Gotham City Soul

Some years back I was recording some music for Christmas, which would be held at my brother’s house in Virginia and got knocked in the heart without warning when I clicked on Susser die Glocken nie Klingen . From the first notes I began to tear up. I think that my mother must have been playing these songs when I was in the womb (I was born in Germany). I never really learned the words, but could easily translate them if I wanted to. Here I am a black American woman crying at my computer over German Christmas songs. I have not been back to Germany since I was born, but the culture is so hardwired into my system that things German really get to me. Christmas began with the first Sunday of Advent. Mom would pull out a little brass-plated Advent candle chime that I always thought was German, but turned out to be of Swedish origin. It has four candles and above them a merri-go-round type of contraption with angels and chimes hanging from it dangling from it. Inside the angel

Warning: This is not for people under the age of 18. Period.   So for the past couple of years I've tried to provide you with a holiday palate cleanser. Something to offset all the traditional Christmas/Hannukah/Winter Solstice/Kwaanza delirium that sets in right about now (although, is it just my imagination, or are people acting with a bit more restraint and common sense this year?) Top of my list of things to see and do this year is a film I haven't seen yet myself, but I've been told by a friend is good. Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale looks like just the sort of flick to put the edge on. Looks like the real Santa is a truly bad one and is being kept frozen in the arctic by scientists. It's playing in NYC until December 14, so catch it if you can. From scary to funny. From Mad TV: If you want to get back to scary Santa, here's an oldie but goody from 1972. What could be better than Joan Collins in a stand off with crazy Santa. I don't know what&

The Huffington Post carried this article the other day about the difference between good people and nice people. It spoke to an idea that has been rolling around in my head for years. In it, the author Judith Acosta, outlined what makes a good person, and what makes a "Super Nice" person, not a nice person in the classic sense of the word, meaning pleasant, but something a bit more sinister.. I posted the checklists below, but the full article is worth a read. Calling someone nice always smacked of lameness to me. The etymology of the word "nice" says it all: [Middle English, foolish, from Old French, from Latin nescius, ignorant, from nescire to be ignorant.] I am sorry to admit that I could check off one or two items on the "Super Nice" list but can say that I do try to plug away at the Good People agenda. The lesson learned (but somehow always known) is that good people are not always nice, and nice people are sometimes just no good. Both qualities

I don't even know how I found this man Arthur Lee and his group LOVE, but wow, what an amazing talent, yet he died relatively unknown compared with the fame of his contemporaries from the 1960s. He was at least as talented if not more so than some and an inspiration for those in his milieu. Did he just not have the right PR or manager? Did he choose creativity over hustling? Was there just not enough room on the psychedelic 60s stage for two African-American rock musicians (Jimi Hendrix being the other)? I think no one would dispute that Hendrix is so beyond beyond when it comes to genius and talent that it wouldn't have been about dueling blacks on the axe. Maybe concert and record producers couldn't sell both? It is about another kind of genius, which was borrowed by at least one legendary act. Compare "She Comes In Colors" which was released as a single in December 1966 by Arthur Lee and LOVE, to "She's Like a Rainbow" by the Rolling St

On Tuesday September 14 at 6:30 pm Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens will be performing in Fort Green Park, Brooklyn. Now I love Ms. Shelton, and I've blogged about her for American Legacy, but the reason I'm back to talk about her is that I love my friend John Stuart even more. Known to many as DJ Johnny Stuart , he will be knocking out some very deep, very rare gospel grooves in between the sets of Ms. Shelton and the brilliant, strange, and hilarious Reggie Watts. John won't be playing any ordinary stuff, either—we are talking pre-1970s Moving Star Hall Singers kind of spirituals and the like. Shelton has been singing gospel and soul in the deepest sense of the word since she was a young girl attending her parent’s church in Midway, Alabama, (which is pretty close to where my father grew up, we both realized) and at a radio studio (one of several) that her father built in Tuskegee. Inspired by Sam Cooke, the Five Blind Boys of Alabama (“the spiritual tone the

Okay so here's a little something for fans of that special neighborhood in the Crescent City.

So my mom bought Nikki Giovanni's album "The Truth Is on the Way" when I was a kid. Eventually I got around to listening to it (I listened to all my parents album in an attempt to understand their musical tastes, which ran the gamut from R&B, blues, jazz, and funk, to classical, folk, and country). I memorized this poem and used it as protection and defense against junior high school boys. It stunned at least a few of then into silence. I've since met Nikki, had the great pleasure of having lunch with her. I told her that my mama was my introduction to her poetry. But I didn't tell her I used her as a secret weapon. Ego Tripping by Nikki Giovanni I was born in the Congo. I walked to the Fertile Crescent and built the sphinx. I designed a pyramid so tough that a star that only glows every one hundred years falls into the center giving divine perfect light. I am bad. I sat on the throne drinking nectar with Allah. I got hot and sent an ice age to Europe to cool

I can never say enough about the Library of Congress and its terrific archive of images. Here is a lovely blog from the Denver Post featuring photos taken around the United States from 1939 to 1943, but instead of the usual black and white, they are in stunning living color. The photographers all worked for the Farm Security Administration and were given the task of chronicling the effects of the Depression. Please take a moment and look. Unlike the famous photo of the Depression era mother and child that we've seen many times, these are actually more about living life and overcoming.

Germany might have been my birthplace, and America my homeland, but Haiti, a place to which I've never been (but one day hope to go) has a deep place in my heart. I don't know why—only God knows why, but I am connected, through my friends Michael and Michelle, and spiritually in ways yet to be discovered. Timouns means children in Kreyol. Through an organization called Save the Children, I sponsor a child named Wilner Derval, who lives in a village in Maïssade Haiti in the Central Plateau about an 8 hours drive (over rugged terrain) from the capital of Port-au-Prince. I chose Save the Children because they have no religious affiliations. They also checked out well with the Better Business Bureau. The money I send goes to building a solid educational system in the countryside, paying for schools, teachers, and teacher training. It occurred to me that although I do correspond with Wilner, who is 14, I don't do it nearly enough. All I have is a photo, which they

Chateau de Joux in the Jura Mountains on the border between France and Switzerland. Part two of my grand adventure in the Alsace, Lorraine, and Franche Comté region of France in 2004: How I learned about the fate of Toussaint L'Ouverture, liberator of Haiti. I am standing with several fellow journalists in the courtyard of a nearly 1,000-year-old fortress called Chateau de Joux and looking at two tiny windows in it. The chateau is more than 3,000 feet above sea level near the French town of Pontarlier in the Jura Mountains, a range that forms a 125-mile natural border between France and Switzerland. Built in the eleventh century as a Burgundian fortification, the original wooden structure was replaced with one of stone two centuries later.      A true castle fortress, with its massive medieval towers, dry moats (there wasn't enough water for a wet moat up on the mountain), and drawbridge, the chateau was reinforced and expanded several times. Sometime in the eighteenth c

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany in the Roman Catholic Church (and other religions and cultures), the commemoration of the Christ revealing himself as man as well as the visit of the Magi (Wise Men) or more familiarly, the Three Kings (they weren't kings but astrologers, seers, holy men). There is much written about the Magi, better and more intelligently than I could without extensive research. What I did want to talk about is one of t he wise men who is described and represented in literature and art as an African. Although there is no evidence that one of the magi was African (often considered either Abyssinian, Ethiopian), black Baltasar , bearing either frankincense or myrrh (both of which are found on that continent) has made an appearance at Jesus's crib from around the 12 th century A.D. . Since the Magi themselves were said to have been Persian, it's a bit of mystery as to how Baltasar (whose name has roots in ancient Phoenecia and means "save the life o