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AFRO-AMERICAN MUSIC INSTITUTE CELEBRATES 36 YEARS

BOYS CHOIR AFRICA SHIRTS
 
 
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/building-today-for-tomorrow/x/267428

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PITTSBURGH JAZZ

 

From Blakey to Brown, Como to Costa, Eckstine to Eldridge, Galbraith to Garner, Harris to Hines, Horne to Hyman, Jamal to Jefferson, Kelly to Klook; Mancini to Marmarosa, May to Mitchell, Negri to Nestico, Parlan to Ponder, Reed to Ruther, Strayhorn to Sullivan, Turk to Turrentine, Wade to Williams… the forthcoming publication Treasury of Pittsburgh Jazz Connections by Dr. Nelson Harrison and Dr. Ralph Proctor, Jr. will document the legacy of one of the world’s greatest jazz capitals.

 

Do you want to know who Dizzy Gillespie  idolized? Did you ever wonder who inspired Kenny Clarke and Art Blakey? Who was the pianist that mentored Monk, Bud Powell, Tad Dameron, Elmo Hope, Sarah Vaughan and Mel Torme? Who was Art Tatum’s idol and Nat Cole’s mentor? What musical quartet pioneered the concept adopted later by the Modern Jazz Quartet? Were you ever curious to know who taught saxophone to Stanley Turrentine or who taught piano to Ahmad Jamal? What community music school trained Robert McFerrin, Sr. for his history-making debut with the Metropolitan Opera? What virtually unknown pianist was a significant influence on young John Coltrane, Shirley Scott, McCoy Tyner, Bobby Timmons and Ray Bryant when he moved to Philadelphia from Pittsburgh in the 1940s?  Would you be surprised to know that Erroll Garner attended classes at the Julliard School of Music in New York and was at the top of his class in writing and arranging proficiency?

 

Some answers  can be gleaned from the postings on the Pittsburgh Jazz Network.

 

For almost 100 years the Pittsburgh region has been a metacenter of jazz originality that is second to no other in the history of jazz.  One of the best kept secrets in jazz folklore, the Pittsburgh Jazz Legacy has heretofore remained mythical.  We have dubbed it “the greatest story never told” since it has not been represented in writing before now in such a way as to be accessible to anyone seeking to know more about it.  When it was happening, little did we know how priceless the memories would become when the times were gone.

 

Today jazz is still king in Pittsburgh, with events, performances and activities happening all the time. The Pittsburgh Jazz Network is dedicated to celebrating and showcasing the places, artists and fans that carry on the legacy of Pittsburgh's jazz heritage.

 

WELCOME!

 

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Duke Ellington is first African-American and the first musician to solo on U.S. circulating coin

    MARY LOU WILLIAMS     

            INTERVIEW

       In Her Own Words

‘Black Panther’ Star Chadwick Boseman Dies of Cancer at 43

The actor also played groundbreaking figures like James Brown, Jackie Robinson and Thurgood Marshall, becoming one of his generation’s most sought-after leading men.

The actor Chadwick Boseman in 2018. He was 35 when he appeared in his first prominent role, as Jackie Robinson.
The actor Chadwick Boseman in 2018. He was 35 when he appeared in his first prominent role, as Jackie Robinson.Credit...Axel Koester for The New York Times


Chadwick Boseman, the regal actor who embodied a long-held dream of African-American moviegoers as the star of the groundbreaking superhero film “Black Panther,” died on Friday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 43.

His publicist confirmed the death, saying Mr. Boseman’s wife, Taylor Simone Ledward, and family were by his side at the time. A statement posted on Mr. Boseman’s Instagram account said that he learned he had Stage 3 colon cancer in 2016 and that it had progressed to Stage 4.


“A true fighter, Chadwick persevered through it all, and brought you many of the films you have come to love so much,” the statement said. “From ‘Marshall’ to ‘Da 5 Bloods,’ August Wilson’s ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’ and several more, all were filmed during and between countless surgeries and chemotherapy.”



Whether it was James Brown in “Get On Up,” Thurgood Marshall in “Marshall” or T’Challa in “Black Panther,” Mr. Boseman’s unfussy versatility and old-fashioned gravitas helped turn him into one of his generation’s most sought-after leading men.


News of his death elicited widespread shock and grief, and many prominent figures in the arts world and civic life paid tribute to Mr. Boseman. Martin Luther King III, a human-rights activist and the eldest son of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., said the actor had “brought history to life on the silver screen” in his portrayals of pioneering Black leaders.

Joseph R. Biden Jr. the former vice president and current Democratic presidential nominee, shared a post on Twitter saying that Mr. Boseman had “inspired generations and showed them they can be anything they want — even super heroes.”



Oprah Winfrey, also posting on Twitter, wrote that Mr. Boseman was “a gentle gifted SOUL.”

“Showing us all that Greatness in between surgeries and chemo,” she added. “The courage, the strength, the Power it takes to do that. This is what Dignity looks like.”


ImageMr. Boseman in "Black Panther." It was the first major superhero movie with an African protagonist and a majority Black cast.
Mr. Boseman in "Black Panther." It was the first major superhero movie with an African protagonist and a majority Black cast.Credit...Marvel Studios/Disney, via Associated Press

Mr. Boseman had admired T’Challa and Marvel’s “Black Panther” comics since attending Howard University, where he worked at an African bookstore as an undergraduate.

When the opportunity came to bring the character — and his fictional African homeland, Wakanda — to the big screen, Mr. Boseman embraced the role’s symbolic significance to Black audiences with a statesman’s pride and devotion. He lobbied for the characters to speak in authentic South African accents, and led on-set cast discussions about ancient African symbolism and spirituality.

The film, shot in 2017 after Mr. Boseman received his diagnosis, was a cultural sensation — the first major superhero movie with an African protagonist and the first to star a majority Black cast. It was near universally praised by critics for its thematic heft and array of dynamic performances by Lupita Nyong’o, Michael B. Jordan, Angela Bassett and others.

Reviewing the movie for Slate, the writer Jamelle Bouie credited Mr. Boseman with imbuing the comic-book hero with “both regal confidence and real vulnerability.”



Audiences were even more enthusiastic. Joyful armies of fans participated in special outings and repeated viewings. Many came to theaters dressed in African-inspired clothing and accessories, often using a greeting from the film, “Wakanda forever,” as a convivial rallying cry.

The fervor helped make “Black Panther” one of the highest-grossing movies of all time, with more than $1.3 billion in earnings globally. Its success represented a moment of hope, pride and empowerment for Black moviegoers around the world. And it marked an inflection point in Hollywood, where decades of discrimination against Black-led films gave way to a new era of increased visibility and opportunity for Black artists.

The statement on Mr. Boseman’s Instagram account said it was “the honor of his career to bring King T’Challa to life in ‘Black Panther.’”

How the Walt Disney Company might continue the blockbuster franchise without Mr. Boseman, if at all, was unclear. Although a sequel had been scheduled for release in 2022, filming had yet to begin. On Twitter, fans quickly mounted a campaign demanding that Disney not recast the role. The studio had no comment.

Chadwick Aaron Boseman was born on Nov. 29, 1976, in the small city of Anderson, S.C., the youngest of three boys. His mother, Carolyn, was a nurse, and his father, Leroy, worked for an agricultural conglomerate and had a side business as an upholsterer.


Image
Mr. Boseman in “42” as Jackie Robinson, the first Black player in Major League Baseball.
Mr. Boseman in “42” as Jackie Robinson, the first Black player in Major League Baseball.Credit...D. Stevens/Warner Bros. Pictures, via Associated Press

“I saw him work a lot of third shifts, a lot of night shifts,” Mr. Boseman told The New York Times last year. “Whenever I work a particularly hard week, I think of him.”



It wasn’t an upbringing that suggested a future in Hollywood. Mr. Boseman was flanked by the traditional working-class values of his parents on one side, and an environment shadowed by racism on the other. In an interview with Rolling Stone in 2018, he recalled being the target of racial slurs as a child while simply walking down the street.

His older brother Kevin, a dancer who has performed with the Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey troupes and toured with the stage adaptation of “The Lion King,” was a guiding light. Mr. Boseman told The Times that he first gained the confidence to pursue the arts while attending Kevin’s dance rehearsals.

“He had the resolve to be, like, ‘No — I have something; I’m going to do it anyway, right or wrong,’” Mr. Boseman said of following his brother’s example. “And he was right.”

Complete information on his survivors was not immediately available.

In high school, Mr. Boseman was a serious basketball player, but turned to storytelling after a friend and teammate was shot and killed. He enrolled at Howard University with the dream of becoming a director.

While taking an acting class there with the Tony Award-winning actress and director Phylicia Rashad, Mr. Boseman and his classmates were accepted to the British American Drama Academy in Oxford, England. The students couldn’t afford the trip, but Ms. Rashad helped finance it with assistance from a friend and future colleague of Mr. Boseman’s, Denzel Washington.

After graduating, Mr. Boseman moved to New York to work in theater. He wrote and directed several plays, including “Deep Azure” and “Hieroglyphic Graffiti, many of which were infused with the grammar of hip-hop and pan-African theology. He lived in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn and earned money by teaching acting to students at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.


A recurring role in the 2007-9 ABC Family series “Lincoln Heights” brought Mr. Boseman to Los Angeles, where he soon felt the allure of movie stardom.

“Before that, I had just wanted to be an artist in New York,” he said. “I didn’t understand that coming to L.A. and trying to be a film actor was a completely different thing.”

Brian Helgeland, the writer and director of “42,” which gave Mr. Boseman his breakout role, attributed his quick rise in the industry to his striking presence onscreen. Mr. Helgeland said Mr. Boseman reminded him of sturdy icons of 1970s virility, like Gene Hackman and Clint Eastwood.

“It’s the way he carries himself, his stillness — you just have that feeling that you’re around a strong person,” Mr. Helgeland said.


After starring in “Black Panther,” Mr. Boseman reprised the role in two “Avengers” films, “Avengers: Infinity War” (2018) and “Avengers: Endgame” (2019).

He was developing multiple projects as a screenwriter (he co-wrote an undeveloped script for an international thriller called “Expatriate”) and as a producer (he was a producer and star of the 2019 detective movie “21 Bridges”) for what he hoped would be a fruitful new chapter in his career.

Mr. Boseman continued to take on roles with a sociopolitical edge. He appeared as a Vietnam War hero in the Spike Lee epic “Da 5 Bloods,” released in the spring, and will play a 1920s blues musician in a film adaptation of August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” produced by Mr. Washington and Todd Black and due later this year from Netflix.

A lifelong admirer of Muhammad Ali, Mr. Boseman sought to wield his celebrity to advance a greater, moral cause. During this summer’s wave of protests against systemic racism and police brutality, he expressed support for the Black Lives Matter movement and joined other Black entertainers and executives in calling on the industry to cut ties with police departments.

Onscreen and off, he was fueled by a commitment to leave nothing on the table.

“You want to choose a difficult way sometimes,” he said, describing his acting method to The Times last year. “Some days it should be simple, but sometimes you’ve got to take chances.”

Brooks Barnes and Marie Fazio contributed reporting.



Reggie Ugwu is a pop culture reporter covering a range of subjects, including film, television, music and internet culture. Before joining The Times in 2017, he was a reporter for BuzzFeed News and Billboard magazine. @uugwuu

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‘Black Panther’ Director Ryan Coogler Pens Emotional to Chadwick Boseman


Ryan Coogler is heartbroken over the death of Chadwick Boseman.

The Black Panther filmmaker wrote a lengthy, emotional tribute to Chadwick Boseman, who died Friday at his home in the Los Angeles area with his wife, Taylor Simone Ledward, and family by his side.

Boseman, 43, was diagnosed with colon cancer four years ago, and he never made his health public.

In a heartbreaking reveal, Coogler says he “wasn’t privy to the details of actor’s illness,” adding, “After his family released their statement, I realized that he was living with his illness the entire time I knew him.”

Coogler continued, “Because he was a caretaker, a leader, and a man of faith, dignity and pride, he shielded his collaborators from his suffering. He lived a beautiful life. And he made great art. Day after day, year after year. That was who he was. He was an epic firework display. I will tell stories about being there for some of the brilliant sparks till the end of my days.”

Coogler also spoke about their working relationship. “I noticed then that Chad was an anomaly. He was calm. Assured. Constantly studying,” Coogler said. “But also kind, comforting, had the warmest laugh in the world, and eyes that seen much beyond his years, but could still sparkle like a child seeing something for the first time.”

And the director says he is broken from the loss, referencing his time penning a script for a Panther sequel. “I spent the last year preparing, imagining and writing words for him to say, that we weren’t destined to see,” wrote Coogler.

And he said a lot more. Read his statement below:

Read the tribute from Coogler below.

I inherited Marvel and the Russo Brothers’ casting choice of T’Challa. It is something that I will forever be grateful for. The first time I saw Chad’s performance as T’Challa, it was in an unfinished cut of CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR. I was deciding whether or not directing BLACK PANTHER was the right choice for me. I’ll never forget, sitting in an editorial suite on the Disney Lot and watching his scenes. His first with Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, then, with the South African cinema titan, John Kani as T’Challa’s father, King T’Chaka. It was at that moment I knew I wanted to make this movie. After Scarlett’s character leaves them, Chad and John began conversing in a language I had never heard before. It sounded familiar, full of the same clicks and smacks that young black children would make in the States. The same clicks that we would often be chided for being disrespectful or improper. But, it had a musicality to it that felt ancient, powerful, and African. 

In my meeting after watching the film, I asked Nate Moore, one of the producers of the film, about the language. “Did you guys make it up?” Nate replied, “that’s Xhosa, John Kani’s native language. He and Chad decided to do the scene like that on set, and we rolled with it.” I thought to myself. “He just learned lines in another language, that day?” I couldn’t conceive how difficult that must have been, and even though I hadn’t met Chad, I was already in awe of his capacity as actor. 

I learned later that there was much conversation over how T’Challa would sound in the film. The decision to have Xhosa be the official language of Wakanda was solidified by Chad, a native of South Carolina, because he was able to learn his lines in Xhosa, there on the spot. He also advocated for his character to speak with an African accent, so that he could present T’Challa to audiences as an African king, whose dialect had not been conquered by the West. 

I finally met Chad in person in early 2016, once I signed onto the film. He snuck past journalists that were congregated for a press junket I was doing for CREED, and met with me in the green room. We talked about our lives, my time playing football in college, and his time at Howard studying to be a director, about our collective vision for T’Challa and Wakanda. We spoke about the irony of how his former Howard classmate Ta-Nehisi Coates was writing T’Challa’s current arc with Marvel Comics. And how Chad knew Howard student Prince Jones, who’s murder by a police officer inspired Coates’ memoir Between The World and Me. 

I noticed then that Chad was an anomaly. He was calm. Assured. Constantly studying. But also kind, comforting, had the warmest laugh in the world, and eyes that seen much beyond his years, but could still sparkle like a child seeing something for the first time.   

That was the first of many conversations. He was a special person. We would often speak about heritage and what it means to be African. When preparing for the film, he would ponder every decision, every choice, not just for how it would reflect on himself, but how those choices could reverberate. “They not ready for this, what we are doing…” “This is Star Wars, this is Lord of the Rings, but for us… and bigger!” He would say this to me while we were struggling to finish a dramatic scene, stretching into double overtime. Or while he was covered in body paint, doing his own stunts. Or crashing into frigid water, and foam landing pads. I would nod and smile, but I didn’t believe him. I had no idea if the film would work. I wasn’t sure I knew what I was doing. But I look back and realize that Chad knew something we all didn’t. He was playing the long game.  All while putting in the work. And work he did. 

He would come to auditions for supporting roles, which is not common for lead actors in big budget movies. He was there for several M’Baku auditions. In Winston Duke’s, he turned a chemistry read into a wrestling match. Winston broke his bracelet. In Letitia Wright’s audition for Shuri, she pierced his royal poise with her signature humor, and would bring about a smile to T’Challa’s face that was 100% Chad. 

While filming the movie, we would meet at the office or at my rental home in Atlanta, to discuss lines and different ways to add depth to each scene. We talked costumes, military practices. He said to me “Wakandans have to dance during the coronations. If they just stand there with spears, what separates them from Romans?” In early drafts of the script. Eric Killmonger’s character would ask T’Challa to be buried in Wakanda. Chad challenged that and asked, what if Killmonger asked to be buried somewhere else? 

Chad deeply valued his privacy, and I wasn’t privy to the details of his illness. After his family released their statement, I realized that he was living with his illness the entire time I knew him. Because he was a caretaker, a leader, and a man of faith, dignity and pride, he shielded his collaborators from his suffering. He lived a beautiful life. And he made great art. Day after day, year after year. That was who he was. He was an epic firework display. I will tell stories about being there for some of the brilliant sparks till the end of my days. What an incredible mark he’s left for us. 

I haven’t grieved a loss this acute before. I spent the last year preparing, imagining and writing words for him to say, that we weren’t destined to see. It leaves me broken knowing that I won’t be able to watch another close-up of him in the monitor again or walk up to him and ask for another take. 

It hurts more to know that we can’t have another conversation, or facetime, or text message exchange. He would send vegetarian recipes and eating regimens for my family and me to follow during the pandemic.  He would check in on me and my loved ones, even as he dealt with the scourge of cancer.  

In African cultures we often refer to loved ones that have passed on as ancestors. Sometimes you are genetically related. Sometimes you are not. I had the privilege of directing scenes of Chad’s character, T’Challa, communicating with the ancestors of Wakanda. We were in Atlanta, in an abandoned warehouse, with bluescreens, and massive movie lights, but Chad’s performance made it feel real. I think it was because from the time that I met him, the ancestors spoke through him. It’s no secret to me now how he was able to skillfully portray some of our most notable ones. I had no doubt that he would live on and continue to bless us with more. But it is with a heavy heart and a sense of deep gratitude to have ever been in his presence, that I have to reckon with the fact that Chad is an ancestor now. And I know that he will watch over us, until we meet again.

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