PROGRESSIVE MUSIC COMPANY

AFRO-AMERICAN MUSIC INSTITUTE CELEBRATES 36 YEARS

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

 Pain Relief Beyond Belief

                         http://www.komehsaessentials.com/                              

 

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



 
The Wake
Friday, January 17, 2014
4:00pm to 9:00pm
Metropolitan Baptist Church
149 Springfield Avenue
Newark, NJ 07103
973.642.2267
www.mbcnewark.org

 
The Funeral
Saturday, January 18, 2014
10:00am
Newark Symphony Hall
1020 Broad Street
Newark, NJ
973.643.8014
www.newarksymphonyhall.org



U.S. playwright, poet and activist Amiri Baraka is seen in an undated handout picture provided by his publicist January 9, 2014. Baraka died on January 9, 2014, at age 79 at a hospital in his native New Jersey, according to his booking agent Celeste Bateman. (Reuters)

Playwright, poet and activist Amiri Baraka dies at 79

 
Amiri Baraka, a controversial playwright, poet and activist who set a new path for fellow African-American artists by bringing militancy and verve to works about race in the United States, died on Thursday at age 79 at a hospital in his native New Jersey, a representative said.
Baraka had been in failing health and passed away at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, surrounded by family, said his booking agent Celeste Bateman.
Baraka had associated with Beat Generation poets in the 1950s and he published his first collection of poems in 1961. In 1964, he won fame in some circles, notoriety in others and an Obie award for his explosive play “Dutchman.”
In the play, a white woman sexually teases and taunts a black man named Clay on a subway, they clash venomously and he speaks of seething anger at whites. The work ends with the woman stabbing Clay in the heart, then eyeing another black rider.
The New York Times, in a 2007 review of a new production of the play, called it the “singular cultural emblem” of the black separatist movement in the United States.
Among Baraka’s other well-known works are his non-fiction book “Blues People: Negro Music in White America” and the poems “In Memory of Radio” and “An Agony. As Now.”
Born Everett LeRoi Jones in Newark, he later became known as Amiri Baraka. On his way to increased political militancy, Baraka in 1965 divorced his white wife, Hettie.
After the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X, Baraka played a principal role in the creation of the Black Arts Movement as the head of a theatre and school in Harlem, the historic centre of African-American creative expression.
The movement served as the cultural wing of the militant Black Power Movement espoused by groups such as the Black Panthers and which had grown out of the civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s.
“The Black Artist’s role in America is to aid in the destruction of America as he knows it,” Baraka wrote in an essay from the time.
Baraka also embraced Marxism and artists in the developing world who, like himself, made political statements.
Among his accolades were the Rockefeller Foundation Award for Drama and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The late poet Robert Creeley, in a 1996 piece in the Boston Review on a collection of Baraka’s poems, recognized the author’s “much emphasized antagonism toward the white majority” but also his “shifts of strategy and relationship.”
“Clearly Baraka is always there, wry, often contemptuous, with characteristic quick wit and displacing humour, but what he values is the collective, the ‘we’ which comes again and again into his poems,” Creeley wrote.
In 2002, as poet laureate of New Jersey, Baraka drew accusations of anti-Semitism over his poem “Somebody Blew Up America,” which included material borrowed from conspiracy theories in an account of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Baraka refused then-New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey’s request for him to resign and, in response, state lawmakers passed a law to eliminate the position of poet laureate.
“Poetry is underrated,” Baraka told the New York Times in 2012, “so when they got rid of the poet laureate thing, I wrote a letter saying, ‘This is progress. In the old days, they could lock me up. Now they just take away my title.’ ”
Baraka over the decades loomed large as a political figure in his home of Newark, where he returned to live in the 1960s after time spent in New York.
“I always thought Amiri Baraka’s decision to come back to Newark and stay in Newark and engage Newark helped this beleaguered city recover some very important parts of its identity – its self identity – in some periods when the city was spiralling downward,” said Clement Price, a professor of history at Rutgers University.
Newark Mayor Luis Quintana said in a statement that his city mourned the death of Baraka, who he said “used the power of the pen to advance the cause of civil rights.”
“Amiri Baraka’s poetry and prose transcended ethnic and racial barriers, inspiring and energizing audiences of many generations,” Quintana said.
U.S. Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, said in a statement, “My thoughts and prayers are with his children and the whole Baraka family after their loss.”
Baraka is survived by his wife, Amina, and several children. His son, Ras Baraka, is on the Municipal Council of Newark and is a candidate to be mayor.

 

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