By Cheryl Pawelski, NPR Without Sister Rosetta Tharpe, we wouldn’t have rock and roll as we know it now. Her pioneering guitar virtuosity was fueled by the gospel swinging, shouting, holy-spirit energy of the evangelical church and the blues she heard on Chicago’s Maxwell Street, which crossed each other like crackling live wires in her […]
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Erika Alexander Found Power In Hollywood’s Rejection | Essence
The “Wu-Tang: An American Saga” actress says she’s no longer waiting on roles, she’s creating them.
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The Book Of Prince | The New Yorker
Da Piepenbring, The New Yorker “We Bangles hovered around the cassette machine… and we were smitten with the song,” Bangle Susanna Hoffs says of first hearing Prince’s demo of “Manic Monday.” Virginia Turbett/Courtesy of The Prince Estate. Featured Image [dropcap]O[/dropcap]n January 29, 2016, Prince summoned me to his home, Paisley Park, to tell me about […]
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A New Wave of Black Women Playwrights Is Reinventing the Genre | Zora
Their work is, quite literally, changing the face of American theater
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Meet Blanche Dunn, the Jamaican socialite who ruled New York in the 1920s | Face2face Africa
By Elizabeth Ofosuah Johnson, Face2Face Africa The African American arts and culture took a huge leap during the Harlem Renaissance when African American creatives of all kinds came together in Harlem, New York, to work at the progress of their craft and see to it that their works were being consumed by all and not just […]
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Marian Anderson: The Most Modest Trailblazer | NPR
By Anastasia Tsioulcas, NPR Classical singer Marian Anderson was one of the all-time greats — both as an artist, and as a cultural figure who broke down racial barriers. She is best known for performing at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939, after she was denied permission to sing for an integrated audience at Washington’s DAR Constitution […]
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Viola Davis To Play Michelle Obama In Showtime Series ‘First Ladies’ |HuffPost
The anthology features episodes about the powerful women who occupied the White House.
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A Lost Album From John Coltrane, With Thanks To A French-Canadian Director | NPR
Nate Chinen, NPR John Coltrane, photographed in his backyard in Queens, New York in 1963. JB/© Jim Marshall Photography LLC.Featured Image [dropcap]There[/dropcap] is never any end,” John Coltrane said sometime in the mid-1960s, at the height of his powers. “There are always new sounds to imagine; new feelings to get at.” Coltrane, one of jazz’s […]
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The “King of Calypso”: Beautiful Portrait Photos of a Young Harry Belafonte in the Early 1950s | Vintage Everyday
Born 1927 as Harold George Bellanfanti Jr. in Harlem, New York, American singer, songwriter, activist, and actor Harry Belafonte is one of the most successful Jamaican-American pop stars in history. He was dubbed the “King of Calypso” for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) […]
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‘Brian Banks’: Football Star Who Was Wrongfully Imprisoned Shares His Story For “People Who Are Currently Voiceless” | Deadline
Amanda N’Duka, Deadline Aldis Hodge (left, with Sherri Shepherd) stars as a high school football star whose NFL dreams are waylaid when he’s wrongfully convicted of a crime in the inspirational drama “Brian Banks.” (Aug. 9) (Photo: BLEECKER STREET). Featured Image [dropcap]The[/dropcap] story told in Brian Banks is unfortunately all too familiar. The eponymous biopic, […]
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