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“I traveled around the 48, I learned a little something in every state.” -Carmen Taylor, “No More, No Less.” 1954.
I just love this anthem of self assurance by Carmen Taylor. The energy fueled by the electric guitar on the song feels like a direct through line from Muddy Waters going electric in 1948 to Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry’s first hits in 1955.
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Viola Davis and the Art of Living
Viola Davis doesn’t subscribe to the small worldview of a limited imagination. “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are,” she tells Glory Edim on The Well-Read Black Girl podcast. Ms. Davis is one of the world’s greatest actresses. She is also an expansive thinker who claims the beautiful complexity of life. On…
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“Fuck it. Let’s just do it ourselves.” – Linda Goode Bryant on the creation of Just Above Midtown Gallery (JAM)
When the gallerist Linda Goode Bryant worked as director of education at the Studio Museum in Harlem in the early 1970s, artists gathered in her work space for conversation. Their discussions often came to the same place. The art establishment denied artists of color- Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latine/x- exhibition opportunities. Goode Bryant’s response to this…
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Diamond Shines On
Watching Diamond The Original feels like you’ve stumbled into the act of joyful creation. She is a rare jewel of a performer, living up to her stage name. Diamond sings and dances to music of her own beguiling creation on Tik Tok and YouTube. Her performances are a living spin on the quote, “You’ve got…
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Gail O’ Neill has died
If you grew up loving fashion in the 80s, Gail O’Neill was a model you followed. She was effervescent and magnetic. Her walk on the runway was featherlight. May Gail O’Neill rest well. https://www.vogue.com/article/model-and-journalist-gail-oneill-has-died
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Weekend Playlist
“The way I start a piece is that the materials turn me on . . . I find an object and then it hangs around and it hangs around before I get an idea on how to use it.” -Betye Saar, artist. Apollo Magazine interview, November 2019.
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June Jordan on Black English
“The syntax of a sentence equals the structure of your consciousness.” -June Jordan. From her essay, “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You and the Future Life of Willie Jordan.” In June Jordan’s university course, “The Art of Black English,” Jordan and her students explored Black English as a unique living language, “a system constructed…
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Starting Off the 70s with Mavis Staples
Released in 1970, Mavis Staples’ “Only For the Lonely,” signaled the coming of a revolution in pop music where women artists would take center stage. They’d tell stories about their lives reflecting the cultural and political power they were beginning to realize. From Roberta Flack, Carole King, Aretha Franklin and Carly Simon to Joni Mitchell,…
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