SUSAN GEORGE ON
NEO-LIBERALISM
Zerlina Maxwell Offers 5 Ways
We Can Teach Men Not to Rape
Just in case you missed it, Zerlina Maxwell went on FOX News this weekend and brilliantly put rape culture on blast. While appearing as a guest on Hannity, the prolific writer and social media commentator said that when it comes to preventing rape, we must look beyond the reactionary impulse to just give women more guns. Instead, we need to teach men not to rape.
“I think that the entire conversation is wrong. I don’t want anybody to be telling women anything. I don’t want men to be telling me what to wear and how to act, not to drink. And I don’t, honestly, want you to tell me that I needed a gun in order to prevent my rape. In my case, don’t tell me if I’d only had a gun, I wouldn’t have been raped. Don’t put it on me to prevent the rape.”
Maxwell’s comments got lots of attention and caused a ripple effect on weekend social media. Implicit in them was that the problem isn’t just individual behaviors, but a culture of patriarchy. This morning, she followed them up with a piece at EBONY.com on five ways we can teach men not to rape. “Rape culture is a pervasive part of our society because of social conditioning,” Maxwell wrote. “Yet we struggle to find ways to avoid patterns of victim blaming and many of us would rather advise women on the precautions they should take to avoid being raped as opposed to starting at the root of the problem: teaching men and boys not to be rapists in the first place.”
via colorlines.com
__________________________
5 Ways We Can Teach Men
Not to Rape
ZERLINA MAXWELL OFFERS WAYS TO PREVENT RAPE WITHOUT MAKING WOMEN RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CRIMES COMMITTED AGAINST THEM
I took part in a recent debate on Fox News’ Sean Hannity Show about whether women should just get guns in order to prevent rape. There I said the following:
“I think that the entire conversation is wrong. I don’t want anybody to be telling women anything. I don’t want men to be telling me what to wear and how to act, not to drink. And I don’t, honestly, want you to tell me that I needed a gun in order to prevent my rape. In my case, don’t tell me if I’d only had a gun, I wouldn’t have been raped. Don’t put it on me to prevent the rape.”
"We need to focus on the messages that men are getting and about how they relate to women. We also need to focus on what messaging men are getting about women and about what kind of women get raped."
As a rape survivor, the conversation about how to best combat rape and domestic violence is personal and can be very challenging. Rape culture is a pervasive part of our society because of social conditioning. Yet we struggle to find ways to avoid patterns of victim blaming and many of us would rather advise women on the precautions they should take to avoid being raped as opposed to starting at the root of the problem: teaching men and boys not to be rapists in the first place.
When I said that “We can prevent rape by telling men not to commit it,” I wasn’t expressing some simplistic, fantastical worldview. There are organizations like Men Can Stop Rape and Men Stopping Violence that are already doing the work to train men from a young age to understand and challenge rape culture. Interestingly enough, many who disagreed with my argument chose to send me rape threats, insults, and dismissive remarks that in many ways proved my point.
We need a cultural shift NOW. In hopes of getting a conversation started, here are five practical ways by which we can teach men not to rape:
1. Teach young men about legal consent: Legal consent tops my list for a reason. Without it, sexual contact with someone is rape...whether you intended to rape or not. A woman who is drunk, unconscious or sleeping cannot give legal consent. And it’s not about a woman simply saying “no,” it’s really about making certain she’s saying yes!
Jaclyn Friedman author of Yes Means Yes, coined the term “enthusiastic consent,” which flips the traditional lens with which we view consent on it’s head. She asks, “What if, instead of just the absence of ‘no,’ an enthusiastic ‘yes’ was required as a standard for sexual consent?"
We need to focus on the messages that men are getting and about how they relate to women. We also need to focus on what messaging men are getting about women and about what kind of women get raped.
“The really important thing about consent education, it’s not that rapists don’t know they don’t have consent it’s that everyone else is vague about it in their own lives,” Friedman tells EBONY.
“Consent is actually easy to figure out. You have to ask. It’s your job to ask. It’s not gendered. Women also have the responsibility to ask. And if you can’t tell, ask.”
By not being clear that the concept of legal consent is simple and not a vague gray area, “[w]e are removing all of the excuses and allowing rapists to get away with it with impunity. We assume guys don’t understand what consent is and that they don’t understand what they are doing and then we let them off the hook. They likely know they don’t have consent, even though they may not identify what they are doing is rape.” The men and boys in your life should want for their partner to be not merely submissive, but excited at the idea of having sex. Let them know---you don't want a girl to 'give it up,' you want a mutually enjoyable experience that both parties went into willingly.
2. Teach young men to see women’s humanity, instead of seeing them as sexual objects for male pleasure: There is a reason why women are shamed into silence and why teenage boys in Steubenville, Ohio are caught on camera laughing about gang raping an unconscious girl at a party. The dehumanization of women spans all areas of American life.
There is no shortage of evidence that rape culture results from the objectification of women and the view that we exist simply for male pleasure. When a ESPN football commentator implies that the reward for being a star quarterback is that you get to have a pretty girlfriend, that takes away a woman’s individual agency. She is simply an object to be possessed. An object there for male desire and nothing more.
The young men in Steubenville aren’t monsters. They did something monstrous and criminal but perhaps we should begin to stop repeating the notion that “criminals” are the ones raping 1 in 5 women. No, it’s our husbands, boyfriends, acquaintances, relatives, and friends and they rape because they are not taught to see women as full autonomous human beings.
3. Teach young men how to express healthy masculinity: “The question that’s being asked about what women can do to prevent violence against them is the wrong question. It’s not what can a woman say or do that can prevent being attacked. We need to turn that paradigm upside down. We need to focus on the messages that men are getting and about how they relate to women. We also need to focus on what messaging men are getting about women and about what kind of women get raped,” Eesha Pandit, the Executive Director of Men Stopping Violence told EBONY.
Most importantly, “we have to...redefine what masculinity means...rape is not about evil in the world. It’s about power and control, in relationships and in the world. The messages that men get around masculinity from a young age are too often about violence and about exerting power and control. We need to challenge the definition of masculinity as inherently violent,” says Pandit.
4. Teach young men to believe women and girls who come forward: The vast majority of women do not report their rapes to the police and many more only tell one or two people in confidence. That is a result of our proclivity towards victim blaming. What were you wearing? How much did you drink? Why were you there in the first place? When we hear about a rape case in the news or when we hear about one in our own lives, the first reaction should be to believe and support the accuser. There is a misleading perception that many or most rape claims are false. That is simply untrue. When a victim comes forward, they are committing an act of extreme bravery, and we owe it to them, to support (leaving the criminal investigation to law enforcement) them and place blame directly and solely on the perpetrator. In Steubenville, for example, there is photographic proof of the young women being dragged around, and yet the high school coaches and so-called "adults" still questioned whether the victim was lying or implied she asked for it. No one asks or wants to be raped.
5. Teach males about bystander intervention: Both Men Stopping Violence and Men Can Stop Rape have bystander intervention workshops for men of all ages. “It’s about community accountability,” says Pandit, “We require men to talk to other men in their lives and tell them about these programs. It is important that we have community networks that hold men accountable.”
Monika Hostler President of the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence tells EBONY, “We have to engage men and boys, especially around masculinity and bystander intervention. In order to end rape, we have to change the culture in how we treat women and girls.”
When we talk about bystander intervention, it’s more about simply intervening when you see someone doing or about to do something wrong, “It’s also about first calling people out for sexist jokes about women and girls. It’s not just the intervening act, it’s about all of the things that lead up to it. We degrade and oversexualize women and girls and this contributes to sexual violence. We must be consistent to get society to understand how sexist jokes are connected to sexual violence.” Our young men shouldn't shift uncomfortably when a peer jokes about bringing home a drunk classmate who can't possible give verbal consent; they should know to speak up and to do all they can to prevent it from happening---even when it simply seems like a vague possibility.
“Society doesn’t fully understand that rape is not about sex. It’s actually about power and control as a result of hypermasculinity. Bystander intervention is about intervening with people and peers that you know personally. These aren’t evil people. Intervention is all about talking about social and cultural change when people are young.”
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Zerlina Maxwell is a political analyst and soon-to-be attorney. You can follow her on Twitter @ZerlinaMaxwell.
Read more at EBONY http://www.ebony.com/news-views/5-ways-we-can-teach-men-not-to-rape-456/2#ixz...
Follow us: @EbonyMag on Twitter | EbonyMag on Facebook
A Cartoon Depicts
Malala Yousafzai’s
Courage
We love Malala Yousafzai. We stand in solidarity with her. Gavin Aung Than, an Australian cartoonist, does as well. He used his illustration blog, Zen Pencils, to transform Yousafzai’s inspirational story of survival into a comic.
Yousafzai rose to international acclaim in October 2012 after she survived a near-fatal bullet wound. The 15-year-old Pakistani activist was assaulted by the Taliban on a school bus after she criticized the terrorist organization for restricting women’s access to education.
Than was so inspired by Yousafzai’s heroic story, he immediately sketched the brilliant comic after she was shot. The colorful strip is an awesome reminder of the importance of Malala’s heroic work against gender discrimination. It ends with four words: “They cannot stop me.”
She’s right. Yousafzai has been nominated for the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize, making her the youngest contender in history.
__________________________
MALALA YOUSAFZAI:
I have the right
__________________________
104. MALALA YOUSAFZAI: I have the right
February 19th, 2013
Malala Yousafzai (1997-) is a 15-year-old Pakistani girl who was shot in the head on the way home from school by the Taliban. Her only crime was criticising the Taliban’s strict rules against female education and standing up for her right to go to school.
Inspired by her activist father, Malala was involved in social justice from a young age. She first gained prominence at age 11, when she wrote a blog for the BBC for 10 weeks (under a pseudonym) detailing her life under Taliban rule. The blog was extremely popular and her real identity was later revealed when her father nominated her for an International Peace Prize. From there she started appearing on television, speaking against the Taliban’s ruling that banned girls from attending school. Her international status grew even more when she was featured in a New York Times documentary (which you can watch here). She continued to speak out against the Taliban and was nominated for the International Youth Peace Prize and won the inaugural Pakistan National Youth Peace Prize in 2011 (now named the National Malala Peace Prize).
On the 9th October 2012, on her way home from school, Malala was shot in the head and neck by a masked gunman (two other children, Kainat Riaz and Shazia Ramzan, were also injured). The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that Malala was “the symbol of the infidels and obscenity”. Straight after the incident Malala was taken to Peshawar Military hospital for an initial operation where part of her skull was removed to allow room for the swelling of her brain and was later flown to the United Kingdom for further treatment. She would receive two further surgeries to insert a titanium plate in her skull and attach a cochlear device in her left ear to restore her hearing. Malala was released from hospital this month and is currently staying in her temporary home with her family in Birmingham and is expected to make a full recovery.
Malala has recently been nominated for the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize, the youngest person in history to receive the honour, and I, along with the millions of people she has inspired, am hoping this remarkable young woman wins.
- The Malala Fund was established to educate girls throughout the world.
- The quotes in the comic were taken from her blog entries, the NYT documentary and this interview Malala did with CNN.
- I illustrated the events of the shooting after reading a few sources: Daily Mail, The Guardian, CNN, ABC Australia and Wikipedia.
>via: http://zenpencils.com/comic/104-malala-yousafzai-i-have-the-right/
KIM CROSBY
Writer. Educator. Social Entrepreneur. Artist.<p>SPEAK: Kim's Story // insightproject.tv from The INSIGHT Project on Vimeo.</p>
A daughter of the diaspora, Arawak, West African, Indian and Dutch, hailing from Trinidad and living currently in Toronto. I'm an award-winning multidisciplinary artist, activist, consultant, facilitator and educator.
Image Credit: Michele Clarke
I completed my artist residency under D’bi Young at the AnitAfrika Theatre and also was a student of the Buddies In Bad Times Young Creator’s Unit, touring internationally with my one womyn play, “Hands In My Cunt” a biomythographical account of my resistance and experience of sexual violence.
In 2009 I was the Youthline Award Winner for “Outstanding Contribution To Community Empowerment”. In 2010 I was named one of YSEC’s 100 Young Changemakers while also being recognized in Canada’s Northern Lights Exhibition: Celebrating African Canadian Stories. In 2011, I was recognized as one of 12 of the City Of Toronto’s Cultural Champions among such brilliant activists as Lillian Allen. In 2012 I was recognized as one of Go Magazine’s 100 Women We Love, sharing the list with the likes of Ellen Degeneres and Wanda Sykes. In 2013, I have most recently been honoured as one of the featured Game Changers of The Insight Project along with folks like Che Kothari, Brandon Hay & Kristen Wong Tam.
I've spoken on panels and conferences nationally as well as facilitated radical community dialogues including Queer As Black Folk hosted by The Black Daddies Club and was the keynote speaker at Dartmouth Pride, The 2011 Unity Conference and Queering Black History Month.
My writing and voice have been featured in the Toronto Star, The National Post, The Huffington Post, George Brown University textbooks as well as Autostraddle.
<p>Insight: Revolution of Spirit from The INSIGHT Project on Vimeo.</p>
Supporting the creation of community arts and allocation of resources, I sit on the boards of Artreach, Shadeism and the Toronto Arts Council Community Arts Council and most recently the Rhubarb selection committee. I also regularly curate and co-curate events and exhibits including the annual Gender Exhibition in Toronto.
I was a core member of the nationally touring Lesbian Blues group, a collective of Black Queer Folks committed to decolonization through creative political performance as well as T-Dot Renaissance, a wave of cultural and artistic collaborations for this generation of emerging artists of colour.
I'm the co-founder of The People Project. Awarded the City Of Toronto’s Vital Ideas Award in 2010, TPP is a movement of queer and trans folks of color and our allies, committed to individual and community empowerment through alternative education, activism and collaboration.
<p>Insight: Thinkers + Doers from The INSIGHT Project on Vimeo.</p>
Through my work at The People Project, I've consulted and supported organizations the world over including Brown Boi Project, The Harmony Movement, The Grassroots Youth Collaborative, Stolen From Africa as well as the Toronto District School Board and The City Of Toronto Cultural Arts Division. In this work I have developed and co-developed over 50 distinct resources and tools as well as delivered over 150 workshops around race, gender, power, privilege, consent, creation, food and entrepreneurship.
<p>Insight: Incredible Resourcefulness from The INSIGHT Project on Vimeo.</p>
I am the Coordinator of Brave New Girls, a radical healing retreats and a series of traveling skillshares for womyn & trans folks of colour.
I am also one of the owners of The Glad Day Bookshop, the world's oldest LGBTQ Bookstore opened in 1970 with 21 other enormous individuals like Gein Wong, Micheal Erickson & El Farouk Khaki.
<p>Insight: Speaking Back from The INSIGHT Project on Vimeo.</p>
In over a decade of community organizing, I've worked across the intersections of oppression in food justice, HIV activism as well as race & gender justice. I'm also a yoga teacher teaching through the Brown Girl’s Yoga collective.
Sarah Forbes Bonetta:
biography, migration and
the historical agenda
I gave a paper last year debating the use of Sarah Forbes Bonetta’s biography over time. Sarah’s story reads like a novel: a young girl who was ‘adopted’ by Queen Victoria, after a traveller to West Africa brought her back to England, her life story demonstrated the movement possible between Europe and Africa. After arrival in Britain she was sent back to Africa (to Sierra Leone) to attend a mission school for girls. She then returned to Britain, and appears to have been set up with a self-made successful businessman, James Davies. After their marriage, she returned to the West coast with Davies, settling in Lagos and establishing a family who continue to be influential today.
Sarah’s story can be tracked through a range of primary material. She is described in an explorer’s books, national and local newspapers, and even the royal archives. Her life provides a contrast to the many disenfranchised people who left no papers or life history records to enable a detailed reconstruction of their experiences.
One of my conclusions from the paper was that Sarah’s own views appeared very rarely as part of the discussion, partly because they were not part of these institutional records. So newspaper descriptions of her wedding survive, but no record of what she said or thought of these reports. Images do survive, including a series with her husband, James Davies. This leaves the historian with much to say about the perception of some Victorians about Sarah, but little about what Sarah herself thought about her school in Sierra Leone, or her return to Britain and subsequent marriage.
I have found it easy to think of global travel as a ‘new’ thing, a feature of the last century, if that. Yet in teaching a course on migration and Africa to students I came across repeated examples of migrants like Sarah covering substantial distances before planes and scheduled holiday sailings, and found myself readjusting my assumptions. Julia Clancy Smith’s account of Tunis uses one diverse city on the North African coast to demonstrate multiple experiences of migration. Amitav Ghosh’s memoir of research in Egypt discusses using ancient correspondence of migrants. Ghosh’s travellers moved between Egypt, India, East Africa, Syria, Morocco and Spain in the 11th century. Yet it is the survival of written evidence that is noteworthy, rather than the moves they document.
Somehow individuals’ stories seem to strike me particularly, as if it is through their eyes I ‘see’ what it is to move, in a way that statistics fail to do. So Sarah becomes an attractive figure for a narrative about personal experience of migration, of the range of reasons that people move.
In using Sarah’s biography to make a wider point about history (or histories), I am by no means alone. Sarah has been widely written about, and her face or name may even be familiar. She has been used repeatedly in educational campaigns, from abolition to black history month / week. One of the reasons I was able to write about her was that so much material has been published, from educational videos by museums, to digitised newspaper articles. Whilst to me Sarah speaks about the pain and difficulty of moving between worlds, of moving because of family and finance and health to places that might otherwise be chosen, this is not the only perspective.
However, in ‘using’ Sarah’s narrative in this way, I effectively come full circle, enrolling her in a historical agenda much as those who have written about her before. Nine months after writing the conference paper I wonder if this process is inevitable or if it is possible to work with biographical accounts and do justice to the individual’s priorities. This is particularly because The Feminist Press have published a small collection of Sarah’s letters as part of their ‘Women Writing Africa’ series.
Readers interested in finding out more about Sarah may wish to consult:
10 Great Performances
From 10 Legendary
Jazz Artists:
Django, Miles, Monk,
Coltrane & More
Billie Holiday Sings ‘Strange Fruit,’ 1959:Last week we brought you a post titled “Miles Davis and His ‘Second Great Quintet,’ Filmed Live in Europe, 1967,” featuring Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter. The response was enthusiastic, and it reminded us that a great many of you share our love of jazz. It got us thinking: Why not gather the material from our favorite jazz posts into one place? So today we’re happy to bring you ten great performances from ten legendary artists.
We begin with Billie Holiday (above) singing her painful signature song of racism and murder, “Strange Fruit.” The song was written by teacher and unionist Abel Meeropol, who was horrified when he saw a 1930 photograph of two black men hanging from a tree in Indiana, victims of a lynch mob. Holiday first recorded “Strange Fruit” in 1939 and continued to sing it, despite some resistance, for the rest of her life. The performance above was taped in London for the Granada TV program Chelsea at Nine in February of 1959, just five months before Holiday’s untimely death at the age of 44.
Dave Brubeck Performs ‘Take Five,’ 1961:
The legendary pianist Dave Brubeck died earlier this month, just one day short of his 92nd birthday. To remember him on that day we posted the clip above from a 1961 episode of the American public television program Jazz Casual, with Brubeck and his quartet performing the classic song “Take Five” from their influential 1959 album, Time Out. The musicians are: Brubeck on piano, Eugene Wright on bass, Joe Morello on drums, and Paul Desmond (who wrote “Take Five”) on alto saxophone. For more on Brubeck, including a delightful clip of the elderly master improvising with a young Russian violinist at the Moscow Conservatory, see our Dec. 5 post, “Remembering Jazz Legend Dave Brubeck with a Very Touching Musical Moment.”
Chet Baker Performs ‘Time After Time,’ 1964:
Last December we featured the clip above of Chet Baker playing the Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne standard, “Time After Time,” on Belgian television in 1964. Baker is joined by the Belgian flautist Jacques Pelzer, French pianist Rene Urtreger and an Italian rhythm section of Luigi Trussardi on bass and Franco Manzecchi on drums. Baker sings and plays the flugelhorn. For more of Baker’s music and a poignant look at his troubled life, be sure to see our 2011 post, Let’s Get Lost: Bruce Weber’s Sad Film of Jazz Legend Chet Baker.
Duke Ellington on the Côte d’Azur, 1966:
On a beautiful summer day in 1966, two of the 20th century’s great artists–Duke Ellington and Joan Miró–met at a museum in the medieval French village of St. Paul de Vence, high in the hills overlooking the Côte d’Azur. Neither one understood a word the other said, but Miró showed Ellington his sculpture and Ellington played music for Miró. In the scene above, narrated by the great jazz impressario Norman Granz, Ellington and his trio play a new song that would eventually be named “The Shepherd (Who Watches Over His Flock).” The trio is made up of Ellington on Piano, John Lamb on Bass and Sam Woodyard on drums. To learn more about that day, including recollections from the only surviving member of Ellington’s trio, see our May 10 post, “Duke Ellington Plays for Joan Miró in the South of France, 1966: Bassist John Lamb Looks Back on the Day.”
Django Reinhardt Performs ‘J’attendrai,’ 1938:
With only two good fretting fingers on his left hand, gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt created one of the most distinctive instrumental styles in 20th century music. The clip above is from the 1938 short film Jazz “Hot”, which features Reinhardt, along with violinist Stéphane Grappelli and the Quintette du Hot Club de France, perfoming a swing version of the popular song “J’attendrai.” (“J’attendrai” means “I will wait.”) To learn about Reinhardt and the fire that cost him the use of most of his left hand, be sure to see our Aug. 10 post, “Django Reinhardt and the Inspiring Story Behind His Guitar Technique.”
John Coltrane Plays Material From
A Love Supreme, 1965:
In December of 1964 the John Coltrane Quartet recorded its masterpiece, A Love Supreme, in one session. A highly original blending of hard bop and free jazz with spiritual overtones, the album is recognized as a landmark in jazz history. The Smithsonian Institution declared it a national treasure. But Coltrane reportedly played the material only once in public, at a 1965 concert in Antibes, France. You can see a portion of that performance above, as Coltrane and his quartet play ”Part 1: Acknowledgement” from the four-part composition. The quartet is composed of Coltrane on tenor saxophone, McCoy Tyner on Piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. To watch and listen as the band plays “Part 2: Resolution,” see our 2011 post, John Coltrane Plays Only Live Performance of A Love Supreme.
Miles Davis on The Robert Herridge Theater, 1959:
Most of the great performances on this page were preserved by government-funded broadcasting companies, particularly in Europe. Left to its own devices, the “invisible hand” of the television marketplace was fairly content to ignore jazz and allow its great artists to pass unnoticed and unrecorded. A notable exception to this trend was made by the CBS producer Robert Herridge, who had the vision and foresight to organize an episode of The Robert Herridge Theater–a program normally devoted to the storytelling arts–around the music of Miles Davis. In an extraordinary 26-minute broadcast, shown above in its entirety, Davis performs with members of his “first great quintet” (John Coltrane on tenor and alto saxophone, Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums) and with the Gil Evans Orchestra. A sixth member of the smaller combo (by that time it had grown to a sextet), alto saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderly, can be seen briefly but doesn’t play due to a splitting migraine headache. The broadcast took place between recording sessions for Davis’s landmark album, Kind of Blue. The set list is: “So What,” “The Duke,” “Blues for Pablo,” “New Rhumba” and a reprise of “So What.” For more on Davis, see our Oct. 25 post, “The Miles Davis Story: the Definitive Film Biography of a Jazz Legend.”
Thelonious Monk in Copenhagen, 1966:
Here’s a great half-hour set by Thelonious Monk and his quartet, recorded by Danish television on April 17, 1966. The lineup includes Monk on piano, Charlie Rouse on tenor saxophone, Larry Gales on Bass and Ben Riley on Drums. They play three songs–”Lulu’s Back in Town,” “Don’t Blame Me” and “Epistrophy”–with Monk giving the others plenty of room to solo as he gets up from the piano to do his stiff, idiosyncratic dance. For more on Monk, see our 2011 post on the extraordinary documentary film, Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser.
Bill Evans on the Jazz 625 show, 1965:
In March of 1965 the Bill Evans Trio visited the BBC studios in London to play a pair of sets on Jazz 625, hosted by British trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton. The two 35-minute programs are shown above, back-to-back. The trio features Evans on piano, Chuck Israels on bass and Larry Bunker on drums. To read the set list for both shows, see our May 31 post, “The Bill Evans Trio in London, 1965: Two Sets by the Legendary Combo.” And for a fascinating introduction to the great jazz pianist’s philosophy of music, don’t miss our April 5 post, “The Universal Mind of Bill Evans: Advice on Learning to Play Jazz and the Creative Process.”
Charles Mingus in Belgium, 1964:
In April of 1964 the great bassist and composer Charles Mingus and his experimental combo, The Jazz Workshop, embarked on a three-week tour of Europe that is remembered as one of the high-water marks in Mingus’s career. The performance above was recorded by Belgian television on Sunday, April 19, 1964 at the Palais des Congrés in Liège, Belgium. Mingus and the band play three songs: “So Long Eric,” “Peggy’s Blue Skylight” and “Meditations on Integration.” The group features Mingus on bass, Dannie Richmond on drums, Jaki Byard on piano, Clifford Jordan on tenor saxophone and Eric Dolphy on alto saxophone, flute and bass clarinet. A sixth member, trumpeter Johnny Coles, was forced to drop out of the band after he collapsed onstage two nights earlier. For more of Mingus’s music and a look at his troubled life, see our Aug. 2 post, “Charles Mingus and His Eviction From His New York City Loft, Captured in Moving 1968 Film.”
via openculture.com
Omar Sosa and Paolo Fresu
Perform from their Album
‘Alma’
Omar Sosa (L) and Paolo Fresu (R) in Fraser Studio at WGBH. (Photo: Marco Werman)
I’ve been following the respective careers of Omar Sosa and Paolo Fresu for more than 10 years.Sosa is a Cuban jazz pianist and Fresu is an Italian trumpet player.
As soloists, they push beyond the conventional limits of jazz.
But then I heard that Sosa and Fresu began a collaboration a few years ago, I thought, “wow.”
So when they came to a Boston jazz club a couple of weeks ago, I had to get them to our studios for a chat perform some of their incredible music.
Read More
Omar Sosa's website Paolo Fresu's website Tom Schnabel's DJ Pick 'Alma'
via theworld.org
AIDS Vaccine 2013 ConferenceJournalism FellowshipPosted 01 March 2013 | Deadline: 28 April 2013The AIDS Vaccine 2013 conference invites qualified print, radio/broadcast, community and online journalists to apply for a fellowship to participate in the world's only scientific meeting dedicated exclusively to HIV vaccine research. The fellowship program runs 6 – 10 October in Barcelona, Spain in conjunction with the AIDS Vaccine 2013 conference. It includes a pre-conference workshop for journalist fellows on the global HIV epidemic and the latest in HIV vaccine research, featuring some of the leading scientists, advocates and experts in the field.
FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM:
HIV vaccine research has progressed further and faster in the past few years than at any time since the epidemic began. The fellowship program aims to update journalists on the latest progress in the field, introduce new and novel HIV vaccine research developments, and discuss emerging issues in HIV vaccine research and testing. In addition to the workshop, fellows will participate in daily press briefings, Q&A sessions with experts and other events designed to improve the conference experience and facilitate quality media coverage of the event.
Journalist fellows will receive conference registration, transportation to and from Barcelona, accommodation, most meals and a per diem. Applications are encouraged from reporters with experience covering the science of HIV/AIDS as well as the social, economic and larger societal impact of the epidemic. Successful applicants should have the support of their media outlet to attend and report on the conference. All applicants must have strong English speaking and reading skills.
APPLICANT REQUIREMENTS:
All applicants are required to submit a brief letter of intent, CV, editor recommendation, samples of published work relating to HIV/AIDS and other details. This is a competitive program. Applications must be received by Sunday, 28 April.
AIDS Vaccine 2013, the leading global scientific conference on HIV vaccine research, is hosted by the Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise and the Catalan Program for HIV Vaccine Research, HIVACAT.
- Title your letter of support as follows: Surname First Name LETTER, (e.g., Brown James LETTER)
- Title your samples of published work as follows: Surname First Name SAMPLES, (e.g., Brown James SAMPLES)
- Your letter of support and samples should be in PDF format.
CONTACT INFORMATION:
For queries: Jennifer Brunet at jbrunet@vaccineenterprise.org
For submissions: via the online fellowship application site
Once every quarter, we have a short story competition. The maximum story length is 1500 words and you can write about any subject genre you like. But don't forget it has to be amusing, witty, funny or whatever word you may care to choose.
It costs €5 per story to enter.
All payments to be made via PayPal only.
You will either have to set up an account here www.paypal.co.uk and when you get to the payment page put payments@cheerreader.co.uk in the recipient box, or I can send you a PayPal invoice via email, and all you have to do is follow the instructions contained therein.
This second option doesn't necessitate you opening a PayPal account.
If you choose the second option, please email your details to payments@cheerreader.co.uk.
First prize is €100. The prize will be paid through PayPal only. Runners up (those that miss out narrowly on Ist prize) will be awarded a CheerReader commendation. The prize-winning entry and the commendations will be published on this website.
The next competition will be the Winter Short Story Competition. The closing date is March 31st, 2013. The winner and commendations will be announced two weeks after the closing date.For complete details, see the competition rules & regulations page. Happy writing and good luck!
Call for Papers:
West Indian Literature Conference 2013
The West Indian Literature Conference 2013, under the topic “Multiple Textualities: Imagining the Caribbean Nation,” will be held at the College of The Bahamas, October 10-12, 2013. The deadline for proposals is June 15, 2013.
Description: Charles V. Carnegie—in his multimodal text, Postcolonialism Prefigured: Caribbean Borderlands—argues that “nationalism both presumes and demands a fundamental sameness, whether through a common pledge of loyalty to a set of civic principles or through supposedly shared primordial characteristics such as language or ethnicity.” His text urges Caribbeanists to question the inflexibility of nationalist dialogues that construct West Indian identities. This and other recent critiques of nationalist discourse draw attention to the limitations of nationalism in conceiving and constructing individual and communal West Indian experiences.
Further, “this presumption of homogeneity”, Carnegie asserts, “sets up both external and internal oppositions,” and these oppositions undergird the conventional nationalist discourse coming out of the region. New approaches to Caribbean literary analysis, such as that seen in Shalini Puri’s The Caribbean Postcolonial: Social Equality, Post-nationalism, and Cultural Hybridity, complicate this focus on homogeneity and apply the frameworks of hybridity and difference to produce post-nationalist interpretations of Caribbean literature.
It would seem, then, that there is something we’re missing in our articulations of the Caribbean experience when we interpret West Indian literature from the traditional perspective of nationalist politics and aesthetics. This conference welcomes critical practice and critical reflection on new interpretive models for West Indian literature, art, and critical discourse that stretch the boundaries of nationalist discourse. We especially invite examinations of multiple and multimodal texts that also stretch the boundaries of genre and disciplinary studies.
Some questions to consider include: What is the relationship between Caribbean independence, nationalism and imagination? In what ways does the history of independence inform our critical approaches to West Indian art and aesthetics? How was and how is nationalism constructed in Caribbean literatures? How are nationalisms being challenged in West Indian art? In what ways can nationalist discourse be sustained as an integral aspect of the Caribbean literary aesthetic? How does multimodality impact representations of West Indian identity? How do artists utilize multiple modalities to construct the complexity of the West Indian experience?
Please submit 50-100 word abstracts to westindianlitconf2013@gmail.com by June 15, 2013.