A technological feat has emerged amid the Chilean protests. A video of protestors bringing down a police drone has gone viral on social media sites. These protestors didn't use any physical or gun force to bring the drone down. Instead, they used another form of technology: lasers. A lot of bright green laser beams were pointed in unison at the drone, which can be seen moving erratically, before quickly falling down to Earth.
Fespaco is a meeting place put to good use to promote the development of black cinematography. From 1973, topics of discussion are introduced at each edition.
Invincible: Detroit’s Homegrown, Hip-Hop Activism: Powerful, passionate, and politically charged rhymes that speak for marginalized people.
by Shannan Stoll
Ilana Weaver started listening to hip hop when she was seven, after her family moved from Israel to Ann Arbor, Mich. She was trying to learn English, but soon became fascinated by how hip hop gives a voice to marginalized people.
In Hong Kong in 2014 the song Raise Your Umbrella by Denise Ho and Anthong Wong became an anthem for the pro-democracy movement known as the Umbrella Revolution. The song was written after police fired tear gas into the crowds when protestors filled the streets.
In Louis Armstrong’s study in the Queens home he shared with his fourth wife, Lucille, bookshelves were filled with reel-to-reel recordings he made as a sort of audio diary. Those tapes and his letters — read by the rapper Nas — lay the foundation for the director Sacha Jenkins’s documentary “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues.”
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.
The Scheherazade Project is a Performing Arts Non-profit based in Washington DC. Co-founders Lisa Leibow and Julia Alvarez were inspired by Scheherazade in the Arab classic 1001 Nights and created The Scheherazade Project.
For more information, our website is https://thescheherazadeproject.org/The-Scheherazade-Project
‘‘HAMILTON,’’ the new musical biography of Alexander Hamilton created by and starring Lin-Manuel Miranda, kicks off with a doozy of a question. The houselights rise on Aaron Burr, the third vice president of the United States and, infamously, the killer of Hamilton in a duel in 1804. Burr steps to center stage and reels off several lines of verse:
CAIRO — Seven Egyptians were arrested on charges of promoting homosexuality after concertgoers waved rainbow-colored flags at a rock concert in Cairo last week, Egyptian officials said.
The arrests were the latest assault on social freedoms in Egypt under President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, whose government has imposed harsh restrictions on free speech and led an aggressive campaign against gays.
I have been composing and singing a selection of our President's tweets. I have two goals for this ongoing project. One is to laugh which helps all of us deal with the high anxiety of our times. The second is to shine new light on the absurd, troubled and baffling mind of our 45th President. There’s something utterly satisfying when I hear his words sung in an earnest lilting voice. I hope it compels you to think and listen in a whole new way.
In Kiev, clashes between protestors and police have persisted since December. Blood has been shed, and the political stability of Ukraine remains uncertain.
During late January and early February, the opposition began to play music (from pianos) in front of riot police. These artists modus operandi has been to serenade protestors and police toward peaceful consensuses.
Rapper Logic's song "1-800-273-8255" may have helped prevent a significant number of suicides around the time of its release, according to a study published Monday.
China's only seaside theater festival has been held in the resort town of Aranya in north China's Hebei Province. Artists from around the world traveled there to take deep dive into the world of dramatic performance. For theatergoers, there were interactive activities including cross-border installations such as seaside talks, environmental drama readings, screenings, theater houses, parades and bonfires by the sea.
"Writing Political Music in Today's World" I began studying composition with Fred Ho without knowing quite what I was getting myself into. I was 25 with a fresh graduate degree in composition under my belt, lost in that special way only millennial twenty-somethings get to be. I knew I wanted to write political works and, having met Fred twice before, I knew that he was the one who could help me do it.
A This flash mob was designed to deliver a message to raise awareness and deepen understanding about the immediacy of the climate change problem. By subverting the lyrics of the Rattlin’ Bog, we appealed through music to the hearts of participants.
The Irish song, the Rattlin’ Bog, is a well-loved traditional cumulative song, with a short chorus, and is easily learned. The word Rattlin’ means ‘splendid’.
The aim of the action is to create a fractal network of poets, where their poems will be recited, recorded, set to music, will be activistically acted as performance material in order to resist the censorship of art.
The field of action is the poets who will be born and the network that will be created by the restless artists.
In March of 2022, JR, with the help of 100 volunteers, unfurled the portrait of five-year-old, Ukrainian refugee Valeriia in Lviv, Ukraine. Leaving Ukraine, JR saw firsthand how difficult it was for women and children to get to safety due to long queues at the border. In response, he released two NFTs of Valeriia as part of his solidarity project titled: Can Art Change the War?
2020 was the year of when protest music blared everywhere. For a long period, Black people struggled against police brutality and in the uproar of George Floyd's murder, BLM protests instantly swept over the country. Of the many protest music that was released that year, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire wrote a song that would spearhead raging sentiments towards racial injustice beyond just jazz.
Ultra-Red is a collective founded by two AIDS activists in 1994 to explore the intersection of the political and aesthetic through "militant sound investigations".
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.
Migratón México es un proyecto satírico que se creó colaborativamente en 2017 a partir de un Laboratorio de Artivismo y Humor que organizó el Hemi en San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, México, con un un grupo de más de 30 artistas y activistas de México, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua y Estados Unidos.
The rap duo Macklemore and Ryan Lewis has broken records with their hits “Thrift Shop” and “Can’t Hold Us.” And now, with their pro-marriage equality hit “Same Love,” which features out lesbian Mary Lambert, they’re shattering stereotypes.
"In a world where artists do themselves no financial favours by voicing critical political sentiments, Björk’s iconoclastic position and perspective is almost unique. Despite having made zero concessions to commerciality in her music, she has sold millions of albums, and remains as vital today as she was a quarter of a century ago.