By Samantha Chaney Every election season we are given a list of reasons why we should exercise our right to vote. We are told that voting is the opportunity to demand change and choosing not to vote is a choice to silence your voice. There has been a call to action this year echoing across…
By Jessica O’Donnell WASHINGTON — As more states move to pass strict voter ID laws, cries of voter suppression have grown louder. But that’s not really new: Voter suppression in the U.S. is as old as the nation itself. From the beginning, white women and enslaved black people were barred from the polls. After the…
By Marc Rivers Even if they don’t look the part, white actors usually do not have to defend being chosen for their roles — as Zoë Saldana is being forced to do for her starring role in the new Nina Simone biopic. The tall and glamorous Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty were hardly dead ringers…
By Marc Rivers Rita Hayworth serenades a nightclub audience with the Latin-tinged love song “Amado Mio” in one of the most famous scenes in“Gilda.” A spotlight caresses her body; the rhinestones on her pearly white dress twinkle like stars. The soft lighting makes her glow. The rest of the audience sits in shadow; all eyes…
won’t be watching the Oscars on Sunday. For the second year in a row, every acting nominee is white. It is the first time that there have been two straight years of all-white nominees since 1995 to 1996, just three years after I was born. Jesse Jackson called for a boycott of the 1996 ceremony….
We’re BAAACK for podcast #3! We are super excited and will keep it simple – All we talked about was Beyonce’s “Formation.”
It was a Saturday morning in Paris. Memorials were hung and candles lit at the Bataclan Concert Hall, which saw the greatest carnage from a terrorist attack the night before that left 129 dead. As hundreds of mourners gathered, an unknown musician set up a piano, a peace sign painted on its lid, sat down…
Despite a rich history of classical black composers and musicians, black people are far from ubiquitous in classical music. And hip-hop, in which black people are ubiquitous, seems to operate in a world still separate from classical. Essayist and journalist David Samuels called Kanye West “the Mozart of American music” In a 2012 article in…