We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite (1960)

Wikipedia - "We Insist! (subtitled Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite) is a jazz album released on Candid Records in 1960. It contains a suite which composer and drummer Max Roach and lyricist Oscar Brown had begun to develop in 1959 with a view to its performance in 1963 on the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation. The cover references the sit-in movement of the Civil Rights Movement. The Penguin Guide to Jazz awarded the album one of its rare crown accolades, in addition to featuring it as part of its Core Collection. The music consists of five selections concerning the Emancipation Proclamation and the growing African independence movements of the 1950s. Only Roach and vocalist Abbey Lincoln perform on all five tracks, and one track features a guest appearance by saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. We Insist! is an avant-garde jazz album and a vocal-instrumental suite on themes related to the Civil Rights Movement. ... Brown and Roach began collaborating in 1959 on a longer piece that they planned to perform at the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1963. However, the urgency of civil rights issues steered them towards a new project in 1960, the album that would become the Freedom Now Suite. ..."
Wikipedia
Liner Notes — We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite, by Nat Hentoff
allmusic
Discogs
amazon, iTunes
YouTube: We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite(Video)

Edward Hopper - Seven A.M. (1948)

"In her diary entry for September 22, 1948, Josephine Hopper recorded the completion of her husband Edward’s most recent painting: 'E. has done this canvas in 16 days. I find on looking back he stretched it on Labor Day Sept. 6. This [is] a very short time.' The painting she describes, Seven A.M., depicts an anonymous storefront cast in the oblique, eerie shadows and cool light of early morning. If the fullness of summer is suggested by the lush foliage at the left, the mood is decidedly off-season and desolate. The store’s shelves stand empty, and the few odd products displayed in the window provide no evidence of the store’s function. A clock on the wall confirms the time given in the title, and indeed the painting seems to depict a specific moment and place. Yet a series of Hopper’s preparatory sketches reveal that he experimented with significant compositional variations, depicting a figure in the second-story window. He even considered setting the painting at another time of day. Josephine Hopper described the storefront as a 'blind pig,' a front for some illicit operation, perhaps alluding to the painting’s forbidding overtones."
Whitney

2008 July: Edward Hopper, 2010 October: Finding Nighthawks, 2010 December: Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time, 2012 Wednesday: Through Edward Hopper's eyes: in search of an artist's seaside inspiration, 2013 July: Hopper Drawing, 2014 May: INTERVIEW: “An Interview with Edward Hopper, June 17, 1959″., 2014 September: How Edward Hopper “Storyboarded” His Iconic Painting Nighthawks, 2015 February: Edward Hopper's New York: A Walking Tour, 2015 September: Edward Hopper life and works, 2016 May: "Night Windows," 1928, 2016 July: Sunday (1926), 2016 September: Drug Store (1927)

The Deep Blue Moods (Chance, Zorn, Ribot) at The Cooler, NYC 9.28.95

"James Chance, Robert Aaron, AJ Mantas, Ron Miller, Richard Dworkin, John Zorn, and Marc Ribot, performing Ain't Nobodies Business If I Do, Yesterdays, Leave My Girl Alone (with Luther Thomas and Judy Taylor). Filmed by Rich Spezialo. September 28, 1995 at The Cooler in NYC."
YouTube: The Deep Blue Moods (Chance, Zorn, Ribot) at The Cooler, NYC 9.28.95 (Video)
W - The Cooler (night club)

2009 December: James Chance, 2011 December: No New York, 2014 July: No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980, 2014 July: Bush Tetras, 2015 January: Buy - James Chance and the Contortions (1979), 2015 July: James White And The Blacks - Off White (1979), 2015 October: Pat Place, 2016 January: Lost Chance (1981), 2017 January: Twist Your Soul: The Definitive Collection (2010), 2017 April: Contort Yourself / (Tropical) Heatwave full 12” (1979), 2017 May: Filmed by Libin+Cameron: James White & The Blacks (1980 Live Performance Hurrah NightClub), 2017 August: Live Aux Bains Douches - Paris 1980, 2017 September: Soul Exorcism Redux - James Chance & The Contortions (2007)

Ursula K. Le Guin, Acclaimed for Her Fantasy Fiction, Is Dead at 88

"Ursula K. Le Guin, the immensely popular author who brought literary depth and a tough-minded feminist sensibility to science fiction and fantasy with books like 'The Left Hand of Darkness' and the Earthsea series, died on Monday at her home in Portland, Ore. She was 88. Her son, Theo Downes-Le Guin, confirmed the death. He did not specify a cause but said she had been in poor health for several months. Ms. Le Guin embraced the standard themes of her chosen genres: sorcery and dragons, spaceships and planetary conflict. But even when her protagonists are male, they avoid the macho posturing of so many science fiction and fantasy heroes. The conflicts they face are typically rooted in a clash of cultures and resolved more by conciliation and self-sacrifice than by swordplay or space battles. Her books have been translated into more than 40 languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide. ..."
NY Times
Guardian - Ursula K Le Guin, by Margaret Atwood: ‘One of the literary greats of the 20th century’

2015 October: Ursula Le Guin

When Something Is Wrong with My Baby - Sam & Dave (1967)

Wikipedia - "'When Something Is Wrong with My Baby' is a classic hit song, a soul ballad, written by Isaac Hayes and David Porter, recorded in Memphis and sung by Sam & Dave, and first released in 1967 by Stax Records. ... The song was covered by: Otis Redding & Carla Thomas in 1967; by Charlie Rich in 1967; Sonny James in 1976; Hall & Oates with David Ruffin and Eddie Kendrick of the Temptations at their Apollo Theatre concert in New York City 1985; Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville as a Top Five duet in 1990 - from the Triple Platinum album Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind, and again by Patti LaBelle and Travis Tritt in 1994 and by Frankie Miller in 1994. It has also been covered by the Dutch singer Herman Brood. Guy Sebastian sung the song in a duet with Jimmy Barnes and original Stax band Booker T. & the MG's in Sydney during the Memphis Tour Concert (Friday, 7 March 2008). ..."
Wikipedia
YouTube: When Something Is Wrong with My Baby (Video)

Water Ice Found Exposed in Martian Cliffs

Thick bands of ice (blue) have been spotted in steep cliff faces.
"Thick sheets of water ice, some barely buried beneath the surface and likely more than 100 meters thick, have been spotted on several Martian cliff faces. Geologists hoping to study the past climate history of Mars — and visionaries planning future visits by astronauts — got some great news with the discovery that exposures of water ice have been spotted on cliff faces. The widely scattered outcrops, seven in the southern hemisphere and one in the north, lie at latitudes of 55° to 58° — far from the planet's polar caps of water (and carbon-dioxide) ice. Colin Dundas (U.S. Geological Survey, Flagstaff) led the team that made the discovery using two instruments aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. First, detailed images from the spacecraft's HiRISE camera revealed banded layers in the scarps' steep faces that had a bluer color than their surroundings. Then near-infrared maps from the CRISM spectrometer confirmed that the layers were strongly enriched in water ice. ..."
Sky & Telescope
Science: Ice cliffs spotted on Mars
Washington Post: 'A fantastic find': Mars hides thick sheets of ice just below the surface (Video)

The 14 pieces of software that shaped modern music

Max (1986)
"We’re at the stage in history where using music software isn’t so much an option as it is a necessity. Sure, there are always going to be some contrarian sorts who take it upon themselves to record to dictaphone tape and pen their sheet music on rolls of dried human flesh, but nowadays they’re in the minority. If you’re going to be recording music, chances are you’re going to need some software to do it, and there are plenty of options. It wasn’t always this way – back in the early ’80s, when the MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) protocol was in its infancy, computers were still glorified word processors, and while some brave souls were attempting to generate experimental sounds (Max Mathews, please stand up), most of us were simply stuck waiting half an hour just to load a copy of 3D Monster Maze, only to be met by a read error at line 348. Over time, however, music software blossomed, and transitioned from fiddly time wasters, doomed to the forgotten directories on an Commodore Amiga cover disk, to the plethora of usable and sturdy apps we have available to use today. ..." (2016)
Fact

2012 January: Dr. T's Music Software, 2013 January: The 30th Anniversary Of MIDI: A Protocol Three Decades On, 2017 December: Instrumental Instruments: Atari ST

Communication: Gail Bichler

"For the fourth in our six-part series in collaboration with Bang & Olufsen, Design Matters, the New York Times Magazine design director Gail Bichler discusses taking risks, the tactility of print, and creating a record of history. All designers – whether they are producing everyday, practical tools or bespoke, high-end products – work with the same basic elements and needs. What do they need to communicate? What materials are they going to use? How is their design going to look, feel, and function? ..."
frieze (Video)

The Fate of the Party

Italian Communist Party (PCI) offices in Venice.
"At one point in time, the Italian Communist Party (PCI) was the largest communist party in the Western world, hitting 2.3 million members in 1947 and capturing nearly a third of the vote in the 1970s. Born out of a split, led by Antonio Gramsci and Amadeo Bordiga, from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), the party underwent a clandestine period during the Mussolini regime; played a historic role in the antifascist Resistance; and won the inscription of its values into Italy’s postwar constitution, which states that 'Italy is a democratic republic founded on labor.' Yet its institutional legacy reflects little of the party’s original radicalism. Its 1990s transformation into the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) was the beginning of multiple splits and rebrandings which ultimately ended in today’s Democratic Party (PD), the center-left party led by Matteo Renzi and committed to liberalizing Italy’s labor relations. What accounts for this trajectory? ..."
Jacobin
W - Antonio Gramsci
W - Italian Communist Party
W - Amadeo Bordiga

2013 July: Gramsci Monument

Monday used to be laundry day in New York City

"I’d seen this 1900 image of sheets, shirts, and undergarments hanging between rows of New York tenements before. But I never noticed the caption, 'A Monday’s Washing.' Was Monday the city’s official laundry day? Apparently it was a traditional day to do the hard work of washing clothes, as this excerpt from Tyler Anbinder’s book about the city’s notorious 19th century slum, Five Points, explains. 'Hard wash-days—typically Mondays—provided some of the most unpleasant memories for tenement housewives such as those in Five Points,' wrote Anbinder. 'They first made numerous trips up and down the stairs to haul water up from the yard. Then they heated the water on the stove and set to work scrubbing.. ..."
Ephemeral New York
A Fine Line: The Art of the Clothesline
W - Laundry

#18: Semina 4

"In the Spring of 2003, my wife and I had recently separated and the ink had dried on the sale of our house. Alone, I retreated into a small one-bedroom apartment nestled in the center of a triangle involving all my points of interest: a cigar store, a library and a bar. It was a time to regroup and to collect my thoughts, not to collect Burroughs. Instead, flush with cash, I proceeded to shuttle my way between the aforementioned landmarks and to go on an epic Burroughs buying spree that I have yet to duplicate since. Seemingly every day a package containing some Burroughs rarity arrived in the mailroom. Items I previously never dreamed of being able to add to my library. Items I thought I would only be able to fondle at book fairs and in institutions. ..."
RealityStudio
NY Times: A Return Trip to a Faraway Place Called Underground
From a Secret Location: Semina
Seminal and Impenetrable
amazon: Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & His Circle

40 Years On: Pere Ubu’s The Modern Dance Revisited

"In a December 1975 interview with Jane Scott of The Plain Dealer, a heavyset, wild-haired Cleveland singer known as Crocus Behemoth declared, 'We're putting out the hits of the next psychedelic era. If a melody fits in, fine. If not, we don't feel we have to use one. We're a bit ahead of our time, but that's the fun of it.' Mr. Behemoth was referring to his new band, Pere Ubu. Although they were yet to play their first show, they were already a familiar proposition in the nascent Midwest punk scene. Three months earlier, Cleveland proto-punk heroes Rocket From the Tombs self-imploded, leaving behind a trail of half-finished songs and tales of self-destruction and farce-filled gigs. Of its classic line-up - which Lester Bangs once called 'the original legendary underground rock band' - Gene O'Connor and Johnny Madansky formed Frankenstein, before settling on the name The Dead Boys. ..."
The Quietus
Punk 77
Fire Records (Video)

2008 April: Pere Ubu, 2010 July: Pere Ubu - 1, 2012 November: David Thomas And The Pedestrians - Variations On A Theme, 2013 February: Dub Housing, 2014 September: Carnival of Souls (2014), 2015 June: Street Waves / My Dark Ages (1976), 2016 January: Live at the Longhorn: April 1, 1978, 2016 February: Cloudland (1989), 2016 April: Architecture of Language 1979-1982, 2016 November: The Modern Dance (1978), 2016 December: Don't Expect Art (1980), 2017 January: New Picnic Time (1979), 2017 June: Allen Ravenstine, 2017 August: Two First Singles (1975-76)

2018 Women's March

Ginger Naglee from Olney, Maryland, reacts during the Women's March on Washington.
Wikipedia - "The 2018 Women's March held on January 20, 2018, on the anniversary of 2017 Women's March, was a reprise protest march with coordinated mass rallies, attracting hundreds of thousands of participants, in hundreds of cities, towns and suburbs in the United States, with sister rallies in Canada, Britain, Japan, Italy and other countries. Some of the largest rallies in the United States were held in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Dallas, Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, and Atlanta. By 2018, Women's March U.S., along with protesting President Trump and his administration’s policies on 'immigration, healthcare, racial divides' and other issues, new themes gained momentum including 'Power to the Polls'. Power to the Polls carries a new message with a focus on increasing voter participation through new voter registrations, encouraging more women, as 'strong advocates for women’s rights', to run for office. ..."
Wikipedia
Womens March (Video)
NPR - Women's March On Washington: 'We Are A Part Of America, So We Need To Be Out Here'

Rebekkah Logan, 20, of Corvallis, Ore.
Voices From the Women’s March - "On the first anniversary of the Women’s March, thousands gathered in major metropolitan areas and small towns around the globe. From Cheyenne, Wyo., to Pikeville, Ky., to Washington to Rome, people marched for women’s rights on Saturday. Eight photographers went to rallies for The New York Times and asked marchers what their hopes were for 2018. ..."
NY Times
NY TIMES: Women’s March 2.0 (Video)

2017 January: Women’s March Highlights as Huge Crowds Protest Trump: ‘We’re Not Going Away’

Ann Annie Makes Tape Loops Blossom

"If you follow Ann Annie’s music, then you may recognize the little tape cassette to the left of the deck in the new performance video 'Blossom.' Just over a week ago, a couple dismembered Maxell tape cassettes — also pink in accent color — were visible in one of Annie’s Instagram photos, with a 'feelin loopy' caption. Today the music that resulted has appeared. The product of that whimsy is now evident in this footage, almost seven minutes of exceptional sonic transformation, as the tape loop is mixed with dense oscillations, all of which is shifted, looped, glitched, and warped. There are terse bell tones and effluent white noise, lens-flare grace notes and ecstatic birdsong to 'Blossom,' which true to its name expands as it proceeds — what starts as loose and gentle gets more chaotic and rambunctious as time passes. ..."
disquiet (Video)

Big Sur - Jack Kerouac (1962)

Wikipedia - "Big Sur is a 1962 novel by Jack Kerouac. It recounts the events surrounding Kerouac's (here known by the name of his fictional alter-ego Jack Duluoz) three brief sojourns to a cabin in Bixby Canyon, Big Sur, owned by Kerouac's friend and Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The novel departs from Kerouac's previous fictionalized autobiographical series in that the character Duluoz is shown as a popular, published author. The Subterraneans also mentions Kerouac's (Leo Percepied) status as an author, and in fact even mentions how some of the bohemians of New York are beginning to talk in slang derived from his writing. Kerouac's previous novels are restricted to depicting Kerouac's days as a bohemian traveller. ..."
Wikipedia
NY Times: A Turn in the Road for the King of the Beats (1962)
NY Times: A Writer Who’s Beat in Search of a Refuge
YouTube: BIG SUR Trailer (Jack Kerouac's Book Adaptation)

2009 November: Another Side of Kerouac: The Dharma Bum as Sports Nut, 2010 July: Kerouac's Copies of Floating Bear, 2011 March: Jack Kerouac on The Steve Allen Show, 2013 September: On the Road - Jack Kerouac, 2014 May: “Walker Evans and Robert Frank – An Essay on Influence by Tod Papageorge” (1981), 2015 March: Pull My Daisy (1959), 2015 December: Hear All Three of Jack Kerouac’s Spoken, 2016 July: Mexico City Blues (1959), 2017 February: The Jack Kerouac Collection (1990), 2017 May: The Subterraneans (1958), 2017 June: The Town and the City (1950)

Joy Division - She's Lost Control (1979)

"... Listen to the nervy horror of She’s Lost Control now, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that it’s been cursed by some crooked finger of fate. It all seems spookily predestined that Curtis would write the lyrics when, in his nine-to-five job at the Department of Disabled Services in Manchester, he witnessed a young woman collapse with an epileptic fit. Later he’d learn that she died of a seizure; and eventually he’d be diagnosed with the condition himself. But even without the foreshadowing, She’s Lost Control would still sound starkand stern, like the last waltz at the death disco, coiled around Peter Hook’s rumbling bass. Curtis goes way beyond physical trauma lyrically too, turning the sight of jerking, flailing limbs into a cerebral crisis. Lost control means lost dignity, and the longer the song goes on, his voice becomes less steady, too: 'She’s clinging to the nearest passer by / She’s lost control / And she gave away the secrets of her past,' he barks. ..."
Guardian - Joy Division: 10 of the Best
W - She's Lost Control
How to Play She’s Lost Control by Joy Division (Video)
YouTube: She's Lost Control (Live)

2008 March: Ian Curtis, 2009 August: Factory: Manchester From Joy Division To Happy Mondays, 2010 November: Love Will Tear Us Apart, 2012 February: An Ideal for Living EP, 2012 May: Unknown Pleasures, 2013 May: "Atmosphere"/ "Dead Souls", 2016 December: John Peel Session (1979), 2017 July: Closer (1980)

The Second Lives of Pussy Hats

"One year ago, people at Women’s Marches across the country and around the world donned pink headgear to protest an administration headed by a man who, by his own account, thought he had a right to grab anything he wanted. We asked readers what they’ve done with their pussy hats since. Nicole Cesare of Philadelphia stashes hers in a 'go bag' along with pens, a notebook and snacks in case she needs to rush to a protest. Whitney Logan of Fairway, Kan., puts hers on when she makes phone calls to her senators and representatives: 'It gives me courage,' she said. Emily Kilbourn, in Bethlehem, Connecticut, wears hers when she’s going somewhere she knows she’ll run into conservatives: 'Amazing what a smile, wave, and a tip of the pussy hat will do!' For some readers, they’ve become complicated objects, representative of an unserious sort of activism, unsuited to the times. ..."
NY Times

American Landscape: An Exploration of Art & Humanity

American Landscape #34
"Using orange as a color representative of fear, Mousa’s mixed-media American Landscape Series takes up the fraught politics of LGBTQ rights in America. He employs the color’s long association with post-9/11 security threats – Code Orange (emergency code), even though in Europe and America prior to 9/11, orange had very positive connotations, like warmth, sweetness, and high energy. In Buddhism, orange is the color of illumination, indicating strength and wisdom. Mousa, however, uses it to add a disquieting sense of alarm to his work. Applied with scratchy, frantic marks, the color connotes both fire and blood. It lends urgency to an issue that’s intensely personal for Mousa, a gay man subject to right-wing, pro-family ideologies that compromise the queer community’s civil rights. The panels feature same sex figures linking hands – in pairs, rows, and even formations that build up the stars and stripes of the American flag. Combining them with other potent signifiers of American culture, the series provides important commentary on civil rights in the United States."
Nabil Mousa
NY Times: Arab and Coming Out in Art That Speaks Up

INTERVIEW: Jason Lutes Talks the Final Days of “Berlin”

"Following a devastating defeat in World War I, Germany embarked on what its citizens hoped would be a golden model of human achievement. However, the Weimar Republic incarnation of the country’s history was bedeviled by economic imbalance, social and racial strife, and radicalized factions that demonized their foes rather than striving to understand them. As even the most cursory knowledge of history tells us, this chaos paved the way for the horrific events of the Holocaust and World War II. For nearly twenty years, cartoonist Jason Lutes has been examining that tumultuous era of German society in the pages of 'Berlin.' At the center of the comic’s ensemble cast stand journalist Kurt Severing, hard-headed and serious, and artist Marthe Maller, affable and spirited. Around them revolve desperate children, Jewish businessmen, communist laborers, art students, National Socialist hardliners, Black jazz musicians and more. The intended trilogy of books is nearly complete — with 'Berlin' vol. 1 'City of Stone' and vol. 2 'City of Smoke' both published by Drawn and Quarterly. ..."
INTERVIEW: Jason Lutes Talks the Final Days of “Berlin”
LitHub: The American Artist Who’s Been Drawing Interwar Berlin for 23 Years
Quarterly Conversation
W - Berlin (comics)
amazon: Jason Lutes

BLT

Wikipedia - "A BLT (Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato) is a type of bacon sandwich. The standard BLT is made up of four ingredients: bacon, lettuce, tomato, and bread. The BLT evolved from the tea sandwiches served at a similar time to the club sandwich, although it is unclear when the name BLT became the norm. While there are variations on the BLT, the essential ingredients are bacon, tomatoes and lettuce, on a slice of bread. The quantity and quality of the ingredients are matters of personal preference. The bacon can be well cooked or tender, but as it 'carries' the other flavours, chefs recommend using higher quality meat; in particular, chef Edward Lee states 'Your general supermarket bacon is not going to cut the mustard.' ..."
Wikipedia
YouTube: BLT - Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato

Nigeria Special Volume 2 & Afrobeat Compilation Reviewed

"In recent years, world music has become less, well, worldly. The creeping influence of the sounds of the Sahara have found their way to America’s West Coast, and to California in particular, scattered out over the underground landscape like seeds falling and floating off a particularly beautiful, and enviably fertile, flower. The burgeoning African hip-hop scene, too, has gone full circle: the bubbling flows and garish styles its impressionable, youthful rappers learnt from MTV imports, and then melded with their own instruments to create something wonderfully unique, are now impacting on the next generation of rappers and producers in America and Europe. Now Africa is firmly in the spotlight, good documents of its musical history (as well as those of the Caribbean islands and other areas of particular potency with a broadly African base) are needed; compilations that are well researched and unpatronising, expansive without being hopelessly scattered. And that’s where Soundway Records come in. ..."
The Quietus (Video)
Discogs (Video)
Discogs (Video)
Nigeria Special, Vol. 2: Modern Highlife, Afro Sounds & Nigerian Blues 1970-6
YouTube: Nigeria Afrobeat Special, Nigeria Special Vol. 2, Fela Kuti Interview

Meet the Puerto Ricans Who Fled to New York After Maria

Juan Miranda
"The Hurricane Service Center was set up by NYC Emergency Management in October of 2017 for displaced residents of Florida, Texas, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico, following Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. I had gone there because I needed help: I’d been living with my grandmother in the northern coastal Puerto Rican town of Arecibo and went through Maria with her when it made a direct hit on the town; though the house suffered no damages, our daily lives became limited to setting up whatever receptacle we could find to gather rainwater and seeking whatever food was available in the small grocery stores nearby. As a video editor and filmmaker working in a small company in the south of the island, I couldn’t work without an internet connection, let alone power or generators. Eventually I decided to leave for New York City, where my brother lives. But the reality is that there is nothing minor about this crisis, for anyone. Some island residents lost homes, belongings, family, and friends, while others lost their jobs. ..."
Voice

John Carter ‎– Castles Of Ghana (1986)

"John Carter, a not-so-well-known clarinetist, creates in the ’80 a series of albums, 5 to be precise, that summarize the history of afroamerican music. Those lp’s are obviously not a scientific effort to classify and organize the musical experience of black people in United States, all the elements are nevertheless present and finely mixed. Avantgarde, swing, blues, minimalism, dixie marches share the same ground and justappose and interwine each other homogenously. Each of the five chapters deals with a different historical moments, from Africa to deportation, from the fields to the urban migrations in America. Castles of Ghana is the second part of the series, the title itself invokes dark dungeons where men were gathered and lately deported to cotton fiels and hard labor. The music is never relaxed, it goes from hectic to humble, sad and obscure to ironic, almost playful, with an wry irony disdainful of the oppressors. Altough the disc stands by itself, the listening of all 5 chapters, chronologically or not, is an engaging and imageful sham of a barbarity and of one of its painful but most sublime aftermath: jazz."
nowhereville
Discogs
YouTube: Castles of Ghana, Theme Of Desperation, Conversations, The Fallen Prince

The Bostonians - Henry James (1886)

Wikipedia - "The Bostonians is a novel by Henry James, first published as a serial in The Century Magazine in 1885–1886 and then as a book in 1886. This bittersweet tragicomedy centres on an odd triangle of characters: Basil Ransom, a political conservative from Mississippi; Olive Chancellor, Ransom's cousin and a Boston feminist; and Verena Tarrant, a pretty, young protégée of Olive's in the feminist movement. The storyline concerns the struggle between Ransom and Olive for Verena's allegiance and affection, though the novel also includes a wide panorama of political activists, newspaper people, and quirky eccentrics. ... Unlike much of James' work, The Bostonians deals with explicitly political themes: feminism and the general role of women in society. James was at best ambivalent about the feminist movement, and the early chapters harshly satirise Olive and her fellow ideologues. Another theme in the book, much discussed recently, is Olive's possible lesbian attraction to Verena. ..."
Wikipedia
Guardian: The end of innocence
The Allantic
amazon

Grounding the currents of Indigenous resistance

Nepantla
"Indigenous peoples across the Americas have been rising up for 500 years, presenting multivalent forms of resistance to colonial violence, femicide, epistemicide and ecocide. The many faces and instances of this resistance do not register within leftist discourse and practice, and, in fact, are often invisibilized. As Indigenous women who have actively participated in and led community resistance to colonial violence, our response to the question 'Why don’t the poor rise up?' is to share our own stories and the stories of our people here not as the answer to this question but as the context for our own question: 'When will the left listen?' This article was written at the onset of the fourth anniversary of the Idle No More movement and in the eighth month of the Indigenous-led action and encampment to stop construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline on sacred ancestral lands of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation. ..."
ROAR (Video)
11 Indigenous resistance movements you need to know
W - Indigenous peoples
Unsettling America - Decolonization in Theory & Practice
Indigenous Resistance: The Big Picture behind Pipeline Protests
Indigenous Resistance to New Colonialism
500 Years of Indigenous Resistance: The Anti-Colonial Struggle in Canada (Video)
8 Musicians Highlighting Indigenous Resistance With a 2016 Spin (Video)

Music With Memory - David Behrman (2018)

"Alga Marghen return to David Behrman’s pioneering electronic experiments with this astonishing collection of live recordings marrying microprocessors with violin, sax and electrified Mbira between 1986-1989, all previously unpublished on any format. While Behrman’s name is synonymous with 20th century avant garde sonics - often checked in the same breath as John Cage, or alongside peers Gordon Mumma, Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier - it may be difficult for curious neeks to grasp his wide-reaching, exploratory practice, which is where you can consider this LP a seductive and ear-dilating portal to his freely improvised, beautifully mercurial world. Music With Memory was realised at the behest of John Driscoll and Mathias Osterwold, who conceived the phrase to describe the mixture of then newly available, portable 'microprocessors', or computers equipped with memory, with 'real' musicians, namely Takehisa Kosugi (Violin) and Werner Durand (Soprano Saxophone) respectively, at their concerts held at Eiszeit-Kino in Kreuzberg, Berlin, 1986. ..."
boomkat (Audio)
Discogs
Soundohm
amazon
Soundcloud: Music With Memory (Excerpt 3)
YouTube: Music With Memory (Excerpt 1), Music With Memory (Excerpt 2)

2010 October: Roulette TV: David Behrman, 2012 January: The Siren Orchestra, 2014 May: On the Other Ocean/Figure in a Clearing (1977). 2015 June: Wave Train

Turkey’s State of Emergency

"Politics always involves a tension between laws and leadership, accountability and action. Emergencies occur, the ship of state needs to negotiate the storms of unexpected events; there is a need to act. For those who believe in the priority of rights as an ideal of politics, this can be a problem. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben mused on this in his State of Exception, arguing that sovereignty and constitutions are unstable partners, with the sovereign always longing to slip the constitutional net. I was reminded of this during my recent trip to Ankara as part of a European socialist delegation in order to witness the trial of the two leaders of the mainly Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP in Turkish), Selahatin Demirtas and Figen Yuksegdag. The prosecutors have asked for a 142-year sentence for each of them. It is likely that their request will be granted. There is currently a 'state of emergency' in Turkey, where President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has developed a peculiar form of national Islam, an unprecedented combination of Atatürk and the Muslim Brotherhood. ..."
The Nation
The Nation: In Turkey, Repression of the Kurdish Language Is Back, With No End in Sight

2016 February: The Feminist, Democratic Leftists Our Military Is Obliterating -  Debbie Bookchin, 2016 May: Turkey’s Authoritarian Turn, 2016 July: How Turkey Came to This, 2017 March: As repression deepens, Turkish artists and intellectuals fear the worst, 2017 July: A Long March for Justice in Turkey, 2017 July: Radical Municipalism: The Future We Deserve, 2017 September: Istanbul: Memories and the City - Orhan Pamuk

Fine Arts Work Center

Frank Gardner - Provincetown Morning
Wikipedia - "The Fine Arts Work Center is a non-profit enterprise devoted to encouraging the growth and development of emerging visual artists and writers through residency programs, to the propagation of aesthetic values and experience, and to the restoration of the year-round vitality of the historic art colony of Provincetown, Massachusetts. The Work Center was founded in 1968 by a group of American artists and writers to support promising individuals in the early stages of their creative careers. The Work Center, whose founders included Stanley Kunitz, Robert Motherwell, Myron Stout and Jack Tworkov, annually offers ten writers and ten visual artists seven-month residencies, including a work area and a monthly stipend. ..."
Wikipedia
W - Provincetown Art Association and Museum
Provincetown Arts Magazine
W - P'town
Google: Provincetown, Mass.
Provincetown History: The Art Colony, A Brief History

Fine Arts Work Center

1959: The Year that Changed Jazz

"1959. It was a pivotal year for jazz. Musicians started breaking away from bebop, exploring new, experimental forms. And four absolutely canonical LPs were recorded that year:Kind of Blue by Miles Davis; Time Out by Dave Brubeck; Mingus Ah Um by Charles Mingus; and The Shape of Jazz to Come by Ornette Coleman. 1959 also found America on the cusp of great social and political upheaval. Integration, Vietnam, the Cuban Missile Crisis -- they were all coming around the bend, and sometimes figures like Mingus and Coleman commented musically on these events. This transformative period gets nicely covered by the recent BBC documentary, 1959: The Year that Changed Jazz. The outtake above focuses on Ornette Coleman and his innovative work as a free jazz musician. If it whets your appetite, you can dive into the full program on YouTube. The documentary featuring interviews with Brubeck, Coleman, Lou Reed, and Herbie Hancock is available runs roughly 60 minutes. ..."
Open Culture (Video)

Towards Anarchitecture: Gordon Matta-Clark and Le Corbusier

Window Blowout 1976. Photograph mounted on board.
"Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–1978), who trained originally as an architect, is best known for his spectacular ‘building cuts’. These have often been seen as an outright rejection of the architectural profession. The collaborative project Anarchitecture (1974), however, demonstrates how the language of modernism, particularly the polemical and epigrammatic Towards a New Architecture by the French modernist artist and architect Le Corbusier, was very much part of his raw material. ..."
Tate
NY Times - Back in the Bronx: Gordon Matta-Clark, Rogue Sculptor
Bronx Museum - Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect
amazon: Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect
vimeo: Anarchitecture, the Architecture

Restoring King

"Every year, in January and April, we commemorate the extraordinary career of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. But there is probably no figure in recent American history whose memory is more distorted, whose message is more bowdlerized, whose powerful words are more drained of content than King. A few years ago, in preparation for a public lecture on 1968, I reread the most important book on King and his politics to come out in the last decade: Thomas F. Jackson’s From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King Jr and the Struggle for Economic Justice. Jackson, a former researcher with the King Papers project at Stanford, has read King’s every last sermon, speech, book, article, and letter. What Jackson finds is that from the beginning of his ministry, King was far more radical, especially on matters of labor, poverty, and economic justice, than we remember. In media accounts, King was quickly labeled the “Apostle of Non-Violence” and, by the mid 1960s, portrayed as the antithesis to Malcolm X. ..."
The Dawn
NY Times: Will America Choose King’s Dream or Trump’s Nightmare?

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

William Basinski ‎- The Garden Of Brokenness (2005)

"The sustain pedal was one of the greatest discoveries of my life. I still remember the first few times I ever sat at a piano, holding it down and letting the notes vibrate against each other until they faded to imperceptibility. And then doing it again. Incredibly, the sound of felt hammers on metal strings can be used to express almost any emotion you could name. In 1979, when he first recorded the piano loops used on The Garden of Brokenness, William Basinski says he was attempting capture 'mono no aware,' a Japanese concept whose closest English translation is 'the sadness of things.' 'Things' could be taken two ways, of course-- it may refer to the general state of being alive, or to literal, physical objects. Either way, these sad, slow piano loops are the kind of sounds that poke around in your guts looking for sensitive spots to nestle into. ..."
Pitchfork
YouTube: The Garden of Brokenness

2017 January: The Disintegration Loops (2002-2003), 2017 October: Watermusic II (2003)

The loveliness of New York’s skinny brownstones

"A single-family brownstone has been a New Yorker’s dream home since these “brown stone front” row houses (often made of brick with brown sandstone covering the facade) began appearing on city blocks by the middle of the 19th century. Because building lots during the brownstone era typically measured 25 by 100 feet, the average home came in at about 20 feet across, which allowed for a spacious parlor floor with two or three wide windows with decorative touches spanning each floor. But thanks to profit-driven developers who decided to squeeze two brownstones into one lot, the cityscape of today contains a fair number of slender, narrow, skinny brownstones. The top photo shows one in Gramercy with the same iron balconies and cornice as its wider counterparts. The second photo shows two compressed-looking brownstones on West 30th Street. ..."
Ephemeral New York

2014 April: Brownstone, 2015 May: Park Slope and the Story of Brownstone Brooklyn

Alice Neel, Uptown

Mercedes Arroyo, 1952
"Known for her portraits of family, friends, writers, poets, artists, students, singers, salesmen, activists, and more, Alice Neel created forthright, intimate, and, at times, humorous paintings that quietly engaged with political and social issues. In Alice Neel, Uptown, writer and curator Hilton Als brings together a body of paintings and works on paper of African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, and other people of color for the first time. Highlighting the innate diversity of Neel’s approach, the selection looks at those whose portraits are often left out of the art-historical canon and how this extraordinary painter captured them; 'what fascinated her was the breadth of humanity that she encountered,' Als writes. ..."
David Zwirner
The Atlantic: How Alice Neel’s Sharp, Compassionate Eye Painted Harlem
[PDF] David Zwirner
amazon

2010 October: Alice Neel, 2012 September: Alice Neel: Late Portraits and Still Lifes

Swoop And Cross – Stories Of Disintegration (2018)

"... Up first is this pastoral and nostalgic beauty from Swoop And Cross, aka London based Portuguese composer/musician, Ruben Vale. Like a soundtrack to a melancholic and romantic silent film from long past, the tracks on Stories Of Disintegration wind their way into your subconscious, softly easing you into a state of memory and longing. As though you are watching your life on rewind…and waiting to hear what happens in the music. The languid and dreamy piano motifs are counter balanced by more rhythmic electronic flourishes, and together they form this very contemplative set of sounds. ... Each lidded box is collaged on the cover with unique Japanese prints of temples and gardens, torn, punched and holed, leaving parts of the original album cover showing. Most boxes have a spinning wheel on the cover as well, and each comes with a wraparound stamped obi strip. Each box is then edge stamped, and comes inside with fragments of photos and texts from the originally included librettos and booklets. ..."
Time Released Sound (Audio)
disquiet (Audio)
Soundcloud: Swoop And Cross "Stories Of Disintegration" St. No
YouTube: #Gonzervatory Application - Swoop and Cross

Bill Morrison - The Dockworker's Dream (2016)

"There is a magical new film by Bill Morrison, who has has garnered love and accolades for his films that use archival footage to tell new stories. His work has been shown around the world, recently as part of a mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Along with his use of found footage, Bill Morrison often teams up with modern composers. He's made films using music by Philip Glass, Harry Partch, Vijay Iyer and Bill Frisell which gives you an idea of his reach into both the world of classical, avant-garde and jazz. For his new film, The Dockworker's Dream, Bill Morrison did something a bit different, by teaming up Kurt Wagner of the dreamy, country-tinged band Lambchop for music that is both instrumental and vocal. The film is a reflective black and white journey from port to factory that includes a wedding and a hunt. ..."
NPR - Archival Filmmaker Bill Morrison Meets Lambchop: Watch Their Film (Video)
YouTube: The Dockworker's Dream

2012 June: Bill Morrison, 2015 October: Decasia (2002), 2017 December: The Miners' Hymns (2011)

Nuyorican

Miguel Piñero of the Nuyorican literary movement and poet Sandra Maria Esteves on the train in New York City in 1977.
Wikipedia - "Nuyorican is a portmanteau of the terms 'New York' and 'Puerto Rican' and refers to the members or culture of the Puerto Rican diaspora located in or around New York City, or of their descendants (especially those raised or still living in the New York area). This term could be used for Puerto Ricans living in other areas in the Northeast outside New York State. The term is also used by Boricuas (Puerto Ricans from Puerto Rico) to differentiate those of Puerto Rican descent from the Puerto Rico-born. The term Nuyorican is also sometimes used to refer to the Spanish spoken by New York Puerto Ricans. ... Ethnic enclaves centered on Puerto Ricans include Spanish Harlem, Manhattan; Williamsburg, Brooklyn; and the South Bronx. ... Nuyorican itself dates at least from 1975, the date of the first public sessions of the Nuyorican Poets Café. ..."
Wikipedia
W - Nuyorican Movement
Becoming “Nuyorican” (Video)
W - Nuyorican Poets Café
Nuyorican Poets Cafe

The exterior walls are painted by a local artist "Chico" who has done neighborhood murals for decades. Above the entry doorway hangs Diana Gitesha Hernandez's acrylic painting.

Chaos Is This College Basketball Season’s Only Constant

"This college basketball season is drunk. I know that gets said every year around this point in January, but that’s only because the sentiment always rings true. The entire sport’s landscape feels fuzzy: Unranked teams are beating top-10 teams so often that it’s no longer even surprising; all the blueblood programs are worse than expected; there were no undefeated teams left by New Year’s Day; and four teams — Arizona, Florida, Texas A&M, and Notre Dame — have fallen to unranked status after previously cracking the top five of the AP poll. The SEC and Pac-12 are shitshows, the Big East and Big 12 are bloodbaths, the ACC might be the fourth-best conference in America, and the Big Ten is a thing that also exists. Plus, Wisconsin and Iowa State stink, Auburn and Arizona State don’t, Buzz Williams has hair, and J.P. Macura doesn’t wear sleeves on the court. ..."
The Ringer

2012 July: Doin’ It In The Park: Pick-Up Basketball, NYC, 2013 March: March Madness 2013, 2014 January: History of the high five, 2015 February: Dean Smith (February 28, 1931 – February 7, 2015), 2015 September: Joint Ventures: How sneakers became high fashion and big business, 2015 December: Welcome to Smarter Basketball, 2016 January: The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams (1994), 2016 January: A Long Hardwood Journey, 2016 March: American Hustle - Alexandra Starr, 2016 July: Photographers in Focus: Ethan Sprague, 2016 November: 2016–17 College Basketball, 2017 November: 2017-18 College Basketball

Bootsy Collins - What's In My Bag?

"Bootsy Collins is a legendary funk and R&B bassist with a musical legacy spanning four decades. Born in Cincinnati, Collins began his musical career with The Pacemakers, members of which later served as James Brown's backing group under the name The J.B.'s. After moving to Detroit in the '70s, he was introduced to George Clinton and joined Funkadelic. In 1976, Collins and several other members of the Parliament Funkadelic collective formed Bootsy's Rubber Band and recorded five albums together. In the '80s Collins recorded both as a solo artist and with Bootsy's Rubber Band. He has collaborated with Bill Laswell, Fatboy Slim, Deee-Lite, and Jerry Harrison of Talking Heads. His most recent release is 2011's The Funk Capital of the World, which features appearances by Chuck D, Snoop Dogg, George Clinton and Bernie Worrell."
Amoeba Music (Video)

2009 July: Bootsy Collins, 2012 April: Ahh...The Name Is Bootsy, Baby!, 2009 January: George Clinton, 2010 December: Mothership Connection - Houston 1976, 2011 October: Funkadelic - One Nation Under A Groove, 2011 October: "Do Fries Go With That Shake?", 2012 August: Tales Of Dr. Funkenstein – The Story Of George Clinton & Parliament/Funkadelic, 2015 July: Playing The (Baker's) Dozens: George Clinton's Favourite Albums, 2015 August: Chocolate City (1975), 2016 February: Maggot Brain - Funkadelic (1971), 2016 June: P-Funk All Stars - Urban Dancefloor Guerillas (1983), 2017 March: Up for the Down Stroke - Parliament (1974)