitan Museum of Art
NY Times
Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Roof Garden Commission 2016: Cornelia Parker (Video)
W - Psycho (1960)
Open Culture: Alfred Hitchcock’s Rules for Watching Psycho (1960) (Video)
'Psycho': 25 Things You (Probably) Didn't Know About Hitchcock's Classic
New Yorker: THE GREATNESS OF “PSYCHO”
YouTube: Psycho Trailer

2009 July: Alfred Hitchcock

The Hero with a Thousand Faces - Joseph Campbell (1949)

Wikipedia - "The Hero with a Thousand Faces (first published in 1949) is a seminal work of comparative mythology by Joseph Campbell. In this book, Campbell discusses his theory of the journey of the archetypal hero found in world mythologies. Since publication of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell's theory has been consciously applied by a wide variety of modern writers and artists. ... Campbell explores the theory that important myths from around the world which have survived for thousands of years all share a fundamental structure, which Campbell called the monomyth. ..."
Wikipedia
The Writer's Journey
[PDF] The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Beat Generation - Centre Pompidou

"The Centre Pompidou is to present Beat Generation, a novel retrospective dedicated to the literary and artistic movement born in the late 1940s that would exert an ever-growing influence for the next two decades. ... Foreshadowing the youth culture and the cultural and sexual liberation of the 1960s, the emergence of the Beat Generation in the years following the Second World War, just as the Cold War was setting in, scandalised a puritan and Mc Carthyite America. Then seen as subversive rebels, the Beats appear today as the representatives of one of the most important cultural movements of the 20th century - a movement the Centre Pompidou's survey will examine in all its breadth and geographical amplitude, from New York to Los Angeles, from Paris to Tangier. ..."
Centre Pompidou
Guardian (Video)
Slash
NY Times
YouTube: 'Beat Generation', 2016
VIDEO: A Trip with the Beat Generation at the Centre Pompidou

2009 August: Beat Generation, 2010 April: Beat Hotel, 2010 October: "Howl" - Allen Ginsberg, 2012 April: The Beats — A Graphic History, 2012 December: Jazz poetry, 2013 January: Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg.

DJ Shadow feat. Run The Jewels - Nobody Speak (2016)

"DJ Shadow has unveiled the music video for the song 'Nobody Speak' featuring Run The Jewels, a standout track from his latest album ‘The Mountain Will Fall,’ out now on Mass Appeal Records. The video depicts a meeting of leaders that quickly descends into chaos, a scene not unlike what is unfolding in governments around the globe. It also features appearances by DJ Shadow and Run The Jewels. Says DJ Shadow: 'We wanted to make a positive, life-affirming video that captures politicians at their election-year best. We got this instead.' ..."
YouTube: Nobody Speak (Official Video)

Brymo - Tabula Rasa (2014)

Wikipedia - "Tabula Rasa (Latin for 'blank slate') is the fourth studio album by Nigerian singer Brymo, released independently on October 30, 2014. It is the first album released by the singer since the Federal High Court of Lagos lifted Chocolate City's injunction against him. The album was preceded by the single 'Fe Mi' which was released in the month leading to the album's release. The LP's material includes the recurring theme of freedom. Critical reception to Tabula Rasa was overwhelmingly positive, with many critics deeming it a 'classic'. ..."
Wikipedia
YouTube: 1 Pound (The Documentary - Live)
YouTube: Tabula Rasa Full Album 2014

Montreal-style bagel

Wikipedia - "The Montreal bagel, (sometimes beigel; Yiddish בײגל beygl, in French Bagel de Montréal), is a distinctive variety of handmade and wood-fired baked bagel. In contrast to the New York-style bagel, the Montreal bagel is smaller, thinner, sweeter and denser, with a larger hole, and is always baked in a wood-fired oven. It contains malt, egg, and no salt and is boiled in honey-sweetened water before being baked. In many Montreal establishments, bagels are still produced by hand and baked in full view of the patrons. Montreal bagels, like the similarly shaped New York bagel, were brought to North America by Jewish immigrants from Poland and other Eastern European countries; the differences in texture and taste reflect the style of the particular area in Poland in which the immigrant bakers learned their trade. ..."
Wikipedia
Montreal Bagels: St-Viateur vs. Fairmount
The Hole Truth
YouTube: How We Make Montreal-Style Bagels, Montreal Bagels: The Lowdown, Myer's Bagel Bakery--Burlington, Vermont

2014 November: Bagel, 2016 February: Bialy

“The Spoiler” Speaks

"Jill Stein escaped 2012 without drawing quite the same ire from liberals as Ralph Nader in 2000 and 2004. If nothing else, that was a sign of the Green Party’s sagging fortunes and how comfortable Democrats felt about their monopoly over left-of-center voters in the Obama era. This year things are different. With Bernie Sanders’s social-democratic platform exciting a young base of Democratic primary voters, there appears to be real force in US politics emerging to the left of liberalism. ..."
Jacobin
Jacobin: Vermont’s Cautionary Tale

2016 August: Jill Stein

Shaking Up Italy’s Most Popular Museum

"FLORENCE, Italy — Eike Schmidt, the new director of the Uffizi Gallery here and the first non-Italian to hold the job, took what seemed a logical step. In the spring, he set up loudspeakers warning visitors about scalpers and pickpockets who target tourists waiting in the perennially long lines outside Italy’s most-visited museum, famous for its magnificent treasures by Botticelli and Raphael. But not everyone was grateful. A few days later, three Florence police officers with local media in tow arrived at his desk and handed him a fine of about $329, for broadcasting without proper city authorization. 'Initially I was a little bit angry,' Mr. Schmidt, a German art historian, said recently over a glass of wine. But he quickly spotted an opportunity, telling them he would pay the fine out of his own pocket. The next day, when he did, journalists were there snapping photos, making him an instant local celebrity. ..."
NY Times
Accademia Gallery

Pogo

Wikipedia - "Pogo is the title and central character of a long-running daily American comic strip, created by cartoonist Walt Kelly (1913–1973) and distributed by the Post-Hall Syndicate. Set in the Okefenokee Swamp of the southeastern United States, the strip often engaged in social and political satire through the adventures of its anthropomorphic funny animal characters. Pogo combined both sophisticated wit and slapstick physical comedy in a heady mix of allegory, Irish poetry, literary whimsy, puns and wordplay, lushly detailed artwork and broad burlesque humor. The same series of strips can be enjoyed on different levels by both young children and savvy adults. The strip earned Kelly a Reuben Award in 1951. ..."
Wikipedia
Going Pogo
W - Walt Kelly
Comic Strip / Pogo
Pogo Art
Whirled of Kelly
allmusic (Video)
amazon - Walt Kelly
YouTube: Pogo, The Pogo Special Birthday Special, Walt Kelly "Songs Of The Pogo" 1956 FULL ALBUM

Hugh Masekela - The Chisa Years: 1965-1975 (Rare and Unreleased)

"Hugh Masekela and Stewart Levine met in 1961 at the Manhattan School of Music. They became friends, roommates, and collaborators. They began experimenting with putting together groups of African singers, studio musicians, and a fusion of South African township jive and urban gospel. The two started the CHISA label together in 1966 just before the pair scored big with Masekela's smash, 'Grazin' in the Grass.' After the success of that track, they put more money into their label, and scored a distribution deal with Motown. The 14 sides here, on Chisa Years: 1965-1975 (Rare and Unreleased) are little known or forgotten tracks from the CHISA years. It's true that the Crusaders recorded for CHISA in this period, but there are no tracks by them on this set -- though most of the band appear here in one form or another. None of Masekela's hits are here either. And it's just as well. What is collected on this disc is a vibrant slew of cuts recorded by the pair. ..."
allmusic (Video)
Discogs
amazon
Spotify
YouTube: Afro Beat Blues, Macongo - Hugh Masekela & Letta Mbulu, Baranta with Miatta Fahinbulleh - Witch doctor, Baranta feat. Miatta Fahinbulleh -- Amo Sakesa, Cantaloupe - Best cover ever, Baranta with Miatta Fahinbulleh - Ahvuomo

The Pocket Louvre: A Visitor's Guide to 500 Works by Claude Mignot

"... Encyclopedic in its scope and exhausting in its magnitude, the Louvre has vast collections ranging from the 6th century B.C. to the mid-19th century. Its impressive architecture goes back 800 years, to its origins as a fortress guarding medieval Paris. In its contemporary incarnation, recently reconfigured and rebaptized 'The Grand Louvre,' it spreads over four levels and boasts more than 30,000 works of art; its galleries, shops, and offices occupy some 1.6 million square feet, of which some 645,000 are dedicated to exhibitions. Such daunting dimensions can make the museum feel like an endless labyrinth to uninitiated visitors. ..."
Abbeville Press
amazon

2014 August: Louvre

Saudis and Extremism: ‘Both the Arsonists and the Firefighters’

Muslim pilgrims surrounding the Kaaba, the black cube at the center of Islam’s holiest mosque in Mecca, in 2003. The Saudis’ export of Wahhabism has special cachet because the country is the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad.
"... The first American diplomat to serve as envoy to Muslim communities around the world visited 80 countries and concluded that the Saudi influence was destroying tolerant Islamic traditions. 'If the Saudis do not cease what they are doing,' the official, Farah Pandith, wrote last year, 'there must be diplomatic, cultural and economic consequences.'  And hardly a week passes without a television pundit or a newspaper columnist blaming Saudi Arabia for jihadist violence. On HBO, Bill Maher calls Saudi teachings 'medieval,' adding an epithet. In The Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria writes that the Saudis have 'created a monster in the world of Islam.' The idea has become a commonplace: that Saudi Arabia’s export of the rigid, bigoted, patriarchal, fundamentalist strain of Islam known as Wahhabism has fueled global extremism and contributed to terrorism. ..."
NY Times

Sun Ra - The Cry of Jazz (1958)

Wikipedia - "Cry of Jazz is a film by Ed Bland documenting Chicago's black neighborhoods. It includes interviews with artists and intellectuals and performances by Sun Ra and John Gilmore. ... The Library of Congress had this to say of the film and its significance: Cry of Jazz...is now recognized as an early and influential example of African-American independent filmmaking. Director Ed Bland, with the help of more than 60 volunteer crew members, intercuts scenes of life in Chicago’s black neighborhoods with interviews of interracial artists and intellectuals. Cry of Jazz argues that black life in America shares a structural identity with jazz music. With performance clips by the jazz composer, bandleader and pianist Sun Ra and his Arkestra, the film demonstrates the unifying tension between rehearsed and improvised jazz. ..."
Wikipedia
Open Culture - The Cry of Jazz: 1958’s Highly Controversial Film on Jazz & Race in America (With Music by Sun Ra)(Video)
NYT: Edward Bland, ‘Cry of Jazz’ Filmmaker and Composer, Dies at 86
The Cry of Jazz: Q & A with director Edward Bland
The Cry of Jazz and the expressive politics of music and race: interview with Ed Bland
ED BLAND.....Urban Classical Funk
Ed Bland’s remarkable short film ‘The Cry of Jazz’: Real talk on race & music in 1959
YouTube: Sun Ra - Cry Of Jazz 34:15

The Short Century

Le Gardien de la Vie - Hamed Ewais, 1967-1968
"Historical periods are not defined by calendar dates, but by significant events that mark the end of one era and the beginning of the next. The 20th Century is 'The Short Century,' a term popularised by the historian Eric Hobsbawm for an era that saw many of the most dramatic and extreme shifts in human history. This era was witness to the most violent wars, the largest human migrations, the rapid expansion of cities (now the largest centres of human life), the dominance of mechanised industry, and the rapid rise, conflict, and collapse of expansive ideologies that underpinned them. ... Each end demarcates stark shifts in politics, society, and cultural production. ..."
Barjeel Art Foundation
Arab art chronicles of the 20th century

Cryptography - Neal Stephenson (1999)

Wikipedia - "Cryptonomicon is a 1999 novel by American author Neal Stephenson, set in two different time periods. ... Cryptonomicon is closer to the genres of historical fiction and contemporary techno-thriller than to the science fiction of Stephenson's two previous novels, Snow Crash and Diamond Age. It features fictionalized characterizations of such historical figures as Alan Turing, Albert Einstein, Douglas MacArthur, Winston Churchill, Isoroku Yamamoto, Karl Dönitz, Hermann Göring, and Ronald Reagan, as well as some highly technical and detailed descriptions of modern cryptography and information security, with discussions of prime numbers, modular arithmetic, and Van Eck phreaking. ..."
Wikipedia
Guardian: Neal Stephenson's message in code
NY Times
amazon

Isabel Bishop

"Shop girls, down and out men, lone pedestrians on the way to the elevated train—from the 1930s to the 1980s, Isabel Bishop observed these men and women from her Union Square artist’s studio, painting them in soft tones that reveal their humanity and fragility. Born in 1902 in Cincinnati, Bishop moved to Manhattan at age 16 to attend the New York School of Applied Design for Women. She then took classes at the Art Students League, developing her talents as a printmaker and painter. Influenced by early Modernists like Robert Henri and old masters such as Rubens, she became associated with the 14th Street School, a group of realist artists that included Reginald Marsh and Raphael Soyer. ..."
Ephemeral New York
W - Isabel Bishop