Month: June 2015
The American Folk Blues Festival 1962 1969 – Pure Gold for any Blues Lover
Lightnin’ Hopkins Gets Your Head Tore Up
In the summer of 1960, Dallas, Texas journalist Grover Lewis went to Houston’s Third Ward in search of Bluesman Lightnin’ Hopkins. Lewis found him in an old ’54 Dodge. The resulting essay, published in the Village Voice in 1968, is a small masterpiece of personal music writing, offering a snapshot of artistic endurance, 1960s race relations, and the daily life of one of the pivotal figures in the ’60s Blues revival. It’s also a shining example of how to blend first-person interiority with reporting in a way that shows the effect music can have on our lives. Lewis isn’t as well known as his New Journalism counterparts Gay Talese and Tom Wolfe, but he’s just as good. You can read the essay in the book Splendor in the Short Grass: The Grover Lewis Reader:
Accepting the bedrock necessity of unceasing struggle for existence as a simple, inflexible condition…
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Fresh audio product
I’ve been very delinquent at updating my radio archive. It’s now all up to date. Freshly added:
June 11, 2015 Adolph Reed on the state of the left • Sungur Savran, editor of Red Med, on the Turkish election and challenges to the AKP’s rule
June 4, 2015 Lee Drutman, author of The Business of America Is Lobbying, on the growth and power of lobbying in DC • Josh Bivens on the Fed’s vast asset-purchasing program
May 28, 2015 Katha Pollitt, author of Pro, on the importance of legal abortion that’s actually available • Raquel Varela about the dimensions of Portugal’s economic crisis [back after fundraising break—if you like these shows and want to keep them coming, please support KPFA (and mention BtN)]
April 30, 2015 Bruce Dixon on Loretta Lynch and the black misleadership class • Sean…
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Fishing by Torchlight in Kai Province — Katsushika Hokusai
Ornette Coleman: “I’m in love with eternity…I don’t care about how many changes that goes on, as long as it keeps going on.”
“This is what I really would love to have in my music: presence. You know, as long as I can live. I mean I don’t care about nothing I played yesterday if I can go home right now and write some music that, is a presence. You know? That’s why they have machines, you know, so, if you want the past, there’s a machine that’s got the past. Right there, you know…which I think is very good, you know; so therefore, that means we as human beings can be in the present.”
21st Century Theater 