July 19, 2010
Remember this music video, in which New York city is imagined as spinning record on a turntable? The Empire State at the center, anchoring the spinning city, the steadiness of the needle’s shadow. Lauryn’s movement is classic New York: a woman on foot in elevated shoes–sometimes it seems/we’ll touch that dream.
The city is accessible just by going out and walking it, all the parts are connected. New York is the spinning record, and sometimes we get scratched.
June 24, 2010
–Bill Brewster & Frank Broughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey, (1999)
But, where does house music begin?
June 11, 2010
Consider the history and style of funk dancing, as a form of expression in urban black America, and then as a popular American dance form. Consider how this form has disappeared, in a sense, from our everyday physical vernacular. How are popular dances, ways of moving and self expression, archival practices?
From 1982 to 1984, I staged collaborative performances with large or small groups of people, entitled Funk Lessons. The first word in the title refers to a certain branch of black popular music and dance known as “funk” (in contrast, for example, to “punk,” “rap,” or “rock”). Its recent ancestor is called “rhythm and blues” or “soul,” and it has been developing as a distinctive cultural idiom within black culture since the early 1970s. Funk constitutes a language of interpersonal communication and collective self-expression that has its origins in African tribal music and dance and is the result of the increasing interest of contemporary black musicians and the populace in those sources elicited by the civil rights movement of the 1960s and early 1970s (African tribal drumming by slaves was banned in the United States during the nineteenth century, so it makes sense to describe this increasing interest as a “rediscovery”).
June 10, 2010
The glowing halo of curly black hair, the even skin, shy white smile. The fragile teen-aged body. Tuxedo jacket open, with a large, loosely-tied bowtie, sleeves pushed up to the elbows, one hand finger-snapping, one hand in pocket. White socks, black loafers.
Falling suddenly, into a marbled sky, and to me, an avid marble collector, and fan of blowing soap bubbles, this seemed like a dream—I want to be there! I want to be where he is. He splits into 3 loosely synchronized selves in this music video, each one imploring me, in stereo, not to stop til I get enough rocking, snapping, spinning, freezing.
Here, I should tell you what this is not about:
(more…)
April 26, 2010
April 4, 2010
I love parties. And I love party flyers. What would a collection of such beautiful, ephemeral things tell us about a city?
Brussels:
Paris:
Tel Aviv:
February 24, 2010
New York, you’re perfect, oh please don’t change a thing!
you let the people see just who you want to be,
and every night you shine just like a superstar
February 14, 2010
Waacking is a form of house dance which had its heyday in the 1970s. But these London rockers are part of a new wave of dancers keeping this New York City tradition alive. I love this video, in which you see the way the dance itself is a response to the atmosphere of the night time city. In the deserted streets of London’s Chinatown, they glitter and glow like lanterns.
January 25, 2010
December 15, 2009
