Ravi Shankar, godfather of world music, a century after his birth
One hundred years after the birth of sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar, his meditative reinvention of Indian classical raga music has particular resonance during the corona crisis. The loneliness that many experience during the corona crisis is a feeling Continue Reading
Coronavirus in the Middle East: Creativity to help knows no bounds
From mounting death tolls in Italy and the US to fractured responses to the global crisis, there is no shortage of tragedy across the globe. But even in such darkness, Continue Reading
Lara Downes Explores the Many Resonances in Roots Music
Lara Downes | Credit: Max Barrett In liner notes for her new album, Some of These Days, pianist Lara Downes expresses the 14-track CD’s origins and significance. A line in an African-American spiritual, “Welcome Continue Reading
Bay Area Musical Luminaries Plan a Tribute to Hamza El Din
Hamza El Din | Credit: John Werner There were so many right reasons why the tribute to the late Nubian musician Hamza El Din, at San Francisco’s Presidio Theatre, was planned for Continue Reading
How painter Jacob Lawrence reframed early American history with ‘Struggle’By Jared Bowen, WGBH
Sources: PBS Amid the McCarthy hearings and the launch of the civil rights movement in the 1950s, painter Jacob Lawrence, the most famous black artist of his era, sought to Continue Reading
PRÊTE-MOI TON RÊVE: This contemporary art exhibition in Dakar tackles African migration and reframes colonization By Ciku Kimeria
MUSEE DES CIVILISATIONS NOIRES Siriki Ky’s, Têtes précieuses (Precious heads), sculpted bronze heads piled on a regal red pillow, laments how the continent has forgotten the wisdom from its griots Continue Reading
James BalduinThe purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been concealed by the answers.
— James Baldwin
Georgia O’keeffeTo create one’s own world in any of the arts takes courage.
Lauryn Hill performing at Brixton Academy, London. 05/02/1999. (Photo by Chris Lopez/Sony Music Archive/Getty Images)“As musicians and artists, it’s important we have an environment — and I guess when I say environment, I really mean the industry that really nurtures these gifts. Oftentimes, the machine can overlook the need to take care of the people who produce the sounds that have a lot to do with the health and well-being of society.” – Lauryn Hill
Dr. Daisaku IkedaThe life and essence of art—whether it be painting, music, or dance—lies in expressing through a wellspring of emotion the universal realm of the human spirit. It is a melding of the individual and the universal. That is why great art reaches out beyond ethnic and national barriers to move people all over the world.
Nadine GordimerResponsibility is what awaits outside the Eden of Creativity
—Nadine Gordimer South African novelist, The Essential Gesture, lecture, 12 Oct 1984
Sigmund FreudEverywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me.
—Sigmund Freud
Antoine de St. ExuperyA rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
—Antoine de St. Exupery
I’m not a political singer. I don’t know what the word means. People think I consciously decided to tell the world what was happening in South Africa. No! I was singing about my life, and in South Africa we always sang about what was happening to us — especially the things that hurt us.
- As quoted in Denselow, Robin (16 May 2008)
Ben OkriStories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals or nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations.
—Ben Okri, Nobel Prize for Literature
Arundhati Roy“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.
Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
― Arundhati Roy, War Talk
Dr. Johan GaltungBy peace we mean the capacity to transform conflicts with empathy, without violence and creativity- a never ending process.
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