“On July 5, 1968—just three months after King’s assassination and the April 16th settlement that ended the strike—blues musician Furry Lewis was quietly shedding tears while entertaining friends at a party in his Memphis home. … The previous day had marked the nation’s first Independence Day since King’s death, yet for many black Americans in 1968, the Fourth of July offered little cause for celebration.”
Songs about home: missing home, leaving home, memories of home, defining home.
“To them, popular culture mattered, it was vibrant, and it was politically up for grabs.”
In our age of environmental collapse, socio-political polarization, and brutal warfare, the jazz composer Andromeda Turre has created a new album that pulls the listener into “a dark night of the senses” and configures a space of hope.
A mix tape of the music of Manu Chao and friends
“Refusing to sacrifice her socialist principles for commercial success, folk-blues-jazz singer Barbara Dane dedicated her life to bringing music from around the world back to where it belonged: in the hands of the people struggling to change it.”
Two Algerian rai tunes made the top ten of the Village Voice music critics’s poll in 1989. Why were post-liberation Algerian pop singers winning a wide Western audience while an earlier generation of popular Arab singers like Umm Kulthoum, Muhammad ‘Abd al-Wahhab and Fairouz never did?
A Magpies’ Mix Tape featuring female instrumentalists over the years.
magpiesmagazine.com 