King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have released a pair of live albums to benefit relief efforts in response to devastating wildfires in their native Australia.
Renowned French artist JR and Oscar-nominated American filmmaker Darren Aronofsky have collaborated on The Standing March, a major public artwork exhibited in Paris during the UN’s COP21 climate conference. The video projection will remind leaders that the world is watching as they gather to negotiate a deal aimed at keeping global warming below 2°C.
It is a clear, fresh New York night in March 1939. You're on a date and you've decided to investigate a new club in a former speakeasy on West 4th Street: Cafe Society, which calls itself "The Wrong Place for the Right People".
“Rose Boy” (玫瑰少年) refers to Yeh Yung-chih, a 15-year-old junior high school student in Taiwan who died on April 20, 2000, after years of bullying due to his non-conforming gender expression. Though the official cause of death was ruled accidental—he allegedly slipped in a school bathroom—the circumstances surrounding his death, including prior complaints from his mother about repeated verbal and physical harassment, drew widespread public attention.
Julius Eastman was a Black and Queer avant garde, minimalist composer and performer from the 1960s-1980s. He used his platform to advocate for the rights and livelihoods of Black and queer people through his unique musical aesthetic and the controversial naming of his pieces, including "Gay Guerrilla," "Evil N-word" and "Crazy N-Word"
My skin is black,” the first woman’s story begins, “my arms are long.” And, to a slow and steady beat, “my hair is woolly, my back is strong.” Singing in a club in Holland, in 1965, Nina Simone introduced a song she had written about what she called “four Negro women” to a young, homogeneously white, and transfixed crowd.
The new wave of hip-hop has arisen a woke generation. From it, Xiuhtezcatl — seventeen-year-old Indigenous rapper and activist — has emerged, stirring the comatose with his music.
From performing at the Standing Rock encampment with Immortal Technique and Nahko to leading the Youth v. Gov. lawsuit against the Federal Government, Xiuhtezcatl’s actions show his music is more than words.
Yesterday, I procrastinated my way to watching the Savage X Fenty Show, and I was left in complete awe of Rihanna. She truly is a powerhouse, but on top of that, all her brands; Fenty Beauty, Savage X Fenty and Fenty have intentionally left no one behind.
There is a large Filipino community in the Bay Area that organizes and fights for better workers’ rights and educating youth of color. There are groups within this community that address these issues through hip-hop.
Kiwi Illafonte, 40, is a Bay Area political rapper who talks about social issues in his music.
“Social change is at the center of my universe,” Illafonte said.
Born as a side project Las hijas de Violencia approaches the subject of street harassment and gender based violence through performance art, punk and video that is addressing socially legitimized male violence. "As actresses and as women we feel directly affected and consider it urgent to address the real cause of the problem: its ideological nature.
"Writing Political Music in Today's World" I began studying composition with Fred Ho without knowing quite what I was getting myself into. I was 25 with a fresh graduate degree in composition under my belt, lost in that special way only millennial twenty-somethings get to be. I knew I wanted to write political works and, having met Fred twice before, I knew that he was the one who could help me do it.
At ‘Arcadia Earth,’ Dazzle Illuminates Danger
Using augmented reality, virtual reality and installations of light and art, the creators of this pop-up exhibition hope to inspire action on climate change.
By Laurel Graeber
Oct. 23, 2019
The creators of “Arcadia Earth” want to awaken your conscience. But they also plan to make that guilt trip extraordinarily fun.
Glowing softly in the West Texas desert night, artist Guadalupe Maravilla’s Mariposa Relámpago, was once an ordinary school bus but is now a richly decorated, mobile site for remembrance and healing. Like much of the artist’s work, this piece commemorates and confronts the artist’s journey to the United States as an unaccompanied, undocumented minor fleeing civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s.
Brisbane, Australia — The flash mob descended on Brisbane’s city square, wearing double denim and blond wigs in the style of a legendary Australian singer as they danced with wild abandon to one of his 1980s hits.
Late last year, the New York Times published an op-ed short film written and narrated by Jay Z. The clip was called “The War on Drugs Is an Epic Fail,” and that kind of title was explicit enough for everyone to grasp the entertainment mogul’s general argument, whether they knew anything about drug war or not.
Founded by Frankie Hutchinson, Emma Burgess-Olson and Christine Tran, Discwoman is a New York-based platform, collective, and booking agency—representing and showcasing cis women, trans women and genderqueer talent in electronic music. Started as a two-day festival in September 2014 at Bossa Nova Civic Club Discwoman has since produced and curated events in 15+ cities—working with over 150 DJs and producers to-date.
In 1996, filmmaker John Akomfrah created the character of the Data Thief as a narrative device to offer an insightful study of Afrofuturism in his film The Last Angel of History, which links Black musicians including George Clinton, Derrick May, and Sun Ra to Akomfrah’s thesis about the role of technological fantasy in Black artistry across genres and mediums.
The rise of rock and roll in the late 1980 was largely associated with the student movements taking place at the same time. Cui Jian, considered by many to be the godfather of Chinese rock, even performed for the students on hunger strike in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Kanami Kusakima, also known as the woman who dances in Washington Square Park with the long black hair and the paint, was happy to allow the Mayor's Office of NYC use her image as a promotional tool for a "post-coivd" New York. Yet, she has had multiple encounters with police who want to shut her performance down.
At the New Orleans Swing Dance Festival the all African-American dance troupe The Rhythm Ambassadors were presented along side an African-American iteration of the Preservation Hall All-Star band with African-American vocalist Taryn Newborne to deliver the message that the African-American Lindy Hoppers were going to be protest until their rhythm is better presented...i.e.
Parió Paula is an all women’s percussion group based in Lima, Peru. These women are truly artistic renegades defying the social norms of Lima’s predominantly male music scene. With a bold message on emphasizing female expression, these ladies have transformed their countless styles of drumming into something effective for their city.
(see full article and short documentary at link below)