Ultra-Red is a collective founded by two AIDS activists in 1994 to explore the intersection of the political and aesthetic through "militant sound investigations".
As Black History Month commemorations start to wind down, one festival is just gearing up. Afropunk the Takeover — Harlem, running from Tuesday through Feb. 25, will celebrate black culture with music, art, film screenings, discussions and comedy.
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.
"The Red Power Movement of the 1960s and 70s was a time of profound social change and progress for American Indians in the United States and Canada. In her outspokenness about the injustices facing Indigenous people, Buffy Sainte-Marie also sang for peace, the environment, women and children—believing that art can have impact and make a difference.
It was a long time coming - but it was worth the wait.
Nearly two years ago, more than a dozen of Mexico’s biggest performing artists came together in a mega-event aimed at saving Wirikuta, one of the country’s most sacred sites, from devastation at the hands of Canadian gold and silver mining operations.
Kendick Lamar is known as one of the most prolific, and socially conscious, rappers of our time. 'BLOOD.' is the second track off of Lamar's iconic album 'DAMN.' from 2017. What makes this song stand out is the sample used at the end of part one of the song.
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.
In a single hour, Beyoncé's Lemonade re-wrote the textbook definition of what a visual album should look like. The genre-bending music it introduced will define the struggles a generation was enduring in 2016, specifically for black women. The project transcends every definition pop has ever had; blending R&B, contemporary rock, country, reggae, soul and hip-hop in its 12 tracks, occasionally fusing several of these into a single song.
Beyoncé delivered an intensely, unapologetic celebration of Black and HBCU culture at the Coachella Festival 2 weekends in a row. Not only were her performances some of the best live performances to date but they sent a pretty significant message to the world.
Here are some assessments of this beautiful demonstration of Blackness and Black Girl Magic:
From BBC News:
In Louis Armstrong’s study in the Queens home he shared with his fourth wife, Lucille, bookshelves were filled with reel-to-reel recordings he made as a sort of audio diary. Those tapes and his letters — read by the rapper Nas — lay the foundation for the director Sacha Jenkins’s documentary “Louis Armstrong’s Black & Blues.”
Alejandro Ghersi, the Venezuelan-born artist behind Arca, is part of a relatively recent and growing diaspora, and at a time when the political situation back home is at a fever pitch, it feels difficult not to see the ways this album relates to the anguish of that experience.
As part of USAID's "My Comunidad-Mi Agua" program in Peru, "Pamparadio" was a radio show run by two adolescents from the community of Iquitos, a jungle province. Armed with a gigantic speaker on the top of a community center and an AM radio frequency, Marco Jhastin Anchec and Cledy del Aguila Mozombite single-handedly ran "Pamparadio" as a celebration of potable water, how to make it, and how to take care of it.
On April 30th NYU in conjunction with Free University held liberation lab in Washington Square Park from 11 30 Am until roughly 5 or 6pm. The day was very festive and full of amazing talks, performances, installations and discussions. I even got to participate in this day via our final project in the creative activist course.
Resonate, Reverberate, Roar (Re-Re-Roar) is a growing archive of original sounds that express an experimental, independent, and socially progressive spirit. The sounds on Re-Re-Roar include field recordings, interviews, songs, speeches, experimental music, and more. Re-Re-Roar is a site for research and activ[ist] listening, with the purpose of distributing sounds of resistance to eager ears around the globe.
Presaged by shimmering spin-off hits “Dreams” and “Linger,” The Cranberries’ landmark debut album, Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?, suggested its creators had taken up the baton handed down by jangly indie-pop classicists The Smiths and The Sundays.
Vince Staples mentioned Long Beach's Ramona Park approximately 80 times on his debut album Summertime '06 and even allotted the park two of its own tracks: "Ramona Park Legend Pt. 1" and "Ramona Park Legend Pt. 2." "The sun come down and guns come out, you know Ramona Park."
“I am the dishes, the ironing, I am everything, I am nothing. But remind me: Who are you?” So plays the hook of a new feminist anthem released by the Palestinian rappers, DAM. The video for “Who You Are” plays on sexist attitudes by having men and women switch domestic roles typical in the Middle East, but also familiar across most cultures.
2020 was the year of when protest music blared everywhere. For a long period, Black people struggled against police brutality and in the uproar of George Floyd's murder, BLM protests instantly swept over the country. Of the many protest music that was released that year, trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire wrote a song that would spearhead raging sentiments towards racial injustice beyond just jazz.
Rage Against the Machine have always been rabble rousers, but the political statement that got them banned from Saturday Night Live sounds positively prosaic compared to other acts of protest they committed in their heyday, like shutting down the New York Stock Exchange or sporting a "Free Mumia Abu-Jamal" shirt on live television.