United States

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Museum Exploring Music’s Black Innovators Arrives in Nashville

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMuseum Exploring Music’s Black Innovators Arrives in NashvilleThe National Museum of African American Music has six interactive sections covering 50 genres of music with a focus on gospel, blues, jazz, R&B and hip-hop.Each of the museum’s galleries focuses on the development of a genre of music with African-American roots.Credit…NMAAM/353 Media GroupFeb. 5, 2021Updated 10:49 a.m. ETIf you want to trace the roots of American popular music, you have to start when Europeans brought enslaved Africans across the Middle Passage. After Emancipation, the sounds of Africa and field hollers and work hymns from the American South dispersed across the country and transformed into new forms: the blues in Mississippi, jazz in New Orleans and later house music in Chicago and hip-hop in the Bronx.Historians, anthologies and exhibitions have traced this path before, but an entire museum hasn’t been devoted to demonstrating and celebrating how Black artists fundamentally shaped American music until now. Last Saturday, the National Museum of African American Music opened in Nashville, with six interactive sections covering 50 genres of music with a focus on gospel, blues, jazz, R&B and hip-hop.The idea for the museum, which has been 22 years and $60 million in the making, originated with Francis Guess, a civil rights advocate and Nashville business leader, who shared it with T.B. Boyd III, then the president and chief executive of the R.H. Boyd Publishing Co. In the beginning, they gathered with local leaders for monthly meetings in their living rooms to raise enthusiasm and seed money.The Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce conducted a feasibility study for a museum encompassing African-American culture in 2002; and in 2011, its focus was narrowed to music. With the support of the city and many community members, 56,000 square feet of the Fifth & Broadway complex in downtown Nashville were carved out for the institution. (The museum is open on Saturdays and Sundays in February, and time-slotted tickets are required for a limited number of masked visitors.)Steven Lewis, one of the museum’s curators, said that the galleries aim to show the living tradition of Black music. The more than 1,500 artifacts illustrate the experiences of everyday people, not just the famous ones. (Though the collection does feature items from Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, George Clinton, Whitney Houston and TLC.) They also show the music’s global reach.“Look at the young white British musicians from the 1960s, like the Beatles,” Lewis said in an interview. “They were listening to Muddy Waters and Son House. They found something in that music that drew them. Look at Louis Armstrong’s tours in West Africa — there was something that connected them. The African-American experience as expressed in the music is a compelling distillation of experiences of oppression, struggle and triumph that people around the world can relate to in different ways.”“Nashville needs this museum, because it’s a musical mecca,” said the blues guitarist Kevin Moore a.k.a. Keb’ Mo’.Credit…NMAAM/353 Media GroupLewis, a jazz saxophonist and ethnomusicologist, specifically looked at the impact of the Great Migration on the spread of Black music around the world. During this period between 1916 and 1970, more than six million African-Americans left agricultural work in the South for manufacturing jobs in the North and West. With the industrialization of America also came the industrialization of music — in the blues, artists like Muddy Waters went from playing acoustic guitar to the electric.In the section of the museum devoted to this moment, called “Crossroads,” artifacts on display include a lantern from the Illinois Central Railroad, a guitar and handwritten lyrics from B.B. King, a suit and shoes from Bobby “Blue” Bland, and a 78 from Black Swan Records, the first major blues and jazz record label owned by African-Americans.“Crossroads” also strives to tie the genre to the present by collaborating with living musicians like the blues guitarist Kevin Moore a.k.a. Keb’ Mo’, a Nashville local who has been involved with the museum since its conception.“Nashville needs this museum, because it’s a musical mecca,” said Moore, who is a national chair for the museum. “The average person just thinks of country music,” he added, noting that the city’s nickname Music City is said to have come from the Black vocal group the Fisk Jubilee Singers impressing Queen Victoria with a performance.One of Moore’s first red Silvertone electric guitars, an instrument that survived the 2010 Nashville flood and Moore sees as a testament to the city’s resilience, is also on display. “Some of the paint came off, and it’s a little damaged, but it’s still playable,” he said. “It’s significant to me because the Silvertone guitar from Sears is a part of my musical history. I got that one when I was 17 and it’s one of the nearest and dearest to me.”In developing “Crossroads” and the other galleries, curators made a point of spotlighting women’s contributions. “Women are the ones that started this genre,” the vocalist Shemekia Copeland said, adding that she fell in love with the blues as a child because of the way the lyrics tap into the power and struggles of Black people. “In the 1920s, it was all about female entertaining and the musicians were in the background. That changed later on when it became more guitar-driven.”Copeland believes that a museum devoted to African-Americans’ vast impact on music is critical. “The music is the people,” she said. “It’s how we’ve always expressed ourselves. If the world ended and somebody found records and they listened, it would tell the story of what happened to us culturally.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 63 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Six Great Movies About Presidents

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySix Great Movies About PresidentsIf you’re looking for some escapism, these films are a good reminder that democracy works.Daniel Day-Lewis took an Oscar-winning turn as President Abraham Lincoln in the 2012 film “Lincoln.”Credit…DreamWorks Pictures and 20th Century FoxJan. 16, 2021When a new president is inaugurated, it’s traditionally an occasion for pageantry and pomp, showcasing the splendor of Washington and reminding the country and the world of the United States’ democratic promise: that power ultimately rests in the will of the people. As we head into these ceremonies next week, it’s a good time to let these movies remind us that the mechanisms of American politics and the institution of the presidency — at their best and worst — have endured for centuries.These six entertaining films are about real and fictional presidents, and are set against the backdrop and complicated culture of our nation’s capital.‘Lincoln’The director Steven Spielberg and the screenwriter Tony Kushner take an unusual approach to telling the story of one of America’s most beloved presidents, focusing mostly on the first months of Abraham Lincoln’s second term, when he cajoled a reluctant Congress into passing a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery. Daniel Day-Lewis gives an Oscar-winning performance as Lincoln, capturing the man’s gentle good humor and shrewd — sometimes ruthless — political instincts. The “Lincoln” creative team make the figures from history books look and feel like real people, with complex personalities and motives.Watch it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu, YouTube[Read The New York Times review.]‘Thirteen Days’The title of this film refers to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Soviet deployment of nuclear weapons not far from the Florida coast pitted John F. Kennedy and his inner circle against both the Russians and their own Joint Chiefs of Staff. The outcome of this story is well-known. (Spoiler alert: The missiles were removed and a potential catastrophe was averted.) But the director Roger Donaldson and the screenwriter David Self still successfully dramatize the tension and paranoia brewing when Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood), his brother Robert (Steven Culp) and his adviser Kenneth O’Donnell (Kevin Costner) scrambled to out-negotiate their rivals.Watch it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu, YouTube[Read The New York Times review.]‘Seven Days in May’The characters in this jittery 1964 thriller are fictional, but the situation — particularly of late — feels all too real. Kirk Douglas plays a Marine colonel who suspects that a hawkish Air Force general (Burt Lancaster) is organizing a coup against a pacifist president (Frederic March). The director John Frankenheimer (who two years earlier made the similarly pulse-pounding “The Manchurian Candidate”) and the screenwriter Rod Serling adapt a novel by Charles W. Bailey II and Fletcher Knebel into an offbeat war movie, where the soldiers fight in boardrooms instead of battlefields, attacking using clandestine meetings and phone calls.Watch it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu, YouTube[Read The New York Times review.]‘All the President’s Men’Richard Nixon is at the center of this newspaper drama, even though he mostly stays offscreen. Based on Carl Bernstein’s and Bob Woodward’s account of how they investigated the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post, this film conveys the day-to-day business of gossip, leaks and social networking in the nation’s capital. But it’s also a rousing story about how citizens and journalists can serve as a check on the executive branch, whenever presidents and their staff start imperiously ignoring or bulldozing over federal laws.Watch it on HBO Max, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu, YouTube[Read The New York Times review.]‘Dave’One big appeal of movies about presidents is the chance to see how the leader of the free world lives. In this 1993 comedy “Dave,” Kevin Kline plays an ordinary guy who looks just like the president. When the White House staff asks him to pose as POTUS while the real one recovers from a stroke, Dave soon finds himself embroiled in a plot involving scandal, chicanery and romance. What makes this picture so delightful is Kline’s endearingly upbeat performance as someone who genuinely enjoys the privileges of the presidency — from the perks of the White House to the power to improve people’s lives.Watch it on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu, YouTube[Read The New York Times review.]‘The American President’The screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has a knack for creating charismatic and inspiring politicians, as seen in his hit TV series, “The West Wing.” In this 1995 romantic drama, Michael Douglas plays the title character, a Bill Clinton-like centrist Democrat prone to push for popular legislation rather than taking controversial stands. Sorkin’s story (directed by Rob Reiner) is mostly about the widowed president’s love affair with an environmental lobbyist played by Annette Bening. But the movie also imagines an idealized Washington, where the right speech at the right time can change minds and perhaps save a nation.Watch it on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu, YouTube[Read The New York Times review.]AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy’ Review: A Brisk Look Back at a Crisis

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy’ Review: A Brisk Look Back at a CrisisVeteran documentarian Stanley Nelson crafts a somewhat cursory primer on the 1980s crack epidemic.A scene from the documentary “Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy.”Credit…NetflixJan. 12, 2021, 5:18 p.m. ETCrack: Cocaine, Corruption & ConspiracyDirected by Stanley NelsonDocumentary, Crime, History1h 29mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.As its alliterative mouthful of a title suggests, the new Netflix documentary “Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy” takes on a many-headed beast. Racial injustice, economic inequities, police corruption, media ethics and foreign-policy scandals are all crammed — a bit too cursorily — into Stanley Nelson’s brisk primer on the 1980s crack epidemic.[embedded content]Told in eight chapters, the film begins with some scene-setting bits of archival footage. Speeches by President Ronald Reagan and clips from the 1987 drama “Wall Street” capture the era’s free-market capitalism, while its underside is illustrated by images of impoverished inner cities and the hip-hop that emerged from there. Former dealers explain that crack, a cheaper and more potent variant of cocaine, offered destitute youth a get-rich-quick scheme. The drug suddenly became more available than ever in the United States in the ’80s, which the movie links to shady C.I.A. dealings during the Iran-contra affair.In the film’s strongest moments, former peddlers, users, journalists and scholars unravel the narratives, often propelled by the media, that led to a disproportionate targeting of people of color during the war on drugs. A dealer recalls with horror how D.E.A. agents persuaded him to lure a teenager into buying crack in front of the White House just so President George H.W. Bush could have a cautionary tale to use in a televised speech.But Nelson tries to cover too much ground too fast, leading to some tonal fuzziness: In a too-brief segment on Black women’s exploitation during the crack era, a dealer’s seemingly amused recollection of how women would trade sexual favors for a hit goes oddly uncontextualized. A narrower focus might have allowed the film to better tease out such knotty material.Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & ConspiracyNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. Watch on Netflix.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More