Colors …
This is a Voyage into Sound
inst. of change (ELECTRIC GUITAR)
the players
INSTRUMENTS OF NOISE.
Truth be Told
Living Colour
2016 — Shade
“They say that every story has two sides … With a purpose to confuse.”
((( “Two Sides” )))
Photograph by Stephanie Mitchell (Harvard Staff)
Where can we find light, In this never-ending shade?
— Amanda Gorman
National Youth Poet Laureate reading at President Joe Biden’s Inauguration (January 20, 2021)
“Unity“
James Brown w/ Afrika Bambaataa
2016 — Soulsonic Force
((( Original Sugar Hill Rhythm Section )))
[FROM THE TOP]
1982 — The Bad Brains was one of the most influential American Punk bands in the earliest days of a movement that had begun in working class England (Sex Pistols, The Clash). The Brains were distinctly American in their lyrics and onstage aggression (Hardcore), more like those in New York City (CBGB/Plasmatics), than in London. expected out of Washington D.C. who boasted Go-Go as Chocolate City’s “official” music. Also different (diverse) about the Brains, was they were one of few Punk bands that was black.
1968 — Romare Bearden’s “Martin Luther King Jr. — Mountain Top” was a collage he created soon after King’s assassination. Bearden made it as a tribute to all King had done in leading the Civil Rights movement, and improving the lives of so many African Americans.
THE BRIDGE
MALCOLM X (KLB)
2016 — Not Yet Banned in D.C. Living Colour, along with Stanley Clarke, The Roots, and Public Enemy, played Freedom Sounds, the concert ending the celebratory day of the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of African American History and Culture’s opening. (September 24, 2016).
2021 — Amanda Gorman, 20, the first Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, read “The Hill We Climb” at Joe Biden’s Inauguration, photographed in Harvard Square after an appearance at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts.
“F.O.X.”
Living Colour
Shade
2016 — Freedom Of Expression
((( Propagana v News )))
[FROM THE TOP]
1984 — “Hello Mollie” When a rusty Venezuelan ship, the Mercedes I, crashed onto Ted Kennedy’s next door neighbor’s beach, socialite Mollie Wilmot’s fifteen minutes of international fame began …
1985 — Arguing that if million-dollar cars could parade over the Okeechobee Bridge, on their way to a show at the Breakers Hotel on Palm Beach, the KKK should be permitted to march down the middle of Worth Avenue. The West Palm Beach Grand Wizard said his Klan had chosen Palm Beach’s exclusive street, because it was filled with so many likeminded shops, clubs, galleries, restaurants, people …
1985 — “Running for their New York City lives,” guitarist Skip McDonald, bassist Doug Wimbish, and drummer Keith LeBlanc (the Original Sugar Hill Rhythm Section) moved to London and joined Adrian Sherwood and ON-U Sound Records. Together, they formed Tack>>Head, an unusual fusion of Electro, Industrial, American R&B, Hip-Hop, and Funk music. (Fats Comet, Gary Clail, Mark Stewart). Four years later, Tack>>Head was one of the most popular bands in the European Underground, especially in London, where Rock N Roll royalty was often seen in the band’s audience. (Mick Jagger, Jeff Beck, Annie Lennox). The creation of what became known as Trip-Hop music can be traced back to the meeting of Sugar Hill (Hip-Hop’s) Original Rhythm Section and Adrian Sherwood, whose roots were in Bristol, with bands credited as the first in the early ’90s Trip-Hop. (Massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky)