Last time, we looked at Janelle Monae’s self description as “the random minor note you hear in major songs” and hinted that was somehow related to the artificiality of the even-tempered Western European scale. But[…]
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Category: Race
Presidential Portraits
Everything President Obama has done since first taking office has been viewed with particular scrutiny, and his and Michelle’s selection of portraitists was no exception. Each took the opportunity provided to raise the profile of[…]
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Stevie Wonder: Philosophical Music
It occurred to me recently that in my survey of philosophical music I had too long overlooked perhaps the premiere philosopher of transcendent pop music, Mr. Stevland Wonder (an artist I had the exquisite pleasure[…]
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Morality is Back: Goodness (and Diversity) in Popular Culture
Scientific studies have shown that when times are good, people act bad. Morality becomes an afterthought in times of peace and plenitude, perhaps because bad behavior often pays off when the world is otherwise stable.[…]
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Allegiance
Allegiance is returning to theaters for a one day only engagement, on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor! See it if you can! You may not have heard of the recent Broadway musical Allegiance. You might[…]
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Sister Mine
As I mentioned in my review of “The Justice Trilogy,” when you are a minority author writing a genre book, you’re risking ending up with a fractal audience, occupying a niche inside a niche. The[…]
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Caroline, or Change
When I went to see what turned out to be an extraordinary production of the Broadway musical Caroline, or Change (playwright Tony Kushner, composer Jeanine Tesori) I wasn’t sure what to expect. I remembered reading[…]
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Quietly Subversive: Malcolm in the Middle
Bryan Cranston became a superstar playing a kindly suburban teacher turned deadly drug kingpin on the hit AMC show Breaking Bad, but before that he was best known as Hal, the emotional center to Fox[…]
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Wiley Reconsidered
A Response to the Toledo Art Museum Retrospective My first encounter with the work of artist Kehinde Wiley was in 2006, when the Columbus Museum of Art commissioned his first significant museum show. At the[…]
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Jordan Edwards: This Life Mattered
The story, in general outline, has been so oft repeated it’s easy to dismiss or overlook: Unarmed black teenager shot and killed by police officer. The facts and images in this particular case make it[…]
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