71 Search results for "the blues"

Murals and Community Art Across Atlanta
Lasalle is an Atlanta-based muralist and multidisciplinary artist whose work appears across the city’s everyday surfaces — walls, utility boxes, and street corners people pass every day. A graduate of Valdosta State University with a degree in Fine Arts, he has been part of Atlanta’s arts community since high school. His practice grows out of […]
This Didn’t Begin With Us
Creative expression did not begin with writing. It began with voice — with stories spoken across rooms, songs carried across distance, rhythms tapped into tabletops and knees when words alone could not hold what needed to be said. Long before notebooks, microphones, or publishing platforms, Black communities were shaping experience into sound and gesture so […]
Faced with commercialization, the Black Punk community turns to its past for a guide to keep resisting
By Monika Estrella Negra The majority of the Black punks I have talked to were drawn to (or got lost in) the Punk scene in order to escape the rigidity and heteronormative idealism of traditional Black political organizing. This is not to infer that all Black punks identify with far leftist views, nor does it […]
Inland, a short story
by Vernon Jordan, III She sat in the back of the joint, eyeing him. From over the shoulder of his bass, he noticed her fingers around the rim of a glass, miming the bass notes. He was the player, but so was she. Rooted, was their first glance, she minded him the way trees mind […]
How Ariana Grande uses “Black Cool” in her incremental appropriation game
by Ayika Tshimanga Ariana Grande recently released a music video for her song, “7 Rings”, a repetitive pop-trap&B tune with all the necessary ingredients to bring out your innermost bad bitch. The bouncy trap beat, braggadocious lyrics, and an attempt to ooze the kind of confidence radiating from pop stars like Beyoncé on “Apeshit”, or Rihanna […]
Blackkklansman continues the tradition of letting white women off the hook
by Josie Pickens Most Black folks of a certain age, who slowly crept towards adulthood in the nineties, have a soft spot for writer, director, producer and actor Spike Lee. I needed Lee’s movies, and his contemporary representation of Black life. The film She’s Gotta Have It aided me in understanding who I was becoming […]
We need to challenge fat antagonism in Black activist spaces
by Denarii Grace “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.” These words, uttered by legendary Black civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer, have become as much a part of Black languages and cultural understandings, both past and present, as “lit,” “bumboclaat,” and “the bomb.” Her expression of the ongoing oppression of Black […]
What do we need for a new freedom?: A proudly fat, disabled, bisexual enby’s vision for #Juneteenth
By Denarii Grace Some days I wonder if the work that I do is worth it. On the surface, Black artists/cultural workers, healers, teachers and activists who live most on the margins have the least to gain in their lines of work. And in a society based on the allure of social and financial capital, […]
The question of Blackness: How conversations about Bruno Mars and Cardi B miss the mark
by Briana L. Ureña-Ravelo There has been much conversation regarding Blackness as of late. What it is, when and how it matters, and who can and cannot claim it. At times the conversation has been very illuminating and compelling, but more and more it has become overwhelmingly caustic and mired in elitist, ahistorical, and colonial […]
In the midst of #metoo stories, we must also ask “What’s next?”
by Josie Pickens This essay contains discussion of sexual violence I once dated a man who said that he had never been in a relationship with a Black girl who hadn’t suffered serious sexual trauma. He would soon learn that I was yet one more. It had happened to #metoo. A woman who began being […]
Esperanza Spalding joins Harvard University faculty
They say the next thing to do after you reach the top of the mountain is to reach back and help someone else make it there. Esperanza Spalding has already won pretty much every award she can in music – including Grammys, an NAACP Image Award, a Boston Music Award and a Soul Train Music Award. Now, […]
Zuckerberg tells Harvard grads to create more jobs in the age of automation
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, returned to Harvard University to get the degree he left behind when he dropped out nearly 12 years ago. At the age of 33, Zuckerberg is the youngest person to deliver the commencement address at the Ivy League university. And he used this opportunity to speak to his […]