I’ve never liked the term “Blue Eyed Soul“. Thought it was demeaning and still feel that way today. I’m only revisiting this notion because of “Sara Smile” the Hall and Oaks hit single of the late 70’s and new interpretation of this song by Rumer, another British female artist who has been able to recreate a sense of the past without being nostalgic.
Rumer’s rendition of “Sara Smile” is soulful and very much her own, understated, and in this live version of the song the band does all of the Hall and Oaks screams and shouts. If you like Rumer ‘s interpretation and I do, you might notice that the color of her eyes had nothing to do with it. Let’s place an asterisk next to the term “Blue Eyed Soul” that says “Eyes Don’t Matter”.
I love to listen to Brazilian music when I paint: Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Stan Getz etc. I just read this absolutely fascinating article in the NY Times about the origins of Brazilian music: how it was influenced by Arabic culture & how its aesthetic was passed onto American Blues. I have to get my hands on the recently released “Musica Tradicional do Norte e Nordeste 1938”. (It’s a 6 CD box set of Brazilian music circa 1938.)
Beauford Delaney (1901–1979), Portrait of a Young Musician, Studio Museum in Harlem,
An exploration in what was called “Avant-garde” , sometimes dismissed because of unfamiliarity and being seen as ahead of it’s time, because it was. Starting over, musically and visually. Realism was found to be not real.
“The exhibition’s title is drawn from a 1960 solo album by virtuoso jazz pianist Jaki Byard in which improvisation on blues form becomes a basis for avant-garde exploration. The title suggests that the expanded poetics of the blues is pervasive—but also diffuse and difficult to pin down. By presenting an uncommon heterogeneity of subject matter, art historical contexts, formal and conceptual inclinations, genres and disciplines, Blues for Smoke holds artists and art worlds together that are often kept apart, within and across lines of race, generation, and canon.” Blues for Smoke,
Picky, Picky, Picky is how I describe much of the conversation surrounding the 2012 release of Les Misérables. The noise is that the movie is not the (Musical) play and that of the director’s choice to shoot and record the actors singing live on camera, (no lip syncing) making some viewers uncomfortable. Too bad.
There have been over ten theatrical or movie interpretations of Les Miserables and not one of them was the original story. Critics and some viewers wasted their time in not seeing this movie production as something new vs. comparing it to what they had already seen and knew. It’s OK not to like this film, but dislike it because it’s a movie you don’t like and not because it is not the play.
Les Miserables 2012 is an original piece of art, a spectacular movie, beautifully staged, acted and in most cases well sung. If your thought is that the Broadway musical is the only experience you want to remember or have then don’t see this film. It is different and special in its own way.
Quentin Tarantino, the over hyper creative genius, and his new film Django Unchained flirts with mastery. The film is maybe 15 min too long but its close enough(more about the 15 min later). If you’ve seen a ton of movies in your life, you will find a reference to just about every one of them in Django Unchained, that’s what Tarantino does, except in this one “The Guys with the White Hats” loses out. Directors like Sergio Leone, Alfred Hitchcock, George Stevens, Tim Burton and many more have contributed unknowingly to this creative effort and again this is no knock on Tarantino’s creative talents, it is his creative talent in using themes we are all familiar with and in some cases turning them upside down that makes us laugh and maybe even think.
The film makes no pretense that the story of Django is based on anything remotely true and yet still is able to paint an ugly picture about this country’s past. The movie is often hilarious, heart breaking (for some of us) and outrageous. Tarantino has created an African America Super Hero who rides a horse that mimics Trigger and thus slaps down the fable of “Guys with White Hats” being the good guys. There is room here for a sequel(s), the son of Django Part 2.
The movie is gory, so if you find vampires, Bruce Willis, Jason Bourne or Bambi disturbing you should avoid Django and not see it. The dialogue at times is that of two 9 year old inner city kids acting out scenes from a movie, with a child’s emphasis on vulgarity. As promised, the wasted 15 min: Cutting the number of times the N-word is used in half to about 70 would make the film shorter giving Tarantino his masterpiece. Spoiler alert, no other movie that I’ve ever seen has approached the subject of Black Slavers (Blacks who enslaved other Blacks) and while its not gone into in great depth it has not been swept under the rug either and I am not sure how open Black America is to this fact. In addition Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson) is an important and complex character in the film, similar to, but a more repulsive, Colonel Nicholson (Bridge on the River Kwai) who are both blinded to their own culpability.
Django Unchained is enormously entertaining and not a source for cultural or political debate and yet people will feel a need to see it as some referendum about current, past or future events. What can be debated is that Tarantino got to do a film that no African American director would be allowed to do, and that should be debated (and not with me). Django is a movie, just like Les Miserables, Jack Reacher, Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook are all just movies. Django just happens to be really good.
I really like this group. Nice clean sound and would enjoy seeing them live. Maybe at The Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) in 2013. Maybe someone is listening? Listen to more here Chic Gamine
I’ve never liked the term “Blue Eyed Soul“. Thought it was demeaning and still feel that way today. I’m only revisiting this notion because of “Sara Smile” the Hall and Oaks hit single of the late 70’s and new interpretation of this song by Rumer, another British female artist who has been able to recreate a sense of the past without being nostalgic.
Picky, Picky, Picky is how I describe much of the conversation surrounding the 2012 release of 
