by Bob Martin | Oct 10, 2009 | Art, Arts, Entertainment and Music, Creativity, Exhibits, Galleries, sculptor
The best way to understand history is not through a backwards look through time reconstructing a narrative from tidbits of info.
William H. Johnson, Folk Family, ca. 1944, oil on plywood.
Novels, Paintings, Sculpture, Music and Dance created at the time, provides a better picture of what life was like, what people appreciated and the challenges they encountered. I think this can also be said about curating the work that is on display at the “White House”. As historians look back at this period, they will make note of the first African American President and First Lady and the distinctions between them and earlier occupants of the “White House”. In particular the selection of paintings, sculptures and performing artists who were featured, will say more about these times then most anything else.
One of Mrs. Obama’s selections, Johnson’s “Folk Family”, speaks to commonality, aspirations and accomplishment for the African in America over the last 100 years.
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by Sandy | Oct 4, 2009 | Art, Arts, Entertainment and Music, Blogroll, Books, Creativity, Culture
“30,000 YEARS OF ART- THE STORY OF HUMAN CREATIVITY ACROSS TIME AND SPACE” is a book that charts the history of art from 28,000 BC to the present day – 1,000 masterworks of art in chronological order.
“30,000 YEARS OF ART”
A really big book! = 1072 pages, Phaidon Press Inc
by Sandy | Oct 3, 2009 | Arts, Entertainment and Music, Blogroll, Creativity, Film, Movies, music, Theater
The filmed version of the play, “Passing Strange”, is clever, funny, with great music. Spike Lee documented the last 3 days of the musical’s Broadway run (it won the 2008 Tony for Best Book) and it has now come to a theater near you.
I saw the play last year and loved it. The terrific band, whose members, along with the few actors, tell the story of a black young man, “Stew”, trying to look for the “real” by moving from middle class L.A, where he feels he doesn’t fit in and everything is a fraud, to Amsterdam and Germany.
In Europe, he is more “American”, than he was in California. To gain friends and acceptance in the avant garde scene, his new girl friend is only impressed with the oppressed, he “passes” as the stereotype of a ghetto youth and writes songs about the “struggle”. After doing this for a few years, he wonders what if the only thing real is your “art” and “reality” is phoney?
He eventually returns to America to pursue his art and just be himself. He is amazed that the direction of his life was decided by the decisions he made as a teenager.
Serious questions, but told with humor and music. Hard to describe, a different type of musical, but, very entertaining.
“Passing Strange”
Book and lyrics by Stew
Music by Stew and Heidi Roderwald
Directed by Spike Lee
by Bob Martin | Sep 28, 2009 | Art, Artist, Creativity, Galleries
If you are in town please stop by “The Breadfruit” in Phoenix”. Will have a few paintings on the wall for the month of Oct.
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by Bob Martin | Sep 23, 2009 | Actors, Art, Artist, Creativity, Culture
Just a quarter of a century ago, in the neighborhoods you were told to stay clear of , the theory was that the new “Cosby Show” was not reality. The show was funny, responsible and smart, but some people thought it was a fairy tale.
The Huxtables
The focus on this one fictional Black Family mirrored the lives of many Africans American families whose existence had been overlooked by the general media as well as those who needed and deserved a different kind of role model.
How important is the media!
Last year when then candidate Obama was running for the Presidency it was said (often) that people where now open to this possibility having seen movies and a TV show with an African in American as commander and chief.
The Cosby show first aired at a time when MTV, a breeding ground exclusively for white recording artists, was under pressure to include more colorful acts. At that time, the thought of an African American quarterback leading a team to a Superbowl win was seen as a bigger fantasy then a Black doctor with a stable home life.
I don’t think there is a show on the air now that represents the promise of the kind of change in cultural understanding that the Cosby Show offered. Maybe there is one, but I’ve not seen it yet.
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by Sandy | Aug 13, 2009 | Arts, Entertainment and Music, Blogroll, Creativity, Culture, Film, Movies
“I Bring What I Love” – is a documentary film about Youssou N’Dour, the pop music superstar from Senegal, West Africa.
N’Dour is revered for his “remarkable range and poise and for his prodigious musical intelligence as a writer, bandleader and producer. He absorbs the entire Senegalese musical spectrum in his work, often filtering it through the lens of genre-defying rock or pop music from outside his culture. N’Dour has made “mbalax”—a blend of Senegal‘s traditional griot percussion and praise-singing with Afro-Cuban music—famous throughout the world during more than 20 years of recording and touring outside of Senegal with his band, The Super Étoile”.
The director of “I Bring What I Love”, Elizabeth Chai Vasahelyi, followed the singer for 2 years throughout Africa, Europe and the U.S. to bring us a picture of this super talented and complex man who spread the music and rhythms of his homeland worldwide.
Youssou N’Dour * “I Bring What I Love“
