Commentary
dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
Thanksgiving day has come and gone. But before we enter the Christmas and Holiday season I just wanted to say a hearty THANK YOU on behalf of the Black Kos team to everyone in the Black Kos family! Thank you to all of our readers, commentators, lurkers, and recommenders. Thank you all, for supporting us and helping us grow. So in the spirit of giving thanks I thought this would be a good time to look back at the growth of Black Kos.
In Daily Kos' "infancy" quite a few pundits "asked" after the 1st Yearly Kos (Net Roots Nation precursor) "where are the people of color?" Of course these pundits were able to decipher from the pixels and bits the color of diarist on Daily Kos. Although I enjoyed the "colorless" dialog back then (no one knew my race) I knew this developing narrative had to be stopped. Black Kos grew out of an attempt to combat this meme as much as it grew out of an attempt to educate the larger progressive universe. After reading "Crashing the Gates" I realized the danger of the "silos", where progressive groups only focused on their issue and not the larger movement. I hoped to play a small role in reaching out, spreading news and goodwill from an important part of the progressive coalition. We needed to speak to each other more and learn what we were talking and thinking about when we weren't around each other. From this idea Black Kos was born.
[] My First Black Kos Diary quite well received by the way 358 comments, 100+ rec's on Tuesday January 2nd 2007: Black Kos: an open thread.
[] But by next week only 27 comments (I only averaged about 16-25 for the first year): Black Kos: Know anything on Whip Clyburn?#3 Dem.
[] Realizing to grow I needed help, I decided to call in the "big guns" I asked a certain "warrior queen". Robinswings' first Black Kos diary. The number of weekly commentators immediately jumped from an average of 16-25 to 80-90 (my poor ego LOL): My last Black Kos week in review diary.
[] This is the first Black Kos diary under it's own identity. Welcome to the team! Black Kos, Week in Review.
[] Who made the first Black Kos comment? TerryPinder one minute six seconds after the diary posted he wrote "good enough for me" (what took him so long? HA!).
[] First person to recommend it? CanadianBill. paul2port was number 30, highest on the list who is still active in this diary. (Two Canadians must be leftover karma from my old trips to Caribana)
[] Last but not least as we expanded to another day in the week the First Tuesday Chile: Black Kos, Tuesdays Chile.
On behalf of Robinswing, sephius1, Deoliver47, Amazinggrace and myself, thank you and much love!
Sincerely,
dopper0189
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Commentary
by Sephius1
I don't know about you, but every now and then I like to revert back to a child and whimsical. I especially liked the water fights. My mom didn't like guns of any kind so she would let us fill up balloons and throw them. Although later on she would let use those intergalactic, bright green, water guns. Now, admittedly, those guns only allowed a couple minutes worth of fun, however, the young folks have WAAAAY cooler water guns. Thanks in part to Lonnie Johnson.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to come up with a great idea, but it certainly doesn't hurt. For Lonnie Johnson, a lifetime of achievement and success at various levels on government and private sector projects could not prepare him for the success the he would ultimately achieve - by building a better squirt-gun.
Lonnie Johnson was born on October 6, 1949 in Mobile, Alabama. His father worked as a civilian driver at Brookley Air Force Base, and his mother was a homemaker who worked part time as a nurse's aide. His father taught Robert and his brothers how to repair various household items, prompting the boys to create their own toys. The boys once made a go-kart out of household items and a lawn mower motor. Although his parents were excited about his interest in science and inventing, they weren't prepared for the time he decided to experiment with a rocket fuel he created with sugar and saltpeter which exploded and burned up part of the kitchen. His talents were more refined when he attended Williamson High School and in 1968, as a senior, took part in a national science competition sponsored by the University of Alabama. There he displayed a remote controlled robot named "Linex" which he built from scraps found at a junkyard and parts of his brothers' walkie-talkie and his sisters' reel-to-reel tape recorder. He placed first in the competition and entered Tuskeegee University on a mathematics scholarship. At Tuskeegee he was elected into the Pi Tau Sigma National Engineering Honor Society and graduated with distinction in 1973 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering. He continued on at Tuskeegee and received a Master's Degree in Nuclear Engineering in 1975.
After graduation, he took a position at the Savannah River National Laboratory, conducting thermal analysis on plutonium fuel spheres. He later served as a research engineer, developing cooling systems at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He then joined the Air Force and was assigned to the Air Force Weapons Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico where he served as the Acting Chief of the Space Nuclear Power Safety Section. In 1973, he left the Air Force and took over as Senior Systems Engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. He worked on the Galileo Mission to Jupiter, but returned in 1982 to his military career. He worked at the Strategic Air Command (SAC) facility in Bellevue, Nebraska and then moved to the SAC Test and Evaluation Squadron at Edwards Air Force Base in Edwards, California where he worked on the Stealth Bomber. He also worked as Acting Chief at the Space Nuclear Power Safety Section of the Air Force Weapon Laboratory at Kirkland Air Force Base in New Mexico. A Captain, he was awarded the Air Force Achievement Medal and the Air Force Commendation Medal. In 1987, Johnson returned to his work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he worked on the Mars Observer project, and served as the fault protection engineer on the Saturn Cassini mission project. He later worked as a project engineer for the Kraft mission which studied asteroids.....Read more
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This weeks news by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
Note: Amazinggrace is away dealing with a loss in her family, our thoughts and prayers are with her.
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Sammy Sosa?!?!?! Unfortunately I (dopper) have been aware of skin bleaching for some time. There was a reggae song back in the 1980's ("dem a bleach") denouncing this. Unfortunately this silliness has spread (from west Africa?) and still bubbles up from time to time, in countries with large Black or Indian (Dravidians from southern Indian) populations. The Root: Color-Struck Around The Globe.
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When I saw Sammy Sosa with his jarringly lighter complexion at the Latin Grammys last week, I wasn’t all that shocked—and I certainly didn’t think it was steroids. I’m a brown girl who knows the work of skin lightening creams when she sees it.
In an era when countries like the Dominican Republic and India have put colonialism squarely behind them, you’d think that we would be throwing concepts of caste aside, embracing our brown selves and celebrating that no one is forcing their aesthetic standards (or anything else) on us anymore. But instead, it seems like people of color across the globe are still colonized by colorism.
To be fair, it’s certainly not just Sammy Sosa, the Dominican Republic and India. It’s Japan, Malaysia, Cuba, Iran, Britain, Singapore, Mexico, Sri Lanka ... the list goes on and on. The skin lightening cream industry is a $432 million a year industry in India, $7 billion a year industry in China—and it’s growing globally. read more here -->
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People of multiple ethnicities know that their manes can be easily mangled. But salons and hair-care products are improving. LA Times: Getting mixed hair right.
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You've seen the great hair divide in the movies: "Steel Magnolias" was centered in Truvy's beauty salon, which catered to white women; Queen Latifah's "Beauty Shop," on the other hand, had a clientele that was almost exclusively black.
For years, with few exceptions when it came to hair care, never the twain should meet.
But today, with mixed marriages surging, hair is no longer black or white. read more here -->
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President Obama presents the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award to Magadonga Mahlangu and her organization Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA).
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Like anything as big as a continent views change from country to country. In South Africa same sex marriage is legal then there is this.. The Root: Should We Send Aid?
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Stumbled across this blurb over on the Atlantic (which stumbled across it on The Independent Gay Forum). Writer Jamie Kirchick doesn't think aid money should be given to Uganda, a nation with an entirely contentious relationship with its homosexual citizenry, even going so far as to make homosexuality a crime punishable by death.
"When a government actively encourages homophobia, the effect reverberates throughout society. Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, has accused European gays of coming to his country to "recruit" people into homosexuality. Ugandan newspapers and bloggers have seized on the proposed law to launch their own broadsides against gays, posting the names and photographs of individuals in Wild West-style "wanted" posters in print and online. A major tabloid, the Red Pepper, trumpeted an expose headlined "Top Homos in Uganda Named" as "a killer dossier, a heat-pounding and sensational masterpiece that largely exposes Uganda's shameless men and unabashed women that have deliberately exported the Western evils to our dear and sacred society."
From 2004 through 2008, Uganda received a total of $1.2 billion in PEPFAR money, and this year it is receiving $285 million more. Clearly, the United States has a great deal of leverage over the Ugandan government, and the American taxpayer should not be expected to fund a regime that targets a vulnerable minority for attack — an attack that will only render the vast amount of money that we have donated moot."
Read the rest of Kirchick on Independent Gay Forum.
Not that the US can really be considered a beacon of light when it come to gay rights, but death penalties and such take it entirely too far. What do you think? Should aid still be given?
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The story above goes even deeper. See Uganda has a truly draconian law before it's Parliament that will prescribe the death penalty to "aggravated homosexuality". The Law describes this "as engaging in homosexual relations with an intoxicated person" (translation: buy a man a drink in a bar bring him home and get hung). Promoting homosexuality "only" gets a life sentence (translation: tout same sex marriage and wind up in jail). The President of Uganda Mr. Museveni and the majority party support this law. But before readers turn this into a opportunity to bash "backwards Africans" guess who is supporting this measure. The secretive religious cult "The Family" of John Ensign and Mark Sanford fame. While many progressive have been sleeping, Evangelicals have been pushing their agenda oversees.
NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross: The Secret Political Reach Of 'The Family' and interview with Jeff Sharlet.
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Here's how it can work: Dennis Bakke, former CEO of AES, the largest independent power producer in the world, and a Family insider, took the occasion of the 1997 Prayer Breakfast to invite Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni, the Family's "key man" in Africa, to a private dinner at a mansion, just up the block from the Family's Arlington headquarters. Bakke, the author of a popular business book titled Joy at Work, has long preached an ethic of social responsibility inspired by his evangelical faith and his free-market convictions: "I am trying to sell a way of life," he has said. "I am a cultural imperialist." That's a phrase he uses to be provocative; he believes that his Jesus is so universal that everyone wants Him. And, apparently, His business opportunities: Bakke was one of the pioneer thinkers of energy deregulation, the laissez-faire fever dream that culminated in the meltdown of Enron. But there was other, less-noticed fallout, such as a no-bid deal Bakke made with Museveni, the result of a relationship that began at the 1997 Prayer Breakfast, for a $500-million dam close to the source of the White N—e -- in waters considered sacred by Uganda's 2.5-million–strong Busoga minority. AES announced that the Busoga had agreed to "relocate" the spirits of their dead. They weren't the only ones opposed; first environmentalists (Museveni had one American arrested and deported) and then even other foreign investors revolted against a project that seemed like it might actually increase the price of power for the poor. Bakke didn't worry. "We don’t go away," he declared. He dispatched a young man named Christian Wright, the son of one of the Prayer Breakfast's organizers, to be AES's in- country liaison to Museveni; Wright was later accused of authorizing at least $400,000 in bribes. He claimed his signature had been forged.
"I'm sure a lot of people use the Fellowship as a way to network, a way to gain entree to all sorts of people," says Michael Cromartie, an evangelical Washington think tanker who's critical of the Family's lack of transparency. "And entree they do get."
"Anything can happen," according to an internal planning document, "the Koran could even be read, but JESUS is there! He is infiltrating the world." Too bland most years to merit much press, the breakfast is regarded by the Family as merely a tool in a larger purpose: to recruit the powerful attendees into smaller, more frequent prayer meetings, where they can "meet Jesus man to man."
In the process of introducing powerful men to Jesus, the Family has managed to effect a number of behind-the-scenes acts of diplomacy. In 1978 it helped the Carter administration organize a worldwide call to prayer with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. At the 1994 National Prayer Breakfast, Family leaders persuaded their South African client, the Zulu chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, to stand down from the possibility of civil war with Nelson Mandela. But such benign acts appear to be the exception to the rule. During the 1960s, the Family forged relationships between the U.S. government and some of the most oppressive regimes in the world, arranging prayer networks in the U.S. Congress for the likes of General Costa e Silva, dictator of Brazil; General Suharto, dictator of Indonesia; and General Park Chung Hee, dictator of South Korea. "The Fellowship's reach into governments around the world," observes David Kuo, a former special assistant to the president in Bush's first term, "is almost impossible to overstate or even grasp."
[] read more here -->
[] listen to the interview here ( ((-))) )
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About time. The AP: St. Vincent contemplates cutting ties with queen.
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Voters in the Caribbean nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines decide Wednesday whether to break their ties with Britain's monarchy, even as Queen Elizabeth II is making a rare visit to the region.
A two-thirds majority in the referendum is needed to adopt a proposed constitution that would replace the charter in place since independence from Britain in 1979.
If the charter is approved, St. Vincent and the Grenadines would join other Caribbean nations that have enacted new constitutions in recent months, including the Dominican Republic and the Cayman Islands.
The proposed constitution would remove the British monarch as the head of state and create a president nominated by the two political parties. Among other changes, it would establish a new court of appeals to replace Britain's Privy Council, which is now the highest court of appeal for the island nation.
Both the governing Unity Labor Party and the opposition agree the islands should become a republic. But members of the opposition New Democratic Party are encouraging voters to reject the charter because they say it does not sufficiently reduce the powers of the prime minister, and they want the president to be elected by voters, not selected by Parliament. read more here -->
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Forgiveness is hard but it brings man closer to the divine. New York Times: South Africa Is Divided on Gesture by Educator.
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For a speech about reconciliation it could hardly have been more divisive. Jonathan D. Jansen, the new head of the University of the Free State, spoke of the "place of infamy" just 100 yards behind him, the residence hall where four white students last year made a racist video that incited outrage across the country.
Those students had been expelled, but now the new rector announced that they were welcome to return, pardoned of any further campus discipline. The young men may have been racially troubled, he explained, but the bigger problem lay with the university, which itself was racist. read more here -->
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Notice how silent Neo-Cons become when spreading democracy means a leftist candidate? New York Times: Haiti Bars Ex-President’s Party From Elections for Parliament.
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The political party of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide will be barred from legislative elections scheduled for Feb. 28, Haitian election officials said Wednesday.
The decision drew immediate criticism from Mr. Aristide, who was a populist hero in Haiti before being ousted in an armed rebellion in 2004. From exile in South Africa, he asked whether Haitian election officials were trying to organize an election or "to make a selection."
Mr. Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest, became Haiti’s first freely elected president in 1991 and won a second election in 2000. His Lavalas Family party is still considered the most popular political force in Haiti, an impoverished Caribbean nation of nine million people.
"The Lavalas Family party will not be allowed to participate in the next election, because the electoral council’s legal counsel said the party did not meet all legal requirements," the electoral council president, Gaillot Dorsinvil, told local radio stations.
He did not specify which requirements the party had failed to meet. read more here -->
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If you always wondered what Camelot was like. NYT: Modern Flourishes as Obamas Host State Dinner.
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It is an old tradition, a White House dinner governed by ritual and protocol that happens to be this city’s hottest social event. But at their first state dinner on Tuesday night, President Obama and his wife, Michelle, made sure to infuse the glittering gala with distinctive touches.
They hired a new florist, Laura Dowling, who bedecked the tented outdoor dining room with locally grown, sustainably harvested magnolia branches and ivy. They selected a guest chef, Marcus Samuelsson of Aquavit in New York, an American citizen who was born in Ethiopia, reared in Sweden and cooks up melting pots of flavors and cuisines.
They invited local students to witness the arrival of the guests of honor, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India and his wife, Gursharan Kaur, and presented a mélange of musical entertainment, including the National Symphony Orchestra; Jennifer Hudson, the singer and actress; Kurt Elling, the jazz musician from Chicago; and A. R. Rahman, the Indian composer who wrote the score to the movie "Slumdog Millionaire."
And at the tables, the meatless menu included a mix of Indian and American favorites, including some African-American standards. Collard greens and curried prawns, chickpeas and okra, nan and cornbread were served to the 320 guests — including some well-known Republicans and prominent Indian-Americans — who started off with arugula from the White House garden and finished up with pumpkin pie tart. (After a tasting at the White House on Sunday, the Obamas gave the dishes their stamp of approval, Mr. Samuelsson said.) read more here -->
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Giving back is always a good thing. Yahoo! News: Filmmaker Tyler Perry donates $1M to NAACP.
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Filmmaker Tyler Perry has donated $1 million to the NAACP to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the civil rights organization.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People says the gift announced Monday is the largest donation from an individual in the organization's history. It will be distributed over four years.
In a statement, Perry says the perseverance of thousands within the NAACP helped pave the way for his success in the film industry.
NAACP leaders say the gift marks a major shift in black philanthropy. They say donations of this size have not typically gone to civil rights groups.
It's also a key time for the NAACP as the group faces questions over whether it remains relevant. read more here -->
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Ta-Nehisi Coates is always a must read! I love his take downs of rightwing trolls. The Atlantic: An Effete Liberal's Worse Nightmare.
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Rightwing troll writes:
Just the sheer volume of responses confirm my suspicions, the liberals are scared to death of Sara Palin because she stands for freedom, honesty, decency and motherhood. Not afraid to speak her mind and not afraid to confront critics. Her message rings true to much of America, remember Obama did not win in a landslide. Quote polls all you want in your rants. Will she run for President? Are her qualifications less than a community organizer? If she runs, she will win.
This puts me in the mind of the early 90s when Negroes were running around parroting that Menace II Society line, I'm white America's worst nightmare: Young, black and just don't give a fuck. I was kid, but even then I used to think, No you're not. You're your momma's worse nightmare. You're your next-door neighbors worse nightmare. White people got expensive jails and cheap graves for niggers like you.
I mean, I guess some substantial portion of white people were afraid--but these fools were confusing white fear with some kind of actual black power. This was false for many reasons, among them, many people who weren't white were also afraid, and generally acted accordingly. Likewise, Palin's base confuses "liberal fear" with some kind of populist power, by ignoring the fact that a lot of people who want nothing to do with us pinkos, are afraid of Palin too.
People misunderstand fear. It doesn't always cause your foes to cower in a corner. Sometimes it causes them to beat the crap out of you with a bag of rusty nails. read more here -->
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It's of course just a coincidence that the only schools in Mississippi that were asked to merge or justify their funding were the three historically black schools and a woman's college. AOL News: Plan to Merge Black Colleges Criticized.
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Gov. Haley Barbour's plan to merge Mississippi's three historically black universities has created a tense atmosphere in a state saddled with a violent civil rights past and a decades-long legal battle over the historic underfunding of those schools.
At Jackson State University, students have turned to Twitter and Facebook to gather signatures on a petition to block the move proposed by the Republican governor. A half-dozen students attended a state College Board meeting Thursday expecting some discussion about the proposal, but there was none.
"I personally believe they undermined the uniqueness of the black colleges and how far we've come with the little resources we have," said Marissa Simms, a 20-year-old JSU student.
Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi argues that his plan to merge three of the state's black colleges into one college would save the state budget $35 million a year. Opponents counter that it unfairly singles out African Americans. One critic called the plan "an insensitive recommendation devoid of critical data."
Many of the nation's public historically black colleges and universities, known as HBCUs, were founded more than a century ago. Mississippi's own Alcorn State University in Lorman was the country's first land-grant black college.
The state's other historically black campus is Mississippi Valley State University in Itta Bena.
Nationwide, there are 42 public HBCUs and dozens more private institutions. White House officials and representatives of national organizations say the colleges play a vital role in an initiative by the Democratic Obama administration. read more here -->
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In a bad economy and with black youth unemployment so high this is a missed opportunity to say the least. Washington Post: Despite pact, few blacks at Coast Guard school.
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Eight years after the U.S. Coast Guard and the NAACP signed a voluntary agreement to work together to boost the number of African-Americans at its 1,000-cadet service academy, the annual enrollment and graduation figures for blacks remain in single digits.
Seven blacks graduated from the academy based in New London, Conn., in the spring of 2001, the year the agreement was signed.
The same number graduated from the Class of 2006, the first class for which blacks were recruited under the agreement.
Subsequently, there were seven black graduates in 2007, five in 2008 and four in 2009.
That makes 23 graduates in four years under the agreement, including the academy's first black female valedictorian. In the four previous years the number was 33.
Leading lawmakers have grown increasingly upset with results even as they repeatedly are told the Guard is working hard to improve diversity in a service where only 311 of its 6,787 commissioned officers are black, with only one black admiral.
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The kids call it jerking. New York Times: Hip-Hop’s New Steps.
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THINK globally, act virally. Like a cartoon thought bubble, that notion seems to hang in the mild afternoon air here, as school lets out early on parent-teacher conference day at Alexander Hamilton High School. At two o’clock precisely, students flood from a 1930s brick building evocative of Andy Hardy movies. If you are 130 years old, you will get that reference. If you are not, let’s just say that they were Hollywood films in which perky and resourceful teenagers had a tendency to put on shows in somebody’s barn.
And isn’t the Web, in its wildly do-it-yourself essence, a technological update on the Andy Hardy narrative? And isn’t this partly why the students hanging out on South Robertson Boulevard have become huge stars on the Internet, their fame conjured out of home-grown YouTube videos of jerking — a new dance with its own quickly evolving music and a style of dress?
Julian Goins, the 15-year-old leader of the Ranger$, a five-member jerking crew, hops onto the tips of his sneakers — the Tippy Toe — and then swivels his body ground-ward, legs crossed at the ankle. He pops up like a jack-in-the-box, spins and bounces, gliding backward in the Reject, a move that resembles nothing so much as the Running Man, an ’80s dance-floor step but in reverse. read more here -->
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Jamaica's renown as a wonderfully musical nation has come not only because of our prowess in reggae and jazz. We have produced, too, world-class opera singers and classical music instrumentalists. Jamaican Gleaner: Caribbean classic - Jamaica's unique symphony orchestra showcases talent.
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Now, add to the above a symphony orchestra which surely is one of the world's largest and definitely the only major one with a steel-band section.
Formed in September 2008, the Jamaica Symphony Orchestra (JSO) has more than 100 members and, together with the traditional four sections of a symphony orchestra - the strings, woodwind, brass and percussion - it has a full steel pan unit, which gives it a sound that is both unique and authentically Caribbean. (The steel pan, originating in Trinidad and Tobago, is reputedly the only new musical instrument invented in the 20th century).
On Sunday, the JSO ended its two-venue concert series with a performance in the Assembly Hall at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI). The orchestra had played the previous night at Northern Caribbean University (NCU) in Mandeville. read more here -->
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Bill T. Jones’ Broadway production is a full-bodied, sensory experience for theatergoers. He puts Fela the legend center stage, but Fela the man stays out of the limelight. The Root: Presenting Fela!
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Bill T. Jones’ debut as a Broadway director, with his remarkable new musical, Fela!, is best described by one moment in his staging of Fela Kuti’s smash-hit song "Zombie." Fela, played by Sahr Ngaujah, stands at one end of the stage—shirtless, sweaty, clad only in tight, pink pants—and hunkers down on a fire-engine-red saxophone trimmed with cowrie shells. He points his sax at two dancers representing Nigerian military police and cranks out a wall of sound that sends their bodies flailing, stunned and overcome. For two acts, Jones’ audience gets much of the same treatment.
Jones’ exploration of Fela’s legendary life fits awkwardly onto the stage. It’s neither standard Broadway nor truly a musical because there’s not much in the way of narrative. It’s far more than a concert, though it could certainly pass for one. And though Jones’ bold choreography shapes it, it’s not dance, either. More than anything else, what Jones has put together is a full-bodied, sensory experience for theatergoers. Which is probably the most fitting way to introduce many Americans to the force that was Fela Anikulapo Kuti.
Jones is no more willing to be trapped by the stage itself than he is the genre’s conventions. The band—Brooklyn’s awesome Afrobeat collective Antibalas—starts jamming before the show even starts. Fela makes his entrance through the orchestra seats—arms thrust high in his iconic pose, a cigarette in one fist and a mic in the other, surrounded by a bobbing, too-cool-for-school entourage. The show’s constant motion regularly flows back into the audience’s space, with dancers streaking and tumbling down the aisles. There’s even a dance floor in the balcony. We are not asked to passively consume this show. It’s our experience; Jones’ players are merely our guides.
read more here -->
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FRIDAY'S WAKE-UP MUSIC
Seein' Is Believing by Adriana Evans
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[] Jobs Crisis: 34.5% unemployment for young black men by aaraujo
[] Racial Segregation in U.S. Schools: Illinois Terminates Chicago’s Desegregation Decree by The Opportunity Agenda
[] U.S. Religious Right Stirs-Up Anti-Gay Politics in Africa by Frederick Clarkson
[] Kampala Coaches: The Bus Company From Hell by BorderJumpers