Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 573

Jazz Night in America -- Wynton Marsalis' SPACES (ftg. Lil Buck & Jared Grimes)

'In Spaces, Wynton Marsalis' new dance suite for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, each movement corresponds to a different animal — a chicken, a lion, a frog and more. He enlisted tap dancer Jared Grimes and "jooker" (street dancer) Lil Buck to embody the animals in their performances. In this piece, Marsalis also describes his fascination with the animal kingdom, his process of writing, and the way he attempts to draw on the spaces that all creatures inhabit.' -- +Jazz Night in America 

The Untold Story of the Space Race -- Conversation with Margot Lee Shetterly, Author of 'Hidden Figures'

'Margot Lee Shetterly, Author, Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race with John Donvan.' -- +Atlantic Live 

Nick Cave: Thick Skin -- A Black Artist Confronts Racial Profiling

'Episode #239: Artist Nick Cave discusses the experiences that force him to confront his identity as a black man—including being racially profiled by police—and how they fuel his impulse to create. Cave explains that in these moments he gets quiet and avoids lashing out in rage. “And if I do, lashing out for me is creating this,” he says in reference to his intricately constructed Soundsuits. “The Soundsuits hide gender, race, class and they force you to look at the work without judgment.” The exhibition “Here Hear,” which included a large-scale community performance, was installed at Detroit’s Cranbrook Art Museum in 2015. The museum is associated with the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where Nick Cave attended graduate school in the 1980s and was the only minority student at the time.' -- +ART21 

Negro + Black + African American: The Significance of Racial Labels

Kerry Haynie and Mark Anthony Neal, co-directors of the Duke Council on Race and Ethnicity (DCORE) are joined by Karla FC Holloway in a discussion of the  naming and labeling of Black identity.  

#TheSpin: on Toxic Masculinity + the Politics of Consent

Carrie Mae Weems -- from the Kitchen Table SeriesOn this episode of #TheSpin -- in collaboration with Ebony.com -- #theCONSENTconvo featuring host Esther Armah and contributors Joan Morgan and Asha Bandele. 

Walter Mosley on Developing a Viable Untopia for Human Survival in the 21st Century

'Author Walter Mosley explores the mysteries of life, labor and freedom in the 21st century - from the failures of global capitalism and the impossibility of socialism, to technology's toll on humanity's understanding of itself, its needs and its limitations - and explains why building a future that serves humankind starts with destroying the ideological frames that reduce people to servants of a system, not masters of their potential. Mosley is author of the forthcoming Folding The Red Into The Black: Or, Developing A Viable Untopia For Human Survival In The 21st Century.' -- This Is Hell Radio

MartyrLoserKing: A Conversation with Saul Williams & Mark Anthony Neal on October 6

Iconic spoken word artist Saul Williams will speak with Mark Anthony Neal, Professor of African & African American Studies at Duke University, about Williams’ career, and spoken word and activism.
The following evening, Williams performs with the Mivos Quartet in Nelson Music Room on Duke’s East Campus. Info below and tickets available HERE .
Thursday, October 6, 12 - 1:15 PM | Full Frame Theater, 
Power Plant Building, American Tobacco Campus, 
320 Blackwell Street, Durham (Map | Parking) |  
Free & open to the public. 
A light lunch will be served in the Power Plant Gallery for all attendees following the conversation.
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Williams whom CNN calls “hip-hop’s poet laureate” developed his voice in the slam poetry crucible Nuyorican Poets Café before taking a leading role in the 1998 Sundance-winner Slam. He has since collaborated with Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and published acclaimed collections of poetry. Williams’ work — an incendiary mixture of “firebrand politics with metaphysical wordplay” (AV Club) — is complemented and amplified by the Mivos Quartet.
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Presented as part of Duke Performances’ Hip-Hop Initiative, made possible, in part, with support from the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation.

A part of Talking Music: Conversations with Scholars, Writers, Archivists, and Artists, co-sponsored by Duke Performances and the Forum for Scholars & Publics. This event is also sponsored by Left of Black; Center for Arts, Digital Culture & Entrepreneurship (CADCE); and The Power Plant Gallery. (The Power Plant Gallery is an initiative of the Center for Documentary Studies and the Master of Fine Arts in Experimental and Documentary Arts at Duke University.)  

Harry Belafonte’s Eighty-Nine Years of Activism

'We take for granted that popular entertainers can and should advocate for causes they believe in. But until Harry Belafonte pioneered that kind of activism in the middle of the last century, stars largely kept their political leanings private. In the lead-up to October’s Many Rivers to Cross festival, which Belafonte helped dream up, the New Yorker staff writer Jelani Cobb paid a visit to the actor, musician, and civil-rights icon. Belafonte turned eighty-nine this year and is looking to pass the torch, but he’s worried about the state of the civil-rights movement and what he sees as a lack of organized response: we have a struggle, he says, but not a movement. Cobb, who covers many civil-rights and other political issues for the magazine, teases out what Belafonte means.' -- WNYC
 

Washington Ideas Forum: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

'Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Author of Americanah talks with Mary Louise Kelly, Contributing Editor, The Atlantic.' 

The 10th Annual Business of Hip-Hop/Urban Music Symposium @ the Berklee College of Music