Hudlin Entertainment Forum

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The latest raft of damning statistics concerning diversity in Hollywood have revealed that only 12% of films or TV shows reflect the actual balance of ethnic minorities in US society.

These figures are particularly shocking if we consider that over 70 years ago, when African Americans were struggling for their civil rights, they were also engaged in a battle to improve their depiction on film.

In 1942 a man called Walter White travelled from New York to Hollywood, armed with a letter of introduction from the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. His aim was to try to persuade filmmakers to positively portray African Americans in movies...

http://mashable.com/2016/02/24/oscarssowhite-74-years-ago/#Bqs16PYhnsqa

The actors who were singing and dancing their way through “Cherchez La Femme: The Musical” in a rehearsal room on Great Jones Street were in street clothes and gymwear. The show’s co-author, songwriter and inspiration, who kept a close eye on the proceedings, was far more dapper. When asked, August Darnell proudly itemized his outfit: black-and-white wingtip shoes, dark gray three-piece pinstripe suit with pleated pants, white shirt, vintage necktie, pocket handkerchief folded just so and a classic Fedora. “Once I discovered this mode of attire, I never gave it up,” Mr. Darnell said.

Now 65, Mr. Darnell has sported his 1940s look since he played bass in Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, whose definitive 1976 hit, “Cherchez La Femme,” merged big-band swing with disco. The Savannah Band was led by Mr. Darnell’s brother, Stony Browder Jr.; Mr. Darnell (born Thomas Darnell Browder) went on to lead Kid Creole and the Coconuts, which found a huge audience in Europe in the 1980s with songs like “I’m a Wonderful Thing, Baby,” “My Male Curiosity” and “Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy,” which all appear in the new musical.

Both bands danced across time warps and racial categories. They were costumed like performers from nightclub revues in black-and-white movies; their songs told stories, and their music folded together the retro and the contemporary with multicultural panache.

Mr. Darnell had majored in drama at Hofstra and went into music, he said, as a “frustrated actor”; in its heyday, Kid Creole and the Coconuts always seemed like a musical waiting to happen. Now that musical was taking shape, to open May 20 at La MaMa. It’s a double time warp: the 2010s looking back on the 1980s looking back on the 1940s.

The story is a fictional, parallel-universe take on Mr. Darnell’s world, using songs from his albums with dialogue written by Mr. Darnell and Vivien Goldman, a longtime music journalist from England who wrote a novelistic history of Kid Creole and the Coconuts, “Indiscreet,” and who is now a professor at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU’s Tisch School...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/22/theater/dapper-as-ever-kid-creole-dresses-up-his-songs-for-a-new-musical.html?smid=tw-share

"Underrated." That is the word that best describes Prince, the Guitarist. Why? Because his phenomenal guitar-playing was just one arrow in a quiver full of remarkable talents. He was such a masterful singer, songwriter, producer, performer, bandleader, dancer, multi-instrumentalist and global sex icon that his overall Prince-ness often eclipsed what may have been his most formidable talent: playing guitar.

Prince's Unheard Music: Inside the Paisley Park Vault
There are many pop stars who are great performers – but there is no chart-topping pop star in history who could play guitar like Prince. Imagine if Michael Jackson had played the solo on "Beat It"?! That was Prince on a Tuesday. His playing always sounded inspired, soulful and fearless. He combined the showmanship of Jimi Hendrix with the incredible melodic sensibility of a seasoned jazz cat. He could play funky James Brown-style rhythms, like on "Kiss," and he could play avant-metal solos like the intro to "When Doves Cry." It's an outrageous solo; certainly not the kind of sound that you'd expect to hear on a pop single – and he starts the song with it.

I saw Purple Rain in the summer of '84, and, Spinal Tap notwithstanding, it's the greatest rock & roll film of all time. There's so much Prince coming at you that you have to remind yourself he's also a breathtaking guitar player. When he plays the "Purple Rain" solo, it's life-changing. Put that on right now and try not to cry. And at the end of the movie, he conjures this genre–destroying guitar storm – and does it in high heels on top of a piano while his guitar is squirting. You just can't compete with that.
Purple Rain, the album, is a great guitar record. "Let's Go Crazy" has that driving rhythm riff that I loved playing at keg-party–cover-band shows in college, and "Darling Nikki" is a fantastically slippery, sleazy guitar song, perfectly matching tone with intent.
But let's not forget Prince's guitars themselves. From the male/female love-symbol guitar to the curlicue one that kinda looks like an ocean wave, every guitar was a statement. How is it possible that guitars that look that crazy could also sound that good? It's not the guitar, of course, it's the player. Every guitar was an extension and an expression of the awesome Prince fire that was screaming out of the amps.

Since his death, I've been watching videos of Prince's performances. Check out that great clip of him playing "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2004. He's onstage with Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne and Steve Winwood. Now those people are all-time rock icons. But then Prince steps forward like a badass gunslinger to play the solo. All eyes and ears turn as he effortlessly demonstrates a confident, cocky mastery of the instrument; his playing is deeply emotional, beautifully melodic, raw, inventive and soul-stirring, and then when you least expect it, he just f*cking flat-out flies up and down the neck shredding like Paganini and whirling like a dervish. The solo goes on for, like, 80 bars, building to a soaring, roaring crescendo of finesse and nuanced fury, and by the end of it the other rock luminaries onstage have all faded into the background, left behind in a purple cloud. Spectacular. There was nobody like Prince.

As told to Kory Grow.

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In a huge win for organized labor and unions across the nation, a Dane County Judge just ruled that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s notorious “right-to-work” law is unconstitutional. Union leaders argued that the law is an “unconstitutional seizure of their property” because it allows workers to enjoy union benefits without paying dues, stripping the labor organizations of important sources of funding, which is an undue burden on the organizations.

Judge Willam Foust ruled that the “plaintiffs will be obligated to spend treasury — their property — on services for which they cannot legally request compensation. This is enough to establish that unions do have a legally protectable property interest at stake…they are not isolated, and the impact of Act 1 over time is threatening to the unions’ very economic viability.”

Republicans erupted in fury at the news, echoing common conservative complaints that the Judge was “legislating from the bench,” as they do every time a court rules against them. “Once again a liberal Dane County judge is trying to legislate from the bench. No one should be forced to join a union or pay union dues as a condition of employment.  I’m confident that this decision will be reversed in a higher court and worker freedom will prevail” said Rep. Robert Vos...

http://occupydemocrats.com/2016/04/08/breaking-judge-strikes-scott-walkers-right-work-law-unconstitutional/

Exactly 62 years ago, on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that segregated schools were unconstitutional.

The Brown v. Board of Education decision was historic — but it's not history yet.

Just this week, a federal judge ordered a Mississippi school district to desegregate its schools.

The case on which the judge was ruling was originally brought during the summer of 1965. The first named plaintiff, "Diane Cowan, minor," was a fourth-grader at the time. Now she's Diane Cowan White, a 57-year-old clerk with the U.S. Postal Service.

The legal saga that bears her name continues because, for 50 years, the Cleveland, Miss., school district has failed to integrate.

The town of 12,000 people — like many, many towns and cities in America — is racially segregated. A railroad track runs through town. Black people live on the east side of the tracks; white people live on the west side.

(Last year, The Washington Post published a stunning set of visualizations showing how American cities are separated along railroad tracks and highways. Suffice it to say Cleveland is not unique.)....

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/05/17/478389720/after-50-year-legal-struggle-mississippi-school-district-ordered-to-desegregate