Writer/musician/auteur Greg Tate is curating a very interesting musical performance, FIRE & FIRE, a collaborative examination of the parallels between Black Americans and The Rom of Romania and Hungary (aka gypsies). It’s a fascinating subject as societal study alone but the manifestation of that it into music takes it to another level. From the Fire & Fire Facebook page:
The story begins in Hungary when three New Yorkers: Eisa Davis, Melvin Gibbs and Greg Tate take a summer field trip to Budapest with Jakab Orsos, Director of the Hungarian Cultural Center New York. They are in search of the Hungarian Gypsy experience, with a mind to investigate the synergies between the Black diaspora and Gypsy culture. For three days and nights they wine, dine and jam with fellow performers and musicians, discovering new territories of expression. Back home in New York, these encounters continue to percolate, creating Fire + Fire.
Fire + Fire features an historic meeting of musical sympathies when nine Hungarian Gypsy musicians meet with seven of their Black American counterparts to interrogate a history of mutual oppression and silences. Part of the yearlong Extremely Hungary Festival, Fire + Fire delves into the synergies of two cultures, melding musical and political expression—this taking the shape through the story of star crossed lovers caught in a weft of cultural clash and political dialogue. The ensemble employs an experimental fusion of spoken word, movement and full on “jam sessions” to create a brand new vernacular that will spring this tale of two cultures to life. Fire + Fire will be presented at Symphony Space on November 19 and 21.
“There are compelling parallels between the Gypsy and African-American experience, that energy and struggle is reflected in jazz and Gypsy music—both are intense, explosive, individual and raw.”
–Greg Tate, Co-Curator FIre+ Fire
According to The Guardian, one of my all time favorite magazines, THE FACE, might be up for a comeback either in print or digital or some combination of both.
If true, this is wonderful news. THE FACE was by far the publication that made me absolutely fall in love with magazines. I was kinda already there, having been roped in by mags like Andy Warhol’s INTERVIEW and ID, but THE FACE did it. Something about it felt completely me, completely of my mindset. That’s what you look for in a mag, something to teach you a few things, reflect your style and interests and make you want to stretch your boundaries. Does your favorite mag do that for you?
Reaction may be fine on the European streets in regard to President Obama, but First Lady Michelle Obama is doing even better. In the US, her favorable numbers are even higher than her husband. An amazing transformation in the public mind from just months ago.
The London Daily Mail reports that the UK’s version of Dancing with the Stars, called Strictly Come Dancing is dealing with some controversial buzz regarding accusations of viewing audience racism in voting for Black contestants to be bumped from the competition.
It’s a situation very similar to all the buzz around American Idol every time Black contestants seem to do well in performances but get counted out by the viewers. Could it possibly be that they’re just not that talented?
The same applies in this case, apparently. Judges gave two couples led by Black Brit TV celebs Heather Small and Don Warrington decent scores that would have kept them in the competition, but lower scores from viewing audiences knocked the two in a dance-off to see who gets the boot.
I got a note focusing my attention on an article by ultra-right columnist and professional rabble rouser Kevin Myers in The Irish Independent. Even in the face of some of the most progressive suststainable technology being created in Africa, even in the face of rapidly increasing oil wealth in places like Angola, Nigeria and Gabon. Even in the face of mutually beneficial business dealings between African Governments and China, you still get broad sweeping venom and contempt like this out of Europe.
Nothing explains away Robert Mugabe’s actions in Zimbabwe and Thabo Mbeki’s lack of forcefulness in dealing with the issue, but columns like this gives one a greater understanding of why Mbeki and Mugabe are so resistant to pressure from Europe, precisely because in that pressure they see motivations like this:
I’ll let genocide masked as conservative intellectualism speak for itself. But a question: How does this even get by an editor?
A real, longer article and review to come, but I checked Les Nubians at the House of Blues in Chicago last Friday and got to hang out with them a bit during and after sound check (shout to AngelaBailey).
As usual they were in great voice and put on an incredible and energetic show, though the venue was just on this side of too big. Last year they were in Chicago at Hot House, a now defunct joint that was by contrast way too small, but the intimacy provided an energy that may have been missing this time around. They hit a good mix of tunes from the first and second albums as well as one or two small teases from a planned third LP that drops in February 2009, including an innovative version of U2’s With or Without You. The highlight was their cover of Fela signature tune “Upside Down”, already one of my favorites with his version. Their relatively stripped down instrumentation actually gives it a lot more power.
One of the interesting things we talked a lot about was the candidacy of Barack Obama and what it meant to people who consider themselves citizens of the world. Their feelings about Obama as the symbol of a new post-racial day mirrors that of today’s New York Times story on Afro-Parisians and the hope they see in a possible Obama presidency. That became the theme of many of the between song riffs once the show started.
Anyhow, check your local venues for the tour. This one just popped up on the HOB schedule unexpectedly. Right now there doesn’t seem to be any bookings on the tour in the US until Chicago again in August at the African Arts Festival. If you’re in France, you’re in luck, however.
Someone writing a press release for this upcoming Father’s Day event in DC maybe got a little overzealous with the descriptions here:
“Britain’s Barack Obama”, The Honorable Paul Boateng, Ambassador to South Africa [from Great Britain], and former Major League
baseball star Ken Griffey, Sr., join Washington DC City Council Chair, Vincent Gray, in introducing public-policy and family-centered solutions
toward responsible fatherhood, and the re-engagement of fathers in the success of families, at the 10th Annual International Fatherhood
Conference from June 10-13, 2008 at Gallaudet University Kellogg Conference Hotel, in Washington DC.
The conference focus is on countering low academic achievement among children, rising childhood health and special needs, as well as youth violence and incarceration,
which are all statistically linked to the absence of fathers in the home…
Now, if you follow British politics, referring to Paul Boateng as the British Barack Obama is either generous or an insult depending on how you feel about either of them. But is it accurate? Read the rest of this entry »
At Art Chicago last week I got a rare chance in the U.S. to see and meet briefly the emerging “starchitect” (he’s got to hate that word by now) David Adjaye from London. Adjaye was there to participate in a seminar on ‘The Perfect Blend of Art & Architecture” from the framework of his much-hailed design of the new Denver Museum of Contemporary Art (pictured above).
The seminar was planned as a “conversation” between Adjaye and Denver MCA director and curator Cydney Payton, and unfortunately that’s what the first half hour turned out to be, with Payton peppering the session with self-consciously intellectual hoohah and $2 word combinations like “minimalist interrupts” and “bespoke moments” (a phrase I’m still trying to figure out).
Sensing they were losing the audience Adjaye politely opened the conversation up to the audience and it all got better after that, with the reasons for Adjaye’s amazing rise to the upper echelon of global architects becoming evident as the event went on.
Adjaye let everyone in on the competitive process of choosing an architect for a major commission, which in this case involved participating in fundraising activities to get the building built - something Adjaye was astounded by given the boatloads of old money in Europe to fund architecture. He also spoke of the challenges of green design (the museum is Gold LEED certified) and his goal to seek “transformative materials” or materials common to other industries that he can apply creatively for use in buildings. In the case of the Denver MCA, he used a plastic generally used to line refrigerated trucks as the “skin” of the building because of its unique ability to diffuse light in a city where there’s 365 days of sunshine.
I’ll spare you too many details, but it would be a mistake to take lightly the importance of having a young brother be considered as someone in the pantheon of Philip Johnson, I.M.Pei and other major architects whose work is studied and admired. Architecture is one of those things that can’t really be denied when it lasts. You can certainly tear down a building, but as long as its up, the history is told visually and not subject to a historian’s interpretation. It’s deeply critical for Black folk to have that kind of lasting and visible impact on the face of the world.
A buddy of mine just sent a note around that he was accepted as a Fulbright Scholar, and will be assigned to teach in Russia starting 2009. Very very cool (no pun intended). We shared a laugh last night that, predictable, sistas started calling him immediately after that e-mail warning him that he (a Black man) better stay the hell away from them devil Russian (i.e. white) women.Which all reminded me of this old commercial from Wendy’s called “Russian Fashion Show” - one of my favorites. For most of the 20th century, this was the image we all had of women from the Eastern bloc - steroid-taking, husky freaks of nature who ere really men and that was why they kicked our butts in the Olympics.
Then Ronald Reagan came along, yelled “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall”. And what came stepping through?
Anna Kournikova, that’s what. And Petra Nemcova. And if the AVN Convention that was next door to the Consumer Electronics Show was any indication, the entire cast of the adult film industry. Actually, even before all that, during the Cold War 70s, when the Olympics were really billed as serious nation vs. nation competition, there was Ludmilla Tourischeva, every fanboy’s secret crush until Olga Korbut opened the door of the gymnastics world to underfed dwarfs.
So why the disconnect from media perception to reality? Well, if you can define a people’s standard of beauty you can influence others to despise them, right? I mean, nobody respects a race of people who the word calls ugly, right? Right?
Recent Comments