Tag: Fine Arts: Page 12

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Speaking on jazz education: Ellis Marsalis – Interview

Ellis, Marsalis, regarded by many as the best modern jazz pianist in New Orleans, is the director of the jazz studies program in the Department of Music at the University of New Orleans (UNO).

July 11, 2007

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Anything We Love Can Be Saved. – book reviews

Alice Walker has been accused of writing well, and of writing badly. In the case of her most famous work, The Color Purple (1982), both accusations overlapped dramatically, each bringing its own measure of adoration and libel. Her admirers and detractors emerged from all sectors of popular, public, and academic life yielding a range of responses — from ostensible assessments of her craft, to open judgement of her political affiliations, to speculative accusations of ulterior (market-driven) motives. A similar response greeted the novel Possessing the Secret of Joy (1992)

July 11, 2007

Faculty & Staff

Acting out: black theater in transition – Cover Story

August Wilson has achieved the success most playwrights only dream about. His award-winning plays – which include “Fences”, “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” and “The Piano Lesson” – have rendered sensitive and probing portrayals of African American life. Staged in venues ranging from regional theaters to Broadway, Wilson’s plays have earned two Pulitzer Prizes and lavish praise from critics.

July 10, 2007

Sports

The true significance of sports for Black Americans

I am not a sports fan. I’ve written that so many times it seems redundant to write it again. No, this is not another sports-bashing column. Been there, done that. This is a column about the context of sports, about the reasons why sports has been so important for African American people.

July 6, 2007

Native Americans

Wired for controversy: symbolic sculpture by Native American rejected by University of New Mexico – Barbed

The University of New Mexico has rejected a sculpture it had commissioned from a Native-American artist because his final product includes barbed wire.

June 23, 2007

Students

Women of the Harlem Renaissance. – book reviews

Women of the Harlem Renaissance, by Cheryl A. Wall, an associate professor of English at Rutgers University, is a welcome addition to the scholarship on women of this period. Excellently researched, this book focuses on the lives of three women writers — Jessie Redmon Faucet, Nella Larson, and Zora Neale Hurston. Together, they epitomized the voice, tone, style and vision of Black women writers in New York City during the 1920s and early ’30s — the period of the Harlem Renaissance.

June 17, 2007

Leadership & Policy

Black literature in the ’90s

In 1948, Zora Neale Hurston published an article in the Negro Digest titled “What White Publishers Won’t Print.” Today, the issue turns not on what white publishers won’t print, but rather, what they will print when it comes to African-American literature.

June 17, 2007

Students

The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni – book reviews

I like to bring Nikki Giovanni’s poetry into my poetry workshops, especially the “Beginning Poetry Workshop.” I have a number of good reasons. The first is what her biographer, Virginia Fowler, tells us is Giovanni’s “single most important achievement,” which is “(t)he development of a unique and distinctive voice.”

June 17, 2007

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A man and his cello – black cellist Dr. Ronald Crutcher

To Dr. Ronald Crutcher, musicians should do more than aim for Carnegie Hall. They should be working to “lift the human spirit” through their music, and they should be doing that in schools, nursing homes, prisons — anywhere they can find and develop an audience.

June 15, 2007

Asian American Pacific Islander

Carving Out Their Own Niche

African-American cultural expression is one of the many influences fueling Asian-American artistry.

May 30, 2007

HBCUs

Fisk Turns to Seasoned Fund-raiser to Reverse its Fortunes

University no longer pinning its financial future on sale of priceless art.

May 30, 2007

Sports

Perspectives: Will the Messages in Rap Music Change Because of Russell Simmons’ Efforts?

In the wake of Don Imus’ sexist and racist slurs against the Rutgers women’s basketball team, a new voice was added last week to the to the chorus line against inappropriate lyrics in music. To my surprise, Russell Simmons, the pioneering rap industry mogul who also has a line of clothing, has joined in the effort to clean up rap lyrics.

April 29, 2007