Tag: News about famous black people

An art fair specialising in works from Africa and its diaspora is launching its first Asian project in Hong Kong next March.

The London-based 1-54 fair, so called because there are 54 countries in Africa today, announced on Thursday that it would make its first foray into Asia to provide more access to African art there amid growing interest from the region’s collectors.

The inaugural project will take the form of a small-scale selling exhibition at auction house Christie’s office in Alexandra House, Central, during the last week of March to coincide with the 2024 edition of the Art Basel Hong Kong fair.

“Around 25 galleries will provide artworks for the Hong Kong show, and the exhibition will have 25 to 30 pieces in total,” says Touria El Glaoui, who founded the fair in London in 2013 before launching editions in New York in 2015 and Marrakech, Morocco, in 2018.

She adds: “This is a presentation rather than a fair, as Hong Kong is very new to us. The idea is to go with highlights of the past 11 years from 1-54 and to reference artists who are well established.”

If the first sale is well received, says El Glaoui, who was born in Casablanca, Morocco, she will launch a full-scale fair in Hong Kong in 2025, probably at Christie’s soon-to-open new headquarters in the Henderson, the curvy skyscraper designed by Zaha Hadid Architects that is under construction in the city’s Central business district.

The just-completed 2023 1-54 fair in London featured 62 galleries from more than 30 countries, making it the largest to date.

Compared with London and New York, where there are large African diaspora populations and a close cultural affinity with the continent, in Asia there is far less knowledge of Africa and its art. Collectors in Asia have, until now, focused on regional and Western artists.

However, Asian collectors follow closely US art market trends, and started buying works by black American artists, such as the late Jean-Michel Basquiat, in the mid- 2010s with the rise to prominence in the United States of the Black Lives Matter movement, says Pearl Lam.

The Hong Kong-born owner and founder of the eponymous art gallery represents African-born artists such as British-Nigerian Yinka Shonibare and South African Zanele Muholi.

We all follow America because it’s the leader of [the] contemporary art world. Contemporary art is always about politics and social change, and in the US it’s been diversity, diversity and diversity in the past 10 years,” Lam says.

As a result, the market focus has been on African-American artists, though more people have come to know about African contemporary art through fairs such as 1-54, she adds.

It will be exciting to have Chinese collectors come up with their own understanding of art from the continent

Her own interest in African art goes back a long way.

Lam visited the 2005 exhibition “Africa Remix” at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and was riveted by the work of artists such as Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui and Ethiopian-born painter Julie Mehretu, for whose work a new auction record of US$9.32 million, including commission, was set in Sotheby’s Hong Kong evening sale on October 5.

Lam believes that collectors in Asia will have a great deal of curiosity about African art. Modern China began trading with Africa in 1949 because of Western sanctions during the Cold War, she says.

Can contemporary art help mend the relationship between China and Africa?

“With that long relationship in mind, it will be exciting to have Chinese collectors come up with their own understanding of art from the continent.”

Dolly Kola-Balogun, founder of Retro Africa in Abuja, Nigeria, agrees. She took part in Art Basel Hong Kong for the first time in 2022, and found there was “extreme and genuine” interest from collectors, even though sales were not as good as they could have been.

“We sold four pieces. Two to collectors we already knew and two to new collectors. The lack of sales was not an indication of a lack of interest,” she says.

Chinese collectors’ art sale flops at Sotheby’s auction in Hong Kong

“I think that collectors want to know whether my gallery will have consistent interaction with the region, which is why we are going to Art SG [in Singapore] in January 2024 and we are also applying to Frieze Seoul.

“We are not going back to Art Basel Hong Kong in 2024 because we have to pick between Singapore and Hong Kong, but we plan to be back the following year,” she says.

“The art market is shifting East and we believe the moment for African-Asian cultural exchange is now.

“It is an exciting thing to be in the region without being subjected to the gatekeeping of Western validation. Asian collectors can make decisions for themselves,” Kola-Balogun adds.

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

Three events in four days at the Jamestown Arts Center begin from 1-3 p.m. Oct. 22 with a Dia de los Muertos workshop for families.

Dia de los Muertos, translated to Day of the Dead, is a Mexican holiday that celebrates the dead rather than mourn them. Jesus de la Torre will demonstrate ways to make an ofrenda, or offering table, which is an altar with a collection of objects placed on ritual display to welcome dead loved ones to the setting. Items for the hands-on project include flowers, tissue paper, masks and banners.

Following the workshop, which will include Mexican hot chocolate and the traditional sweet bread (pan de muerto), families will take their kits home to continue creating their ofrenda for the Nov. 2 holiday.

The individual cost for the workshop and take-home kit is $25. The cost for a family of four is $55; each additional member is $10 at the door. Children under 4 are free.

Two days later, from 4-6 p.m. Oct. 24, Al Miller, Melaine Ferdinand King and Ikea Johnson will discuss Afrofuturism, which nestles strongly in the paintings of Miller, whose exhibition is on display at the arts center. His artwork re-examines ancient cosmologies of African civilizations and African-American life and culture. Admission is $10.

The panel will discuss the philosophical, spiritual and cultural complexity of the meaning and significance of Afrofuturism, which is a genre “that centers on Black history and culture and incorporates science fiction, technology and futuristic elements into literature, music, and the visual arts,” according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Miller’s work draws on geometry, numerology and the structures of nature, science and architecture, and he frequently references African and African-American artistic heritage, such as beading and quilting. Yet, his use of new technologies traverses the so-called digital divide that associates blackness with technological disadvantage, the arts center said.

Along with many Afrofuturist thinkers, he is conscious of a long line of “Blacks in Science,” under-recognized black inventors and innovators, and he experiments with sound, kinetic energy, solar power, 3-D animation and holography. His emphasis on light, both represented and used as an artistic medium, undermines historical associations of blackness with darkness, and reinforces Afrofuturist metaphysical concepts.

The third and final event next week, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Oct. 25 at the arts center, will be a collaboration with the Newport Art Museum. The tour of both facilities will allow visitors to meet Miller, Bob Dilworth and their curators, Francine Weiss and Karen Conway. The artists are showcasing parallel solo exhibitions.

Along with Miller’s display, “Coming and Going,” Dilworth’s exhibition in Newport, ranges from lush wild landscapes to portraits filled with floral motifs. Dilworth draws on the memories and experiences from the artist’s life in Providence and his home of Lawrenceville, 50 miles south of Richmond, Va.

The tour is free for members and supporters of either facility. Transportation is not supplied.

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

Pat Boone, nearly nine-decades old, greets a Tennessean reporter while seated in a Music Row office’s conference room wearing a white, ten-gallon cowboy hat, heavily starched, striped white dress shirt and blue jeans, plus a personalized white belt and buckle and white cowboy boots.

Though he’s never been considered a country superstar, the master of writing and delivering pop songs senses the power of pop music’s moment intersecting with country music’s aesthetics, lifestyle and songcraft.

Moreover, given his numerous and varied interactions with how America’s traditions interact with its mainstream, he’s the perfect person with whom to speak at the present moment.

Boone is nearing the end of his 70th year in music. He has led one of America’s most essential and fascinating lives — a film and television star whose social impact rivaled Elvis Presley’s and Frank Sinatra’s, plus a groundbreaking entrepreneur, Gospel Music Hall of Famer and writer of over two dozen books about Christian faith and conservative politics.

He released “Country Jubilee,” his 79th studio album — comprised mainly of covers of his favorite country compositions — on Sept. 8. Included is “Grits,” a new line-dance-ready country song featuring Ray Stevens, the Gatlin Brothers, Lorrie Morgan, Deborah Allen, and Dean Miller.

He sings most of the song and pauses at the novelty of his rhyme of “country caviar” with “Tennessee foie gras.”

“Country Jubilee” is a collection more at the speed of Eddy Arnold and George Jones than Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen.

Religion, love set Boone on a career and life path

Boone’s life has been both in service to Christ and in service to being the teenage husband of early country icon Red Foley’s daughter Shirley. That moreso than anything is the best context to regard his early career.

Some seven decades later, Boone still recalls Foley crying so much that the Camel cigarette he held between his lips was tear-stained as the singer promised he loved Shirley and would “take care of her.”

He was a dutiful husband, looking to make a career out of singing rather than become a music-aimed religious educator. That led him to cut R&B sides as pop-aimed material

However, ask him to dig into the greater value of why he’s remained vital to musical conversations, and the topic shifts to another song he’s recently re-recorded.

It’s not country, it’s Enya.

Since the 1950s, Boone has excelled at streamlining songs for audiences that often lacked the cultural awareness, racial understanding, or social graces to decipher the words or read between the lines of Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That a Shame” or Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally” and “Tutti Frutti.”

“If they made it roll, I make it rock,” says Boone about how his work has always struck a counterbalance.

“I listened to ‘Only Time,’ this haunting, excellent Enya record about a love affair, and I knew there was a great story — but I couldn’t quite understand all of the lyrics,” says the iconic vocalist.

Once he understood the lyrics, he — as he has countless times over generations — offered a re-arranged version of the song de-constructed into more of a march-tempo ballad that offers a less haunting and more hopeful take on yearning for the power of love.

The song is an homage to Shirley, who died in January 2019.

‘Race records,’ pop acclaim and his crossover legacy

“I enjoy a song’s flavor and singing my heart out with great feeling in my performances,” says Boone.

Boone’s early stylings catching the ear of early rock ‘n’ roll-era Cleveland DJ Bill Randle is also essential to any conversation regarding his career.

Randle was famously a champion of Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s work and Elvis’ earliest recordings on Sun Records. Plus, songs like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic” were also favorites of his ear.

The unlikely space where religious standards and R&B-inspired pop existed was unlike the jazz-infused swing that blended with the sanctified blues that defined rock ‘n’ roll’s most sustainable evolution.

For two decades, Boone lucratively stood alone in that space as its most legendary — and sometimes reviled — figure.

On one hand, Boone was a globally renowned artist, pitchman for DC Comics and General Motors and one of the founding owners of the American Basketball Association, among many accomplishments.

However, others still feel differently.

In a 2019 piece for Canada’s Global News, Lisa Tomlinson, a cultural critic and lecturer-professor at the University of the West Indies, notes that she believes Boone’s almost asexual presentation of “sleazy, underground” proto-rock culturally appropriated Black experiences and reduced them to “tame” “family-like” and “more softened” interpretations.

Boone’s lane — where he’s a Hall of Fame-caliber talent with 45 million records sold and 38 top-40 hits — is reduced to “an institutional system,” “controlled by white men,” to “appease white people.”

In response, Boone offers that “taking ‘race records’ that weren’t known on (segregated) pop radio allowed for Black artists who had (in the case of Little Richard) part-time jobs washing dishes in bus stations to have the type of visibility that allowed them to make enough money to pursue music full time.”

Five decades after his controversial breakout success, Boone — still clearly impacted by the perceived mischaracterization of his early pop career — paired with James Brown, Earth, Wind and Fire, Kool and the Gang, Sam and Dave’s Sam Moore, Smokey Robinson and the Four Tops’ Levi Stubbs to record the 2006 album “We Are Family: R&B Classics.”

“More than anything, since the 1950s, I’ve become a musical chameleon, sincerely able to do my best to mean every syllable when I sing anything put in front of me,” he says. “I want to make it OK for religious people, white people, DJs, pop music lovers, anyone, to have an appreciation for the R&B music that — among many genres of music — I love to sing.”

He doubles down by recalling a conversation he had with the Rev. Jesse Jackson while promoting the album on a Rainbow Coalition-affiliated radio program.

Jackson, 81, noted that he was old enough to recall hearing Boone’s father-in-law, Red Foley, singing Negro spirituals, then hearing Boone himself sing R&B.

He then added an even more profound comment.

“Pat Boone did more for race relations in the 1950s than any other artist.”

Thoughts on country’s modern moment

Digging deeper into country’s modern crossover, Boone has thoughts about songs as diverse as any one of the nearly 150 songs that Zach Bryan or Morgan Wallen have recently released, as well as Luke Combs’ cover of Tracy Chapman’s 1989 folk-rock classic “Fast Car,” and yes, even a pair of infamous Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 singles — Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” and Jason Aldean’s “Try That In A Small Town.”

“America was a nation built on the backs of rebellious farmers with rural-borne, small-town, Bible-based principles,” Boone says. “In my opinion, this was not a country ever meant to have skyscrapers and concrete jungles — and many people, especially those hungering for country music right now, would agree.

“Sane American living requires re-discovering simple norms. The society I wish we all could’ve experienced, equally, exists in songs like Hank Williams singing ‘Kaw-Liga’ (in 1953) or me singing ‘Moody River’ (in 1961).”

Aside from making a clear call for a traditionalist-style country revival, Boone’s current-day musical desires become even more profound when casting him as the last artist in a class dating back to Presley and early rock’s crossover traditions.

“[Artists like Elvis and I] made compelling songs that could not be ignored,” Boone says. “When people wholeheartedly capture the feeling and emotion of a moment, they are timelessly attached to history.”

He smiles, then offers the rest of his statement.

“My catalog is a timeless appreciation of how we share our lives with each other.”

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

THEATER

“Annie”:  8 p.m.; Oct. 24-26; Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, 445 S. Magnolia Ave. in Orlando; drphillipscenter.org

“A Voice in the Dark: A Salem Story”: 8 p.m. Oct. 20-21, Oct. 23; 3 p.m. Oct. 22; Breakthrough Theatre Company, 6900 Aloma Ave. in Winter Park; $12-$20; 407-920-4034; breakthroughtheatre.com

“Dracula the Musical”: 8 p.m.; Oct. 20, Oct. 22, Oct. 26; CityArts, 39 S. Magnolia Ave. in Orlando; 407-246-2555; downtownorlando.com

“The True Story of the Three Little Pigs”: 10:15 a.m., noon Oct. 20, Oct. 24, Oct. 26; 2:30 p.m. Oct. 21-22; Orlando Shakes, 812 E. Rollins St. in Orlando; $14-$30; 407-447-1700; orlandoshakes.org

“The Stranger’s Tale”: The story of faith examines modern homelessness through music and drama. 2 p.m.; Oct. 21-22; First United Methodist Church of Mount Dora, 439 E. 5th Ave. in Mount Dora; free; 518-817-0256; curtistuckermusic.com

“Boulevard of Bold Dreams”: A dynamic story about the night Hattie McDaniel (“Gone with the Wind”) became the first Black artist to win an Oscar. 7:30 p.m. Oct. 20, Oct. 25-26; 2 p.m. Oct. 21-22; Orlando Shakes, 812 E. Rollins St. in Orlando; $25-$50; 407-447-1700; orlandoshakes.org

“The Spider Queen”:  7:30 p.m. Oct. 20, Oct. 22-23, Oct. 26; 8 p.m. Oct. 21; Fringe ArtSpace, 54 W. Church St., Suite 201 in Orlando; $20-$23; 407-436-7800; orlandofringe.org

Central Florida Entertainment Advocacy Community Connect: 6:30 p.m.; Oct. 23; The Abbey, 100 S. Eola Drive, Suite 100 in Orlando; 407-704-6261; abbeyorlando.com

DANCE

“Toxic”: What happens when things take a turn for the unexpected and the situation becomes dire? 7:30 p.m.; Oct. 21-22; ME Theatre, 1300 La Quinta Drive in Orlando; 844-633-2623; metheatre.com

Midnight A$$ – DJ ZKrazy’s Dance Party: This event is for those 21 and older. 10 p.m.; Oct. 26; Lil’ Indies, 1036 N. Mills Ave. in Orlando; free; 724-712-0977; willspub.org

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

New York, NY (Top40 Charts) In February 1924, George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue was premiered in New York City, capturing the exuberant essence of what Gershwin called “a musical kaleidoscope of America.” 100 years later, iconoclastic American pianist Lara Downes reimagines Gershwin’s masterpiece to reflect on a century of immigration and transformation. Downes has commissioned a radical new arrangement of Rhapsody In Blue by Puerto Rican composer Edmar Colón that reverberates with the multicultural, kaleidoscopic sounds of America today. Rhapsody In Blue Reimagined, featuring Downes at the piano, will be released on January 19, 2024, on the Pentatone label. It will also be featured on a forthcoming full album entitled This Land, a reflection on diverse American journeys that includes works by Arturo O’Farrill, Kian Ravaei, Jake Heggie and Margaret Bonds, to be released on Pentatone in fall of 2024.

The World Premiere of this adventurous new work will take place October 21 in San Francisco, featuring Downes and the future-forward ensemble of dynamic young musicians in the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Orchestra, led by conductor Edwin Outwater. More information on the premiere can be found now, and the performance will be also livestreamed on October 21 at 7:30PM Pacific here: https://vimeo.com/event/1718470/8c981de8f2

Downes, the orchestra and Outwater will record the piece that same weekend with Grammy award-winning producer Adam Abeshouse. Downes believes that centering young musicians in this project is one of its most important attributes: the next generation finding something brand new in something a century old.

Downes’ mission for Rhapsody In Blue at 100 is to celebrate the waves upon waves of new arrivals to this country over the past century. This new arrangement fills the Rhapsody with the sounds of Downes’ own lineage, as well as Colón’s. It features Afro-Caribbean rhythms and instruments, and musical elements that represent American journeys from many corners of the globe. Learn more about the project here: https://www.laradownes.com/rhapsody-in-blue-100

Says Downes: “Rhapsody In Blue holds a special place in my heart as both a musician and a lover of music. It’s been a great thrill to reflect on the story of an American century and my own family’s journey of immigration and social change, as expressed in Gershwin’s music. I think he would be so thrilled to know that this piece is still part of the colorful, beautiful, multicultural musical kaleidoscope of America, now and for generations to come.”

Rhapsody in Blue received exuberant praise and helped to usher in the jazz age as America rebounded from the losses of World War I and a global pandemic. Gershwin, who was inspired by the melting pot of America as he composed the original piece, was himself the son of immigrants. The success of Rhapsody In Blue helped to make Gershwin a star; he was featured on the cover of TIME Magazine the following year. The first recording of the piece sold 1 million copies.

1924 was a transformative year: three months after Rhapsody in Blue was first heard, the United States passed an immigration act designed to “preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity” and prevent “a stream of alien blood.” These federal policies drastically restricted European immigration but coincidentally (and unintentionally) opened a pathway for new arrivals from the British West Indies. In a personal story that brings this project full circle, among these new arrivals were Downes’ grandparents, who migrated from Jamaica to Harlem in the 1920’s.

Lara Downes has been called “a musical ray of hope” by NBC News, has performed a Tiny Desk Concert for NPR, was recently a NY Times Crossword clue and has topped the Billboard Classical charts with several of her recent releases. She is the creator and host of the acclaimed NPR video series Amplify with Lara Downes, featuring uniquely intimate conversations with trailblazing Black artists and cultural figures – including Rhiannon Giddens, Jon Batiste, Samara Joy and Allison Russell. She has been profiled by the NY Times, is known for her work celebrating composers such as Scott Joplin and Florence Price, and is a frequent guest on NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered. She is the Resident Artist for Classical California KDFC and KUSC.

Her recent and upcoming onstage adventures include guest appearances with The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Boston Pops, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Louisville Orchestra, and Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. She is spearheading the creation of a diverse new repertoire for piano and orchestra via the commissions and world premiere performances of concertos written for her by Adolphus Hailstork, Arturo O’Farrill, Christopher Tin, Quinn Mason, Clarice Assad, Viet Cuong, Aldo López-Gavilán, Carlos Simon, and Billy Childs, among others. Current recital and residency engagements include Ravinia, the Gilmore Festival, Carolina Performing Arts, Washington Performing Arts, Caramoor, Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and the Cabrillo Festival, among others.

She collaborates with an eclectic range of artists including folk icon Judy Collins, pianist Simone Dinnerstein, musical multi-hyphenate Rhiannon Giddens, former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove, author John McWhorter, Broadway legend Brian Stokes Mitchell, bassist Christian McBride, the Miró Quartet, and violinist Daniel Hope.
https://www.laradownes.com/home

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

Max Easton’s novel Paradise Estate offers a variation on the share-house drama epitomised by Monkey Grip (1977), Helen Garner’s chronicle of communal living in Melbourne.

In contrast to the post-hippie lifestyle depicted in Garner’s novel, however, Paradise Estate engages with the difficulties of contemporary rental accommodation: skyrocketing prices, an overabundance of tenants and a dearth of potential abodes.

Review: Paradise Estate – Max Easton (Giramondo)

In the end, many of the generation depicted in Monkey Grip traded their communal flower-power ideals for individual gain by way of property investment. Young people today are faced with an economy that favours those already well established in the housing market. For many, long-term renting has become the norm and the idea of owning their own home is less a dream than an illusion.

But in Easton’s good-humoured novel there is little hint of bitterness toward those who have benefited from Australia’s housing market evolving into a Darwinian survival of the fittest.

Concentrated living

Although it acknowledges the grim truth that for many people home ownership is now out of reach, Easton’s novel is more concerned with the lives and histories of the “vibrant personalities” who reside in a rundown share house that the character Sunny dubs “Paradise Estate” – an allusion to a song by the British post-punk band Television Personalities.

The household dynamics are mediated by Helen, a character who also featured in Easton’s first book The Magpie Wing (2021). Helen moves in to Paradise Estate as a newly separated gay woman in her late thirties, her single status motivating her to find, and fill with tenants, a four-bedroom place in the Sydney suburb of Hurlstone Park.

It is significant that Helen only secures the rental by pointing out its flaws to other prospective renters. In particular, it is drearily hemmed in by encircling apartments. Again and again, Easton’s novel highlights the tensions of a concentrated living that for many is no longer a temporary housing option, but a permanent circumstance.

The high-density living evokes the cinematic precedents of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954), a film that meditates on voyeurism via a protagonist who watches his neighbours through a telephoto lens, and Roman Polanski’s cult classic The Tenant (1976), which dramatises a lodger’s paranoia – a condition intensified by the intrusive surveillance of his neighbours.

Paradise Estate is neither a Hitchcock thriller nor a Polanski horror, but it is keenly aware of the “stage-like” visibility of its central household. It is a novel where “seeing” is doubled: Easton’s characters are watched by their neighbours, who are scrutinised by us, as readers, overseeing the entirety of the drama.

Read more: In Bon and Lesley, Shaun Prescott has written an Australian horror story of uniquely local proportions

Humour and shared grief

The lack of privacy becomes a source of humour when Sunny tries to entertain housemates and friends by performing a loud punk song in the exposed backyard:

Alice watched in horror as Sunny pulled back the drop sheet […] It revealed the drum kit Sunny promised not to use, and two amps that towered over the people sitting cross legged before them. The squealing of the guitar amp started at ten p.m. […] It drew neighbours to their balconies […] Four police marched down the side of the house.

Sunny is a multifaceted character, who is referred to with the gender-neutral pronoun “they”. Easton neither declares nor heralds Sunny’s non-binary status. It is simply part of the fabric of the share house, and by extension a novel that foregrounds the manifold nature of identities and relationships.

The friendship between Sunny and Helen is particularly significant. Grief unites these central characters, both of whom are mourning the death of Helen’s brother Walt, who was once Sunny’s lover.

Sunny is motivated to preserve Walt’s revolutionary ideas — philosophies wedded to a now largely extinct punk sensibility. In fact, Sunny thinks so highly of Walt that they liken him to the late Mark Fisher, a respected k-punk blogger, whose analytical range extended from politics to cultural criticism and music theory.

Easton’s prose is witty and sharp, and has an energising effect, but the commentary on music stretches the allusion to Fisher (one also made in the back-cover blurb). When the novel attempts to explore the politics of its characters through their aesthetic tastes, the passages lack Fisher’s philosophical complexity and can feel forced at times.

A crucial taped conversation between Sunny and Walt, for instance, records their discussion of poptimism, American rapper Cardi B, and punk rock. Walt suggests that in the late 1970s, the introduction of Top 40 music into rock clubs undermined the punk “underground”. Sunny quips: “That’s just a 2019 way of saying ‘Disco Sucks’.”

The term “disco sucks” has racist, sexist and homophobic connotations. As British music journalist Alex Petridis observes, disco was “predominantly made by black artists, dominated by female stars and with a core audience that was, at least initially, largely gay”. Fisher would hardly have approved of this kind of blithe allusion to an ugly backlash against a crucial musical and social movement.

It is only after some quite confusing back-and-forth in the taped dialogue between Sunny and Walt – a minor readability flaw in the book – that a female character finally comes along and clearly articulates all that is wrong with a culture that has long had men at its centre. Sunny’s acerbic flatmate Beth, who has a unique ability to call out bullshit, points out that “hardcore punk” may be associated with “toxic masculinity”, but to her mind it’s “toxic boyhood”.

Read more: Reality and fantasy combine in Immaculate, Anna McGahan’s award-winning debut novel

A 21st-century commune

The desire for a collectivism that might counter the alienation of modern city dwelling is voiced many times in Paradise Estate.

Flatmate Nathan is particularly keen to convert the Hurlstone dwelling into a self-sufficient commune, with the aid of his long-suffering girlfriend Alice, an enthusiastic gardener who can’t grow anything. In another comical moment, Helen observes how her flatmates treat Nathan with suspicion because of his over-reliance on the royal pronoun “we” , which she describes as the “sociopath’s first person”.

Nathan is indeed a potential cult leader, who works as a casual history tutor by day, but is also the self-appointed leader of a left-wing group called “The Centre”. The most extraordinary thing to come out of Nathan’s “Centre” is Dale, an antisocial alcoholic, whose residency in the share house is short-lived. He causes an outbreak of maggots, stalks flatmate Beth, and is finally caught masturbating with his bedroom door ajar.

Dale is an apolitical whirlwind who leaves a mark on flatmates and readers alike — so much so that his replacement “Rocco” is christened the “anti-Dale”. He brings a grunge element to the house and the novel.

In a way, he resembles the dissipated character of Gordon Buchanan in Andrew McGahan’s Praise (1992). But unlike Gordon, who is sexually active, Dale is sex-starved. His frustration produces more up-to-date comedy when his thinly veiled incel status is revealed through his drunken protests about a so-called “wave of sex negativity”:

These days, no one wants to talk about sex. And people aren’t fucking as much either.

The dream of a share-house commune is not realised, as genuine collaboration and community is sabotaged by egotism. Helen’s assessment of Nathan comes true, though he proves to be more narcissist than sociopath. The novel follows the trajectory of the share house’s disintegration, closing with the scattering of its characters, who seek shelter and safety elsewhere. What stands out from the emotional rubble is Alice’s hilarious assessment of her ex-flatmates and Nathan:

She closed her eyes, feeling hopeless, carted away by her boyfriend the plagiarist, away from her housemates that included an animal killer, a hoarder, a self-described spinster, and a wannabe concubine…

Alice’s descriptions capture the wit of Easton’s novel. Yet despite its exposure of the frailties and shortcomings of its characters, Paradise Estate retains a sense of compassion and humanity. Fittingly, it ends with the three characters who have upheld its moral and psychological world – Helen, Sunny and Walt – and the completion of Sunny’s labour of love: Walt’s collected writings, titled “Walt Coleman’s Unpublishable Works of (Non)Fiction”.

Easton has produced an ultra-contemporary novel that references pop music, COVID 19, Donald Trump, the storming of the Capitol building, Twitter (now X), TikTok and the Indigenous Voice to Parliament. These references run the risk of quickly dating the text, but Paradise Estate should transcend the present. Its witty and intelligent chronicle of share-house living and micro-world of complex politics and idealistic desires ultimately speak to broader social concerns.

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) — Community leaders in Albany unveiled plans for a new Black arts and culture center in the city. The Alice Moore Black Arts and Cultural Center is replacing the African-American Culture Center of the Capital Region, which was dissolved because of a lack of funding.

The new organization will be housed in the same building on South Pearl Street. Leaders are planning to buy property next door and add rental apartments and affordable housing on the upper floors of both. It will help the center bring in revenue and address housing shortages in the area.

“We’ve already been approached by developers who find this space very valuable, and as a matter of fact, asked us to sell it to them,” Alice Green, president of the Alice Moore Foundation, said. “But we said no. Our commitment is to this community and to arts and cultural programming, and that’s what we will do with it.”

Former board members of the African-American Culture Center are spearheading the project. They are still looking for a director for the new center.

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

After 40 seasons and over 300 performances, Watertown’s New Repertory Theatre will permanently close.

“It’s a bit of the frog in the boiling pot, where we’ve been gradually coming up to this point,” said New Rep Board Chair Chris Jones. “It’s always a challenge to put the puzzle pieces together, and then you add in all the different factors over the last couple of years, [and] it’s really swimming upstream to get to sustainability.”

The news follows a tumultuous three years for the midsize regional theater.

In 2021, New Rep paused its operations due to financial losses incurred during the pandemic. It reopened nine months later on a smaller scale with a renewed focus on new work and diverse voices. 2023 marked its first full-fledged season since the pandemic, featuring productions of “The Normal Heart,” “A Raisin in the Sun” and the world premiere of a new play, “DIASPORA!”

“This is in the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce these kinds of shows,” said Jones, referring to the theater’s recent black box productions. “Tickets can be excellent for those shows, but you need contributed income.”

Jones declined to share the theater’s current operating budget, but said the organization would wind down with its financial affairs in order and no debt.

He pointed to a shortfall in philanthropic funding as the primary reason for the theater’s closure. The nine-month hiatus, followed by a reboot into an untested incarnation, seemed to put some funders off, at least from the perspective of New Rep leadership.

“In all frankness, these tend to be organizations and folks that say, ‘Yeah, I believe in what you’re doing and I think it’s great, and that’s the direction things should be heading in,’” said New Rep Resident Artist Maria Hendricks. “But there’s that apprehension, there’s that stutter, almost.”

“They want you to be successful before they’ll help you be successful, and that’s the Catch-22 just in the funding game,” Jones added.

Following the racial reckoning of 2020 and broader conversations around equity in the arts, New Rep leaders had pledged to pay its artists and workers a living wage.

“That’s not a model that existed, necessarily, where every person employed by a theater was able to live on what they were making at the theater, and that is something that we were aspiring to,” New Rep Board Vice Chair Danielle Galligan said. “That would have also impacted the amount we needed to sustain ourselves moving forward.”

New Repertory Theatre began its life in 1984 in a Newton church before relocating to the larger Watertown Arsenal, later renamed the Dorothy and Charles Mosesian Center for the Arts. The theater made a name for itself in the 1990s as a destination in the Greater Boston theater scene, despite having fewer resources than the area’s heavyweights, The Huntington Theatre and the American Repertory Theater.

New Rep’s travails began in March of 2020, when it abruptly shuttered, along with the rest of Greater Boston’s theaters, as COVID-19 cases ticked upward. In December of that year, Michael J. Bobbitt, the organization’s first Black artistic director, departed after only 17 months on the job to lead the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Six months later, the theater announced it would pause operations temporarily and laid off most of its staff, estimating over $1 million in losses since the pandemic began.

When New Rep returned, it was with a newly-honed progressive vision and a reduced budget. Rather than hire an artistic director, it appointed a group of “resident artists” to put the new vision into practice. Maria Hendricks, Lois Roach and Michael Hisamoto piloted a residency program to develop new work by local theater makers and organized numerous one-off productions and community events before launching the 2023 season.

“Being at the forefront of that and walking that [walk] is not a simple task. And we did it with our programming. We did it with our community outreach and in dealing with professionals and being able to pay them their worth,” Hendricks said. “Just that, alone, is tremendous.”

She said the focus on work by theater makers of color and other marginalized identities, along with the emphasis on new work, seemed to be resonating with audiences.

“As far as the numbers and attendance question, that wasn’t really a factor at all as we gained traction over the last year,” Hendricks said.

New Rep’s decision to shutter comes amid a wave of theater closures across the country. In Boston, the fallout from the pandemic put arts leaders on edge. New Rep’s closure follows the shutdown of StageSource, a membership-based nonprofit that connected and supported local theater artists.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has presented unprecedented challenges to the arts, with many organizations still struggling to bring audiences back while navigating changes in consumer habits, reduced revenues and an altered arts economy,” said Catherine Peterson, the executive director of ArtsBoston, a nonprofit that supports the arts in Greater Boston. “In talking to many arts organizations, I worry that New Rep is not an isolated case.”

But Galligan sounded a more optimistic note.

“I’m encouraged by the idea that there are other fledgling companies, midsize companies, growing companies that can step in and still do great work, and will maybe take some of the pieces that we’ve laid out … and experiment with it themselves,” she said.

She hoped that other theater companies would make use of the mainstage and black box at the Mosesian Center for the Arts, New Rep’s home since 2005.

Said Galligan, “There’s still a stage to be filled.”

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment

The African American Arts Alliance, which has been fostering the creativity of Black artists in Chicago for decades, has a new name and a new president who aims to expand the group’s mission.

Charlique C. Rolle has taken the reins at the non-profit, which was just renamed the Black Arts & Culture Alliance of Chicago, or BACA.

Rolle, 32, plans to reinvigorate fundraising efforts and increase marketing to inform Black artists about the resources available through the organization, which range from workshops to mentorship in in theater, dance, music, literature, technology, film and visual arts.

“A lot of people haven’t engaged with us because they haven’t known about us. That’s what we are hearing in listening sessions,” said Rolle, who’s taking on the unpaid position after serving for three years on the group’s board. “So many artists have said we didn’t even know the Alliance existed.” 

The Alliance currently has office space at the Black Ensemble Theater, 4450 N. Clark St., but runs programming at various community spaces around the city.

“One of our long-term visions is to become a physical hub for the arts with a space and a home,” said Rolle. ”It’s not an immediate thing, but part of the future vision.”

Rolle is moving away from offering free memberships, and switching to only paid memberships for individuals and organizations, but will work with members to keep the cost low, she said.

Rolle, who was born and raised in the Bahamas, is also the executive director of Chicago’s Congo Square Theatre and has an artistic resume that includes modeling, dance, poetry, writing, acting and composing music.

“I’m passionate about creating structure that allows the community to thrive,” she said.

Rolle studied dance and theater at Missouri Valley College before coming to Chicago. She’s since been involved in dance as a performer, choreographer and instructor, but also served as a business manager at various dance companies in Chicago.

She took over the position of president earlier this year from Black Ensemble Theater founder and CEO Jackie Taylor, who co-founded the Alliance in 1997. The Alliance was born out of the Black Theater Alliance, a group that was started by Black artists in the ’70s and folded in the early ’90s. Taylor was a member of that original group. 

Taylor, who grew up in the Cabrini-Green housing projects and now lives in Uptown, saw the need for other artists to benefit as she did from working with the Alliance.

“I greatly benefited from being part of that supportive community in not only physical ways, but in mental and spiritual ways, and also in understanding that my art was a business,” Taylor said.

Anthony Jackson/For the Sun-Times

Taylor stepped down from her role at the Alliance after 25 years at the helm but will remain head of the Black Ensemble Theater, which she founded 47 years ago.

The Alliance has a strong membership base and is on strong financial footing, she said.

“It was time for the Alliance to take that next step in terms of joining the tech age and reaching more artist. It needed a shot in the arm,” Taylor said. 

“And I’m confident we’ll be in good hands going forward with Charlique Rolle. Besides the high intelligence that she has, she brings a freshness, she brings a youthful passion and she has the pulse of the community.”

The Alliance has hosted a series of performances and workshops in October for Black Arts Month. The final Black Arts Month event takes place at 7 p.m. Oct. 23 at the Muse Coffee Studio, 747 S. Western Ave. It will be an evening celebrating Black storytelling through theater, poetry, film, and dance that’s free and open to the public. Pre-registration is available at bacachi.org.

The Alliance’s 23^rd annual Black Excellence Awards ceremony will be held on Nov. 6, to recognized outstanding achievement by artists and organizations in Chicago’s cultural arts scene.

RankTribe™ Black Business Directory News – Arts & Entertainment