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Raul Midon Live

Posted 06/27/2008 at 8:29 AM  |  Comment?  |  Category: Concert Reviews

Raul Midon at Madison Square Park (NYC 6.25.08)

Are there any bad blind musicians? And I mean bad meaning bad not bad meaning good. There is the musical genius Stevie Wonder and the Jamie Foxx immortalized late icon Ray Charles, not to mention the Blind Boys of Alabama. We might one day add another sightless singer to that group, if Raul Midon keeps creating. I caught the half African-American/half Argentine New Mexico native's recent free performance in New York City's Madison Square Park and was absolutely charmed.

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Alicia Keys for President...:Quick Notes on the 2008 BET Awards

Posted 06/24/2008 at 9:02 PM  |  1 comment/s

Alicia Keys for president of BET networks. She brought absolute class to the poorly produced event that is the BET Awards. If it hadn't been so hot in my unairconditioned apartment, I would have jumped up and waved my Blackberry in the air when SWV appeared, performing "Weak" no less. Now, if only they would have turned SWV's mics up, En Vogue's mics on, and T-Boz's mic off (she looked and sounded a mess and needs to just call it quits), it would have been perfect.

Additional comments from 30 minutes in (I tried to watch "NCIS" first but gave in to temptation and flipped begrudgingly to BET):

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Black Girls Rule Gotham's Summer

Posted 06/22/2008 at 10:35 PM  |  Comment?

Imagine my delight upon learning Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz is following up last summer's Lauryn Hill comeback concert with a soul sister summer line up for the annual free Martin Luther King, Jr. Concert Series. The Brooklyn concerts are the de facto Central Park SummerStage for Black folks and reliably thick. You might even run into Elvin Thibodeaux of "Cosby Show" fame glad-handing cued up concert-goers if his brother makes another attempt at public office. The free Monday night concerts are not to be missed, especially with Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Estelle and Patti LaBelle set to rock the bandshell.

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Loverly: Cassandra Wilson's Return

Posted 06/20/2008 at 11:22 AM  |  Comment?

I have been humming nothing but "Gone With the Wind" for the past few days. It is one of 12 standards on Cassandra Wilson's newest record, Loverly, released 10 days ago. Guitarist Marvin Sewell plays Wilson's band poignantly in before kinetic percussionist Lekan Babalola and "modernistic" piano man Jason Moran elaborate the dogged melody. Whether plodding through day job tedium, brainstorming freelance copy or sitting sweltering at home, "Gone With the Wind" pops into my head.

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Arid Soul: On John Legend's "Green Light"

Posted 06/17/2008 at 9:08 PM  |  1 comment/s

Just 38 seconds into John Legend's new joint, "Green Light," featuring Andre 3000 and I was pining for red. Legend's full and scratchy Ohio-grown voice, which I first got a taste of at live date with a pre-The College Drop Out Kanye West at New York City's SOB's, now sounds breathy and bland. It's not all uncommon for soul and R&B singers to oxygenate their vocals; Toni Braxton, Mariah Carey, Brandy, even Britney Spears, no longer belt, they puff and purr. But it's altogether annoying to willfully sap your instrument of all its density and distinctiveness. Black and many Black-influenced singers seem to think themselves only two options for success, blackening up their style to the point of caricature and/or vacating it of ethnic markers, both strategies are adopted to increase mainstream success.

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Joy to Be Near You: Partying With Stevie Wonder at Wonder-FULL

Posted 06/15/2008 at 5:48 PM  |  2 comment/s

Last night, DJ Bobbito and DJ Spinna convened a motley crew of Stevie Wonder fans for their 10th annual Stevie Wonder dance party, Wonder-FULL. At evening's mid point, a commotion occurred by the deejay booth, which me and the passionate assembled soon realized was caused by Stevie Wonder and his daughter Aisha's arrival at the venue.

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The Numbness: My Lack of Reaction to the R. Kelly Verdict

Posted 06/14/2008 at 6:57 PM  |  Comment?

When I was alerted to the R. Kelly child pornography acquittal, by my friend and activist Moya Bailey, his music soundtracked the next few minutes. Who can forget the insidious chorus of Jay-Z's "Guilty Until Proven Innocent,"

You can't touch me, no, you can't touch me
Jigga, Kelly, not guilty

Well, beyond being a masterful singer-songwriter, producer for hire and deviant, Robert Kelly has proven himself something of a seer, which isn't much of an achievement when it comes to escaping punishment for Black on Black violence, especially violence against Black women. With little Black girls so developed and so fast, grown ass men cannot be blamed for their indulgences, for their abuses: that's what we are ingrained to think but I got to sense enough to think for myself, to consider the facts. And that reading of Black girls is all wrong, it's fabricated to other folks' ends.

Given the tragic verdict, Jill Scott's incisive statement is worth listening to again. I'd recommend it to the one unidentified juror cited in the excerpted Associated Press story below.

One juror said he just was not sure the female was who prosecutors said she was or that she was a minor -- noting her body appeared too developed.

I can't cry. I can't shed any tears. We've been too long pimped, positioned and parodied without acknowledgment.

And the struggle still continues...

Photo Credit: UPI Photo/Brian Kersey

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Busting Back: Thoughts on Plies

Posted 06/12/2008 at 8:57 AM  |  3 comment/s

Tuesday marked the release of Plies' sophomore album, Definition of Real. To mark the occasion BET's 106th & Park invited Plies to perform live in their studio. This is when I stepped in. Fresh from my 9-5, I plopped down on my couch, flipped through the channels, stopped at Robert Johnson's dastard network and caught most of Plies' Ne-Yo-aided performance of "Bust it Baby Pt. 2," a song of which I'd heard but had never heard. Ne-Yo drew me in, lip syncing or singing fairly imperceptibly over the track on the hook. I didn't attempt to distinguish much of what Plies was rapping, I was so captured by two young white dudes in the audience painfully trying to balance their clear enthusiasm for Plies and Ne-Yo with the appropriate masculine indifference to male celebrity.

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Back Sweat: Notes from the Roots Picnic

Posted 06/09/2008 at 1:03 PM  |  2 comment/s  |  Category: Concert Reviews

Baked to a seared sheen at the Roots Picnic Saturday. Arrived at the shadeless waterfront concrete expanse around 3 pm, peeped the dense afro and toothy smile of a very pretty Esperanza Spalding, her set just concluded, signing CD's at the merchandise table and approached the stage as J*DaVey began. Miss Jack Davey, bra-stuffed, pranced as much as her black and tortoise shell platform t-straps would allow, sweating through her red jumpsuit with Brook D'Leau bouncing at the keyboards in rabbit's foot-flanked running shorts. Questlove, an ubiquitous face all picnic long, manned the drums as they surveyed their shallow catalogue. Miss Jack Davey worked her thin voice effectively, slanging that haute raunch much more convincingly than she did at her New York debut. Their "Division of My Joy," so beloved my me, was pleasingly if almost unrecognizably reconfigured but "Mister Mister" struck hard with the rest of their fans, and their cover of "Message in a Bottle" won over those unfamiliar with the Los Angeles duo. Next, the Roots checked in for some fun Captain Kirk-heavy rocked out play before ceding the stage to the Cool Kids, who I missed to water ice myself back to life in the din of the DJ tent. 45 or so minutes reclined, a wiggerish young man sat beside and informed me of the lineup's progression, "some weird Asian girl is on," (Deerhoof) before bowing his fitted-capped head to the floor in either exhaustion or exasperation.

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Happy Black Music Month

Posted 06/05/2008 at 9:33 AM  |  Comment?

By George W. Bush's 2003 proclamation, June is Black Music Month. Now listening in these fifty nifty is an ongoing celebration of Black musical creativity given that American music was built on Black backbeats but it never hurts to call attention to our achievements. In the spirit of the month, I've made a little annotated list of Black musical resources that I recommend.

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So it is: Barack Obama Claims the Nomination

Posted 06/04/2008 at 10:17 AM  |  1 comment/s

I am under no illusions. The revolution was not last night televised live on MSNBC. Barack Obama is no radical freedom fighter but, damn, if he ain't something to behold. Rhetorically, he's clear, he's sharp, he's witty and he's humble. He's a fierce exhorter and a diplomatic peacemaker.

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Talk is Cheap: Thoughts on Post Apartheid South Africa and Gentrified Portland, Oregon

Posted 06/02/2008 at 11:22 AM  |  1 comment/s

I was not at all shocked by the recent outbreak of xenophobic violence in South Africa. It has been just 14 years since the fall of apartheid and, by the the looks of the townships, the lives of the indigenous haven't much improved. Why would they? Institutionalized racism disenfranchises, displaces and divests wealth from those it segregates, in South Africa's case, specific Black ethnic groups like the Zulu, Xhosa, Basotho, Tsonga, Swazi and Ndebele. Apartheid's end didn't change those real disparities and the confessions elicited by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission didn't assuage that sustained trauma, didn't make up for that underdevelopment, didn't endow them with ownership to their countries wealth, provide them housing, food to eat, fair wages or quality education. All it provided them were words, not justice. So why wouldn't they lash out at whomever was nearest when their frustrations with their lot bubbled over. I'm sure they had sense enough to know that if you're gonna wild out on someone, let it be your immigrant African neighbors and not the white, wealthy and/or powerful, which is not to say that ethnic tensions/prejudices could have played some sort of role. That said, I'm with Chris Rock, who weighed in today with these words,

"It's broke-on-broke violence. It's broke people robbing each other," the 43-year-old actor-comedian said at a news conference Monday. "That's the sad thing."

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