Young, Latin & Black

Baseball on the beach in the Dominican Republic.
"The 'trap' strain of American hip hop, out of the Black American South, is at the moment the most popular rhythm in the world. I know that statement seems hyperbolic, but if you think back to the previous contenders for that title—New York’s strain of hip hop, techno, reggae, disco, jazz—its not hard to look around and see that trap’s rhythm and sonic aesthetics make up a musical cell that currently holds a singular place at the top of Black Atlantic musical food chain. (The globalized version of dancehall being carried around the world by anglophone West Africans is probably the closest contender, and may eclipse trap by the end of this year.) Because of its popularity, trap and its surrounding culture have also become the signifier for that quintessential African American cultural element called 'coolness' that so many young people around our hyperconnected world desire. ..."
Africa is a Country (Video/Audio)

Hedge Walking: The Land Art Of Andy Goldsworthy

"Sometimes when walking in nature something uncanny may reveal itself. A group of trees might momentarily form a straight line from a particular angle as you walk past, a shaft of light may find passage through a valley cut to hit a single pool of water, stones may emerge from the ground that appear to be some planned passage or pavement. We are creatures of pattern, and we look for such suggestions of structure and order in the apparent chaos and clutter of the natural world around us. But sometimes, just sometimes, that hint of order is actually man-made, because where you’re walking may have previously been visited by British land artist Andy Goldsworthy, subject of a new documentary by Thomas Riedelsheimer. ..."
The Quietus
Guardian - Branching out: why artist Andy Goldsworthy is leaving his comfort zone
5 Lessons Creatives Can Learn from Andy Goldsworthy
Leaning Into The Wind: Andy Goldsworthy (Video)
If Andy Goldsworthy Climbs a Tree and There's No One There to Hear Him... (Video)
amazon

2007 November: Andy Goldsworthy: Roof, 2012 March: Rivers and Tides, 2012 June: Andy Goldsworthy 1987 Grizedale, 2017 September: Rivers and Tides: Working With Time - Fred Frith (2001)

The Wailing Souls - Wailing Souls / Soul & Power

"Wailing Souls (CD): This neglected classic from 1974 gets a timely reissue in both CD and vinyl formats. The original vinyl release is quite difficult to find and something of a collectors' item so this will be welcomed by more than a few Studio One aficionados. The CD is supplemented with two bonus tracks, Things & Time and Without You, and includes extended versions of Back Out With It and Row Fisherman; whereas the vinyl reissue comes without the two bonus tracks but with extended versions of Back Out With It, Real Rock and Got To Be Cool. It is unusual (even for Studio One) that the two formats should be so different. But, whether your preference is for vinyl or CD, you won't be disappointed. The Wailing Souls were early stars of Coxonne Dodd’s legendary ‘Studio One’ record label, originally recording under ‘The Renegades’ and releasing a set of highly sought after 7”s. Studio One is widely considered to be the Motown of Jamaica, led by visionary producer Lloyd ‘Coxonne’ Dodd with his house band ‘Sound Dimension’ housing, at different points, some of the greatest musicians ever to grace the island. ..."
Holland Tunnel Dive
Discogs - The Wailing Souls, Discogs - Soul Power
YouTube: Pack up, Got To Be Cool, All alone, Trouble Maker, EQUALITY

William Corbett (October 11, 1942 – August 10, 2018)

Wikipedia - "William Corbett (October 11, 1942 – August 10, 2018) was an American poet, essayist, editor, educator, and publisher. Corbett's work and public readings acknowledge the influence on him of jazz, modernist and imagist poetry (especially William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound in his later work), the group of poets in Donald Allen's seminal anthology The New American Poetry 1945–1960, many of them from the Black Mountain College community (most notably Allen Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara, James Schuyler, his friends Robert Creeley and John Wieners, and his mentor, Charles Olson), classical Chinese poets (mainly Li Po), and French poetry of the mid-19th to early 20th centuries (especially Guillaume Apollinaire). ..."
Wikipedia
Jacket Magazine - William Corbett: On West Broadway
Jacket Magazine - William Corbett - Ric Caddel
Jacket2: A few words on James Schuyler - William Corbett
amazon: William Corbett

Where Fans of Rare Retro Soul Get Their Groove on

Every Wednesday at Botanica, Matt Weingarden, center, the host of “Downtown Soulville,” a radio show on WFMU, plays music from his personal collection of 45s.
"Matt Weingarden was running late. Clutching a box of records, he asked the couple in the window seat at the candlelit bar to relocate. He bussed a pint glass from their table, set up two turntables and a mixer, and set his records up on the windowsill. Switches were flipped. Knobs were turned. A green light blinked on. Finally, he put the needle down. 'I’m Drunk and Real High (In the Spirit of God),' a single by the little-known crooner Ada Richards, poured lo-fi, up-tempo beats into the room. About 15 people milled about. Some snapped fingers. Some clapped hands. A group started dancing. Every Wednesday for the last 23 years, at around 9:30 p.m., whether there’s a blizzard or a heat wave, Mr. Weingarden, a.k.a. D.J. Mr. Fine Wine, shows up at Botanica, an unassuming bar on East Houston Street with a music-rich past. Here he plays obscure vinyl, mostly soul, from the 1960s and ’70s. He plays seven-inch singles exclusively. ..."
NY Times (Video)
WFMU - Downtown Soulville with Mr. Fine Wine: Playlists and Archives (Video)

D.J. Mr. Fine Wine, a.k.a. Matt Weingarden, travels with a box and two bags of records on the subway to East Houston Street in Manhattan for his gig at Botanica.

Jazz Jams With Harvey Pekar

"For most of his adult life, Harvey Pekar held a day job filing medical records at Cleveland Veterans Administration Hospital. Perhaps the attention to detail in that endeavor helped him with his more famous vocation, as the creator and writer of American Splendor comic books. When he was sixteen, Pekar began collecting jazz records, saying, 'I loved jazz and listened to it closely and analytically.' When he started writing his comics, he had such graphic masters as Robert Crumb, Spain Rodriguez, and Alison Bechdel illustrate his workaday tales of life in Cleveland. In 1995, he teamed with Joe Sacco, an artist known for his comics journalism (Palestine, Safe Area Gorazde), to collaborate on an illustrated reminiscence with the jazz guitarist Bill DeArango, who, like Pekar, was a Cleveland native. ..."
Voice

Let Us Now Praise the Radical Women of New York

"It has been six weeks since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated Joe Crowley in the Democratic Primary for New York’s 14th Congressional District. Ever since, the nation’s thinkpiece writers have been working overtime, spilling untold barrels of ink in the pursuit of explicating, denigrating, or emblematizing her. Just this week, a piece at CNN seemed to lay blame at her feet alone for the failure of several progressive candidates in Tuesday’s special and legislative elections. The extraordinary focus on a neophyte nominee is in part due to the unusual circumstance of an incumbent being dislodged at all in America’s top-heavy system, much less by a very young woman of color. But critics keep returning to just one way in which Ocasio-Cortez has distinguished herself from the multitude of Democratic candidates this cycle: She identifies as a socialist. ..."
Voice

Catch the Perseid Meteor Shower at Its Peak

The Perseid meteors appear to stream away from the shower's radiant point near the border of Perseus and Cassiopeia.
"'Stars fell like weaving in the south, unceasingly through the night.' So a city gazetteer printed in Shanxi, China, described the sky above Fenyang on August 10, 1862. Calculating backward, scholars have determined that the 'weaving stars' witnessed by the townspeople were in fact Perseid meteors, falling at a time when the shower’s radiant, the point from which the meteors appear to emanate, lay low in the sky. The Perseids are associated with the short-period Halley-type comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, which was independently discovered by American astronomers Lewis Swift and Horace Tuttle as it approached perihelion in July 1862. When Earth crosses Swift-Tuttle’s orbit, bits of dust and rocks left behind by the comet hit the planet’s atmosphere, creating the light show we know as the Perseid meteor shower. In years when Swift-Tuttle reaches perihelion, the number of visible meteors significantly increases, which explains the dramatic display of August 1862. Since the comet has a 133-year orbital period and last visited the inner solar system in 1992, we’ve got another 107 years to go before that possibility arises again. ..."
Sky & Telescope
10 Things: How to Photograph a Meteor Shower (Video)

This composite image is made of several exposures shot at Sunset Crater, Arizona, over nearly 2 hours on the morning of August 12, 2016. The image shows 48 Perseids — including two spectacular fireballs — and 5 sporadics (meteors not associated with the Perseids, identified by the trails not in alignment with the majority).

#2 Acid Arab • DJ Set • Le Mellotron

"Acid Arab is a French duo on a mission to combine what they call 'Eastern music' with acid house and techno. It’s a tricky task. How do you take sounds and ideas with such a vast (and vague) set of signifiers and make it anything more than a gimmick? Inspired by a trip to Tunisia, Guido Minisky and Hervé Carvalho set out to do just that, and they’ve brought some of their friends along for the ride. The duo’s 'Theme' is probably the best thing on the EP, and, thankfully, it isn’t just Arabic melodies pasted onto acid house. The duo sends a wafting melody through a sieve of percolating hand percussion, with the acid manifesting in satisfying bursts of harsh resonance. Crackboy tries his hand at attacking the source material directly with a remix of Omar Souleyman’s 'Shift Al Mani.' His attempt is wildly unhinged, as the hammering drums struggle to contain the original’s monophonic fury. Boys In The Oud—a collective that includes Versatile boss DJ Glib’R—get dubby on 'Cosmique Arabe.' Like a journey through some trippy Shangri-La, the group places melodies and furiously plucked guitar on a foundation that leans towards disco house. With 'Le Bon Vieux Temps,' French dance magnate I:Cube is the only one who takes the predictable route. Essentially boilerplate acid house saddled with Middle Eastern motifs, it’s serviceable but feels like the simplistic pastiche that everyone else managed to avoid."
Acid Arab & Banda Panda at KC Grad (Video)
Mixcloud (Audio)
Soundcloud (Audio)

2018 July: #1 - Le Mellotron: Mehmet Aslan • DJ Set

Van Gogh’s Art Now Adorns Vans Shoes

"While museums remain free for the most part in Europe and still so popular that they are loved better than luxury brands (according to this one article), funding is not what it used to be. As you might have seen with our posts on Hieronymus Bosch on (Dr. Marten’s) Boots, wearable classic art is kind of a thing now. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam announced a series of limited-edition Vans (Van Gogh, Vans shoes, get it?!) featuring patterns based on his paintings: 'Skull' (1887), 'Almond Blossom' (1890), 'Sunflowers' (1889) and van Gogh's 'Self-Portrait as a Painter' (1887-1888). There’s even a shoe that uses writing from one of his letters, including stamp and address, as a pattern. ..."
Open Culture

August Wilson in St. Paul: A MN Original Special

Jasmine Hughes and Terry Bellamy in "Jitney" at Penumbra Theater in costumes by Mathew LeFebvre
"MN Original celebrates the late Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson and his impact in our community through the years he spent in St. Paul. This special includes a rare interview with August Wilson from 1997 program Literature and Life: The Givens Collection, profiles featuring director Marion McClinton and Penumbra Theatres Artistic Director Lou Bellamy and perspective from Star Tribune theater reporter Rohan Preston."
Twin Cities Public Television
Q&A: Penumbra Costume Designer Mathew LeFebvre on Costuming the Plays of August Wilson
YouTube: August Wilson in St. Paul: A MN Original Special

"Youngblood" from Jitney by Mathew LeFebvre

2017 July: Fences (2016), 2017 August: The Ground on Which I Stand, a Speech on Black Theatre and Performance (1992), 2018 July: Pittsburgh Cycle

Barry Lyndon - Stanley Kubrick (1975)

Wikipedia - "Barry Lyndon is a 1975 British-American period drama film by Stanley Kubrick, based on the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray. It stars Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Leonard Rossiter and Hardy Krüger. The film recounts the early exploits and later unraveling of a fictional 18th-century Irish rogue and opportunist who marries a rich widow to climb the social ladder and assume her late husband's aristocratic position. The wry and doleful unreliable narrator Michael Hordern occasionally voice-overs the story. The film's cinematography has been described as ground-breaking. Especially notable are the long double shots, usually ended with a slow backwards zoom, the scenes shot entirely in candlelight, and the settings based on William Hogarth paintings. The exteriors were filmed on location in Ireland, England and Germany, with the interiors filmed mainly in Kubrick's adopted home city of London. The production was troubled; there were logistical, political (Kubrick feared that he might be an IRA hostage target), and weather-related problems, while the relationship between Kubrick and O'Neal was especially fraught and difficult. O'Neal's performance and perceived lack of on-screen depth and ability to portray a character arc have been repeatedly criticised, even by those who consider the film as one of the director's major successes. ..."
Wikipedia
All hail Kubrick’s ‘Barry Lyndon,’ a masterclass in bringing a unique filmmaker’s vision to life (Video)
Roger Ebert
Guardian - Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon: ‘It puts a spell on people’ (Video)
YouTube: Barry Lyndon (New Trailer 2016), Recital Scene, Barry Lyndon and Art | BFI, Barry Lyndon and Literature | BFI

2008 August: Stanley Kubrick, 2010 September: 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2011 February: A Stanley Kubrick Odyssey - A Tribute, 2011 April: Killer's Kiss (1955), 2011 December: Chicago (1949), 2012 October: Dr. Strangelove (1965), 2013 April: Stanley Kubrick - LACMA, 2018 June: Through A Different Lens: Stanley Kubrick Photographs (2018)

In Colour: Polychrome Sculpture in France 1850-1910

Henri Lombard, sculptor and Jules Cantini, marble worker. Helena
"Relatively unknown, 19th century polychrome sculpture is one of the key facets of the history of the discipline. Until the beginning of this century, the only colours permitted in statuary were the white of marble and the monochrome patina of bronzes. But the discovery of the use of polychromy in ancient architecture and sculpture changed people’s perspective, as well as generating heated debate. The question of applying colour to contemporary sculpture superseded archaeological debates, and pioneering sculptors like Charles Cordier began to specialise in this technique from the 1850s. Once the controversy had died down, colour began to establish its legitimacy of the Second Empire thanks to its decorative character, prevailing under the influence of Symbolism and Art Nouveau as of the 1880s. ..."
Musée d'Orsay

Paul Gauguin - Be mysterious

What You Need To Know About Democratic Socialism

"In the month since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s shocking primary victory in New York’s 14th Congressional District, the term 'democratic socialism' is everywhere. While Stephen Colbert declares that God’s a socialist on late-night television, Bret Stephens warns from the New York Times that democratic socialism is 'Dem doom.' In the same publication, Michelle Goldberg insists that the 'Millennial socialists are coming,' and that centrism won’t win, while on The View, Meghan McCain screams that she doesn’t want socialism to become 'normalized,' shouting Margaret Thatcher quotes at Joy Behar. Media spectacle aside, there are many questions floating around. What’s going on with these socialists in the Democratic Party? How is socialism different from capitalism? And just what do democratic socialists actually believe? ..."
In These Times
The Atlantic: The Progressives’ Plan to Win in 2018
New Yorker: How the Democratic Socialists of America Learned to Love Cynthia Nixon and Electoral Politics

Ten newly found recordings of poems performed by Ashbery

"Thanks to Anna Zalokostas, we at PennSound have just now located recordings of ten of John Ashbery’s poems. They had been preserved in a Segue Series audio tape, dating from a 1978 reading Ashbery did with Michael Lally at the Ear Inn. We had left the Ashbery portion of this reading not quite identified, and have now corrected that oversight. On Ashbery’s PennSound page now, and on the Segue series page, you will now see — and can hear — these segments. ..."
Jacket2

Black Classical History Of Spiritual Jazz 1955-2012

“There’s been a slow but steady resurgence in the interest of the deep spiritual jazz sound of the 1960s and 1970s, as more and more record labels strive to find and reissue obscure private press and long out of print works to meet the insatiable tastes of record collectors and modern-day music historians. Labels like London’s Jazzman Records and Universal Sound imprints, the Parisian Heavenly Sweetness, and Porter Records based out of Wisconsin, USA have all recently put out compilations or completely remastered releases of long-lost (or highly sought after) records that remain relevant in a genre that often is deemed to have lost its way. ... Luckily, however, we have the man Black Classical on hand to shine a little light into that chest with this mammoth 12 hour selection of spiritual jazz music, curated from his collection and featuring an absolutely astounding number of artists and tracks from this most in-demand of sub-genres. …”
the jazz meet
Archive: Spiritual Jazz 1955 - 2012 (Video)
NTS: Black Classical charts the history of spiritual jazz through a 12 hour mega-mix. (Video)
Open Culture - The History of Spiritual Jazz: Hear a Transcendent 12-Hour Mix Featuring John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Herbie Hancock & More (Mixcloud)

The Strange - Jérôme Ruillier

"Jérôme Ruillier’s latest graphic novel, The Strange, his first translated into English, opens cinematically with a masterfully compressed pre-title sequence. The story begins in medias res, with a bird’s-eye view of a townscape rendered in thick lines and set against a dense red background. When the nameless central character speaks, his language of unfamiliar symbols is translated for the reader. We had decided to leave, he says. After paying a local fixer a large sum to supply him with a fake passport and tourist visa, he rushes to board a plane to an unspecified country in search of 'a better life' for him and his family. In this moment of airborne transition, what little we do know of him recedes, and we hit the book’s title card, which marks his new identity: This undocumented individual is a 'strange.' ...”
The Atlantic: The Graphic Novel That Captures the Anxieties of Being Undocumented
Drawn & Quarterly
Guardian
amazon

Wide Awake: Song of Summer

"... For Nixon, the summer of 1974 was an ending. For me, a beginning. It was a heady time for music, a summer when new genres were just taking form and competing for national attention. In the cities, disco was rearing its head for the first time, at the same moment the Ramones were making their CBGB debut. ... Classic rock, folk, disco, and punk were all facing endings and beginnings that summer. ... The song that was everywhere in the summer of 1989 had no such rheumy-eyed notions of the past. 'Fight the Power' by Public Enemy was as angry, sweaty, and claustrophobic as the Spike Lee movie (Do the Right Thing) that made it famous. ..."
Voice (Video)

After ISIS, Iraq Is Still Broken

"MOSUL, Iraq—The week before Iraq’s parliamentary elections in May, chunks of black gunk floated through the gutters of Wadi Hajar, a decimated neighborhood in West Mosul. Men with missing limbs hovered near a truck carrying staffers from an NGO offering legal services, waiting to ask for help. One of them, Muhammad Mustafa, had come to the NGO to seek a birth certificate for his daughter, who was born while the city was under occupation by the Islamic State, which lasted from 2014 to 2017. A Sunni Arab living in a poor neighborhood, he’d supported his wife and two daughters by working with the Iraqi police—a risky proposition in post–U.S. invasion Iraq, as al-Qaeda’s influence spread across the region. When ISIS took Mosul in June 2014, Mustafa fled to his grandfather’s village in a southern suburb of Mosul. ..."
The Atlantic

2018 July: NY Times: Caliphate (Audio), 2014 August: The Islamic State, 2014 September: How ISIS Works, 2015 February: The Political Scene: The Evolution of Islamic Extremism, 2015 May: Zakaria: How ISIS shook the world, 2015 August: ISIS Blows Up Ancient Temple at Syria’s Palmyra Ruins, 2015 November: Times Insider: Reporting Europe's Refugee Crisis, 2015 November: Three Teams of Coordinated Attackers Carried Out Assault on Paris, Officials Say; Hollande Blames ISIS, 2015 November: The French Emergency, 2015 December: A Brief History of ISIS, 2015 December: U.S. Seeks to Avoid Ground War Welcomed by Islamic State, 2016 January: Ramadi, Reclaimed by Iraq, Is in Ruins After ISIS Fight, 2016 February: Syrian Officer Gave a View of War. ISIS Came, and Silence Followed., 2016 March: Brussels Survivors Say Blasts Instantly Evoked Paris Attacks, 2016 April: America Can’t Do Much About ISIS, 2016 June: What the Islamic State Has Won and Lost, 2016 July: ISIS: The Cornened Beast, 2016 October: Archaeological Victims of ISIS Rise Again, as Replicas in Rome, 2016 December: Battle Over Aleppo Is Over, Russia Says, as Evacuation Deal Reached, 2017 January: Eternal Sites: From Bamiyan to Palmyra, 2017 February: Tour a City Torn in Half by ISIS, 2017 March: Engulfed in Battle, Mosul Civilians Run for Their Lives, 2017 May: Aleppo After the Fall, 2017 July: Iraqi forces declare victory over Islamic State in Mosul after grueling battle, 2017 July: The Living and the Dead, 2017 October: ISIS Fighters, Having Pledged to Fight or Die, Surrender en Masse

Disquiet Junto Project 0342: In Sea

"The Assignment: Record a piece of music in tribute to Terry Riley's In C using only samples of water sounds. Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. ... Tracks will be added to the playlist for the duration of the project. ..."
disquiet (Audio)

Wheatland hop riot

Wikipedia - "The Wheatland hop riot was a violent confrontation during a strike of agricultural workers demanding decent working conditions at the Durst Ranch in Wheatland, California, on August 3, 1913. The riot, which resulted in four deaths and numerous injuries, was subsequently blamed by local authorities, who were controlled by management, upon the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The Wheatland hop riot was among the first major farm labor confrontations in California and a harbinger of further such battles in the United States throughout the 20th century. Ralph H. Durst (March 28, 1865 – May 4, 1938) was a leading grower of hops in the Central Valley of California. The Durst Ranch, located on 640 acres (1 square mile (2.6 km²)) outside the town of Wheatland in Yuba County, California, was the largest single employer of agricultural labor in the state, requiring each summer the hiring of hundreds of seasonal workers to help bring in the harvest. The farm also dried and packaged the picked hops on site, before transporting them by train to San Francisco for export to England. In the summer of 1913 Durst advertised for temporary harvest workers as he had always done, promising ample work at high rates of pay. In one flier soliciting laborers, the Durst Ranch promised a job to every white hops picker who arrived on his farm by August 5. In this year, however, the number of willing workers far outstripped demand, with some 2800 men, women, and children flocking to the Durst Ranch to work as pickers in the fields. Jobs actually existed for only about 1500 workers daily, and pay rates were consequently slashed. ..."
Wikipedia
Organizing Farm Workers: The Beginning (Audio)
YouTube: Part 4: "Not So Jazzy"

Lester Young - The Jazz Giants '56 (1956)

"Even critics who feel (against the recorded evidence to the contrary) that little of tenor saxophonist Lester Young's postwar playing is at the level of his earlier performances make an exception for this session. Young was clearly inspired by the other musicians (trumpeter Roy Eldridge, trombonist Vic Dickenson, pianist Teddy Wilson, guitarist Freddie Green, bassist Gene Ramey, and drummer Jo Jones), who together made for a very potent band of swing all-stars. The five songs on this album include some memorable renditions of ballads and a fine version of 'You Can Depend on Me,' but it is the explosive joy of the fiery 'Gigantic Blues' that takes honors. This set, a real gem, is highly recommended. "
allmusic
W - The Jazz Giants '56
W - Lester Young
Discogs
amazon
YouTube: The Jazz Giants 56 5 videos

Jannis of Jakarta Records Shares His 'Arabic 60s/70s Vinyl Mix Part. 2'

"Jannis Stürtz, the co-founder of Cologne-based label Jakarta Records, delivers nearly 40 minutes of vintage music in his Arabic 60s/70s Vinyl Mix Part. 2. Comprising songs that he discovered while touring North Africa with Blitz The Ambassador and participating in Tunisian studio sessions with Oddisee for the Sawtuha compilation, the energetic mix blasts funk-heavy sounds from Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt and features artists like Lebanese arranger Elias Rahbani and the late Egyptian composer Baligh Hamdi. As Stürtz explains on the soundcloud page for Arabic 60s/70s Vinyl Mix Part. 2, 'while being there I did some digging and found some incredible music from the 60s and 70s. Some of the music in this mix has zero info on the net, was never sold on eBay and has not been 'rediscovered' yet. Others are somewhat classics in the field of arabic groove.' The lack of information is almost refreshing, though, and Arabic 60s/70s Vinyl Mix Part. 2 itself is often electric and entrancing. Listen to it below."
Okay Africa (Audio)
Soundcloud (Audio)

Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing (1968)

"While many texts are readily available chronicling the Black Power Movement, the same cannot be said for its 'aesthetic and spiritual sister,' the Black Arts Movement. Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing is a rare exception that documents and captures the social and cultural turmoil of the period. Amiri Baraka and Larry Neal, co-editors and contributors to this volume, saw Black Fire as a manifesto to bring about change in Black thought and action, generated from a Black aesthetic. Often considered the seminal work from the Black Arts Movement, Black Fire is a rich anthology and an extraordinary source document, presenting 178 selections of poetry, essays, short stories and plays from cultural critics, literary artists and political leaders. ..."
Africa World
ChickenBones: A Journal - Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing
amazon

Taxi Driver - Martin Scorsese (1976)

Wikipedia - "Taxi Driver is a 1976 American neo-noir psychological thriller film directed by Martin Scorsese, written by Paul Schrader, and starring Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd, Harvey Keitel, Peter Boyle, Albert Brooks and Leonard Harris. Set in New York City following the Vietnam War, the film tells the story of a lonely veteran (De Niro) working as a taxi driver, who falls for a presidential campaign worker (Shepherd) and befriends an underage prostitute (Foster). Driven insane by the corruption that surrounds him, he plots to assassinate the former's candidate (Harris) and the latter's pimp (Keitel) in the hope of becoming a savior to them and the city. Critically acclaimed upon release and nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Taxi Driver won the Palme d'Or at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival. It is regularly cited by critics, film directors, and audiences alike as one of the greatest films of all time. ..."
Wikipedia
Approaching Menace: The American Pathology of Martin Scorsese’s ‘Taxi Driver’
Open Culture: Robert De Niro’s Taxi Cab License Used to Prepare for Taxi Driver (1976)
Scene Stealers: Martin Scorsese in Taxi Driver (Video)
'Taxi Driver' Oral History: De Niro, Scorsese, Foster, Schrader Spill All on 40th Anniversary
YouTube: Taxi Driver (1976) - [Official Trailer HD]

What Is Socialist Feminism? - Barbara Ehrenreich

"Barbara Ehrenreich’s essay 'What Is Socialist Feminism?' first appeared in WIN Magazine in 1976 and, subsequently, the New American Movement’s Working Papers on Socialism & Feminism. The introduction below is new, written by Ehrenreich for this republication. While Ehrenreich has several quibbles with her original essay — as she details in her prefatory notes below — we’re very pleased to republish it at a moment when more and more people are being exposed to socialist and feminist politics for the first time. ..."
Jacobin

Dele Sosimi ‎– You No Fit Touch Am (2015)

"... Wah Wah 45s are very proud to present the first full-length album in almost a decade from vocalist, keyboard player, Fela Kuti collaborator and afrobeat legend, Dele Sosimi! You No Fit Touch Am represents where Dele is today – something of an untouchable force in the music scene that he has always been such a vital part of. The title is an uncompromising message that this man means business, and with his mammoth afrobeat orchestra on board that is definitely the case. Recorded at the Fish Market Studios in North-West London by Benedic Lamdin (AKA Nostalgia 77) the album provides a musical representation of Dele’s strong socio-political opinions, as well as delivering classic song-writing that could have come straight out of 1970s Lagos! ..."
Wah Wah 45s (Audio)
Wah Wah 45s 1 (Audio)
Discogs
amazon
YouTube: E Go Betta, You No Fit Touch Am, Sanctuary, We Siddon We Dey Look (Straight Molin'), Where We Want Be

Take This Cheat Sheet To The Ballpark To Decide When To Leave

It’s not over until it’s over. But sometimes, it’s basically over.
"Baseball is probably the one major sporting event where there is no shame in leaving a little early. For starters, the games typically range from long to comically long. The average nine-inning Major League Baseball game in 2017 took three hours and five minutes, setting an all-time record. With a new rule to limit mound visits, the average 2018 game is hovering at an even three hours, which is still longer than 'The Godfather' start to finish and would tie for the third longest mark in history. And unlike the current marathon affairs in college football, baseball is not exactly packing the extra minutes with scoring and excitement — unless pitchers jogging in from the bullpen is exciting to you. Plus, the stakes are low. They play 162 of these things. Add it all up and you understand why lines of fans hit the exits to beat the traffic home. ..."
FiveThirtyEight

Konk ‎– Yo! (1983)

m
"Original pressing of the band's first and best LP, very hard to find, on Les Disques de Crepuscule, TWI 143, made in Belgium, 1983, with insert. One could describe the sound of Konk as being pretty similar to the sound of a roomful of people partying down and shaking their rumps. Born from the same early '80s New York dance-funk scene that made groups like Liquid Liquid and ESG the legends they are today, Konk fuse a wide palette of sounds (Afrobeat, post-punk, hip-hop, funk and disco) into one digestible and accessible catchall that's ideally suited for grimy underground dance floors. Most comparable to fellow New Yorkers Defunkt for their super-clean approach to recording, Konk left a lengthy trail of singles in their eight years together, most of which are collected here, along with the best tracks from their only album, 1983's Yo. ..."
Holland Tunnel Dive
W - Konk
Discogs
YouTube: Yo! 36:20

The Calculus Affair (1956)

Wikipedia - "The Calculus Affair (French: L'Affaire Tournesol) is the eighteenth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by the Belgian cartoonist Hergé. It was serialised weekly in Belgium's Tintin magazine from December 1954 to February 1956 before being published in a single volume by Casterman in 1956. The story follows the attempts of the young reporter Tintin, his dog Snowy, and his friend Captain Haddock to rescue their friend Professor Calculus, a scientist who has developed a machine capable of destroying objects with sound waves, from kidnapping attempts by the competing European countries of Borduria and Syldavia. ..."
Wikipedia
The Calculus Affair
[PDF] The Calculus Affair
amazon

2008 May: Georges Remi, 1907-1983, 2010 July: The Adventures of Tintin: Breaking Free, 2011 December: Prisoners of the Sun, 2012 January: Tintin: the Complete Companion, 2012 December: Snowy, 2015 August: The Black Island (1937), 2015 September: King Ottokar's Sceptre (1938), 2015 December: Red Rackham's Treasure (1943), 2016 July: Captain Haddock, 2017 April: Cigars of the Pharaoh (1934), 2018 March: Destination Moon (1950), Explorers on the Moon (1954)

The Jazz Pianist Who Made One Masterpiece And Disappeared

"'I was in my basement practicing, and he came past and knocked on the window,' said the saxophonist Odean Pope recently, remembering the first time he met his friend Hasaan Ibn Ali. 'I was about 16 at the time. I came to the door. He asked me whether I’d like to practice with him. So I told him yes. We struck up a very good relationship, practicing almost every day together. He was so advanced on harmonic concepts, melodic concepts, rhythmic concepts, that he was having difficulty working with anyone and making jobs with anyone. But I was really interested in what he was doing, because he was doing something different.' That would have been around 1954. ... In any case, Ali’s ideas ran ahead of the marketplace. Stylistically, he was in tune with pianists who sat adjacent to bebop — he specifically admired Elmo Hope and Thelonious Monk — and beboppers were interested in fractious phrasing and unresolved dissonance, but even in their context Ali represented an extreme. Starting around 1948 — around the time he changed his name — he became a difficult fit at dance jobs and jam sessions. Whatever the norm was for the job — houserocking R&B, standards, bebop — he would unsettle known tunes with jagged fantasias or cause confusion with his own unconventional music. ..."
Vinyl Me, Please (Audio/Video)
W - Hasaan Ibn Ali
W - The Max Roach Trio Featuring the Legendary Hasaan

The Usual - Photos by Emily Frances

Parkview Diner, Coney Island.
"To step into a diner is to step into a time warp, offering a glimpse inside a world of pay phones, grandma’s chocolate cake, and jukeboxes with 2001’s Billboard Top 40. You can buy the chance to grab a stuffed animal with a claw, or you can rely on the certainty of getting a rubber ball for twenty-five cents. You can order a Western omelette at 6 p.m. This standstill is part of their charm. There is something familiar about these establishments that draws us back to them. And something a little strange. Below, we present snapshots of four diners of Brooklyn."
BKLYNR

The Genius of Tina Weymouth: Breaking Down the Style of Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club’s Basslines

"... Another of my favorite players is also a self-confessed 'complete autodidact,' Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club. As distinctive a player as Mascis, it's impossible to mistake her style for anyone else's. 'I was only playing bass for five months when the band first played [live],' she told an audience in 2014 at the Red Bull Music Academy in Tokyo. 'I did not take a lesson. Nobody taught me.' But unlike many of her self-taught male counterparts with roots in punk and a decades-long association with a band that defined an era, Weymouth, argues Carrie Courogen at PAPER, has been tragically under-recognized. ..."
Open Culture (Video)

Rebel Women: Defying Victorianism

“Age of Brass: Or the Triumphs of Woman's Rights,” 1869
"We may think of the Victorian era as a period of constraints on women’s lives, a time when middle-class ideas about femininity defined women by their roles as guardians of virtue and relegated them to the private, domestic sphere. But 19th-century New York City was full of women who defied those expectations—women of different classes, races, and ideologies who challenged the social expectations that attached to them because of their gender. Some of the things that these women did would not be considered boat-rocking today: a woman could be a rebel simply by speaking in public, by working outside the home, or by disregarding middle-class morality or decorum. Rebel Women explores the lives of activists like Elizabeth Jennings Graham, an African-American New Yorker who refused to get off a segregated trolley in 1854; professionals like Hetty Green, a wealthy businesswoman and broker branded 'the witch of Wall Street'; and working women like Helen Jewett, New York's most prominent courtesan—all of whom challenged the Victorian ideal. ..."
Museum of the City of New York
NY Times: These ‘Rebel Women’ Sought Equality in 19th-Century New York

Glenn Branca: A Guide to the Symphonies

"To most listeners, composer Glenn Branca is best known for his early engagements with the experimental side of rock history. Back in 1981, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo were two of the guitarists in the orchestra for the premiere of Branca’s Symphony No. 1, and since it was Branca’s own early ’80s imprint, Neutral, that originally released Sonic Youth’s first self-titled EP, the man has been subsumed within that band’s origin story for decades. Likewise, the composer’s short-lived art rock group Theoretical Girls remains a part of CBGB’s aesthetically wild 1970s legacy – making it much easier for some to talk about Branca as a rock icon than as a symphonic visionary. However, now that the iconic club has been 'recreated' both at Newark Airport and on HBO’s Vinyl (and since Sonic Youth’s run appears well and truly over), perhaps it's the right time to tell the Glenn Branca story as something other than a footnote to underground rock lore. (Especially as this summer marks the 35th anniversary of Branca’s Symphony No. 1.) You have to give Branca credit for dedication: as of this writing, his website details 16 different symphonies. ..."
Red Bull Music Academy Daily (Video)

2017 October: Theoretical Girls - U.S. Mille / You Got Me (1978), 2018 May: Rorschach Audio: Glenn Branca Discusses Reading, Writing & Volume

The Essentials of Socialist Writing

"Left-wing writing is often caricatured one of two ways: as impenetrable jargon, weighted with Marxist lingo no-one has the time to look up, or as oversimplified propaganda. Of course one’s politics never precludes one from being an incomprehensible, lazy, or just plain bad writer. But the Left’s history is full of authors who took to the pen because they had an important message to convey, and who worked hard to make sure that message was understood as broadly and deeply as possible. Moreover, it is rarely discussed how the goals of a socialist writer, and the methods required to reach such goals, differ from the capitalist or apolitical writer. To find out, Mark Nowak for Jacobin spoke to author and LeftWord Books chief editor Vijay Prashad about the role of writing in socialist politics. ..."
Jacobin

Kamal Keila’s “Muslims and Christians” Offers a Rare Glimpse Into 1990s Sudanese Jazz

"Had Jannis Stuertz listened to the moldy reels of audiotape just once before digitizing them, the recorded music of Kamal Keila—who is often referred to as Sudan’s James Brown, and one of the godfathers of a nearly forgotten strain of Sudanese jazz—might have been lost forever. Though Stuertz didn’t know it when he first laid eyes on them, the tape reels contained Kamal Keila’s Muslims and Christians, one of the only recorded Sudanese jazz albums in existence. Built on the synthesis of early American rock ‘n’ roll and traditional Sudanese rhythms, instrumentation, and arrangements, Sudanese jazz is an entirely unique and unequivocally African musical innovation. Despite its name, the genre bears little sonic resemblance to what we typically call 'jazz' in the West. Rather, the music that poured out of clubs in Omdurman and Khartoum throughout the ‘60s, ‘70s, and early ‘80s, was closer to what it might sound like if Fela Kuti covered a Bill Haley song for the soundtrack of a Quentin Tarantino film. Timely blasts of horns are reminiscent of funk; guitar strings bent to their breaking point evoke the blues; familiar and foreign rhythms blur into a versatile groove that’s sometimes reggae, sometimes rock, and always addictive, drenched in the joie de vivre of earnest originality. ..."
Bandcamp (Audio)
Soundcloud: Kamal Keila - Taban Ahwak (Release coming soon), Muslims And Christians
Habibi Funk 008: Muslims and Christians (Audio)

Resistance, Rebellion, and Death - Albert Camus (1960)

Wikipedia - "Resistance, Rebellion, and Death is a 1960 collection of essays written by Albert Camus and selected by the author prior to his death. The essays here generally involve conflicts near the Mediterranean, with an emphasis on his home country Algeria, and on the Algerian War of Independence in particular. He also criticizes capital punishment ('Reflections on the Guillotine') and totalitarianism in particular. Camus proclaims the call to justice and the struggle for freedom also declaimed in the Old Testament, particularly the minor prophets. But he does so in a modern context, where God is silent and man is the master of his own destiny. Although he sees no messianic age, he proclaims the hope that by continuous effort, evil can be diminished and freedom and justice may become more prevalent. ..."
Wikipedia
Commentary Magazine: Lionel Abel (Feb. 1, 1961)
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2011 October: Albert Camus on Nihilism, 2014 November: Albert Camus: Soccer Goalie, 2015 May: LISTEN: New Cave And Ellis Soundtrack, 2016 April: Anarchism and Friedrich Nietzsche, 2016 April: Algerian Chronicles (2013), 2017 November: The Stranger (1942)