Inauguration Protesters and Police Clash on Washington’s Streets

"A spate of violence erupted on Friday in the nation’s capital, as protesters damaged storefronts, threw rocks and bricks at police officers and lit a limousine on fire. Phalanxes of police officers used pepper spray, flash grenades and other nonlethal crowd-control tools to disperse the protesters. By the end of the day, six police officers had sustained minor injuries and more than 200 people had been arrested. Many of the protesters were dressed in black, wore face masks and carried flags associated with anti-fascist groups. They congregated on a series of streets just blocks from the parade where Donald J. Trump passed as he made his way to the White House for the first time as president, their activities creating a distraction as television networks played live footage of the clashes. ..."
NY Times


Members of Occupy Museums #J20 outside the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Artists Reckon With Trump’s Inauguration
"Kelli O’Hara sang 'A Cockeyed Optimist.' Chita Rivera delivered 'America.' Four more Broadway stars belted out 'I’m a Woman,' and a larger group made melody with 'What the World Needs Now Is Love.' In one of countless displays of cultural counterprogramming to Inauguration Day across the country, Broadway’s biggest stars — a group generally disheartened by the election of Donald J. Trump — performed show-tunes-with-a-message on Friday afternoon at Town Hall in Manhattan to raise money for social justice organizations. With Mr. Trump celebrating the start of his presidency, the singers celebrated art as a comfort, an inspiration and a rallying cry for the coming months and years. ..."
NY Times


An illustration of a crowd in front of the White House during Andrew Jackson's first inaugural reception in 1829.
The Wild Inauguration of Andrew Jackson, Trump’s Populist Predecessor
"Seeking to portray Donald J. Trump as a man of the people, some of his closest advisers have said he is the natural successor to President Andrew Jackson, America’s architect of political populism. With crowds streaming into Washington for the inauguration on Friday, commentators and historians were harking back to the inauguration of the seventh president on March, 4 1829, when a crowd of thousands mobbed the Capitol building and the White House, representing to many at the time the danger of the mob run amok. Biographers, historians and Mr. Trump’s own confidants have not been shy about drawing parallels. ..."
NY Times

A Dark Inaugural"Politicians, preparing for inaugurals, scurry for their histories. The Republican Senator Roy Blunt, who welcomed the crowd to Donald Trump’s Inauguration, chose to commemorate the peaceful transitions of the late eighteenth century, when partisan tensions were high and the Republic might not have survived. The Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer, speaking just before the new President, read at length from a letter that Sullivan Ballou, a Union officer, wrote to his wife: 'I know how strongly American Civilization now leans upon the triumph of the Government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us.' In the faces just behind the new President and his family, viewers could detect the partisan zigzag of our recent political history: the Clintons, the Bushes, the Obamas.  ... This was a dark inaugural. The America Trump described was filled with victims: of 'inner city' poverty, of 'crime and drugs and gangs,' of 'rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation.' But even starker was how forcefully Trump compressed history. ..."
New Yorker

A Brief History of Subway Cinema

On The Town(1949)
"Decades in the making, the Second Avenue Subway finally opened to the public this week, its glimmering new stations at 72nd, 86th, and 96th Streets heralded with the pomp and circumstance of a movie premiere. Of course, the subway doesn’t immediately come to mind as a photogenic movie star, but in fact, the various tunnels and stations of the New York City Subway have appeared as the backdrop for hundreds of movies. Its route diversity — from deep under midtown to elevations above the outer boroughs — and its longevity have allowed filmmakers to turn the subway into a rolling sound stage. ..."
The Bowery Boys: New York City History (Video)

Inventing Downtown: Artist-Run Galleries in New York City, 1952–1965

John Cohen, Red Grooms transporting artwork to Reuben Gallery, New York, 1960.
"Between the apex of Abstract Expressionism and the rise of Pop Art and Minimalism, the New York art scene was transformed by artist-run galleries. Inventing Downtown presents works from fourteen of these crucibles of experimentation, highlighting artists’ efforts to create new exhibition venues for innovative works of art—ranging from abstract and figurative painting, assemblage, sculpture, and works on paper to groundbreaking installations and performances. ..."
Grey Art Gallery
Grey Art Gallery: Images
NY Times: ‘Inventing Downtown’ Recalls When Artists Ran the Galleries
WSJ: ‘Inventing Downtown: Artist-Run Galleries in New York City, 1952-1965’ Review: The Good Old Days
amazon: Inventing Downtown
WNYC: Remembering the Tenth Street Galleries
YouTube: inventing downtown

Street Sounds From The Bay Area: Music City Funk & Soul Grooves 1971-75

"It’s about time BGP got seriously funky and over the next few months we will be serving up some fantastic collections of rare funk and groovy soul from the depths of the black American recording industry. In the last decade funk has gone from the forgotten cousin of soul to the genre that has been most quickly excavated and then sometimes discarded. It often seems that every rare record has been snapped up and compiled already (it’s not true but sometimes it seems like it). However, the Ace collective really does have the ability to go deeper; as with the world of rare soul, our access to the tape vaults of various companies allows us to bring the world some exceptional music that has never been heard since the day it was recorded. Street Sounds From The Bay Area is the result of our examination of the recordings made, and then on the whole not released, by Ray Dobard’s Music City outfit between 1971 and 1975. ..."
Ace Records (Video)
Discogs
iTunes
JUNO: Charles Doc Williams - "Bumpin' On Sunset/We Got More Soul" (medley), Chucky Thurmon - "Just A Man", The Two Things In One - "Stop Telling Me", Etc,
YouTube: Eddie Boogaloo - Love Uprisers, Sixth Sense - Soul Messengers

Jim White - No Such Place (2001)

"Southern Gothic singer/songwriter Jim White grew up in Pensacola, Florida, enamored with the sounds of the white gospel music he heard on the Gospel Jubilee television series. After spending his formative years on the outskirts of a deeply Pentecostal community, he entertained a career as a professional surfer, followed by a stint in Milan as a fashion model. A bandsaw accident that resulted in a maimed left hand seemed to end White's hopes as a musician, but after writing a collection of simple songs on his guitar, a friend convinced him to record a demo, which ultimately made its way to the offices of David Byrne's Luaka Bop label. After re-recording the songs, White issued his debut, Wrong-Eyed Jesus!, a collection of atmospheric, oddly spiritual country-folk performances, in 1997. No Such Place was issued in early 2001. In 2004, White released Drill a Hole in That Substrate and Tell Me What You See (again on Luaka Bop), which featured such eccentric guests as the Barenaked Ladies, Aimee Mann, and Bill Frisell. ..."
allmusic
W - Jim White
JIM WHITE LIVES HERE (Video)
YouTube: If Jesus Drove A Motor Home, 10 Miles To Go On A 9 Mile Road, The Wound That Never Heals, Handcuffed to a fence in mississippi, Searching For The Wrong-Eyed Jesus, God Was Drunk When He Made Me, Hey! You going my way???, Christmas day, Corvair

A Visit to Home, Memory, and Future at Caribbean Cultural Center African Diaspora Institute’s (CCCADI) New East Harlem Home

"... Your inaugural exhibit, Home, Memory, and Future is quite impressive. It is divided into three distinct parts. Yes. Part I: Harlem: East and West features the works of three acclaimed photographers who have been documenting Harlem since the 70’s. Part II: Harlem and Home in the Global Context showcases artworks that suggest how cultural traditions are used to establish “home” in distant places. And Part III: Mi Quirido Barrio (My Beloved Community) – focusing on the social history of El Barrio — takes place outdoors and in cyberspace, using augmented reality. Among its themes are: migration, nostalgia for the past. gentrification and looking to the future. ..."
Street Art NYC

William Onyeabor - Crashes in Love (1977)

"Crashes in Love was released in 1977 on the artist's own imprint, Wilfilms, like every of his records (all masterpieces). The album is said to have been composed as a soundtrack to a movie Onyeabor made - 'a tragedy of how an African Princess rejects the love that money buys', as mentioned on the sleeve. Crashes in Love is actually William Onyeabor's first record and of course features a few mindbending tracks. Genius man. William Onyeabor studied cinematography in Russia for many years, returning to Nigeria in the mid-70s to start his own Wilfilms music label and to set up a music and film production studio. He recorded a number of hit songs in Nigeria during the 70s, the biggest of which was ‘Atomic Bomb’ in 1978. ..."
afrobeat, afrofunk, afrojazz, afrorock, african boogie, african hiphop ...
Guardian: The five-year quest to reissue William Onyeabor
Discogs
YouTube: Something You'll Never Forget, Heaven and Hell, Ride on Baby">
YouTube: 'Fantastic Man' (Full Length) - A Film About William Onyeabor

2014 March: ATOMIC BOMB! The Music of William Onyeabor

Eva Mlinar

Cafe DADA Illustrations for the playbill of the theatre play
"Hi, I'm an illustrator and graphic designer from Ljubljana, Slovenia. I studied History of Art (Faculty of Arts, Ljubljana) and also Visual Communication at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana. In my work, I love to combine handmade and digital processes for a fresh, artful approach and enjoy playing with different techniques. Inspired by books, museums, medieval times and tiny little details. I live and work between Ljubljana and Istanbul."
Eva Mlinar
ILLUSTRATED INTERVIEW WITH EVA MLINAR
Interview: Eva Mlinar

How Baudelaire Revolutionized Modern Literature

Portrait by Gustave Courbet, 1848
"Around, let’s say, 1885 the young French poet Jules Laforgue was living in Berlin and scribbling observations in his notebooks. He was reading Charles Baudelaire’s notorious book of poetry, Les Fleurs du Mal— a book that had been prosecuted, successfully, by the French state for obscenity — and as Laforgue read on, he jotted down small aphorisms, mini-observations. These phrases were of a private kind: 'a distinguished wanderer in the line of Poe and Gérard de Nerval,' 'sensual hypochondria shading into martyrdom . . . ': that kind of thing. They were private notes for a future essay that Laforgue would never write, attempts to define the genius of Baudelaire — who had died in 1867, around twenty years earlier, at the age of only forty-six. ..."
New Republic
The Paris Review: The Eye of Baudelaire
W - Symbolism

2009 February: Charles Baudelaire, 2012 December: Impressionism and Fashion

Frédéric Bazille (1841-1870). The Youth of Impressionism.

Summer Scene
"How should we consider the work of Frédéric Bazille, who died in combat in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War aged just 28? Although his early paintings are clearly those of a budding painter, influenced by Realism and by his friend Monet, he nevertheless went on to complete numerous masterpieces in which he gradually asserted his unique talent. Around sixty paintings have come to us, each one a challenge, another milestone for the young artist, enabling us to follow his progress towards the increasingly personal expression of his 'temperament', in the words of the time. ..."
Musée d'Orsay (Video)
Musée d'Orsay
W - Frédéric Bazille

Pearls Before Swine - Balaklava (1969)

"A record that virtually defies categorization, Pearls Before Swine's 1968 epic Balaklava is the near-brilliant follow-up to One Nation Underground. Intended as a defiant condemnation of the Vietnam War, it doesn't offer anthemic, fist-pounding protest songs. Instead, Rapp vented his anger through surrealist poetry, irony, and historical reference: Balaklava was the 1854 Crimean War battle that inspired Alfred, Lord Tennyson to write his epic The Charge of the Light Brigade; in reality, the 'Charge' was a senseless military action that killed scores of British soldiers. ... It's probably the best example of what Rapp calls 'constructive melancholy' (also the name of a recent CD collection of Pearls songs), a combination of the real with the surreal, and it's indispensable to any serious '60s rock collection."
allmusic
W - Balaklava
YouTube: Balaklava [Full Album]

Josef Koudelka: Nationality Doubtful

Moravia, 1966 - Art Institute of Chicago
"Nationality Doubtful, the title of an intensely beautiful exhibition of Josef Koudelka’s photographs at the Getty Center, refers to a peculiar fact of the Czech photographer’s life. Born in 1938 in a small town in Moravia, he moved to Prague to study aeronautical engineering, but by the late 1950s photography was occupying more of his time. By the 1960s he was working for theater companies in Prague while pursuing a project that would occupy him for years: he began traveling Eastern Europe, spending time in over 80 Roma villages and encampments. Photography and itinerancy, or the photographing of itinerancy, took over his life. He was back in Prague in 1968 when Soviet-led Warsaw Pact armies entered the city. It was one of those moments when history happens to an artist, and Koudelka brought all his powers to documenting the invasion. ..."
Koudelka was into enormity By W.S. Di Piero
The J. Paul Getty Museum
The Art Institute of Chicago (Video)
vimeo: Nationality Doubtful

2016 March: W.S. Di Piero, 2016 December: Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861-2008.

The Other Colombia

January 2016, Putumayo. In this part of the Amazonian jungle, people use the river to travel. The local economy is based on cattle breeding and coca production, which is illegal. In the area, the FARC promotes training in cattle breeding. But the peasants don’t give up coca production, which is seen as the more lucrative opportunity in this isolated place.
"There is a Colombia left out, ignored. To meet her, you often need to take muddy tracks deformed by mule hooves or travel for hours on a tiny little rowboat. This Colombia doesn’t know the effects of the growth. It’s still waiting for the next visit of a health brigade or schoolteacher. But this Colombia isn’t only poverty and misery. It is also the liveliness, ingenuity, and passion of those who learned to survive and construct a world far from anywhere. You can meet it in the course of a vallenato refrain, on the rhythms of cumbia, or when you let yourself drive to the incredible stories of a local ranchera song. This is the other Colombia: out of the cities, removed from the centers of decision-making, living in the countryside at the pace of the harvest, the rainy period, and the moon’s cycle. She is built on community ties, looking at consumer society and its middle class with alternating desire and disgust. ..."
Guernica

The Evolution of Dr. King

The National Civil Rights Museum
"Virtually every Democratic Party politician, black or white, claims the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. Conveniently forgotten is the fact that in the final years of his life, before his assassination in 1968, King broke with Democratic President Lyndon Johnson over the Vietnam War and the administration’s failure to enforce civil rights legislation in the South. That’s something no Democrats of national stature have been willing to do today. ..."
Jacobin
Graphic essay: What the Civil Rights Movement can teach us about surviving Trump
The National Civil Rights Museum (Video)

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

The Disintegration Loops - William Basinski (2002-2003)

Wikipedia - "The Disintegration Loops is a series of four albums by American avant-garde composer William Basinski released in 2002 and 2003. All tracks have the same form of ambient music fragments played in a tape loop that slowly deteriorates as it passes by the tape head, increasingly producing noises and cracks in the music as the theme progresses. The recording coincided with the 9/11 attacks and the album covers and accompanying videos feature a still skyline of New York City with smoke and dust rising from the World Trade Center site. ..."
Wikipedia
New Yorker: Looped In
Pitchfork: The Disintegration Loops I-IV
The Disintegration Loops by William Basinski (Video)
YouTube: The Disintegration Loops, Disintegration Loops 6 (D|p 6), Disintegration Loops 5 (D|p 5)

Palladium

Wikipedia - "The Palladium (originally called the Academy of Music was a concert hall (and later a nightclub) in New York City. It was located on the south side of East 14th Street, between Irving Place and Third Avenue. ... Thousands of bands played shows at the Palladium, including many UK punk and new wave acts who made their New York debuts there, including The Clash, The Boomtown Rats, The Fall, Graham Parker & The Rumour, Rockpile, U2, The Undertones and Roxy Music. American punk bands The Ramones, Blondie, and The Cramps also played there in the late seventies. ... New York proto-punk musicians, The Patti Smith Group, John Cale, and Television, all played there at a show on New Year's Eve 1976. ..."
Wikipedia
Ephemeral New York: A 1960s downtown rock club with an 1860s name
'People Loved It Loud': Rockers Recall Academy of Music and Palladium

Groove & Grind: Rare Soul, ‘63-’73

"Few eras of pop music inspire as much intense, all-consuming devotion as the golden age of soul, roughly defined as the mid ’60s through the mid ’70s. For the faithful, just appreciating the classics isn’t enough: the most committed trawl through forgotten 45s in search of the ultimate lost groove or beat or wail. ... Multiply that by the fact that few copies of these forgotten records were ever pressed — they were often released through small regional labels, and there obviously wasn’t much demand for non-hits — and the search for hidden treasure can overwhelm before it’s even begun. Thankfully, RockBeat Records has done would-be cratediggers a favor, compiling over 100 overlooked tracks on the 4-CD set Groove & Grind: Rare Soul, ‘63-’73. ..."
Rebeat (Video)
Astonishing Collection of Rare Soul Singles (Video)
Discogs
amazon

Robert Duncan's notes on Ron Silliman's 'Opening'

"In 1974, John Taggart asked Ron Silliman to write an essay for an issue of Maps (#6 - special Robert Duncan issue on the work of Duncan. Silliman chose to do a close reading of the first poems of Duncan’s Opening of the Field (1960) in which he suggested that Duncan set them out as an argument from which to mount the large, unnamed lifework that was initiated with these poems. Silliman reproduced the text of the Maps essay on his blog on December 6, 2010, a few hours before he presented on Duncan as part of the 1960 symposium at the Kelly Writers House. ... The pages views as a whole, also with Duncan's markings, are available as a PDF. ..."
Jacket2
Jacket2: On Robert Duncan, 'The Opening of the Field'

2008 March: Robert Duncan, 1919-1988, 2011 May: Robert Duncan: May 18, 1959, 2012 January: Ten Poems, 1940 to 1980, 2013 May: An Opening of the Field: Jess, Robert Duncan, and Their Circle

Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1847)

Illustrated by Sir John Gilbert
Wikipedia - "Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie is an epic poem by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, written in English and published in 1847. The poem follows an Acadian girl named Evangeline and her search for her lost love Gabriel, set during the time of the Expulsion of the Acadians. The idea for the poem came from Longfellow's friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Longfellow used dactylic hexameter, imitating Greek and Latin classics, though the choice was criticized. It became Longfellow's most famous work in his lifetime and remains one of his most popular and enduring works. The poem had a powerful effect in defining both Acadian history and identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. ..."
Wikipedia
W - Expulsion of the Acadians
Explanatory maps of Saint Croix & Acadia: Acadian Deportation, Migration, and Resettlement
Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie

2015 October: History of the Acadians

A Murky Legal Mess at Standing Rock

The protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline are not over. Protesters plant a flag on Turtle Hill. Jan, 7
"In early September, Allisha LaBarge, a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, travelled from Hibbing, Minnesota, to the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, in North Dakota, where she began living in a tepee and taking part in protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline, which is meant to transport oil eleven hundred and seventy miles to Illinois. LaBarge, who is thirty-four, joined the protest camps, she said, because she believed that the pipeline, which some Native Americans call 'the black snake,' would pollute the Missouri River, violate treaty rights, and harm lands and burial grounds sacred to the Sioux. ..."
New Yorker
These Striking Images Prove the Fight for Standing Rock Is Far From Over
Standing Rock 2017: The Fight is Not Over
Columbia Journalism Review: Two journalists—father and daughter—on covering Standing Rock
‘Standing Rock Is Everywhere:’ An Interview with Judith LeBlanc of the Native Organizers Alliance (SoundCloud)
YouTube: Police Brutality and Arrests Continue. Rezistance Unit's taking down barricade at Standing Rock

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'

Robert Wyatt - '68 (2013)

"Cuneiform has delivered a Holy Grail with Robert Wyatt's '68. Of its four recordings, half were thought lost or not to have existed. After their second whirlwind tour of the U.S.A. with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the exhausted members of Soft Machine went their separate ways. Wyatt remained in California, then went to New York in the fall as a guest of the Experience. He was granted access to the TTG and Record Plant studios in off hours. ... The sound on '68 is excellent; it was painstakingly cleaned up and remastered from original sources, making this a must for any Wyatt, SM, or prog head. The booklet also contains a lengthy interview with Wyatt by Aymeric Leroy with comments from Hopper. All killer, no filler."
allmusic
W - '68
Cuneiform Records (Video)
amazon
Cuneiform Records: Chelsa
YouTube: soft machine -moon in june (live), Soft Machine - Moon In June (Peel Sessions), Rivmic Melodies [excerpt], R.Wyatt/J.Hendrix(bass) - Slow walkin' talk

2010 November: Robert Wyatt, 2011 October: Sea Song, 2012 October: Comicopera, 2013 March: The Last Nightingale, 2013 September: Solar Flares Burn for You (2003), 2014 March: Cuckooland (2003), 2014 October: Robert Wyatt Story (BBC Four, 2001), 2014 December: Different Every Time (2014), 2016 March: Interviews (2014), 2016 June: Dondestan (Revisited)(1998), 2016 September: Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard (1975).

Mexique (1900–1950)

"Since its independence won from the Spanish monarchy in 1821, Mexico has never ceased to assert its willingness for change and its spirit of modernity. With painting, sculpture, architecture, urbanism, music, literature, film and the applied arts the country has forged its identity. The exhibition, which was desired by the highest French and Mexican authorities, is the largest event dedicated to Mexican art since 1953. Offering a panorama of famous artists such as Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Rufino Tamayo, the exhibition tour is a testament to the vibrant artistic creativity of the country throughout the twentieth century."
Grand Palais (Video)
Paula's Passport
amazon
YouTube: GRAND PALAIS PARIS FRANCIA 2016 - 2017

Bob Dylan ‎– 50th Anniversary Collection 1964

"Another Christmas present arrived from Bob Dylan in the form of the third limited-release collection of copyright busters. This time, nine LPs cover the extraneous material, filling in the holes around the one album he recorded in 1964, and the performances already available on various Bootleg Series. This stuff has long been documented, and one wonders if the producers merely follow the lead of certain websites. A single visit to the studio in June was the source for Another Side Of Bob Dylan, and two sides’ worth of outtakes from it form the centerpiece of this set. Two incomplete, forced takes of 'Black Crow Blues', both on the guitar, demonstrate why the one on the album has piano. ..."
Everybodys Dummy
Wikipedia
Audio: 2014 - "50th Anniversary Collection 1964"
Discogs
YouTube: Spanish Harlem Incident [Alternate Take] (1964 Outtake), I Don't Believe You [Take 1], Black Crow Blues [Alternate Take], I Shall Be Free [Take 2], It Ain't Me, Babe [Alternate Take], Ballad In Plain D [Alternate Take], Denise (1964 Outtake)

In on the Joke

"Is Trump still a joke? It’s been two months since the election, and the mind still reels. We may never be able to handle the cognitive dissonance of Donald Trump, commander-in-chief, and Donald Trump, patron saint of talentless celebrities. The new president is a dangerous demagogue who fires up arenas with a hatefully catty speaking style that somehow evokes both Mussolini and your rambling Aunt Irene. This inescapable weirdness isn’t going to change when Trump takes office. Like prisoners huddled around the bulletin board on a demonic cruise ship, we’ll be forced to check the president’s cheerful Twitter posts to learn what horrors the new day will bring. ..."
Jacobin

2016 January: Donald Trump and the Joys of Toy Fascism, 2016 January: Sanders Is Not Trump, 2016 January: Donald Trump’s Twitter Insults: The Complete List (So Far), 2016 April: Lost in TRUMPLANDIA, 2016 November: Scenes From Anti-Trump Protests, 2016 November: Rust Belt, 2016 November: Autocracy: Rules for Survival, 2016 November: Rally in Brooklyn Park Condemns Swastikas and ‘Go Trump’ Graffiti, 2016 December: The Democratic Party Has Failed—We Need a Radical Vision to Defeat Trumpism, 2016 December: An Alt-Right Makeover Shrouds the Swastikas, 2016 December: Sticky Notes Bearing Election Hopes and Fears Removed from Subway

Jah Observer: Backstage at the Notting Hill Carnival

"For more than 30 years, the family sound system Jah Observer has remained a bastion of roots and culture at the Notting Hill carnival even as the event changed with the gentrification of the city of London. In 2010, the owner, Spiderman, decided to return to Jamaica. The year before I got a chance to follow him and his family throughout the duration of their Notting Hill carnival marathon. It’s night time and the streets of Ladbroke Grove are empty. The calm before the storm on a friday night, as more than 800,000 people are expected to hit the streets over two days as they have done for decades on the August bank holiday, the last sunday and monday of the month. It’s drizzling. This is where the deal is going down. ..."
Dub-Stuy
YouTube: notting hill carnival, the mighty jah observer

Nat Hentoff (1925-2017)

Mr. Hentoff with the clarinetist Edmond Hall in 1948 at the Savoy, a club in Boston.
"When Nat Hentoff died on Saturday at age 91, one of his sons broke the news on Twitter. ... He might also have been amused—if grimly so—by the fact that many of his obituaries devoted more space to his latter-day career as a civil libertarian than to the writings about jazz with which he made his journalistic name. Sad to say, that makes perfect sense. Not only had the music that Mr. Hentoff loved best (he died listening to the records of Billie Holiday) ceased to be central to the American cultural conversation by the time of his death, but he was a First Amendment absolutist who lived to see free speech under siege in his native land, which explains why his impassioned writings about it should now loom so large in memory. ..."
WSJ - Nat Hentoff (1925-2017): A Link to Jazz’s Founding Fathers (Video)
Wikipedia
NY Times: Nat Hentoff, Journalist and Social Commentator, Dies at 91
The Atlantic - Track of the Day: ‘Freedom Day’ (Video)
YouTube: Nat Hentoff on Free Speech, Jazz, and FIRE, Nat Hentoff: A Civil Libertarian Takes on Obama and the World, Nat Hentoff - Journalistic Integrity & The Minority View, The Pleasures of Being Out of Step: Notes on the Life of Nat Hentoff ($)

2015 June: "Fine and Mellow" - Billie Holiday (1957), 2016 February: Ahmad Jamal Trio - "Darn That Dream" (1959), 2016 April: Sun Song - Sun Ra (1956)

East Village Map

"For over a half-century, the East Village has been the locus of bohemian and avant-garde culture in New York City. This illustrated map spotlights the writers, artists, musicians, actors, entrepreneurs and political leaders who have helped define new directions in American fine arts and popular culture. Featuring caricature portraits and accurate renderings of buildings and streets, this pictorial map makes for an entertaining and educational poster. The back of the map provides addresses and an easy-to-use walking tour of the neighborhood. ... The East Village Map is much more than an attractive wall poster. It also contains a well-researched walking-tour guide to the neighborhood's historic sites. ..."
Ephemera Press

2015 June: Queens Jazz Trail Map

Resident Visitor: Laurie Spiegel's Machine Music

"Probably the most remarkable thing about Laurie Spiegel is that a piece of music she made could be the first sound of human origin to be heard by extraterrestrial lifeforms. If aliens exist, of course. And assuming they have ears. Spiegel's computer realization of a composition conceived back in the early 17th Century by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler is the opening cut on the Golden Record, a disc that accompanied both Voyager probes on their journey across the solar system and out into the great interstellar beyond in 1977. ..."
Pitchfork (Video)

2011 May: Laurie Spiegel, 2012 November: Laurie Spiegel - The Expanding Universe, 2014 February: The Interstellar Contract, 2015 September: Resident Visitor: Laurie Spiegel's Machine Music, 2015 October: Laurie Spiegel: Grassroots Technologist, 2016 June: Meet Four Women Who Pioneered Electronic Music: Daphne Oram, Laurie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue & Pauline Oliveros

Nicolas Jaar - Sirens (2016)

"There are only about 45 seconds left on Nicolas Jaar’s new album Sirens when something astounding happens. Heralded by a selection of drums and birdcall synths, a gospel cry arrives, shrouded in distortion and punctuated by sharp arrhythmic drumming. The most useful words to describe this are the silliest and most hyperbolic: awesome, transcendent, timeless or more accurately, out-of-time. It begs for pretension, for the vocabulary of divinity and 'high art,' for references to religious philosophers and poets of the West that you barely remember from college, Milton and Kierkegaard, Eliot and Blake. And though there are many similarly striking moments on Sirens, this one stands out for its brevity and particular beauty. It is a moment thoroughly earned by the album that precedes it, and in less than a minute, it’s gone. ..."
Pitchfork
W - Sirens
Nicolas Jaar: Take A Look Outside
YouTube: Sirens (Full Album 2016)

2013 September: Nicolas Jaar, 2014 January: Other People, 2015 May: Nicolas Jaar Soundtracks Short Film About Police Brutality and #BlackLivesMatter, 2015 July: Space Is Only Noise (2010), 2015 August: Boiler Room NYC DJ Set at Clown & Sunset Takeove, 2015 September: Work It (Bluewave edit), 2015 October: Darkside EP - Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington (2011). 2012 January: The Color of Pomegranates (1968) - Sergei Parajanov, 2015 November: Nicolas Jaar - Soundtrack, The Color of Pomegranates (2015)

A Brief Survey of the Great American Novel(s)

"On this date in 1868, novelist John William DeForest coined the now inescapable term 'the great American novel' in the title of an essay in The Nation. Now, don’t forget that in 1868, just a few years after the end of the Civil War, 'America' was still an uncertain concept for many—though actually, in 2017 we might assert the same thing, which should give you a hint as to why the term 'great American novel' is so problematic. ... In the nearly 150 years since the essay was written, the argument over the Great American Novel—what it is, what it should be, do we have one, do we need one, why so many white men—has gone on and on. ..."
Literary Hub

The Honeycombs - "Have I the Right?" (1964)

Wikipedia - "'Have I the Right?' was the début single and biggest hit of British band The Honeycombs. ... Howard and Blaikley were impressed by the group's lead vocalist, Dennis D'Ell, and the fact that they had a female drummer, Ann (‘Honey’) Lantree. ... Conspicuous in "Have I the Right?" is the prominent part of the drums that carry the song. Their effect was enhanced by having the members of the group stamp their feet on the wooden stairs to the studio. Meek recorded the sound with five microphones he had fixed to the banisters with bicycle clips. For the finishing touch someone beat a tambourine directly onto a microphone. The recording was somewhat speeded up, reportedly to the disappointment of Dennis D'Ell, who regretted that he could not reproduce this sound on stage. ..."
Wikipedia
W - The Honeycombs
The Honeycombs fan site
The Honeycombs fan site: Honey Lantree
allmusic: Honey Lantree
YouTube: Have I the Right?

Joanna Neborsky - Novels In Three Lines, Daniil Kharms

"In September 2010 I featured illustrator Joanna Neborsky's adaptation of Fénéon's Novels In Three Lines. Joanna has since worked her magic for deadpan Russian absurdist Daniil Kharms: 'Daniil Kharms (1905–1942) wore a hat to protect his ideas from being seen. He smoked a pipe to appear English (he was Russian). He wrote twenty children's books. This is not one of them. 'This short story from 1936 is illustrated in twenty collaged pages. Available in English and Italian editions. English translation courtesy Matvei Yankelevich and The Overlook Press.' ..."
Tumbling Old Women
Joanna Neborsky (Video)
Joanna Neborsky: Etc. (Video)
amazon: Illustrated Three-Line Novels: Felix Feneon, A Proust Questionnaire: Discover Your Truest Self--in 30 Simple Questions
YouTube: Light In The Attic Presents: The Shaggs "Philosophy Of The World" (Joanna Neborsky)

2011 March: Joanna Neborsky, 2012 August: On Cataloguing Flaubert

The Art of Painting - Johannes Vermeer (1665–1668)

Wikipedia - "The Art of Painting, also known as The Allegory of Painting, or Painter in his Studio, is a 17th-century oil on canvas painting by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. It is owned by the Austrian Republic and is on display in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. This illusionistic painting is one of Vermeer's most famous. In 1868 Thoré-Bürger, known today for his rediscovery of the work of painter Johannes Vermeer, regarded this painting as his most interesting. ... Many art historians think that it is an allegory of painting, hence the alternative title of the painting. Its composition and iconography make it the most complex Vermeer work of all. ..."
Wikipedia
Johannes Vermeer's influence and inspiration
NGA
Critical Assessments: The Art of Painting
YouTube: The Art of Painting, 1666-69

2009 September: Vermeer's Masterpiece, The Milkmaid, 2011 February: Vermeer: Master of Light, 2013 October: Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis, 2015 December: This Is Not a Vermeer ™.

Poetry and Politics in Iran

"In 1965, after a trip through China and Japan, the Iranian modernist Sohrab Sepehri found his voice. It could be heard in a new poem he had written, called 'The Sound of Water’s Footsteps.' Sepehri puzzles over his identity as a writer, as a Muslim, as a widely travelled painter, and as a man from Kashan, where, in the seventh century, according to legend, Arab invaders intent on spreading Islam subdued the poet’s home town by throwing scorpions over the walls. Sepehri muses on the space race and 'the idea of smelling a flower on another planet,' and he writes in free verse, inspired by Nima Yushij, a kind of Ezra Pound figure in the history of modern Persian poetry, who was inspired by the poetic notions of French Symbolists. Reflecting on a country with centuries of bumpy foreign contact, he draws out figures of confusion and displacement. ..."
New Yorker
W - Ferdowsi
NPR - Abolqasem Ferdowsi: The Poet Who Rescued Iran (Video)
Life of Ferdowsi
Persian Language & Literature
YouTube: Iran, Ferdowsi The Great Iranian Poet. Shahnameh

Guernica (2016)

"Sandbags, rifles and the fatigues of the militia have been familiar sights once more in the hills and valleys of the Basque country this autumn and are only now being cleared away, almost 80 years after the start of the Spanish civil war. But this time it was all make-believe. The life of George Steer, the British reporter who brought the horror of the bombing of Guernica in 1937 to the public in both Britain and America, has inspired a major English-language film, due out next year. Called Gernika, using the Basque spelling, it will be the first to depict the terrible events of 26 April on the big screen and it has been welcomed by the people of the region, many of whom have taken part as extras. ..."
Guardian: Reporter who told world of Guernica atrocity and inspired Picasso is hero of new film
Independent - Gernika: New film pays homage to civilian suffering over town that was brutally bombed during Spanish Civil War
W - Bombing of Guernica
W - Guernica (Picasso)
YouTube: Guernica Trailer

2011 July: Spanish Civil War - 75 Year, 18 July, 2011 August: Down and Out in Paris and London, 2012 March: 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother), 2012 June: "The Spanish Earth", Written and Narrated by Ernest Hemingway, 2013 January: The Real George Orwell, 2015 August: Songs of the Spanish Civil War, 2016 September: George Orwell - Homage to Catalonia (1938)

The Edge Becomes the Center - DW Gibson (2015)

"If you live in a city and every year, more and more Americans do you ve seen firsthand how gentrification has transformed our surroundings, altering the way cities look, feel, cost, and even smell.  ... The Edge Becomes the Center captures the stories of the many kinds of people brokers, buyers, sellers, renters, landlords, artists, contractors, politicians, and everyone in between who are shaping and being shaped by the new New York City. In this extraordinary oral history, DW Gibson takes gentrification out of the op-ed columns and textbooks and brings it to life, showing us what urban change looks and feels like by exposing us to the voices of the people living through it. Drawing on the plainspoken, casually authoritative tradition of Jane Jacobs and Studs Terkel, The Edge Becomes the Center is an inviting and essential portrait of the way we live now. ..."
Indie Bound
‘I Put in White Tenants’: The Grim, Racist (and Likely Illegal) Methods of One Brooklyn Landlord By DW Gibson
Yes, It’s Illegal for Landlords to Discriminate. And Yes, They Still Do It. By DW Gibson
NY Times: ‘The Edge Becomes the Center’ Explores the Rubble of Rebuilding
The Paris Review - Meet Your New Neighbors: An Interview with DW Gibson
Winner of the 2015 Brooklyn Eagle Literary Prize
Tracking Evictions and Rent Stabilization in NYC

At Huerto Roma Verde in Mexico City: Where Ecological Awareness Meets Public Art

"While exploring the streets of Mexico City earlier this month, I meandered into Huerto Roma Verde, a huge urban community garden — largely constructed with salvaged materials — in the South Roma colony. Committed to ecological awareness and sustainable consumption, it features a range of workshops and activities for folks of all ages. It is also rich and varied not only in its offerings and produce, but in its public art, as well. Here is a small sampling..."
Street Art NYC
Instagram

John Berger 1926-2017

"I first rang John Berger more than a year ago – I had been given his number by his publisher to arrange a date to meet him in Paris. I mentioned that November was a busy month, to which he responded in a warm, conspiratorial tone: that was good – because he would be away throughout the month and could not say when next he would be free. The sense was – charming, if not helpful in professional terms – that we would agree not to meet unless or until it suited us. The clear subtext was: let the bosses go hang. I put the phone down – amused but then anxious that I had missed my opportunity to meet the great man – storyteller, art critic, artist.  ..."
Guardian
New Yorker - Postscript: John Berger, 1926-2017
The Paris Review (Video 30:02)
Jacobin
NY Times: John Berger, Provocative Art Critic, Dies at 90
YouTube: John Berger, John Berger on Ways of Seeing, being an artist, and Marxism (2011) - Newsnight archives

2008 May: John Berger, 2010 November: Ways of Seeing - 1972 BBC four-part television series

Separate Cinema: 100 Years of Black Poster Art

"A new book from film poster collector John Duke Kisch presents 100 years of black film posters, charting the evolution of African-American cinema and changing attitudes towards race… Separate Cinema: The First 100 Years of Black Poster Art presents a compelling visual history of the representation of African-Americans in film, from early productions perpetuating racist stereotypes, to ground breaking films by black directors and contemporary releases such as Steve McQueen’s Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave. The book features hundreds of film posters from Europe, Asia and the US, which were sourced from Kisch’s Separate Cinema Archive – a collection of more than 35,000 posters from 30 countries. ..."
Creative Review
UCLA Film
The History Of Black Cinema In Vintage Hollywood Posters
amazon

John Ashbery - New Collages (2017)

“Salle d’Attente” (2016)
"The poet John Ashbery starts many of the collages in his new show at his longtime gallery, Tibor de Nagy, with a found postcard or a color reproduction of an old master painting like Andrea Mantegna’s 1497 'Parnassus.' Atop these politely cropped images, he affixes some small figure cut out of an incongruously different source, a comic strip like 'Popeye' or a vintage Coca-Cola advertisement. He places this figure where it will reinforce rather than disrupt the original composition, so that even as he is shading, psychologizing or interpreting the painting he’s chosen, he’s also letting it shine as it is. ..."
NY Times: What to See in New York Art Galleries This Week
Tibor de Nagy Gallery
In John Ashbery’s Collages, Life Is a Mixed-Media Affair

The Jam: Absolute Beginners EP (1981)

"This EP is more officially called The Jam, but it is record company Polydor putting two different singles and their B-sides together in one volume. ... Paul Weller and company, whether they sound more punk or new wave, consistently have something interesting going on. Inspired by the Colin MacInnes mod subculture novel of the same name, 'Absolute Beginners' features the line, 'I need the strength to get what I want,' which plays right into both the novel and The Jam’s ongoing themes of speaking up for the underclasses and those who are on the outskirts of mainstream society. ... 'Funeral Pyre' deals more directly with those in power who work against those below them. In the age of Thatcher, where the power of trade unions and other workers’ benefits programs were greatly reduced, the government presented their policies as being 'for the good of Great Britain.' ..."
Persephone Magazine (Video)
Post Punk Monk
Discogs
YouTube: Absolute Beginners (Live), Funeral Pyre (Live), Tales From The Riverbank (Live)

2009 March: The Jam, 2012 November: "Going Underground", 2013 January: In the City, 2013 February: This Is the Modern World, 2013 July: All Mod Cons, 2013 November: Setting Sons, 2014 January: Sound Affects (1980), 2014 December: Live At Bingley Hall, Birmingham, England 1982, 2015 March: "Town Called Malice" / "Precious", 2015 July: The Gift (1982), 2015 September: "Strange Town" / "The Butterfly Collector" (1979), 2016 April: "Down In The Tube Station At Midnight" (1979).

Jackie Opel - Cry Me A River / Eternal Love (1964)

Wikipedia - "Born Dalton Sinclair Bishop in Chapman Lane, Bridgetown, Barbados in 1937, Jackie Opel was a popular singer who possessed a rich, powerful voice with a high octave range. He was known as the 'Jackie Wilson of Jamaica' and was also a gifted dancer. In the early 1960s, he was discovered by Byron Lee, the band master of the Dragonaires, who brought him to Jamaica. His styles included ska, R&B, soul, gospel and calypso. He is credited with inventing spouge music, a fusion of ska, calypso, and R&B music. ..."
Wikipedia
The Jackie Opel Story
Discogs
YouTube: Cry Me A River, Lonely Tear