Seben Heaven: The Roots of Soukous

"Kanda Bongo Man’s 1987 hit 'Sai' is an assault of joyful energy from the opening note through to the last: Diblo Dibala’s lead guitar rings clearly above Guadeloupean drummer Ti Jean’s pounding kit, while Pablo Lubadika Porthos’ slick bass lines and Lokassa Ya Mbongo’s expert rhythmic twang provide a solid springboard. As the music takes off, Kanda shouts “kwassa kwassa” and the band shifts into high gear. This powerful studio production is archetypical Parisian soukous, recorded with a studio ensemble of household names – all stars in their own right – and aimed directly at the clubs. But what is this rapid-fire, guitar-driven music that swept Europe in the ’80s? Where did it come from, and where did it go? ..."
Red Bull Music Academy Daily (Video)

The spectral resistance

"A few weeks ago I went into the city to see a revival of Tom Stoppard’s 1974 play Travesties, in which Henry Carr, an elderly English civil servant, looks back on his time as a diplomat in Zurich in 1917, where he was witness to the various antics of James Joyce (composing Ulysses), Tristan Tzara (fomenting Dada), and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (plotting communist revolution). The play is a delightful, disorienting romp, but at its heart — somewhere between the sublimely apolitical aestheticism of Joyce and the burning political rage of Lenin — is a question that has occasioned endless thought over the past two centuries: what is the relationship between literature and politics? Does the 'revolution of the word' have anything to do with revolution in the world? ... The first two decades of the last century, when modernism was remaking European art and literature and popular revolution was remaking much of Europe, were the heyday of artistic 'manifestos': Marinetti’s futurist manifesto of 1909, the Vorticist manifestos Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound published in Blast in 1914, Hugo Ball’s Dada Manifesto of 1918, and so forth. ..."
Jacket2
W - One Big Union (concept)
amazon: The OBU Manifestos

2010 April: Little Red Songbook, 2016 September: Don't Mourn-Organize!: Songs of Labor Songwriter Joe Hill (1990), 2017 January: The Rebel Girl, 2017 March: Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

Dave Robinson - My Homeland (1976)

"My Homeland -Come on everyone, and listen to my song // Through my nationality, they refuse to set me free / But I know, oh yes I know I shall get home to Africa / 'Cause it's my homeland, where I belong, you know / And I love it so well, only time will tell, yeah // Many times I sit and I've wondered / About the many times I've been slandered, yeah / By the hypocrites-dem, by the hypocrites-dem / So ..."
Jah Lyrics
W - Dave Robinson
Discogs
YouTube: My Homeland [1976]

Curtis Mayfield - (Don’t Worry) If There’s A Hell Below, We’re All Going To Go (1970)

"... 'Hell Below,' [Curtis] Mayfield’s debut single as a solo artist, was released soon after he stepped down as the leader of the beloved soul group, The Impressions. The song also opens Curtis, his first solo album. Always a deliberate and self-aware artist, he didn’t choose randomly. He’d already steered The Impressions toward funkier, more conscious material—most notably on 1968’s This Is My Country and 1969’s The Young Mods’ Forgotten Story—but as a solo artist, he wanted to make a fresh impression beyond The Impressions. 'Hell Below' certainly did that. While The Impressions had shown occasional flashes of darkness or outrage, Mayfield’s sweet, silky tenor sounded more pleading than pummeling. It didn’t help that the diminutive, baby-faced Mayfield—whose bucktoothed smile is plastered on almost every Impressions LP—kind of looked like a teddy bear. On 'Hell Below,' though, he comes out like a grizzly. A feral bass line launches the song, growling and loping along like a wounded animal. On top of it, a Tower-Of-Babel clamor of voices—some gibbering like TV news, others pushing The Book Of Revelation—twist the mood from bestial to biblical. Then Mayfield steps up. To listeners in 1970, it must have been jolting. ..."
Curtis Mayfield, “(Don’t Worry) If There’s A Hell Below, We’re All Going To Go” (Video)
W - "(Don’t Worry) If There’s A Hell Below, We’re All Going To Go"
Genius (Audio)
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: ‎(Don't Worry) If There's A Hell Below We're All Going To Go

2013 June: Roots (1971), 2014 May: Super Fly (1972), 2014 July: There's No Place Like America Today (1975), 2014 September: Back to the World (1973), 2014 October: Omnibus (1995), 2015 March: "Freddie's Dead" (1972)

Gas - Edward Hopper (1940)

"... Take Gas. The petrol station on the empty road seems about to close down. The lights from the hut are almost fluorescent. The petrol pumps are garish splashes of red against a dense, dark background. The trees are solid and impenetrable - only the road continues, but it quickly disappears behind the building and there is no sign at all of where it might lead, if indeed it leads anywhere. And then there is the solitary, half-hidden figure. Is he turning off the pump, or hiding?It is impossible to tell. The only thing that is certain is that he is alone. And though by definition he is unaware of it, it is a loneliness he shares with nearly all the people who populate Hopper's world. ..."
Edward Hopper: All The Lonely People
Hopper “lost in an artist’s dream”: Gas (1940)
W - Gas (painting)
Whitney: Edward Hopper, Gas, 1940 (Audio)

2010 October: Finding Nighthawks, 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), 2016 September: Drug Store (1927), 2018 January: Seven A.M. (1948), 2018 February: Jo Hopper, Woman in the Sun

St. Paul & the Broken Bones - Half the City (2014)

"With a charismatic, dynamic, and theatrical lead singer who seems to channel the intensity of James Brown on-stage, a loose and punchy two-man horn section, and a garage band back line that holds everything down, Birmingham, Alabama's St. Paul & the Broken Bones at their best capture a retro-soul sound that echoes nothing so much as the classic Stax and Muscle Shoals sides from the late '60s and early '70s. Lead vocalist Paul Janeway's gospel-inflected soul singing is impassioned to say the least, and he wrings every ounce of sweat and soul out of the tracks included on this, the band's debut full-length album. From the opener, 'I'm Torn Up,' the stage is set for track after track of slow-burning and heart-wrenching soul ballads, a form that is obviously Janeway's specialty. He croons, and roars, and gasps, and groans, and slides through these songs like the second coming of Al Green, somehow smooth and rough and raw all at the same time, pure emotion tempered with a dose of gospel spark, and there's no denying this is his show. ..."
allmusic
W - St. Paul & the Broken Bones
Discogs
amazon, iTubes
YouTube: Half the City FULL ALBUM 39:09
YouTube: Call Me (Live), "Half the City", Apollo, I'll Be Your Woman, Broken Bones and Pocket Change, "Everybody Knows (The River Song)", "Let Me Roll It"

Apollo Theater Is Celebrated in a New Graphic Novel

The cover of the graphic novel, adapted from a history by the same author.

"The graphic novel 'Showtime at the Apollo: The Epic Tale of Harlem’s Legendary Theater' is like a sprawling Hollywood biopic. A sea of boldface names — James Brown, the Jackson Five, Dionne Warwick and countless others — make their way through the theater. The work, adapted by Ted Fox from his 1983 history of the same name, and illustrated by James Otis Smith, goes beyond the singers, dancers, comedians and other entertainers who have taken the stage of the Apollo, which celebrates its 85th anniversary this month. The book also shines a light on Harlem and black culture in America. Fox said he reworked his Apollo history into a focused narrative told in three acts, beginning years before the first performance at the theater. ..."

NY Times
Showtime At The Apollo: The Epic Tale Of Harlem’s Legendary Theater (Video)
amazon: Showtime at the Apollo: The Epic Tale of Harlem’s Legendary Theater

The graphic novel includes an inside view of the theater inspired by news clippings from a 1937 New York World-Telegram article.

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 Was the Year of the Labor Strike

Thousands of teachers, students and union allies march through downtown Los Angeles on December 15, 2018, ahead of a possible strike.
"For US workers, 2018 was the year of the strike. It may seem incongruent for workers to have gotten more militant in making demands of their employers in an economy with such low unemployment. The unemployment rate has hovered around 4 percent or less this year. If so many people can find work, what’s the problem? Even as many of us have gone back to work in the years since the Great Recession, we’re not being rewarded for our labor. Wage growth has just recently started to show signs of increasing — it was up 3.1 percent over the last year, as of the most recent jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics — but it’s still lagging behind where it was before the recession and where you’d expect it to be, given the low unemployment rate. Four in ten adults in the US say they don’t have the money to cover an unexpected $400 emergency and more than a fifth can’t pay all of their monthly bills in full. ..."
TruthOut
Soundcloud: Punching Out (Audio)

Battle of Quebec

Good Friday Massacre
Wikipedia - "The Battle of Quebec is a former National Hockey League (NHL) rivalry between the Montreal Canadiens and Quebec Nordiques. The rivalry lasted from 1979–80 to 1994–95. The teams played against each other five times in the NHL playoffs, and the Canadiens won three of the series. One meeting in 1984 resulted in the Good Friday Massacre, a game in which multiple brawls happened. The Battle of Quebec extended to politics, in which the Canadiens and Nordiques became symbols for rival parties, and beer distribution, as the teams were both owned by competing breweries. ..."
W - Battle of Quebec
W - Good Friday Massacre
La Bataille du Québec 1979-1995 - The Montreal Canadiens vs. the Quebec Nordiques (Video)
The Atlantic: Remembering Hockey's 'Good Friday Massacre,' 28 Years Later (Video)
Quebec Nordiques – A History of Beer, Brawls, and Van Halen
SI: The Battle of Quebec
Waiting for the Nordiques: Quebec City doesn’t mind being NHL’s Plan B
YouTube: Quebec Nordiques: History & Future, Canadiens vs Nordiques - Oct.28,1979, NHL Classics: Good Friday Massacre 1984 playoffs

A Gilded Age painter’s rainy, wintry New York

"Cold rain and wet snow make it hard to get around New York on foot and take in its beauty. But damp weather like this was ideal for the Impressionist painters who lived and worked in the city at the turn of the last century. With dark streets marked by puddles and tree branches heavy with water, the Gilded Age city glistened. The blurred faces of New Yorkers in black coats and hats came across as elusive and mysterious. Carriages and street cars made their way through wet streets with passengers hidden and snug inside. Tall buildings higher than treetops and small walkup tenements alternate in the background. Few painters revel in this rainy enchantment quite like Paul Cornoyer. Born in St. Louis in 1864, he came to New York at the tail end of the Gilded Age in 1899. ..."
Ephemeral New York

The Largest J.R.R. Tolkien Exhibit in Generations Is Coming to the U.S.: Original Drawings, Manuscripts, Maps & More

"'I first took on The Lord of the Rings at the age of eleven or twelve,' writes The New Yorker's Anthony Lane. ... And it hardly requires covering much more ground to get from hungering to know everything about the world of The Lord of the Rings — one rich with its own terrain, its own races, its own languages — to hungering to know how Tolkien created it. Now the countless Lord of the Rings enthusiasts in America have their chance to behold the materials first-hand. The exhibition Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth, which runs from January 25th to May 12th of this year at New York's Morgan Library and Museum, will assemble 'the most extensive public display of original Tolkien material for several generations,' drawing from 'the collections of the Tolkien Archive at the Bodleian Library (Oxford), Marquette University Libraries (Milwaukee), the Morgan, and private lenders.' ..."
Open Culture (Video)

When America Stared Into the Abyss

"The Treasury secretary’s voice exuded tension and urgency. 'A very serious situation is developing,' Henry Paulson warned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the phone. 'Nothing we can say will calm the situation until we come up with a policy that is overwhelming force!' Later that Thursday afternoon, Pelosi received the same dire message when she telephoned Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke; financial markets were seizing up, major Wall Street firms were on the brink of collapse, and the nation’s economy hovered perilously on the edge of an abyss. Pelosi recalls asking, alarmed, 'If things are this bad, why aren’t you calling me?' Paulson and Bernanke urgently requested the speaker to convene the bicameral congressional leadership to hear the George W. Bush administration’s proposed response to the rapidly accelerating crisis. Pelosi agreed to call a meeting the next day. That might be too late, Bernanke cautioned. Indeed, without swift action, there might not be an American economy by the end of the weekend. ..."
The Atlantic
The Atlantic: The Nancy Pelosi Problem (April 2018)
The Atlantic: How Wall Street’s Bankers Stayed Out of Jail (Sep. 2015)
The Atlantic: The Never-Ending Foreclosure (Dec. 2017)
The Atlantic: This Sociological Theory Explains Why Wall Street Is Rigged for Crisis (Sep. 2013)

The Death of Stalin - Armando Iannucci (2017)

"... And so to 'The Death of Stalin,' a startling new film from Armando Iannucci. The title does not lie. Less than twenty minutes into the movie, Joseph Stalin (Adrian McLoughlin) is found lying on a rug in his dacha, outside Moscow. It is March, 1953, and breakfast is ready, but the great leader has been felled by a stroke. Steeped in urine, he is soon surrounded by a small horde of henchmen from the Central Committee. First to arrive is Beria (Simon Russell Beale), Stalin’s fellow-Georgian and the head of the N.K.V.D., the security service, followed by Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor)—next in line to succeed Stalin, and dreadfully pale at the prospect—and Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi), still wearing his pajamas under his suit. Then comes the rest of the gang, including Kaganovich (Dermot Crowley), Mikoyan (Paul Whitehouse), and Bulganin (Paul Chahidi). Notable by his absence is Molotov (Michael Palin), whose wife has been arrested. His own head could be on the block. The problem, for all concerned, is the idea of a Stalin-free land. ..."
New Yorker: “The Death of Stalin” Dares to Make Evil Funny
Slate: What’s Fact and What’s Fiction in The Death of Stalin
W - The Death of Stalin
NY Times: The Slapstick Horror of ‘The Death of Stalin’
amazon
YouTube: The Death of Stalin - Official Green Band Trailer, THE DEATH OF STALIN - OFFICIAL TRAILER [HD]

Record Collector Is The Best Record Store In Iowa

"... I became obsessed with music at a young age, and wanted as much as I could possibly hear. I scavenged to build my music collection. I ripped my older siblings CDs into my library. I had a friend whose parents’ enormous CD collection included every classic rock and pop record from every decade dating back to the 1960s; I borrowed and ripped all of those. ... All but one of my friends went off together to attend Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, the other stayed back in Waukon. I left that sparse Iowa town after graduating and packed into a 19’x9 single dorm room for my first year at the University of Iowa in Iowa City without a single friend. ... I’d never been to a record store. Like other small town kids in Iowa who moved to Iowa City to attend the University of Iowa, I didn’t really know what it meant to be a part of a music scene beyond just myself. It was called Record Collector. ..."
Vinyl Me, Please (Video)

Author and Experimental Musician David Toop on Hip-Hop’s First Decade

"Since the mid-1970s, David Toop has skillfully combined careers in three disparate disciplines: music, journalism and academia. In that time, he has earned respect from his peers in all three fields, releasing a wealth of cutting-edge albums and a number of exemplary music books. It was in the world of improvised music that Toop first made his mark, joining forces with free-jazz musician Max Eastley for the 1975 full-length New And Rediscovered Musical Instruments on Brian Eno’s label, Obscure Records. Since then, he has continued to record and release albums that draw inspiration from a myriad of experimental styles, in the process collaborating with like-minded musicians including Eno, Scanner, Bill Laswell, Jeff Noon, Ken Ikeda and Japanese art-pop troop Frank Chickens. ..."
Red Bull Music Academy Daily (Video)
David Toop (Video)

2018 March: David Toop Is Still Seeking Out New Sounds

Lee Dodou & The Polyversal Souls - Basa Basa

"As the lead singer of George Darko's legendary Burger-Highlife hit-band, Lee Dodou became the number one voice of 80's Highlife. Born in Kumasi, the epicenter of Ghanaian Highlife, he came to Berlin in the late 70's - by then the uprising epicenter of Burger-Highlife - to work as a back-up-singer for Pat Thomas. After joining and leaving Georg Darko and running his own band 'Kantata', he stopped releasing music in the early 90's. Now, Philophon is proud to present new recordings of his soulful genius to the world of 2018. Basa Basa is a song in the classic 'concert party' style, as it was played in the glorious 60's. After a firey horn introduction Lee takes over in that funny and entertaining manner typical for 'concert party' music. ..."
Holland Tunnel Dive
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: Basa Basa, Sahara Akwantuo

See for Yourself

“Cleaning the Drapes,” also from House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home.
"The black-and-white video looks, just for a moment, like it might be a real cooking show. The female host holds up a chalkboard displaying its title, then puts on her apron and picks up a bowl. Yet instead of preparing food, she begins to stir with an invisible spoon. One by one, she picks up kitchen utensils and says their names aloud, making her way through the alphabet—'apron,' 'bowl,' 'chopper,' 'dish,' and so on—until she reaches U and starts spelling out the rest of the letters with her body. She never handles any food. Martha Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen is one of the artist’s most beloved works. The six-minute video parodies cooking demonstrations, replacing the typical gracious host with, in the artist’s words, 'an anti-Julia Child' played by Rosler, who doesn’t smile and maintains a withering stare throughout. ..."
New Republic
The Living Room War: A Conversation with Artist Martha Rosler
INTERVIEW with MARTHA ROSLER, The Artist Who Speaks Softly but Carries a Big Shtick
MoMA (Audio)
NY Times: Martha Rosler Isn’t Done Making Protest Art
W - Martha Rosler
YouTube: Semiotics of the Kitchen 1975

Tortilla Flat - John Steinbeck (1935)

"Tortilla Flat was, I believe, John Steinbeck's third novel first published in 1935, and it marked his first of many commercially successful novels. As with many of his novels it is set in Monterey, California. It tells the story of Danny and his friends, a group of paisanos - a word of Spanish origin referring to poor countrymen. At the start of the novel, in the preface, we see them leaving to join the military during World War I, but by the first chapter they have returned. ... Tortilla Flat follows the adventures of the friends, some rather extravagant, some essentially rather mundane, but even so this book is such a pleasure to read. It's fun and lighthearted, very comic at times, but above all else it was very warm and vibrant. It's a novel about friendship and we see how, in Monterey where people are poor and are possessions are few, friends and small communities are structured outside the more familiar class system. ... But it's a beautiful one, very simple and even honest to a degree (though one must acknowledge the reader may be uncomfortable with the portrayal of paisanos as layabouts), and yet again I am reminded that Steinbeck is one of the greatest authors of the 20th Century."
On Books
Guardian: John Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat is not for 'literary slummers'
W - Tortilla Flat
[PDF] Tortilla Flat
amazon

William Basinski - A Shadow in Time (2017)

"In the fifteen years since William Basinski released the debut installment of his Disintegration Loops series he has been rapidly, and rightly, lionized. But for two decades prior to that, he was just another eccentric artist in New York, a tinkerer who built his own instruments, ran a venue and experimented insatiably with tape loops. He would tune in to the easy listening piped out by CBS and record snippets of it, creating a massive archive of schmaltz that, through the alchemy of sampling, could be transfigured into something infinitely more haunting. 'I would set up loops, get them going, put on the tape recorder and let it go for the length of the cassette because if it was going, it captured this eternal moment,' he told The Quietus in 2012. That eternal-moment is quintessential Basinski; his work has been uniquely fixated on time and loss, his compositions heaving with longing, melancholy and a sense of impenetrable mystery. ..."
Pitchfork (Audio)
W - A Shadow in Time
William Basinski’s A Shadow In Time is the tribute David Bowie deserves (Audio/Video)
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: A Shadow in Time, For David Robert Jones


2017 January: The Disintegration Loops (2002-2003), 2017 October: Watermusic II (2003), 2018 January: The Garden Of Brokenness (2005)

The 1959 Project - January 1, 1959

Charles Mingus, John Handy and Booker Ervin playing at the Five Spot while Orson Welles listens, 1958
"Anyone ringing in 1959 in Manhattan had options: Eartha Kitt at the Waldorf, Dizzy Gillespie at the Village Vanguard, Count Basie and Joe Williams at Birdland (which was broadcast nationally on CBS Radio’s 'New Year’s Eve Dancing Party'), Teddy Wilson at The Embers (54th St. and 3rd Ave.), Willie 'The Lion' Smith at Central Plaza (6th St. and 2nd Ave.), and Blossom Dearie at Versailles (9th St. and 6th Ave.) among many, many others. But the most tantalizing line-up, in retrospect, might have been at humble East Village club the Five Spot (Bowery Ave. between 4th and 5th St.), where Sonny Rollins and Charles Mingus were performing with their ensembles. ..."
The 1959 Project (Video)

Watch an Art Conservator Bring Classic Paintings Back to Life in Intriguingly Narrated Videos

"Even in our age of unprecedentedly abundant images, delivered to us at all times by print, film, television, and especially the ever-multiplying forms of digital media, something inside us still values paintings. It must have to do with their physicality, the physicality of oil on canvas or whatever tangible materials the painter originally used. But in that great advantage of the painting lies the great disadvantage of the painting: tangible materials degrade over time, and many, if not most, of the paintings we most revere have been around for a long time indeed, and few of them have come down to us in pristine shape. Enter the art restorer, who takes on the task of undoing, painstakingly and entirely by hand, both the ravages of time and the blunders of less competent stewards who have come before. In this case, enter Julian Baumgartner of Chicago's Baumgartner Fine Art Restoration, a meditative short documentary on whose practice we featured earlier this year here on Open Culture. ..."
Open Culture (Video)

Africa is a Country - World Cup 2018

The 2010 World Cup was tumultuous for France; both an athletic failure and a site of social conflict.
"The Respectable French - Football exerts a tortured fascination on the French public. It is fashionable to scoff at the benighted masses turning to football as an opium and to deplore the bad behavior and flashy spending of footballers. But everyone goes back to being a fan if Les Bleus are winning. The only country to qualify for three World Cup finals in twenty years, France also flamed out in the group stage at two of the tournaments in between 1998 and now. As Les Bleus’ athletic performance has seesawed, so has the team’s perception by an increasingly racist, classist society. Countless retrospectives have looked back at the French 1998 squad and the illusory dream of 'black-blanc-beur' unity. But while the memory of that victory 20 years ago is beloved, what really shapes the current iteration of Les Bleus was the tumultuous 2010 World Cup. ..."
Africa is a Country - The Respectable French
Africa is a Country - World Cup 2018

French national football team squad member, Paul Pogba with the national team at the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Africa is a Country - Pogbacité By Laurent Dubois

Arthur Russell - The World Of Arthur Russell (2004)

"There appears to be a typo on the usually on-point Soul Jazz label, in that an 'S' is missing from the title of their attempted overview of the enigmatic New York scene cellist Arthur Russell. If anything, there were many musical 'worlds' for Iowa-born Arthur Russell, and he floated between them effortlessly in a way that, up until death from AIDS in 1992, no one else had. There was the world of Indian master-musician Ali Akbar Khan, in which Arthur used his cello to trance-inducing effect. There was the world where his cello shadowed the beat-poet Allen Ginsburg at readings, as well as the world of The Kitchen, where he premiered his peculiar minimal compositions while also rubbing elbows with composers like John Cage, Rhys Chatham, and Philip Glass. He was in the rock world, too, nearly joining the Talking Heads and forming the short-lived Flying Hearts with ex-Modern Lover Ernie Brooks. He even briefly produced quirky tracks in the rap world, frustrating young rapper Mark Sinclair who would one day go on to make it as the meat-headed action hero Vin Diesel. ..."
Pitchfork
Sounds of the Universe (Audio)
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: The world of Arthur Russell (Full album) 1:13:13

2015 November: Love Of Life Orchestra ‎– Extended Niceties EP (1980), 2015 September: Arthur Russell, 2017 January: Instrumentals (2007), 2017 April: The Infinite Worlds of Arthur Russell

Manhole covers that left their mark on New York

"To get a sense of modern, massive New York City, you have to look up and take in the scope of the bridges, apartment towers, and skyscrapers. But to uncover the city’s past, it helps to look down. That’s where you’ll find manhole covers not stamped 'Con Edison' or 'Made in India' but embossed with a local manufacturer’s name and signature design motif. Instead of cookie cutter lids that all look alike, these covers turn a utilitarian object into something sublime. One of my favorites is the one at the top of the page by J.B. and J.M. Cornell, a manufacturer of specialty and ornamental ironwork since 1828, according to glassian.com. The address on the cover is that of the company; the cover itself was spotted in Brooklyn Heights. (Patented 1845!) The cover likely had glass over the holes at one time, allowing light through. ..."
Ephemeral New York

Latin Underground Revolution: Swinging Boogaloo, Guaguanco, Salsa & Latin Funk from New York City 1967-1978

"A cooking collection of rare Latin soul tracks from the end of the 60s – and a few great salsa numbers from the 70s underground too. The cover shot is from a Louie Ramirez album from the boogaloo years. It is with great pride and excitement that we bring you Latin Underground Revolution: Swinging Boogaloo, Guaguanco, Salsa & Latin Funk from New York City 1967-1978 triple-45 box set. We have compiled an exciting mix of hard to find dance floor delights showcasing three different eras of latin music in NYC throughout the late 1960s & 1970s."
Holland Tunnel Dive
Discogs (Video)
Rocafort Records (Audio)
YouTube: 107th Street Stickball Team - Let Me Do My Thing

Atlantic City - Louis Malle (1980)

Wikipedia - "Atlantic City is a 1980 French-Canadian romantic crime film directed by Louis Malle. Filmed in late 1979, it was released in France and Germany in 1980 and in the United States in 1981. The script was written by John Guare. It stars Burt Lancaster, Susan Sarandon, Kate Reid, Robert Joy, Hollis McLaren, Michel Piccoli, and Al Waxman. ... Sally (Susan Sarandon) is a young waitress in an Atlantic City casino who has dreams of becoming a blackjack dealer in Monte Carlo. Sally's estranged husband Dave (Robert Joy) returns to her one day with the intention of selling a large amount of cocaine that he had stolen in Philadelphia and meets Lou (Burt Lancaster), an aging former gangster who lives in Sally's apartment building and runs numbers in poor areas of the city; he also acts as a caretaker for Grace (Kate Reid), a seemingly bedridden aging beauty. Dave convinces Lou to sell the cocaine for him, but as Lou sells the first batch, Dave is attacked and killed by the mobsters from whom he had stolen the drugs. ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times: 'ATLANTIC CITY,' LOUIS MALLE GHOST STORY By VINCENT CANBY (April 3, 1981)
Roger Ebert
YouTube: Atlantic City original trailer

32 North Kentucky Avenue, Atlantic City, New Jersey. W - Club Harlem

Constellation

Johannes Hevelius, Prodromus Astronomia, volume III: Firmamentum Sobiescianum, sive Uranographia, table QQ: Orion, 1690.
Wikipedia - "A constellation is a group of stars that forms an imaginary outline or pattern on the celestial sphere, typically representing an animal, mythological person or creature, a god, or an inanimate object. The origins of the earliest constellations likely go back to prehistory. People used them to relate stories of their beliefs, experiences, creation, or mythology. Different cultures and countries adopted their own constellations, some of which lasted into the early 20th century before today's constellations were internationally recognized. Adoption of constellations has changed significantly over time. Many have changed in size or shape. Some became popular, only to drop into obscurity. Others were limited to single cultures or nations. The 48 traditional Western constellations are Greek. ..."
Wikipedia
Decatur Area Astronomy Club
W - IAU designated constellations
Stellarium is a free open source

Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 - Black Times (2017)

"During his lifetime, Fela Kuti, the godfather of Afrobeat, was a cultural icon and one of the leading voices of unrest during the Civil War in Nigeria. He’s the country’s most famous musician, and perhaps its most popular child, too. Now, Seun Kuti, Fela’s youngest son, has emerged to carry his father’s legacy. He’s the current leader of Fela’s old band, Egypt 80, a group that changed its name from Africa 70 after Fela sensed a need to educate his audience on Egypt’s contributions to the world. While it’d make sense for the child of a celebrity to run from such parental weight, Seun has embraced it fully, tying his identity to his father’s. ... Seun’s philosophy is mostly aligned with his father’s because the current political situation in Nigeria reflects the fight Fela engaged in during the 1960s and ‘70s. ..."
On “Black Times,” Afrobeat Artist Seun Kuti Extends His Father’s Legacy (Audio)
Seun Kuti's 'Black Times' Is About "Knowing Who You Are As A Motherland Person In This World Today" (Video/Audio)
Discogs (Video)
amazon, iTunes
YouTube: Black Times (Live on KEXP)
YouTube: Black Times (Full Album) 1:01:10

The Economy Is Leaving Young People Behind

"Then the Great Recession hit, wiping out trillions of dollars in middle-class wealth, young people weren’t spared. They graduated into the weakest labor market since the 1930s, lost homes that many had just purchased, and accumulated an ever-growing pile of student debt that could not be discharged despite their financial distress. Things have gotten somewhat better since the depths of the recession, but young people are still worse off than they were decades ago. Their diminished economic position is apparent across a range of metrics. First, here is median net worth for young families. I included both the net worth concept used by the Federal Reserve and a modified net worth concept that excludes vehicles. Insofar as vehicles are rapidly depreciating consumer durables, many argue that they should not be counted as assets for these purposes. ..."
Jacobin

Macondo Mix: Pharoah’s World

"Hailing from Rome, Florence based, Simona Faraone is one of the first women to have undertaken the DJ career in Italy and Europe. Refined digger of cutting-edge sounds, she started a long and respected militancy in the Italian underground scene in 1987, with a background deeply rooted in the African-American music and an eclectic, original style. As an activist in the Italian club culture, she’s seen the birth and partaken in almost all the electronic music movements: from the seminal house and techno-rave, across the progressive detour, until the manifold forms of contemporary electronica. ... Her very own project of 'Phonographic Editions From Tomorrow’s World' called New Interplanetary Melodies was born in 2016 paying tribute to the unique and visionary approach of Sun Ra. It’s an experimental, free, transversal, and contaminated imprint which aims at promoting the sound of brilliant unconventional music producers and musicians, to create a parallel dimension in the world of modern independent sounds. ..."
Musica Macondo (Audio)

Dakota War of 1862

Wikipedia - "The Dakota War of 1862, also known as the Sioux Uprising, the Dakota Uprising, the Sioux Outbreak of 1862, the Dakota Conflict, the U.S.–Dakota War of 1862 or Little Crow's War, was an armed conflict between the United States and several bands of Dakota (also known as the eastern 'Sioux'). It began on August 17, 1862, along the Minnesota River in southwest Minnesota, four years after its admission as a state. Throughout the late 1850s in the lead-up to the war, treaty violations by the United States and late or unfair annuity payments by Indian agents caused increasing hunger and hardship among the Dakota. ... A military tribunal quickly tried the men, sentencing 303 to death for their crimes. President Lincoln would later commute the sentence of 264 of them. The mass hanging of 38 Dakota men was conducted on December 26, 1862, in Mankato, Minnesota; it was the largest mass execution in United States history. ..."
W - Dakota War of 1862
The Dakota Sioux Execution Was The Largest In U.S. History — But America Has Forgotten It
YouTube: DAKOTA 38 - Full Movie

1904 painting "Attack on New Ulm" by Anton Gag

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

John Prine - Everybody (1972)

"While out sailing on the ocean
While out sailing on the sea
I bumped into the Savior
And He said pardon me
I said 'Jesus you look tired'
He said 'Jesus so do you,
Sit down son
'Cause I got some fat to chew'"
YouTube: Everybody

2010 February: John Prine, 2011 October: John Prine - 1, 2012 May: Diamonds in the Rough., 2013 September: Sweet Revenge (1973), 2016 February: "Souvenirs" - John Prine & Steve Goodman (1973)

Poet Among Painters by James Schuyler

Frank O'Hara
"I first met Frank O'Hara at a party at John Myers' after a Larry Rivers opening: de Kooning and Nell Blaine were there, arguing about whether it is deleterious for an artist to do commercial work. I was most impressed by the company I was suddenly keeping. A very young-looking man came up and introduced himself (I had already read a poem by Frank in Accent, the exquisitely witty 'Three Penny Opera,' written either at Harvard or at Michigan.) He asked me if I had read Janet Flanner that week in the New Yorker, who had just disclosed the scandal of Gide's wife burning all his letters to her. 'I never liked Gide,' Frank said, 'but I didn't realize he was a complete shit.' This was rich stuff, and we talked a long time; or rather, as was so often the case, he talked and I listened. His conversation was self-propelling and one idea, or anecdote, or bon mot was fuel to his own fire, inspiring him verbally to blaze ahead, that curious voice rising and falling, full of invisible italics, the strong pianist's hands gesturing with the invariable cigarette. ..."
This Recording
PennSound - USA: Poetry Films by Robert O. Moore, 1966 (Video)

Washington Square - Henry James (1880)

Wikipedia - "Washington Square is a short novel by Henry James. Originally published in 1880 as a serial in Cornhill Magazine and Harper's New Monthly Magazine, it is a structurally simple tragicomedy that recounts the conflict between a dull but sweet daughter and her brilliant, unemotional father. The plot of the novel is based upon a true story told to James by his close friend, British actress Fanny Kemble. The book is often compared with Jane Austen's work for the clarity and grace of its prose and its intense focus on family relationships. James was not a great fan of Washington Square. He tried to read it over for inclusion in the New York Edition of his fiction (1907–1909) but found that he could not, so the novel was not included. Readers, though, have sufficiently enjoyed the book to make it one of the more popular of James' works. ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times: Discussing ‘Washington Square,’ by Henry James
Henry James and Washington Square
Henry James’s (and Later William Wyler’s) Washington Square
[PDF] Washington Square

Frank M. Ingalls, New York City: Washington Square Park and arch, Double-decker buses visible, ca. 1901-1930.

2018 January: The Bostonians (1886), 2018 September: The Golden Bowl (1904)