Links for the Voracious

Some things old and some things new from across the Internet


Music

"A young jazz audience is such a rarity, in fact, that it's become a kind of holy grail for presenters. So how does Jarasum do it?"

How a Korean Jazz Festival Found a Huge Young Audience

Source: Bailey Rebecca Roberts via inthesetimes.com

"I'm creating hip-hop songs from a Lakota perspective and looking at the way my ancestors framed our songs, whether that be a pow wow or ceremony song. They're short, powerful phrases repeated. Something I love about Lakota music that's very important to me is the drums; you just hear it and know you're home."

Native American Rapper Frank Waln Talks Decolonization and "Dirty Sprite 2"

Mariachi Flor de Toloache- NPR Tiny Desk Concert

Source: newyorker.com

"How does a Berklee hotshot halfway to an EGOT end up playing keyboards on a tribute to a melting pot, spend half a decade working to eliminate its weak spots, and find himself sitting at the right hand of a juggernaut?"

Nerding Out with Hamilton Musical Director, Alex Lacamoire

“As I progressed from being a student to a professor who teaches and writes about popular music culture, I’m always after some recreation of my own experiences as a listener. Making selections for a course syllabus isn’t all that different from DJing; in both cases, you’re thinking about the mix."

Personal History: Riot Grrrl Radio

“Influenced by Kraftwerk, electro, Bambaataa, Italo disco, George Clinton, new wave, and post-disco boogie (essentially everything they heard the Electrifying Mojo play on his radio show), Detroit techno soon became way more popular overseas than it ever was at home."

10 Classic Techno Records for People Who Don't Know Shit About Techno

"We need a better conception of Americana, one that is polyglot and profoundly more varied than the dueling banjos of country and blues."

The South Stole Americana

“What I want to do is explore what songwriting means to me, what it is that is going to be my contribution to the music world at large other than interpretation. Because I know I’m always going to be an interpreter. That is something I do well and is something that is important not to lose sight of, but I also feel like I do have a voice to be heard. I want to make sure that there’s something really important being said.”

Learning Curves and Musical Curiosities: An Interview with Rhiannon Giddens

The Passionate Listener

Rainy Day Soul

Links for the Voracious

Source:creativegrowth.org

A fascinating article about the artists and the mission of the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland. All of the artists are developmentally disabled adults and some of them have become highly collectible artists.

Celebrate the new additions to the periodic table with Tom Lehrer's performance of "The Elements."

Lydia Stuckey remembers traveling with and making dresses for Maya Angelou.

This Leslie Jones profile is a portrait of the artist as a comic heroine.

The rediscovery of master abstract painter Sam Gilliam.

Source:georgetowner.com

"And every one of us has the right to tell our story." Tyler Perry's response to the criticism of his work in New York magazine.

Eva Longoria on returning to prime time TV and living a full life away from celebrity culture.

Ashley C. Ford talks about family, the role of mentors in her professional development and making the choice to be a writer.

Source:huffingtonpost.com

It Is Always The Right Time For The Queen of Soul

Celebrate the end of the year with the unimpeachable greatness of Aretha Franklin blessing your ears.

"Evil Gal Blues"-The Steve Allen Show, 1964 

"Bridge Over Troubled Water"- 13th Annual GRAMMY Awards, 1971

"Dr. Feelgood"- Amsterdam, 1968

"Rock Steady"- Soul Train, 1973

"Precious Lord Take My Hand"-1984

"I Say A Little Prayer"- The Cliff Richard Show, 1970

Chimamanda Adichie and Zadie Smith in Conversation at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Zadie Smith interviewed Chimamanda Adichie about her novel "Americanah" at the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture for the New York Public Library podcast. It was a jubilant exchange of ideas between two literary superstars. The interview was a rare meeting of two black women authors speaking to one another in a public forum about writing. They talked about "Americanah," the ethos that influenced the novel and the often unheard of experiences of black immigrants in the United States. Here is a sampling of their wide-ranging conversation. 

Listen to the podcast.

Zadie Smith on the women in Chimamanda Adichie's fiction:"What really appeals to me in this book ["Americanah"] was the sense of a position, of an argument. Particularly of women who have not even a moment's doubt about speaking their minds which I think is quite unusual in American fiction. We're always dealing with women in relation to their men or in relation to men as status objects. But the women in your fiction here and in the other novels are somehow always themselves, always confident."

Chimamanda Adichie's on the guiding ethos of "Americanah":
"I've been a dutiful daughter of literature. I have followed the rules. You know, show don't tell, that sort of thing. With "Americanah" I thought I am going to write the book I want to write. The whole idea of pushing the character, not trying to be too obvious, not to hit the reader over the head, I did not think about it with this book. If I hit the reader over the head, I hit the reader over the head."

Chimamanda Adichie on writing strong women:
"The idea of a woman being strong, and simply being strong not to prove anything is normal to me."

Chimamanda Adichie on being a Nigerian immigrant in the United States:
"It is very different to come to the U.S. and to realize that you are something else called black and that there are so many assumptions because of this something else that you are."

"You quickly realize that you are expected to play the "good black" because you are not African American, therefore you're the "good black."

"I don't know. America fascinates me because I think there is almost a willful denial of history, I guess. But really, I keep thinking, how can white people not get it if you know the history of America. Do you know what I mean? And I am a foreigner. I'm sort of looking at it from the outside."


Zadie Smith on being a black British immigrant in the United States:
"When I came here, I guess it's very different in England where blackness is almost obscured. We're all meant to be British. To be here was kind of joyful to have people say to you "sister" in a shop. No black person in England would ever call me "sister" in a million years, unless they were a Rastafarian perhaps."

"In the UK I don't think there is a sense of a positive black identity or a strong black identity. And here, even if it has been created in defense or in response, there is so much that is beautiful in it. So much that feels strengthening. And now, when someone calls me "sister," I find it a very joyful matter."

Chimamanda Adichie on black America:
"The ethnic group I most admire in this country is African Americans. I just don't understand after having read the history how , no seriously, it is very personal to me. I would read the history and cry. Because I would think I don't believe all of this happened and I don't believe a people could come out of it with such grace."

Links for the Voracious

Death

 





Stacia L. Brown explores the narrow world of the personal essay. Tracy K. Smith shares how prose carries memory in a different manner than poetry. Rachel Kaadzi Ghanash remembers her grandfather and his will to survive in rural Louisiana and Los Angeles. Tyger Williams has written two hit movies in his career, twenty-two years apart. The fallacy of school choice.The band Death is getting immortalized at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. If you happen to be in a place where "The Golden Girls" isn't playing three hours a day on basic cable, treat yourself to some quotes and dialogue from Dorothy, Blanche, Rose and Sophia. Listen to Tony Geary talk about his career as Luke Spencer, the first anti-hero on daytime television.

Links for the Voracious

 

 

Source: commons.wikimedia.org

 

 

Bengali intellectual M.N. Roy's philosophy of Radical Humanism and his vision for an anti-colonial utopia in Mexico City. English has changed dramatically over the last five hundred years. Documenting the fall and rebirth of the National Natural History Museum in Paris.

 

 

Source: irishtimes.com

 

 

The scientific discovery which shuffles the deck of human history. The practice of photographing enslaved African women in Brazil in the late 1880's. Joan Acocella on Elmore Leonard. The American Dream plays favorites. 

 

 

Harriet by Elizabeth Catlett

Source: elizabethcatlett.org