Harlem on My Mind

In January 1969, the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened an exhibition dedicated to the vibrant history of Harlem—the institution’s first attempt at displaying and interpreting African American culture. “Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900–1968” came to life at the tail end of the civil rights movement and on the cusp of Black Power. [...]

Instead, “Harlem on My Mind” represented Harlem via floor-to-ceiling photomurals, archival ephemera, and street soundscapes alongside interpretive text. It was the cutting edge of immersive exhibition design; the Met had never put on an exhibition like it before (and hasn’t since). Yet from the perspective of many Black artists, critics, academics, and organizers, the show was woefully retrograde. Despite concerns raised by community representatives during the exhibition’s development, the Met had reduced the culture of Harlem to an object of sociological, or even ethnographic, inquiry. Black people were once again the subjects, rather than the authors of their representation. [...]

Today, the legacy of “Harlem on My Mind” lies in the organizing that its failures prompted. In response to the exhibition, artists formed the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition and picketed the show, carrying signs that read “Harlem on Whose Mind?” and “Whose Image of Whom?” The BECC, which remained active through the 1970s, would go on to demand that the Met and other art institutions hire Black curators and administrators and display work by Black artists. It would not be an overstatement to suggest that the new Met show “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism,” curated by Denise Murrell, is a descendant of this activism.  Rachel Hunter Himes, The Nation

la mostra "The Harlem Renaissance" è al Met fino al 28 giugno

Jazz e Talmud

« Dans son ouvrage His Own Words, Selected Writings, Oxford University Press, paru en 2001, «Louis Armstrong parle en termes élogieux de la famille Karnofsky qu’il avait abondamment fréquentée dans sa jeunesse à La Nouvelle-Orléans. En effet, c’est Morris Karnofsky qui lui avait prêté l’argent pour son premier cornet et ce sont les berceuses russes qu’il entend chez eux qu’il rend responsables de son amour du judaïsme. Il dédie ce même ouvrage à son agent Joe Glaser. Sa reconnaissance vis-à-vis des Juifs s’exprime aussi par une dédicace au Dr Gary Zucker, son sauveur de l’hôpital Beth Israël de New York.»

C’est ainsi que commence l’article de Jean Szlamowicz, Juifs américains et Afro-Américains, Convergences et divergences dans le champ social du jazz, paru dans la revue Pardès en 2008.

il musicista jazz Julien Grassen Barbe (nella foto) parla della sua musica con Marc-Alain Ouaknin in Talmudiques

Ornette Coleman

Coleman spoke little of himself, and dismissed the idea that he was exceptional. The ‘autobiography of my life is like everyone else’s’, he wrote in the liner notes to his 1960 album This Is Our Music. ‘Born, work, sad and happy and etc.’ But the journey that led Coleman from Fort Worth, Texas, where he was born to a ‘poorer than poor’ family in 1930, to international fame as a free jazz innovator was anything but ordinary, and required no small amount of courage. The world of saloons, honky tonk clubs and travelling minstrel bands in which he performed in his teens was dangerous. Coleman was jailed for having long hair. When a white woman raised her dress over his head in the back of a Texas club, he knew he could be lynched if a white man saw them. In Baton Rouge, a group of thugs smashed his saxophone case, and left him with a collarbone injury that took years to heal. Adam Shatz. lrb.

In ricordo di Dave Brubeck

Desmond e Brubeck negli anni 40

During the war both Desmond and Brubeck served in army bands. Brubeck was asked to organize one, which spared him from fighting in the Battle of the Bulge. He insisted that the band be racially integrated. He had met Desmond (who had tried out for a band and was rejected) in 1944. After the war they hooked up briefly but had a falling out. Desmond had gone to New York, but then heard a Brubeck trio on the radio. He decided to seek out Brubeck in California and offer his services. It was a hard sell until Desmond offered to babysit Brubeck’s children. Eventually there were six—five boys and a girl. Their quartet began in 1951 and “Take Five” became its signature. Their sound was different from any other jazz group and was influenced by the training that Brubeck had received from people like Darius Milhaud. He named one of his boys “Darius.” Jeremy Bernstein, nybooks.