East Harlem/Spanish Harlem/El Barrio

 

“East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem or El Barrio, is a neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, New York City, roughly encompassing the area north of the Upper East Side and bounded by 96th Street to the south, Fifth Avenue to the west, and the East and Harlem Rivers to the east and north. Despite its name, it is generally not considered to be a part of Harlem proper, but it is one of the neighborhoods included in Greater Harlem. … Southern Italians and Sicilians, with a moderate number of Northern Italians, soon predominated, especially in the area east of Lexington Avenuebetween 96th and 116th Streets and east of Madison Avenue between 116th and 125th Streets, with each street featuring people from different regions of Italy. ...”

Wikipedia

NY Times: Spanish Harlem on His Mind

Latino Art in NYC: A Short History of El Museo del Barrio

W – La Marqueta

NY Times: Honoring Latinx Art, Personal and Political

2011 November: Charlie Palmieri, 2014 March: Harlem River Drive - Harlem River Drive (1971), 2014 October: Fania at Fifty, 2017 December: Nu Yorica: Culture Clash In New York City - Experiments in Latin Music 1970-77, 2018 December: Latin Underground Revolution: Swinging Boogaloo, Guaguanco, Salsa & Latin Funk from New York City 1967-1978, 2017 June: Eddie Palmieri - Unfinished Masterpiece (1976), 2018 July: The Soul Of Spanish Harlem / El Barrio: Sounds from the Spanish Harlem Streets, 2011 June: Mario Bauzá, 2017 June: Rhythm & Power: Salsa in New York, 2012 February: Rubén Blades, 2017 December: Carlos Vera: Barcelona's Boogaloo: Mixes and Mashups, 2019 April: An NYC Mambo, Boogaloo and Salsa Family Tree, 2019 October: Best Fania Samples: 20 Latin Grooves That Helped Build Hip-Hop, 2021 February: Fania Records

 

Spanish Harlem (El Barrio) (Video)

Eno is a 1973 documentary short film directed by Alfons Sinniger.

 

“Eno is a 1973 documentary short film directed by Alfons Sinniger. The subject of the film is musician Brian Eno (shortly after his departure from Roxy Music), and features the recording sessions for Eno's record Here Come the Warm Jets. There is one live recording of one of the Eno/Winkies shows, from Kings Hall in Derby on February 13th, 1974, but it is an extremely lo-fi audience recording. ...  On February 19th, 1974 Eno and The Winkies were taped for a John Peel session performing ‘The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch’ and a cover version of Peggy Lee’s ‘Fever.’ ...”

UbuWeb (Video)

​Is Old Music Killing New Music?

 

Old recordings, like zombies in those bad films, are out to kill the living

“I had a hunch that old songs were taking over music streaming platforms—but even I was shocked when I saw the most recent numbers. According to MRC Data, old songs now represent 70% of the US music market.Those who make a living from new music—especially that endangered species known as the working musician—have to look on these figures with fear and trembling.But the news gets worse. The new music market is actually shrinking. All the growth in the market is coming from old songs. Just consider these facts: the 200 most popular tracks now account for less than 5% of total streams. It was twice that rate just three years ago. ...”

Ted Gioia

Just Mercy - Destin Daniel Cretton (2019)

 

“Just Mercy is a 2019 American biographical legal drama film co-written and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, and starring Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, Rob Morgan, Tim Blake Nelson, Rafe Spall, and Brie Larson. It tells the true story of Walter McMillian, who, with the help of young defense attorney Bryan Stevenson, appeals his murder conviction. The film is based on the memoir of the same name, written by Stevenson. ...”

Wikipedia

Slate: What’s Fact and What’s Fiction in Just Mercy (Video)

ejl: Equal Justice Initiative (Video)

YouTube: JUST MERCY Official Trailer

​Pharoah Sanders – Live In Paris (1975) (Lost ORTF Recordings)

 

“When Pharoah Sanders played tenor saxophone with John Coltrane in the 1960s, his tone was harsh and wild. Soloing alongside Coltrane on records like Ascension, Om, and Live in Japan, Sanders’ horn would shriek and howl and cry, reaching a pitch of earth-shaking intensity on pieces that pushed jazz to the limits of legibility. But after Coltrane’s death in 1967, Sanders began exploring a different path. Playing with Alice Coltrane on Ptah, the El Daoud and Journey in Satchidananda, and on his own albums for the Impulse! label, his sound was still searching, but now it was lyrical, and his musical settings often included trance-inducing grooves. After a half-decade enduring the blast furnace of free jazz, Sanders’ style grew more spiritual and cosmic and started looking to music from around the globe for inspiration. ...”

Pitchfork

W - Live in Paris (1975) (Lost ORTF Recordings)

LondonJazzCollector (Audio/Video)

YouTube: Live In Paris (1975 - Album)

2015 December: Maleem Mahmoud Ghania With Pharaoh Sanders - The Trance Of Seven Colors (1994), 2016 January: Ptah, The El Daoud - Alice Coltrane & Pharoah Sanders (1970), 2016 November: Tauhid (1967), 2017 May: The Pharoah Sanders Story: In the Beginning 1963-1964, 2017 November: Let Us Now Praise Pharoah Sanders, Master of Sax, 2018 February: Anthology: You've Got to Have Freedom - Pharoah Sanders (2005), 2018 February: James Blood Ulmer & Pharoah Sanders - Live 2003, 2018 May: How Pharoah Sanders Brought Jazz to Its Spiritual Peak with His Impulse! Albums, 2019 January: Africa (1987), 2021 December: Promises - Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra

A Holocaust Survivor’s Hardboiled Science Fiction

 

“In ‘His Master’s Voice,’ a 1968 sci-fi novel by the Polish writer Stanisław Lem, a team of scientists and scholars convened by the American government try to decipher a neutrino signal from outer space. They manage to translate a fragment of the signal’s information, and a couple of the scientists use it to construct a powerful weapon, which the project’s senior mathematician fears could wipe out humanity. ... In a cycle of melancholy sci-fi novels written in the late nineteen-fifties and sixties—’Eden,’ ‘Solaris,’ ‘Return from the Stars,‘ ‘Memoirs Found in a Bathtub,‘ ‘The Invincible,’ and ‘His Master’s Voice’—Lem suggested that life in the future, however remote the setting and however different the technology, will be no less tragic. Astronauts disembark from a spaceship into the aftermath of an atrocity; scientists face an alien intelligence so unlike our own that their confidence in the special purpose of human life falters. ...”

New Yorker (Audio)

2011 June: Stanisław Lem, 2017 March: Pilot Pirx (1979-1982), 2017 April: The Star Diaries (1971), 2018 February: His Master's Voice (1968), 2021 December: A Century in Stanislaw Lem’s Cosmos

​Little Glitches: Laurie Anderson’s Big Science

 

“Laurie Anderson’s 1982 debut LP Big Science opens as if her voice has been waiting for us to show up: ‘Good Evening. This is your captain.’ ... And since the 1970s, Laurie Anderson has explored the glitches and inhumanities of systems far more diffuse than air traffic control: her topics include language, sound, business, and technology at large. Early in her career, small new works came fast across a variety of media, and so her project became one of organizing, juxtaposing, and optimizing them. Her initial audience was mostly fellow downtown NYC artists, but factual talk of her eventual stardom was in the air. ...”

The Quietus (Video)

YouTube: The end of the moon (Legendado), The beginning of memory, "The Speed of Darkness"  The Shaughnessy,  College of St. Catherine, St. Paul, MN  Feb 8, 1997. 1:37:14

2008 June: Laurie Anderson, 2009 December: Personal Service Announcements, 2011 February: Home studio (late 80's), 2011 March: I Don't Need It, I Don't Want It, And You Cheated Me Out of It, 2011 October: Big Science, 2011 October: Delusion, 2013 June: United States Live, 2021 December: Laurie Anderson Has a Message for Us Humans

Elvin Jones And Richard Davis - Heavy Sounds (1967)

 

“A month later, the moods darkened considerably. Heavy Sounds was recorded on June 19 & 20, 1967. John Coltrane, Elvin’s associate from the legendary, groundbreaking John Coltrane Quartet, passed away on July 17, 1967. During his tenure with Coltrane, Jones had already recorded occasionally. Elvin! (Riverside 1961) and Dear John C. (Impulse 1965) are notable albums. In 1966, Jones allegedly felt uncomfortable with Coltrane’s new rhythmic settings that included drummer Rashied Ali and quit the band. Enormous potential besides the magnitudinous presence of Elvin Jones. Richard Davis is one of the most virtuosic bassists of the classic jazz era, arguably the most proficient. A brilliant musician who also took care of business in symphony orchestras, having performed with Igor Stravinsky, Pierre Boulez and Leonard Bernstein. ...”

Flophouse Magazine (Audio)

W - Heavy Sounds

Discogs (Video)

YouTube: Heavy Sounds, Elvin Jones, Richard Davis  1 / 6

2022 January: Elvin! (1962)

​When Martin Luther King Came to Harlem

“Less than a year before his assassination, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. came to Harlem. In the June 22, 1967, Village Voice, contributor Marlene Nadle observed the crowd anxiously awaiting the Baptist minister’s arrival: ‘Using programs folded accordion style instead of pastel fans with pictures of Christ, they managed to turn the chandeliered ballroom of the Hotel Roosevelt into a Baptist Church.’ At times during her reporting on the event, Nadle comes across as jaded, as in her description of when the audience initially glimpses King in a movie being shown by the hospital workers’ union, which had arranged the event: ‘The Lord appeared for the first time — on film. There was a great burst of applause.’ ...”

Voice

2008 January: Martin Luther King Jr., Martin Luther King Jr. - 1, 2013 August: The March at 50 , 2015 January: Freedom Journey 1965: Photographs of the Selma to Montgomery March by Stephen Somerstein, 2015 February: Spider Martin’s Photographs of the Selma March Get a Broader View, 2015 March: Revisiting Selma, 2015 December: Atlanta: Darker Than Blue, 2016 February: Unpublished Black History, 2018 January: The Evolution of Dr. King, 2018 January: Restoring King, 2018 April: Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘Letter From Birmingham Jail’, 2020 January: Martin Luther King Jr. Day: 8 Places in New York to Remember His Legacy

The Diaspora Suite: Ephraim Asili

 

“Ephraim Asili’s five-part series The Diaspora Suite is both a personal and global study of the African diaspora. Created over the course of seven years, every film in the series has a unique rhythm built around a specific amalgam of footage shot in American and international locations — each an important site within the African diaspora. Forged Ways (2011) travels between Harlem and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; American Hunger (2013) features Philadelphia, Ocean City, and Cape Coast, Ghana; in Many Thousands Gone (2014), Harlem and Salvador, Brazil; in Kindah (2016), Hudson, New York, and Jamaica; and in Fluid Frontiers (2017), Detroit and Windsor, Canada. ...”

VDB

Ephraim Asili’s "Diaspora Suite" explores the influence of African culture throughout the world

Criterion Channel: The Diaspora Suite

VDB: Forged Ways (Video), American Hunger (Video), Many Thousands Gone (Video), Kindah (Video), Fluid Frontiers (Video)

Is Civil War Looming, or Should We Calm Down?

 

“In January of last year, shortly after the storming of the Capitol, the pollster John Zogby conducted a national survey that yielded a troubling finding: A plurality of respondents — 46 percent — believed that the United States is headed for another civil war.According to Barbara Walter, a political science professor at the University of California, San Diego, who studies civil wars, that belief is perfectly within the realm of reason. ... Should Americans take the prospect of another civil war seriously, or do such warnings constitute a misguided, perhaps even dangerous form of alarmism? Here’s what people are saying. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: Let’s Not Invent a Civil War

NY Times: We Need to Think the Unthinkable About Our Country

NY Times: Are We Really Facing a Second Civil War?

Guardian: Is the US really heading for a second civil war?

The Harvard Gazette: We don’t need a civil war to be in serious trouble

Fragmented Illuminations: Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Cuttings at the V&A

 

“Featuring highlights from the museum's collection of over 2,000 cuttings from medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, this display explores the types of books these pieces came from and the 19th-century context in which they were cut up and collected. ...”

V&A

YouTube: Fragmented Illuminations: Medieval & Renaissance Manuscript Cuttings at the V&A 49:16

Trail of Tears

 

A map of the process of Indian Removal, 1830–1838. Oklahoma is depicted in light yellow-green.

“The Trail of Tears was part of the Indian removal, a series of forced displacements and ethnic cleansing of approximately 60,000 Native Americans of the Five Civilized Tribes between 1830 and 1850 by the United States government. Tribal members ‘moved gradually, with complete migration occurring over a period of nearly a decade.’ Members of the so-called Five Civilized Tribes—the Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations (including thousands of their black slaves) were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands in the Southeastern United States to areas to the west of the Mississippi River that had been designated Indian Territory.  The forced relocations were carried out by government authorities after the passage of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. ... The relocated peoples suffered from exposure, disease, and starvation while en route to their newly designated Indian reserve. Thousands died from disease before reaching their destinations or shortly after. Suzan Shown Harjo of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian describes it as a genocide. ...”

W - Trail of Tears

W - Indian removal

W - Thomas Jefferson and Native Americans

YouTube: Cherokee Almanac: Removal Stockades, Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears

 

Britannica: Trail of Tears

How to Photograph the Northern Lights

 

A spectacular Aurora display in early 2015 captured from just north of Fairbanks Alaska

“As the Sun heads south for winter in the Northern Hemisphere, the nights grow longer and the opportunities to catch the northern lights, or aurora borealis, increase the further north you live or travel. Aurorae occur when charged particles (mostly electrons and protons) in the solar wind sneak past Earth's magnetic shield and collide with atoms in the upper atmosphere. As the ionized oxygen and nitrogen molecules return to their ‘ground’ state, they glow, much like a neon light does when electrical current runs through it. The results are awe-inspiring, and if you’ll forgive the metaphor, magical. ...”

Sky & Telescope

 

Especially active aurora will also include Nitrogen atoms which will glow a pink or magenta color.

​Oath Keepers Leader Charged With Seditious Conspiracy in Jan. 6 Investigation

 

“Stewart Rhodes, the leader and founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, was arrested on Thursday and charged along with 10 others with seditious conspiracy over what prosecutors said was their wide-ranging plot to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6 last year and disrupt the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s electoral victory. The arrest of Mr. Rhodes, 56, was a major development in the sprawling investigation of the Capitol attack. He and the other Oath Keepers are the first to be charged with sedition among the more than 700 people accused so far of taking part in the assault. ... The Justice Department has brought a variety of charges in connection with the Capitol attack; it has prosecuted about 275 people for obstructing Congress’s duty to certify the 2020 presidential vote count, for example. ...”

NY Times

NY Times: Jan. 6 Inquiry Weighs a Major Escalation: Subpoenaing Colleagues

NY Times: Jan. 6 Committee Subpoenas Four Big Tech Firms

Mother Jones: “Seditious Conspiracy” Charges Against Oath Keepers Mark a Major Advance in January 6 Investigation

W - Oath Keepers

2021 February: 77 days: Trump’s campaign to subvert the election, 2021 February: First They Guarded Roger Stone. Then They Joined the Capitol Attack., 2021 February: A Small Group of Militants’ Outsize Role in the Capitol Attack

 

NY Times: Tracking the Oath Keepers Who Attacked the Capitol (Jan. 2021)

​Travelling in the giant footsteps of Tony Soprano’s New Jersey

 

“After the fuzz of the classic HBO intro screen departed, a fractured view of the New Jersey turnpike rolled into the lounge and television would never be the same again. Even the mere opening credits sequence hinted at the cinematic twist The Sopranos was about to give TV that has proved wildly seminal ever since. Iconic skyline sights melded with the gritty inner workings of the locale, all through the occasional plume of puffed cigar smoke, giving the show a deep sense of contextualisation from the off. Sadly, a lot of modern shows have mimicked this cinematic sense without ever delivering the same substance. ...”

Far Out Magazine (Video)

2011 June: The Sopranos, 2012 March: The Family Hour: An Oral History of The Sopranos, 2013 June: James Gandolfini, 2015 April: David Chase Reveals the Philosophical Meaning of The Soprano’s Final Scene, 2019 January: Television Learned the Wrong Lessons From The Sopranos, 2019 June: Don’t Stop: The Sopranos ends, 2020 July: The Sopranos - Season 1, 2020 July: Season 2, 2020 August: Season 3, 2020 August: Season 4, 2020 September: Season 5, 2020 December: Season 6, 2021 October: The 12 Defining Scenes of ‘The Sopranos’

​The Encyclopedia of Reggae: The Golden Age of Roots Reggae

 

“This heavily illustrated guide to reggae is a colourful, herbally endowed and sunsplashed history of one of the world’s most popular musical styles. Reggae was born in 1960s Jamaica, a potent mix of such indigenous genres as ska and rocksteady plus R&B, jazz and traditional African rhythms. Before long, it had conquered the globe, influencing musicians from Britain to Brazil. The Encyclopedia of Reggae focuses on the music’s golden age, from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s heyday of dancehall and features more than 500 images, including rare album art and ephemera. Written by one of the foremost experts on the subject, this amazing resource profiles more than 200 key performers, impresarios and producers from reggae’s history. ...”

Pauze Radio

Mike Alleyne, author of "The Encyclopedia of Reggae..."

amazon

YouTube: Encyclopedia of Reggae - The Golden Age Of Roots Reggae - MyVinyl preview

A French Village: The Complete Series

“A French Village starts off on June 12, 1940, with a premiere that includes a German fighter plane shooting at children on a school trip. The scene is suspenseful but also staged with deliberate restraint, like a dream slowly turning into a nightmare before anybody quite realizes it. The series that follows sticks to that matter-of-fact, almost detached tone. Life in the fictional Villeneuve, a village in occupied France about sixty miles from Switzerland, is irreversibly upended by German rule but still retains a routine element.The pitch for A French Village could fit on half a napkin: Each season covers roughly one year of the occupation of Villeneuve in World War II. ...”

Voice: ‘A French Village,’ Streaming on Amazon, Examines Life After Evil Triumphs (Nov. 2016)

The Nation: Tangled in the Garden of Good and Evil (Sep. 2018)

A Historical Drama and a Master Class (Oct. 2020)

Why the Wartime TV Series “A French Village” Is Important (July 2018)

W - Un village français

amazon

YouTube: "A French Village" - Season 5 Critic's Quotes (Trailer)

Conceptual Personae: The many imagined lives of Fernando Pessoa

 

“‘Sockpuppeting’ is internet slang for the contemporary variety of an age-old hoax: with a fake account registered under a pseudonym, a social media user becomes free to post whatever they like, unfettered by the wearisome burdens of attribution. Perhaps a pundit wishes to promote his own book without appearing to do so himself. ... The poet who produced that work was named Fernando Pessoa, but the majority of his finest poems were signed with three different names. Alberto Caeiro, Álvaro de Campos, and Ricardo Reis were not, however, mere pseudonyms; they were separate identities—what Pessoa called ‘heteronyms’—crafted to undertake distinct and diverging poetic projects. ...”

The Baffler

2008 March: Fernando Pessoa, 2012 October: The Book of Disquiet, 2012 November: Fernando Pessoa and Co.: Selected Poems, 2014 May: Aspects by Fernando Pessoa, 2016 March: Passoa's Trunk - 13+ ways of looking at a poem, 2017 September: Fernando Pessoa’s Disappearing Act, 2020 February: Strange Music Of Silence: Fernando Pessoa’s Book of Disquiet, 2021 August: The Heteronymous Identities of Fernando Pessoa By Richard Zeniths

Hasaan Ibn Ali ‎– Metaphysics: The Lost Atlantic Album (2021)

 

“During his lifetime, pianist and composer Hasaan Ibn Ali (1931-1980) was a jazz enigma. The Philly musician practiced with John Coltrane during the early '50s and is credited as the primary influence on the saxophonist's ‘sheets of sound’ harmonic approach first articulated on Giant Steps -- a sound that exploded across his Impulse! work. Metaphysics: The Lost Atlantic Album is a genuine jazz holy grail, one of only two albums to feature the pianist's compositions and unique playing style. ... The music, though easier to approach in the 21st century, is quite radical in harmonic density and rhythmic invention. Opener ‘Atlantic Ones’ offers a Monk-esque lyric intro before the band careens across a knotty bop head. ...”

allmusic (Audio)

All About Jazz

W - Metaphysics: The Lost Atlantic Album

Discogs (Video)

amazon

YouTube: Metaphysics (Full Album)

Weekly Beats 2022: "Three Clock Problem"

 

“I’m gonna give the Weekly Beats series (weeklybeats.com) another go this year. It’s a great online community, one where people post their tracks and comment on each other’s. Unlike with the Disquiet Junto and other communities, there is no required compositional prompt, though folks do propose such things in the WB forums. My first Weekly Beats recording of the year, ‘Three Clock Problem,’ is a simple drone (yeah, yeah, arguably beat-less) I put together in VCV Rack 2. A series of quantized pitches are sent through a reverb that has a wide array of controls. ...”

disquiet (Audio)

Checking Privilege in the Animal Kingdom

 

Check your privilege, squirrel.

“Some North American red squirrels are born with a silver spoon in their mouths. They live in pine forests where the adults defend caches of food. Without a cache of their own, many baby squirrels won’t survive the winter. But each year, some squirrel mothers abandon their territory, bequeathing all their food to one or more babies who stay behind. These young squirrels are much more likely to survive until the spring. Across the animal kingdom, there are other examples of species that share resources such as territory, tools and shelter between generations. ...”

NY Times

W - American red squirrel

​AFCON 2021 guide: The storylines, the underdogs and the games you won’t want to miss

 

“The latest Africa Cup of Nations is just around the corner. It’s been a long road to get here for a competition that has been moved around the calendar multiple times and, in the style of Euro 2020 last summer has the ‘wrong’ year in its official title, but 24 teams are now finally set to duke it out in Cameroon to become the next champions of Africa, with the tournament getting underway on Sunday, and finishing on Sunday, February 6. Here’s everything you need to know. ..."

The Athletic (Audio)

NY Times: The Joy in Embracing the Unknown (Video)

New Frame: Behind concerns over Afcon is a culture of disdain

Predicting the Africa Cup of Nations 2021 Winner

GOAL - Afcon 2021 predictions: The contenders and the pretenders (Video)

BBC - Afcon 2021: Everything you need to know about tournament in Cameroon (Video)

****Africa Is a Country 1:11:15 (Audio)

​In ‘African Origin’ Show at Met, New Points of Light Across Cultures

 

Partnerships: Spanning eras and cultures, a pairing of artworks from “The African Origin of Civilization” includes “The King’s Acquaintances Memi and Sabu” from Egypt, ca. 2575–2465 B.C. and “Seated Couple”  from Mali, 18th or early 19th century.

“Object for object, there isn’t an exhibition in town more beautiful than ‘The African Origin of Civilization’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Nor is there one more shot through with ethical and political tensions.The gathering of 42 sculptures in one of the Met’s Egyptian galleries unites, for the first time here, pieces from its Ancient Egyptian and sub-Saharan African holdings, centuries apart (the earliest sub-Saharan work on view is from the 13th century). The pretext for the display is a practical one. ...”

NY Times

MET Museum: The African Origin of Civilization

​A photographer captures a New York City of abstraction in the 1940s

 

“The street photographers who point their cameras all over the city tend to focus on people in motion in recognizable places—the rush of crowds on a subway platform, barflies at a corner tavern, or the random strollers, workers, loafers, and others found at any moment in time on specific streets and sidewalks. ...”

Ephemeral New York

​The Legacy of Atlanta Hip Hop, Mapped

 

“A new map tells the story of Atlanta’s expansive hip hop legacy. For this week’s MapLab, CityLab’s Brentin Mock has the details: Some of the places and buildings on the ATL Rap Map are no longer actually still standing. They live in memory, and in the lyrics recited by the Atlanta rappers the map honors. The kings and queens of Atlanta’s hip hop culture — Outkast, Jermaine Dupri, Crime Mob and one of its newest stars, Latto, to name a few — frame a portrait of the city, which from a distance looks like a cluster of buildings and street signs surrounded by forests. ...”

Bloomberg

Reddit - Maps