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SISTER FROM ANOTHER PLANET

25 Jun

Unreleased Thelonious Monk From 1959 French Film ‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses’

Courtesy of Arnaud Boubet - Private Collection Tom Moon All Things Considered | NPR The music Thelonious Monk contributed to the 1959 French film Les Liaisons Dangereuses had never been released until the master tapes were discovered last year. In 1959, the peak of his playing years, Thelonious Monk did something he'd never done before: record music for a film. Released in the U.S. as Dangerous Liaisons, the French film Les Liaisons Dangereuses featured nearly 30 minutes of Monk's music, none of which ever...

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24 Jun

Drummer Profile: Jola of Adam Ant

Photo | Greg Ramar Photo | Michael Sanderson by Lisa Vinciguerra Tom Tom Magazine The background music begins and the crowd cheers as New Wave icon Adam Ant emerges from the mist and takes the stage. Best known for his theatrical style and innovative work in the 80’s that bridged punk and post-punk, Adam Ant’s resurgence is booming. A captivating front man, he is backed by an exceptionally talented and tight band that elevate his songs. Infused with pounding Burundian beats, classics such as...

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19 Jun

Brian Eno Meets Yanis Varoufakis

IT'S ALL POLITICAL, MUSIC

by Brian Eno and Yanis Varoufakis for the Guardian The British musician and producer Brian Eno meets Yanis Varoufakis, former finance minister for Greece’s Syriza government, at Eno’s recording studio in west London. Both are stylish, shaven-headed men famous for their radical ideas. Eno, 67, started out playing synth and wearing leopardskin shirts in the 1970s with Roxy Music and went on to produce, among others, David Bowie and Talking Heads. Varoufakis, 54, who turns up in his trademark leather jacket, describes himself as a libertarian Marxist and has...

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10 May

How Punk & Reggae Fought Back Against Racism in the 70s

IT'S ALL POLITICAL, MUSIC, SUBCULTURE/LIFESTYLE

RAR carnival against the nazis, leeds, 1981 I was just reminiscing about this movement; there's no real equivalent today, and it's needed more than ever here in the US and around the world. I'd like to help change that. by Stuart Brumfitt | i-D Vice Syd Shelton’s photographs capture the Rock Against Racism movement that confronted racism in 70's and 80's Britain. When Syd Shelton returned to London in 1977 after fours years living in Australia, he was shocked at how much things had changed. "The recession...

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26 Mar

Artists Wanted for Van Gogh Film Painted Entirely by Hand

ARTS, MULTIMEDIA

Photo, Oli Scarff/Getty Images SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — A unique crew call has been posted for oil painters to work on film about the life of Vincent Van Gogh. Loving Vincent will be the first feature film completely painted by hand. The biopic about the Dutch impressionist painter will be told through some 800 personal letters and 120 of his paintings. Timelapse of Loving Vincent painting process. Directors Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman told Voice of America the 80-minute feature film will require 57,000 painted frames....

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23 Mar

THIS…Is What You Call a Tribute

This is so f$#king awesome! Can he kick it? Yes he can. And THAT'S what we call a tribute! Mark Arum from WSB-TV dropped A Tribe Called Quest lyrics in his traffic reports to honor Phife Dawg, who passed away this morning. He's definitely invited to the cookout! // < ![CDATA[ // < ![CDATA[ // < ![CDATA[ // < ![CDATA[ // < ![CDATA[ (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); // ]]> ...

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7 Mar

“So be it! See to it!”

AFROFUTURISTIC, WOMEN

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7 Mar

At M.I.T., Science Embraces a New Chaos Theory: Art

Hilarie M. Sheets The NY Times | Arts & Science “Sandcastle No. 3,” drawn on a single grain of sand, part of a Vik Muniz series from 2013.CreditVik Muniz, via Sikkema, Jenkins & Co. As a graduate student at the respected M.I.T. Media Lab, Marcelo Coelho collaborated with the artist Vik Muniz to help him achieve a poetic and technical feat that teases the imagination: drawing a picture of a castle on a single grain of sand. After two years of failed experiments with various lasers,...

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5 Mar

‘Sound & Color’ by The Alabama Shakes

I slept hard on this gorgeous, wistful 3:03 minute slip of a song--in fact on this band in general. Sure I'd heard of Brittany Howard, loving how she broke all boxes that defined a rock star, Black music, Black woman. But for some reason they were on my shortlist that I never manifested. I don't watch TV so I didn't see the iPad Pro commercial, but after they won a couple of Grammies it was time I woke the f#$k up. Future People and...

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5 Feb

Where Do I begin…Another Chapter of My Childhood Has Died.

I've been trying to figure out how to address my feelings on the passing of Maurice White since he left this earth on February 3rd, 2016. I think I have to go back to 1976, around the time my then 13-year-old brother discovered That's The Way of the World and Spirit. See, my French horn-playing baby bro Deryck was absolutely OBSESSED with EWF. I mean as in carrying-a-boombox-into-the-bathroom-so he-wouldn't-miss-a-single-note-type obsessed. Over and over and over again. Don't get me wrong, I loved them too--but unfortunately hearing...

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21 Jan

You Mourned David Bowie, But You Mock Glenn Frey. Why?

Star men … David Bowie in 1974 and Glenn Frey of the Eagles in 1973. Photograph, Terry O'Neill | Hulton Archive | Getty Images | Rex Features Last night, walking up 7th Ave around 40th Street I hear the last strains of "Witchy Woman" bouncing off the buildings. I follow the sound and trace it to a lone Asian man on the corner, wrapped in a blanket, rocking a Tibetan sort of hat and blaring the Eagles' classic out from a...

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13 Jan

Don’t Deride Those Mourning Bowie – This Grief is Serious & Rational

Flowers and messages left by fans in front of the David Bowie mural in Brixton Photograph by Han Yan/Xinhua Press/Corbis by Suzanne Moore The Guardian For some, a hole has been ripped in the universe and we are lost. Our sadness doesn’t mean we don’t care about Madaya or Istanbul – but what if there is never anyone else like him? OCTOBER 01: RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL David BOWIE live onstage, Philly Dogs Tour | Photo by Steve Morley/Redferns | Steve Morley/Redferns/Getty Time takes a cigarette...

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13 Jan

Brother From Another Planet: Bowie & Black Music

by Greg Tate mtv news David Bowie ranks as high in our electric church’s Afrofuturist pantheon of demiurges as Jimi Hendrix, George Clinton, and Miles Davis. That’s for his outrageous aristocratic style, not-just-skin-deep soul, badass brinksmanship, and all-around Alter-Negrocity. Not to mention the Starman’s own sui generis take on The Funk. Bowie remains that rarity — a white rock artist whose appropriations of black kulcha never felt like a rip-off but more like a sharing of radical and bumptious ideations between like-minded...

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28 Dec

Born Beautiful: Tracey Morgan, First Black Transgender Model

FASHION/STYLE, IT'S ALL POLITICAL

by Jada Yuan and Aaron Wong (Photographs by Peter Hapak, Styling by Diana Tsui) The Cut Tracey’s model card from the Grace Del Marco agency, 1991, before she changed the spelling of her name. Tracey “Africa” Norman always knew that the question wasn’t if she’d be found out, but how long she could go undetected. To be black and from Newark in the mid-1970s and get plucked from a model casting call for Italian Vogue by Irving Penn — it was the kind of success story that was unheard of, especially for someone...

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27 Dec

A New Squad of Superheroes

AFROFUTURISTIC, FASHION/STYLE

by Paola Mathe | Finding Paola *UPDATE Sadly, activist/model Mama Cax/Cacsmy Brutus passed away on December 16, 2019 at the age of 30. I once saw her on the subway and introduced myself, telling her how inspirational I found her; she was lovely. She was a real-live superhero. Here's a link to The NY Times article about her life. In the dark shadows of the night where women’s screams were unheard, and evil crept silently through back alleyways and hidden streets, four super heroes emerge to fight...

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20 Dec

African-Inspired Space Opera ‘Yohancé’

AFROFUTURISTIC, MUSIC

by Andrew Liptak i09 When it comes to space opera, most people don’t associate the genre with Africa. Not Paul Louise-Julie. He’s creating a space opera comic called Yohancéinspired by African aesthetics, culture and design. Paul noted that he’s long been inspired by Star Wars, drawing comics with his brother since childhood. With parents who collected African art and a year spend in Burkina Faso, he became fascinated with the continent’s artwork, and integrated it into his own works. The Pack 001: A Wolf in...

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20 Dec

Black British Artists to Be Written Into Art History

ARTS, IT'S ALL POLITICAL

Sonia Boyce to create database of works by artists of African and Asian descent held in UK public collections by Anny Shaw The Art Newspaper The British artist Sonia Boyce aims to rewrite the history of art by creating the first database of works by black artists held in UK public collections. Over the next three years a team of artists and researchers at the University of the Arts London will trawl museums and galleries across the country hunting for works by...

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26 Nov

‘The Prophecy’: Senegal’s Trash Transformed Into Haute Couture Art

ARTS, FASHION/STYLE, IT'S ALL POLITICAL

Fabrice Monteiro, “The Prophecy #1” (2013) (image via Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, © Mariane Ibrahim) by Carey Dunne Hyperallergenic In The Prophecy, a striking series by Dakar-based photographer Fabrice Monteiro, majestic alien creatures wear hoop skirts and headdresses made from soda cans, garbage bags, fishing nets, tortoise shells, and the odd baby doll. It isn’t just fashion photography at its most theatrical and cinematic: There’s a vivid environmentalist message here, though it doesn’t look like any anti-pollution campaign you’ve ever seen. To visualize the pollution problem that plagues Senegal, Monteiro collaborated with fashion designer Doulsy and the Ecofund Organization to...

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26 Nov

Thanksgiving…

IT'S ALL POLITICAL, MUSIC

...as perfectly expressed by the brilliant Eugene McDaniels. Earlier known as Gene McDaniels, he had hits like "100 Pounds of Clay", wrote classics like Roberta Flack 's "Feel Like Makin' Love" and channeled iconic masterpieces like protest song "Compared to What", best interpreted by Eddie Harris' and Les McCann's magic moment in time at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1969. Very big on social commentary through his music, this track from his 1971 album "Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse" was light years was ahead of its time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFNzifsV9KM...

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18 Nov

‘Nature By Numbers: The Fibonacci Sequence’ Animated

BRAINIAC, MULTIMEDIA

Full screen, full blast! https://vimeo.com/9953368...

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