Many, many people with an internet connection, including yours truly, spent a fair amount of time on 11 August 2017 entranced by a Google Doodle.…
The story of the funky drummer:
“Give the drummer some”, said the voice of funk soul pioneer James Brown as it rang out above his band on the 1967 recording…
A History of American Protest Music
On June 12, 1963, in the early morning after president John F. Kennedy’s Civil Rights address, activist Medgar Evers was shot in the back as…
The origins of hip hop
When we hear “hip-hop” or “rap” (we hardly hear just one of those term separately, because of their common origins), we talk about a musical…
#HipHopDance
How the B-Boy and B-Girl Became Choreographed Count-By-The-Numbers Dancers Prologue: Ihave a dilemma. Every time I pull up old clips of Def Comedy Jam’s first…
PHASE 2’s Party Flyers
In the South Bronx in the 1970s, hip-hop culture was just beginning to form at large musical gatherings called jams. In abandoned buildings packed with…
From Prodigy to KDot
Legendary photographer Estevan Oriol has taken more than a half-million photos throughout a career that has spanned over 25 years. The legendary photographer sat down…
DO THE RIGHT THING
Spike Lee’s third feature, “Do the Right Thing,” returns to movie theatres this weekend in honor of the thirtieth anniversary of its release. Lee dedicated the…
PROJECT SURREALISM
As a season of 1990s cinema kicks off at BFI Southbank, we look back at the suburban landscapes of Mathieu Kassovitz’s vital portrait of the…
FIGHT THE POWER
In the first episode of Ava DuVernay’s Netflix drama When They See Us, a couple of dozen black teenagers pour into Central Park on the…