Erica Savage Wilson experienced a traumatic brain injury. In “Things Not Seen,” she reveals the daily challenges of recovery and holding on to the will to live.
Breaking the glass ceiling is just the beginning. Labour MP Diane Abott provides a glimpse into what it’s like being Britain’s first Black Member of Parliament (MP).
“This is not about charity or inspiration. It’s about justice,” disability rights advocate Rebecca Cokley on the Ford Foundation’s first of its kind disability rights grant program.
“My goal is to leave a digital footprint of our Hmong language for future generations.” Annie Vang on the app she created, HmongPhrases.
The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) is an enormous free collection of over 50,000 hours of public radio and television interviews and programs.
Rolling Stone has re-upped its monumental list of the 500 greatest songs of all time. There’s something on this list for everyone to disagree about.
“Black women are not bottomless bowls of sweat, work, emotional support, and reassurance for white America. I, as a Black woman, needed to reclaim my ability to have my own prerogative and self-interests while living in a country that can’t do right. Basically, if I’m putting on an apron and getting in the kitchen, I’m frying chicken for my damn self.”
-Musician Adia Victoria in conversation with Marcus K. Dowling for CMT.com
Across the country workers are on strike for fair wages and benefits and safe working conditions. In their honor, five songs of protest and solidarity.
Could you really listen to only four musical artists for the rest of your life? Of course not, but it’s fun to think about. Everyday is a new opportunity to fall in musical love. A single song is all it takes. I fell for Carmen McRae, Nina Simone, and Grace Jones one song at a time.
The first time I knew I was listening to Carmen McRae’s voice was when her death was announced on National Public Radio (NPR). The report featured a snippet of her singing “It’s The Good Life” and I was instantly and forever hooked. I was in college at the time. Later the same day, I walked into my African American History class to the sound of a crisp, elegant voice filling the room. It was Carmen McRae. The professor was playing one of her records on a turntable he’d brought to class. He mourned and celebrated Ms. McRae by introducing her to his students.
My devotion to Nina Simone began with “Mississippi Goddamn.” I’d never experienced a singer who made every note count the way she did. Nina Simone’s ability to break down a song to its emotional essence is unparalleled. Carmen McRae and Nina Simone tap into what I’m feeling or carry me to where I want to be. Grace Jones takes me places I never knew were possible. Her 1985 album “Slave To The Rhythm,” is audacious. It is an autobiography told in a wonderland of spoken word, dance, and new wave. “La Vie En Rose” was a classic twice over before Jones sped up the tempo and added a dance beat. Her version maintains the longing of Edith Piaf’s original and takes its playfulness from Louis Armstrong’s version.
Grace Jones’ body of work is in part the expression of a radical and maximal mixing and matching of genre and tone all wrapped in a velvety alto voice. Her approach to music is almost sartorial, like a layered outfit of plaid on stripes on polka dots. The outcome is brilliant and only something she can pull off. The magic is that Grace Jones has been doing this all flawlessly for decades. So of course, Carmen McRae, Nina Simone, and Grace Jones are my top three.
Right now, Yola is making a strong showing for the number four spot. Her latest album “Stand For Myself” is glorious. Yola’s first album “Walk Through Fire” and her EP “Orphan Offering” are unyielding in their gorgeousness. The debut album and EP have been a balm over the last 18 months of quarantine and lockdowns. Every song on “Walk Through Fire,” especially “Lonely The Night” possesses a richness of voice and production reminiscent of the listener enveloping harmonic universe of the 60s Wall of Sound. Even with all of that goodness, could I choose Yola instead of Big Maybelle or Joan Armatrading?
Big Maybelle is an icon for the ages. Her hits “My Country Man,” “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” and “Candy” are foundational elements of the post World War II popular music landscape. Big Maybelle’s version of The Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” is a completely original rendition of the song worthy of resurrection and reverence. She recounts the tale of Eleanor and Father McKenzie with resigned commiseration. Her requiem for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Heaven Will Welcome You Dr. King” is a crushing expression of Black national grief. Big Maybelle was one of the original queens of popular music who never received her flowers.
Joan Armatrading is the enigma among the artists on my list. Her catalog is wide-ranging. She glides easily across genres, writing ballads and rock anthems like “I Really Must Be Going” and “Love And Affection.” Armatrading has a devoted international following and it’s not big enough. As a fan from the United States, I am both astonished and not surprised that she came into my life by accident. In my case it was sitting in traffic listening to her give an interview on a Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) radio show played on my local NPR station. Black women whose music can’t be neatly stuffed into pre-approved genres of what Black people are supposed to like are hard to find. And when you find them, or at least when I do, I go deep. Joan Armatrading’s songs are the epitome of cool we all deserve to experience.
Entertaining the idea of listening to four musical artists for the rest of my life has taken me to the real and digital record crates. I have listened to songs I love again and again with an ear for description to share what they mean to me. I have found new angles and new stories, new spaces to explore. Carmen McRae, Nina Simone, and Grace Jones reign supreme. I still haven’t found my fourth, but I’ll keep looking.
The cadence. The precision. The buttery essence. The silky perfection. Today is the 40th anniversary of “Never Too Much,” the debut album of Luther Ronzoni Vandross, Jr. Get into it.
This edition of Links For The Voracious is about women who made history, attempts to deny history, and making sense of the past in art and life.
Gloria Richardson could not tolerate the dehumanizing terror of second-class citizenship, so she organized. Her work to end segregation on Maryland’s Eastern Shore helped transform the nation. Ms. Richardson died at the age of 99 on July 15. May her memory be a blessing and may she long be remembered by those who hunger for justice.
When Ida B. Wells was born into slavery on July 16, 1862, the trajectory of her future was beyond imagination. Ms. Barnett became the moral compass of a nation unwilling to live up to its own ideals.
In Mary Wang’s Miscellaneous Files series for Guernica, artists share the references and ideas that shape their work.
Photographer Carol Highsmith is traveling across the country documenting the grand diversity of American places. She’s donating all the photographs (60,000 so far) copyright-free to the Library of Congress.
Boiling absurdity down to its ridiculously contradictory essence. Making a way out of no way. Laughing to keep from crying and sometimes doing both because that’s the only way to survive. Professor Danielle Fuentes Morgan explores Black satire in the 21st century.
Writer Scott Hoshida’s short story “To Move is To Hope” in The Broadkill Review.
Toni Morrison had enduring friendships with Angela Davis and Fran Lebowitz. That’s range.
Angela Davis on Toni Morrison: “I have always been impressed by her ability to be so focused and to inhabit the universe of her writing while not neglecting the universe that involves the rest of us.”
Fran Lebowitz on Toni Morrison: “People who aren’t in a constant state of fury aren’t paying attention. But Toni was paying attention. She was simply above it rather than swamped by it. I don’t know how you do this, because I cannot do this. People use the word compassionate a lot, and I don’t know many people who really are. Toni was. And forgiving. She was forgiving.”
