Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday
Discobelle.net (Free subscription) | 5 hours ago
NYC production and dj duo Holy Ghost! just did an exquisite mix for Beats In Space. Great stuff all around on this one. Beats In Space #506: Part 2, Holy Ghost! (direct link) Tracklist after the jump. 13. The House Girl – Bessie Smith (Farley Jackmaster Funk) – Farley Music 14. Holy Ghost! – On Board (featuring The DFA [...]
Windows Toward the World (Free subscription) | 02/06/2010
Bessie Smith, “Empress of the Blues” 1929
3quarksdaily (Free subscription) | 02/05/2010
Todd Weeks in Allegro: "Art thou troubled? Music will not only calm, it will ennoble thee." – Ralph Ellison Of Richard Wagner, Ralph Ellison once wrote that the composer’s symphonies were works, "which, by fulfilling themselves as works of art,...
Label Rock (Free subscription) | 02/01/2010
LABEL ROCK Radio Show PLAYLISTE DIMANCHE 31 JANVIER 2010 http://www.archive.org/details/LABELROCKLABELROCKRADIOSHOWDIMANCHE31JANVIER2010 (Download/téléchargement) SO SO MODERN “Life in the undergrowth / The worst is yet to come” ( http://www.sosomodern.com ) BUILT TO SPILL “Hindsight” ( http://www.atpfestival.com/recordings ) ABSYNTHE MINDED “Envoi”...
Fast Company Now (Free subscription) | 01/28/2010
A newly released overlay on the city government's on-line map shows New York City from 1924. New York changes all the time--buildings go up, bars close--but one thing, I hope, will always stay the same: the city's obsession with self-documentation. Maybe it comes from how transient the landscape sometimes seems, but government and citizens alike absolutely love mapping the city's history. Last year's...
NewBlackMan (Free subscription) | 01/22/2010
Ego Trippin' Something (Sasha) Fierce: Musings on Black Women in Music by Regina Barnett Music has always proven a viable outlet for any representation of blackness whether gendered male or female. The blues, for example, provided a voice for women of color to talk about those things too worldly for the church walls. Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Ella Fitzgerald were dangerous. They spoke to their passions,...
Artmanjosephgrech (Free subscription) | 01/09/2010
16.00 The day has continued from last night except that I was able to get the next two British War film DVD's in early morning blue sky. In fact in kept cloudless over my hill for the greater part of the day although I could see the cloud stretching back over the river towards Gateshead and Newcastle. I celebrated the day with a coffee in cafe and then had another with toast on return (A nutty brown...
The WOW Report (Free subscription) | 01/09/2010
"You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" by the iconic drag phenomenon, Sylvester. Still one of the best hi-NRG songs ever made, whose lyrics speak to drag queens everywhere. Sylvester got his start in San Francisco with the groundbreaking genderfuck troup, the Cockettes, singing a repetoire of Bessie Smith songs. He left in 1972 and eventually recorded with everyone from the Weather Girls, the...
KK & R Music Blog (Free subscription) | 12/24/2009
Billie Holiday remains (four decades after her death) the most famous of all jazz singers. "Lady Day" (as she was named by Lester Young) had a small voice and did not scat but her innovative behind-the-beat phrasing made her quite influential. The emotional intensity that she put into the words she sang (particularly in later years) was very memorable and sometimes almost scary; she often...
By Neddie Jingo! (Free subscription) | 12/22/2009
The 1920s have always held a certain fascination for me. There seems to have been some sort of culmination going on, the end of a long period of roil and moil where African rhythms appeared slowly in White-People Music -- first inauthentically in the minstrelsy of the 1850s and '60s, and then quite authentically indeed in the ragtime trend of the 1890s and 1900s. Whether you responded positively to...
AfriClassical (Free subscription) | 12/20/2009
AfriClassical has learned from John Malveaux of a program at 6:30 p.m., Feb. 15, 2010 at California State University, Long Beach: Out of the Margins Darryl Taylor, countertenor Lukas Swidzinski, piano Darryl Taylor, countertenor sings a program of masterful selections by underappreciated African American composers. This lively program simultaneously emphasizes the legitimacy of African American song...
The Huffington Post (Free subscription) | 12/18/2009
Check Flavorpill LA for a full list of the very best in LA arts and cultural happenings. Let There Be Light Opens Saturday Dec 19 (7-9pm) Dec 5 - Jan 10, 2010, Daily Phantom Galleries LA: Long Beach East Village Arts District Info In a modern update on the urban tradition of extravagant seasonal shop-window decorations, Phantom Galleries' Long Beach phalanx offers nearly 30 light-based art installations...
Sir Charlie Palmer (Free subscription) | 12/12/2009
http://www.mediafire.com/?y2z2gmyytfl Track listing 1. Good Morning, School Girl - Sonny Boy Williamson 2. My Baby Left Me - Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup 3. Worried Life Blues - Big Maceo Merriweather 4. Going Down Slow - James Oden 5. Grinder Man Blues - Memphis Slim 6. Baby Please Don't Go - Big Joe Williams 7. Midnight Special, The - Leadbelly/Golden Gate Quartet 8. Sweet Little Angel - Tampa...
Line Out (Free subscription) | 12/11/2009
Today marks the birthday of R&B singer Big Mama Thornton. Nee Willie May Thornton in 1926— (so that's where the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls in Brooklyn scrounged their name!)— Big Mama got her start singing in the Baptist Church and left home to begin touring on the rhythm and blues circuit at the haggard old age of 14. If you listen to Koko Taylor, Bessie Smith or hell, even Janis...
Music: Music blog + Pop and rock | (Free subscription) | 12/11/2009
Last week was all about the pleasures of the flesh. Now we want you to suggest songs that announce themselves in style That was more like it. As I attempt to explain in this week's column, I didn't quite appreciate how juicy "meat" would prove as a topic. But as well as being a substance close to the heart of rock'n'roll (blocking the thoracic artery, to be precise) it was also a good jump...
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