Afropollination: Residency Power in the Global Underground


"In 2022 and 2023 Piranha Arts, in collaboration with Nyege Nyege, organized two six-week residencies in Kampala, Uganda and Hamburg, Germany. Thirty artists from across Africa and Germany came together to deconstruct and reimagine their art for a new generation of creatives. Practicing, performing, and exchanging in unlikely places, across languages and hemispheres, this residency program attacked ideas of appropriation, heritage, collaboration, and creation. Beyond difficulty and drama, past the ecstatic noise of festivals, this is a story of explosive creativity, diehard cultural exchange, and avant-garde community, from Kampala to Hamburg. ..."


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Herbert Kohl and James Hinton: Golden Boy as Anthony Cool (1972)


"Herbert Kohl and James Hinton’s 'Golden Boy as Anthony Cool,' published in 1972, is a seminal work in the study of urban graffiti and street culture. Not only an academic exploration; it’s a journey into the heart of graffiti as a form of personal expression, rebellion, and cultural identity. Kohl’s insightful essays paired with Hinton’s evocative photographs provide a window into the lives of young people in the urban landscapes of New York City and Los Angeles as they simultaneously boil, wane and flourish in the late 60s and early 70s. These vibrant and vibrating communities are chronicled, whether affluent suburbs or struggling neighborhoods, each appears to brim with stories cryptically told through tags and murals on walls and doors. ..."



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Echoes of the Jazz Age


"'Echoes of the Jazz Age' is a short essay by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald that was first published in Scribner's Magazine in November 1931. The essay analyzes the societal conditions in the United States which gave rise to the raucous historical era known as the Jazz Age and the subsequent events which led to the era's abrupt conclusion. The frequently anthologized essay represents an extended critique by Fitzgerald of 1920s hedonism and is regarded as one of Fitzgerald's finest non-fiction works. ... Fitzgerald's essay instead posits various technological innovations and cultural trends as fostering the societal conditions which typified the Jazz Age. He attributes the era's sexual revolution to a combination of both Sigmund Freud's sexual theories gaining salience among young Americans and the invention of the automobile allowing youths to escape parental surveillance. Echoing Voltaire's belief that novels influence social behavior, Fitzgerald cites the literary works by E. M. Hull, D. H. Lawrence, Radclyffe Hall, and others as influencing Americans to question their sexual norms. ..."



Flappers and patrons in front of The Krazy Kat, one of the famous speakeasies during the Jazz Age.
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(Djibouti Archives Vol. 1) Super Somali Sounds from the Gulf of Tadjoura; Mogadishu's Finest: The Al​-​Uruba Sessions


"In 2019, Ostinato Records became the first label granted access to the grand Archives of Radiodiffusion-Télévision de Djibouti (RTD), a vault of secrets and stories from East Africa. The first in our Djibouti Archives series is a seminal anthology of 4 Mars, a 40-member Somali supergroup behind the most streamed and downloaded track on our Grammy-nominated Sweet As Broken Dates compilation. The personal band of a political party, 4 Mars' sound reveals a brand new history of the world. ..."

"Seven years in the making, the official retrospective of one of Somalia's most famous and beloved private bands, Iftin. Digitized from cassettes recorded between 1982 and 1987 at the legendary Al-Uruba hotel's secret studio and the jams for the masses performed in the basement of Somalia's national theater. Banaadiri rhythms from Somalia's south, Mogadishu's finest vocalists, Dhaanto reggae-like guitar licks, and smoldering brass blend seamlessly with the sounds of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa to form one of rawest, most cosmopolitan eras of music anywhere. Iftin's Mogadishu is where the world's sounds begin and end. ..."

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World Central Kitchen halts operations in Gaza after strike kills staff


"International food charity World Central Kitchen (WCK) is suspending its operations in Gaza following the death of seven of its workers in an Israeli air strike. Three of the killed aid workers were British citizens, WCK said. The charity said those killed were part of an aid convoy that was leaving a warehouse in central Gaza on Monday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has acknowledged that Israel's forces hit 'innocent people'. Gaza's Hamas-run media office also blamed Israel. WCK is one of the main suppliers of desperately needed aid to Gaza. It said that it would 'be making decisions about the future of [its] work soon'. According to the charity, the aid convoy was hit while leaving the Deir al-Balah warehouse, 'where the team had unloaded more than 100 tons of humanitarian food aid brought to Gaza on the maritime route.' The convoy was made up of three vehicles, including two that were armoured. The BBC understands that all three were hit in the strike. ..."





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The Caitlin Clark Show Rolls On


"One way to view the meteoric growth of women’s college basketball is through the career arc of its current protagonist: Caitlin Clark, the University of Iowa’s stone-cold mad bomber. Her first college game came in an eerily quiet setting: no fans, players spaced out on bleachers and some wearing masks to protect against the coronavirus. Eventually that season, the atmosphere livened up with cardboard cutouts in the seats. ... The early rematch of last year’s national championship game ended fittingly, with the ball in Clark’s hands as she dribbled out the final seconds of Iowa’s 94-87 regional final victory over L.S.U. that was covered, as usual, in her fingerprints. If Clark exceeded her own standards — with 41 points, 12 assists and 7 rebounds — so, too, did the game, which was free of jawing, dismissive gestures and score settling. ..."






 
 
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How Did Conspiracy Theories Come to Dominate American Culture?


"Americans see hoaxes and plots everywhere: from climate change to immunizations to almost anything having to do with Hillary Clinton. But why? Is the constant stream of conspiracy theories a side effect of social media? Are conspiracy theories a product of the increasing polarization of politics? Or have they always been around and for some reason we just notice them more now? We can start to answer the last question: in their modern form, they have been around for at least two hundred years. The United States was less than ten years old when New England religious leaders sounded the alarm about the Illuminati’s plans to destroy the republic. And this was only the beginning. ..."





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Camus on Cassette: the 10 best existentially philosophical songs ever written


"Albert Camus once wrote, 'Maybe Christ died for somebody but not for me.' The inherent punk musicology of the French philosopher’s quote became apparent when Patti Smith borrowed heavily from it for the first line she would ever present to the world: 'Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine.' This touchstone between the two worlds typifies how the expressive potential of music is often the most existentially questioning medium of any art form. There is a deft beauty to being able to probe at the greatest questions man has ever mused upon in three sweet minutes that can float by without ever scathing your psyche if your mood doesn’t much care to grapple with the wherefores of the human comedy. However, that same song can catch you on a window-gazing day, and it seems to encapsulate the purpose of life somewhere in its sweet refrain. ..."



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Alligator Records: Crucial Blues Chicago, Crucial Slide Guitar Blues, Crucial Harmonica Blues, Crucial Guitar Blues, Crucial Texas Blues

“One of three simultaneously released, budget-priced Alligator blues compilations (the other two are Crucial Guitar Blues and Crucial Harmonica Blues), Crucial Chicago Blues is a 12-track anthology of the Chicago-based label's hometown artists. Harp players such as Carey Bell, James Cotton, and Junior Wells share space with guitarists Fenton Robinson, Magic Slim, Son Seals, and Lonnie Brooks, who nearly steals the show with his solo on a live "Cold Lonely Nights." Muddy Water's pianist, Pinetop Perkins, is the only keyboard entry and oldest performer. In fact, the album should put "contemporary" in its title, since the classic blues performers most fans associate with Chicago -- such as Otis Rush, Muddy Waters, and Howlin' Wolf -- were never Alligator artists and hence are not included. ..."

AllMusic

YouTube: Various – Crucial Chicago Blues 49:09

YouTube: Various – Crucial Slide Guitar Blues 53:25

YouTube: Various – Crucial Harmonica Blues 47:57

YouTube: Various – Crucial Guitar Blues 57:13

YouTube: Various – Crucial Texas Blues 53:38

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The Rent Was Too High So They Threw a Party


"Minnie Pindar was at home  in Harlem on a Saturday in 1929, and she had a party to throw. She and her sister, Lucibelle Pindar, had passed out invitations, printed on cheap, white card stock, promising a good time in their ground floor apartment at 149 West 117th Street. 'Refreshments Just It' and 'Music Won’t Quit,' the invitation read. Their invitation, one of dozens of similar party invitations tucked into the Langston Hughes papers at Yale’s Beinecke Library, hints at the rich but difficult lives of Black people living in New York at the dawn of the Harlem Renaissance. On that Saturday, Nov. 2, the Pindar sisters likely readied their home to welcome guests. Maybe they moved the furniture to make room for dancing. Maybe Ms. Pindar wore her best dress. There would likely be revelry and laughter that night, but throwing the party was a necessity. Every guest was expected to give them a quarter. The rent was due. ..."


 
 A black and white video shows a bustling street scene in New York in 1939.
 
2009 February: Harlem Renaissance, 2010 August: A Nightclub Map of Harlem, 2010 October: Apollo Theater, 2014 May: History of Harlem, 2014 November: A Harlem Throwback to the Era of Billie Holiday, 2015 February: A Nightclub Map of Harlem, 2017 June: During Prohibition, Harlem Night Clubs Kept the Party Going, 2018 March: How a Group of Journalists Turned Hip-Hop Into a Literary Movement, 2018 March: Rent party, 2018 December: The Sheck Wes story, 2019 January: Apollo Theater Is Celebrated in a New Graphic Novel, 2019 April: Minton's Playhouse, 2019 June: Loïs Mailou Jones, 2019 June: An Artist on Paying Homage to Harlem, and Using Found Fabrics in Paintings, 2019 October: Lenox Lounge, 2020 March: Bebopped and Rebopped: The Births of Bebop and Invisible Man, 2020 July: The Theater Where Ella Fitzgerald Got Her Start, 2020 August: A Walk Through Harlem, New York’s Most Storied Neighborhood
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Weimar culture

The Blue Angel (1930) was directed by Josef von Sternberg.

"Weimar culture was the emergence of the arts and sciences that happened in Germany during the Weimar Republic, the latter during that part of the interwar period between Germany's defeat in World War I in 1918 and Hitler's rise to power in 1933. 1920s Berlin was at the hectic center of the Weimar culture. Although not part of the Weimar Republic, some authors also include the German-speaking Austria, and particularly Vienna, as part of Weimar culture. Germany, and Berlin in particular, was fertile ground for intellectuals, artists, and innovators from many fields during the Weimar Republic years. The social environment was chaotic, and politics were passionate. ... Leading Jewish intellectuals on university faculties included physicist Albert Einstein; sociologists Karl Mannheim, Erich Fromm, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse; philosophers Ernst Cassirer and Edmund Husserl; political theorists Arthur Rosenberg and Gustav Meyer; and many others. ..."






Prostitutes buy cocaine capsules from a drug dealer in Berlin, 1930. 
The capsules sold for 5 marks each.
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Hüsker Dü, The Fastest Band In The World


"Hüsker Dü began when Greg Norton met Grant Hart at a record store in West St. Paul. Bob Mould comes to a Ramones show and the power trio is born. The band creates a label, Reflex records, and soon bond with Dead Kennedys front man, Jello Biafra. The Huskers put out the first Minnesota hardcore vinyl, Land Speed Record. The Replacements are their major rivals, comments Tommy Stinson."




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Maps of the April 2024 Total Solar Eclipse


"On April 8, the moon will slip between the Earth and the sun, casting a shadow across a swath of North America: a total solar eclipse. By cosmic coincidence, the moon and the sun appear roughly the same size in the sky. When the moon blocks the glare of the sun, the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, will be briefly visible. Below are several maps of the eclipse’s path as well as images of what you might experience during the event. The eclipse will begin at sunrise over the Pacific Ocean, then cut through Mexico and cross the United States from Texas to Maine. Most of North America will see a partial eclipse, but viewers within the deepest shadow — a band sliding from Mazatlán, Mexico, to the Newfoundland coast near Gander, Canada — will experience a total solar eclipse. ..."
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The Cult of the Criterion Collection: The Company Dedicated to Gathering & Distributing the Greatest Films from Around the World

"There was a time, not so very long ago, when many Americans watching movies at home neither knew nor cared who directed those movies. Nor did they feel particularly comfortable with dialogue that sometimes came subtitled, or with the 'black bars' that appeared below the frame. The considerable evolution of these audiences’ general relationship to film since then owes something to the adoption of widescreen televisions, but also to the Criterion Collection: the home-video brand that has been targeting its prestige releases of acclaimed films squarely at cinephiles — and even more so, at cinephiles with a collecting impulse — for four decades now. ..."




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Looking for Lorca in New York


"For a son of the titular city, reading Federico García Lorca’s Poet in New York is akin to curling into your lover, your nose dipped in the well of their collarbone, as they detail your mother’s various personality disorders. Yes, Federico, yes, my mother is thoroughly racist and takes every opportunity to remind me, her sometimes destitute child, about the silent cruelty of money. 'At least you got to leave,' I want to tell him. 'Imagine being stuck with her for the rest of your life.' He would likely understand my irrational attachment; after all, he was so consumed by Spain, its art and its politics, that his country would go on to swallow him whole. Still, it is crucial for those of us with this sort of umbilical tether to unwind it and test how far it might stretch. ..."





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Carlo Giustini – Custodi (2019), Manifestazioni (2018)


"Since the release of La Stanza di Fronte, Treviso sound artist and cassette tape lover Carlo Giustini’s debut album, on ACR at the beginning of last year, the young musician’s music has traveled along a clear trajectory. The spectral drones and use of fidelity/absence-as-sound that dominated that curious tape have remained steadfast elements in Giustini’s work, but as he progressed through various releases on labels such as Bad Cake, Purlieu, and No Rent the presence of melody and other more traditional ambient qualities have become increasingly prominent. Custodi, his second release on the Rohs! ..."



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Soho Weekly News


"The folks pictured above are a small sampling of the talent that made up the Soho Weekly News over its run from 1973 to 1982. Thanks to a generous donation from Allan and Joanna Wolper of their rare, bound collection of 24 volumes of the Soho Weekly News, the newspaper will be preserved when it travels with the rest of the Soho Memory Project Archive to the New York Historical Society, its future home. But before any of this happens, let’s have a look inside this treasure trove of downtown history with none other than Allan Wolper himself, who has written a Soho Weekly News Who’s Who of sorts, from Edward Gorey and Rex Reed to Bruce Springsteen and beyond. The many boldfaced names included here are a testament to the paper’s journalistic excellence. ..."



Style Section spread photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe
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Phill Niblock (1933–2024)


"How different Phill Niblock’s life would have been if he hadn’t moved into a third-floor loft on Centre Street, near New York’s Chinatown, in 1968. It was his home for the rest of his life, and it was there that the composer/filmmaker/photographer transformed the Experimental Intermedia Foundation, originally a performing-arts organization founded by choreographer Elaine Summers, into one of the premier artist-run experimental-music venues of downtown New York. Spontaneously inaugurating its concert series in 1973 with a gig of his own—relocated at the last minute from the Kitchen, which was deemed unusable after a blood-soaked performance by Hermann Nitsch the night before—he hosted hundreds of now-legendary artists. It was the most convivial and soulful avant-garde music spot imaginable: The performances took place in Phill’s spacious living room, complete with a formidable sound system with self-built speakers, while the socializing centered in the kitchen. ..."


2024 January: Phill Niblock

Arthur Russell, Elodie Lauten, and others performing at Experimental Intermedia, New York, 1983–84.
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The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen

Mary Bowman compares the "feigned" historical echoing of Beren and Lúthien in the "Tale of Aragorn and Arwen" with Dante's echoing of Lancelot and Guinevere in his tale of Paolo and Francesca, here in an 1862 painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

"'The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen' is a story within the Appendices of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. It narrates the love of the mortal Man Aragorn and the immortal Elf-maiden Arwen, telling the story of their first meeting, their eventual betrothal and marriage, and the circumstances of their deaths. Tolkien called the tale 'really essential to the story'. In contrast to the non-narrative appendices it extends the main story of the book to cover events both before and after it, one reason it would not fit in the main text. Tolkien gave another reason for its exclusion, namely that the main text is told from the hobbits' point of view. The tale to some extent mirrors the "Tale of Beren and Lúthien", set in an earlier age of Middle-earth. This creates a feeling of historical depth, in what scholars note is an approach similar to that of Dante in his Inferno. ..."




In Peter Jackson's The Lord of The Rings film trilogy, the tale is brought from the appendix into the main narrative, and (shown) Arwen brings the banner of the White Tree to Aragorn, and they are married. In the book these are separate events. Aragorn is shown wearing a circlet; Tolkien described the crown in the book as a taller version of the helmets of the city guard, and in a later letter as resembling the Hedjet of Upper Egypt
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“It’s This Line / Here” : Happy Belated Birthday to James Schuyler


"... The tiny, beloved 'Salute'—which is not the poem that I mean to discuss—both gathers and separates, does and then undoes what the poem says Schuyler meant to do but never did. (And isn’t this, the play of assembly and disassembly, to a certain extent just what verse is? How part and whole relate or fail to as the poem unfolds in time is a basic drama of poetic form.) Schuyler’s enjambments—at once distinct and soft, like the edge of a leaflet or the margin of a petal—are sites of hesitation where meanings collect before they’re scattered or revised. ..."



Fairfield Porter -  Portrait of James Schuyler
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Anthéne & David Cordero, Lost Under the Sea (Home Normal)


"Behind the nom de musique Anthéne is Torontonian Brad Deschamps, who also runs the fine label Polar Seas. David Cordero is from Cádiz, the ancient Spanish port. Both are prolific ambient composers worth cherishing. This album, featuring a photo of a foggy Toronto harbor by the former, is the result of file trading between the two and inspired by the vastness of the Atlantic that separates them. In its serene, beatless unfolding, Lost Under the Sea is Platonic-ideal ambient music, soft and comely with a hint of mysterious. The duo seamlessly mesh their guitars, tapes, 'modular,' glockenspiel and the merest wisp of wordless vocals to produce a very gentle undertow. There is actually nothing patently aquatic to the sound of Lost Under the Sea, no burbling brooks or sloshing waves, even though each title refers to water. As a whole, wet or dry, it is an exemplary album, and the penultimate track “Across Estuaries” is one of the most gorgeous pieces you’ll ever hear.  - Stephen Fruitman"




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Rudeboy: The Story of Trojan Records (2019)

""The story of Trojan Records, the most iconic British ska/rocksteady/reggae label, is inextricably linked to that of the Jamaican community in Britain. For seven years, the label — alongside very few others — served as the cultural voice for those who had recently traded the warm beaches of the West Indies for the rain-lashed streets of Hackney. It was a voice that sung for different reasons: sometimes with thoughts of home, sometimes lovelorn, sometimes with warnings or messages to the youth. Then it collapsed. Rudeboy: The Story of Trojan Records, directed by Nicolas Jack Davies, is the latest attempt to grasp the musical and social significance of the ska/rocksteady/reggae evolution. And it does not do it alone. A legion of greying legends appear across Rudeboy — Bunny Lee, Toots Hibbert, Pauline Black, and Derrick Morgan, to name but a few — and grant the audience some expert insights. ..."

Honi Soit

Discogs (Video)

amazon

YouTube: Rudeboy: The Story of Trojan Records (official trailer)

YouTube: Rudeboy: The Story of Trojan Records    1:25:16

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Too Little, Too Late: On American Media Executives’ Hypocritical Support of Palestinian Journalists

Internally displaced Palestinians gather to collect food donated by a charity group, in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Palestine, March 14, 2024.

"When it comes to righteous causes, I generally believe it is important to leave space for people to have an onramp to join at any time. If someone has not been actively supporting campaigns against racism, transphobia or injustice of various kinds, I do not want stigma or shame to keep any individual from joining the cause. The best response when someone shows up for the first time at an activism meeting or organizational space is not to embarrass them but to say, 'Welcome aboard!' However, I do not extend the same grace to welcoming people nor institutions in positions of enormous power, especially when they are still causing and benefiting from the unjust conditions people with less power than they wield are organizing against. It is in this spirit in which I read an open letter, 'News outlets express solidarity with journalists in Gaza' to be too little, too late, and too hypocritical. ..."





Palestinians gather to receive aid outside an UNRWA warehouse as Gaza residents face crisis levels of hunger, in Gaza City, March 18.
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The Clash – "White Riot" (1977), White Riot - Directed By Rubika Shah (2020)


"'White Riot';is a song by English punk rock band the Clash, released as the band's first single in March 1977 and also included on their self-titled debut album. ... There are two versions of the song: the single version (also appearing on the US version of the album released in 1979), was one of the first songs they recorded at CBS Studio 3 on Whitfield Street in Central London, after signing with CBS Records. ... Lyrically, the song is about class economics and race and thus proved controversial; some people thought it was advocating a kind of race war. ... In an interview with the New Musical Express in December 1976, Joe Strummer responded angrily to the suggestion that some people misinterpreted the 'White Riot' lyrics as racist, saying, 'They're not racist! They're not racist at all!'. Strummer pointed out that inner-city black youth were now fighting back against poverty and heavy-handed policing. 'White Riot' was a call to arms to white youth to fight back in the same way and have, in the words of the song, 'a riot of my own'. ..."

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An elegy for a surreal East Village dive bar that welcomed those in the shadows


"There’s something about legendary East Village bars that leave New Yorkers mourning them even decades after they close their doors. The tenth anniversary of the shuttering of Mars Bar in 2011, the gritty dive on Second Avenue and East First Street, merited tribute posts recalling its eclectic mix of regulars. Brownie’s, on Avenue A, pulled the plug in 2002, but Gen X fans are still reminiscing about the bands they saw there. So it seems unusual that one old-school East Village haunt has no Facebook fan group posting photos and videos, no articles bemoaning the reasons behind its closure. 
That haunt would be Eileen’s Reno Bar, a hole in the wall at 175 Second Avenue between 11th and 12th Streets. ..."


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