Yesterday, the NAACP passed a resolution condemning the racist acts of Tea Party protesters. The backlash from the Tea Party has been furious.
But we are not an organization that shies away from controversy. The NAACP was founded on hope, not hate — and we will not stand idly by as racists work to divide our [...]
It’s festival summer time in DC. Hip Hop Theater Festival starts today. It’s hot-hot-hot.
The Capital Fringe Festival opens Thursday, July 8 — “where everyone’s story has value!”
Screen on the Green is back! I’ve heard rumblings that this free outdoor film festival on the National Mall (between the Lincoln Memorial and US Capitol) [...]
In John Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy” song he writes “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” Or lately, the adage resembles the Frank Sinatra tune “That’s Life.” One life lesson is there’s really no excuse for not practicing your art if that’s what you want or love even in a [...]
The first time I heard Horace Silver’s “Song for My Father,” it was in Finney Chapel at Oberlin College. Wendell Logan, the jazz professor of a renegade jazz studies program at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, assigned it to my BFF Dawn E. Robinson to sing as a duet with our fellow Duke Ellington [...]
Years and years ago, I told the mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves, (before she became a star) that I couldn’t sit through an opera performance. That I couldn’t listen to opera unless I was doing something at the same time…like frying chicken.
Well, that’s what I’m doing today. I’m frying chicken. And I’m going to select [...]
“My identity is very clear to me now. I am a black woman. I’m free. I no longer have to be a ‘credit.’ I don’t have to be a symbol to anybody; I don’t have to be a first to anybody. I don’t have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort [...]
From Reginald Dwayne Betts:
Please check out the news of the first reading for my newly released poetry book, Shahid Reads His Own Palm. It’s a special mother’s day edition reading, and I’d love to have some friends come out. The paperback of A Question of Freedom will also be available.
WHAT: The Nine On the Ninth [...]
Lately, I’ve been asking people if there is any “movement music” after seeing the documentary “Soundtrack for a Revolution” about the music of the American civil rights movement.
Well, let’s see if a movement evolves from Bank Reform. Movement in the musical sense that is.
NPR’s “This American Life” commissioned a Broadway song from Robert Lopez [...]
The Washington Post’s Peeps Show/Contest has become one of my favorite spring traditions. And this year is no exception in terms of creativity and talent. I never thought Peeps were food in the first place. Always left them in my Easter basket. My favorites were the chocolate anything and the colored eggs. [...]
If there’s anyone who personifies the “eclectique citizen,” it’s Ruben Blades. Yesterday, my friend Dawn and I arrived 3 hours before he was to give a public interview covering his life as an artist, citizen, and just plain old human being at the Carmichael Auditorium in the National Museum of American History and Culture. [...]
