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…
By Miesha Miller April Reign, who spearheaded the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag, will be live-tweeting “The Wood” with some of her 22,000 Twitter followers during the telecast of the 88th Academy Awards tonight. As part of a nationwide series of protests and “tune-outs,” the Rev. Al Sharpton plans to lead a rally outside the Dolby Theatre in…
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…
Hey, everyone! Hope you enjoy Truth be Told’s first podcast. Today’s subjects range from the origins of our site, to the importance of black institutions, to Missy Elliot’s new single. Plus: is Spongebob SquarePants the last great American hero? Hosts Marc Rivers and Maya Cade discuss. (NOTE: This podcast was recorded before the…
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…