Thelma Golden, curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem, talks through three recent shows that explore how art examines and redefines culture. The "post-black" artists she works with are using their art to provoke a new dialogue about race and culture -- and about the meaning of art itself.
We were ‘Superheroes’ and had fun, colourful, engaging activities which had a high visual impact with a purpose to engage the head, hand and heart. We believe that everyone has superpowers within and they just need to be released but that all superheroes need a rest in order be at their best for themselves and others.
The Voice of Dissent
“I am not here to entertain you; I am here to disturb you. Those who are here for entertainment, I request them, please go.” It’s unusual, if not rare, for a live performer to begin by saying that to the audience. The compact of patronage that’s implicit is what Sambhaji Bhagat smashes right at the onset of his performance. For him, this art is a quest for the truth that will liberate the people he represents.
Bus Regulation: The Musical (2019 – 2023) is a Trilogy of roller-skating Musicals inspired by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Starlight Express’ performed in three of the UK’s biggest post-industrial city-regions – Greater Manchester, Strathclyde and Merseyside – in collaboration wi
Converse Rubber Tracks is a global community of professional recording studios, which provides free studio time to emerging artists. Bands and artists record without any fee whatsoever and maintain all the rights to their music.
As Black History Month commemorations start to wind down, one festival is just gearing up. Afropunk the Takeover — Harlem, running from Tuesday through Feb. 25, will celebrate black culture with music, art, film screenings, discussions and comedy.
In a single hour, Beyoncé's Lemonade re-wrote the textbook definition of what a visual album should look like. The genre-bending music it introduced will define the struggles a generation was enduring in 2016, specifically for black women. The project transcends every definition pop has ever had; blending R&B, contemporary rock, country, reggae, soul and hip-hop in its 12 tracks, occasionally fusing several of these into a single song.
Promoted as a DIY festival with no corporate sponsorship, the 2015 Latino Punk festival in Brooklyn, NY featured bands from all over the Americas. With an emphasis on local bands supporting each other and nurturing local scenes, this festival functions in reference to the ideals of the punk and Riot Grrrl movements in the 1990s.
On April 30th NYU in conjunction with Free University held liberation lab in Washington Square Park from 11 30 Am until roughly 5 or 6pm. The day was very festive and full of amazing talks, performances, installations and discussions. I even got to participate in this day via our final project in the creative activist course.
Riot grrrl is a feminist punk rock movement started in the early 90's, particularly in Washington DC, Olympia, Washington, and Portland, Oregon. Bands that follow the movement include Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Jack Off Jill, Bratmobile, Adickdid, The Butchies, Heavens to Betsy, Huggy Bear, Bangs, and Calamity Jane, amongst others.
In keeping with his activist turn on 2016’s 4 Your Eyez Only, J. Cole’s new album, KOD, is an exploration of addiction. The title has three different meanings that all speak to this aim: Kids On Drugs, King OverDosed, and Kill Our Demons. Each feeds into the next in this narcotic odyssey.
I have several theories about why song rewrites work well. Theory aside, people know the tunes and can learn the words. Scholars differ on whether you should make it as simple as possible or let the crowd be the artist by recognizing their ability to learn and perform something a bit tricky. Either way, it's great when songs are repurposed and people get to shout and sing instead of just chanting or listening to speeches.
Frank Waln, a 25 year old Native American hip hop artist, tours the country and Canada performing and teaching motivational workshops to students across the country. He took to rap at a young age when he found a cd (Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP) on the side of the road. Growing up on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation of South Dakota, he realized that the hip hop music genre was an outlet for expressing pain and frustration.
As local rapper Naty says, a group of young people are intent on making their mark in Madagascar's cultural history. From gifted slam poet Caylah to inventive visual artist Temandrota and a crew of entrepreneurial skateboarders, a generation of young Madagascans are making space for creative projects.They are inspiring in their enthusiasm and hopeful for the future despite the poverty in their country and its colonial past.
Kids Helping Kids is a youth hip-hop program run by two NGOs, Hip Hip Saves Lives and Negusworld. Together, these organizations work with middle school and high school students to make conscious hip hop influenced by activist work happening worldwide.
Conscious Lee is a public awareness project to help people value and protect their rivers. Rivers are rich sources of life and are vital for clean water. They are beautiful spaces to connect with nature. We all need to appreciate our rivers. We can all help river wildlife and protect this natural amenity for future generations.
BANGKOK — The rhymes came to Nutthapong Srimuong before dawn, when Bangkok is as still as it can be and the night jasmine overpowers the Thai capital with its perfume.
The country whose capital is turned into a killing field
Whose charter is written and erased by the army’s boots
The country that points a gun at your throat
Where you must choose to eat the truth or bullets
An exercise that used drama/and audio visuals to engage with with all election partners, especially the political parties especially the political parties and their candidates/leaders, Electoral Commission, Musicians Association of Ghana, etc to push for a free, fair and peaceful Presidential and Parliamentary election and hand over of power to who ever won the elections peacefully.
Demonstrators aligned with the Occupy Wall Street movement sang their way into handcuffs during a Bronx foreclosure auction Monday to protest the housing crisis that continues to plague the borough.
They serenaded a courtroom of real estate investors with the lyrics, "Y'all are speculating off people's pain. With all due respect, you should be ashamed."
MEXICO CITY — Of the half-dozen pieces that form Tania Bruguera’s series “Tatlin’s Whisper,” the one that the Cuban government silenced may have resounded most.
It started as an experiment: what happens when you equip a vibrant youth community with the resources to express themselves through hip hop and electronic music? Last summer I traveled to Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo to find out and the results were more beautiful than I could have imagined.
A viral video of a student dance performance in southern China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region has won praise for speaking out against so-called ghost marriages, which many today see as an archaic and even dangerous tradition.
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